are being made the subjects of close, careful, scientific study. It is thought that in order to deal effectively with these young people the high school teacher should understand those marvelous changes—physical, mental, and moral—thru which they are passing. How else can one know how to check where checking is needed (and it usually is needed somewhere along the line); to guide where the pathway is obscure (and every adolescent is sure to pass thru valleys of darkness during the high school course); and to inspire where inspiration is lacking (and with some it is lacking a good deal of the time)—in a word, how else than thru a knowledge of the situation can one be the "philosopher, guide, and friend" that the adolescent always needs?

Do you know that about one-fourth of all students who enter the freshman classes of our high schools, thruout the United States, drop out before the close of the first semester? Do you know, too, that the elimination continues right along until that one-fourth is made more than one-half before graduation day arrives? Now, these boys and girls enter full of hope and expectation, eager and ambitious for what the high school is supposed to do for them; they do not plan to drop out before completing the course—nor do their parents plan to have them do so. Why do they do it? What has changed their point of view and sent them from the school, sad and disappointed, and their parents dissatisfied with both school and child? What is it? Do you want me to tell you? The situation has been the subject of investigation in many places thruout the country, and the conclusion reached by thoughtful men and women, unbiased students of educational practises, is that, while many influences combine to bring about that unfortunate result, the chief cause of this high mortality is the unsympathetic attitude of high school teachers toward the adolescent. But, you may ask, why unsympathetic? Because they regard them as fickle, unstable, and irrational, and so have but little patience with them. I'll admit that the adolescent seems all that at times, but that is only on the surface. The developmental changes—physical and moral—thru which he is passing often make the life during this period one of turmoil. From fourteen to eighteen—the normal high school period—is frequently called the "storm and stress period" of life. Not having made a study of the situation, high school teachers, in the main, do not know the fundamental scientific facts, and therefore can not account for actions, points of view, signs of waywardness, lack of appreciation, poor lessons, etc., etc., that sometimes characterize the youth while a student in the high school. They often lay to an unclean mind what springs from a perfectly normal development of the sex function; they are sure that moral perversity is the basis of actions that are more correctly explained by reference to a moral nature merely in the process of development; they think that pure laziness alone explains the lack of vigorous work, whereas the boy is growing so fast that he has no strength for anything else; they scold him for being awkward and say it is due to carelessness and a slip-shod mind, because they do not know that the muscles sometimes grow faster than the bones, making accurate co-ordination a physical impossibility; in a word, to general, all round cussedness they charge behavior that should be referred to high blood pressure, aching bones, the knitting together by fiber growth of the various brain centers, and finally, to youthful enthusiasm, all of which are perfectly normal signs of developing youth. They do it because they do not know any better. They are ignorant of many things that touch, and vitally, the young people with whom they are working. But how could it be otherwise? They have never given any reflective thought to the matter. The term "half-baked" that they often apply to the adolescent in disgust, or in coarse jest, is, from this point of view, more applicable to themselves.

That, I say,—the unsympathetic attitude of the high school teacher toward the adolescent—is the chief cause of the high mortality of high school students. That, coupled with another, that springs from the same fundamental situation—ignorance of the needs and points of view of the adolescent—tho not so chargeable to the individual class teacher as to the school system as a whole, local, state, and national, pretty nearly cover the ground. The other cause to which I refer is the course of study and program of activities that are so ill-adapted to the tastes, and needs, and capacities of adolescent boys and girls—studies and activities that have no real meaning to them and that fit them for nothing definite save college entrance where the same old process, meaningless to many, often goes on for another period.

What is being done on the firing line to better such conditions? A good deal; quite a good deal. Normal schools and schools of education here and there, the former more than the latter, are now giving attention to the matter, requiring in some cases and urging in others, prospective teachers to become intelligent in regard to the lives they are to direct. It is being done at our own institution as at others. This year Dr. Todd has given instruction in child study to nearly one hundred young men and women who are looking forward to teaching in the grades, and I have had a group of some thirty-five or forty prospective high school teachers and superintendents who have been making a careful study of adolescence. I guarantee that these people will not make the crude and unfeeling blunders that I have mentioned as too common among high school teachers, as they run. These are firing-line activities. They were nearly new a dozen years ago. My introduction of such courses in our University was smiled at indulgently by some of my colleagues and sharply criticised, especially the work in adolescence, by others. They are not yet required of students preparing to teach, but have evidently demonstrated their value since, tho in no sense snap courses, they have become very popular.

As illustrative of this work let me refer to a notable recent action of the legislature of Iowa. It has just passed an Act appropriating to the State University $25,000 a year for the purpose of financing what is called a "child-welfare" campaign. The plan is to make an exhaustive scientific study of the child from both the physiological and psychological points of view, to the end that it may be better known and thus more satisfactorily guided in its educational career.

One other thing, in this same connection, is being done on our firing lines all over the country—something that is hoped will set the people at large, parents and citizens generally, to thinking sanely on educational matters and ere long rectify our blunders as to subjects of study and general school activities and thus result in sending the children out efficient workmen in suitable fields. I refer to addresses and discussions such as this and others, to articles in newspapers and magazines, and the educational press, and to even more extensive and thoro discussions put out in book form from time to time for the laymen.

The old darkey says, "The world do move." We sometimes think it moves very slowly, but yet it "do move." Tho we can't see it move, we can, by looking back, see that it has moved.

Physical Education

Another thing for which we are fighting out on the firing lines is an adequate system of physical education. This would include periodical medical inspection of every child from the kindergarten up; it would also include the school nurse and the visiting nurse, and, as well, free public clinics for ear, eye, nose, throat, and tooth difficulties. It would also include, for mental