dowments. There are its physical and geographical possibilities in resources and trades. Then we have the far more important factors of the character and types of our composite people. We are moulding all races of the world into a new unity. This means a tremendous force of unique possibilities. Community development in America has taken an interesting trend which has a distinct national bearing. Specialization in efficiency for industrial pursuits has produced a new kind of "community," which goes beyond local interests and geographical contiguity and is national in scope. The binding force of some special interest has welded distant parts of the country together. We have but to think of our huge iron and steel interests; our oil, coal, tobacco, cotton interests-each organized under efficient leadership so as to embrace the entire production of the commodity; we may think of our labor-unions, our national societies, political parties, etc. Much of this wonderful development is desirable and the result of a marvellous display of efficiency; much, also, is undesirable, because anticivic, and must. give way before a higher national idealism.

The nation must define its aims and recognize its ideals. Are its aims in industrial and commercial life to organize national community methods such as its "captains of industry" are practising? To foster factory methods such as above described? If so, the nation must take its course with a clear knowledge not only of the facts, but of what its course means as a national policy.

If a majority of the increments making up the progress of this nation must forever be based on skill only, while the tasks-for the execution of which this skill is

required are planned out by a few efficient leaders, let us recognize this as a situation to be faced. But it would mean a sorry shipwreck of democratic ideals.

Democracy and Efficiency. The plan of democratic government rests upon the tenet that there must be opportunity for all of us to appreciate the various phases of the country's problems, to recognize the material and spiritual opportunities for social betterment, and to give of our own best selves, by ballot or in actual service, for the good of our fellow citizens. If we wish to remain true to the democratic ideal, how shall we reconcile this with the actual tendency to give opportunity for efficiency only to the few, and to restrict the many to circumscribed skilled occupations?

To harmonize the democratic ideal with actual conditions, we must make a careful survey of our population, differentiating our citizens into broad groups representing types. We must preserve and cultivate the combinations of endowments such groups represent, so that efficiency increments on a national basis may be obtained from large numbers of individual members of each group. Further, if it is discovered that efficiency increments cannot be secured or even expected of every individual citizen; that there exists a percentage of individuals who have no efficiency stamina, or whose stamina it is not practical to develop; we must at least provide opportunities to raise their performance level in skill of constructive kind to a higher plane. Thus, the process of conserving the competency of the individual will reflect itself in the conservation and evolution of the national competency.

National Tendencies and the Public School.-"Vocational training and guidance" has become a popular

phrase, a sort of slogan. Such training and guidance is ostensibly to be a means of producing greater individual efficiency in various occupations, by selective training in harmony with individual competency. It has been suggested that by scientific study the individual competency can be discovered, conserved, and developed for the good of the student and of the community. School authorities have realized the importance of this demand. But from lack of a clear-cut conception of the larger aims and of the individual potentials they have been unable to arrive at a satisfactory solution of the many problems involved. Failing to discriminate between the community and national issues entering into this problem, failing to realize the need of individual differentiation, they are cramming their pupils with a mass of unnecessary and indigestible material.

Or, heeding the extreme claims of the advocates of specialized rather than common education, some school systems have patterned their organization upon the general outlines of industrial organizations, developing many branches or departments of special instruction, so that the pupil be enabled to focus his entire attention upon some definitely circumscribed training. These systems endanger the true purpose of the schools-the education of efficient boys and girls. Of course it is important to increase skill; or, rather, to raise the performance level from a simple to a more complex skill. But is skill of any degree or type the sole object of our schools? Is it their purpose to feed factories with girls who can attain a higher speed in packing soap or filling perfume bottles? Is it our aim to concentrate the education of boys upon greater skill in fastening so many dozens of heels a day to ready-made shoes, or to start

levers which in turn will set in motion thousands of spindles, or to handle a typewriter, or to count up figures? Would not the object of such an educational factory be nothing higher than to produce human machines for the regular industrial factory, the office, the store?

The examples cited represent low performance levels of skill. But is there any essential difference in educational aim if we give the pupils a "practical" preparation for the skill demanded in the banking-house, the railroad, etc., which varies from the lower forms, if they be lower, only in type or degree, but not in essence? Will education so circumscribed in scope conserve and convert competency into dynamic forces of efficiency?

School men must clear up their conceptions of community aims and national ideals. They must meet the demands of the more powerful tendencies more adequately. We must bear in mind that the best individual increment is the efficiency increment. This is based upon special competency which needs to be developed to its highest perfection. It is the educator's problem to harmonize individual efficiency with community needs and national aspirations.

The Public School and Individual Efficiency. Our schools must take it into account that individual endowments differ, and that these different endowments predispose to differentiated work. The whole field of possibilities which the true ideal of efficiency presents must be explored.

Perhaps there will always be a residue of persons who can do no more than start levers of machines, or be hewers of wood and drawers of water. For such, skill and efficiency are so nearly identical that they mean lit

tle to the progress of the nation. But aside from this almost negligible residue we have the millions of children who represent human raw material of immense possibilities. To condemn them to life-long slavery in machinelike occupations which will be more and more assumed by real machines is a great wrong to them and to the nation. They contain potential competency of every variety which is lying fallow until worked to a high state of efficiency through the aid of education. Many of them may become inventors of devices and machines which will replace human slave-labor. Each individual is capable of being matured in his own right only; he must have the chance of expressing his own life attitude in his active pursuits.

It is efficiency which creates, promotes, and increases material and spiritual progress. Efficiency, in the last analysis, is the result of a man being fully himself. It implies the development of the individual as an individual to his full possibilities. It presupposes that the individual is conscious of his powers and knows how to project them upon his environment. It implies the power of self-management and self-direction-the vision of human development and cultural growth—the enjoyment of cultural existence. It is the expression of sterling character, honest work, of motives that go beyond individual narrowness, and which serve the ideals of national betterment and the progress of civilization. Efficiency points high; it points to perfection; it points to godliness.