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HEN Mr. Wirt, of Gary, Indiana, was given a chance to try his experiment of an educational system upon a New York and a Brooklyn school, a discussion on education arose on every side. Two school years have passed since then, and other schools have been added to this list.

The exponents of the Gary system believe in vocational training. They have shops for printing, carpentry, pottery, plumbing; classes in millinery, cooking, sewing, clerical work. They want to do away with the congested class-rooms by utilizing every room in the school at all hours-there will be no assembly hall vacant all day. They wish to keep the children in school for longer hours -to interest them in study and play, and not send them forth to learn the talk of the crowded streets. Above all, they want the co-operation of the parents.

My workroom looks out upon a police station. Young girls, roughly handled by policemen, are pushed, jostled, and thrust into a patrol wagon, while a crowd gathers around to stare. Young boys, making a bad start, from which it is so hard to break away, fight with the policemen against the penalty of their fault-the jail. And even sadder still to see are those who, sullen and morose, heed not the crowd, mind not the policemen's harsh directions, but who have gone further and further down until pride, the most human of human characteristics, has been trampled into dust.

I had heard that the Gary system was considered by some enthusiasts to be the solution of even these moral ills. I wondered what the parents had to say about it. I was curious to know if they were merely suffering their children to be experimented upon, or if they felt, as some critics have contended, in a vague and non-specific fashion, that their offspring were losing the elementary instruction in the three R's, which is popularly supposed to corner-stone every educational struc

system, and its principal, Mr. Angelo Patri, is a zealous advocate of these new ideas in child-training.

Without new things and new ideas it makes the mind-what shall I say?-so stiff." This was the summing up of it all when I asked an Italian woman, wife of the editor of an Italian paper, what she thought of it. This was for her the root of the whole matter, but it had also many shoots and farreaching branches. She was distinctly of the better educated class. She knew the whys and wherefores of education. She aids at the mothers' meetings. She translates lectures into Italian and helps the mothers to learn the language their children speak, and thus keeps them in harmony with the younger element in their homes. She helps her people. "But I could not do so without the aid of the Gary School," she said with a smile.

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"You see," she told me, "the foundation of knowledge will develop and grow under this system. It is only the ignorant and thoughtless who oppose it. Ah, no," and she shrugged her shoulders, never could we leave this neighborhood and the school. Do you know what we want?" And she looked as if she had some deep, beautiful secret to tell me. "When the fruit ripens, we want Lincoln, our little boy, to have some too. Lincoln must have this chance, this big, free, democratic chance, and so we will never move from here while Mr. Patri is working out the Gary school ideas.'

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She thought for a moment. "Ah, yes, know," she said. "I must tell you what Lincoln thinks. It is a simple thing, but you can tell, oh, quite, quite easily, whether Lincoln loves his school or not. When he is naughty, we say to him, 'If Lincoln is not a good boy, we will move downtown farther, where mother and daddy want to go,' and he is good-oh, so very, very quick." "What about the co-operation between parents and children ?" I asked her. I will tell tell you," she said, "for it is one of the most important things in the system. The chief wish is to take in the community or neighborhood in which the teachers live. If it is Italian, they study and develop

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with an Italian foundation, and the same would be true in a Jewish neighborhood or any other.

Here we are almost all Italians.

The Gary system wants to have the old join hands with the young for the new, growing things of life, and to have the young learn from the old of all the things that experience has taught them.

'Among Italians it is always the girl who works.

The boy does nothing. The girl from her childhood cooks, cleans. She is the housewife from babyhood. The boy plays cards; he learns to gamble early. He plays all the time that he is not idling. The Gary system is showing the Italians in the Bronx that the boys must help the girls. They must work together. They must play together. They must dance together. And here," and she paused, "is one of the biggest obstacles the Gary system has to overcome.

The older people of Italy who have settled in this new country do not believe that boys and girls should dance together. All they know of mixed dances is from cheap dance-halls where their girls have stayed too late and tears and sorrow and trouble have resulted. They have never known the free, normal companionship between boys and girls that exists in America. They think : This strange new country; what will happen to the girls if they dance when they are young? Will they not bring disgrace and anguish to their parents and to themselves; will they not lose the lives that belong to good women-lives where they have homes, motherhood, and children and the respect of their neighbors ?'

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"The Gary school sees very far ahead, and the parents will soon begin to see too," she continued. 66 Slowly the prejudices are being overcome. They are convincing the mothers that dancing is normal, and not harmful. Ah, yes, soon they will see how fine it all is, and what it means to the coming generation. If these children should be forbidden the pleasures that are allowed to the Americans, they would seek them secretly. The Gary system is making the parents understand. The next generation will not see the wives always left at home. They will enjoy the pleasures of their husbands. For them it will not be all

cooking and having babies. It will not be all drudgery. They will not be left for other women, for they will take the places of the other women.

"And when they can write and read the language their children know they will be so

"They

happy!" she added, irrelevantly. will not have to get me to attend to their business, for they feel it is so impolite to let others know their business."

And again, by way of a sharp contrast, I saw one of the most uneducated of the mothers. I asked her the same question.

"I like this school," she said. "It ain't no good for them to go to a school and learn books all day-they could be making money peddling papers better. But here my boy will learn the plumbing trade. They say plumbers make so very much money." A future for her son--a comfortable home for her old age. It meant much to this woman who had slaved and toiled all her days and had aged before her time.

Up flights of rickety stairs I climbed one day to the topmost tenement in the building. Here were plenty of Gary children. In this home were three families. One woman with seven children of her own and three of her brother's. Four children of a neighbor whose husband was out of work had been invited to stay until the husband found work!

The wife told of her husband's delight when he learned that the children were studying planting and cultivating gardens. For him the only tilling of the soil, which he had loved so well back in Italy, had been excavating for the new subway. At night he heard with joy and pride his children tell of the plants they were growing. This was the first time he had ever taken an interest in what they were doing. There on the fireescape the mother showed me a soap-box in which a bright-red tomato was growing. Beside it little tops of green lettuce showed bravely above the soil.

Oh, my husband, he is so good to me now! I like the Gary system; I like it, I like it," she said, with a wistful look. Then she added, "Look here," as she led me into a dark little room. There on a bed was a tiny creature.

"She is only two weeks old," she said, earnestly, "but it will be so beautiful when she can go to the school, too!"

ones.

Here I found an old, old mother who was strongly against boy-and-girl dancing. She was very ragged, and her age seemed to make her shiver more than the younger ragged She appeared as if food and clothing might be the only things in the world to awaken her interest. But her dark eyes flashed and lighted up her face when I asked her what she thought of the system.

Ah, de Gay-ree seestem," she said. "I like it verree mouch. Only-only it is so well to learn to cook. That is a'right, to build de shops, to maka de gardens, but to dance-" and she stopped to show me what dancing was. With a sparkle in her eyes, she picked up her ragged skirt and danced about. I laughingly told her that she seemed to enjoy dancing herself.

But she stuck to her point. "No, it is not for me, nor for us, we women. We are to cook. To maka de homes, never to dance." And the sad look came back and the eyes lost their luster.

And I saw a father who was helping instruct in the farming and gardening classes. His joy seemed almost deeper than any of the others.

My two little boys are in that school. My girl-she learn to sew. She help her mother. She become fine dressmaker. But my boys, they love the earth!" He beamed. "And they are proud of their papa. They say: Our dad, he very fine man, he can teach in our school. He know all about the ground, the vegetables, the flowers.' Before they went to this school they didn't think nothing of me! They thought my hands were always dirty. That I wore old ragged clothes

-not stylish, you know, like their teachers'. I thought my boys would run away and leave me from shame. But now, ah, we're so happy! I teach, they learn, and they teach me too! We have good times."

I talked with the man who had given a marionette show one evening.. He has a night class in geology, and many of the fathers digging in the subway bring home small queer stones that quickly find their way into the class-room.

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"Do you like the system?" I asked him. "Do I like it?" he repeated. "I hope you are not against it?" And his black eyes looked worried and distrustful. "Of course," he continued, "you do not know, or you wouldn't ask. No one can help but like the pretty-no, that is not the word-ah, the beautiful in life when it is so good, so fine, so practical. No one wants to make life. harder. Every one wants to make it richer. To get more out of it-all that is fine and big and unselfish. That is what the children learn here. They learn how happy they are when they are good to each other and love their homes and their school. They cultivate self-control, self-discipline. Why, to me," and he looked as though he were al

most treading on sacred ground, "the Gary system is the salvation of the world. All the parents in the Bronx know what their children are studying. We are proud of them. The school cements the family life. And we see that children are not only little creatures who get quickly so dirty, who get punished in school and make us trouble, but they are little souls with ideas and hopes and ideals that they do not yet understand. And to the poor such children will not be a burden. Ah, it is the solution of many ills! All of these children will help their parents. And with the children the parents will learn."

All seemed eager to praise the educated, the uneducated, the poor, the well-to-do. The children, too, were eager to tell of their work, of their love for school. Often a little hand shot up to " please be allowed to speak," and a tiny voice said, "Lady, I love the Gary system."

One small tot showed me a picture he had crayoned in the art class. Art seemed a big, imposing thing to hear of from such a wee child. It was of a tree laden with apples, with two on the ground underneath. Seriously he explained to me:

All the apples would not be on the tree. Some would fall down, wouldn't they? So I put two down on the ground." Surely here the mind was not "stiff." This child had drawn from life.

I saw the priest who has most of the children of the school in his parish-for in this section they are Catholics.

In two years

"It is wonderful, this school," he said, with an almost contagious enthusiasm. "Our troubles are so much fewer. it has made such a difference! They understand how to make good people by looking after the children. I have always found that if I looked well after the children in my parish then I had good parishioners. It is the young who are so important. We must all feel that."

The children flock to the libraries, often to look up secret hobbies of their parents. One little boy was finding out about an aeroplane to tell his father, who, in turn, told him what the aeroplanes were doing in the war. Another link between parent and child.

A mother told me that at first the children thought that they had a freedom which was amazing, a lack of discipline to be taken advantage of. Soon they began to love their school-a wonderful change, no more truancy. They felt like young citizens. "Now they

are never absent," she said, "unless poverty, sickness, or lack of proper clothes forces them to be away. The school visitor investigates then, and such troubles are remedied. And they make healthy children, too. They say they must have healthy bodies to have healthy minds, and I think they must be right."

"My boy, he broke windows," said a father. "He worried us all the time with the bills from mad shopkeepers. He wouldn't stop-he thought it was fun to smash the glass and cause us trouble. But now-what you think that boy do? Break windows? No. He put in the windows when they break in school, and he put in the panes of glass in the new conservatory. The others who used to help him break windows for fun now help him put the glass panes over the flow

ers.

Isn't that a good school?"

"Yes," said another mother, "I will gladly tell you what I think of the system, and I will tell you for the whole house. The others you could not understand. They do not speak so clear-such good English as I do.

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'You Americans let us come to your country. We want to come. But we must be understood a little. Eh? We shouldn't be

let in without your-understanding. We want our children not to go to the sweatshops or to be the ones for the big policemen, their jails, and their night court. We have come to a land of freedom. What is it you call it ? A democracy. A big word thatdemocracy-but we all know what it means. We want the freedom we have come for, don't we? The right kind, so you'll be glad you let us in. The Gary school system gives us the opportunity. Then we will make good citizens. We will all be working together. Yes, all of us-parents, schools, children, homes, country."

And as I heard her talk in that inimitable Italian drawl, with her eyes flashing, her voice soft and animated, I felt there was no longer any doubt of what the parents thought of the system.

Educationally, morally, physically, and in the homes the Gary system is showing astonishing results. The parents feel that it covers a wider range than the school which makes the three R's its curriculum, for it embraces this curriculum and then goes spreading forth beyond. And, oddly enough, parents are apt to know something about children and the way they should be educated!

IN The Outlook for August 29, 1914, in

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an article entitled "Using Magazines in History Classes," the writer said: "Our boys and girls have not kept up with the growth of our vocabulary. As a result they are out of touch with current thought and expression. If the reader is inclined to think this point overemphasized, let him attempt to find out how thoroughly the average student understands and uses correctly common modern social, economic, and political terms, and he will be convinced of the truth and importance of my contention."

In this article I am, in the first place, submitting proof that my contention rests upon fact and not upon assumption, and, in the second place, conclusions reached through the experience of gathering the proof.

In the study of current history at our

made, last November, a collection of over eight hundred words and expressions from only five successive assignments in current events! These eight hundred terms came from the note-books of exactly ninety-eight high school juniors and seniors.

The following words and expressions, about three hundred in number, were very commonly found in the note-books examined:

THE LIST

Alliance, absolute blockade, autocratic, administrative entity, absolutism, autocracy, amnesty, armament, Associated Press, ambassadors, ad interim, alienating, arbitration, anarchic, autonomy.

Budgetary system, benevolent neutrality, boycott, belligerent, bureaucracy, beleaguered, bonds, bicameral, bona fide, blockade, body politic.

Corporate excess, Chancellor of the Exchequer, committee of the whole, council of conciliation, coalition cabinet, carpetbagging, citizen, contemporaries, constituency, citizen army, caucus, conciliatory, contingencies, curriculum, censoring of newspapers, chronic state, constitutional reform, city council, continental army, co-operation, conservation bill, conservative Republicans, congestion, compendium, conservation, cosmopolitan, chaotic, constabulary, cataclysm, city manager, consular.

Domestic enemy, dynasty, diplomatic blunder, draft, disarmament, diplomatic corps, doctrine. of the open door, doctrine of State sovereignty, dreadnoughts, doctrine of non-resistance, disbursements, diplomacy, doctrine, drafting a bill.

Ethical feeling, exchequer, embargo, excise laws, epochal war.

Franchise tax on corporations, fiat currency, free list, floating a loan, Federal despotism, Federal Reserve Bill, filing a brief, Federal Republic, Federal, foreign emissaries, franchise, fiscal.

Government, government by Socialism, government by regulation.

House of correction, hyphenated Americans, hyphenated journal, home rule.

International obligation, indemnification, inalienable, impassioned liberalism, imperial law, international court, incendiary, inalienable rights, inter-State, initiative, inheritance tax, indemnity, inviolability, internationalism. Judicial tribunal. Kultur, kill a bill.

Litigation, legitimate, legacies, lip loyalty. Municipality, maelstrom, maladministration, marplot, militarist, merchant marine, Monroe Doctrine, mobilize, minimum wage.

National Security League, National defense, naval battalion, neutral, negotiate, National integrity, National Trade Commission, nonpartisan.

Open door.

Preamble, progressive tax rate, propaganda, pound sterling, proportionate, proclamation, public law of nations, post-bellum dumping, property qualifications, Pan-Americanism, parole law, participation accounts, predicated, pedagogical, protective tariff, public opinion, preparedness, pork barrel, pacifist, pigeonhole a bill, playing politics, paternalism, Pan-Germanism.

Reiterated, Revenue Tax Law, referendum, rural credits, redistricting recruits, repudiate, recall.

Subsidiary, short-term notes and bonds," standpatters," sinking funds, sedition, stock dividends, sectarianism in politics, socialized autocracy, sectional bias, subpoena, subsidy, States' rights, scientific tariff-making.

Triple Alliance, The Hague, textile manufacturers, textile industry, tariff-tinkering, "trustbusting," treason, textile.

Unrelieved absolutism, utilitarian, unalterably, ultimatum.

Vulnerable, validity, verbatim, vilification. Whitewashing, watering stocks, "watchful waiting."

Yellow journalism.

What, Mr. Reader, are you now thinking? Stop long enough to consider just what or who is responsible for that which such a list of terms reveals. Do you think the spending of $500,000 annually on public schools supposedly for public benefit is benefiting the individual, and thus the public, as fully as it might? With how much pleasure and appreciation could any one read newspapers and magazines who does not know the meaning and use of terms such as you have just read and of many other similar terms? Every one knows that great good comes from being an habitual reader of magazines which record current progress, but how can we expect young men and young women to be interested in the reading of newspapers and magazines when they do not know what the editors are talking about?

The list of words herewith submitted I have shown to several college students, two of whom are taking a post-graduate course in a New England college. In each instance the college student has been frank enough to say that he and his colleagues would find it exceedingly hard, if not wholly impossible, to explain satisfactorily a large percentage of the expressions. Generally speaking, the average college student is as little interested in current problems as are secondary-school students.

Is it any wonder that young Americans—