I Cornerstone of Democracy BELIEVE that family life including the tender and affectionate treatment by the man of his wife and children is the cornerstone of democracy. Hence the so-called civilizations of Egypt, Judea, Greece, and Rome had no permanence and supply no useful lessons for the American or any other democracy. I believe that the need of democratic society is not more schools of the existing sort but different methods of teaching and much more attention to the individual pupil and to the training of teachers capable of awakening the interest of every pupil in his work and of making him active during every lesson. In a democracy the public schools should enable any child to get the best training possible up to any year not for the humblest destinations only but for all destinations. This country wants the best schools for the masses, not for the classes. The American people already accept as one just aim for a democracy Napoleon's phrase "Every career open to talent." The urban populations in the United States have already learnt that city children need to learn in their schools accurate handwork to teach them patience, forethought, and good judgment in productive labor, qualities which the children of rural communities learn from cooperating in the habitual work of father and mother. Democratic educational policy should press toward a mark remote. It should aim at providing a kind of teacher much above the elementary or secondary school teacher of the present day, and the expenditure on its schools of much larger sums than is at all customary as yet. It is one of the main advantages of fluent and mobile democratic society that it is more likely than any other society to secure the fruition of individual capacities. The democratic school should be a vehicle of daily enjoyment for its pupils and the teacher should be to the child a minister of joy. It should be a recognized function of the democratic school to teach the children and their parents how to use all accessible means of innocent enjoyment. Finally, the children in a true democracy should learn in their schools fidelity to all forms of duty which demand courage, self-denial, and loyal devotion to the democratic ideals of freedom, serviceableness, toleration, public justice, and public joyfulness. They should learn to admire and respect persons of this sort and to support them on occasion in preference to the ignoble. -Charles W. Eliot. [AMERICAN EDUCATION WEEK-1925] By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation EDUCATION is becoming well-nigh universal in America. The rapidity of its expansion within the past half century has no precedent. Our system of public instruction, administered by State and local officers, is peculiarly suited to our habits of life and to our plan of government, and it has brought forth abundant fruit. In some favored localities only one, two, or three persons in a thousand between the ages of 16 and 20 are classed as illiterate. High schools and academies easily accessible are offering to the youth of America a greater measure of education than that which the founders of the Nation received from Harvard, William and Mary, Yale, and Princeton; and so widely diffused has advanced study become that the bachelor's degree is no longer a symbol of unusual learning. All this is reason for gratification; but in the contemplation of worthy achievement we must still be mindful that full provision has not yet been made throughout the country for education of either elementary, secondary, or higher grade. Large numbers have not been reached by the blessings of education. The efficiency of the schools in rural communities is, in general, relatively low; too often their equipment is meagre, their teachers poorly prepared, and their terms short. High schools, notwithstanding their extraordinary growth, have not kept pace with the demand for instruction; even in great cities many students are restricted to half-time attendance, and in outlying districts such schools are frequently insufficient in number or inadequate in quality. In higher education the possibilities of existing institutions have been reached and it is essential that their facilities be extended or that junior colleges in considerable numbers be established. These deficiences leave no room for complacency. The utmost endeavor must be exerted to provide for every child in the land the full measure of education which his need and his capacity demand; and none must be permitted to live in ignorance. Marked benefit has come in recent years from nation-wide campaigns for strengthening public sentiment for universal education, for upholding the hands of constituted school authorities, and for promoting meritorious legislation in behalf of the schools. Such revivals are wholesome and should continue. Now, THEREFORE, I, Calvin Coolidge, President of the United States, do proclaim the week beginning November sixteenth as American Education Week, and I urge that it be observed throughout the United States. I recommend that the Governors of the several States issue proclamations setting forth the necessity of education to a free people and requesting that American Educacion Week be appropriately celebrated in their respective States. I urge further that local officers, civic, social, and religious organizations, and citizens of every occupation contribute with all their strength to the advance of education, and that they make of American Education Week a special season of mutual encouragement in promoting that enlightenment upon which the welfare of the Nation depends. In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. [SEAL] DONE in the City of Washington on this 18th day of September in the year of our Lord One and August] Published Monthly [except by the Department of the Interior Bureau of Education Washington, D. C. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE Provide Adequate Parks for City, County, State, and Nation. Stephen T. Mather. All Universities in Ecuador Closed by Governmental Decree. R. M. de Lambert Department of Elementary School Principals Finds Its Proper Path. Mary McSkimmon Parents Do Not Realize Decisiveness of Early Years of Childhood. Dorothy Canfield Fisher . Provide Training to Improve Employability of Unemployed Young Men. Alfred Nutting. A Well-Organized and Well-Conducted High-School Lunch Room. Alzira Wentworth Sandwall Shall Untrained Persons Be Employed to Teach Our Children? William M. Robinson Published Monthly, except July and August, by the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education VOL. XI WASHINGTON, D. C., NOVEMBER, 1925 No. 3 Provide Adequate Parks for City, County, State, and Nation Health of Body, Mind, and Soul Prerequisite to Efficiency. Systematic Outdoor Recreation Recognized as Essential to Health. Relaxation and Rest with Moderate Exercise Offered in the Public Breathing Spaces. State Parks Fill an Important Function, and the Number is Growing Rapidly. Threefold Purpose of National Parks. Recent Development of Educational Work in Them T HE WATCHWORD of to-day, more than of any other time, is efficiency. Not alone must one be efficient in business or profession, but efficiency must be carried into our very play, if we are to keep up with the pace set for us. One of the prerequisites of efficiency is health health of body, mind, and souland in no way can health be so vitally conserved as through systematic outdoor recreation and relaxation. Now that the commercial development of the United States is progressing so rapidly, it is essential that more areas be set aside as parks, so that facilities for outdoor recreation in its various forms may be available. The record of the men drafted into the Army during the World War, when nearly 40 per cent were rejected because of physical defects; the statistics showing the fearful toll that pneumonia and tuberculosis take each year; the appalling number of .cases of juvenile delinquency and mentaldisease victims; all these emphasize the strain under which our citizenship today is laboring, and the need for adequate parks of all kinds, wherein through rest and relaxation, combined with physical exercise, a return to the normal may be made and new strength stored up for the future. 66185°-5t-1 By STEPHEN T. MATHER Parks naturally fall into three main groups, city, State, and National. More than half the population of the country live in cities; so that the city parks, by their very nature, administer to the needs of the greatest numbers. Where millions of people, or even hundreds of thousands, are gathered within the space of a few square miles, principally engaged in indoor work, it is imperative that breathing spaces be provided. Large municipal parks are important in the scheme of urban outdoor relaxation, but these are not adequate to meet the needs of the city dwellers. In between the more pretentious parks should be smaller areas of park land and children's playgrounds, so that a bit of green may be within easy reach of all. The records of city courts show that playgrounds and parks have already been extremely beneficial in eliminating crime breeding and in reducing juvenile delinquency. State parks are our newest group of park areas, and the movement to set aside these State reservations is growing with increasing momentum, spreading through all parts of the United States. The State parks fill a very important function in providing adequate outdoor recreational facilities, and the development of more of them is greatly needed, in order that such parks may be easily reached from all our large cities. Many people in commercial life who can not take long vacations can get away from town for a few days, or a week end; and these derive the greatest benefit from the State parks. Such a use of these parks located in the vicinities of our large cities relieves the congestion in the city parks, leaving them for those unable to get away from town at all. In 1921 a conference of those interested in the State park movement was called in Des Moines, Iowa, and plans were made to further the creation and effective administration of such reservations throughout the country. From this initial meeting grew the National Conference on 41 |