This sort of thing has soaked into the public mind pretty deeply. It has exerted its effect upon the life of this generation. The number who would like to live without much exertion are a more or less direct result of it. It is one of the things that must be overcome. Some day it will begin to right itself, for the public will realize the mistaken assumption underlying it. Then a reaction will set in, but we dare not wait for the reaction. We must be trying to stem the current for the sake of those who need to be shown the light now. Just now we are probably at the crest of the billow. It is to the credit of the public school system that it has always glorified work. We have never needed work and workers so much as we do now. Our armies have torn the world to pieces. We must now have workers to rebuild it into a finer and grander thing than it was before. Therefore, the person who expects to take up room on it and live from it must produce. The life of society is co-operative. Each must do his share. The test of learning is service. The School as a Reform Agency (1921) In the little red school house that stood on the hillside thirty years ago some crude things were done. At the same time, some very important and helpful things were done. Even some of the crude things now seem to have had an indispensable value. The years teach us that the only test of the correctness of any educational method is its result in terms of life. In those days a great deal of moralizing was done. A moral was drawn from everything. The great bulk of the teaching was didactic. Each lesson in the old-fashioned reader had its definite ethical point. Often the moral was stated in so many words at the end. Patriotism, thrift, industry, the fact that there is always room at the top—all these things came in for their share of attention. The result was a patriotic, thrifty, industrious, and ambitious generation of people. We owe that generation and its work largely to the teacher who did not fear to frankly face the moral implications of things. He may have moralized a little too much, but his work had its effects for good. The history of the world is largely made up of actions and reactions. The reaction against all this came on in due time. We witnessed the development of a great dislike for all stories with apparent morals and of a distinct resentment against all didactic teaching. We still make some effort at character-building, but that effort is usually veiled and often neglected altogether.