Here it is necessary to recall that the majority of these children are _typical_. The middle 50 per cent of all children born deviate but slightly from the type of the race, in all their mental functions. They do not call for special adjustments. On either side of these, deviating more widely toward less and greater, run the remainder of the children, in very rapidly decreasing frequencies. Those who need a very wide latitude in school organization constitute possibly 20 per cent of all, the highest 10 per cent, and the lowest 10 per cent, in general or special capacity. The problem does not seem so vast, when we recall the shape of the curve of distribution; and the comparative infrequency of extremely unusual children. VI. THE COST OF FOSTERING INDIVIDUALITY The cost of individualizing education acts as a deterrent, even when the desirability is fully recognized. Compulsory education for all the children of all the people is expensive. A nation must be wealthy in order to carry it through. To maintain every child born into the social order for fourteen to sixteen years without earnings, and to pay from public taxation for his education for eight to ten or more of those years, is an enterprise upon which few societies of any time have ventured. Nevertheless, if democracy is to survive, and especially if it is to improve, as a form of government, universal education on a large scale is basic. Self-government, in the highly complicated environment which has been evolved, depends on literacy and other knowledge, requiring long instruction, even for youth of average ability. What then of the great numbers of those who deviate in various degrees below the average in capacity for learning? The social order needs and will utilize their services. The economics of their presence in the republic is not a much more difficult problem than under other forms of government. It is the politics of their presence that causes concern under a democracy; for they are enfranchised, yet without learning they are political dependents. They stand at the mercy of any catch word tossed at them, with results which have raised on every hand an earnest searching of democracy. For example, this question has been raised: Is it possible for education to prepare the lower half of the distribution curve for self-government? Considering recent discoveries as to the mental capacity which characterizes the lower half of the population when adult, is it possible that education will ever be able to nullify the charlatan influence of demagogues, whose appeal is to prejudice and cupidity? These questions remain unanswered. In the meantime the great experiment of compulsory education is under way. The expense of it is kept down by teaching the children in large groups of thirty to fifty or over, the same lessons, in the same way, at the same time.