(_d_) The following idea is very generally diffused, that it is the aim of the school to prepare children for the life they will have to lead when they are grown up. Most of the children attending the public elementary schools will become proletarians, wage-workers. Since the proletarian must be diligent, thrifty, humble, disciplined, it is regarded as the duty of the elementary school to inculcate these virtues. But these so-called virtues are not virtues at all. The greatest obstacle to any improvement in the lot of the average wage-earner is that he should be content with things as they are. The labourers’ wage represents the minimum that he finds requisite to the satisfaction of his needs; when his needs increase, his wages rise. Every friend of social progress should endeavour to secure that the elementary school should arouse in the children certain needs and desires. (_e_) Many persons wish to utilise the public elementary school to turn children away from socialist ideas. This is to be done by making the children acquainted with the dangers which the realisation of socialist theories would involve, and in addition by inculcating in the children the afore-mentioned virtues. But the attainment of this end is less easy than such persons imagine. The public elementary school exercises a certain influence. The workman who has received at school education and instruction of the suggested type will doubtless less readily become an enthusiastic adherent of the socialist party than the workman who has never attended an elementary school, and who was an illiterate until he first came under the influence of his trade union. But the notions inculcated in the public elementary school in respect of obedience, humility, and the like are readily eradicated by a short experience of socialist comradeship, and replaced by social-democratic ideas. _General Culture._--It is by no means one of the aims of the public elementary school to provide general culture. Even less is this the aim of education than it is the aim of the public elementary school--and the provision of general culture by the latter would appear to be entirely out of the question. During the few years a child spends at the public elementary school, it is impossible to attempt to impart all that is included in the wide field of general culture.