Governor Hughes is quite right in emphasizing “the importance of giving our teachers and of having them communicate to their pupils the proper sense of responsibility of citizenship in this country.” That sense of responsibility will hardly be strong and effective if it is to come from purely academic study of government. It will be powerful and helpful if it comes from an earnest and sympathetic study of government in operation, a study of what the government is actually doing for the student, what it ought to do and what he himself can do to improve it. A study of this kind can hardly fail to give the future citizen a feeling of pride in his own city, and a proper sense of his own responsibility in making its government honest and efficient. The municipal campaign recently concluded in New York seems to have been conducted largely on the idea that the average voter is more interested in personalities than policies. Such a campaign would be impossible before an electorate having even an elementary appreciation of the direct bearing upon its own personal interests of an honest and efficient administration of the city’s affairs. It is plainly the business of the schools to use their extraordinary opportunity and extraordinary power to equip the voters of to-morrow with a training in these vital affairs of government that shall make them intelligent critics of what their servants in office have done or what claimants for their ballots propose to do. Heretofore the schools have been generally content to give instruction on matters of state and national government, with but scantiest reference to municipal affairs, in spite of the fact that municipal government is of most direct and vital importance to the citizen, touching him in his daily life at every turn. If the schools could only establish firmly in the minds of the students just the one fact that party labels are of no importance in municipal matters, that honest and efficient administrators should be chosen regardless of party connection or endorsement that alone would be a tremendous gain. We have been going on the assumption that a knowledge of state and federal government will furnish enough insight into matters of administration to guide the voter in matters of municipal government. It would be far better if the choice were necessary to rely upon a proper knowledge and appreciation of municipal interests to guide the voter in the broader fields of government. The choice is of course not necessary. State and national government should still be studied, but in a more rational way. Much the same method may well be employed as in the study of municipal government.