The question is not new; the questioners are not new; the things questioned are new. In olden days when schools existed primarily for the Latin professions, the question was answered: these things prepare for law, medicine, and the ministry. Schools now prepare for other professions and also for the trades; but the question is not yet answered without condition, amendment or dissent. In those old days the members of the Latin professions were the bearers of the highest culture; but now with our ideas of democracy and opportunity, and the general diffusion of knowledge, these members are but a small fraction of the bearers of the highest culture. The school system has grown from the school of the professions into the school of the people; but do the schools prepare for the people as the older schools prepared for the professions? A healthy, growing institution--like Webster’s mariner--must constantly take its bearings relative to life to know how far the elements of fads, specialization, and scholarly isolation are driving it from its true course. Practical relates to action, use, practice; it refers to ends or means to ends; it is opposed to theoretical, speculation or ideal. But there is nothing in the word to debar its use in mental as well as physical fields. It may be used as the German uses _übung_ in his university courses. Value is the quality that makes something suitable for ends or purposes. It permits the wildest limit of “art for art’s sake”; and equally permits one part of the “art” to be suitable to the ends and purposes of another part or of another “art.” Practical value, then, is the quality that renders a thing useful or desirable in meeting ends. It does not by any means alone imply “for revenue only.”