There are those who always view the education of workers strictly from the standpoint of its value for social security. Just as a well-known statistician not long ago advised the American investor to support the Church, whether or not he agreed with its doctrines, because the influence of the Church upon the masses, he said, was on the side of invested capital, so there are those who believe that giving educational opportunity to working men is a sort of premium paid upon a general policy of social insurance. The fear of the menace of labor often inspires efforts for the education of workers in the hope that with better knowledge labor will become safe and sane. There is a wide-spread belief that education like religion is a conservative influence. If working men were only better informed they would have a more sympathetic understanding of the intentions of their employers; they would show some appreciation of their economic opportunities under our free institutions; they would know better than to go on strike, or listen to their union leaders, or dally with socialistic ideas. Perhaps so, but I have yet to see an educational effort which was consciously directed to these ends that was either sincere or intellectually respectable. From a wholly different point of view, the relation of education to work would seem to present no problem at all. Work itself is said to be the only genuine method of education. A popular writer who holds advanced ideas on this subject, says that the four years at college are wasted, that “as early as fifteen or sixteen a youth should be brought into contact with realities and kept in contact with realities from that age on. That does not mean that he will make an end of learning then, but only that he will henceforth go on learning--and continue learning for the rest of his life--in relation not to the ‘subjects’ of a curriculum, but to the realities he is attacking.” In this passage one detects the odor of Rousseau. We discussed this theory when we were considering liberal education as animal training. At best it is but half true. If learning necessarily came from contact with realities, every one would be educated. But there is no assurance that people will see the significance of the realities they “attack.” The importance of experimental study is not a new discovery. Science has long employed the laboratory method. And even laboratory work, work done in an environment which is carefully arranged to stimulate discovery, does not always develop habits of independent judgment.