The present-day tendency in the education of American children is to emphasize the importance of knowledge, health, and character in the order in which they are here set down. To confine the term “education” solely or chiefly to the acquisition of knowledge is to limit its meaning to its usual synonym of instruction or teaching. In its truer and broader sense it implies the discipline and development of the moral, physical, and spiritual faculties, as well as the purely intellectual faculty, for it is only through such comprehensive development that ideal maturity can be approached. Sheer intellectual power, resulting from the systematic acquisition of knowledge and training of the mind, produces a one-sided individual who lacks the restraints and guidance imposed by moral and ethical concepts. He is like an ocean liner of tremendous speed and power but without chart, compass, or rudder. It is obvious that the intellectually brilliant crook, devoting his mental gifts to the accomplishment of his criminal purposes, is a less worthy and less useful citizen than the laborer of high character but limited knowledge. The entire trend of our present system of education is to overemphasize the importance of the acquisition of knowledge and to underemphasize the necessity for the building of character. And this is the chief fault with our otherwise excellent public-school system of education, which, circumscribed by public prejudices grounded in widely differing religious beliefs, steers clear of comprehensive moral training because of its intimate coherence with religious and spiritual training. The meager moral training which the public school affords is merely incidental to its primary function of imparting knowledge. This deficiency must be supplied primarily by the home, and secondarily by the Sunday school and the church in laying the foundations of character strong and deep before the child reaches the school age and by continuing the work on the moral and spiritual super-structure until maturity beholds the building completed on all sides. When we come to realize that the true function of education is first of all to build strong character, second to develop a virile physique, and last of all to impart knowledge and discipline the mental faculties, we then will have evolved an educational system which will be effective in accomplishing its real purpose--the evolution of the child into the symmetrically equipped adult. This is the eternal boy-problem.