and uneasiness and restlessness are felt everywhere in the schools. All these disgruntled forces, by working in unison, can usually elect at least one member to a board of education. Lucky is the city where it is not a majority. This member is the grievance member. He, or she, becomes the repository of all secret complaints. Dissatisfied teachers or parents or neighbors pour out their imaginings into his or her lap. Reporters, hard pressed for stuff, ply him or her with ingenious questions. The public is fed on a diet of "suppose" and "they say," while the poor schools are a-quiver, wondering what will happen next.

If these disgruntled ones succeed in carrying an election, and with it a majority of the board, then the voice of the sovereign people must of course be obeyed! Whatever was the issue, usually kept in reserve during the campaign, it must now be dragged out and the will of the people vindicated sometimes by breaking the heart of a fine and cultured teacher; sometimes by discharging a superintendent of independence and courage who refuses to do the bidding of the unreasonable board, and dares to stand between the people and their enemies; sometimes by ripping up a course of study, or by dismissing a business manager, or by reinstating a delinquent official. Whatever the original grievance, by the time election is over it has grown, like a fast-rolling snowball, and the avalanche is rushing on its destructive course.

IV

In spite of these volatile, irresponsible, disgruntled elements; in the teeth of agitation about what to teach and how to teach it, and how to build and where to build; against restlessness and suspiciousness on the part of teachers and patrons, our free schools have vindicated the great wisdom of their founders. At heart everybody

believes in them, and they are among our most cherished public possessions. We must not be blind to the handicaps that so universally beset them.

Before they can approach the idealized usefulness that so often is pictured of them, they must be placed under purely professional control, out of the reach of the mere agitator, the headless and heedless costermonger of educational panaceas, and the unreason of the multitude. Moreover, there must be a saner popular participation, finding expression in much more generous tax levies, and the election of the wisest and sanest men of the community to membership on the governing board. There must come a greater public interest in the educational work of the school. Some method will be devised, whereby the public will be enabled to infuse some of its energy and practicalness into the school work. The dividing of the city into small districts and appointing a committee of visitors from each district, whose duty it is to visit the schools, and suggest to the board of education and the superintendent such changes as they deem wise, has produced good results in German cities. And there must certainly be more educational aggressiveness on the part of the pedagogue, more response to the actual needs of life, both cultural and vocational.

It appears that the public-school educator needs tranquillity, freedom, and enterprise. He needs tranquillity, because the development of his science requires the repose of the study. The rude jolting of suspicion, jealousy, vindictiveness, and bigotry are fatal to the growth of a sane pedagogical science.

He needs freedom, for an institution dependent upon the political vicissitudes of the day cannot be stable and well poised.

And, above all, he needs enterprise, the enterprise to match his schools with our civilization.

Maybe, if there were more genuine enterprise — not the make-believe, bustling kind — among the educators, there would be a great deal less carping and parsimoniousness on the part of the people. Maybe the public would hail with great joy and coöperation such an energizing of the schools. Maybe it is too much to hope that this tranquillity, freedom, and enterprise shall ever abide in the schools belonging to an impulsive public that often seems to prefer a self-complacent mediocrity to a virile efficiency.

PLAIN FACTS ABOUT PUBLIC SCHOOLS

AFTER a varied experience in education and law, Samuel P. Orth became professor of political science at Cornell in 1912, which position he held until his death. While a lawyer in Cleveland, Mr. Orth was elected to the Board of Education in that city, which gave him an excellent opportunity to learn many "plain facts" about schools. Mr. Orth wrote the volume of the Yale Chronicles entitled Our Foreigners.

Points of View

What progress

1. THIS article was written fifteen years ago. have we made since then in developing centres of training for school administration and for teaching? In reorganizing the programme of studies? In keeping the schools out of politics?

2. Has the trade school justified Mr. Orth's statement that it "must become our national economic salvation"? How has the problem of vocational education changed since the introduction of vocational schools?

3. Have we developed methods that are not mere technical routines and that do not suppress individuality?

4. Are parent-teacher associations effective in maintaining contact, without hampering interference between the community and the schools? How can they be made effective?

5. "The state has certainly not done its part to glorify the profession of teaching." Would laws for tenure of office, teachers' pensions, and standards for certification help toward raising the level of the teaching profession? Would effective measures for keeping politics out of school administration be a help? What organizations should take the lead in pressing for such laws?

TESTING THE HUMAN MIND

ROBERT M. YERKES

I

THE army mental tests have shown that there are, roughly, forty-five million people in this country who have no sense. Their mental powers will never be greater than those of twelveyear-old children. The vast majority of these will never attain even this meagre intelligence. Besides the forty-five millions who have no sense, but a majority of votes, there are twenty-five millions who have a little sense. Their capacity for mental and spiritual growth is only that of thirteen- or fourteen-year-old children, and your education can add nothing to their intelligence. Next, there are twenty-five millions with fair-to-middling sense. They have n't much, but what there is, is good. Then, lastly, there are a few over four millions who have a great deal of sense. They have the thing we call "brains."

THESE statements, which I venture to quote from a popular magazine, are typical of much that has been written about army mental tests. Are they true? No. Is there any truth in them? Just enough to make them worse than false. They discredit psychology and mislead the reader in important matters of fact. This is my excuse for turning from my scientific tasks to write a would-be popular article on the results of psychological examining in the army.

Two types of statement appear repeatedly in popular and general accounts of the army work. The one is that the draft was but thirteen years old mentally; the other