turbances, presents a highly auspicious condition in its educational affairs, — and to include in our inspection, regions where the common school fares hardly; and furthermore, to mark communities which will have no dealings with the system which is possessing the land and blessing the inhabitants thereof. This general survey in its entireness is favorable in its issue, albeit there are many distracting sights and sounds; and the American common school, in its largest sense, is seen to be capable of a service to the country which cannot be measured by the finest judgment, so great are its possibilities.

The phrasing of the question under discussion happily places the forecasting we would attempt on the simplest and most reasonable basis. A fair expectation touching the work of a typical institution,

that, in brief, is the limit appointed to this paper.

It may be well to remark that the expectation of the people in general, the common judgment concerning the common school, is in issue, not the searching and difficult reasoning of minds bent on minute discriminations between slight degrees of excellence. What ought the plain citizen to ex pect that is the inquiry; not what may be the demands of specialists in theories of instruction.

The governmental idea unto which we are born includes in its broad meaning the development of the individual in the direction of intelligent citi

zenship. By so much as a single inhabitant comes short of an appreciative participation in the determination of the personality and potency of authority, local and general, by so much does the system fail to do its designed work. That which is perfect will have come when the humblest voter indicates his choice, not only freely, but with a reason to give every man for the ballot he has deposited. Republicanism (not party, but governmental), with its varied ministries, is laboring to bring the individual to share in governing with independent and intelligent desires. The common school is one of these instrumentalities. Its aim agrees

with the main purpose of our national system. Its mission is to produce the honest and reasoning citizen, clean-handed, clear-minded. With the development of each child so grounded in morality and intelligence, a new foundation stone is laid, and the country has an additional guaranty for its preservation. The citizen is not his own, politically. The larger duty is to the commonwealth, to the nation.

The common school is not ordained to prepare individuals, primarily, to buy and sell and get gain, to appear properly in reputable society, to be free from the shame of ignorance. The reason of its being lies deeper: it is to perpetuate and purify citizenship. What may be fairly expected of the American common school in the way of fitting

boys and girls for membership in the municipal and national organization? Let us try to answer that practical and momentous inquiry.

That which has been is that which shall be. The common school will continue to teach-indirectly often, but surely the things that belong to our individual and national liberty. Not that constitutional problems and the abstractions of a philosophy of freedom are to be set before the immature understanding; but none the less is there to be a distinct enforcement of the idea that our belongings as Americans include a restrained yet practically unfettered liberty. Liberty, too, which costs something, is to be represented as the inheritance and the trust of those who seek the care and culture of our free schools.

The

The common school is not a gratuity. child receives this impression; the elders go on to derive important conclusions from this premise. Taxation is a vague but familiar process to the child, who knows that those responsible for him. are laid under contribution for his education. He is free to go to school. He has the right to demand the advantages ordained for his age and intelligence. The liberty is unquestioned; but behind the teacher is the parent with his reserved powers, and behind the father is the tax-gatherer. A system of checks and balances, based upon appropriations equally obtained from the well-to-do and the

impoverished, such is the common school. Common benefit procured at the common cost, — that conception of the plan of our educational work is an early acquirement of our boys and girls. The very existence of the common school substantiates the claim of those who favor our form of government. We are not friendly to license, to the removal of boundaries, to an indiscriminate sharing in public advantages with no offer of an equivalent therefor. It is liberty "protected by law," it is privilege guarded by provisions for its proper expression, it is advantages founded upon the contribution of certain fair and moderate returns, that we champion, and for which some have dared to die!

An element of the common freedom is this offer of privilege through the medium of the common school. The same free air is breathed whether one be standing in the presence of the jury boxwhich is the exemplification of independence - or before a class whose members represent all grades in society, each free to come and go, preparing to serve those who have opened the way for their entrance upon a rudimental education. In the very dew of his early childhood,- before we can credit it, not infrequently, the boy has apprehended the truth that obligation and obedience are conditions of the proper relation between parent and child. Very early, then, may the idea

of liberty, that costs something, be made clear to the understanding. The primary school may be the birthplace of the consciousness that a very choice kind of freedom is that which we are to cherish and insure to others. As in a mirror, the child may behold the larger liberty of the country. pictured in the common school, with its wholesome order, its reasonable requirements, its connection with sacrifice sometimes, and always with cost.

It may fairly be expected, then, that the Ameri can common school will impart to those who are within its jurisdiction an appreciation of the fact that legitimate freedom is the portion at once of the scholar and the mature citizen; the love of liberty and the love of letters being joint expressions of the effect of our educational processes, affections joined together, because it is for the good of the individual, and of the greater personality, the nation, that they be not put asunder.

A lesson easily learned by the pupil of the common school concerns the relation between members of the class, and the whole body of those studying in a particular school as well. Equality is a second principle which is inculcated by the conditions of being of our school system. The serene eye of the law rests with impartial kindness upon the children whose parents dwell apart in social and cultured ways. No certificate of high birth and gentle breeding does the law ask. The