of their ideals as it has in Germany, it must for its own purpose spend time and substance in purchasing the people’s confidence.  In assuming the place of guardian it must of necessity minister to the physical needs of the people.  If it retains the people’s confidence in its guardianship, it is incumbent on it to pursue this policy.  It is incumbent on such a state to mould the people’s ideas of what their needs are.  The schools obviously offer the most hopeful media for the accomplishment of that result, and they have been used in Germany more effectively in this way than the schools of any other country.  The German school system follows hard and fast preconceptions of aims and ends, and because of this it was possible for Germany to put over its own particular sort of efficiency.

As a first requisite of efficiency, Germany classifies its people, gives them a place in the scheme of things, and holds them there.  By circumscribing within definite limitations the experience of individuals it produces specialists at the sacrifice of a larger human development.  The classification of the people and the training of them naturally for the German purpose falls to the schools.  The sorting out of individuals begins at the early age of ten in the elementary schools, when each child’s social and economic position is practically determined.  It is decided then whether he shall be one of the great army of wage workers or whether he shall fall into some one of the several social classes and vocations which stand apart from the common mass of wage earners.  The children in the German schools, who are selected at the age of ten for a more promising future than the trades hold out, have more leeway in the making of their decision.  But even these children from the American point of view are summarily disposed of and fatally consigned.

The telling off of children at the age of ten and assigning them to a place in the social scheme for life is not American in spirit, nor does it conform to our habits and institutions.  But, it is complained, the American habit of taking chances is not efficient.  The habit of letting children escape into life with their place unsettled creates confusion and makes calculations in serious things like industry difficult.  Therefore, unfaithful to the development of our own concepts of life we are expected to emulate Germany and to determine the destiny of the child.  Germany undertakes to eliminate the chances of the individual and the taking of chances by the state, while the American ideal is to leave its people free to make the most of each new exigency that life turns up.