BIBLIOGRAPHY ON THE HOME

Allen.—­Making the Best of Our Children.  Two vols. ($1.00 each).

Field.—­Finger-posts to Children’s Reading ($1.00).

Fiske.—­Boy Life and Self-Government ($1.00).

Kirkpatrick.—­Fundamentals of Child Study ($1.25).

Putnam.—­Education for Parenthood (.65).

II

THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AND THE BOY

Of the primary institutions that are cooperating in the life of the boy today, without a doubt the public school is the most efficient and most serviceable.  Today the school offers and compels a boy to get certain related courses of study which will make him a better citizen by fitting him in a measure for the procuring of an intelligent and adequate livelihood.  The school by no means is perfect in this matter, and as long as over fifty per cent. of the boys fail to graduate even from the eighth grade in the grammar school, and but one per cent. go to college, there will be great need of a reconstruction of its methods of work.  Without question, the curricula of the public school should be modified so as to meet the needs of all the boys in the community and vocational and industrial training should have larger place in our educational plans.  The boy who is to earn his livelihood by his hands and head should receive as much attention and intelligent instruction as the boy who aims at a professional career.  However, with all its limitations, the public school is the only institution which has a definite policy in the education of the boy.  The leaders of the public school system know whither they are going and the road they must travel to reach the goal.

Perhaps the greatest weakness of our public school system today is the inability, because of our division between church and state, to give the boy any religious instruction in connection with what is styled “secular education.”  For the first time in the history of the world has religious instruction been barred from the public school, and that in our free America.  Most intelligent Christian men now realize that, because of the division between church and state in our country, religious instruction in the public school is impossible, as the school is the instrument of the state in the production of wealth-producing citizenship.  The men who with clear vision see these things also see this limitation of the public school system and recognize that the church has a larger mission to fulfill in America than in any other country, it the education of the boy is to be symmetrical and well balanced.