=Life-giving properties.=—­The stream that issues from the school is the very antithesis of all this.  Instead of all these heterogeneous elements, the stream when it comes from the school is composed wholly of Americans.  A hundred flags may be seen in the stream that enters the school, but the stream that flows out from the school bears only the American flag.  The school has often been called the melting-pot, in which the many nationalities are fused; but it is far more than that.  True, somehow and somewhere in the school process these elements have been made to coalesce, but that is not the only change that is wrought.  The volume of life that issues from the school is the same as that which enters, barring the leakage, but the resultant stream is far more potent in life-giving properties because of its passage through the school.

=Changes wrought.=—­When we see the stream entering the filtration-plant polluted with impurities and then coming forth clear and wholesome, we know that something happened to that stream in transit.  Similarly, when we see the stream of life entering the school as a mere aggregation of more or less discordant elements and then coming forth in a virtually unified homogeny, we know that something has happened to that stream in its progress through the school.  To determine just what happens in either case is a task for experts and a task, moreover, that is well worth while.  In either case we may well inquire whether the things that happen are the very best things that could possibly be made to happen; and, if not, what improvements are possible and desirable.

=Another misconception.=—­The analogy between the plant and the school will not hold if we still retain in the parlance of school procedure the expression “getting an education.”  The act of getting implies material substance.  Education is not a substance but a process, and it is palpably impossible to get a process.  So there can be no such thing as getting an education, in spite of the tenacity of the expression.  Even to state the fact would seem altogether trite, were we not confronted every day with the fact that teachers and parents are either unable or unwilling to substitute some right expression for this wrong one.  Education is not the process of getting but, rather, the process of becoming, and the difference is as wide as the difference between the true and the false.

Just how long it will require to eradicate this conception from the school and society no one can well conjecture.  Its presence in our nomenclature reveals, in a marked way, the strength of habit.  Many teachers will give willing assent to the fact and then use the expression again in their next sentence.  Certainly we shall not even apprehend the true function and procedure of the vitalized school until we have eliminated this expression.  If we admit the validity of the contention as to this expression, then we may profitably resume the consideration of our analogy, for, in that case, we shall find in this analogy no ineptitude.