Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE PEOPLE'S SCHOOL FOREWORD The fact that only nine per cent of the pupils who enter the early grades of American public schools finish a high school course should be the cause of serious concern to every citizen. The taxpayer may well ask himself why he contributes over twice as much for the support of secondary schools that benefit one tenth of the population as for that of those in which most children receive their only education. The educator must marvel that, with all the care and money lavished on our higher institutions of learning, they prove so unattractive to the majority of our children. And the worker for the public weal can find but a slowly widening outlook for social betterment when so small a per cent of the next generation are availing themselves of the means of improving their condition. That the public school is the corner stone of American democracy, has been reiterated until it is the merest platitude, but like most platitudes, it is absolutely true. If the people are to govern, they must know how to govern. The present is a time of feverish activity in all lines of philanthropic work. Social settlements flourish. The juvenile court is an established factor in legal procedure. Prisons are transformed into reformatories. Charity organization societies coordinate the work of a hundred different agencies for alleviating distress. And while these various agencies have been helping the victims of society, they have learned a great lesson. The cause of the distress they strive to eliminate is in almost every case ignorance. The ignorant mother fed her baby soured milk and it sickened. The ignorant consumptive slept in darkness and filth, with closed windows, and died. The ignorant voter sold his franchise to a boss and stole from his own pocket. The ign...