Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 79.djvu/399

Rh Lastly, there are the unequaled opportunities of a sociological or missionary nature which come oftenest to one possessing practical knowledge and which if taken advantage of make him truly altruistic. Hitherto the real if not the admitted purpose of education has been the good of the educated, however much society, as a whole, may have profited from its educated members. But it is coming more and more to be recognized that no feature of an educational system, supported at public expense and whose single aim is citizenship, can be defended that does not contribute directly to social efficiency. Social efficiency includes all that may be appropriate to the most utilitarian phases of industrial education, but it includes a good deal more. Racial betterment must be the compelling motive. On the final test of social efficiency "he that is greatest among you shall be your servant."

The evaluation of these hitherto unassumed school functions is, to him who insists that everything done in the school be assigned its proper "preparatory" value in credits of admission to higher institutions, the difficult end of the problem of the adjustment of agriculture to the course of study. The purpose of the high school is to undertake them and do them to the best of its ability, leaving it to the college and university to worry over their pedagogical classification and estimation.