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when they know they are going out into circumstances that are going to destroy in just a few months all the effects of the education which they have had. Furthermore, they are going to say unto themselves. "What is the point of our trying to prepare these boys and girls for jobs when there are none?" We can have emergency measures to take care of these boys and girls and prop them up for a while, but that doesn't remedy conditions any. Teachers are going to insist on a change of conditions so that their education in the classroom is not futile. When they do these things they will have regained their full citizenship.

A short time ago, I had the opportunity of being in sort of a colony of retired firemen; that is, firemen who worked on the city force and have retired. When I saw those retired firemen, spoke with them, and visited them, I sensed how great an advantage they had over the school teachers. Do you know that the firemen of a certain city not so far from here have had raises in pay? They had a reinstatement of their pay cuts. After twenty years of service they can retire and they can live at our northern lakes in the summer and go South for the winter. According to the intelligence test records, the firemen's division falls way down the scale, while the teachers are found way at the upper end. The teachers cannot retire even after thirty or forty years of service and be sure of an income. They are facing fifteen per cent, twenty per cent, and twenty-five per cent cuts. The teachers are trying to serve human resources, while the firemen have the great advantage in protecting property. Naturally, they are worth more according to the standards under which we operate. Why are teachers treated in that way? Don't misunderstand me. I am glad that the firemen get all they do, and I am glad that such a premium is put on their labors. They are compensated also by the drama in which they engage. What is wrong with the situation? Why are the teachers of such caliber that they who are supposed to be in the upper intellectual brackets, face pay cuts, face insecurity, face everything that minimizes them, while here are the firemen on the other hand, and I admire them and respect them more than ever for it, getting increases in salary and retiring to life security after a mere twenty years of service?

Now the teachers are going to change in the future, I believe. They are going to be strongly banded and strongly organized and nobody is going to impose on those teachers. I hope, on the other hand, that when the teachers organize that way, they do not organize for tenure alone, but will organize to improve not only the schoolroom but also to improve society itself. I have seen something of the teachers' organizations of the more militant type, and I have noticed in many instances that the membership consists of older people who are members of such organizations mainly to maintain their tenure and avoid retirement, while what they should be working for is an early retirement, say at the age of sixty. They should work for security after retirement rather than for tenure alone. There is a danger that they banded together merely to maintain themselves, but on the other hand, we must recognize the fact that probably conditions were such as caused them to band together for this.

Change will not occur because teachers are going to be more intelligent. They will not be to a great extent, but circumstances are going to cause them to improve their lot.

Let us turn next to the curriculum and to supervision, and last of all to the support of schools. I think curriculum is going to be more flexible, less "textbooky." It is going to be liberalized in the sense that it will be less rigid. We will see less "question and answer" type of teaching; that is, an assignment in which the teacher says, "Now we will recite on that chapter. Read all the questions at the end and be prepared to answer them." There will be less of that, particularly in the elementary schools and in high school teaching. We will operate more on the project method-larger problems. "This is psychology. Don't mix that up with sociology." "Now that is math. It has nothing to do with geography." There will be less of that. Knowledge will be organized psychologically according to the way it comes together naturally as related to big problems. For instance, if any cne is conducting a research problem regarding the adult, he has to go into biology, statistics, psychology, sociology, and various other subjects. He can't stay in one department. Our knowledge is going to be organized that way. We are not going to take a logic-tight course, clip off a coupon and say that we have completed so much of this subject. We are going to work or wider projects. There are many who oppose that. They think there is character-building value in strict classroom procedure in which the teacher hurls out questions. They think you develop character, thinking, good mental discipline; and they have feared that the character of their boys and girls would be soft and flabby if we let our knowledge organize naturally according to problems and projects in which the children ask the questions rather than the teacher.

I think there will be that change in curriculum, and that the knowledge will be geared to the present rather than to the future. We say that the boys and girls will need a certain thing when they grow up. I wish that the educators had the sense of the young lady who was asked if she preferred a young man with a past or a future. She answered that she would take a young man with a present. I think we will teach the child for today, not for tomorrow alone. Tomorrw will take care of itself. There is no point in teaching for tomorrow, because we don't know what tomorrow will bring, and I think the Lord was right when He directed the hand of the prophet that wrote that each day is enough unto itself. We will develop the principle that the time to learn a thing is when you need it. If you need an education as an adult, you get it as an adult. There is no use in storing up something in the teens that you probably will not use in the twenties and thirties.

We will recognize more the needs of the education of the adult It is pretty well established that the best ages of a human being are from twenty-five to forty years of age. At that time the individual has most energy, his brains are at their best, and he can educate himself and add intellectual cubits to his stature much better between the ages of twentyfive and forty than at any other time in life. Why try to educate people

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for all time in the teens, when they can learn so much more effectively, say between the ages of twenty-five and forty; and even from forty to sixty we have an age in man when he can learn effectively and be very useful. Anyone who is in trim, intellectually speaking, can learn better between the ages of forty and sixty than he can in the early teens.

Curricula will be more flexible and will be liberalized. In Minnesota, steps are being taken in that direction. Under the aggressive leadership of our present Commissioner of Education, Mr. Rockwell, attempts are being made to liberalize the curriculum. Commissioner Rockwell says to a community, "Now, if you want to modify the curriculum, if you want to carry on an education program that is different from that outlined in the course of study, by all means do it. Submit your plan and your proposal to modify the course of study, come and see us, and we will help you work it out." Dr. Rockwell sees that there is no validity in having the education up in Cook County necessarily the same as down in Yellow Medicine. Conditions are different. Needs are not the same. Mr. Rockwell expects the suggested modification to be an improvement, of course; not something to soften or weaken the system. That is a step in the right direction, and right along with that, supervision is going to be different from what it has been in the past.

In the past, supervision has concerned itself primarily with the secondary details of the educational processes. How does the teacher ask questions? How does she put her problems on the board? Does she grade her papers faithfully? Does she keep the window shades at about the right height? Are the floors neat? Does she have enough books? The building is inspected to check the height of blackboards, seats, etc. Elementary mechanics! Now I think supervision is going to be different in the future. It will not be so personal and direct. Attempts will be made to cause teachers to function in a way that develops them. Supervision will attempt to bring teachers into educational situations. They will be interested in the requirements so that the teachers will broaden them so that they will have experiences, so that they will live in the world. Our concern will be to put good people into the classroom, rather than mechanics--good people, with gray matter in their brains and spirit in their souls, and incidentally, some red blood in their arteries. I think that will be the main concern of supervision in the future. There was a teacher down in Cook County, Cook County in Illinois, who had lived forty years teaching geography, and had never been outside of Cook County. She may have been a "good" classroom teacher, had good techniques, understood the psychological principle of the whole method or part method, etc., but I could not conceive of her being a geography teacher. The supervisor should have brought about a situation which required her to cross the country. That would have been effective supervision in her case. I think the supervision in the future will be more in the direction of developing teachers as people, broadening them, enlarging them, and putting before the youngsters a person, a personality, rather than just one who goes through certain processes or goes through an act day after day.

How are the schools of the future going to be supported? I think we shall have to look forward to federal support of education. The Federal Government, I think, will have to subdize elementary and secondary education. There are many states that just can't support their schools adequately. It may happen that we won't get more financial support, and the schools will become increasingly poorer. That is possible. I think the strong states will have to support the weak states, just as in this state we have an excellent state aid program in which the strong, communities financially help support the weak communities, so that there are good schools even in areas where the wealth is very limited. How are federal grants going to be administered? There is great danger in federal support. Evils lurk in every corner. There is a danger that when the Federal Government allots money to states for the support of schools, that they are going to dictate how the schools are going to be operated; that is, that we will have federal control rather than federal guidance and assistance. Now, I must say that the record of the Federal Government in education the last four years has not been very good. As you know, the Federal Government has given money for education. It should be said to the credit of the Federal Government, however, that it did use these funds for adult education rather than for the education of children. This is a step in the right direction, because if we are to have social reconstruction, we will have to have it through the education of adults and not the education of children.

The Federal Government has attempted this adult education rather unwisely in some respects. It has dominated independent and established institutions. In some states, a political appointee known as an administrator steps in and controls the adult education program independent of established educational agencies. He is known to select as his assistants those who have been his political supporters, although he hasn't had any particular training. Of course, that isn't characteristic of only the Federal Government, but also of the state. It has been very evident in the case of the Federal Government in the operation of its adult education program. Now, if the Federal Government does that in a more comprehensive program of state aid, it will hinder the purposes of that aid. One won't be able to avoid politics; the money will not be well used; and in time, I think, the aid will either be refused, as in some states the federal aid has been refused for adult education, or there will be legislation destroying all federal aid to education.

Now, in discussing this matter of aid and support of schools, I don't believe we should fall into the error of saying one method is right, and one wrong. Some believe in local support, some in state support, and some in federal support, as if one alone was right. They have hardening of the categories. I don't believe that the federal support of schools is wrong. I think we should have it, but it should be different from that which we have had. Now, of course, we have had federal aid for farm purposes, and I think that has been reasonably successful. The Federal Government should give this money and it should only advise, aid, and suggest how it should be used. It should not lay down the law as to just

how the money should be spent. Federal aid can operate very effectively. Let us illustrate with a state like North Dakota that has suffered so much recently. If the Federal Government were to give North Dakota a grant for the use of its schools, it should give that money to the State Department of Education in North Dakota, and say to it, "Here is the money, Let's sit down and see how we can best use it. We will send out a representative to you. He will discuss this with you. Now understand, he does not come to dictate how this money is to be used, but will advise how it should be used. Work it out together." I think under such a system, federal money could be used to great advantage.

It should also be said that if the Government gives money for education, it should sense what education really is. We hope that through adult education we can improve the intellectual level of the citizenship, but the Federal Government to a great extent handicapped that hope for some of us. Education has been handicapped by two social workers in Washington who never saw education as a process that could improve people. They only saw education as a process of putting people to work. "Let us put these teachers to work so they can live." I wonder how many of you social workers are merely concerned with the process of keeping people alive, or are you interested in changing people so that they will be different and better. Some conceive of education as a process of making people intelligent about vital issues-real education in its biggest sensebut we received word from Washington that money was to be spent only to keep people employed, and they were hardly interested in what the educational outcome would be. When some of us met with the federal representatives, one outlined the "law" for us. She was a social worker who told us how much we could pay, how much work we should expect, and when we doubted that adult education should be an employment program, but an educational program, we talked a language that wasn't understood.

The education of tomorrow should be an education for both adults and children. The teachers should be vigorous citizens teaching the truths that will liberate the people from the forces opposed to their welfare.

DISCUSSION-Emerson P. Schmidt, Assistant Professor of

Economics, University of Minnesota.

I think I disagree with almost everything that Mr. Sorenson has said. First of all, regarding private schools,--my prediction is that the reverse will be true. Historically, the reverse is true. One hundred years ago we had practically no public schools, and we are moving definitely in the direction of entire public schools. Mr. Sorenson is, after all, an expert in prophecy, so perhaps we should take his judgment.

If you examine the history of the institution of private property, you discover that institution demonstrated certain survival value. It is pretty difficult to conceive of human values apart from property values. After all, most people are out for number one.