to let the traditional subjects of the course of study wait.  We are interested in Sam Brown just now and he is far more important than some man-made course of study.  We are interested, too, in one hundred per cent of Sam Brown, and not in three fourths of him.  If arithmetic will not enlist all of this boy and nature will enlist all of him, then arithmetic must be held in abeyance in the interest of the whole boy.

The seventy-five per cent standard is repudiated by the world of affairs even though it is emphasized by the school.  Seventy-five per cent of accuracy will not do in the transactions of the bank.  The accounts must balance to the penny.  The figures are right or else they are wrong.  There is no middle ground.  In the school the boy solves three problems but fails with the fourth.  None the less he wins the goal of promotion.  Not so at the bank.  He is denied admission because of his failure with the fourth problem.  Seventy-five will not do in joining the spans of the great bridge across the river.  We must have absolute accuracy if we would avoid a wreck with its attendant horrors.  The druggist must not fall below one hundred per cent in compounding the prescription unless he would face a charge of criminal negligence.  The wireless operator must transcribe the message with absolute accuracy or dire consequences may ensue.  The railway crew must read the order without a mistake if they would save life and property from disaster.

But, in the school, the teachers rejoice and congratulate one another when their pupils achieve a grade of seventy-five.  It matters nothing, apparently, that this grade of seventy-five is a fictitious thing with no basis in logic or reason, in short a mere habit that has no justification save in tradition, and that, in very truth, it is a concession to inaccuracy and ignorance.  When we promote the boy for solving three out of four problems we virtually say to him that the fourth problem is negligible and he may as well forget all about it.  Sometimes a teacher grieves over a grade of seventy-three, never realizing that another teacher might have given to that same paper a grade of eighty-three.  We proclaim education to be a spiritual process, and then, in some instances, employ mechanics to administer this process.  By what process of reasoning the superintendent or the teacher arrives at the judgment that seventy-five is good enough is yet to be explained.  Our zeal for grades and credits indicates a greater interest in the label than in the contents of the package.

Teaching is a noble work if only it is directed toward worthy goals.  Nothing in the way of human endeavor can be more inspiring than the work of striving to integrate boys and girls.  The mere droning over geography, and history, and grammar is petty by comparison.  And yet all these studies and many others may be found essential factors in the work and they will be learned with greater thoroughness as means to a great end than