Someone has characterized the American Public Educational System as an institution "devoted to the glorification of the mediocre and to the perpetuation of convenient half-truth." The author of this statement might have gone further. He might have railed against the politician who makes these things possible and necessary, he might have castigated the inert combination of cynicism on the high side, and of saccharine ignorance on the low, a combination which in turn makes the politician possible and necessary. And if asked for a demonstration, he might have turned to the evidence which Dean Holmes presented in the Massachusetts State House yesterday afternoon. He could recall the salary atrocities which, in the name of boss-ridden finance, have been inflicted on Chicago's teachers; he could point, perhaps, to the Cambridge school board, which is unfortunately typical, and which has been styled, with too much kindness, "a spring board into state politics. He would be tempted to describe the whole system of second-rate normal schools, harassed dummy superintendents, and bland favoritism, as Dean Holmes described it--"pedagogical racketeering."

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Perhaps these things are platitudinous, perhaps I err in presenting material which must be all too familiar to intelligent men. Certainly, those beatific doctrines which have earned Mr. John Dewey the gratitude of every politician have been thoroughly punctured. And if any literate men still remain beneath their spell, there is for the purpose of enlightenment Mr. John Chamberlain's brilliant analysis of the vicious circle which is their fallacy. If we have anything describable as thought, we laugh at the politician who mouths glibly that only through more extensive public education can America advance; it is a tragically ridiculous doctrine, it is a smirking dodge. Just so long as politicians control education, just so long, will youth be educated in "convenient half-truth." The origin of the present conviction that these things need restatement rests in the eloquent Phi Beta Kappa speech delivered last spring by Mr. Wilbur C. Cross of Connecticut. I may be mistaken, but that highly-touted bit of oratory, written by one who has been called in enlightened public servant and uttered before presumptive students, had all the carmarks of political device. Mr. Cross was content to run the customary Deweyan gamut, and to garnish his loopholes with a fine show of classicism.

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If these things are not entirely unfair, then it is time for someone to begin calling knaves knaves. With a courage, born as much of sincerity as of invulnerbility, Dean Holmes has clouted a hornets nest with a very short handled stick. He has not much of a solution to offer, but he has sensed the difficulty, of the American feels a keen desire to perpetuate the kind of politician which is his bane; there is no better, no surer way to do it than to leave in that politician's sticky fingers his educational system. TERTIUS.