as essentially a brief for introducing "proletarian" literautre in the classroom, or for lopping off a dozen pages from the curriculum of the social sciences of the social graces, or for injecting school teachers' pedestrian biographies of absurd personalities who are engaged in a mad scramble for notoriety via popular mechanics or the restaurant business and who are now canonized as blessed Americans worthy of emulation. This does suggest that we avoid treating or studying literature in vacuo or as a peculiarly English phenomenon. During the ghastliest of depressions, the average literature teacher in the world's greatest industrial center consoled her troubled spirit by working into the curriculum three or four "topical" poems: "Factory Workers," "The Man with a Hoe," and "Caliban in the Coal Mine," and so reposed soundly through a period of tragic upheaval. She has more recently paused to add a few on democracy and Americanism and has turned over on the other side. Only here and there during the last months, one thrills to the occasional sound of classroom recordings of Americans All-Immigrants All, Chee Lai, the Red Army Songs, the Songs for Democracy, Negro ballads and Flamenco Folk Songs-as well as Maurice Evans declaiming "O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt." Here is literature no less than Chesterton's Lepanto, Lindsay's Congo or Sir Patrick Spens. What could the teacher not do with appropriate collateral readings if only they were available? And what a simple transition from such reading to moral considerations of tolerance. of social and economic justice. To teach an admiration for England and her literature is not to teach a desire for monarchy any more than teaching the literature of Spain or Russia need reflect our opinion concerning their present-day governments. And what an exciting course of study it should prove: the literature of a morally and economically federated world society. Here is the substance of a faith extending beyond the old horizons, and embraced by all religions; here is the text for a crusade of democratic liberation. to stir the hearts of all teachers.

INEVITABLE CHANGE. If the machinery of curricular change grinds slow, little oil is to be squeezed out of text book publishers who are generally heavily mortgaged to expensive plates and old stock garnered on countless shelves, while the less said about certain segments of civic authority who are in principle opposed to "too much education" the better. For these reasons, the changes will

come haltingly, but the time is surely not remote when we must alter our literature course, when the present narrow view in historical depth, the vertical cross-section through one culture will be supplemented by a transverse geographical overview embracing the five continents and demonstrating the validity of other customs, cultures and social structures born of equally sacred religious dogma, native history and folk-lore.

Of such a course of literature, the student in America will find increasing need; first, because our assumption of leadership in the post-war world will require of each of us individually a greater sympathy with and understanding of all cultures in addition to our own; and second, because the driving force of nationalism which inevitably follows in the wake of war is likely to leave us Americans stiff in our pride, isolated in our grandeur, arrogant in our strength and thought-precisely those jingoistic qualities that have militated against a community of nations. The haunting refrains of our old English ballads and the compelling cadences of our great poetry need not be subordinated to a captivating leit-motif borrowed from the choral symphony of allied literatures.

THE NEW WORLD A-COMING. To secure vital point and purpose to classroom literary discussions, to adjust their focus so as to bring sharply into view the salient features of the new world a-coming-assuming always that reading materials are charged with suitable dramatic themes-a clear and steady course should somewhere be mapped out, one that steers wide of the flotsam of superannuated lesson plans and heads for specific new objectives. Any well-considered aims must be generally patterned on a minimal category of concepts, ideals, and visions-the dynamic elements of a democratic education. Your best story is after all but an extended fable with its own pointed moral. What, then, out of our realms of gold and stories that keep children from play and old men from the chimney-corner, have we found that will lend fuel to the burning issue of the proposed brotherhood of men and nations? Does the class have under consideration another storied aspect of man's inhumanity to man? Racial? Religious? Economic? What aspects of the fascist mind does your villain exhibit? And how shall the students answer bigotry in their own homes or neighborhoods? Can they take a moment to consider the next story as a reflection of the biblical-old struggle for the four freedoms? As applied to

the theme of problem or plot situation, let them pause a moment to consider whether the bright currency of the four freedoms would have brought the solution to a happy, rather than this tragic, denouement. How seems yet another story as a manifestation of the American spirit or national character or destiny? Have we literary evidence to suggest that the pan-American spirit is merely the European spirit at last liberated? Does the biography contribute to that noble galaxy of Americans All-Immigrants All? Or does it illustrate how man may achieve his potential best in a democracy? Does it point up for us that ever-precarious balance between freedom and security-the crux of our national or personal affairs? How does this classic illustrate man's altered role in society since the industrial revolution? Can we offer an entertaining story that includes the effects of an occupational disease, of unemployment, of hunger, of poor housing? What does the tale reveal of the changing social fabric? Have we a glittering instance in powerful story form of the extremes of mistaken patriotism run riot in chauvinism and jingoism? These among scores of others are not of course to be substituted for questions of individuals ethics and virtues, mores and morals. And need one add that all this should come only after fullest enjoyment of the story qua story? It should also go without saying that as valid as all other considerations are those concerned with esthetics of form, technique, style. But above all, we must have first the realization that the old framework of texts will not grow this new flesh and blood.

NEW TEXTS. Legislative reports and education commissions of inquiry can recommend few administrative changes half so vital and far-reaching as those that could be effected through a shift in texts. Two-thirds of those now in use-the deadwood-could be discarded as a service to our youth, while half the remaining third should be re-edited for contemporary use, eliminating antique introductions, gratuitous chronological tables and absurdly inept bibliographies. As to personnel, in the long run, teachers, even after the most searching examinations are likely to remain pretty much what they have always been, conscientious, painstaking and beset by the usual human frailties; but it is the terrain covered by these guides that can happily be altered to provide a broader vista of challenging horizons such as has been yielded only in sparse moments through present readings, and then only on the stimulus of our rarest teachers.

Heifetz can do much with a ten dollar fiddle, but given a Stradivarius all of us can produce some exceptional if fragmentary resonance. Given suitable new textbooks supplemented by vital analytical apparatus, a framework of study cores, integrated bibliographical guideposts, and the whole co-edited by at least two people from the English and social studies departments--and with such materials even the weakest sisters of the profession will happen upon promontories that should have the class wide-eyed with new concepts.

For the rest, Alice is as nice a girl as any to die for, but if the disaster of another conflagration should overtake us, or if a stage in this present game is reached where American homes are being bombed, I should prefer to see our American hero withstanding the enemy assault by reading Goethe's Faust or the Rubaiyat, or Waley's Translations from the Chinese, or Romain Rolland's Jean Christophe or Manzoni's I Promessi Sposi, More's Utopia, Ibsen's Doll's House or Pearl Buck's The Good Earth. The enterprising Hollywood director who refuses to be pinned down will sensibly show Joe Zilch propped up in the dim shelter with a fat copy of Macy's or van Doren's World Anthology. But all this is really up to the English teacher rather than Darryl Zanuck. Literature was never meant to be the sacred cow we set it up for; art has blossomed out of dungeons and hovels and was ever called to serve the people's need. Today the talents of our finest writers, through the O.W.I. and the Authors' Guild, have been marshalled in the cause of our common struggle against fascism; for the next century at least they will continue to be absorbed in the alchemy of art, transmuting the legends and the tales of the present war and its aftermath into classics. It is up to the literature teachers similarly to muster out of our rich literary storehouse the materials that have vast significance in the light of vast developments. Let us not hide behind the pretty arras of Hamlet's soliloquies.

Army Training Program*

JAY E. GREENE, Eastern District High School

Educators today are looking ahead to the post-war era and wondering how to make use of the experiences of the Army and Navy in training men and women. So far the most vociferous have been the extremists. There are those who have become almost hysterical in denouncing our present schooling, who would scrap all our modern methods and remodel them entirely after the Army pattern; and there are those who would ignore the experiences of the Army and continue in the channels we were pursuing before the war.

However, let us take a more sensible attitude. While our school system has proved the value of a certain amount of stability, it has never been static, but in the changing world of our democracy, has maintained its vitality by seeking improvements. Let us, therefore, see how we may modify and improve some of the present practices in the light of Army training experience.

AIMS OF EDUCATION. Army and Navy schooling was organized to meet certain temporary, specific, and concrete needs: mechanics, navigators, artillerymen were urgently required—and in a hurry. The army was not interested in culture or the more subtle aspects of education, and so a practical training program in practical schools was set up. This is the keynote of the Service Schools: they are 100 per cent pragmatic with all the uphlostery of education cast aside. Such training was possible because the Army knew exactly what it sought as an end product-a skilled soldier, disciplined for his specific job, with faith in himself and his equipment.

We shall have to re-examine our own educational aims. Progressive teachers have long felt that our cardinal principles were too vague. It is my belief that each school should go beyond such general aims and have its own specific aims depending upon the needs of its student body and upon the equipment of the school. Certainly the departmentalized teaching of our secondary schools would be more integrated and meaningful.

TESTING AND ACHIEVEMENT-Another worth while feature

*The author was a member of the Armed Forces, U. S. Air Corps for ten months.