Substitutes-Other Activities.- "Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do." It behooves the wise school administrator to develop in his school many forms of activity that not only will occupy the studious but those less so, that not only will give a field of achievement to the individual but will encourage and direct the formation of natural and legitimate groups whose membership shall be based on special interest and activity in any given direction rather than upon the personal preference of those already members, and whose aim shall be the maintenance of some legitimate activity naturally connected with the school.

Co-operation of Parent and Teacher.-Avowedly social gatherings for purposes of amusement, entertainment, and social training, handled under the direction of teachers or specialists trained for that purpose, are attempted with success in some places and are likely, when wisely handled and watchfully guarded, to supply the recreation which otherwise would naturally be sought in fraternity parties and "hops." The question as to how far the solving of this problem of social activity and development should be done by the family or by the community, through the agency of the public school, is not as yet a settled question; the final answer must come after further study and experimentation.

The main feature in every effort to meet this most difficult of social problems in the high school is the intelligent, harmonious, and sympathetic co-operation of parents and teachers.

Need for Legislation. It ought to be the aim, moreover, of all loyal and intelligent citizens who are interested in educational improvement to secure in every State the enactment of statutes forbidding in all public

high schools membership in such organizations; and such statutes ought to be enacted discriminating, on the one hand, between college fraternities, which have done some harm and much good, which have a genuine mission of helpfulness, and which supply a real need that can hardly be supplied in any other way, and, on the other hand, high school fraternities, which have done practically no good and much evil, and which have no real mission or aim to fulfil. This distinction, based on so manifest a difference, is, nevertheless, hard to establish in the minds of some legislators whose experience has given them no first-hand knowledge of these two wholly different sorts of organizations, who are misled by the similarity in the sounds of their names and by other wholly superficial indications, and who are sometimes influenced by the ex-parte arguments of selfishly interested persons posing as champions of democracy.

The Legal Status.-The legal status of this question has been well summed up in published articles named in the bibliography. The courts have unanimously upheld the boards of education in all cases that have been brought before them. Two decisions have been handed down by State supreme courts-namely, those of Washington in the Seattle case and of Illinois in the Chicago case. The decisions as to the authority of boards of education to punish by expulsion violations of the rules prohibiting membership have been made only by trial courts, but supreme-court decisions in other cases involving the same principle would seem to make it sure that this final authority would be supported by the courts of last resort if any such question should finally reach them.

The summing up of the legal phase of the matter is so

comprehensively presented in an article by S. J. Wetterick in the December, 1910, number of The World of To-Day that it is quoted here in full:

The principles of law deducible [from the court decisions quoted] are these:

First, school authorities have authority to make all reasonable and necessary rules for the government of the school;

Second, it is the duty of pupils attending a school to obey its rules;

Third, the right to attend a public school is not absolute but conditional;

Fourth, the right to attend may be denied for a violation of rules prohibiting acts that are detrimental to the interests of the school.

If it is admitted, then, that high school fraternities are detrimental to the interests of a school, we are forced to the conclusion that they may be prohibited, and that pupils who participate in them to the injury of the other pupils and the school may be suspended or expelled and may be denied any or all of the privileges of a public school.

PART IV

ADDITIONAL SOCIALIZING FUNCTIONS OF THE MODERN HIGH SCHOOL

CHAPTER XXI

THE HIGH SCHOOL AS A SOCIAL CENTRE

CLARENCE ARTHUR PERRY, B.S.

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF RECREATION, RUSSELL SAGE

FOUNDATION

A Study in Educational Evolution. The subject before us is one of educational evolution. The high school is in the process of expanding its social function; it is developing a new and more immediate relationship with its constituency. The present stage of this development, the impulses within the system, and the conditions in its environment which are producing the new power and its future relation to the school's prime function-these are the general aspects of the theme to be considered in the present chapter.

Extension of Public Education General.-In the beginning the State universities instructed only the students in residence on the campus; to-day their extension departments' are reaching out to the utmost confines of

1 See "A University that Runs a State," by Frank Parker Stockbridge, in World's Work for April, 1913.

the commonwealth and are endeavoring to benefit adults as well as adolescents. Through its kindergarten the primary school has recently taken in a younger set and through its evening classes it is bringing in the grownups, while the secondary school has not only got hold of the men and women but it, too, is making overtures to a group lower down in the age scale than the one it has traditionally served.

These three institutions are not only extending their benefits to new classes of persons but they are also rendering new kinds of service. The university extension divisions are sending out material for debating clubs and social surveys as well as the lecturers and demonstrators with which they began. To the elementary-school building the outside public is increasingly resorting for its games, its athletics, its entertainment, and its social life; at the high school it is finding not only these same enjoyments but the illustrated lectures, theatrical representations, and art exhibitions which its more spacious quarters make possible. In these novel and more direct relations with society the secondary school is simply following the trend of a general educational movement.

Present Stage of the New Development. In the case of the university the evolution has reached a more advanced stage than it has in the lower institutions. Its extension work is deliberately planned and supported from within. But in the public-school systems the newer enterprises are only beginning to emerge from the category of "outside activities." The authorities still permit them more often than they promote them. Evening classes and public lectures, it is true, have a recognized status in school systems, but the position of club work, quiet games, and social dancing is not so