New-York tribune., 1918-12-15
Security League Advocates
Equal Opportunities for
All of Americas Youth
Would Raise Standard
Better Methods and Better
Teachers, With Higher
Pay, Are Its Chief Aims

The National Security League has
begun nationwide campaign for the
equalization of educational opportunity
throughout the country without at
tempting to centralize control of meth
DDS and without so much as attempt
ing to lay finger upon the dollar of
the taxpayer.
Taught in the rigorous school of ox-
perience with reference to effective
methods, the league will, during the
coming year or two, apply its energy
to the exploitation of idealism in edu-
cational methods. A start was made in
the work last summer, when the league
induced scores of the most eminent
schools in various sections of the coun-
try. The results were so encouraging
that the league, believing the ending
of the war opens a new vista, will
much the same methods that won the
support of patriatic and philantropi-
caily inclined persons in the last year
and half.
Equal Education for All
Robert NJ. McElroy, educational d.
rector of the league, said yesterday:
"The most fundamental problem of
America to-day is how to make real
those ancient educational pretences in
which America has so long gloried:
First pOua1 ODDOrtI1Oitv and second
universal education.
Local option, sectional notification
and accident of birth. the accident of
poverty four vital foes have
been allowed to ravage the sheepfold
from the dawn of our history. We
have never had national system of
education. We have never had any
considerable or powerful body whose
business it was to think Of education
In terms of this great federal expert
ment which we are performing not for
our benefit alone, but for the benefit
of all those nations which have looked
and are looking to us for light
Neglect Is Widespread
For hundred years and more we
have held aloft upon our national ban
ners the proud motto, "A free govern
ment cannot succeed except upon the
a hundred years and more we have al
lowed each community, on its own
motion and by negative action, or by
inaction, to decide whether that funda-
mental condition of national success
shall be fulfilled or shall be neglected.
I'VE have attempted recruiting for
higher education to some extent in the
high schools. We should now begin
lower down, planning to save for
higher education the enormous mass
OF material which we lose because we
have made no plans for recruiting it.
The child trained to think locally
VIII be not an asset but liability as
we face our new world problems.
Best of Schools for All
In making real our right to equality
OF education we must tie this law:
No child may be deprived of the
right to compulsory, equal educaxscn
on account of race, color. place of resi-
dence. the will of parents, the will of
city, county or state That would mean
that the child born in the back country
OF South Carolina must 90 to ele-
mentary schools as good as those
which exist in New York City or Bos-
ton and must have the way to higher
education open in proportion to his
talents.
az pIcSellC lUe career or rural
school teacher is not in fact career;
II is in general a hating place between
two stages. 1t is shockingly under
paid position, occupied commonly by
young girls without training or fitness
for the work while they wait to dis
cover whether they are to become ma
irons or must face life alone as spin
sters. One-ffth of our children are
being taught by men and women with
out professional training. DR.. Finegan
reports that even in New York State
there are 5000 rural teachers who
have had no educational advantages
beyond the elementary school courses.
and no professional training whatever.'
The National Security League is en-
deavoring to give to the teachers Of
the country definite help in under
standing the causes and issues of the
war for peace and the problems which
we must meet as nation and as in
diyiduals. Last summer there was
sent to considerably more than hun
dred thousand teachers the Handbook
OF the War with suggestions for the
use of this material in classes"