Junior High School Civic Attitudes: A Comparative Study of Civic Attitudes, Especially in Grades Seven and Eight of Junior High School

One of the most important educational objectives of the present day is the training of young men and young women in civic awareness. During these early decades of the twentieth century material science is being developed with incredible rapidity, and much faster than the spiritual adjustment is being made. The WorId War with its after effects has tended to disintegrate community and national solidarity. Religious restraints are becoming less vital in directing human attitudes, lawlessness is becoming rampant, respect for Government officials is waning, home and family life are becoming less substantial, schools of crime are being organized, communism is gnawing at our political and economic fabric, and the spirit of war is still rife.Thoughtful educators now quite generally agree that the major objective of education is to train in character and for citizenship. Senator Bingham of Connecticut, in dedicating one of our Washington high schools recently, stated that public schools justify their existence only as they train for better citizenship. So keenly felt is the need for more vital character education that the Association of superintendents of the national Education association, at their recent convention at Atlantic City, adopted a resolution to confine the 1932 Yearbook of the association to character education.