In this address, the President of Teachers College outlines some of the ways in which the spirit of William Heard Kilpatrick contributes wisdom to our confrontation of today's educational problems. That wisdom lies less in specific ideas and more in a courageous and humane facing of social change, less in doctrine and more in an articulate commitment to a world of freedom and opportunity. Kilpatrick's work is honored more by its extension in the light of our novel circumstances than by the preservation of his boldly experimental formulations.

The present argument for the "inclusive" school rings a novel change on the old theme of how a genuine democracy can balance an equalitarian ideal with the facts of human difference. Is it probable, for example, that in this seething time of tragic racial conflict, the route to democratic color-blindness lies paradoxically through a heightened consciousness of color?

Few more heartrending problems have been forced on our attention by the related pressures of population growth and urbanization than the issue of multiracial schools (and communities), especially in regions outside the South. Any productive focus here on education, says the author, must concern itself with the wider and inevitable question of "how and how soon the Negro is to become a fully accepted participant in the life and culture of the American people."

The question of priorities in education is new only in the sense that all the important questions must be faced anew by every generation. But if the question itself is old, the context in which we now face it is unprecedented. More than ever before we depend upon our educational establishment not only to give us a steady and growing supply of experts and leaders but also to elevate the knowledge and competence of the whole people to the level required by the social, political, and technological conditions under which we live. It is this joint necessity, further complicated for us by the democratic ideal of equal opportunity for personal fulfillment, that now confronts us with a task that is truly new.