MARYLAND ASSOCIATION BOARDS OF EDUCATION 439

diminish narcotics use. A thorough training in the importance of
public safety can create an insistence on law and order, and a respect
for those who enforce it. Sex education is our best means to reduce
illegitimacy, to combat venereal disease. Sanitation, hygiene and the
conservation of natural resources must be emphasized if we are to
preserve our economic prosperity and, in fact, perpetuate the human
race.

Education must develop an attitude and an aptitude to confront
all these problems within our children, if they are to survive and
serve well our communities as citizens. This is the most meaningful
intellectual priority — for the state of mind directs and disciplines
the knowledge absorbed.

Thus we arrive at the last question — what are the roles and goals
of the public school system? Obviously, it is the latter — the goals —
which will dictate the roles of our schools?

Our goal is to provide that training which will enable our students
to function at their full potential in the world in which they (not we)
live.

Our role is to provide present programs and plan future facilities
to achieve this objective. I would like to propose twelve specific ways
in which we can better fulfill our role and achieve our goal.

One: We must review and revise our curricula to include attitude
training, to guarantee that existing academic courses and textbooks
are current, and that each subject is taught to emphasize philosophy
as well as fact. Programs should be introduced that develop attitude
as well as aptitude to encourage a mastery of the learning process
rather than memorization.

Two: We cannot assume that this is an isolated process nor that
having once reviewed and revised our curricula we have accomplished
our objectives. This is a continuous and constant project due to the
rapid rate of changing conditions and the knowledge explosion.
Therefore, each School Board should contemplate the development of
a continuous curricular evaluation program conducted by professional
personnel.

Three: We must accept the need for continuous education and
accommodate it within our public school system. We must recognize
its increased importance in our long range plans. Adult education,
within the next decades, will no longer be limited to a fringe benefit
of an affluent society nor regarded as a remedial expedient to upgrade