Our newspapers in America,as well as in Lithuania, have begun to realize the lack of schools for Lithuanians. They urge our people to get interested in establishing such schools, because Lithuanians have fallen behind other nationalities in regard to education.

American Lithuanians would not have any reason to complain about Lithuanian elementary schools if the parents and the priests would be more concerned with the placing of our schools on a higher level. In certain localities some priests are concerned with the improvement of the Lithuanian parochial schools, but they meet many obstacles in their effort to raise the standards. Some parishioners agree to have elementary schools, but when it comes to the question of contributing a few cents for the school fund, they refuse to do so; and in addition, they prohibit their children from attending these schools.

As a matter of fact, we cannot blame the parishioners for not sending their 2children to these schools because they are not up to the required standards and are usually controlled by priests, who have only a religious education and very little secular education.

However, there are certain localities, where we could have good parochial schools and good teachers, but our Polonized priests are not interested enough and not a bit concerned about improving the educational standards of our schools.

We have plenty of large buildings and good facilities for standard parochial schools in every Lithuanian colony.

Our children, who are attending these schools at present, learn only how to pray and waste a lot of their valuable time on catechism, and not enough time is spent on general education such as English grammar, Lithuanian grammar, American history, geography, and other important educational subjects, which form a very good foundation for those who are planning to attend high school and university.

However, this situation can easily be remedied, with very little effort; that is, if the people are interested enough to improve their parochial schools and to raise the required standards. We must remember, however, that education is indispensible to our progress and to the up-lift of our people. We cannot make any progress without higher education, because all the progress of mankind is based on the latter.

An education is very important to all of us, regardless of whether we live in America or in some other country.

It is a well-known fact that one cannot very well get along without education, and that one cannot accomplish anything worth while without it; a man without an education is just like a blind individual who cannot see the beauties of nature and the beauties of our civilization.

An education plays a very important part in human life, it builds the individuals character, opens his eyes to the world and helps one to differentiate between good and bad. We have no words with which to describe 4the value of education, and its importance to the people, especially to our people who are lacking it at the present time.

All of us know that education is spreading very rapidly among other nationalities, because they understand and appreciate its value more than we do, and they also know that without an education one cannot get a desirable position, for which responsibility is required.

There are quite a large number of Lithuanian students attending private Catholic High Schools in the City of Chicago and also in other localities. We also have a large number of our students attending various universities in this country as well as in Europe.

If we cannot afford to have our own high schools and university, we should send our children to the public high schools, and not to Catholic schools where they waste too much of their valuable time on cateschism and praying. The home is the proper place in which to teach religion- 5not the school-for there are more important subjects to study than religion. In addition, Catholic high schools are not as well equipped as public high schools in the city of Chicago. Our children learn much more in the latter institutions than they do in Catholic high schools.

It is too bad that we do not have our own schools where we could send our children. Those who are attending high schools and universities are forgetting their own language. We cannot blame them for that, but we must blame ourselves for not having our own institutions of higher learning. If we had them our children would be able to learn their own language. We cannot expect them to learn it in American schools. If we don't have our own schools, we have to be contented with the others.

We, Lithuanians, do not understand or we do not want to understand 6the benefit of having our own institutions of higher learning in the United States of America. If we had at least one high school in the city of Chicago our cultural level would become much higher. In certain localities our people would like to have a high school of their own, but they cannot afford to have one. In other localities, such as Chicago, where the greatest number of Lithuanians live, they could afford to have at least one, but they do not want to have any institutions of higher learning.