UC-NRLF 277 = j 1*3 O^5 LEWIS AND CLARK CENTENNIAL EXPOSITION PORTLAND, OREGON, JUNE TO OCTOBER, 1905 H. W. GOODE. President H, E. REED, Secretary PROGRAM, ORGANIZATION and ADDRESSES Lewis and Clark Educational Congress AUG. 28 TO SEPT. 2, 1905 AUDITORIUM OF THE EXPOSITION Portland, Oregon, U. S. A. LEWIS AND CLARK CENTENNIAL EXPOSITION PORTLAND, OREGON, JUNE TO OCTOBER, 1905 H. W. GOODE, President - H, E. REED, Secretary PROGRAM, ORGANIZATION AND ADDRESSES Lewis and Clark Educational Congress AUG. 28 TO SEPT. 2, 1905 AUDITORIUM OF THE \EXPQS-TION Portland, Oregon, U. 3: A\ Auspices Lewis and Clark Congresses Committee and a Committee of Pacific Northwest Educators V- G Presses of ANDERSON & DUNIWAY Co. Portland, Oregon preface The Lewis and Clark Educational Congress was held August 28 to September 2, 1905, mornings, from 9 to 12, in the Auditor- ium on the Exposition grounds, Portland, Oregon. It was one of a series of Congresses pertaining to the social welfare of the Pacific Northwest. The notable success of the Educational Con- gress was due chiefly to the fact that the Committee on Congresses secured the hearty and effective co-operation of the educators of Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana, represented by a Gen- eral Committee of seventeen and in turn by an Executive Com- mittee of five. A bill was passed by the Oregon Legislature (Senate Bill No. 133) whereby the County Superintendents of Oregon were permitted to omit the annual county institutes for 1905, and to apply the funds to the expenses of this Congress. About $2,000 was thus accorded, sufficient to cover all the expense of procuring distinguished speakers for the Congress and to share in the expense of printing this volume. Upon the pages immediately following may be found the committees, organization of the Congress, and the program as carried out. The proceedings of the Congress in detail are not given. It was very regrettably necessary to omit the addresses of the distinguished presiding officers and the addresses of those who had been invited by the committees to lead the discussions everything, in fact, but the principal addresses. We hope that some other worthy medium of publication may be found for the noteworthy utterances of Professor J. R. Robertson, of Pacific University ; Professor H. D. Sheldon, of the University of Oregon ; Mr. B. W. Johnson, Director of Manual Training, Seattle, Wash- ington; Honorable W. T. Harris, United States Commissioner of Education (following Mr. Frank Rigler on Thursday), and Pres- ident S. B. L. Penrose, of Whitman College. The Committee regrets that it has been impossible to obtain the manuscripts of three important addresses, those of Professor A. H. Yoder, Mr. Frank Rigler, and Professor Samuel McCune Lindsay. The latter will be printed privately and distributed later. This volume will be sent to anyone making application to the Secretary of the Congresses Committee for the same and enclosing six cents for postage. W. G. ELIOT, JR., Secretary Lewis and Clark Committee on Congresses, 681 Schuyler Street, Portland, Oregon, U. S. A.. 358823 Organisation anfc program Lewis and Clark Congresses Committee J. R. Wilson, Chairman ; W. G. Eliot, Jr., Secretary ; W. W. Cotton, W. L. Brewster, E. P. Hill, R. W. Montague, S. S. Wise. Executive Committee of Educators J. H. Ackerman, Chairman, State Superintendent of Oregon ; R. B. Bryan, State Superin- tendent of Washington ; Miss May L. Scott, State Superin- tendent of Idaho; W. E. Harmon, State Superintendent of Montana ; W. N. Ferrin, D. A. Grout, J. C. Zinser. Committee of Educators P. L. Campbell, President of the State University; W. N. Ferrin, President of Pacific University; Frank Rigler, D. A. Grout, C. L. Starr, J. C. Zinser, J. H. Copeland, E. E. Bragg; J. H. Ackerman, State Superinten- dent of Oregon ; R. B. Bryan, State Superintendent of Wash- ington ; Miss May L. Scott, State Superintendent of Idaho : and W. E. Harmon, State Superintendent of Montana. Committee of County Superintendents R. F. Robinson, Chair- man; M. C. Case, L. R. Alderman. VI program EDUCATIONAL CONGRESS. Held in the Auditorium, mornings, from 9 to 12, August 28 to September 2. Admission to this Congress was free through the street en- trance, this admission not including admission 7 to the Exposition Grounds. Monday, August 28 Administration Band. Address of welcome : Honorable A. L. Mills, of the Execu- tive Committee of the Exposition, on behalf of the Ex- position. Presiding Officer for the day: President W. N. Ferrin, of Pacific University. Convocation address : Honorable William T. Harris, LL. D., United States Commissioner of Education, Washington, D. C. Address : Honorable Andrew S. Draper, Commissioner of Education for the State of New York. Subject: "Unset- tled Questions in the Organization and Administration of Schools." Tuesday, August 29 Vocal solo: Mrs. L. T. Chapman, of Pacific University. Presiding Officer for the day: Mr. E. V. Littlefield, Presi- dent of the Oregon State Teachers' Association. Address : President Benjamin Ide Wheeler, of the University of California. Subject: "The Relation of the Pacific Coast to Education in the Orient." Discussion : Professor J. R. Robertson, of Pacific University. Address: Mr. F. Louis Soldan, City Superintendent of Schools, St. Louis, Missouri. Subject: "Education in a Democracy." Tuesday Evening, eight o'clock, at the Auditorium Lecture by Mr. H. M. Leipziger, Supervisor of Lectures in the New York City Schools. Subject: "Adult Educa- tion and the Extension of the Schoolhouse." Wednesday, August 30 Presiding Officer for the day : President E. D. Ressler, State Normal School, Monmouth. Address : Professor A. H. Yoder, Department of Pedagogics, State University of Washington. Subject : "Social Con- ditions and Elementary Education." Discussion: Professor H. D. Sheldon, of the University of Oregon. Address: Mr. H. M. Leipziger. Subject: "Manual Train- ing." Discussion : Mr. B. W. Johnson, Superintendent of Manual Training in the Seattle public schools. In the evening a reception was tendered Honorable William T. Harris at the Oregon State Building by the Associa- tion of the Commissioners of state educational exhibits. Thursday, August 31 Mr. A. J. Church, City Superintendent of Public Schools for Baker City, Oregon, was the presiding officer for the day. Address : Honorable J. H. Ackerman, State Superintendent of Public Instruction for Oregon. Subject: "The Prob- lem of the Rural School." /Address : M/r. Frank Rigler, Superintendent of the Portland Public Schools. Subject: "The Problem of Classifica- tion." Discussion: Honorable W. T. Harris. Friday, September 1 Mr. R. F. Robinson, County Superintendent for Multnomah County, presiding officer for the day. General subject for the day: "Technical and Industrial Ed- ucation." Address : President E. A. Bryan, of the Washington State College, Pullman, Washington. Subject: "Higher Ag- ricultural Education." Address : Honorable Howard J. Rogers, Assistant Commis- sioner of Education for the State of New York. Subject: "Education in Reference to Our Future Industrial and Commercial Development." Saturday, September 2 President Thomas F. Kane, of the University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, presiding officer for the day. General subject : "Colleges and Universities." Address : President P. L. Campbell, University of Oregon, Eugene. Subject: "Education and the State." Discussion: President S. B. L. Penrose, Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington. Address: Professor Samuel McCune Lindsay, Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, University of Penn- sylvania. Subject: "Education for Efficiency and the Demands of Modern Business." Concluding remarks : Honorable J. H. Ackerman. CONVOCATION ADDRESS. By W. T. HARRIS. Fifty years ago enterprising people in Missouri conceived the idea of starting a railroad that should extend in time to the Pacific Ocean and connect this Western Coast line with the Mississippi Valley and the Atlantic Slope. This was the latest form of the heart-hunger for a country of wealth and abundance gold and precious stones, and a fabulous king every morning powdered with gold-dust so that he was the shining one, as the word rajah indicates to the people who speak Sanscrit. The land of realized wealth was called India, and 'was sought by adventurous travelers from Europe to the East. And a way by sea around Africa was explored long before Vasco di Gama doubled its southernmost cape, not long after Columbus had executed the bolder plan of circumnavigating the world by sailing westward. Almost every navigator who followed the example of Columbus tried to find not America, but a western passage through America to India, the ideal land of wealth. They did not know of the great wealth in gold offered by the mines of the west coast of America, and were not satisfied with Mexico and Peru, but wished to get to the India of Eastern Asia, whose story they had read. Thomas H. Benton, Missouri's great statesman, standing in Lafayette Park in St. Louis recited his oration at the celebration of the beginning of the first railroad ambitious enough to call itself the Pacific Railroad, and for which the State of Missouri had contributed a large sum from its treasury. Pointing to the West along the line of the projected road, Benton said in his im- pressive manner : "There is the West, there is India." Early in our civil war the Pacific Railroad was pushed through to completion, on the western line from Chicago and connected by a branch with the Missouri Pacific. Little was it then thought that the Western Coast would itself be much richer than India has ever been, and that its commerce with the East would exceed the commerce of Europe with India. But surely there has come such a commerce to the East, and with it also a great commerce to Asia, six great trans-Pacific naviga- tion lines already and a prospective increase to a trade that will rival the domestic commerce with the Eastern and Central States of this Republic. Fifty years before Benton's famous address, Lewis and Clark had made the world-historical exploration of Oregon which you 10 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. celebrate this summer in this gorgeous exposition of the arts and industries of all nations. Hence, too, this Educational Congress, happily conceived be- cause it celebrates one of the permanent aspirations that had its origin in the heart-hunger that led the people of Europe out in search of the land of the Golden King a search which finally led, on all hands north and south, not to kingdoms, but to demo- cratic republics and to the local self-governments of America. The Crusades, the age of discovery, and the era of coloniza- tion, all came from the desire for an opportunity for self-activity on the part of the people as people. The realized nations of Europe were good and gave much opportunity, far more than had yet been realized by other parts of the world, but that was only a mere taste of freedom in thought and action, and there must arise on the distant borderlands such organized forms of opportunity as would satisfy the very ideal of free development on new lines each man revealing his new thought by deeds. A mere taste of freedom led to full draughts of freedom. Man escapes from the too great pressure of tradition and too servile obedience to the past by migrating to the borderland of opportunity where he can do for himself. If his ideals are wise ones and he has skill, he will reap a rich reward ; if his ideals are unwise or his practical skill very small, he will reap poverty and all manner of misfortune. But in both cases his life will be a revelation of himself as an individual, and not a mere slavish execution of time-worn usages and modes of doing. The field of opportunity aids us to free ourselves from the weight of the past. But that servitude of the past is only one kind of slavery. Present needs and necessities furnish another kind of slavery, and the past helps to free us from the thraldom of the present, and this is the lesson of our Congress of Educa- tion here today. Education helps man to understand the past and to bring it to the aid of the present. All its discoveries, all its bitter experiences, all its great successes, go to the aid of man through education. His self-activity becomes fortunate if he can profit by the observations and thoughts and inventions of his fellow men. Great as he may be in ambition and in the raw material of an individual career, he will not succeed except in- sofar as he reinforces his individual might by the aggregate might of civilization except as he reinforces the present by the past. Education has been and is the chosen instrument of success, for it can in the deftest manner give the new individual the knowledge of the progress of mankind in the conquest of nature by science and art, and the method of organizing people into free institutions by which they mutually reinforce one another. Convocation Address. 11 Education changes the past from a tyrant to a friendly auxiliary from an oppressive burden of blind customs to an illuminating theory which all may see, each for himself. Therefore it is that with the successful transplanting of civi- lization into the Western Continent the school has been found necessary for success. Opportunity is lost to the person who cannot command knowledge and skill and who cannot combine with his fellow men. Education gives man freedom, because it gives him insight the ability to see and understand for himself both the past and the present, so that he can use them to build with. In the light of this movement of civilization towards the borderlands, and in the presence of this great exposition of re- sources and production, let us look at the work before this Con- gress which is laid out in the program of the five days coming, and briefly recapitulate some of its most important topics. The pupils and the work in the different grades are shown in the general exhibits of the Exposition. The discussions of this Congress will relate to the special interests of the schools today which center in such problems as: 1. The substitution of the well-graded school for the rural ungraded school that exists in the sparsely settled districts. It is in process of being supplanted by the graded schools through the new device of transportation to the central school of the vil- lage. 2. The makeshift teacher is being replaced by the profes- sionally trained teacher, who is a graduate of the normal school. 3. The professional teacher has salaries above him reaching to $10,000 or more as the summit the rank and file find it easy to get $600 and can, in fact, almost start with it. High school positions open 1,300 new ones a year, and 25,000 already reached colleges and universities 1,000 new ones a year, and more than 20,000 positions exist already. Superintendents of city systems, 1,000 of them in cities of over 8,000 population, and about 1,500 of them in all. New cities are growing out of vil- lages from year to year. 4. Transportation of pupils to village centers from the rural sparsely settled districts is in process of eliminating on a large scale the old ungraded school and installing the professional teacher in place of the makeshift teacher who comes in as a vol- unteer for a three months' service. Once begun, the transportation of pupils from ungraded schools to urban-graded schools will go on more and more rap- idly, affording thousands of new positions annually for profes- sional teachers, such as are trained in the normal schools. The normal schools graduate 8,000 pupils a year, and within fourteen years have graduated 113,000, most of whom are now 12 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. teaching in graded elementary schools, high schools, and in col- lege work, at annual salaries sufficient to furnish a respectable living. 5. Transportation of pupils solves the problem of the rural school. The growth of villages increases the number of ten- month schools. Railroads create centers of urban life, and com- munities that read- the daily newspaper. The significance of graded schools is found in the time gained for recitation, for the cultivation of critical alertness, and for teaching how to study. The ungraded school had for its method individual in- struction, and not class instruction, which becomes a powerful instrument in graded schools. A population that remains in an old settled country in its "fatherland" grows up in the grooves long ago fitted for it, and is not given to new initiatives or to the development of orig- inality. "Opportunity" is not found there in its most stimulating forms. Columbus discovered America, and an age of opportunity arose for all Europe for a period of 200 years first an age of exploration, which was followed by an age of colonization. What in history is spread out over centuries and "written large on the blackboard of the universe," so that even the slow- minded may see it, gets realized, by and by, in each man's life in after ages, and now every family in the old centers of civili- zation New York, Philadelphia, Boston sends its sons out to serve a business apprenticeship in the borderlands Chicago, San Francisco, and Portland. Even London, Paris and Berlin send their sons to Australia, Madagascar, or the Argentine Republic. This age of opportunity which in history was once spread out over 300 years of Crusades, 200 years of discovery and coloni- zation of the New World five centuries in all is now taken up into the culture of every family, and is lived through within the compass of a single life. In a newspaper age, people have learned to watch from day to day the world-history unrolling on the wheel of time, reading its pages from day to day as they are lived and written. Thus the epic element enters human life in its everyday tasks, turning its prose into epic poetry. It is perhaps the greatest function of the common school that it fits out its pupils with an ability to read, and a habit of reading. Reading involves the capacity to .recognize, by sight, words that existed before the school age only as sounds addressed to the ear. The school makes the child eye-minded. He was only ear- minded before. He knew words only by ear, now he begins to know them by the eye. As ear-minded, he learned chiefly by hearsay, now, become eye-minded, he learns by the printed page, and like Heimdall, the gate-keeper of the Gods in the old Norse Convocation Address. 13 mythology, he can hear all the movements in the wide uni- verse he can hear the trees grow, yes, even the wool growing on the backs of sheep, the whisperings of the people in China, and India, in Russia and Japan. But the gift of hearing elevated to a high potency is not equal to this gift of eye-mindedness which can stop the rolling wheel of time and fix on its printed page the fleeting moment so. that it is made permanent and can be recalled at pleasure from the past, or summoned hither from any remote distance. Eye-mindedness and not ear-mindedness can go beyond the colloquial vocabulary and master the technical vocabulary in which science can express with unmistakable accuracy its obser- vations, its experiments, and its reasonings. Let us consider some of these topics more in detail : The preparation of the teacher for his vocation is always a central problem in school management. In 1880 there were 240 normal students in each million of inhabitants; in 1897 there were 936 in each million. The normal school, it may be said, has the general effect of making its pupils observant of methods. The ordinary persons sees results, but does not take note of the methods by which they are produced. Hence the teacher who has never received instruction in a normal school may hap- pen to be a good teacher, but it is quite unusual for him to under- stand how he secures his own results; and he is not often able to profit by seeing the work of other good teachers, for he cannot readily see what method they use, not having acquired the habit of looking at methods. On the other hand, the normal school graduate seldom visits a successful school without carrying away some new idea, or at least, some new device of method. Hence normal school graduates continue to grow in professional skill for ten, twenty, or even thirty years, while it is said truly that the teachers not from normal schools usually reach their maximum skill in from three to five years. After that period degeneration is apt to set in because of the fixation of methods in ruts a me- chanical habit grows on the teacher who does not readily see "how his mannerisms look to other people. Teaching as a makeshift occupation, such as we find it in rural schools, with three or four months' annual session, can never be of sufficient importance to cause young men and women to spend years at training schools in preparation for that work. Only places with annual salaries and with eight or ten months of teaching will warrant the establishment of normal schools, and the three years' course of preparation necessary to secure the qualification needed for the professional teacher. In order that we may provide good teachers there must be adequate salaries, and there must be annual salaries, and not 14 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. monthly salaries such as are found in schools that have sessions of only three or four months. I am therefore glad to mention here that the average annual increase in higher education throws open nearly 1,000 new places a year in colleges and universities for teachers promoted from the secondary schools on being found to have the requisite skill and scholarship. There were in 1890, 7,918 professors and instructors in the colleges and universities of the United States, not count- ing the professional schools. In 1903 the number had risen to 20,887. It started with less than 8,000 and had an increase of new places in thirteen years almost equal to 1,000 a year 12,969. The secondary schools of the United States counted 16,329 teach- ers in 1890, and in 1903 counted 33,795. This increase gave 17,466 new positions in thirteen years for teachers in public and private high schools. Besides these positions in colleges which are for a year of eight or nine months, and offer good salaries, the teacher's profession offers in the elementary and high schools and in the office of superintendent the following positions, reported from 467 cities of over 8,000 population, to the special committee of which Col. C. D. Wright was chairman : Salaries. Position. $ 600 to $ 700 16,015 700 to 800 11,064 800 to 900 8,664 900 to 1,000 4,424 ,000 to 1,100 2,539 ,100 to 1,200 1,486 ,200 to 1,300 2,825 ,300 to 1,400 1,166 ,400 to 1,500 861 ,500 to 1,600 766 1,600 to 1,700 1,005 1,700 to 1,800 227 1,800 to 1,900 361 1,900 to 2,000 233 2,000 and over 1,918 Total 53,554 $500 to $600 14,193 Under $500 17,728 - Adding the positions in colleges and universities, 20,887, to 53,554 positions with salaries of $600 and above, we have a total of 74,441. It will be seen on inspection of the above table that there are 26,475 positions that pay $800 and upwards, which with the college positions make 47,362. Consolidation of Schools and Transportation of Pupils. The practice of consolidating two or more small schools and transporting the more distant pupils of the discontinued schools Convocation Address. 15 to the central (usually graded) school at the public expense has been resorted to, either under specific provisions or under the general authority of the law, in the following states : California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana (1903), Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Ver- mont, Virginia (1903), Washington, Wisconsin, and Oregon (1903), twenty-seven states in all. Notable movements toward the consolidation of schools, but without the feature of transportation, have been recently inaugur- ated in North Carolina and Missouri. Some progress in the same direction has also been made in Louisiana. Consolidate rural schools by free transportation and provide for their instruction in graded schools with annual sessions of ten months, taught by teachers who have professional skill and who know how to make the class an instrument for the instruc- tion of each individual pupil in the class. Can a rural school with a good teacher be a good school? It will find in its ten, twenty, or thirty pupils all grades of ad- vancement, from the beginners at five years to those who have had seven or eight years of schooling, and attained the age of sixteen years or more. These pupils cannot be taught in classes to any great extent; there must be many recitations, and conse- quently short ones. Let there be good teachers, and they will certainly accomplish more than poor ones. But what can a good teacher do in a five-minute recitation? One of the accomplish- ments of a trained teacher is his ability to probe the pupil's understanding of the lesson and set him thinking about the rela- tions of what he has just learned to what he has learned at a former time, either at school by study, or by experience, in the events of his life. But even the skilled teacher cannot, in a five- minute recitation, probe the pupil's knowledge of the lesson, and connect it with all its threads of relation. He cannot teach the pupil habits of deeper thinking. Moreover, the pupil, if he re- cites by himself, or in a class of two or three, does not gain the great advantages that come from reciting in a class of twenty pupils substantially equal in ability. For each pupil in a class learns as much from his fellow-pupils as from the teacher direct. He can see the one-sidedness of the recitations of his fellows. They have learned some things that escaped his attention, but have neglected others that he has learned well. There is too great a disparity between the pupil's view of a subject and the teach- er's view to make a thorough mutual understanding possible, except through the mediation of the class. Each pupil learns more from the teacher's criticism of the work of the other pupils than from the criticism of his own work. 16 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. Every recitation reveals to the pupils of the class many points of view -that they had missed in the preparation of their lessons ; some have missed this point and some that point. They learn also to criticise the text-book and overcome their superstitious reverence for what they find printed in books. The Growth of High Schools and Colleges. Before considering our next theme, "The Growth of High Schools and Colleges," I ask your attention to a definition of civilization. What right, it is asked, has one nation to impose its form on another by force, on the ground that its own is a higher form of civilization? What infallible criterion have we, asks another, by which we may be entitled to conclude that we have a higher civilization than the neighboring nations? Why is not the Indian civilization as good as ours? Why is not the Chinese civilization, or the civilization of the Philippine Islands, as good as the civilization that calls itself the United States, or Great Britain, or France, or Germany? This is a serious question and needs to be understood if one is going to sit in judgment upon national conduct. I ask you, therefore, to consider with me the answer which can be made to the question, "What is it that makes one civilization higher than another? What is a high civilization, and what is the highest civilization ?" I offer a definition for civilization. It is this: A people is civilized when it has formed institutions for itself which enable each individual citizen to profit by the industry of all his fellow- citizens; when it enables each individual to profit by the experi- ence and wisdom, the observations and the thoughts of his fel- low-citizens ; when it encourages each individual to enter upon a rational self-activity by which he contributes, either through his industry or through his observations and his thoughts, to the benefit of the people with whom he lives. This definition of civilization can be put in another form which shows its significance. Civilization enables man to con- quer nature and make it his servant ; to command the services of heat, light, electricity, and of all the inorganic elements ; to com- mand also the plant world or vegetation, for his uses ; to com- mand also the animal kingdom for the same service; in short, to command the services of nature for food, clothing, and shel- ter. Besides this control over nature, civilization should give man access to the history ^of his race : access to its literature ; access to its scientific discoveries ; access to its various inventions ; and, above all, access to its moral and religious ideals. Civiliza- tion, in short, should give man command of the earth, and likewise command of the experience of the entire race. Convocation Address. 17 In the light of this definition we may approach the civiliza- tions as they actually exist and inquire how far they have realized the ideal, how high they have climbed on the ladder of civiliza- tion. At once we see how low the tribal civilization is as com- pared with the civilization of Great Britain, or France, or Ger- many. There is no tribal civilization on the face of the earth, and never was one, which could compare with these nations in its knowledge of the uses of mineral substances, chemical transfor- mations, and the natural forces such as heat, light, electricity, gravitation, etc. No tribe can possibly command the complete resources of the world as regards its' vegetable and its animal life, the products of agriculture and the mines. The reason for this is that the tribe is too small, and the tribe from the very nature of its. constitution can not co-operate with other tribes nor receive their help. It stops at a view of nature which is a mere supersti- tion. The tribe can climb only a little way up the ladder which leads to the control and command of all the substances and forces of nature. Consequently the tribe can not participate to any great degree either in the productive industry of the whole world or in its intellectual investigations and discoveries. Other forms of civilization above the tribe take rank as high- er or lower, according to the degree in which they realize this ideal of conquest over nature and complete intercommunication with the rest of the world. No nation that lacks a great com- merce can be so high in civilization as Great Britain or France. No nation that lacks railroad communication can be so high in civilization as the United States. No nation that lacks steam engines to perform its drudgery can be so high as the nation which has these things. Again, a nation that has no printing presses and that can not buy or read the books of the world can not be said to have a high civilization. And on this scale the nation that has the most print- ing, that makes the most books, and that reads the great books of the world is higher than the other nations. The ideal in this respect is that civilization should make it possible for each .man to know the experience of all the past through science and litera- ture, and that he should be able to see, through the columns of a morning newspaper, the history as it is making, day by day, in all the lands of the world. Again, there is another criterion a very important one. A nation may be very far advanced in its ability to control nature and to command access to the wisdom of the race ; but it may do this only for some classes of its citizens and not for all. Such a nation is not so highly advanced in its civilization as one that allows each of its citizens to participate in the product of the whole. The nation that gives schools to the humblest classes of its people as well as to its highest classes, and the nation which 18 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. allows the humblest people to govern themselves under just laws, is a higher nation than one which separates the ruling class into a government apart from and above the mass of the people. The highest ideal of a civilization is that of a civilization which is engaged constantly in elevating lower classes of people into participation of all that is good and reasonable, and perpet- ually increasing at the same time their self-activity. High schools and colleges teach the grounds of our civiliza- tion; the elementary schools provide the first rudiments. We often hear people ask whether a high school course of study is really practical, or only ornamental. Let us pause a moment to consider. There were 292,287 pupils in the United States pub- lic high schools, and 54,726 in private high schools, studying algebra, in 1900. Algebra is a difficult study, but it gives an insight into the construction of arithmetic. If a person in later life should forget his arithmetic he may readily reconstruct its rules, if he has studied algebra at some time in his youth for a year. He can perform far more difficult problems by its method than he ever could perform by simple arithmetic. No advanced course of study in mathematics can be pursued except by aid of algebra. Besides these students in algebra, there were 168,518 youth in high schools studying geometry. This branch shows the neces- sary structure of all bodies that exist in space. Algebra and geometry are tools of thought that enable man to control matter and motion. They are among the most practical of all branches for giving directive power. My attention was called .to this practical phase of high school mathematics as applied to physics thirty years ago, when one of our high school boys in St. Louis, Mo., took a humble position in the water works office of that city. Some pipes in the lower part of the city, next to the river, burst, and the new ones by which they were replaced did not last long. This boy made a calcula- tion, and found that the pressure of 150 feet of water is something like sixty pounds to the square inch, and that this was more than the regulation pipe used could stand, and, on request of the man- ager, he made a formula by which the proper regulation standard of pipes could be fixed. This boy was promoted. Physics, or "natural philosophy," enrolling 118,936 pupils, describes and explains mathematically the various properties of matter and force, showing the structure of all kinds of machinery and giving an insight into electricity, steam, attraction of gravi- tation, the dynamics of water, the nature of the solar spectrum, the structure of the telescope, the microscope, and the like. Of all branches that have to do with the conquest of nature, by human industry, physics is the most important for the pupil. Convocation Address. 19 In the languages, 65,684 pupils in high schools were studying French, 100,873 pupils studying German, 24,869 Greek, and 314,856 were studying Latin. Latin is the stock out of which the southern languages of Europe are formed. Even the northern languages get the most important part of their vocabularies from it, namely, the technical words for the sciences and the words expressing fine shades of thought and refined emotions. Ever a brief study of Latin, say six months, is of immense value to enable one to be at home in the English language, of which three-fourths of the vocabulary is of Latin origin. Besides these language studies which deal with a knowledge of human nature, the high school gives other studies that help powerfully in the same direction: 238,134 pupils in high schools studied general history last year. This is an age of the conquest of nature by machinery. One hears gladly the strong speeches made by progressive men in favor of manual and industrial training there ought to be free industrial schools enough to enable each youth to learn the trade of his choice without resorting to the tedious and wasteful process of apprenticeship. In the past thirteen years manual training has been provided for in 322 cities out of the 587 cities of over 8.000 inhabitants, and there are 33,062 pupils enrolled in manual train- ing high schools. A little more than 5 per cent of all high school pupils in the United States are studying manual training. It ought to be possible for any middle-aged man or woman to attend an evening school or a day school and learn a new trade in a few weeks or months or, what is of quite as much importance to them, learn how to improve themselves in the trades they have been following for twenty years without acquiring any consid- erable skill because of having no opportunity to learn the most approved new methods and manipulations. All this is true, but it remains a fact that the pupils who have well learned the com- mon school branches are far better fitted to use machinery than the illiterate laborers who have served their long apprenticeships of seven or even of twenty-seven years. The growth of high schools and colleges in the United States has been something enormous in the past thirty years. I quote here the comparison of 1890 with 1900. If we add the totals of higher education to those of secondary schools, in order to see what the country as a whole is doing in schools beyond the elementary grade, we find that in 1890 there were 8,053 students in the million of population, Who were pursuing ad- vanced studies, and that these 8,053 had increased in the decade to 12,588. 20 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. ENROLLMENT OF SECONDARY PUPILS. Ninth to twelfth year of course of study in the United States. 1890. 1900. In each million population. 1890. 1900. Private academies 94,931 203,000 69,109 110,727 520,000 89,193 1,576 3,241 1,115 1,443 6,832 1,174 Public high schools Preparatory classes and special institutions. . . . Total secondary pupils 367,040 719,920 5,872 9,449 TOTAL HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES. 1890. 1900. In each million population. 1890. 1900. Colleges 800 1,301 1,284 1,855 Other higher education, professional and tech- nical . . Total higher 2,181 3,139 Grand total secondary and higher 8,053 12,588 The significance of these educational items cannot be fully appreciated without considering the facts that I have hinted al- ready, namely, that the school gives the power to continue one's education with increasing skill throughout life. Even the illiter- ate grows, although slowly, in mental power by reason of his experience in life. But his experience is limited to what he can observe in himself and in a small circle of neighbors. But his school-educated companion who can read and does read, ; is all the time widening his mental view by what he gets from the printed page, and growing in accuracy of thought on account of it. Hence it happens, after fifty years of life, at the age of sixty years, the illiterate has grown as much by experience as he could grow by one year of schooling, while his literate companion has grown at least ten times as much. . So with the secondary pupil there are opened new windows out of which to observe man and nature the windows of alge- bra and geometry, of physics and chemistry, of Latin and French or German, and of general history. He gets at least three times as much from the printed page of science or literature as the graduate of the elementary school, and his accumulation in the Convocation Address. 21 course of fifty years is more than ten times that of his elementary companion, or 100 times that of the illiterate. In one year's time the high school graduate has not made very many applications of his knowledge, but as the years go on he starts new trends of observation, and follows out threads of causation and long paths of genesis in the growth of the things and events that come under his immediate observation. The student of higher education far surpasses the secondary student in his ability to see lines of causality and of genesis in facts and events, and his power to accumulate in his life experi- ence from year to year is far greater. His power to see the past in the present and to predict the future at a glance of the present situation seems miraculous, after fifty years of using his higher education. Just as Agassiz could see in the scale of a fish enough of its character to enable him to draw the fish, although he had not yet seen the fish, and just as Asa Gray could divine the his- tory of a tree from seeing it at a single glance, so in a thousand ways and in a thousand different provinces the old man who in youth has been trained in the college and in the professional school acquires powers of seeing things in their history and in their com- plex of relations. These are the considerations that make us rejoice at the recent unexampled increase of sec6ndary and higher education, and it remains for us to say that this increase is likely to go on, because it is due to the growth of productive industry in the country. The use of water, steam, and electricity in the indus- tries is increasing the average annual production of each inhabi- tant. This accumulation of wealth enables our people to prepare their children in better schools and in longer periods of schooling. The average school term of the United States is only five years of 200 days each, or 1,000 days. The future will see this lengthened with the increase of wealth in the community. I do not think that the average production of wealth in 1800 could have been more than 10 cents a day for each man, woman, and child, but by 1850 it had risen to 30 cents a day, and in 1880 to 44 cents ; in 1890 to 52 cents ; in 1900 to 58 cents. The average amount of schooling will increase to ten years and more when, at some time in the future, we can produce a dollar a day for each inhabitant. The great work of the elementary schools impresses us when we consider its function in the industrial and political life of our nation. It makes public opinion possible. Instead of ninety-nine drudges producing raw material and one person working to fur- nish and diffuse directive intelligence, it will come to pass some time in the future that one man will, by the aid of machinery, furnish the raw material, another man's labor will make the useful articles of food, clothing, and shelter; ten mre will elaborate 22 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. articles of comfort and luxury ; the rest, more than 80 per cent of the community, will take up vocations having to do with pro- tection and culture. The work of education is the direct work of helping individ- uals to help themselves. It does not go on as fast as it should, nor as far as it should. Our comfort is that it is making visible progress. The average complete school life for the entire nation is at present only 1,034 days for each person. This would give five years each year of 200 days enough to take a pupil through the primary schools of a city. Even Massachusetts, with all its schools, public and private, does not give enough schooling to amount to seven years apiece for its inhabitants. Some states of the union give only a little more than two years for an average. But it is worthy of note that Massachusetts, with nearly twice the average schooling per individual, produces nearly or quite twice the amount of wealth per individual, compared with the nation's average. In 1880 the census seemed to show that the average production of the whole nation was 40 cents per day for each inhabitant. That of Massachusetts came up to 80 cents. It is in view of the fact that the laborers who produce raw material are paid only one-half of the wages paid to those engaged in skilled industries, such as are carried on in cities, that we find the significance of this great exposition in the City of Portland. The symbols of the highest civilization are the railroad, the daily newspaper, and the school. Here we find the type of the bearer of civilization. It brings together the producer and the consumer. In the city the raw material brings the highest price, and the manufactured product is found at its cheapest price. The city makes combinations ; it seeks out the producer and buys his product, selling him its equivalent of the merchandise of the world. The city thus connects the people of its environ- ment with the world. The family that produces for itself its own food, clothing, and shelter is living on a low plane of civilization. It should produce some specialty for the market of the world, and exchange it for a share in all the productions of mankind. Each person consumes or partakes of the product of the world of uni- versal human society ; each, himself, contributes to the supply of all others. It is this process of intercommunication of each with all that is the essence of civilization. The family that produces all that it consumes does not enjoy luxury nor culture as the result of its labor. But when it has access to the market of the world through the mediation of the city, then it may have endless variety in what it consumes. By the division of labor, skill and productive power are increased, so that the share of each person is multiplied. Hence, each gets more than he gives to the world market. Convocation Address. 23 Here we may see the vast significance of the school educa- tion in enabling the citizen who shares in the productions of his fellowmen to know his fellows, and understand their views of the world. It enables him to know their opinions, and to share in their spiritual productions as well as in their material produc- tions. It enables him to participate in the formation of national and international public opinion. Small as is the schooling given by our nation to its people, some four and one-half years apiece, it suffices to make reading and writing universal, and with them gives also a limited acquain- tance with the rudiments of arithmetic and geography. This fits the citizen to become a reader of the daily newspaper, and thus to bring him under an educating influence that will continue throughout his life. A newspaper civilization is one that governs by means of public opinion. The newspaper creates public opin- ion. No great free nation is possible except in a newspaper civi- lization. By aid of the printed page,, the school-educated person makes present to himself daily the events of .the world and lives an epic life. For the epic life is the life of nations. A certain portion of the day of each citizen is given to contemplating world events, and to discussing them. He. sees the doings of his state and nation, and forms his own opinion. His opinion, in the aggregate with those of his fellow citizens, is collected and offered to the world by the newspaper. That our schools suffice to pro- duce a government by public opinion this is a result of a higher order than the other good results which we have canvassed. To give people the power to readjust their vocations, and to climb up to better paid and more useful industries out of lives of drudg- ery, is a great thing, a sufficient reason in itself for establishing a public school system. But to give the people the power of par- ticipating in each other's thoughts to give each one the power to contribute his influence to the formation of a national public opinion is a far greater good; for it looks forward to the mil- lenium, when no wars will be needed for the mediation of hostile ideas. 24 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. UNSETTLED QUESTIONS IN THE ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE SCHOOLS. By ANDREW S. DRAPER. There are certain fundamentals of the American educational system which, it may well be said, are settled. They are settled by common thinking and universal acceptance ; by legislative sanc- tion and judicial determination. They are looked upon as the necessary basis of our political system ; as the essential support, guardian, and guide of a democratic form of government. For example: It is settled that our schools are to be free. They are to be supported at the common cost. All property is to contribute its share. They are to be open to all. There is to be nothing about them to which any may justly object on con- scientious grounds. They are to be managed and their particular character and accommodations determined and provided by the people in primary assemblages or by officers chosen by the people. It is accepted that they are subject to the legislative power in each state because they are supported by taxation, and the power of taxation is a sovereign power which can be exercised only by the legislature. The legislative power which levies taxes must ac- count for the manner in which the revenues are used. This logically results in very considerable legislative control and direc- tion over the schools, but the local interest in the schools is so great and so jealous of prerogative that the legislative powers go only to general and vital matters, while the real organizing, hous- ing, and administration of the schools is, and is likely to remain, local. It is settled that the power of the state shall undertake to assure a suitable school within accessible distance of every home and that each local community shall elaborate and embellish its particular school as far as the majority rule will authorize or permit. It is settled that there shall be a'free high school in every considerable town and a free university in every state unless an endowed university is already upon the ground and in some measure meets the public needs. It is settled that all grades of schools shall articulate together with some exactness ; that instruc- tion shall be continuous from the primary school to the graduate school in the university, and that all pupils shall be encouraged to go as far and as high as they will. It is fundamental, though it has not always been so, that girls shall have the same rights as boys in the schools. It is settled that the legislature may proVide for training teachers, and establish the methods, the standards, and the authority for determining their qualifications ; may also go as far as it pleases in appropriating moneys directly to the support of the schools or in fixing the sums which localities must raise, ab- Unsettled Questions of the Schools. 25 solutely or conditionally; and may go further and create such supervising officers and such machinery for promoting effective teaching as it pleases. The vital American principle that there shall be no organic or financial relation between the state and any church, between a school supported in whole or in part by taxation and any sectarian interest, has a decisive bearing upon the affairs of the public schools. The state will encourage every movement or enterprise which promises to be of advantage to any factor in the population by giving its sanction and approval thereto, but it will not enter into any business or moneyed relation with any class or faction as against any other, and it will not divest itself of any part of its power and function to deal with all sectional, class, religious, or partisan interests with exact and impartial justice. Accordingly, the public schools are common to all, must avoid all entanglements, and, in the fullest practicable measure, must be of equal advantage to all. It is not possible, nor desirable, to enumerate all of the foundation principles of the common school system. They are easily traceable to the essential principles of our federal and state constitutions, to the settled doctrines of the common law and to the uncontroverted usages which have grown up in the thought and the public life of this country. Wherever the developing educational system comes in contact with these headlands of our political theory and our system of jurisprudence it will be well to understand at once that the educational system will have to adjust itself to them. These fundamental principles are well "settled," and, so far as the -features and phases of the school sys- tem relate to such principles, they will have to be considered "settled" also. Aside from this, nothing is settled beyond recall and nothing has gone beyond the possibility of change. Indeed, the adapta- bility and effectiveness of the schools depend upon unceasing modifications which are in keeping with the new conditions which are constantly arising, the new educational experiences which continually crowd upon us, and the new purposes and outlooks which are every day opening up to us* We can not too often point out that our educational progress is measured by the freedom and confidence with which we do things, provided we keep sane, have proper respect for what our predecessors have done, and do not make changes for our own diversion or for the mere sake of a change. Men who would make a minor position in the school system the means of attracting at- tention or gaining notoriety, men who can destroy and not con- struct, men who are more ambitious than useful, often make trouble by supporting all sorts of changes in the schools. That is one of the difficulties with which a democracv has to contend. 26 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. But that is only a difficulty in administration, and not a real ques- tion in constructive or administrative policy. Happily, the school system has gone beyond the point where such men can do it much harm. They are powerless to do much good or harm. Any real problem in the organization and administration of the schools will have to be met by experts in education men and women who know the history and have studied the philosophy of education, who realize the under-running currents of American life, and are desirous of shaping the schools to the purposes of a nation which is bound to give every one his chance and whose public policies and educational instrumentalities must aid and encourage every child of the republic to make the most of his chance. Such men and women need not fear to take the initiative in meeting any new questions which may arise in the school system, or to make any changes which, after discussion, are supported by anything like a consensus of opinion. The life and virility of the educa- tional system depend upon their doing so. I am to suggest but must leave it to you to settle, if they are to be at once settled some of the problems which now seem to confront the American school system. Presenting them with sufficient detail to disclose their reality, I shall not feel called upon to sustain one view or another with arguments, or even to indicate any opinion of my own concerning their solution. It is an open question how much initiative and control shall be exerted by the state and how much shall be left to the locality concerning the schools. Of course, since the public school system has come to be supported by taxation and the power of taxation can not be exercised except by the sovereign authority of a state, there is no question about the state having ample power to do what it will about the schools. But there is very serious question about the measure of direction which the state ought to impose. People learn to do by doing. An officer bearing the appointment and exercising the authority of the state may know more about educational organization and administration than a local school meeting or local official may be expected to know, or, knowing, may be able to do. He may do things better than they will be done without him. Yet, if he initiates and supervises everything, the people will come to depend upon him, and will in- variably look to the state to do what would broaden and strengthen them if they would do for themselves. On the other hand, people need educational intrusion from the outside. It often happens that a community thinks that it has the very best schools, when it has almost the worst. The difficulty is that it can not see, and of course it can not do. How are state control and local self-initia- tive and administration to be balanced with the best results ? Very akin to this question is another, as to the measure of money which the state should provide for the support of the Unsettled Questions of the Schools. 27 schools, and the amount which should be left to each city, town, or district to supply. In many states the support of the schools is left altogether to the locality. In others a very considerable sum is distributed annually on some basis which requires the stronger sections to aid in some measure the weaker ones, and so equalize educational advantages over the state. The City of New York, for example, pays annually about a million and a quarter of dollars to aid other sections of the state which are financially weaker. Of the legal competency of the legislature to exact this there can be no question. Of the substantial aid to the rural districts of the state there is no doubt. But people are never satisfied with the amount of money which they get for nothing. The more they get the more they demand, the more they come to depend upon it, and the less they will be willing to raise for themselves. It is clear enough to me that in education the stronger and wealthier sections of a state ought to help the weaker and poorer ones. But, in justice to themselves, the weaker ones should not be allowed to take all they will. How are the state and the local support to be adjusted so as to assure the best schools in every section and promote the highest interests of an entire commonwealth? Again, if the state is to raise and distribute funds for the support of local schools, how is the distribution to be adjusted as between the primary, secondary, and higher schools? There are some precious souls who, if they are in favor of anything educa- tionally, think they are for the "three R's" exclusively, or, at most, they are for anything beyond the "three R's" only when the need of their being for it has wholly passed away. Yet we know very well that a mere ability to read' and write and cipher does not sustain intellectual life and democratic institutions anywhere in this country now ; and we know quite as well that the excellence of the primary schools is dependent upon the prevalence and efficiency of the secondary schools. Schools are of little worth without schools above them ; thus it is to the very limits of knowl- edge and of teaching power. But the secondary schools are more costly than the elementary schools, and the higher are more ex- pensive than the secondary. How is the state to use its power so as to balance the school system, assure an equitable distribution of the different grades and so secure the best results which wis- dom can devise? Yet again, how is the teaching force to be made the best possible? There are more who want to teach than there are places. The pay is not large, but the work allows considerable leisure and satisfies pride. The unprepared ones are to be shut out. But who are prepared and who are unprepared? Some who know less that is found in books than others do are better teachers than the others are. Surely some who are not very 28 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. successful in passing examinations are acceptable teachers. Some definite scholastic attainments are necessary, according to grade. Some general culture is imperative, regardless of grade. What parent wants to send his child to a coarse and mannerless teacher, no matter how much he knows of some things? Some pro- fessional training in educational theory and in teaching methods is requisite. Then there is the matter of spirit and finally of adaptability. But this refers to the individual teacher. How is the morale of the whole force to be uplifted? It can not be done through indifference and inattention. It will not move for- ward of its own motion. It can not be done through political officers who know less themselves than they are bound to exact of the teachers. It can not be done through examinations alone, and it can not be done without examinations. It can not be done with a rush, and it can not be done through harshness to worthy and deserving teachers. It is a matter of sound plan, steadily followed for a long time. How is the plan to be determined upon, and by what method is it to be carried to a meritorious conclusion ? Then there is always the unsettled question of competent supervision. The office of school superintendent is an American creation. In other constitutional countries the schools do not attempt as much as ours do ; the teachers are men with life tenure who follow the instructions of the government minister of educa- tion in all things; the work is routine; the habit of attendance by young children in primary schools is universal ; there is no mixing of classes and no articulation of schools, and the results place the percentage of illiteracy lower than in this country. With us the curriculum is long and diversified; we instruct all classes of children and we do it in the same schools ; our teaching force is changeable, not so professional in character and often over- taxed. We have tried to overcome difficulties by general super- vision, and in a measure we have succeeded. But the really pro- fessional superintendent is largely without legal authority, and the political superintendent, who often survives in the rural dis- tricts, is frequently without professional efficiency. Generally speaking, whenever there is a professional superintendent he is subject to an unprofessional board which is not without self- confidence in all that concerns the schools. In a word, we have to contend with the disadvantages of democratic government, and that fact sometimes obscures the other fact, particularly to teachers, that there are more advantages than disadvantages in government by the people. The legal and authoritative prerogatives of school superin- tendents, both in city and country, is an unsettled matter in Ameri- can education. Under the prevailing conditions, and conditions which are inherent and not quickly to be changed, supervision is highly important. It is not too much to say that the value of Unsettled Questions of the Schools. 29 the instruction is very dependent upon its professional qualities and closeness. Aptness in supervisory leadership is not wholly dependent upon the same qualities which make for effectiveness in teaching. Then how are we to get adequate training and ex- perience in a sufficient number of men and women to supply the needs? And how are we to treat superintendents, concerning functions, responsibilities, and compensation, so as to secure and retain true manliness and real womanliness, decorated with the qualities which vitalize professional leadership, and shorn of the attributes of mere schoolma'amishness in supervisory positions ? To be a little more specific, what are to be the standard at- tainments of superintendents ? How much are they to have to do with appointing "or removing teachers, with framing courses of instruction, with adopting text-books, with determining disputes, with regulating the progress of pupils, and with developing the morale and spirit and power of the schools? How are they to be saved from humiliation by directors and trustees who have legal prerogatives, but no knowledge of the delicate and perplexing mat- ters involved in the administration upon modern lines of mixed and ambitious schools? How is there to be any supervision worthy of the name in the country districts? With the new means of transportation and communication, is it not pretty nearly time to eliminate the "rural school problem" altogether, to take a more advanced position concerning the professional standing of the rural superintendent or commissioner, and to make supervisory districts in the farming sections of a size which will permit real superintendence and enable all the teachers to come in once a month and sit around a table for discussion and for instruction? Surely these are unsettled questions which will have to be worked out slowly in the further evolution of our public school system. The size of the school district in the farming regions has been much in discussion for several years. From the settlement of the country the school district outside of the towns has been small enough to place a school house within walking distance of every home. To be sure, the walk has often been a long one, but the whole world is relative and it has not seemed so long to those who had to make it as to the less hardy people in the cities. As fast as the country was settled, or the distance became im- practicable by reason of new homes, another district was created and a new school house built. Now there is something of a movement to make larger districts and to consolidate districts, carrying the children to and from school when necessary, in order to have larger schools, more elaborate buildings, and graded courses of instruction. This movement has not, by any means, gone so far as to become a policy. Many arguments have been adduced in its favor. The ones opposed have not been much pre- sented. They can not be fully brought forward here. But such 30 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. questions as the following are surely not impertinent in this con- nection : Are we altogether certain that a large school is better than a small one, or a graded than an ungraded one? Is not the essential difference in the teaching and in the supervision, and may not efficient instruction be assured in the small country dis- trict, by a course less open to objection? Is it, considering the exigencies of carriage and of weather, well to require young children to go farther from home than is imperative ? Is it better to centralize and complicate administrative ma- chinery, with the necessary delegation of the authority for main- taining the schools from the people in primary assemblages to their representatives and officials, or to keep control as close to the people as possible and in the simplest forms compatible with efficiency? May not the district schools be expected to meet the circumstances and the elementary needs of its immediate con- stituency very well indeed, and is not the matter of maintaining the school house and of providing for the modest expenses of the schools likely to keep the people more interested in the schools than they will naturally be if the school is more remote and the measure of their control is lessened? Can not any real difficulty be met by continuing elementary schools as heretofore and by supplementing them by central high schools? Is it not better to continue the unit of district school administration as it prevails over large areas of the country, as far at least as local control over the location and the character of the building and providing for expenses are concerned, and by making a different unit for super- visory purposes which may be large enough to get a strong enough superintendent and yet not so large in miles as to make real supervision impracticable? Is not the real difficulty in the country politics and the size of the supervisory district and lack of professional control over the teacher and the teaching, rather than in the size of the school district ? Is the location of an ele- mentary school within the smallest practicable distance from every home, and the possession of a popular meeting place by the smallest hamlets and the cross-roads regions to be surrendered without the most imperative necessity or until it is clearly proved that the change of plan does not involve greater difficulties than any which are now pending? These interrogations do not neces- sarily negative the policy of consolidation, but it seems to me that they are sufficient to suggest that it is very much within the zone of unsettled questions. There is at all times a sufficient supply of unsettled ques- tions concerning the development of a uniformly virile teaching service, both in city and country. It must be said that teaching- does not attract the larger number of forceful characters. The Unsettled Questions of the Schools. 31 compensation is insufficient and the opportunities for distinction are held to be lacking. Men have very generally ceased to pre- pare themselves for teaching, and the same is largely true of the more ambitious women. No one can question that the best in- terests of the teaching service claim as much of the masculine as of the feminine mind, beyond the primary schools at least. No one can doubt the need of the most aspiring women in the schools. Any great work among large numbers of both sexes requires the co-operative help of both men and women and of the strongest and most expectant men and women in the world. The ordinary conditions of the teaching service do not make for this. And there has been in recent years a remarkable educational develop- ment which, indirectly but strongly, opposes it. That is the ex- pansion of the colleges and universities so as to prepare for all of the professions, and the multiplying of vocations for educated and aggressive men and women. Moreover, the colleges, perhaps unintentionally, prepare for every other vocation better than for teaching, and their indirect influence is against teaching. Uni- versity teachers are not very familiar with modern work in the lower schools, and the interests of their own special branches displaces any serious concern for a unified organization or an all around service in the schools below. They are not only more interested in the pupils who are going to college than in those who are not, but also in the pupils who are headed for their depart^ ments more than in those who are likely to elect other branches for future study. All this is turning nearly all the men and many of the best women, who in other times would have looked to teaching as a vocation, to other work, and it is lessening the in- dependence and effectiveness of the teaching force to a degree which is hardly compensated for by the larger knowledge of educational principles and the improved methods of the modern agencies for training teachers. The live question is, how are we to assure a teaching force which shall be free from specially de- fective factors and generally as capable and spirited and aggres- sive as that which manages the other great, though less important, intellectual activities of the nation? Always a pressing ques- tion, the growing importance and the growing difficulties of the subject make it more weighty now than at any previous time. However important the form of the legal school organiza- tion, and however imperative the character of the men and women who teach the schools, there is nothing about the schools so vital and, it may also be said, so difficult, as a sound determination of what work the schools shall do. The minister of education in other countries does not have a very hard time deciding what the primary Schools shall do and how it shall be done. He does it alone. He follows either the law or long and unchangeable usage. The teachers are men and 32 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. the tenure of position is for life. Every teacher obeys the min- ister's directions without question. He has to provide a simple curriculum for children of the peasant class who expect to live exactly as their fathers have lived. The work is not to inspire children to do their best and rise to high places among their fel- lows; it is not to fit them for the work of advanced schools; it is to drill them to read and write and work through very or- dinary and dead-level lives. It satisfies the demands of the rather slow-going and monotonous life of the people whom these foreign schools serve. It is wholly different in America. Our schools are not shaped and managed by a minister, a cabinet, or a monarch, but by the people. The common thought and general usage have settled the outlines of the system. Each community fills in the details and carries them as far as it will. Everybody has a proprietary interest in the schools. The administration is through popular elections, and changes in administration are frequent. Changes in the teaching force are frequent also. There is not much re- sistive power. Every one with a project thinks the schools ought to carry it out. It is not so hard for one with a scheme to load it upon the schools as it is for an administrative officer or a teacher to keep it out. People who mean well, but who are without any grasp of the general problem, often turn the course of the schools aside from its ordinary and natural channel. From the standpoint of school administration, every Ameri- can child is bred in the purple. He is to have everything that the richest child in the world can have in the way of instruction if he will take it, and all of the fixed influences, direct and in- direct, censure him if he neglects to take it. Every boy must infer from all he hears that he will be discredited unless he follows an exclusively intellectual pursuit, and every girl must believe that her happiness depends upon her becoming literary and know- ing about art and the opera, and wearing silks and directing servants when the silks are often elusive and always illusory and the servants are more elusive and illusory still. All classes mix in our schools. As I passed a ward school the other morning I saw two little girls, whom I recognized, pass in at the same time. One was the daughter of a prominent officer of the state and the other was the daughter of my office messenger. The association was quite as good for the child in the higher social station as for the one in the lower. It will do something to keep the first sane. The second will be most in- fluenced by the foibles and fancies rather than by the substance and the real graces of the other. At the annual meeting in a little school district, both rich and rural, on Long Island, held the other day, the accomplished wife of one of the wealthiest men of the country, whose name is Unsettled Questions of the Schools. 33 familiar to all, and the village liverykeeper were elected trustees of the district school. There was something of a contest, and they were both supported by the same votes. The woman stood for something very decisive in the betterment of the school. It was an admirable result. They will doubtless be of substantial service to each other and to the public in caring for the school. Each will surely learn something worth knowing from the other. In a common service they will be more tolerant of each other, and a rational service may lead two lots or "bunches" of people to see more that they like in each other than they had before realized. In an European school, or in the management of one, such asso- ciations would be wholly impossible and the manifest advantage would be absent. But the European political and educational systems are not intended to bind classes together or to give every one an equal chance with every other. We have a continuous and pretty well articulated school sys- tem, from the kindergarten to the university. Teachers and chil- dren are continually enjoined to be thinking of the next school above. A teacher whose pupils do not pass is discredited. A child who does not pass is in peril of being eternally lost. This may not be really so dreadful to the individual teacher and the in- dividual child, though each thinks it is. It may be as well to have some pressure as to have everything fall down and every- body become lackadaisical for the want of attention. But does it not inevitably attach more significance to the upper than to the middle schools? Does it not assume that the road to college and the road to glory are all the same? And are they? No thinking man can doubt the self-satisfac- tion and enlarged intellectual enjoyment which commonly result from college training. No one will be disposed to deny the ad- vantage which the liberally educated and disciplined mind has in severe mental work and particularly in intellectual combat. No one can fail to see how the higher institutions break out new roads and lead the thinking of the world to higher planes. And surely no school man can ignore the fact that the vitalizing, the energizing, and the steadying of the lower schools must necessarily come from the higher schools. But there are those who will deny that it is desirable that all children shall go to college. There are enough who do not think that it is better to have a college degree and admission to a profession, with little adaptation to it and little to do after it, than it is to master a manual vocation and have plenty to do. There are folks in the world who dare to suspect that many a one becomes really unbalanced and pretty nearly useless through college teaching and college study, when he might have been happy and useful if conditions and normal inclinations had been regarded and if he had found himself in a work where he could have had the reward and the joy which 2 34 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. come from accomplishing things. There are those who even: venture to suspect that men and women with work which they love and the steadiness and balance and respect which they gain by doing it are safer citizens and more attractive characters than men and women who have been through the schools without be- ing able to put the training of the schools to the doing of things which are of moment to the world. It is not a matter of the value of the higher learning to the world at large; it is a matter of the power and purpose of each individual to make it of most use to himself. The unambitious or the incapable rich, who are not in danger of doing much any- way, may as well go to college, if they can be kept from ruining the colleges while there. The rich who have work and sand in them will ordinarily seize upon college training while they enlarge the substance and illustrate the point and power of it. The poor must balance values ; they will coolly calculate the worth of it to any plans which they may have, or they will leave it to chance and take whatever the consequences may be. If there is some- thing like a definite purpose in mind, if the college training is put to a real use, the consequence will be a finished and resource- ful character, and the harder the work and the more the sacrifices, the stronger and the more dependable the character will be. If, however, there is no serious plan or purpose about it all, no power to appreciate and adapt the college training and discipline, the result will be a past master in dudism so long as one has the money to sustain the role, or a misfit and partial, or total, failure when one must earn his living. The percentage of men who have reached the highest posi- tions of leadership and influence without the training of the most advanced schools, as compared with those who have had that advantage, is surprisingly large. It is because they have had the stuff in them and it has been developed and seasoned in life. They have not depended upon books or been largely controlled by theories ; they have squared their lives with the actualities of liv- ing ; they have been both patient and aggressive ; they have found the way to accomplish something worth while. It was something not set forth in the books. But this has been suggestive to the colleges and the courses of study, the characteristics of teachers, the methods of instruction, and the atmosphere of the places have been so radically modified in the interests of doing as against talking, that, aside from the increased number of students who go to college, the advantages to the college man as against the other is very substantially enlarged. And, of course, with an independent, sane, and balanced character, having the elements of strength and success anyway, the advantages of a college train- ing can not be overestimated. Unsettled Questions of the Schools. 35 It is not true that good citizenship is gauged by the depth of culturing study or familiarity with philosophical theory. It rests upon the balanced sense which is the joint product of decent breeding, of familiarity with men and things, and of the labor which shows in things accomplished, either manual or intellectual, and in sweat upon the brow. The man who mends your shoes or makes your clothes is likely to average just as safe and potential a citizen as the one who tries to train your refractory stomach, the one who fills you up with economic theory, or the one who sup- plies theological deductions to your mystified soul. The one who produces physical results in life is certainly no less to be counted upon .than the one who writes the more freely when he is not obliged to be troubled with any facts. These considerations are at the bottom of the widespread criticism against our public educational system. Everybody worth considering knows that the mere ability to read and write is no adequate equipment for efficiency in our complex life, but everybody also knows that no system of training, no matter how elaborate, which leads inevitably to pursuits which are exclusively intellectual or only culturing, will sustain our complex civilization. It is right here that the plan and scope of our Western univer- sities, very largely state universities, is pushing them strongly to the front rank in American higher education. The feeling is very common that there is no sufficient reason why the courses of study and the influences of the lower schools should lead de- cisively to the higher institutions which are only culturing or professional, or to those departments of universities which are essentially so. There is a strong and justifiable sentiment that the work of the elementary and secondary schools does not sup- port the industrial as well as the classical or professional depart- ments in the universities which have provided for all phases of human learning. There is a strong and sustained sentiment that the elementary schools ought to do more for the pupils who are not going to college at all, if the advantages of our popular sys- tem of education are to be equal for all. And there is a decided and a justifiable belief that the elementary schools, taken as a whole, train for versatility more than for exactness, and that either because of this or because they have been loaded with too much, or both they do not turn out pupils who can do any definite thing very satisfactorily when they must go to work. If I interpret the situation correctly, the common sentiment of the country fully sympathizes with the old-line literary col- leges. It feels that there is a place for them, and wishes them well. It has abundantly demonstrated its decisive support of university training in aid of the industries. But it demands that the elementary training shall lead more decisively to the industries and to business, whether pupils are going to the advanced schools 36 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. or are going to work ; and that the work of the lower schools shall be sufficiently concentrated and made sufficiently exact to support the expectation that pupils shall be able to read intelligently, write legibly, perform mathematical processes readily and correctly, and entertain serious notions of real work when they leave the schools. The objection is not that the schools do other things, but that they do not do these things before the other things, and that the result amounts to a discrimination against the industrial masses and the very ones who stand most in need of free educa- tion. Then the whole question as to what the schools shall do is an open one. Apparently, they must have less, rather than more, to do. If not, then a large part of the children must have less. It would seem that there will have to be more differentiation of courses, with reference to future living. There will have to be more drill and more firmness of treatment in the purely elemen- tary work at least. The work will have to be adapted to years so that whenever a child leaves school he may be able to do very well what the world may justly expect of one of his age." There will have to be more exact attention to present actualities than to remote possibilities. It would not be strange if the lower schools were yet required to give every child not only the means of in- forming himself and of expressing himself, but also a definite trade or vocation through which he may earn a living. This would be doing less for the children who will never go to college than most of the larger towns are already doing for those who go to the high school, or than most of the states are already doing for the thousands who go to the state universities. Here is the great, overwhelming, and difficult question in American education. I surely could not settle it. We might discuss it in this Congress for a month, and we could not settle it. It is to be settled out of the abundant experience, the democratic purpose, and through, the natural and logical unfolding of the free life of the nation. There is another unsettled question, and clearly a very serious one, to which I must advert. It has reference to nonattendance upon the schools. It will not do to assume that all in this free country who ought to go to school will do so. All parents are not anxious about the educational welfare of their children. Some parents and children will wallow in ignorance unless they are punished for not taking advantage of the schools. And the worst of it is that the very common sentiment seems to be seriously indifferent to the compulsion. The most recent data available to me shows the percentage of illiterate electors in England to be .009 per cent, and the per- centage of illiterate recruits in the German army to be .05 per cent. In France 4.4 per cent of men and 6.3 per. cent of women Unsettled Questions of the Schools. 37 signed the marriage register with a cross. In Switzerland .33 per cent of the men entering the military service were illiterate. The last report of illiterate conscripts in the army of Holland shows that it was 2.1 per cent and in the army of Sweden it was .08 per cent. Now let us examine the figures of the United States census of 1900, showing the percentage of illiteracy among males of -voting age in the United States. In the country at large it was 10.9 per cent. In the North Atlantic division it was 6.8 per cent; in the South Atlantic division it was 24.5 per cent; in the North central division it was 4.9 per cent; in the South Central division it was 23.3 per cent, and in the Western division it was 6.7 per cent. That is, in no one of these great divisions of our country is the showing so favorable as in any one of the countries I have named, and generally speaking it is so much worse as to shame us. Take several typical states from east to west: In Massa- chusetts the percentage of illiterate potential voters is 6.4; in New York, 5.9 ; in Ohio, 4.8 ; in Illinois, 4.8 ; in Iowa, 2.7 ; in Nebraska, 2.5 ; in Colorado, 4.1 ; in Montana, 6.1 ; in California, 6.2, and in Oregon, 4.8. Taking states from north to south: In Michigan it is 5.5 ; in Indiana, 5.6 ; in Kentucky, 18.8 ; in Tennessee, 21.7 ; in Alabama, 33.7, and in Georgia, 31.6. In no American state is the showing so satisfactory as in England, in the German Em- pire, in Switzerland, in Holland, or in the Scandinavian countries. I can not analyze and exploit this all-important subject here as I shall endeavor to do in another place at no distant day. But here it may be said that there is abundant evidence of a serious difficulty in the indifference of public sentiment or in the character of our educational legislation or in the execution of it. And it may be added that, no matter how great our revenues or our energy or our genius for doing things, no matter how rich, how strong, how commercially successful we become, we shall not honor ourselves nor illustrate the advantage of democratic gov- ernment to other peoples until as many of our people as of theirs are taught to read and write. Whether we can do it or not is a very large matter for American statesmen, and an unsettled and grave question in educational administration. There is still another matter pertinent to our subject, and with a reference to that I shall release your patient attention. There is a frequently expressed disposition to hold the schools responsible for about everything that goes wrong in the country. If there is an epidemic of crime, or an outbreak of objectionable business methods, or any other distinct evidence of widespread moral turpitude, or if all boys and girls are not more completely ready for a swifter and more complex life than was ever ex- pected in all history before the schools are taken to task for it. 38 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. Every step and every influence of the common schools make for character. It is true that religious instruction is not very com- mon not as common as it used to be but it is also true that it is as common as denominational opposition will permit. There is nothing done that does not contribute to cleanness and decency in living, to exactness and correctness in thinking, and to refinement and trueness in feeling. Everything is done in these directions up to the very limits of opportunity. It is a fundamental policy of this country that political officers shall not meddle with denominational instruction, and that ecclesiastical officers shall not bend the policies of the state to denominational ends. It is not because of any indifference to re- ligion, but because of the necessities of the case in a cosmopolitan population of freemen and in a state which is opposed to all favoritism and stands for equal and exact justice for all. This policy leaves religious teaching to the family and to the church, unless the universal consent invites the common schools to give it. And it seems to me that between the schools, and the churches with their auxiliary agencies, and the family life, the children are being trained in free religion and sound morals about as well as can be expected and quite as well as in any days of yore. In- deed, it seems to me that our democratic life and our free and rational teaching are developing a people with more of the ele- ments of undefiled religion and with less of the factors which have burdened true religion than has been common in other lands and in other days. And in this the common schools are doing all that the sound moral purpose of the country will sustain and all that the settled political theory of the country will permit. But there is a difficulty, extended and discouraging, outside of the schools. It operates in spite of the schools. It grows out of the American disposition to place freedom above security, to protect liberty at all hazards, and take the chances of license and its consequences. It seems to me that many of the common usages and some of the most conspicuous object lessons in the country make for dis- honesty rather than integrity. An infinite number of people have become what once would have been thought exceedingly rich. When one becomes half-way rich he becomes money-mad and re- sorts to methods for overreaching all the rest with an ingenuity and fiendishness which out-devils the devil himself. There is lack of law and lack of prosecutors to stop him, and his success in gaining money by immoral methods and in keeping out of jail through the help of astute lawyers and abhorrent forces predisposes too many of the rest to copy his example. Some phase of this thing is everywhere in the land and it corrupts the life, particularly the young life, of the country. Are the schools responsible for that ? Unsettled Questions of the Schools. 39 Again, the railroads are great educators. They educate us in much that is good, and also in much that is bad. They train us in promptness and in evasiveness. The laws concerning them are not yet very well settled. They observe no moral re- straints not fixed by law, and they are past masters in the art of changing and evading the laws which they dislike. Men who are all that can be desired in their individual characters are often all that is undesirable in corporation service. But this is not all; and perhaps it is not the worst. They assume that every one else will violate or evade the law if he dare. For example, they as- sume that everybody will steal from them, and, with something of a fellow feeling for those who do, the matter is soon dropped when they find it out. They closely inspect and often outrage honest people who board their trains. When they find one on their trains wrongfully, they put him off and that is the end of it. The decent folk resent the shabby treatment and are predisposed to retaliate, and the indecent folk get off so easily that they ctre predisposed to try it again. Upon an European railroad every one is treated with politeness. It is assumed that one who boards a train has the right. If one is found on board without a ticket or money he is carried to the next station and put in jail. The road and the public prosecutors make punishment sure and severe. The honest people get decent treatment and the dis- honest ones get the punishment they deserve. It educates in in- tegrity more than we are accustomed to think. It is particularly impressive upon the ignorant and Upon the young. If, then, native honesty, or at least, correct living, is more common among the masses of an European than of an American city, are the American schools responsible for it? Yet again, nothing is a legal crime until a statute makes it so. Criminal procedure rests upon legislative acts and not upon the common law. The regulation and punishment of crime is far from settled. It has not kept pace with the progress of the country. It is so dilatory and uncertain as to shame us. Money can defer punishment indefinitely except in the most flagrant and noted cases and often, indeed, in those. Public officers charged with prosecutions are sometimes found dividing the plunder with thieves in consideration of immunity from punishment. The thing pervades our affairs broadly and makes a vicious impress upon many lives. Here is a great matter outside of the schools which is un- settled and which will have to be settled. It is wholly unfair to charge any lack of moral character or of common honesty which may be discerned in the country to the plan and scope of the educa- tional system. When the law is perfected and is observed, when all may know that it will be speedy and sure and equal in its ap- plication to all, the matter of correct living and of moral character 40 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. in this country seems likely to rest upon as sure a foundation as in any other country. The difficulty in this behalf seems to lie in the rapid growth in population, in the overwhelming changes in manner of life, and in the backwardness of legal and administra- tive systems, rather than in fundamental political principles or in the plan and scheme of the schools. The men and women of the schools are so accustomed to settle things that they are rather predisposed to shoulder all the burdens that are shied at them and determine all the hard problems that come up. The unsettled questions that are legitimately and necessarily upon us are many enough and heavy enough. If we throw back upon the country the hard nuts which are not ours at all, if we resent the constant attempt to use the schools for special ends, if we confine them to what they must do to vindicate our political and educational theories and justify the money they cost, we shall have quite enough to do.- But we shall be able to do it. As some matters that are outside of the schools approach solution, the unsettled questions that are necessarily inside of the schools will settle more easily. The nation is just beginning to realize that the fundamental political principle which holds all men and women equal before the law, with the now well developed national policy which pro- vides free instruction to the very limits of human knowledge to all who will come and take it, involves an expense of unexpected magnitude and presents questions of unprecedented difficulty in organization and administration. But there will be no turning back. More cheerfully than the people meet any other tax, more cheerfully than any other people ever met any tax not vital to the national defense and the saving of lives, the American people supply and will supply the funds for universal and liberal educa- tion. The difficulties will not be met in a year; they will never be settled in a corner. They will be solved by the rational projec- tion of the political theories which are the inspiration and the guide of the nation's life. They will be met with courage and confidence, even with wit and enthusiasm. They will be settled through discussion, and yet more through experience. Not all that we plan will come to pass. The unexpected will often hap- pen, and in time we are likely to see that the unexpected is better than the plan we made. The logically progressive purpose of our millions of freemen, the gradually unfolding scheme of our nation's mission in the world, advancing in accord with a plan that is more than human, will overcome difficulties and break out the roads for a sane and balanced system of education which \vill give most to the nation through the opportunity it will hold out and the encouragement it will give to every one. Relation of Pacific Coast to Education in Orient. 41 THE RELATION OF THE PACIFIC COAST TO EDUCA- TION IN THE ORIENT. By BENJAMIN IDE WHEELER. The ends of the earth at last have met. They have met and joined on the American continent midway between the Asiatic east and the European west. A place and shelter for the meeting has been prepared in the form of a nation blended out of all the bloods of mankind, and builded neither on race nor the cults of kinship, but on the rights of man. This much human society has done, and geography has enforced the work by setting the abode of this nation between the two world-seas whose free highways make their side of the globe the easier way from the old Occident to the old Orient. Four hundred years after the Cabots touched the Atlantic hem of North America and one hundred years after Lewis and Clark brought the Cabots' work to fulfillment in carry- ing the Anglo-Saxon name through to the Pacific hem, in the year of our Lord, 1905, delegates of the greatest European empire followed the track of the sun a hundred degrees of longitude westward and delegates of the most vigorous Eastern power faced the sun and journeyed one hundred and thirty degrees eastward until they met in Portsmouth, and if they had reversed the division of distance it would have been in Portland in either case upon a continent prepared for them by collusion between the separate developments of government and of geography, upon a continent which was no other than that unexpected dyke of land which only four centuries ago suddenly arose out of the ocean's mist, and planted itself upon -the map to block Columbus' way, when he sought the Orient by reversing the direction of the old-time cara- van routes. The arteries of empire and commerce in the twentieth cen- tury world pulse through the two great oceans. The great powers are those that maintain great navies. The ancient world looked inward with its back to the oceans and dealt with the land and inland seas. Power was quoted in terms of armies, and what were called fleets were merely armies fighting from scows in land- locked waters. The ancient world in its highest organization consisted of two mutually exclusive parts, on the one hand Europe with Moham- medan Asia and Africa, on the other India and China. Between the two there was exchange of goods at arm's length, but no ex- change of ideas or institutions. The Occident and the Orient dwelt apart and developed as antitheses. They never have under- stood each other; the fundamental concepts of the life-thought differ toto coelo. 42 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. The old Occident, Europe and Mohammedan Asia and Africa, was established in a blend of two minor antitheses, Europe and the nearer East. The Mediterranean was the mixing pot, Con- stantinople was the label and seal. The nearer East had the sources of its life in the civilizations of the two great river-valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates. Europe assorted its races by means of its rivers, pre-eminently the Volga, the Dnieper, the Vistula, the Elbe, the Danube, the Rhine, the Seine, the Rhone, and the Po ; and by its two southern peninsulas, Greece and Italy, inserted the wick into the oil of the greater world civilization. Greece discovered the creative freedom of the human mind, and established thereon the only human freedom that was ever worth the while; Palestine yielded faith in the goodness and power of the single God; Rome provided for this mind and spirit the body of law and government, and out of the trinity arose the Mediter- ranean civilization we call European, of which our history, politics, art, thought, ethics, religion, in fact, we all of us in all our spiritual being and environment are thus far an established part. Over against this Mediterranean Occident has stood through all the ages unperturbed and impenetrable the incomprehensible Orient of India and China. The West could only understand their spices ; not their salt. And for the spices and other spicy wares the dull camels tramped the Kashgar and the Kabul routes through the dark and unrecorded centuries, the only bond be- tween the two great world-halves which were and are and mayhap always shall be. Ninevah and Trebizond, Babylon, Tyre and Sidon were built of the drippings of this inter-world-half trade ; then when it diverged through the Red Sea, Alexandria was en- riched by it ; and later when the Saracens intervened to disturb the old routes, Venice and Genoa became its monuments, and last of all with the discovery of the route round the Cape of Good Hope nations were enriched, first Portugal, then Holland, then England. It was. not a new continent that Columbus set out to discover, but the old spices and gold of the old Orient. The finding of America instead was his undoing. The yearning of the West has always been toward the East. It has sought its wares and spices, but behind all that has lain the half-formulated, half-confessed instinct to lay hand on the slum- bering power that lurks behind the mystery of the East stored in the long-schooled industrial patience of the Chinaman and the cosmic philosophy of the Hindoo. The emergence of the Ameri- can continent as a mighty barrier across the path of the western route became a discouragement to the thought of using that route. The search for a passage to the north of North America persistently failed. The southern tip of South America pushed itself down more than twenty degrees of latitude farther than the Cape of Good Hope. Even the narrow isthmus of Panama Relation of Pacific Coast to Education in Orient. 43 proved a barrier rather than a highway. It took four centuries for men to dominate fully the barrier by occupying it with homes and cutting it through with steel highways. It will be yet a decade or more before the Panama canal is cut through. Meantime the outreach toward the Orient has reverted to the eastern routes. First came the route round the Cape of Good Hope, which created the colonial system of Holland and the em- pire of England. Then came the short cut by the Suez Canal through the Red Sea. Then came the project of a railway join- ing southeastern Europe by way of Asia Minor and Persia to the head of the Persian Gulf. Then came the development of Russia's trans-Caspian route by steamers across the Caspian and railway on through Turkestan by Samarkand. Only the check of English power has prevented northern Persia and northern Afghanistan from melting into the jurisdiction of Russia and admitting the passage of a railway by the old route, Teheran to Herat to Kabul to India. So the ways revert to the old-time track of the caravans. And finally was built the trans-Siberian line on Russia's own soil almost to the shores of the Pacific. Even if northern Manchuria could be called Russian soil, it could not yet be granted that a railway issuing at Vladivostok had reached the Pacific, for that port was closed a third of the year by ice. The day came, how- ever, when the watchful eye of England was averted or was closed in sleep. Russia displaced England in its place as China's good friend and forced it over into an alliance with Japan. Li Hung Chang was bought with Russian gold. Russia carried her rail- way through to Port Arthur, and at last had found the open sea, and enrolled her destiny with the nations which found their em- pire in battleships that ply the outer seas. For centuries she had struggled to reach an ocean, but the nations plotted to keep her an inland power. The Baltic is almost an inland sea; its harbors are icebound in the winter, and Scandinavians and Germans con- trol its exits. The great powers by a conspiracy of inaction leave the stranded hulk of Turkey to block the exit of the Black Sea. When Russia has looked for a way out of the Persian Gulf, Eng- land has always been ready to set a check, and now the interests of Germany, which in recent years has been establishing itself as guardian of senile Turkey, will be even more potent to prevent. The commercial and perhaps the political interests of Germany lead her along the southwestern face of the Russian glacier. Her wares move southeast. In this direction, too, is the line of least resistance for the development of her political power. The rail- way to the head of the Persian Gulf will be hers. It is therefore just at present her policy to be the good friend and candid ad- viser of Russia, and gather in all the wreckage that issues from Russian disaster. 44 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. When at last in 1898 Russia seemed to have found its clear way to the open sea, it appeared that the history of the world had advanced into a new stadium. A new power had entered the lists for the empire of the outer ocean. Northern and central China were to be brought into relations and assimilated to the west through the mediation of half-occidental, half-oriental Russia, and oriental Japan of occidental veneer was to be robbed of its task, and stand doomed to finally inevitable absorption into the mass of Russia. Then it was that two events presented the opportunity for a total shifting of the horoscope. These two events were the Boxer uprising and the Russo-Japanese war. The former gave the opportunity for the issuance of John Hay's circular note stating the policy of the "open door." The circular note was a device forced upon our state department by the classical incompetency of the United States senate under its present constitution and its unwritten rules of courtesy. It is now a body incapable of largeness of views or promptitude of action. John Hay seized the opportunity and secured the assent of the powers to a policy opposed to partition of China and established, especially since the reaffirmation obtained by a second note, this policy in a security as firm as any body of international treaties could assure. Throughout the Boxer troubles John Hay deftly avoided all recognition of the uprising as involving a state of war, and thus prevented Russia from obtaining a hold upon Manchuria that could arise from conditions of war. Herein lay his most certain and distinguished diplomatic service. This was an achievement of first importance, shapen in terms of the whole world history. Russia had at the beginning assured our gov- ernment that it proposed no permanent occupation of Manchuria, and was present there only as the owner of a railway anxious only to secure peaceful and stable conditions for the operation of its property. John Hay took regular occasion to remind the repre- sentative of the Russian government at Washington of this as- surance, and to impress upon him the fact that our government Tiad noted the assurance and accepted it in literal form. John Hay appeared upon the scene in this critical juncture, because our controversy with Spain had just at that time laid responsibilities upon our nation and established its interests in Asiatic waters. The juncture was rendered for us peculiarly critical by the fact that just at that time England was preoccupied in the Boer war, and had suffered notable decline of international prestige through the prolongation of that conflict. Whether by agreement or otherwise the United States stepped into the ad- ministration of what had hitherto been the Englisji policy in the Chinese Orient. It was the policy of nonpartition, of having China as a whole to work out its own adjustment to world- conditions, to administer its own awakening. Relation of Pacific Coast to Education in Orient. 45 Close upon this event followed the Russo-Japanese war, the issue of which has certainly been to thrust back Russia from its debouchment upon the open ocean, and transform Japan from an island power to a power encircling the Sea of Japan. If this issue shall be established as a permanent fact of his- tory, the verdict means that this latter day reversion to the cara- van routes and the westward track as the means of accomplishing the assimilation of the East to the West has met with rebuff, and again gone down in failure. The failure will have been due in chief measure to two things ; first, the appearance of America as a power in the Pacific; second, the rise of Japan into the position of a modern nation able to assert itself. But it was from America Japan received its impulse toward the adoption of the modern equipment of life. The occidentalism which has affected it has come around the globe westward by the ocean route, not 'by the old eastward route on land. The great problem with which the world-history will have to deal in the next centuries concerns the assimilation of eastern Asia to the other world-half. All through the long history of mankind India and China have gone their own way. They have received little or nothing from the thought and experience of the rest of the world, and given little to it. Their views of the uni- verse and of the purpose and meaning of life are their own, de- veloped out of their own experience and reflection without con- ference with the West. The man of the West and the man of the East can not therefore understand each other. There are no common factors in their thought. In superficial things they may seem to establish a temporary understanding, but they are apart on the fundamentals. They translate each other's thoughts by words that seem to be equivalents, but they are not ; the concepts differ. When the Yankee thinks he has caught the secret of the Chinaman, then is he of all men most miserable; his trouble has really just begun, for to his ignorance is added the deceitful as- surance of knowledge. To understand the guileless prattle of one of these sons of the Celestial kingdom is one thing ; it would be quite another to enter the mysterious caverns of a Chinese head, dwell in the quirks and convolutions of his brain, and look out through his eyes upon the world. Even if you then thought you knew the Chinaman, you surely would not recognize the world as being anything you had seen before. The human society to which all we occidentals belong is a long-time work of history, and highly complicated both as to materials and the forms of their blending and use. Every people and tribe, every religion and culture, from Assyria to Ireland, has contributed its part. We measure boards by Assyrian inches and jokes by the standards of Irish humor. All the elements of this vast and complicated social mass have become with time and in- 46 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. tercourse and interchange more or less assimilated to each other. An Armenian and a Swede are infinitely nearer to each other than either is to a Hindoo or a Chinaman. India nnd China have not yet come into the world's kneading-trough. The time of their bringing in cannot, however, be longer delayed. The globe has shrunk to one-half in twenty years, and the nooks and lurking places are disappearing, and the barriers of mountain, desert, ocean. The assimilation of this other world-half, so far as it con- cerns fundamental things, the view-points of the inner religion and folk-philosophy, will be slow, exceeding slow. The solid earth may not have the staying power and patience to wait there- for. But in the superficial things of materials, their making, use, and interchange, the assimilation will come fast, possibly too fast for the safety of the world. If the enormous force of trained industrial patience of China shall be on a sudden armed with modern steel weapons, i. e., machinery, engines, dynamos, rails, it means, of course, for the world an industrial cataclysm, an eco- nomic revolution and upturning from the depths. The Chinese patience in toil is not a personal acquisition of individuals; it is trained into the bone of the race, and the quality and quantity of it combine to give China a latent working force, an industrial power far exceeding that of all the nations added together. The native steadiness and conservatism of the Chinese must, how- ever, give us fair assurance that the industrial transformation will come gradually enough for economic conditions at largo to adapt themselves thereto. However this all may be, the main fact which concerns us in connection with the analysis we have been attempting is this: the assimilation of the Chinese Orient to the modern world is to be through the Pacific Ocean by the westward path of the sun. The Pacific was of old a lonesome place where the day could change its clothes of number and name without being observed. The old world looked inward ; China and India toward their river valleys, the occidental half toward the Mediterranean. The mod- ern world is the old world turned inside out with outlook toward Oceanus that flows around the continents. When America was first occupied by colonists the inward-looking people of the old world, like the dwellers in an old Roman house built around a court with few outside windows, regarded the new continent as an outbuilding far back in the back yard. The colonists them- selves thought of the Atlantic as something isolating them from the Old World, and they claimed it as a wall of separation to free them from entanglement in the worn-out policies and systems and traditions of Europe, and to give them the thing they called "lib- erty!" But now that the world has been turned inside out, the Atlantic turns out to be only an estuary of the great ocean, and \ Relation of Pacific Coast to Education in Orient. 47 America instead of being an outlying continent hidden away under the sunset assumes its place in the center of the world, midway between the old Occident and the goal of its incessant, age-long yearning, the unfathomed East. Slowly at first, but steadily throughout, and with cresting waves of energy in the last half century, the tide of advancing occidentalism has occupied the new continent and finally covered with deep flood its western coast. The Pacific Coast has thus become within fifty years the outer selvage of occidentalism. Its population, too, represents by its aggressive individualism, its riskfulness, and its power of creative initiative, the most advanced type of the occidental spirit. They are what the old Greeks were in the days when Greece was the inner hem of the Occident. A century ago when the world still looked inward and Amer- ica was a distant annex and the Pacific a desert of waters, the eastern shore of our continent formed its front and facade. Now, with the world turned inside out, with the Pacific established as the world's forum, with the world's contrasted halves arrayed on the opposing' shores, the front of the continent has shifted to the West. For its mission of the future the United States looks westward. A recent history of the United States cast in terms of geography opens with the statement : "While the development of the United States in the first century was clearly determined by their position on the Atlantic Coast facing Europe, it is to be expected that their history will be henceforward determined by their position on the Pacific facing Asia." (Semple.) I think this must be the opinion of all who have considered the course of liuman history in the large ; I know it is the decided conviction of the historian who lives in the White House at Washington, a conviction which has been borne in upon him with a special force "by the events of the last three months. This much by way of introduction, but the whole doctrine of rny discussion inheres in my introduction. I might, therefore, do well to stop at this point, and I am sure you would be quite sat- isfied that I should, but there are yet sundry things that I would fain say, if only by way of annotation to my introduction. The essential spirit of the modern ultra-occidentalism is be- trayed in its ideals of education, which it derives from the Greeks, the ultra-occidentals of antiquity. The nucleoidal idea therein concerns a view of the universe wherein thought is the enliven- ing force, and the free spirit of thinking, planning, willing man the real creative source. Science is the order that human mind injects into the haphazard and waste of savagery and nature after abstracting from them their thoughtless laws by observation. The purpose of education is the ennobling and fulfillment of manhood to its liberation from circumstance, impulse, prejudice, supersti- tion, the rule-of-thumb, and all things that mean slavery to the 48 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. instant vision and thoughtless force. The aim of education is to develop to the full all the native capacities of the individual, so that he may live abundantly and be a freeman, a freeman in the face of unthinking nature by dominating it, in the face of his human environment by judging it correctly and dealing with it justly, in the face of his own self by controlling it. The theory of the whole Chinese system of education, whether in manners, crafts, or letters, involves the effort to fit and constrain the in- dividual into conformity with his environment, so that he may perform the tasks that are awaiting him and live the life his an- cestors have prepared for him, with the maximum of adjustment and the minimum of friction. For discovery, invention, innova- tion, creation, there is no provision, except prevention. It ap- proaches what is viciously called in this country "practical edu- cation," the education that assumes to give skill and the knowl- edge of recipes without that control of the sources and bearings of the matter which enable mind to do its creative work of adapt- ing means to new ends, meeting new emergencies, and making a man a freeman, the master of his job and not its slave. While the Chinese education seeks to shape the individual to his environ- ment, the American training in its best form seeks to give the individual power within himself, i. e., to make him powerful in himself to shape and create his environment. To the American, life is real ; to the Chinaman, it is a drama set upon a stage. The business of the individual is to take the part and play the role assigned to him in the drama. To live well in the Chinese sense is to live in "good form," to "keep face." This is the antithesis both in view of life and theory of education which we are called upon to bridge. Within the next decades the educational institutions of the Pacific Coast in first line of those of America will surel} be called upon, to an extent out of all proportion to anything in the past, to render service in opening Western education to the people of the Orient. As it always has been in the history of human education, betterments and reforms will proceed from the top downward. The universities will lay the foundations. It will be the Chinamen trained in the best our universities can give who will begin the reorganization of their home education and train the teachers for the common schools. A recent Chinese graduate of the University of California has already been put at the head of the educational system of a Chinese province, and is just now busied with the difficult task of founding embryonic normal schools for the training of the first teachers who are to infuse Western learning into the heads and lives of Chinese boys. Within the three past years, aside from the Chinese coming to the university of their own responsibility, a considerable number have been sent by one or another of the provincial governments to be Relation of Pacific Coast to Education in Orient. 49 trained for the government service, some in law, some in political science, some in education, some in engineering, some in com- merce and some in finance. There are no better students today in the university. If we can teach them initiative and sense of control and the modern sciences whose development rests upon these qualities of mind, yet we can learn from them, as our civili- zation can learn from its Eastern antipode, a patient recognition of the power of time and of the force residing in the inertia of great social masses and the value of persistent adherence to the obligations of duty and loyal service to the inherited order of the family and society. A man is of small^ use to his day and genera- tion, be he Chinaman or American, who absolves himself, as her- mit, tramp, and bandit, from all relation or obligation to the life- line of descent and posterity as established in the laws and respon- sibilities of the fireside, the homestead, and the home community. An entirely different problem confronts us regarding the Filipino people who have fallen under pur oversight in the order of events. They came to our hands because we had a Pacific Coast. Dewey entered Manila Bay because a Spanish fleet lying there was a menace to the harbors of. our coast. The rest fol- lowed inevitably. What ,we have done as a nation for these peo- ple is worthy of the best interpretation of our democracy. We have done what no nation has done for a colony of alien race. We have sought to give them through education the power of self- determination. They differ from all other Oriental peoples in that they have enjoyed the advantage of centuries under Christian influence. These centuries have not been in vain in bringing them nearer toward an assimilation into Western civilization. While lacking the Chinese stability, they are bright and versatile, and the best of their youth will respond readily to the opportunities of our higher education and develop into leaders of their people. What is needed by their people is leaders in commerce, law, med- icine, engineering and agriculture not politicians. Already in considerable numbers Filipino boys are coming to our universities and schools, and the immediate future will make large demands upon the institutions of the coast for their care. Our nation was shapen for the work of evangelization. It has gathered into it all the bloods and faiths of the occidental world, and has moulded them together into a people out of which is emerging the concept man. It has based its institutions upon democracy, the most daring optimism devised by man, a system of governing whose chief raison d'etre lies in its power to edu- cate and uplift men by conferring responsibility, and saying to them, "The law and the kingdom, lo, they are within you." The faith of our fathers is our faith today; our , evangelizing zeal is the zeal of democracy, the ultimate zeal of the West, to make men self-determining and self-governing. Is democracy a fail- 50 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. ure ? Our answer is the answer of John Paul Jones to the question of the Serapis, "Have you surrendered?" "We have not yet be- gun to fight." EDUCATION IN A DEMOCRACY. By F. Louis SOLDAN. The Nature of Democracy. Man's culture has been of long development, beginning in ages of which history has no record. Some of the achievements of civilization have been by design and through the work of in- dividuals. Art and literature embody, in the first place, the genius of the artist. Other achievements of civilization have grown from within the race itself and have come into existence through the instinctive action of the masses who are not always conscious of the spirit that impels them. The great institutions which hold society together, family, state, and church, embody the experience and wisdom of the race. No one human mind has planned them. They have been slowly evolved and created by mankind. They make possible peace on earth, order, happiness, and the achievement of all things great and valuable in human life. The culmination of the political evolu- tion of the race is found in the democracy of modern times. The democracies of ancient Rome or Greece were early phases in this evolution, but they were deficient in important respects. A rul- ing class had taken the place of the king, and there were bodies of men! in those republics which were disfranchised. Both ancient and modern democracy place the public good above every other consideration, but while ancient democracy defined the public good as the honor and power of the state, modern democ- racy understands by it the general welfare of the masses. Its belief and tenet is the equal rights of all men. Modern democracy is the most perfect application of the idea of Christianity to the conduct of the state. Democratic institutions are ultimately based on the brotherhood of man and of man's duty to his neighbor. Modern democracy is altruism. It recognizes that the wel- fare of each individual is bound up with, and dependent on, the welfare of all others. In a democracy, every man feels that in defending and protecting the rights of the lowliest and weakest, he defends and protects his own. Modern democracy is more than a political institution ; it is a confession of faith. For this reason the history of our nation is not of local interest only, but concerns the whole world. Our country has made the idea of Education in a Democracy. 51 democracy once more respected in the world, after the first French republic ended in failure and disenchantment. The modest yet bold experiment of our forefathers to found a government on the equal rights of manhood, with its purpose of securing to each life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, has grown to be an example and a peaceful challenge to the peoples of the world. It has re-established the faith in the possibility of a government by the people and for the people. In maintaining her democracy, and developing through it, resources, power, and culture, which could have resulted in no such measure under any other form of government, Columbia holds up the torch of enlightenment to the European world. The arrival of the democracy among the nations of the earth means a turning point in the history of the world. Our un- paralleled growth in population, the immense development of our resources and wealth, make us easily the most powerful nation on earth, and all this influence is thrown silently in the scale of popular liberty and democracy. The first Napoleon, who had felt the fatal grip of autocratic Russia, said: "A hundred years hence, Europe will be Kossack or republican." The arrival of the United States among the nations has made the cause of liberty impregnable. With our active faith in democracy, we do not ignore the many and grave imperfections that cling to our democratic institutions, especially in the government of cities. Democracy is an evolution, which means, I take it, that there is a constant elimination of worthless and decaying features and a strong current of inner life toward the creation and survival of what is fittest to endure. The poison that has found its way into our communal life will be ejected and overcome through the vigor of our national system and the wisdom and character of our citizens. Among the social agencies on which democracy depends for its existence and growth, education ranks first. The family, the church, the school, and the newspaper, have a share in furnish- ing the educational conditions which democracy needs for its life and growth. The Individual in a Democracy. The reason usually given for the demand that education should receive the greatest care in a democracy is that he wha governs a land should be a wise man, and that since each voter helps to govern the country, he should be as well educated as the sovereign of a monarchy. As a matter of fact, the voter is not called upon to map out the policies of government. The matters which he is to decide are mapped out for him by the great political parties which contend. But while the customary argument has a somewhat exaggerated form, it expresses never- theless an undeniable truth. The citizen of a democracy governs 52 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. and is governed at the same time. He helps with his vote to determine issues and to elect magistrates, and he is in turn gov- erned by the vote of his fellow citizens and by the magistrate of their choice. The individual may never be destined to be- come a leader, but intelligence is as necessary to those that follow leadership in political matters as it is to the leaders themselves. Every citizen in a democracy should acquire through education the ability to understand issues and to choose and accept leader- ship. The soldier needs intelligence as much as the captain. The dangerous leader in politics is possible only through the ignorance of his followers. Moreover, the general intelligence of the people exerts its power constantly in producing, modifying and directing that mysterious and potent factor in the life of democracy which is called public opinion and which is nothing but the cumulative wisdom and the ethical force of the masses. Public opinion is the resultant of many minds and many opinions, each exerting pressure in accordance with its individual force, character, and life position. Public opinion thus created moves the affairs of the nation, as the joint action of current, wind, oar, and rudder moves the boat across the river in the line of the re- sultant of these forces. The Public School Idea. With the self-evident necessity of general education as the basis of democracy, it is remarkable that the idea of the public school has but slowly found its way into the history of our in- stitutions. A hundred years ago there was no system of public education in the United States. There were schools maintained by parents, by school associations, and some public schools sup- ported by states and municipalities, but there was no system of public education. A beginning had been made in colonial times. Some of the colonies, especially those of New England, saw the necessity of public education from the beginning. In other colonies, however, education received little attention. Some of the royal governors were opposed to it. The extreme views of Governor Berkeley of Virginia, 1641, have often been quoted. Berkeley was an educated man, a graduate of Oxford, and ought to have appreciated the general value of education. He said: "I thank God there are no free schools nor printing presses, and I hope we shall not have them these hundred years ; for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them and libels against the best of governments. God keep us from both." Nor was the view that it was dangerous to educate the masses confined to the southern colonies. It may be traced in the' definition of purposes for which King's College, the predeces- sor of the splendid and liberal Columbia College of JSFew York, was established ; namely, to educate young men of noble birth Education in a Democracy. 53 and to counteract and resist the spread of republican ideas. The Dutch had established free public schools in their American pos- sessions during the seventeenth century, but when the English wrested the colony from Holland, these schools were stamped out and nothing was done to replace them. The subject of public schools was one of the causes of constant contention between the Dutch communities and the English governors. Even in the New England colonies the principle that public schools are a necessity for the state and hence must be supported by every tax- payer, whether he has children of his own or not, was but slowly evolved. In a general way the steps in the evolution of the idea of public schools conducted by the state may be summarized as having passed through the phases of, first, encouraging schools and allowing, not prescribing, contributions from public funds; second, the obligatory support of public schools from the public funds ; third, making the public schools the common schools for the people. The first attitude of those colonies in which educational sentiment existed at an early time was to encourage and prescribe education but there was no provision, as a general rule, that the state must supply such education free. It was encouraged or prescribed by the state, but the parents were supposed to pay for it. An early law of the general court of Massachusetts directed that the selectmen of every town should prosecute those parents who refused "to train their children in learning and labor," and a fine was fixed for those who did not teach them "so much learn- ing as may enable them perfectly to read the English tongue." While education was thus made compulsory, the burden of pro- viding the means for it was usually put on the parent. The act just quoted contains evidence of the consequences which result from making the parent bear the expense of the maintenance of schools. The poor, the shiftless, and the stingy parent would rather not send his child to be instructed than contribute to the support of the school. The step from the encouragement of public schools to that of having the state provide for such schools was but slowly taken. The most famous school law of colonial times, the act passed by the Massachusetts General Court in 1647, while taking the posi- tion that the child must receive an education at all hazards, im- poses the duty of paying for the schooling on the parent in the first place, and only in the second place on the state. The act reads, in part, as follows : "To the end that learning may not be buried in the graves of our forefathers * it is ordered that every township within this jurisdiction * of the number of fifty households shall appoint one within their town to 54 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read, whose wages shall be paid either by the parents * * of such children, or by the inhabitants in general." This document is thoroughly consistent. When the maintenance of public schools is defended for the reason that learning should not die out, there is no defense for burdening the state with the cost. Provision for public education at public expense becomes justifiable only where its necessity for the very existence of the state is recog- nized. During the eighteenth century the public school idea made but slow progress. It was only after our independence had been achieved that public sentiment in regard to education broadened. The act of 1787 which created the Northwestern Territory gave a large part of the public domain to education. The changed atti- tude concerning the relation between the state and education is best shown by comparing the act just quoted with the famous utterance of the great statesman of the age. Daniel Webster said in 1821 : "For the purpose of instruction we hold every man subject to taxation in proportion to his property, and we look not to the question whether he himself have or have not children to be benefited by the education for which he pays ; we regard it as a wise and liberal system of police by which property and life and the peace of society are secured. We seek to prevent in some measure the extension of the penal code by inspiring a salutary and conservative principle of virtue and of knowledge in an early a g e * * * \Ye confidently trust * * * that by the diffu- sion of general knowledge and good and virtuous sentiments the political fabric may -be secure as well against open violence as against the slow but sure undermining of licentiousness." The obligation of the state to provide free education has been practically settled by public opinion, but the question remains a matter of theoretical discussion to this day. Jn one of the last of his essays, Herbert Spencer, the most influential philosopher of England, denied that the state had any right to compel him to pay for the schooling of his neighbor's children. Even at present the question about the rightful extent of public education is sometimes raised. There are still those who think that the state should not provide an education that goes beyond the three R's. They may possibly believe in public ele- mentary schools, and may not object to state universities, but they are opposed to the maintenance of free high schools. The answer which the practice of the modern state gives to these theorists is, to use the language of the English scientists, that it erects a lad- der from the gutter to the university by which the poorest child may rise to the highest educational plane. The attitude of the people of the United States, and the faith that they entertain that public education is the basis of democracy and the condition of its stability is shown by the enormous sacrifices which our people Education in a Democracy. 55 through congress and legislature have brought for the cause of education. While the general government, as a rule, does not support schools directly, its gifts to the cause of education in grants of the public domain alone amount to eighty-six million acres, or an area equal to that covered by the New England states and the states of New York, Maryland, and Delaware. It is equal to more than two-thirds of the entire territory of the Republic of France. The amount spent in the United States for teachers' sal- aries alone amounts to more than one hundred million dollars per year. The people could not attest their faith in the supreme value of education in democracy in a more emphatic way than by the support they give to the schools. The conviction of the importance of public schools for the life of the state, deep seated as it seems to us at present, has been of gradual growth. While the newer state constitutions invariably provide for education, the older state constitutions contained no such provision. The Common School. The public school as established in the first half of the last cen- tury did not immediately become the "common" school for every rank and class of the people. There were sections in the country in which it was looked upon as a school for everybody, as an in- stitution to which the poor could send their children without pay. Although this idea is becoming obsolete, it still lingers in the minds of some. I remember a conversation with an educated and somewhat aristocratic gentleman of commercial prominence who commended the improvements effected in high schools and incidentally said that he sent his children to some private school. He remarked : "I put my children in a private school because it seems to me to be wrong for a man to get an education for his children for nothing, when he is able to pay for it." The public school has not only the task of disseminating intelligence, but also the further function of building up the na- tion by spiritually assimilating the people. In the common school, the children of all social ranks, of all religious creeds, meet and come in sympathetic touch. Different views and different ranks are taught to live in peace with each other. A democracy like ours does not aim at leveling differences. There is room in it for wealth and poverty, and for every creed and every view. Democracy respects individuality which grows and thrives nowhere better than in the sunshine of liberty. But while recognizing fully the legitimate differences which a large nation with its complex economic life, its social and sectional con- ditions, involves, it does not consider it desirable that the classes and social ranks should get out of touch and sympathy with each other. If the children of the nation are reared in common schools 56 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. attended by the poor and the rich, by all creeds and all nationali- ties, public education not only secures the permanency of free in- stitutions, but establishes cohesive bonds of sympathy and good will among all our people. The public school by becoming also the common school, is welding the whole nation into intimate spiritual solidarity and companionship. It prevents democracy from be- coming a house divided against itself. In our large cities, the work of the common schools has been attended by startling re- sults. In the city of New York, for instance, all the nationalities of the globe are represented, some of them forming colonies equal in number to a large city. The heterogeneity of language, of creeds, of social habits, is marked and permanent. Yet the chil- dren of these immigrants that enter the school ignorant of its lan- guage even, leave it at the end of a few years, devoted to our institutions and in touch with American life. Not only to the immigrant, but to our own people, the com- mon school is a boon and a blessing. The meeting of all classes of our children in common work is in itself of educational value and significance. They learn to appreciate the human qualities in their fellow-beings regardless of social distinctions. The end of school days brings with it a parting of ways, but a bond of fellow- ship has been established through common schooling which softens the harshness of the demarcation lines of life. Education in a democracy requires common schools for the people. The distinc- tion between the idea of the public school and that of the common school will appear perhaps more clearly by reference to the pub- lic schools in German cities. An excellent system of instruction is found there, and the schools are public to the extent that they are supported and maintained by the state and municipality. But they are not common schools. There are in each city public schools of various grades with courses of study that differ in regard to advancement and the kind of studies taught. There are schools in which foreign lan- guages are part of the curriculum, and others in which the boys begin the study of the classics when they have reached their tenth year. In other schools, again, the course is simple and does not go beyond what we include in the ordinary elementary curriculum. The various public schools of the German city differ among them- selves in kind, and the parent must decide what sort of education his child is to obtain and select some school to fit his idea. In each of the city schools of advanced standing a tuition fee is charged, and as a consequence the selection depends on the wealth and standing of the family. Those boys that are to have a college education at a later time are trained in separate schools. This brief explanation will show that while these institutions are public schools, they are not common schools in the sense of Education in a Democracy. 57 our definition. The classes and social ranks separate at an early time, and public instruction becomes, in a sense, class education. The state has created the public school ; in making the public school also the common school, the teacher has largely co-operated, because the question of where the parent sends his children is largely determined by the convenience of the buildings and excel- lence of the instruction. The way to make the public schools the common schools was to make them uncommonly good, and in im- proving the schools and in winning for them the appreciation of the people, the teacher has had a large share. It is of the highest importance for our democratic institu- tions, which require mutual good will and the sympathetic touch of the masses, that there should be common schools. School Instruction in a Democracy. The question arises as to whether the instruction in the com- mon schools of a democracy should be or can be adjusted so as to serve specifically the purposes for which the schools are main- tained. At a first glance, it might very properly be said that in- struction is subject to pedagogical considerations only and cannot be modified to serve political ends. There is no democratic road to arithmetic. Geography, pen- manship, and the study of science, are the same, no matter under which form of government they are taught. Moreover, the best ' way to educate good citizens is to train good men and women. Yet, while instruction in the schools of a democracy must comply with the general method which rational teaching follows everywhere, it is nevertheless true that in some respects it may be adjusted to the great purposes of the state. If democracy de- pends on the dissemination of intelligence, if it is desirable that the citizen, when new issues arise, should be able to inform himself through the printed channels of information, there is no study in the school that is of greater importance than reading. If the schools did nothing else than to impart to the child the ability to read with ease they would thereby render good service to the state. The ability to read makes his mind accessible to the influence of the thinkers and writers of the day. The newspaper can talk to him every day. The library is open to him. He becomes inter- ested in the issues which he must help to decide, and his judgment is enlightened. The ability to read is not identical with the possession of in- telligence. There have been very intellignt persons who were unable to read. The ability to read does not in itself make the thoughtful citizen, but the ability to grasp and assimilate the sub- ject-matter of the printed page ranks among the best training which intelligence can receive. It is the task of the school to pay special attention not only to the mechanism of reading, the cor- 58 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. rect and fluent pronunciation of the words, but to form, from the very beginning, the habit of thoughtful reading. There is no bet- ter training of the child's intelligence than the constant practice of questioning a class on the lesson they have read. The questions should not only serve the important purpose of enriching the child's vocabulary by making the language of the lesson his own by his use of the words of the book, but for the still more import- ant purpose of leading the children to draw inferences and to ex- ercise their judgment. Instruction in reading, besides cultivating intelligence, should engender a love of reading. Inclination to read and enjoyment of reading should become qualities of the child's soul. The love of good books should be the treasure which he carries with him from school when he enters life. During the last two decades important service has been done to education by connecting the work of the public library with the school and inculcating habits of serious and thoughtful reading. The child learns how to obtain books, an art which is useful to the grown man. Reading the newspapers is of importance, but it should be supplemented among intelligent people by the reading of books. Man's education extends from the cradle to the grave. First, the family takes hold of him. Next, the school supple- ments the family. When school ends the forceful education of life begins. The newspaper becomes a potent daily influence which extends beyond the political guidance and instruction which it gives to the reader. The newspaper, besides discussing politics, relates to us every morning the events in the social life of the com- munity and the country. It helps to bring the people of all classes into that touch with each other, which is so important in a democ- racy, where the interests of one are the interests of all. Even this semi-gossiping part of the daily paper has an altruistic ten- dency which gives to each reader a glimpse at the world at large and an interest in the life of others. The subject matter of the reading lessons in the public schools affords many opportunities to hold up civic virtues and noble human qualities before the young minds, to fill them with admira- tion for the great men of the nation and to lead them early to an appreciation of our institutions. Selections in the reading books that are capable of teaching civic duties or of rousing patriotic' sentiments should be utilized with special educational skill. It used to be the practice to defer instruction in history until the child reached the highest grades of the elementary course. The fact that a large percentage of children leave the school before they reach those grades, entails that they never receive instruc- tion in the history of their country. This is a bad practice. While formal instruction in history may not be possible in the primary grades, it is quite feasible to teach the elements of history through the biography of some of our national heroes. More- Education in a Democracy. 59 over, there are easy historical stories written for little children, which should be used for supplementary reading. No matter how early children are compelled to leave school, they should have some knowledge of the history of their country. In the highest grades, the constitution of the United States is studied. It used to be the practice, and in some places it is the practice still, to commit it verbatim, and in answer to the teacher's questions to recite its sections from memory. Fortunately this practice has been superseded by a better method. It laid stress on the words sometimes to the neglect of the meaning. There is no better opportunity to give to the young minds a glimpse at the wonderful structure of our political organization than to grasp the meaning and thought 'rather than the words. It is of course easier to lead children to repeat the words of the constitution than to make them understand the meaning of its leading features, but the latter is the worthier method in the schools of a de- mocracy. Recitations. Aside from the influence which special studies have, the general form of the school work may be made to promote the ability to obtain information by one's own efforts. The school may be so organized as to impart skill in the use of sources of information and to cultivate a certain independence of thought. In European countries and in Eastern cities the whole room as a rule forms one class and recites together. Much can be said in favor of the other plan, of having two classes in each room. This arrangement of the program prevails in many cities of the West. Where the whole class recites together it is constantly dominated by the personality of the teacher. The pupil is not left, to himself sufficiently long; he is not made habitually to depend on his own resources. Where there are two classes in each room, one class studies its lesson while the other recites. The pupil has a chance to do something by himself. He is left to his own initiative. He is freed for a half hour from the intellectual control by which his mind is made to keep step with others. For a time he sets his own pace, and thinks his own thoughts. He learns how to ob- tain through thoughtful reading information of which he must give an account later when he recites. He is placed in the same position in which he will find himself in later years when he tries to obtain information from books. His school experience trains him for life. The recitation of the lesson itself gives important training. Each child is in intellectual touch with his class and joins them in common work. He learns to listen to the reasoning of others, to reason himself, and to present his reasons intelligently. I be- lieve that American schools give greater scope to connected topical 60 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. recitation than is given elsewhere, and that the readiness of the average American to speak in the meetings which he is called on to attend is a direct result of this training. All instruction should tend to develop individuality, but it is an error frequently met, even among teachers to suppose that when children are instructed in classes, individuality is lost thereby. Many believe, erroneously, that it would be better to instruct children singly if time allowed, and that instruction by classes is but a makeshift resorted to because the other way is too expensive. Just the opposite is true. There is no way of de- veloping character and individuality except by touch and contact and intercourse with our fellow beings. Intellectual or artistic talent, says the poet, may develop in solitude, but character and individuality grow only in the stress and struggle of life. Just because the child meets his equals in the school and works and competes with them will his individual traits unfold and become refined and ennobled. Selfishness is suppressed and altruistic motives are cultivated. Teaching children in classes develops individuality. Let us discard the pernicious idea that teaching is a pouring-in process, and consists of nothing but the storing of the mind with information which the teacher presents and the pupil remembers. In instruction it is not the teacher's activity, but the activity which he causes in the pupil that counts. The response alone which the child makes to instruction is of value. Education depends on what the child does with the instruction that is presented, the trains of thought that it engenders in him, how he interprets and assimilates new information, how he is able to express it and what he will do with it in life. The highest pedagogical skill is displayed not in the more or less brilliant way in which the teacher presents knowledge, but the response on the part of the children which she is able to bring about. The child's response to instruction, however, depends on the individuality of the child himself. There are not two in a class that study a lesson alike, to whom it means the same thing, or who recite it the same way. Individuality is irrepressible. It will be promoted strongly by class recitation if the teacher gives enough freedom and elbow- room to the mental activity of the child and judges a recitation or an answer, not from the standpoint that it must conform with the answer she herself has in mind. The teacher must enter into the child's own way of thinking. Discipline. The discipline of the school if rightly conducted imparts civic training. Valuable civic habits may be inculcated and strength- ened, such as the habit of obedience to law, the habit of self- government, the habit of self-regulated, orderly conduct, of re- Education in a Democracy. 6J spect for the rights of others and of good will. These are of general human as well as of civic importance. When the little child enters the kindergarten he learns his first important civic lesson. At home his position was unique, for the youngest child is the royal person round whom the love and attention of the whole family center and whose wish is law. When thrown into touch with other children in the kindergarten he learns verv soon that his will is not supreme since he lives in a little community where others have equal rights with him. In the primary grades the child must learn to respect thor- oughly the teacher's authority, because it is essential that habits of order be formed. The little child must learn to do what he is told without an obligatory lengthy explanation of the "why" and "wherefore" of the order. Obedience to law can not be made to depend on each individual's approval of it. But gradually, when the habit of obedience has been acquired, the teacher's au- thority must be made to appear as the power which carries out the law of the school and the generally recognized rules and usages of proper conduct. When the child has arrived at the age when he can understand the reason for the habits of order which he has formed, constant appeals may then be made to the child's good sense and the discipline of authority changes into the rule of law. The little misdemeanors of learning childhood are then treated not as offenses against the authority of the teacher, but as encroachments on the rights of the other children. Whisper- ing is improper, not because the teacher has prohibited it, but because the other children have a right to be free from unneces- sary and willful disturbance while they are at work. The wise teacher will remember that too much government is as bad in school as it is in the state. Lack of discipline and order in a school room is bad, but too much discipline is worse. An air of individuality, of rational freedom, ought to prevail in a well-managed room, and there is nothing more charming for an educator than to visit a room which seems to run itself, where good order and intentness upon the work prevail, all seemingly due to the earnestness of the pupils, without any apparent effort on the part of the teacher. All glory to such teacher ; it is all her work any way; it is the response which her character, her good judgment, her incessant labor has brought about, which alone counts in education. The air of that freedom which fills the land and in which the children must live their lives must permeate the school room as well. 62 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. SCHOOL EXTENSION AND ADULT EDUCATION. By HENRY M. LEIPZIGER. There is one creed to which we all subscribe, and that is our belief in the necessity and importance of education for all. Not only republican America, but monarchical Europe recognizes the power of public opinion, and this deference to public opinion is the triumph of democracy. How important is it then that public opinion be sound and sane and that the democracy that exer- cises this power should wield it in obedience to lofty and pure motives ! The most potent agent in the spread of education among the people is that nineteenth century product, the public school ; and in the brief time that I shall occupy, I shall speak specifically of the marvelous extension in the conception of the school that has taken place during the last generation, and in making references, shall necessarily be confined to what has gone on in New York. Many other cities have special advantages or have made special school experiments which have been more or less successful ; but it is my desire to call the attention of this audience to what has gone on in school extension in New York City and to indicate the path along which all cities should go to make their schools the most perfect citizen-creators possible. Fully to appreciate the problem, it may be well to call your attention to the fact that the City of New York has on its rolls to-day, in round numbers, about 600,000 pupils; that it has a staff of about 13,000 teachers; that the school population repre- sents all the diverse elements that form our heterogeneous city: that in some portions of this city the population is so dense that practically children may grow up therein with but a limited knowl- edge of nature ; and that the task of educating this vast con- glomeration presents a social problem with which no other city of the world has ,to contend. And, while the solution of this problem is far from being attained, it is well to observe that the spirit and the desire are present gradually to give New York the best that can be given. The extension of the school has gone along three main lines. The school curriculum has been broadened. Thirty years ago, what are known as the staples of education, the three R's, formed the main themes of instruction. Rote learning was the custom repetition of facts learned from books seemed to be the "be all" of education. The hand and the eye were little used as means of educational power. The late General Francis A. Walker, head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in describing the school of his youth, says : "I entered the schools of Massa- chusetts at five years of age and left them to go to college at School Extension and Adult Education. 6$ fifteen. In all the interval, I do not remember ever to have been set to any study or exercise which I could not have done just as well if born without hands, except solely for the convenience of holding a book and turning over its leaves, or of writing on paper, slate or blackboard ; or which I could not have done just as well if afflicted with total blindness." How different in the school curriculum of to-day, when the theory is being put into practice that "the whole boy must go to school," and that the hand and the eye and the heart and the head must be trained! Therefore, in the modern school cur- riculum, there is included provision for the means of acquiring knowledge and expressing it; provision for the study of nature and of history and of literature; provision to give the child the use of his hands; and provision, I am glad to say, for physical development. It seems as if the wise ideal of the present school curriculum is to prepare the children who attend school "for life not merely for examinations" ; and that the educational sys- tem at any time in vogue must adapt itself, constantly to the social and industrial conditions of the time or of the place. In every city, while it is desirable that there should be uniformity in studies so as to secure for every child the just minimum to which he or she is entitled in order to become an upright and an honorable citizen, yet opportunity should constantly be afforded for adjust- ment to conditions which may prevail in different sections of the city, so that the needs of any particular locality may be provided for. The extension as indicated in the curriculum is further shown by the character of the schools which now form a part of the great educational system of our metropolis. Eight years ago, there were no high schools in New York City. The city has maintained a college, formerly known as the Free Academy,, since 1853, and now as the College of the City of New York, and is erecting new buildings for this college at a cost of about $5,000,- 000; and a Normal College for the training of teachers since about 1870 ; but there were no high schools until eight years ago. There are now about twenty-one, including branches, and' these include two commercial and four manual training high schools, one of which is for girls. It is certainly gratifying to note the recognition of manual training. Too much appreciation can not be given to the value of manual training as a moral agent as well as an educational factor; and if in a course of education the studies engaged in by the pupils, besides their educational value, have a relationship to home or to life, then so much more valuable are those subjects. Instruction in art, which is becoming more and more general, and instruction in domestic science, in a city so large a population of which lives in the tenement, constitute one of the most valuable features of the extension of school life. 64 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. As an indication of the appreciation of the fact that the high schools have met a common demand, is the fact that there are about 18,000 pupils in these high schools, and the majority of the scholars in these schools are girls. It is well to refer here also to the avidity with which young women of our city avail them- selves of the opportunities of education. It is indeed true that the privilege of education is one which should be afforded equally to'man and to woman. It is not always, however, that the privi- lege of education has been recognized as a right for women. In the good old New England days, in the Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven, there was a rule that "all girls should be excluded as improper and inconsistent with such a grammar school." When, in 1766, the town of Medford did grant the privilege, how did it do it? It voted that the committee have power to agree with the schoolmaster to instruct girls two hours a day after the boys are dismissed. In 1790 this resolution was passed in Gloucester, Mass. : "That the school shall be open eight hours daily, and that two hours daily shall be devoted to the instruction of females, as they are a tender and interesting branch of the community, but have been much neglected in the public school in this town." The errors of the past are rapidly being atoned for by the granting of the most liberal opportunities for the education and the training of women. A noted American educator has said: "Educate all the men of the generation and leave the women un- educated, and every child under their influence begins his public education with all the disadvantages of his father. Educate all the females, and you will have a permanent impulse to the on- ward movement of the race which it can never lose." Special colleges for women, co-educational institutions, and the opening of professional schools to women, all indicate that the day of darkness for women has passed away, never more to return. The only danger would now seem to be that the desire of women for education is so great that some fear that the student bodies in higher institutions may become over-feminized. In the' high schools of this city, of the 17,000 pupils, 10,000 are girls. In a number of colleges women already outnumber men. At the other end of school life, the most gratifying indication of school extension has been that of the kindergarten. To-day there are more than four hundred of these delightful, these demo- cratic, and these natural introductions to school life, whose edu- cational importance is becoming daily more recognized as one of the most wholesome extensions of our educational system. The extension of the school's use in both these ways, upwards by the establishment of high schools and downwards by the estab- lishment of the kindergarten, is by no means the limit of the school's extension. That the school duty is not complete when School Extension and Adult Education. 65 it provides for children alone of the school age is now being recog- nized by the establishment of evening schools which afford oppor- tunity to those whose education has been limited or to those who have come to our shores after the school age, or to those who, being compelled to work, still desire to contfnue their improve- ment. A system of evening schools and of evening high schools, three of which are for women, indicates this extension. The chief item, however, in public school extension, to my mind, lies in the appreciation, on the part of the public, of what a teacher should be. The most important functionary in the proper state of civilization is the teacher. He or she it is that takes the child in his formative period and shapes it and moulds it for the future. For good 'or for ill, the teacher is the most effective social worker. How do we, in this country, in this rich age, and in the time of our greatest prosperity, regard the teacher ? I take the following statistics from the latest annual report of the United States Commissioner of Education : "There are 16,000,000 pupils attending the public schools of this country. Thirty years ago 39 per cent of the teachers were men; at present, 26 per cent." Is it desirable that the teaching force of the country be so largely feminine? Is not teaching a virile occupation? Is not the training of the child's mind as worthy of the fine intellect as well as the child's body? Perhaps the compensation given to teachers may tell the story. From the same report, the average monthly compensation for men teachers in the United States is $49.98 per month, and the average monthly compensation for women is $40.50. It is true that in the City of New York and other cities a higher rate of compensation prevails, and it is to the credit of New York City that the salaries paid to teachers do fairly attract trained men and women, so that they can be af- forded the opportunities of culture and travel ; but New York is an honorable exception. We may boast of our organized school system and of our great school buildings, but in the last analysis, the foundation of the educational arch is the teacher. President Garfield said that if you put Mark Hopkins at one end of a log and a pupil at the other, you have a university. In the State of New York, which employs about 40,000 teachers, less than 5,000 are men, and the average annual salary for teachers in the City of New York is about $1,000; in the towns of New York about $350. A state will then only be civilized when it recognizes the true dignity and the true worth of the teaching profession. Within the last fifteen years the attention of the people has been drawn to the fact that the school house was a plant costing a large amount of money, but occupied for practically less than half the time. With the constantly increasing population, and with the inadequate places for gathering, it seemed as if so limited 3 66 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. a use of so costly a plant was not justified; and with the apprecia- tion of the additional problems of education, additional uses to which the school house shall be put were devised. Among the most notable of these was the establishment, about five years ago, of the vacation schools. Prior to that time a private corporation, the Society for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor, spent a small sum in providing vacation schools. Their value became impressed upon the educational authorities, and now the beneficent influence of these vacation schools reaches thousands. During the summer but a limited number of the denizens of our city can afford to leave it, and the daily influence of the school being withdrawn, the children, whose only playground is the street, rapidly run chances of deteribration. The vacation school takes these children, utilizes their energy, directs their thoughts away from school routine, gives them a love of nature, takes them on excursions, employs their minds on wholesome reading and their hands in works of art and skill, directs their play and looks after their physical development; so that, when the. autumn re- turns, and the school doors are re-opened, they enter upon their school life refreshed and happy, almost equal to those who have had the good fortune to go to the seashore or to the mountains. The extension of the school house then so that it shall be used all the year round, just as now some of our great universities are open, is a great advance. Following upon the extension of the use of the school house for vacation schools, is the development of the school house as a social center. But a limited number attend the evening schools, and after a day's work the desire for social intercourse is strong in most human beings. Shall that desire be for what is low or for what is uplifting? Shall the intercourse be coarse or shall it be refined? What better place for the education of the social side of the human being than in the school house ? This thought has led to the use of many school houses as play centers and recreation centers, where formal instruction is but a minor feature,, but where refined games, gymnastic exercises, literary clubs, music clubs, etc., exist and are encouraged ; where civics is practi- cally taught ; and where the beginning of delightful, real, genuine refined intercourse is made possible. Under careful supervision, and a proper spirit animating the workers, it would seem that the time might come when the social settlements which prove so efficient now as moralizing and uplifting agencies, might come to an end, and that each school house, wherever situated, might become such a settlement, for each school house should be a center for educational, and recreational, as well as instructive purposes. The extension of the use of the school on the lines to which I have referred has, in the City of New York, been even further broadened. It is believed that education is required not alone as School Extension and Adult Education. 67 a means of livelihood, but as a means of life ; and that as Bishop Spaulding says, 'The wise and the good are they who grow old still learning many things, entering day by day into more vital communion with beauty, truth, and righteousness." It is the belief in this theory that has led the City of New York to include in its conception of the school a provision for adult education. Its underlying principle is that education must be unending. The city's prosperity and growth depend on the intelligence of its citizens, and as we have come to realize that the child is of supreme importance, so have we also arrived slowly at the conclusion that he,, who from necessity has remained a child in education, needs continuous instruction. A librarian once told me that a young reader came into her library and said he wished a book entitled, "How to Get Educated and How to Stay So." He unconsciously spoke a great truth. It is one thing to get educated; it is another to stay so. The school gives the beginning of education. Provision for adult education is necessary to enable us "to stay so." Of the school population of our land, about 3 per cent attend high schools, and less than 1J per cent the colleges, universities, and professional schools. The great body of our citizens have but limited educa- tion ; and the very persons best fitted to profit by education and who need it most are in most cases denied its beneficent influence. Two classes are especially in need of it ; first, those between 14 and 20 years the time of adolescence, when conscience is dis- turbed and when character is being formed at that time all the safeguards of true culture must be around youth ; and then there is a large class of mature people who have a knowledge of practical life and who appreciate the value of education most keenly. It is from such a class that our students I call them that rightly of electricity, of physics, of history, are recruited. A lecturer on physics wrote to me the other day : "The ques- tions put to me by my hearers were, as a rule, more intelligent than are asked in many a college." Sixteen years ago the Free Lecture Movement was tentatively begun in New York in six school houses. The total attendance was about 20,000. During the past year there were 140 places where systematic courses of lectures were given by 450 lecturers, and there came an attendance of 1,155,000. The growth in- dicated by the figures which I have just quoted must lead to the conclusion that this democratic movement for adult education is appreciated by a constantly increasing body of our citizens. The large number who have attended this year prove that the appetite for instruction on the part of the people has not been appeased, but that, like all good things, appetite comes with eating. As a rule, we should not boast of mere bigness ; but the fact that in the City of New York, including as it does all sorts and condi- 68 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. tions of men and women, so large a number of persons, many of them old, wend their way and in many instances climb toilsome flights of stairs to the halls of instruction, is an admirable sign of the times. What is the magic power that draws to these halls some of them far from comfortable no matter in what kind of weather, so many earnest listeners? The answer is that the common sense of our people is truly appreciative of the best that the teacher can give, and in these courses it has been the endeavor to give the people the best available from the staff of lecturers at our command. It can be safely said that the movement for adult education, popularly known as the free lectures, is no longer an experiment. It is recognized in the charter as an integral part of the educa- tional system of the City of New York. Its righteous claim to be considered such is shown by the constant endeavors to sys- tematically organize the instruction. In the first years of the lecture course, the lectures were not organized as consecutively as they are now. We know now definitely what our aim is. A passenger on the elevated train in Boston, somewhat the worse for drink, was carried around the entire system twice, not know- ing where to disembark. Finally, the conductor said to him : "At what station do you want to get off?" The man roused him- self sufficiently to say, "What stations have you got?" Some years ago we were in doubt as to what our stations were. Now we have found our definite station the definite purpose is to ar- "range these courses of lectures systematically to stimulate study, to co-operate with the public library, to encourage discussion ; or, in other words, to bring the best teachers to bear upon this problem of the diffusion of culture among all the citizens of a great city. Has this been done during the past year? One hundred and seventy courses of lectures, averaging six in each course, have been given, and the majority of these courses by professors and teachers in our universities. One course of thirty lectures on Nineteenth Century English Literature was given in a series last- ing through the whole winter at one center, and the audience at each lecture averaged over 300. An examination was held and certificates were awarded to those who had attended at least twenty-seven of these lectures and who had successfully passed two written examinations which were held. Thirty-one received certificates, approved by Columbia University. Thus we have university extension realized on a large scale. Thirty courses of lectures, consisting of five each, on "First Aid to the Injured," were given, examinations held and certifi- cates awarded. To co-operate with the Department of Health, lectures on "The Prevention of Tuberculosis" were given in thirty-four places by reputable physicians, so that the themes School Extension and Adult Education. 69 which have instructed our audiences have been first the facts con- cerning the body and its care. Then the great phenomena of natural science have been ex- plained how steam was harnessed, how electricity is put to man's service, how the stars move in their courses. The whole world has been traveled over. Starting from our own city, the natural beauties of our own land have been described. Every country on the globe, from Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral strand, has been described by travelers who have visited these lands and have braved dangers for our instruction. The development of citizenship has been fostered by scholarly treat- ment of the great epochs in our national history and the study of the makers of our national life; and, to give a wider outlook, epochs in general history have been boldly outlined, for the his- tory of the world is one great drama, and all its acts form part of one stupendous whole. Music, painting and other forms of art have been presented to the people, and courses on the educa- tion and training of children, as well as municipal progress, have been listened to by eager auditors ; for the purpose, as stated be- fore, is to aid the joy and value of human life by diffusing among the mass of our citizens what some one has well called "race knowledge." The level of our citizenship depends upon the quantity of race knowledge which is made a concrete part of our social en- vironment. It has been my privilege to receive year by year appreciative letters from both lecturers and auditors the lecturer emphasizing the value of the experience in its growth and power ; the auditors telling of the inspiration and stimulus derived from the lectures. A college graduate writes : "I believe there are many who think the lectures are only for those who have not had an opportunity to receive a high school or college education. The more intelligent the hearer, the greater the benefit derived. As to the benefits received from these courses, they are too numerous to mention, but I can gladly say that through my knowledge of 'First Aid to the Injured,' I have been of use to different persons from taking a cinder out of the eye of an elevated car conductor to fixing up the sprain of a friend." Another writes : "The majority of us know nothing but paved streets and brick walls. Nature stands at our doors, but we know nothing of her. These lectures give us instruction and mental exhilara- tion." And yet another auditor writes : "I shall try my best to pass the examination (referring to a course on 'First Aid to the Injured'), although I am very absent minded and nervous, having been a victim of typhoid fever a year 70 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. ago and a remittant fever last fall. If I fail, I shall have, at least, tried my best and learned something to my advantage. I can not say anything in favor of the Monday lectures, as my husband only attends them, because I have three small children who can not be left alone. I am glad my beloved spouse stays with them Thursday evenings to grant me the benefit of the lectures." The fact has been established that the people will go to school ; so that there are now two kinds of lectures one for larger audiences, where subjects which appeal to large bodies can be treated ; and the other more special in its nature, where those who come are only interested in a particular subject. The entire winter at some centers is devoted to but one or two sub- jects, and a definite course of reading and study follow. The division satisfies those who are already prepared for higher study and those who are just entering upon an appreciation of intel- lectual pleasure, for, believing as I do in the educational purpose and value of these courses, I also believe to an extent in their wisdom from the recreative side. The character of our pleasure is an index of our culture and our civilization. A nation whose favorite pastime is the bull-fight is hardly on a plane with one that finds pleasure in the lecture lyceum; so, if we can make our pleasures consist in the delights of art, in the beauties of literature, in the pursuit of science, or in the cultivation of music, are we not doing a real public service? Is not refinement, too, one of the ends for which we are aiming not alone knowledge, but culture ; not alone light, but sweetness ? And if we can turn our youth from the street corners to the school playground, transformed into a temple of learning, are we not helping to at- tain a desirable end? To some these lectures have proven the only bright spot in a cheerless existence ; others have been greatly refined through their influence. After the lecture, many have crowded around the lecturer for further information, and upon reaching their homes, their conversation has not been the tittle-tattle of every-day life, but about Shakespeare, Lincoln, the Arctic explorations, or the wonders of electricity. Many a mind has been stirred from its lethargy ; and the lecturers have appealed to all classes of our citizens the dweller in the tenement house or in the single house for their message is to rich and to poor, man and woman, young and old, educated and uneducated. They show parents what a valuable thing education is and the parents become at- tached to the school. They are social solvents, for the school is a safeguard of democracy; and at these lectures the laborer and employer, the professional man and the mechanic attend. More lias been done, for these lectures have been, to many, voices in the wilderness giving aid and comfort to many an aspiring soul School Extension and Adult Education. 71 and revealing to "it its own strength, for many a poorly dressed man may have in him the germ of gifts which it would be well to add to the treasury of noble deeds. In that great storm of terror that prevailed in Europe in 1793, a certain man, who- hourly expected to be led to death, uttered this memorable sen- tence: "At this dire moment," he said, "mortality, enlighten- ment, love of country, all of them only make death more certain yes, on the fatal tumbril itself, with nothing but my voice, I would still cry, 'Take care,' to a child that would come too near the wheel. Perhaps I may save his life. Perhaps he may one day save his country." Summarizing again the aims of this movement, I would say that it is to afford to as many as possible the fruits of a liberal education, to make education a life purpose, to apply the best methods of study to the problems of daily life, so as to create in our citizens a sound public opinion. When it is remembered that a million and a half men, according to the last census, of voting age were unable to read or write that is, 11 per cent of the total number it will be seen how important the continuance of education is in a country whose government is determined by popular suffrage. And the greater portion of this illiteracy, let it be borne in mind, is in persons not of foreign parentage. The percentage of illiteracy among the foreign born is large, but among the native born of foreign parents, it is smaller than among those of native parents. And this leads me to refer to the addition to our course in the shape of lectures in foreign lan- guages to recently arrived immigrants. Nothing is more illus- trative of the hospitality of our city than is this provision for the acquaintanceship of future citizens, at the earliest possible mo- ment, with the history of our institutions and the laws of civic well-being. The lectures are illustrated largely by the stereopticon, and this teaching of the eye has proven a most effective means of popularizing knowledge and retaining interest. Mere speech is no longer sufficient. The actual thing talked about must be shown on the screen. In scientific lectures, abundant experi- ments accompany the lecture, and the interest in scientific sub- jects can be illustrated by the fact that a course of eight lectures on "Heat as a Mode of Motion" in the great hall of Cooper In- stitute attracted an average audience of 1,000 at each lecture. The lecture was followed by a quiz class, which lasted about an hour, and serious reading of such a book as Tyndall's "Heat is a Mode of Motion" was done by many of the auditors. Special attention is paid in instruction in American history and civics. On the birthdays of great Americans, in several por- tions of the city, the lives of these eminent characters form the subject of the lecture ; and during the past two years, in order to 72 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. help in the assimilation of the newly arrived foreigner, lectures have been given in Italian and Yiddish on subjects that relate to sanitation and to the preparation for American citizenship. The lecturers are recruited from the very best educators available. Our lecturers include the professors in our univer- sities, the traveler, the journalist, the physician, the clergyman in fact all who have knowledge to impart and the power to do so ; and the fine spirit that characterizes our teaching force is worthy of emulation by all who are engaged in the noble work of educa- tion. It seems to me that no more honorable, and perhaps more difficult task, can be placed in the hands of a teacher who stands before audiences, such as gather in our school houses, for I know of no more sacred task than that of a teacher in a democracy, organizing as he does public opinion, directing reading, and in- spiring for the higher life. The ideal teacher in a scheme of adult education, as some one says, must combine with the uni- versity professor's knowledge, the novelist's versatility, the actor's elocution, the poet's imagination, and the preacher's fervor. Adult education as practiced in New York combines the best elements of university extension and reaches the working people of the city. It has been the means of realizing the belief that scholarship must go hand in hand with service, and that the duty of the university to the city and the state is to lift our citizens to higher ideals. The influence of the lectures on general reading is illustrated by the report from one public library, concerning which the librarian writes : "The register shows an increase of 321 members during the course of the winter lecture season, of which a large portion con- sisted of those who had first heard of the library in the lecture hall. As a result, the people select their books with more care and forethought, having something definite to ask for and on a subject in which their interest was aroused. A stimulus was created which led to more intelligent reading. You can not ex- pect all the people to appreciate and thoroughly enjoy a book until they know something akin to that subject and until their enthu- siasm has been aroused." This is what I feel the lectures are doing for those who have not had a school course. The platform library forms an integral part of the lecture movement. As the libraries do not possess sufficient duplicate copies of any particular book, there are loaned out to those who attend the courses, the leading books that are mentioned on the syllabus which is distributed with each course of lectures; and the circulation of these books bespeaks the in- telligent pursuit of the subject in hand. The movement of adult education not alone gives a new inter- pretation to education and the teacher, but a new type of school School Extension and Adult Education. 73 house which is to be open not only for a few hours daily, but at all times, and to be a place not alone for the instruction of children, but for the education of men and women; so that there should be in each modern school house a proper auditorium, with seats for adults and equipped with apparatus for scientific lectures, and for proper means of illustration. There should be no necessity for citizens, desiring to add to their culture, sitting in the low and ill-ventilated and unattractive school yard or climbing sixty or seventy steps to sit upon a bench intended only for children. So a change in the construc- tion of our school houses may result from the expansion of this use. The newer school houses built in our city contain such auditoriums ; and the extension of the school for these varied pur- poses makes the school house what it really should be a social center the real, democratic neighborhood house. That we are approaching such an ideal may be inferred from the fact that some of the school houses in the crowded districts are open on Sunday. If the museum and the library are open on Sunday, why should not the school house, too, be open on Sunday and in its main hall the people be gathered to listen to an uplifting ad- dress of a biographical, historical, or .ethical nature? It seems to me that the tendency should be to include in public education all that is best in the movements of philanthropy which mark our time. The interest of churches and philanthropic societies in our work is shown by the constant offering of church and other halls gratuitously for Board of Education Public Lec- tures. The church surely approves of spreading the gospel, "Let there be light." The unification of a great city is furthered by a system of public lectures. It is not brought about by the mere building of bridges. In a great city, neighborliness does not often prevail, but a community of ideas brings people together; and when last year it was resolved to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of New York as a municipality, it was celebrated not by a military parade or a monster banquet, but by a series of illustrated lectures and open air exhibitions of the great develop- ment of New York City. About 100 such lectures were given, illustrating the history of the City of New York thirty of them in public parks. As New York is the pioneer in this work of adult education, so is she the pioneer in this peaceful method of civic celebration. The provision for adult education emphasizes the fact which now, more than ever, should be emphasized in our American life that men are not old at 40. Dr. Osier, deserving of so much credit, has certainly done a great public service in awakening discussion on the question of the period of man's mental decay. What is needed in America, it seems to me, is more, not less, 74 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. reverence for age; more, not less, recognition of the fact that though there may be a climax to man's bodily development in early manhood, his mental development should be continuous, and as President Eliot says, "His last years should be his best." Scientists tell us that the brain of a man between 50 and 60 is at its best, and even at 60 the acquisition of knowledge may well be begun. The history of the world of the past and the present day is full of illustrations of the activities of old men, and no one has put it better than Longfellow in these words : "But why, you ask me, should this tale be told, To men grown old, or who are growing old? It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate. Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles Wrote his grand dipus, and Simonides Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers, When each had numbered more than ff political economy to give a free scope to the public industry. "4. To develop the reasoning faculty of our youth, to en- large their minds, cultivate their morals, and instill into them the principles of virtue and order. "5. To enlighten them with mathematical and physical sci- ences, which advance the arts and minister to the health, the sub- sistence, and the comforts of human life. "6. And generally to form them to habits of reflection and correct action, rendering them examples of virtue to others, and of happiness within, themselves." The theoretical and the practical; the idea and the act; to know law and obey it ; to grasp the theory of political economy, and to apply it for the nation's betterment. The university, as Jefferson plans it, is to train the practical idealist. The student is to simplify life by learning things in their relationships ; to rise to a comprehension of principles, and thus give an orderly arrange- ment to the seemingly endless complexities of everyday experience. Thinking gains in simplicity as it rises. So the university must remain idealistic, in the sense that the plan must be comprehended before action is undertaken and the highest plan is that of life and thought itself. But the plan is only the beginning ; it exists for the sake of its own accomplish- ment. Therefore the university must give intimate knowledge of the conditions under which the accomplishment takes place, in other words, of the world as it is ; and also it must give great skill in actual performance, so that the largest practical results may be most easily and economically attained. Library and labor- atory, seminary and field work, philosophy and engineering, all these go to the making up of the modern university of the state. In it should be found the opportunity for every citizen of the state to secure the highest training in the vocation to which he is called training broadly generalized into literature, philosophy, and art, science and engineering, and the old-time learned profes- sions. But the state is no longer content to stop with a system of education limited to its regularly organized schools. A broader democracy needs a broader education, and if each citizen is to participate directly in the function of legislation, it becomes an urgent necessity that his education be continued through life. He must be kept constantly aware of changing conditions, he must be fitted to meet each new problem as it arises, he must grow a wiser and safer legislator with each passing year. And so the state is extending its activities by means of the great public library movement of recent times, with its highly organized meth- ods of stimulating and directing the reading of the great body Education and the State. 121 of the common people. Only second, in importance now is the public library to the public school, and it seems a question how long it may remain in second place. There is nothing more remarkable in the history of popular education than the marvelously rapid growth of public libraries. Within the twelve years between 1891 and 1903 the number of public libraries supported by taxation increased from 879 to 3,148, and the rate of increase grows greater each year. In the United States today we have in all libraries of 1,000 volumes and over the tremendous aggregate of more than 54,000,000 books, of which by far the greater part are directly accessible to the general public. But in reality we are only in the beginning of the library movement. When every town and village has its public library, when a system of distribution throughout the country districts is m'ade possible through a parcels post, when great central state libraries place at the command of every citizen, at telephone call if you will, the detailed and accurate statement of the experience of the whole world in every department of human activity then will the higher education of the people, the education that follows school, be carried on broadly and effectively through the medium of the wisely organized and skillfully directed reading of books. In conclusion, what is the ideal of government toward which we are making with this vast system of public education? In answer I would say, one in which, through general enlightenment and development of sound character, it may be possible to have a minimum of external restraint and a maximum of internal sense of obligation. This would be the highest type of free gov- ernment, one in which each citizen knows the right and willingly does it. Toward such real freedom it is the high privilege of America to lead the way. Sntiex PAGES Program 7 to 8 Convocation Address 9 to 23 William T. Harris. Unsettled Questions of the Schools ... 24 to 40 Andrew S. Draper. The Relation of the Pacific Coast to Education in the Orient 41 to 50 Benjamin Ide Wheeler. Education in a Democracy 50 to 61 F. Louis Soldan. School Extension and Adult Education v 62 to 75 H. M. Leipziger. Manual Training 75 to 77 H. M. Leipziger. The Problem of the Rural School 77 to 91 J. H. Acker man. Higher Agricultural Education 91 to 101 E. A. Bryan. Education in Reference to Our Future Industrial and Commercial Development 102 to 112 Howard J. Rogers. Education and the State. 113 to 121 P. L. Campbell. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, BERKELEY THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW Books not returned on time are subject to a fine of 50c per volume after the third day overdue, increasing to $1.00 per volume after the sixth day. Books not in demand may be renewed if application is made before expiration of loan period. " OCT ity !SOct'52KF LOAN 50m-8,'26 YC 54135 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY