4. A Right System of Schools for an American Commonwealth

The extract which follows gives a clear and a very comprehensive statement of the position of the modern state in the education of citizens, and the responsibilities of the state in the matter.

[Pritchett, Henry S., in the 6th An. Rept. Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1911, pp. 119–122.]

The various states of the American Union have with practical unanimity accepted the position that the obligation for general education rests upon the state. This conclusion has been reached in the course of a hundred years of history, during which most of these states have grown from pioneer communities to commonwealths of considerable population and wealth.

The beginnings of the educational systems in all of the states were practically the same. Private initiative led the way. In their earlier history the state governments were only too glad to encourage any effort that looked toward education. Private individuals, denominations, and associations of citizens were encouraged to start educational enterprises, whether they aimed to be elementary schools or institutions of higher learning.

At first in New England and the middle west, and much later in the southern states, with increased population and increased differentiation in employment and increased wealth, the state governments one by one undertook the creation of a general system of public schools, first of elementary and secondary schools, and finally of institutions of higher learning as well, so that in many of the states of the Union one finds to-day a system of general education reaching from elementary school to university, under the control of the state. Alongside of these state tax-supported institutions are a number of institutions under private control whose relation with the state system of education is ill defined and rests in the main upon the ideal of education held by those who conduct the separate institutions. It is only within the last decade that the question of relating these independent institutions to the state-developed system of education has become a pressing one. Until that time education of any sort was held to be so desirable that any kind of school was welcome. Furthermore, the state systems were so incomplete that the privately managed school could find a place in either secondary or higher education. With the gradual rounding out of the elementary and secondary school systems of the various states this situation has

changed, and to-day the state begins to concern itself with the relations of these institutions which exist under its laws, but practically outside of its educational jurisdiction. Only within a few years have the states grown into an educational self-consciousness and have begun to ask themselves how they ought to deal with these detached and unrelated schools. How, in fact, ought they to deal with their own institutions, which in many cases have had as little consideration for the general system of education, and have been as truly competing institutions, as have those that were in the hands of private individuals?

The development of the organized school system resembles curiously in its history the development of the system of railroads. In the pioneer days any railroad built under any circumstances was welcome. It was only as the country grew up, as population became more dense, and as industrial and political problems became more pressing, that the various states turned about to examine what kind of railroad system had grown up under this loose régime, and to seek to bring into the hands of the state once more some sort of authority over systems of railroads that had been allowed to develop in such independence.

The beginnings of this change of attitude on the part of the various states toward educational systems are shown in the appointment in the last three years of commissions in one state or another to deal with the question of education. In Iowa a single board has been appointed to take charge of the three state institutions of higher learning. The state of Oklahoma, with characteristic fearlessness, has appointed a single board to govern eighteen state institutions, of which eleven are educational. The state of Virginia has appointed a commission to examine and to report upon the right relations of all of its institutions of higher learning. A similar commission has been created in Kansas.

In nearly all cases these commissions were originated for the purpose of examining existing state institutions whose lack of coöperation had become evident to the state authorities, but no sooner do such commissions begin their work than they find themselves face to face with a much larger question, namely, what sort of system of schools ought an American commonwealth to foster?

This is a very different question from that which was brought to the attention of these commonwealths in their earlier educational history, as different as the problem of railroad regulation in the central west to-day is from the problem of railroad construction fifty years ago. It is a question that touches every interest in the state, if it is answered fully and wisely, and to an

swer this question fully and wisely required the very best thinking of which civilized and educated men are capable.

It is generally admitted to-day in all countries that the state must furnish to all its citizens the opportunity for a general elementary education. In the more advanced countries it is further recognized that the state must deal also with vocational training, certainly with industrial vocations and perhaps with professions. In a word, a state that to-day addresses itself to the problem of education must consider a system of schools which shall train the whole population in those fundamentals that make for good citizenship, and it must establish as well at the right points of articulation with this system, industrial training schools appropriate to the wants of the various communities, and it may foster in addition a fair number of professional schools for those seeking to enter the professions. It does not follow that because industrial education, for example, is a necessary part of modern educational training, that the state itself must establish the local schools which serve particular communities, any more than it would be called upon to establish local schools to train doctors and lawyers and engineers, but it does mean that the state, in considering its problem of education and the system of schools that it will conduct, must so plan that the system of schools established by it shall minister to the training of the individual in his vocation, whether that vocation be an industry or a profession.

It needs only a statement of this problem to make clear the fact that the question that these state commissions and that the states themselves face to-day is a very much larger problem and a very much more difficult one than the problem that the states have attempted hitherto. For example, the matter of agricultural education is one with which the state has dealt by the establishment of an agricultural and mechanical college, but the experience of forty years has shown that such schools train men for professional life, not for industrial life, and that if men are to be trained effectively for the work of the farmer, local industrial training for agriculture must be established by the separate communities, either with state aid or without. But in any case such schools will not be established successfully unless the state in its educational supervision and in its educational policy provides a system of schools that shall minister to agricultural training.

There are to-day two notable examples of the attempt to deal with this question, the one in Germany, the other in Japan. In the German Empire, as in the United States, the question of education is for the federated states, the local schools being conducted and managed by local agencies, but under the supervision

of the state bureau of education, which is notably efficient and farsighted. One finds here a combination of state and community effort producing a truly national effect, due in large measure to the unifying supervision that comes from the state.

Japan, on the other hand, has undertaken to create a new system of schools fitted to the needs of its population, the experiments being conducted entirely through the agency of the imperial government.

It is a hopeful sign that our American states have begun to deal with this question from the general, not from the local standpoint, and although little progress has yet been made in determining how to organize, how to supervise, and how to conduct a state system of schools which shall minister at once to the general education of the whole people and to the training of communities and of individuals for particular vocations, the very fact that the state authorities have begun to think of the question is itself a matter of encouragement. One may well hope that the next ten years will see real progress toward carefully thought out and wellconducted state systems of education. The first steps would seem to be an educational study of the particular state, of its schools, of the industries of its inhabitants, and of the approximate needs that the state is likely to feel in the various vocations and professions. Following such a study, the state might well lend itself to the gradual development of a system of schools which shall undertake to minister to the whole population of the state, both in the larger educational sense and in the vocational sense. It is out of some such experience and out of some such study that our American states will develop, if they develop at all, systems of education which shall answer the needs of the whole population. The question at the moment for any one of these commonwealths is to find a body of experts competent to study the educational situation and to give governors and legislators wise and practical advice.

The Problem of Education of Supreme Significance to a Modern State

The importance of education has long been keenly realized by the American people. We have been proud to feel that the desire for education throughout the United States was well-nigh universal. It is only recently, however, that the American people have come to see the inefficiency of much that goes under the name of education, and to what extent a superficial imitation of education may pass for education itself. The transition in our educational life has been so rapid in the last quarter-century that the various parts

of our educational system - the colleges, the schools, and the academies - have had scarcely time to adjust themselves to one change before they were called upon to make another. The colleges, for example, have to a large extent discarded the old compulsory classical training, which at least had the merit of discipline and thoroughness. In adopting a much broader and in many ways a more sensible curriculum they have not yet had time to reach any such stage of thoroughness as was attained under the old form.

Meanwhile, in the states of the American Union two movements have gone on which have tended to throw increased responsibility upon the school system.

The first has been the enormous progress in the industries and in the differentiation of vocation which has come with modern tools. Workmen no longer ply their callings in their own homes. They are grouped in large factories, where each man becomes a specialist. Under this régime the apprentice system has disappeared, and the school to-day is called upon to do for the boy something like what his apprenticeship did for him a generation ago. In every industrial community there must be provided a school which shall give the theoretical and some of the practical foundations of vocational training, if the boy is to get this training in any systematic or satisfactory way.

A second movement which has to do directly with educational efficiency is found in the recent tendency to place in the hands of the whole people direct political power. During the past ten years much of the political power that has been intrusted to representatives has been taken over in various states by the people themselves. The direct primary, the initiative, the referendum, the recall, are all devices that grow out of the movement, whether wise or unwise, to place political power directly in the hands of the whole people. It needs only the smallest consideration to show that if this movement is to continue, the general education of all citizens becomes an even more vital thing for a democracy than it has been hitherto.

In a word, the question of education, the determination of the right system of schools and of their effective coördination and conduct, is the most important question before each nation, but in no country does this question assume such importance as in a democracy in which every citizen assumes full political responsibility.