against itself cannot stand and that there can be no enduring peace between the alleged "divine right of kings" and the theory that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Just this final word. The hopes, the wishes, the absorbing thoughts of the American people, are now centered with our brave boys "somewhere in France." Unreservedly we are giving ourselves to the cause to which we are committed. I wish I somehow had the power to convince you educators, if you are not already convinst, that you may best serve that cause by resolving with all your energy and with all your well-known devotion to "carry on where you are. In my judgment you can best serve the nation by keeping the schools and colleges open. Of course, individual members of the guild will wish to take sword in hand. I would not restrain them, but I would urge that the continuity of our school and college work be preserved wherever possible. You, you the leaders in education, must not only train the rising generation how best to fight for peace, but also train the citizenry of the future how best to deserve peace.

Have no thought that you are not nobly serving your country. Whether this war ends tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or next year, or whether the victory for peace and humanity and civilization shall be deferred for five, ten, fifteen, or twenty years, no matter when the final issue shall be declared, the flag in the hands of teachers will be held proudly aloft. Yours is a never-ending mobilization process. Enemies are always, and never more than now, entrencht against you. You must conduct the maneuvers at home in the fight against illiteracy, moral and physical degeneracy, race prejudice, crime, avarice, sordid selfishness, treason, and the poisonous philosophy which would justify the wanton murder of women and defenseless children to secure an unearned "place in the sun."

It was long ago said by one of the teaching guild that "there can be no sound mind without a sound body." We must set ourselves as we never have before to the building in our schools of strong human units, strong bodies, alert minds, receptive spirits. We must train our youth in practical citizenship, and we must be ready, readier than we have ever been before, to defend that citizenship. We must look out for a higher level of education in this country. Of course you want to be on the firing line. I tell you, the coming years will bring the firing line all around you.

May I tell you the dream of your future in which I venture to indulge? No, I will not call it a dream, because you, you will make it in the coming years an accomplisht fact. It is this: Nowhere in all this land a single sane man, woman, or child of sufficient years unable to speak and read and write the English language; universal recognition of the fact that the hand as well as the mind can think, and the technical education of hosts of artisans and skilled workmen to give a new dignity and a new place to the thinking hand in our American life; no dirty, unduly ragged, hungry, or physically uncared for child in any school anywhere; universal recognition

that the state has claim upon the citizen, and the systematic military training of our youth so as to give world-highwaymen reason to pause before they again regard a solemn covenant as a mere "scrap of paper"; and finally, the constant objective of the school, high patriotic ideals, clean living, fair dealing, disinterested public service, economic independence, and faith in the Lord of Hosts.

Teachers of America! Carry on! Carry on!

TOPIC: CENTRALIZING TENDENCIES IN EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION

A. LIMITATIONS OF STATE CONTROL IN EDUCATION PAYSON SMITH, STATE COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION, BOSTON, MASS. Educators have not been slow to paraphrase the recent sentence of President Wilson, and to say that popular education is the chief reliance of the nation for making democracy safe for the world. Certainly to those charged with the administration of American education the challenge of this time is to prepare and to present to the American people a program of popular education as broad and comprehensive as are the needs and requirements of the nation, the state in its broadest terms.

Education in a democracy for the upbuilding and perfecting of democracy must be universal and efficient. At present, in America, it is neither universal nor efficient. This is so, not because our people as a whole want it to be so, but because it cannot be otherwise as long as it rests upon a parochial or neighborhood conception of responsibility. To think in terms of larger units and to widen the boundaries of our responsibility, these are definitely the needs of the hour. The state, in the narrow sense, is the responsible creator of educational opportunity. The state representing corporate democracy can and must enforce the means by which it is to be made safe and efficient. That represents the theory clearly laid down by the majority of states in their constitutions. Even within the states the actual practice still harks back to traditional conceptions of responsibility, individual and local, presenting education as a personal privilege and not as a need of the state.

Time was, of course, when a child was held to be entitled to so muchand only so much of an education as his parents could afford. But in time this was seen to be no adequate conception of a community's right and interest in its own welfare. Men saw that local democracy would not be safe on any such basis. Then came the parish and, still later, the district conception of educational responsibility. Under this conception there were -and perhaps even are-neighboring districts, the one offering a longer school year and a better-paid teacher than the other because it is financially better able to do so. We are, however, now accepting a little wider con

ception of our responsibility for the training of our citizenship. In some states the county, in others the town, is required to look upon all children on the basis of equality. We are seeing America's children as America's children, if they come that much within the range of our vision. In most states the constitutional obligation is in a measure being fulfilled. Thru state aid, modified state support, and a measure of state standardization a certain minimum of educational opportunity is guaranteed. But this is not enough. The coming of the war to America has not been altogether bad. Among other things we have had to take account of stock. America is vastly better acquainted with herself than she was a year ago. It may be no harm to us of the schools to inquire where we stand as to the accomplishments of education.

Not to speak in detail, it is a matter of common knowledge that today in America, the richest country in the world, hundreds of thousands of children sit under untrained and underpaid teachers. This is so because we cling to the neighborhood idea of initiative, support, and control of education.

Take the education of subnormal children. America has not even begun to salvage the possibilities that lie within those of the one talent. Local initiative, save in the largest cities, will not do it. Take the education of the unschooled immigrant; it is hardly toucht. Local initiative and local support are inadequate. This program truthfully implies that the education of the negro is of intimate concern, not alone to a section, but to a nation. Rural education is still calling for recognition of its problems and of the nation's fundamental interest in their right solution.

If anywhere in America there is a group of men and women who ought now to be teaching and preaching and working for a realization in very fact of an American system of education, made in America for America, that group is here, in this room.

In the broadest sense the limitation of state control of education is determined only by the conception of the people of the meaning and worth of democracy, and of their responsibility for its safety, its security, and its success. As a major premise I submit that the time has arrived when the resources and the common purpose of our people should get behind our educational program, when we must accept the principle that we will tax wealth wherever it is for the education of children, wherever they live, for the solution of our educational problems, wherever they are found, for the production of that equality of educational opportunity without which democracy can never realize itself to the full. There are those who at once say, "But that means sending our money away for the benefit of others." It is the echo of the original individualist protesting the education of his neighbor's child at community cost. The protest stands only at the peril of national safety. As for myself, I am unable to think of the children of a community in other terms than as potential assets or liabilities of the state or the nation. If there are those of you of California or New York or

Massachusetts, of Chicago or Philadelphia or Boston, who say you do not propose to see your money thus disposed-then I reply, "Whence comes that money?" Build a wall about your boundaries, check the flow of industry and commerce, and speedily you will discover that you are parts of states and parts of a nation from whose fortunes-good or bad-you are inseparable. Let us understand, once for all, that education does not break down anywhere without causing the people as a whole to share the loss. By the same token, education, universal and efficient, means safety and prosperity common to us all.

Theoretically there are no limitations to state control. But practically there are two limitations. First is the consciousness of responsibility. It is not safe to make use of any given unit of government unless, for the purpose at hand, the people feel themselves in control of that unit. State support of education to the extent that it is regarded as coming from an outside source may be demoralizing. State control, when lookt upon as the officious action of an outside body not answerable to the people, may be mischievous. Both state support and state control, when consciously adopted as the means of making effective what the state as a large community desires, is defensible, is safe, and will be effective. The second limitation is one of administration. Some things the state can do better by using a state agency, others a state can do better by using a local agency. One word as to what we may term the physical contacts of local and state agencies. There can be no question that the acceptance of the principle of state support and state control has been retarded because of the clashing of these two kinds of machinery. Traditions of local selfgovernment, fear of bureaucracy, distrust of officials who cannot be seen, having led the people to dread the results of state participation in the management of schools. State departments may, one may humbly acknowledge, have their lessons to learn. They need to look upon themselves, and try to get others also to regard them, not as outside agencies coming in to determine the practice and procedure of education as with a supernal wisdom.

A state office of education is an agency created by the people to serve it in helping to interpret and make effective what they, the people, desire for the state as a whole. A state department that gets much beyond that point is dangerous to itself and not helpful to the state. Power, authority, and control, these are dangerous words anywhere. They need careful annotation in any office of education, be it local or state. Many of the antagonisms which arise between local and state offices of education would disappear if both would accept their relationship as co-working agencies, each to supplement the other, created to make effective the ideals and purposes of the people in education.

As to the state in its broader significance, the nation, it is true that even the state neighborhood cannot carry out a program of education adequate

for the nation, then there will arise shortly the question of the limitations of that wider state control. Here there are constitutional limitations which can, of course, be changed, tho with difficulty. There are traditions which are altered even less easily than those of the constitution. But this much the nation can do. It can create an agency, or give power to one, to study national problems of education, not as statistics, but for definite and practical programs. It can place before the nation those problems which the states have not solved, or cannot solve. It can place national resources at the disposal of the state, that they may solve its, that is, the nation's, problems. It can help to formulate, and give expression, as with a common tongue, to those common ideals and standards which must more clearly and definitely stand forth as marking the road education must take if it is to lead to a common ground of thought and action this great people which we now, more than ever before, must see as a nation. Finally, what I want to express is this, that our whole system of popular education is predicated on the theory that it is created for, and is necessary to, making our democratic experiment a success, that wherever education breaks down, whether by reason of poverty, neglect, or indifference, there democracy is in danger; that neither the nation nor the states may disregard the social and industrial causes creating inequality in the distribution of wealth and of educational problems; that as those charged with a responsibility in education it is our privilege to face this situation, not only as it involves the local duty immediately at hand, but as it involves those larger relations in which we are so inextricably bound together.

Within a twelvemonth there have past before our eyes things of which we had not dreamed. We have seen a nation's money poured out in sums untold to save a nation's name and a nation's ideals. We have seen a thousand transportation systems gathered into one unit for the carrying of a nation's goods, we have seen a nation's industries drawing into a common current, uniting a nation's efforts.

We have seen a nation's sons gathered from every corner of the land to go forth under one common flag to justify anew a nation's faith in democracy. Is it too much to suggest that we too, charged in a measure with ⚫ responsibility for what lies beyond, in the days of reconstruction, that we lay aside the point of view of a place and think in terms of a nation and its needs?

B. THE COUNTY AS A UNIT FOR LOCAL ADMINISTRATION ALBERT S. COOK, SUPERINTENDENT OF BALTIMORE COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS, TOWSON, MD.

There are two requirements that must be met in order to have a good system of schools-adequate financial support and effective organization and control.