THE NATION'S CHIEF CONCERN B By JAMES Y. JOYNER PRESIDENT NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION Y the evidence of all human history, at home and abroad, this work of education committed to the hands of the teacher lies at the foundation of all human progress, material, intellectual, moral and spiritual; in the proper education of all the children of all the people is to be found the only ark of safety for society, government and religion; democracy is but an empty sound and a delusion unless it be based upon equality of opportunity; and equality of opportunity is an impossibility without equality of educational opportunity. We are wholly committed to the principle, but not yet to the complete practice of universal education, and for this reason we need to be reminded of our obligation. The task of providing equality of educational opportunity for all the children of all the people is too great for any part of the people to perform; therefore, the people's school, maintained by the taxes of all the people, is the logical and inevitable necessity for the preservation of democratic government and society. In an age like ours, and a republic like ours, the right to an education is the birthright of every freeborn child, and the duty of providing an adequate system of public education one of the highest governmental functions; but not less high is the obligation upon us to see that every child comes into his birthright, which should be the chief concern of all good citizens. Such a system is adequate only when it extends from the elementary school to the highest college or university, and places within easy reach of rich and poor alike the opportunity to get at home preparation for college or better preparation for life; a system whose bed-rock is such a public sentiment as recognizes the necessity of the development of the mind and heart of a little child as fundamental, and that the resources of field, forest and stream combined have value in the State only in proportion to the intelligence and virtue of her people. Humanity has never yet been led to the heights of civilization and power and peace save under the leadership of a little child. Truly, "A little child shall lead them." COMMENCEMENT ECHOES The broad scholar has passed. The man of encyclopedic learning is no more. Knowledge becomes so enormous that to possess more than the smallest bit of the vast store is impossible.-PRESIDENT THWING OF WESTERN RESERVE UNI VERSITY. Women are in the majority among those who stand highest in college. Nevertheless they have introduced a new great social element into our colleges. This is thoroughly to be approved in itself, but not when it becomes a distraction. The increased interest in the social side of college life is especially dangerous in its influence upon the men.-PRESIDENT HARRIS OF NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY. The conditions of success are education, patriotism and religion. Education most of us believe in; patriotism is regarded as narrow, and perhaps a bit hypocritical, by some very up-to-date people. Many like to think of religion as a thing of the past, only fit for women and little children. If we neglect these things, we shall surely come to grief.— PRESIDENT HAMILTON OF TUFTS COLLEGE. Those who have felt the helping hand of college and of university. . should go out into the world with the fullest possible measure of intellectual charity. The human mind has a myriad of facets, and it rarely reflects experience and observation in more than one of them. It takes the sum total of many individual pictures to tell the whole story of what actually happens.-PRESIDENT BUTLER OF COLUMBIA UNI VERSITY. College men and women can make no finer contribution to the life of their generation than by insistence that the laws already accepted as the basis of the single human life shall prevail as the basis of national life also.-PRESIDENT FAUNCE OF BROWN UNIVERSITY. The old agriculture may have required so little intelligence as to give rise to the contemptuous use of the word “bucolic"; but the new agriculture calls for a large amount of skill and intelligence. It is for the agricultural colleges to lift the farmer and his profession to the highest level of respect in the community.-PRESIDENT MACLAURIN OF MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. THE AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL REVIEW VOL. XXXI JULY 1910 NO. 10 THE MONTH'S REVIEW WHAT EDUCATIONAL PEOPLE ARE DOING AND SAYING It is all over. They were happy, busy, exciting days-those yesterdays werebut today they are Looking Backward memories only and Looking Ahead memories. There was the class day, and the ivy day, and the commencement day, and the banquets, and the songs, and the orations, and the flowers, and the farewells, and the "good lucks," and the "promises to write.' Yes, they were happy, busy, exciting days. But the joys of the yesterdays are no more. Long live in memory the joys of the yesterdays. And now it is the gray dawn of the morning after. And someway, somehow much of the commencement oratory is slipping from us, just as the professors are slipping away to their vacations. The diploma stares at us from its frame on the wall, and now we are face to face with a world which looks easy-but isn't. While we pause within the shadow of the joyous yesterday, suppose we glance over the shoulder at all the yesterdays of the year just closed. It was a good old year, hyphenated nine and ten was. 'Tis true there was a deal of criticism, but then the criticism started back in the year before, or was it the year before that? Criticism prods us on to new and better things. Do not condemn the critic; rather give him a front seat and listen to his words. Even though he be wrong, his ideas may start other brains to moving in new directions and out of the movement may come things of great value, just as Columbus started out to find something else and found America. Criticism or agitation-and they are very much akin-started men and women to thinking of open-air schools, vocational training, agricultural science, human conservation, and other educational movements of great importance. The last school year brought much development in all lines of education. Perhaps the best of the many good things of the year was the increased effort on the part of educators to get closer to the real needs of the nation's citizens in embryo. Without marshaling columns of dry figures for consideration, let us be satis fied with the statement that the year just closed was the best in the educational history of America. Never was there a year when so much money was given to the cause of education, never were so many or so well-equipped buildings erected, never did the people as a whole so realize the necessity of learning, never were so many young men and women seeking training for greater efficiency. The school system of our country is by no means perfect. And it never will be. Were it possible to have a school system that is perfect today, it would not be perfect tomorrow. Every enterprise in the world must keep pace with progress and the conditions which are constantly changing. We must keep step with the procession or fall behind. This is doubly true of the system of education, and thus educators and the schools they represent are always open to criticism. In looking over a statement prepared by the International Harvester Company of America, it is found that this great concern, which furnishes the agricultural world a large percentage of its machinery, spends $500,000 a year for experiments. This seems like a lot of money, but there is a reason. The reaper which gives the very best of service today may not do so tomorrow, for while the machine is the same, there has been a change in conditions. And that which is best for Illinois and Kansas may not suit the requirements of Alberta or far away Siberia. Education has to face the same problems. Life-and education at its best is the best preparation for life-is not the same in manufacturing New England that it is among the fruit trees of California or in the cotton belt of Texas. Education should prepare one to meet conditions anywhere in the world, with special emphasis on preparation for meeting and mastering conditions he is most likely to be called upon to meet and master. But when educators spend time and money in making experiments in education, critics with loud voices are to be found on every hand. But, nevertheless, with or without money, educational ex periments continue to be made, and these experiments are giving the country a more efficient system of schools. The medical schools of the United States and Canada were hard hit by a report issued last Medical Education month by the Carne Is Severely Scored gie Foundation. The report is the result of a personal investigation by Mr. Abraham Flexner, and it is prefaced by a statement by President Henry S. Pritchett, of the Foundation. It finds American medical education in a very bad state. An idea of the severity of the report may be gained from the statement that of more than a dozen medical schools in Chicago, only three are worthy of the name, and in New England all should be eliminated save Harvard and Yale, and then effort be centered upon these two to make them more efficient. President Pritchett, in his introduction, points out that the studies of academic institutions originally undertaken by the Foundation soon raised the question of the proper relation between professional schools and universities, and that an effort to ascertain this relationship at once led to a thorough study of professional schools as such. The Foundation has-so President Pritchett states consistently held that chartered teaching institutions are public service corporations, that the public is entitled to know the truth about them, and that the institutions themselves should co-operate in their effort to learn and state the facts. With few exceptions medical schools have accepted this view and have freely assisted the work. The significant facts which the report proves are, in President Pritchett's judgment, the following: (1) There has been for a quarter of a century past an enormous overproduction of illtrained doctors; (2) this over-supply of ill-trained men is to be ascribed to the existence of independent or proprietary schools, commercially managed, and dependent on fees for support; (3) the cheap quality of most of the instruction furnished by medical schools; (4) the fallacy of the |