supposed to be prepared, either to go into the world as a fairly
well-educated citizen, or to continue his studies for a professional
career. He finds the graduate schools of the universities ready to give
him courses which lead to the degree of M.A. or Ph.D., and prepare him
for the higher kind of teaching. The schools of law and medicine and
engineering offer courses of from two to four years with a degree of
LL.B. or M.D. or C.E. or M.E. at the end of them. The theological
seminaries are ready to instruct him for the service of the church in a
course of three or four years.
By this time he is twenty-four or twenty-five years old. Unless he has
special ambitions which lead him to study abroad, or to take up original
research at Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, or some other
specially equipped university, he is now ready for practical work. The
American theory is that he should go to work and get the rest of his
education in practice.
Of course there have been short cuts and irregular paths open to him all
along the way,--a short cut from the high school to the technical
school,--a short cut into law or medicine by the way of private
preparation for the examination, which in some States is absurdly low.
But these short cuts are being closed up very rapidly. It is growing
more and more difficult to get into a first-class professional school
without a collegiate or university degree. Already, if the American
student wants system and regularity, he can get a closely articulated
course, fitted to his individual needs, from the primary school up to
the door of his profession.
But the real value of that course depends upon two things that are
beyond the power of any system to insure--the personal energy that he
brings to his work, and the personal power of the professors under whom
he studies. I suppose the same thing is true in France as in America.
Neither here nor there can you find equality of results. All you have a
right to expect is equality of opportunity.
II. The great symbol and instrument of this idea of equal opportunity in
the United States is the common school. In every State of the Union
provision is made for the education of the children at public expense.
The extent and quality of this education, the methods of control, the
standards of equipment, even the matter of compulsory or voluntary
attendance, vary in different States and communities. But, as a rule,
you may say that it puts within the reach of every boy and girl free
instruction from the _a_-_b_-_c_ up to the final grade of a _lycée_.
The money expended by the States on these common schools in 1905-1906
was $307,765,000,--more than one-third of the annual expenditure of the
national government for all purposes, more than twice as much as the
State governments spent for all other purposes. This sum, you
understand, was raised by direct, local taxation. Neither the import
duties nor the internal revenue contributed anything to it. It came
directly from the citizen's pocket, at the rate of $3.66 a year _per
capita_, or nearly $13 a year for every grown-up man.
How many children were benefited by it? Who can tell? 16,600,000 boys
and girls were enrolled in the public schools (that is to say, more than
70 per cent of the whole number of children between five and eighteen
years of age, and about 20 per cent of the total population). The
teachers employed were 109,000 men, 356,000 women. The average daily
expenditure for each pupil was 17 cents; the average annual expenditure,
about $25.
In addition to this number there are at least 1,500,000 children in
privately endowed and supported schools, secular or religious. The
Catholic Church has a system of parochial schools which is said to
provide for about a million children. Many of the larger Protestant
Churches support high schools and academies of excellent quality. Some
of the most famous secondary schools, like Phillips Exeter and Andover,
St. Paul's, the Hill School, Lawrenceville School, are private
foundations well endowed.
These figures do not mean much to the imagination. Statistics are like
grapes in their skins. You have to put a pressure upon them to extract
any wine. Observe, then, that if you walked through an American town
between eight and nine in the morning, and passed a thousand people
indoors and out, more than two hundred of them would be children going
to school. Perhaps twenty of these children would turn in at private
schools, or church schools. But nine-tenths of the little crowd would be
on their way to the public schools. The great majority of the children
would be under fourteen years of age; for only about one child out of
every twenty goes beyond that point in schooling. Among the younger
children the boys would outnumber the girls a little. But in the small
group of high-school children there would be three girls to two boys,
because the boys have to go to work earlier to earn a living.
Suppose you followed one of these groups of children into the school,
what would you find? That would depend entirely upon local
circumstances. You might find a splendid building with modern fittings;
you might find an old-fashioned building, overcrowded and ill-fitted.
Each State, as I have said before, has its own common-school system. And
not only so, but within the State there are smaller units of
organization--the county, the township, the school district. Each of
these may have its own school board, conservative or progressive,
generous or stingy, and the quality and equipment of the schools will
vary accordingly. They represent pretty accurately the general
enlightenment and moral tone of the community.
Wealth has something to do with it, of course. People cannot spend money
unless they have it. The public treasury is not a Fortunatus' purse
which fills itself. In the remote country districts, the little red
schoolhouse, with its single room, its wooden benches, its iron stove,
its unpainted flagstaff, stands on some hill-top without a tree to
shadow it, in brave, unblushing poverty. In the richer cities there are
common school palaces with an aspect of splendour which is almost
disconcerting.
Yet it is not altogether a question of wealth. It is also a question of
public spirit. Baltimore is nearly as large and half as rich as Boston,
yet Boston spends about three times as much on her schools. Richmond has
about the same amount of taxable property as Rochester, N.Y., yet
Richmond spends only one-quarter as much on her schools. Houston, Texas;
Wilmington, Delaware; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Trenton, New Jersey; New
Bedford, Massachusetts; and Des Moines, Iowa, are six cities with a
population of from 80,000 to 100,000 each, and not far apart in wealth.
But their public-school bills in 1906 varied as follows: Des Moines,
$492,000; New Bedford, $472,000; Harrisburg, $304,000; Trenton,
$300,000; Wilmington, $226,000; and Houston, the richest of the six,
$163,000.
If you should judge from this that the public schools are most liberally
supported in the North Atlantic, North Central, and Far Western States,
you would be right. The amount that is contributed to the common schools
per adult male inhabitant is largest in the following States in order:
Utah, $22; North Dakota, $21; New York, $20; Colorado, $20;
Massachusetts, $19; South Dakota, $19; Nebraska, $17; and Pennsylvania,
$16. The comparative weakness of the common schools in the South
Atlantic and South Central States has led to the giving of large sums of
money by private benevolence, the Peabody Fund, the Slater Fund, the
Southern Education Fund, which are administered by boards of trustees
for the promotion of education in these backward regions. The Spirit of
America strongly desires to spread, to improve, to equalize and
coördinate, the public schools of the whole country.
Is it succeeding? What lines is it following? Where are the changes most
apparent?
First of all, there is a marked advance in the physical equipment of the
common school. In the villages and in the rural districts the new
buildings are larger and more commodious than the old ones. In many
parts of the country the method of concentration is employed. Instead of
half a dozen poor little schoolhouses scattered over the hills, one good
house is built in a central location, and the children are gathered from
the farmhouses by school omnibuses or by the electric trolley-cars.
Massachusetts made a law in 1894 requiring every township which did not
have a high school to pay the transportation expenses of all qualified
pupils who wished to attend the high schools of neighbouring towns.
In many States text-books are provided at the public cost. In the cities
the increased attention to the physical side of things is even more
noticeable. No expense is spared to make the new buildings attractive
and convenient. Libraries and laboratories, gymnasiums and
toilet-rooms, are provided. In some cities a free lunch is given to the
pupils.
The school furniture is of the latest and most approved pattern. The old
idea of the adjustable child who could be fitted to any kind of a seat
or desk, has given way to the new idea of the adjustable seat and desk
which can be fitted to any kind of a child. School doctors are employed
to make a physical examination of the children. In a few cities there
are school nurses to attend to the pupils who are slightly ailing.
Physical culture, in the form of calisthenics, military drill,
gymnastics, is introduced. Athletic organizations, foot-ball clubs,
base-ball clubs, are encouraged among the boys. In every way the effort
is apparent to make school life attractive, more comfortable, more
healthful.
Some critics say that the effort is excessive, that it spoils and
softens the children, that it has distracted their attention from the
serious business of hard study. I do not know. It is difficult for a man
to remember just how serious he was when he was a boy. Perhaps the
modern common-school pupil is less Spartan and resolute than his father
used to be. Perhaps not. Pictures on the wall and flowers in the window,
gymnastics and music, may not really distract the attention more than
uncomfortable seats and bad ventilation.
Another marked tendency in the American common school, at least in the
large towns and cities, is the warm, one might almost say feverish,
interest in new courses and methods of study. In the primary schools
this shows itself chiefly in the introduction of new ways of learning to
spell and to cipher. The alphabet and the multiplication table are no
longer regarded as necessities. The phonetic pupil is almost in danger
of supposing that reading, writing, and arithmetic are literally "the
three _r_'s." Hours are given to nature-study, object-lessons, hygiene.
Children of tender years are instructed in the mysteries of the
digestive system. The range of mental effort is immensely diversified.
In the high schools the increase of educational novelties is even more
apparent. The courses are multiplied and divided. Elective studies are
offered in large quantity. I take an example from the programme of a
Western high school. The studies required of all pupils are: English,
history, algebra, plane geometry, biology, physics, and Shakespeare. The
studies offered for a choice are: psychology, ethics, commercial law,
civics, economics, arithmetic, book-keeping, higher algebra, solid
geometry, trigonometry, penmanship, phonography, drawing and the history
of art, chemistry, Latin, German, French, Spanish, and Greek. This is
quite a rich intellectual bill of fare for boys and girls between
fourteen and eighteen years old. It seems almost encyclopædic,--though
I miss a few subjects like Sanskrit, Egyptology, photography, and
comparative religions.
The fact is that in the American high schools, as in the French _lycées_
the effort to enlarge and vary the curriculum by introducing studies
which are said to be "urgently required by modern conditions" has led to
considerable confusion of educational ideals. But with us, while the
extremes are worse, owing to the lack of the central control, the
disorder is less universal, because the conservative schools have been
free to adhere to a simpler programme. It is a good thing, no doubt,
that the rigidity of the old system, which made every pupil go through
the same course of classics and mathematics, has been relaxed. But our
danger now lies in the direction of using our schools to fit boys and
girls to make a living, rather than to train them in a sound and
vigorous intellectual life. For this latter purpose it is not true that
all branches of study are of equal value. Some are immensely superior.
We want not the widest range, but the best selection.
There are some points in which the public schools of America, so far as
one can judge from the general reports, are inferior to those of France.
One of these points, naturally, is in the smooth working that comes from
uniformity and coördination. Another point, strangely enough, is in the
careful provision for moral instruction in the primary schools. At
least in the programmes of the French schools, much more time and
attention are given to this than in the American programmes.
Another point of inferiority in the United States is in the requirement
of proper preparation and certification of all teachers; and still
another is in the security of their tenure of office and the length of
their service in the profession. The teaching force of the American
schools is a noble army; but it would be more efficient if the regular
element were larger in proportion to the volunteers. The _personnel_
changes too often.
One reason for this, no doubt, is the fact that the women outnumber the
men by three to one. Not that the women are poorer teachers. Often,
especially in primary work, they are the best. But their average term of
professional service is not over four years. They are interrupted by
that great accident, matrimony, which invites a woman to stop teaching,
and a man to continue.
The shortage of male teachers, which exists in so many countries, is
felt in extreme form in the United States. Efforts are made to remedy it
by the increase of normal schools and teachers' colleges, and by a
closer connection between the universities and the public-school system.
In the conduct and development of the common schools we see the same
voluntary, experimental, pragmatic way of doing things that is so
characteristic of the Spirit of America in every department of life.
"Education," say the Americans, "is desirable, profitable, and
necessary. The best way for us to get it is to work it out for
ourselves. It must be practically adapted to the local conditions of
each community, and to the personal needs of the individual. The being
of the child must be the centre of development. What we want to do is to
make good citizens for American purposes. Liberty must be the
foundation, unity the superstructure."
This, upon the whole, is what the common schools are doing for the
United States: Three-fourths of the children of the country (boys and
girls studying together from their sixth to their eighteenth year) are
in them. They are immensely democratic. They are stronger in awakening
the mind than in training it. They do more to stimulate quick perception
than to cultivate sound judgment and correct taste. Their principles are
always good, their manners sometimes. Universal knowledge is their
foible; activity is their temperament; energy and sincerity are their
virtues; superficiality is their defect.
Candour compels me to add one more touch to this thumb-nail sketch of
the American common school. The children of the rich, the socially
prominent, the higher classes, if you choose to call them so, are not
generally found in the public schools. At least in the East and the
South, most of these children are educated in private schools and
academies.
One cause of this is mere fashion. But there are two other causes which
may possibly deserve to be called reasons, good or bad.
The first is the fear that coeducation, instead of making the boys
refined and the girls hardy, as it is claimed, may effeminate the boys
and roughen the girls.
The second is the wish to secure more thorough and personal teaching in
smaller classes. This the private schools offer, usually at a high
price. In the older universities and colleges, a considerable part, if
not the larger number, of the student body, comes from private
preparatory schools and academies. Yet it must be noted that of the men
who take high honours in scholarship a steadily increasing number,
already a majority, are graduates of the free public high schools.
This proves what? That the State can give the best if it wants to. That
it is much more likely to want to do so if it is enlightened,
stimulated, and guided by the voluntary effort of the more intelligent
part of the community.
III. This brings me to the last division of the large subject around
which I have been hastily circling: the institutions of higher
education,--universities, colleges, and technological schools. Remember
that in America these different names are used with bewildering freedom.
They are not definitions, nor even descriptions; they are simply "tags."
A school of arts and trades, a school of modern languages, may call
itself a university. An institution of liberal studies, with
professional departments and graduate schools attached to it, may call
itself a college. The size and splendour of the label does not determine
the value of the wine in the bottle. The significance of an academic
degree in America depends not on the name, but on the quality, of the
institution that confers it.
But, generally speaking, you may understand that a college is an
institution which gives a four years' course in liberal arts and
sciences, for which four years of academic preparation are required: a
university adds to this, graduate courses, and one or more professional
schools of law, medicine, engineering, divinity, or pedagogy; a
technological school is one in which the higher branches of the applied
arts and sciences are the chief subjects of study and in which only
scientific degrees are conferred.
Of these three kinds of institutions, 622 reported to the United States
Bureau of Education in 1906: 158 were for men only; 129 were for women
only; 335 were coeducational. The number of professors and instructors
was 24,000. The number of undergraduate and resident graduate students
was 136,000. The income of these institutions for the year was
$40,000,000, of which a little less than half came from tuition fees,
and a little more than half from gifts and endowments. The value of the
real estate and equipment was about $280,000,000, and the invested funds
for endowment amounted to $236,000,000.
These are large figures. But they do not convey any very definite idea
to the mind, until we begin to investigate them and ask what they mean.
How did this enormous enterprise of higher education come into being?
Who supports it? What is it doing?
There are three ways in which the colleges and universities of America
have originated. They have been founded by the churches to "provide a
learned and godly ministry, and to promote knowledge and sound
intelligence in the community." They have been endowed by private and
personal gifts and benefactions. They have been established by States,
and in a few cases by cities, to complete and crown the common-school
system.
But note that in the course of time important changes have occurred.
Most of the older and larger universities which were at first
practically supported and controlled by churches, have now become
independent and are maintained by non-sectarian support. The
institutions which remain under control of churches are the smaller
colleges, the majority of which were established between 1810 and 1870.
The universities established by a large gift or bequest from a single
person, of which Johns Hopkins in Maryland, Leland Stanford in
California, and Chicago University founded by the head of the Standard
Oil Company, may be taken as examples, are of comparatively recent
origin. Their immediate command of large wealth has enabled them to do
immense things quickly. Chicago is called by a recent writer "a
University by enchantment."
In the foundation of State universities the South pointed the way with
the Universities of Tennessee North Carolina, and Georgia, at the end of
the eighteenth century. But since that time the West has distinctly
taken the lead. Out of the twenty-nine colleges and universities which
report an enrolment of over a thousand undergraduate and graduate
students, sixteen are State institutions, and fourteen of these are west
of the Alleghanies.
It is in these State universities, especially in the Middle West, in
Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, that you will see the
most remarkable illustration of that thirst for knowledge, that ambition
for personal development, which is characteristic of the Spirit of Young
America.
The thousands of sons and daughters of farmers, mechanics, and
tradesmen, who flock to these institutions, are full of eagerness and
hope. They are no respecters of persons, but they have a tremendous
faith in the power of education. They all expect to succeed in getting
it, and to succeed in life by means of it. They are alert, inquisitive,
energetic; in their work strenuous, and in their play enthusiastic. They
diffuse around them an atmosphere of joyous endeavour,--a nervous,
electric, rude, and bracing air. They seem irreverent; but for the most
part they are only intensely earnest and direct. They pursue their
private aim with intensity. They "want to know." They may not be quite
sure what it is that they want to know. But they have no doubt that
knowledge is an excellent thing, and they have come to the university to
get it. This strong desire to learn, this attitude of concentrated
attack upon the secrets of the universe, seems to me less noticeable
among the students of the older colleges of the East than it is in these
new big institutions of the Centre.
The State universities which have developed it, or grown up to meet it,
are in many cases wonderfully well organized and equipped. Professors of
high standing have been brought from the Eastern colleges and from
Europe. The main stress, perhaps, is laid upon practical results, and
the technique of industry. Studies which are supposed to be directly
utilitarian take the precedence over those which are regarded as merely
disciplinary. But in the best of these institutions the idea of general
culture is maintained.
The University of Michigan, which is the oldest and the largest of these
western State universities, still keeps its primacy with 4280 students
drawn from 48 States and Territories. But the Universities of Wisconsin,
and Minnesota, and Illinois, and California are not unworthy rivals.
A member of the British Commission which came to study education in the
United States four years ago gave his judgment that the University of
Wisconsin was the foremost in America. Why? "Because," said he, "it is a
wholesome product of a commonwealth of three millions of people; sane,
industrial, and progressive. It knits together the professions and
labours; it makes the fine arts and the anvil one."
That is a characteristic modern opinion, coming, mark you, not from an
American, but from an Englishman. It reminds me of the advice which an
old judge gave to a young friend who had just been raised to the
judicial bench. "Never give reasons," said he, "for your decisions. The
decision may often be right, but the reasons will probably be wrong."