The share that the National Government should take in the broad work of
education has not received the attention and the care it rightly
deserves. The immediate responsibility for the support and improvement
of our educational systems and institutions rests and should always
rest with the people of the several States acting through their state
and local governments, but the Nation has an opportunity in educational
work which must not be lost and a duty which should no longer be
neglected.
The National Bureau of Education was established more than forty years
ago. Its purpose is to collect and diffuse such information "as shall
aid the people of the United States in the establishment and
maintenance of efficient school systems and otherwise promote the cause
of education throughout the country." This purpose in no way conflicts
with the educational work of the States, but may be made of great
advantage to the States by giving them the fullest, most accurate, and
hence the most helpful information and suggestion regarding the best
educational systems. The Nation, through its broader field of
activities, its wider opportunity for obtaining information from all
the States and from foreign countries, is able to do that which not
even the richest States can do, and with the distinct additional
advantage that the information thus obtained is used for the immediate
benefit of all our people.
With the limited means hitherto provided, the Bureau of Education has
rendered efficient service, but the Congress has neglected to
adequately supply the bureau with means to meet the educational growth
of the country. The appropriations for the general work of the bureau,
outside education in Alaska, for the year 1909 are but $87,500--an
amount less than they were ten years ago, and some of the important
items in these appropriations are less than they were thirty years ago.
It is an inexcusable waste of public money to appropriate an amount
which is so inadequate as to make it impossible properly to do the work
authorized, and it is unfair to the great educational interests of the
country to deprive them of the value of the results which can be
obtained by proper appropriations.
I earnestly recommend that this unfortunate state of affairs as regards
the national educational office be remedied by adequate appropriations.
This recommendation is urged by the representatives of our common
schools and great state universities and the leading educators, who all
unite in requesting favorable consideration and action by the Congress
upon this subject.