American education

Preface

From the papers wliicli have accumulated tkrougii trvent^-- three years of educational administration enough have been taken to make this book. For each paper taken thi'ee or four have been left. I stipulated, when the book was proposed, that the selections should be made by others, because I doubted my fitness to determine which of my literary children most deserved an extension of life. Those selected have been freed from references to times, people, and places, fitted into a somewhat symmetrical whole, and revised sufficiently to bring them to date. The result presents as compact and comprehensive an expression of my experience and thinking upon American educational questions as I can hope to gather in a single book. For the assistance which has made this possible my acknowledgments are due to my secretaries of recent years, ]Mr. Harlan H. Horner and Mrs. Honore H. Greene. The introduction by President Butler enlarges my obligations to a member of the guild who never fails to appreciate and always inspires.

A. S. D.

Contents

INTRODUCTION ix

I

ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION

II Elementary And Secondary Schools

I. Demands upon the Schools 119

II. Science in the Elementary Grades 137

in. The Rise of High Schools 147

IV. Teaching in the High Schools 157

V. Common Schools and Universities 165 viii CONTENTS

III The College And The University

I. The American University 187

II. The Trend in American Education 200

III. State Universities 216

IV. The University Presidency 223 V. Limits of Academic Freedom 236

VI. Co-Education 256

IV Special Aspects And Problems

I. Education for Efficiency 275

II. The Farm and the School 291

III. Physical Training and Athletics 307

IV. Public Morals and Public Schools 327 V. The Spirit of the Teacher 343

VI. The Teacher and the Position 355

VII. The Schools and International Peace 367

INDEX 377

Introduction

It is nearly a quarter of a century since Mr. Draper entered upon the work of educational administration to which his life has since been given. He brought to this high task an unusual natural endowment and a still more unusual experience with men and affairs. He did not come to the task of administration from the school-room or the laboratory, but from most active participation in affairs and with the practical interests of men. Experience had given him a sense of proportion and perspective, as well as a knowledge of men, and nature had endowed him with a simple and sturdy directness of thought and speech which gave added weight both to his words and to his deeds.

No other American, I think, has, like Mr. Draper, been successively charged with the administration of a state system of public instruction, with the oversight of the schools of a city of considerable size, with the direction of one of the tax-supported state universities of the country, and finally with the supervision and control of the educational activities of an entire commonwealth. As a result, Mr. Draper has been forced, in the daily performance of the duties of his several offices, to approach the educational problem from many different points of view and to see it under almost all of its limitations and difficulties. He has been a frequent and persuasive speaker at educational gatherings and assemblies, and he has written much for publication, in addition to the preparation of luminous, as well as voluminous, official reports.

The fruit of this unusual experience and activity is presented in this volume in something like systematic form,

X V INTRODUCTION

and will be read with appreciation and benefit in all parts of the United States.

Mr. Draper's educational philosophy is so simple that it is more than usually profound. His training in the law has made him appreciate the full significance of the American doctrine that education is a function of the state, the commonwealth, and not that of the nation, or primarily that of a locality, whether urban or rural. The logical consequences of this fundamental principle carry the administrator far out into doctrines of taxation, of educational supervision, and of educational control. Mr. Draper's creed is frankly and aggressively democratic. He makes no apologies for ignorance because it is well-to-do, or for knowledge and capacity because they are poor. He has thrown his personal and official influence in favor of the policy of offering to every American who will accept it an opportunity for study and training that will increase his individual usefulness and his equipment for public and social service as a citizen.

Those who have been fortunately associated with Mr. Draper have long recognized that it is red blood that flows in his veins and an indomitable will that executes the policies concerning which his intelligence is convinced. He has a keen eye for educational subterfuge and sham, and small patience with the doctrinaire who has lost touch with the facts and with the impressions and desires of others than himself.

In a time of general disintegration and reorganization, when strange and crude doctrines of educational theory and practice are urged on every hand, it is well to have the sane, well-balanced, and well-tested teaching of Mr. Draper to fall back upon for light and for help.

Nicholas Murray Butler.

Columbia University, November 1, 1909.

ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION

Ours is a purposeful nation. It has always faced the east. It has always planned for the future. With the growth in material and intellectual estate, with the reaching-out of the common sentiment for the best opportunities for every one, with the new significance of our political theories in the affairs of all men, wherever they may be, there have come purposes and policies which are new to our own thinking and certainly new to the thinking of the other peoples of the world. The greatest, the very greatest, of these, for obvious reasons, are those which concern universal and liberal education.

Schools are not of recent origin. Learning, speaking relatively, is as old as the race. But any definite national purpose to erect schools for distinct national ends is comparatively new, and the self-conscious generation of a great national system of education by a people, for their own upbuilding and for the greatness of their nation, has come within the memory of living men and is essentially peculiar to this country.

In spite of threadbare claims, the original settlers in America held no settled purposes concerning education which can be differentiated from those of their home lands. How meagre and undefined the educational purposes of the mother countries were, the student very well knows.

Before independence, American schools were dissociated and fragmentary. There was no educational system. The schools, like those over the sea, distinguished between

4 AlVIERICAN EDUCATION

what were conceived to be the simpler needs of the peasantry and the necessity of classical training of the higher classes for service in the church and state.

Independence did not of itself fertilize, and did not reflect educational purpose. Neither the Declaration nor the Constitution a dozen years later carried any reference to it. This was not because the management of the schools had already come to be a function of the several states, nor because they were unwilling to concede that it was a function of the nation. The matter attracted no attention. It was scarcely referred to in the congressional discussions. Nor was this, in turn, because the men of the Continental Congress and of the Constitutional Convention were illiterate or indifferent to learning. The average of scholarship among the members of the Constitutional Convention was high. Half of them were graduates of colleges. The dominant personalities were Alexander Hamilton, of Columbia, and James Madison, of Princeton. Education had no part in the discussions and found no place in the Declaration or in the Constitution, because education was held to be a matter of only local and private concern, and not a function of organized government at all.

Nor was the federal Constitution alone lacking in educational initiative. The first constitutions of the original states contained only slight references to education. In Georgia and in Pennsylvania the legislature was enjoined to see that one or more schools were erected in each county. The Massachusetts and New Hampshire references were more comprehensive but less definite. Massachusetts made detailed provision for Harvard College. The North Carolina and the Pennsylvania articles enjoined that the legislature should so arrange that the public " might be enabled to instruct youth at low prices." This was in conformity with the common thought that it was not the function of the state to maintain schools, although the state might help the people to do it economically. The constitutions of the eight other original states made no reference whatever to schools or to education.

It would be interesting to follow the statutes as well as the constitutions of the original states for educational references. Certain it is that they were meagre. Old usage, the foreign influence, the fact that thought would run in established grooves, the distances and the difficulties of communication, made the evolution of educational purpose a slow and laborious one. The fathers did not bring it all with them when they came. England and America, in the first half of the last century, were educationally not so very far removed from the times of Elizabeth. Educational outlook and purpose grew out of our democratic life, and the stronger and freer that life became, the more rapid and the more virile it grew.

As democracy really became free, and as the conventionalities of the mother political system came to be really obsolete, the educational purpose gained volume and force. It is the operation, not the mere declarations or enactments, of our governmental system that has developed popular purpose. As the people moved West, they managed their own affairs with added confidence and freedom, and as rapidly as they did, the educational purpose grew decisively.

Although the first constitutions and laws of the original states made little or no reference to education, those of all the newer states were alive with it. They were not only alive with provisions for the elementary schools which should be common to all, but for higher schools, colleges, and universities, which should also be common to all. And while the eastern states do not know it, and until very recently have been stolidly determined that they will not learn it, there is no doubt whatever about the public educational purpose having its most luxuriant development among the people who exercise their political power more freely and more uniformly in the newer states of the Union. Wherever caste has been most completely overthrown, wherever the aptitude for self-direction has had its freest growth, wherever the fundamental principle of the Declaration of Independence that all men are created with equivalent and inalienable rights has had its largest acceptance, there the educational purpose of America has had its best exemplification, and there it has borne its most abundant fruit.

It is hardly too much to say that the first educational declaration in American law, which was really more serious than ornamental, was that in the ordinance organizing the old Northwest Territory ; and that the initiatory step in the public policy of setting aside the common property for popular education, which was really potential and continuing, appears in the uniform legislation of the newer states which set aside a section of land in every township for the aid of schools.

As more recent immigration has given unexpected strength and completeness to the equipment of the nation, so it has given a new setting and a new meaning to the educational purpose which flickered feebly in the minds of our forefathers. Some new immigrants have appreciated our privileges better than some of the "older settlers." Ireland and Italy and France have enriched our scheme with wit and rhythm and color. Scotland has added moral strength and mental vigor. Norway and Sweden and Denmark have sent agricultural insight and domestic thrift. The great German Empire has contributed scientific method, intensive mechanical skill, and splendid energy and stability to the conception which was begotten and then for a time held in check by English and Dutch pioneers.

The educational purpose of our nation is a law unto itself. It is a force which all must regard. It acts upon government. It does not desist, it is not discouraged when government hesitates or statesmen cannot see. It is independent of dogmatism, of politics, of racial prejudice or religious bigotry, of language, of state or sectional lines, of partisanship or exclusiveness, of selfishness or sectionalism in any form.

Old Andrew Melville, to the King's very face, told James the Sixth, — who hunted our Pilgrim Fathers out of England, — "There are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland and in one of them James is not a king, nor a lord, nor a head, but only an ordinary member." That was the Kingdom of God and his Church. The other was the Kingdom of Men. One was enduring and the other changeable. So there are two governments in America. One is strictly technical, is exactly regulated by written laws, is definitely responsible to the political sentiment of the country; while the other is a pervasive, universal democracy of sense, of moral purpose, and of learning, with an unwritten, free-flowing constitution, which shapes government to its purposes, and in which presidents and governors and senators are weighed by the same standards as all the rest.

The educational thought of America has no inclination toward socialism if socialism means paternalism. It holds that the Declaration decrees equality of right under the law, and not equality of result in spite of moral and legal right. With legal right it makes personal accountability fundamental in our political system. It opens the door of opportunity to all ; but it takes from no man the fruit of his energy and endurance, of his knowledge and skill, of his patience and thrift, to repair the just consequences of another man's worthlessness. It not only accepts, it is the surest bulwark of, the fundamental principles of our democratic institutions ; it approves the fabric of laws which the wisest men of the race have been a thousand years in weaving, and it is not disposed to avoid the operation of those higher laws which are from everlasting to everlasting.

There is no smack of charity about the public educational system of America. It is for all. It is the universal and inalienable right of every man and woman, every son and daughter of the realm. It is the corner-stone of our plan, the essential factor of our governmental purpose.

If there are children in the schools who need help, if there are others who are not in the schools because they need help, they are to have the aid of private or public charity. That is not lacking. Men and women who administer it are experienced in dealing with the needy. Aid so extended will not breed pauperism, and it will not put the school system in a false light. The public schools are to train boys and girls, — not to support the thriftless or the unfortunate. People are to be encouraged to support themselves. If they cannot do it, they are to be helped as a boon, not as a legal right. It is as fundamental that people shall suffer the inevitable consequences of their own misdoing, even of their own misfortune — except where our moral sense relieves them — as that they shall have opportunity, and have their reward for making the most of opportunity. One principle is the necessary complement of the other. Education is the essence of equality in opportunity in America. Support is not a legal right. The two should not be confused in the common thinking. The schools have all that they can do. It would be most unwise to weight them with any unnecessary burdens, or involve them in popular misapprehension through confusion over fundamental principles. The schools are to train. Private philanthropy and organized charity may give such support to the needy as good sense and good fellowship will justify.

The educational purpose of the nation reaches forward to the very mountain tops of human learning. It is time for all to realize that that purpose points not only to a free elementary school within reach of every home, but also to a free high school in every considerable town, and to a free university in every state. It of course accepts the endowed universities as component parts of the educational system. They afford a fair realization of its ideal in some states; but it insists that they shall articulate with the public secondary schools, and, in one way or another, assure every boy and every girl the true chance which the plan and the progressive thought of the nation guarantee. If not, then it insists that the states shall do this through higher institutions of their own.

It does not insist that every one must go to the higher institutions. It recognizes wide differences in the circumstances, the work, and the outlook of men and women. It distinguishes between the kinds of learning which are best suited to differing and inevitable conditions of life. It does insist that the political security and the economic power of the nation shall rest upon the moral sense and the common disposition to produce ; and not exclusively, nor even very largely, upon philosophic theory, upon moneyed wealth, or upon a mere knowledge of literatures or of the fine arts. Seeking culture, it knows that the only true culture must result from doing, and that polish at second-hand, transmitted without labor, is neither deep nor true.

It does not accept the rather general implication that honor and usefulness depend upon intellectual pursuits. It does not encourage all children to seek them. It would make the work of the schools aid the industries, and it would give quite as much prominence and quite as much honor to manual skill as to intellectual occupations.

It stands for a balanced educational system, the best and broadest that can be made, and therefore good enough for all, in which every one may find what he will, may go as far and as high as he will; and not for a system which dignifies any interest or aids any class as against any other. In a word, it believes in schools of every grade and for every purpose, with equality of opportunity and absolute freedom of selection for all, and with special privileges for none.

All endowed institutions of learning are held to be a part of the public educational system of the country, and private and proprietary institutions, if moved by correct influences and managed by proper methods, are considered deserving of aid and commendation. Public school officials usually give to sectarian and denominational schools their fraternal regard and professional cooperation, and ordinarily regret that any may think it necessary on conscientious grounds to decline the privileges of the public school system and maintain schools at their own expense. Sincerity is recognized wherever it is convincing, and there is constant effort to articulate the public school system with every educational activity calculated to quicken the nation's moral sense or uplift the nation's intellectual life.

It is the overwhelming, and, it is to be hoped, the settled American opinion that neither the federal power nor that of any state can sustain a business relation with, or give financial aid to, or divide its responsibility with, any class or interest not common to every citizen and every section ; but that affords no ground for irritation between any class or sectional interest on the one side and any phase of the state or federal power on the other. Indeed, if the state cannot give its money to expensive work which enters into the building of the nation, it may well give to that work the fullest measure of moral encouragement that will be welcome. In a word, special aid can be giyen to none as against another, but we can go to the verge of fundamental and constitutional principles, with all toleration of opinions and all true-heartedness, to bind together the moral forces and the intellectual activities of all sects and parties for the further upbuilding of thei nation.

Public obligations to afford information, to extend culture, and to aid self-improvement outside of the schools are recognized. There has been no more radiant sign of encouragement in our history, hone, indeed, in any history, than the manifest eagerness of our adult masses for knowledge. Sound policy will give to libraries, and study-clubs, and all the means for study at home, an unstinted measure of generous public aid and encouragement. Whatever adds to the real enlightenment of the multitude, adds to the happiness, the strength, and the security of a republic which rests upon the common intelligence and equality of rights for all.

No other country and no other age ever had visions of our great private benefactions to learning. The common impulse honors the benefactors and holds the gifts to be sacred and inviolable public trusts. They must be neither impaired nor misdirected. The laws must assure the ends for which they are created ; public sentiment must see that trustees execute the purpose of the givers with exactness. No one can foresee the influence of these benefactions. They will gain great ends which are often outside the legal powers of organized government. They will round out and complete the undertakings of government. They will ornament and embellish the educational structure which government erects. They may experiment in fields where democracy must hesitate until the ground is proved. The public educational system will aid them and be aided by them. Combining unprecedented public purpose and public powers with unparalleled private beneficence, the United States will develop the most universal, complete, and potential scheme of education that the wisdom and great-heartedness of man can devise.

Of course, our democracy has its difficulties. Equality of opportunity, from the first school to the last one, with continuity of courses from the elementary work in the primary schools to the research work in the universities, presents difficulties which do not confront the educational system of any other land. It is far easier for a minister of education, without interference, to arrange and administer all this than it is for a whole people to do it. But it is better for the people to do it. And the people tax themselves with doing more than ever confronted any minister of education. The zeal of the people, with fullness of opportunity, often puts more upon the teachers than they are able to do completely. There is seeming uncertainty and indefiniteness. But it is not to be forgotten that the people grow in strength and stature through doing things for themselves. It is the fullness of opportunity and the self-conscious power, and the knowledge that consequences may be corrected if need be, that is rounding out the educational system to its unprecedented proportions and its unparalleled effectiveness. The nation will go on doing things, meeting difficulties, correcting mistakes, bringing the perfect figure out of the barren rock, and gaining the splendid ends for which the people sustain the schools.

It is at all times to be kept sharply in mind that the schools are not only to educate people in order that they may be educated, but also to educate them in order that they may do things. They are to be trained for labor and for effectiveness. Things must be done, and great men and women are to develop through doing them. Through the training they are not only to unlock the truths of science, but apply them to the agricultural and mining and animal and mechanical industries; they are to think out economic principles and understand the under-running currents of foreign commerce and worldrelations; they are to learn the underlying principles of finance and apply them to personal and public credits; they are to abound in toleration and work with others in the institutions of society; they are to stand for knowledge; they are to respect labor; they are to exact the right and do it; they are to bring out the resources, help the thrift, stir the humor, enlarge the generosity, increase the selfrespect, and quicken the sense of justice, of the nation. Moral power and earning power are to develop together. The schools must uplift the pupils, and the people must know that the attitude of the Republic in the world is nothing different from the attitude of the individual units which make the nation. No one-man power, no ministerial power, no money power, no specious but fallacious philosophy, is to rule this country. This is a democracy in which native energy and discussion will point the way..

The educational purpose of America is sharply distinguished from that of other lands. The essential difference comes through our democracy.

The English purpose would have every English child read and write and work. England has simple but effective elementary schools for the peasant class. All peasant children go to them. Although they know nothing of American opportunity, the percentage of illiteracy is lower than in our American states. So it is in the leading countries of Europe. Of course, England has schools for the higher classes. But there is no educational mixing of classes, and no articulation or continuity of work. The controlling influence in English politics is distinctly opposed to universalizing education, through fear of unsettling the status and letting loose the ambitions of the serving classes. The placidity of the social organization seems of more moment than the strength of the empire.

So it is also in France. Notwithstanding the republican form of government, the thinking of a thousand years is controlling. With less native sense and less respect for work, with more inherent buoyancy and more art-feeling than in Britain, the children of the masses are trained for service, — an humble service, though possibly somewhat higher than across the Channel. They are trained for examinations and for routine rather than for power. With less fibre and substance in the character commonly trained, the result is not more reassuring.

There is more to admire in the German purpose and plan, for ambition and determination are not lacking in the nation, and the Kaiser knows that the material strength and the military power of the German Empire rest upon the intelligence of the German masses, and the productivity of German labor. Splendid as that is, it is not enough in American eyes.

Our educational purpose has a fast hold upon all that, and more. The nation wants more than industrial strength and military power. Americans do not know all that is to be known; they may learn something from every other system; but there is an essential and universal educational purpose in America which distinguishes the system from all others. There are no "classes" in education. It is the national belief that the true greatness of the nation and the welfare of mankind depend not only upon giving every one his chance, but also upon aiding and inspiring every one to seize his chance.

The corner - stone principle of our political theory coincides absolutely with the fundamental doctrine of our moral law. All men and women are to be intellectually quickened and made industrially potential, to the very limits of sane and balanced character. The moral sense of the people is determined by it and the nation's greatness^is measured by it. Before this fact the prerogative of a monarch or the comfort of a class is of no account. Before it every other consideration must give way. It is right here that democracies which can hold together surpass monarchies. It is for this reason that the progressive will of an intelligent people is better than the hereditary and arbitrary power of kings. And a sane and balanced and boundless educational system, with a base which is broad enough and a peak which is high enough, will fuse the elements of population and enable a democracy of English speech and sufficient Saxon blood to hold together.

All Americans are optimists. The expectations of the nation are boundless. There are no upper limits. Those expectations are not gross: they are genuine and sincere, moral and high-minded. They are the issue of a mighty world-movement; the splendid product of the best thinking and the hardest struggling of a thousand years.

Critics say that Americans are boastful. It is not necessary to put them to the trouble of proving it : it is admitted. It is a matter of definition or of terminology. Our self-confidence is bom of knowledge and of accomplishment. The nation believes in the stars which are in the heavens, and it also believes in the stars which are upon the flag. It knows its history; it understands its constituent elements ; it has definite purposes ; it expects to go forward ; it believes in itself.

Our nation holds the essential principles established in the great charters of English and American liberty to be its particular heritage. It is enlarging, extending, clarifying, reaffirming, and transmitting them. It is putting its whole self, its political power, its sagacity, and its money, into the work which it has set itself to do. Of course it has its perplexities; but it is without apprehension. The great heart of the nation is conscious of its own rectitude. It will not fear and it will not hesitate. It will act upon its own thinking. It will mend its mistakes. It does not merely stand for security : it stands for liberty and fordoing. It is not' for the present alone: it is for the future. It will take care of its own. It will not hide its light. It will not meddle with other people ; but it will deny to no men and women who would uplift themselves such measure of sympathy and assistance as it may give.

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