90 THE SCHOOL 



sixthly, he would justly conclude from the amount of our educational 

 discussion and from the scale of public educational expenditure that 

 the present generation attaches to the school, as a factor in social 

 culture, an importance which was foreign to the habitual thought 

 of his own time. 



In bringing about this great change of opinion four nations have 

 borne an especially brilliant part - - France, Germany, Switzerland, 

 and the United States of America. Without Rousseau and the 

 ethical and social ferment of the Revolution; without Kant, Fichte, 

 and Humboldt, not to speak of Froebe! and of Herb art; without the 

 genius of Pestalozzi and his self-sacrifice at Stanz; without the high 

 Puritan tradition of New England; without the illumination of 

 Franklin's common sense; without the logical audacity of Jefferson; 

 without Washington's measured warning; without Horace Mann's 

 missionary enthusiasm; without Emerson's profound insight into the 

 deeper obligations of democracy, the world would have w r on its way 

 far more slowly to the modern conception of the public school. The 

 value of these confluent forces and the subtle outcome of their inter- 

 action upon one another impress themselves upon the mind of the 

 student of the history of educational ideals, and of the struggle of 

 those ideals to get themselves realized in institutional life and in 

 public administration. Not least is this so when the work of the 

 student lies, as does my own, in a country which is under heavy 

 obligation alike to French, to German, to Swiss, and to American 

 educational effort, and which nevertheless has found in no one of 

 them singly the precise formula of a remedy for its own special 

 educational needs. 



Is there not often a delusive simplicity in too highly generalized 

 discussions of the worth of the elementary school? The elementary- 

 school problem in the modern state is not one problem, but a con- 

 glomerate of problems. May we not say that educational progress 

 will lie in the direction of differentiation of schools with definite 

 regard to different types of future calling in the body politic, and to 

 different kinds of social need, rather than in the assimilation of all 

 the public elementary schools in a community to one general form, 

 whether in respect to discipline (some schools need a stricter discip- 

 line than others), to balance of studies or to internal organization? 

 Differentiation of schools within a general framework of administra- 

 tive unity seems necessary if the elementary schools are to grapple 

 with the complex needs of modern and especially with those of 

 city communities. (This view is confirmed by the fact that in the 

 sphere of high-school education there is a similar tendency towards 

 differentiation of aims.) 



Another obstacle to educational progress has lain in the too com- 

 mon habit of regarding the school as if it were almost an end in itself, 



