92 THE SCHOOL 



could venture to build up a consistent and accurately classified theory 

 of educational aims and practice, adjusted to the diverse and per- 

 plexing needs of modern life. Hence it is prudent to regard much 

 of our present practice as provisional and as likely to require con- 

 siderable revision when more has been done to coordinate the experi- 

 ence already gained in our own and other related branches of social 

 effort, and when the time has come to draw confident conclusions 

 from a wide range of skillfully planned educational experiments. 



From this point of view, the highest significance of the current 

 modern conception of the public school seems to lie less in what 

 it has already achieved, great though that achievement has been, 

 than in the certainty of the further changes to which it promises to 

 lead. In few parts of the field of social regulation must the student- 

 administrator feel himself further from his final conclusions than in 

 the matter of public education. The subject of his study is vast, 

 iridescent with incessant change, and still largely unexplored. 

 Some of the factors are hidden in their operation, elusive of exact 

 analysis, and necessarily slow in producing their effects. The 

 sciences from which he must derive some of his guiding principles 

 are themselves germinating afresh. Moreover, education, in any 

 full sense of the word, involves a social ideal. It postulates a stable 

 social structure. It operates through a variety of influences, only 

 some of which are, or can be, concentrated in the work of the school. 

 But at the present time we are but feeling our way toward some 

 firmer and less fluctuating form of social organization. It is im- 

 possible to predict the outcome of the stupendous forces, economic 

 and emotional, which are now stirring the world to its depths. 

 Educational organization follows great intellectual and social move- 

 ments after an interval, and attempts to carry out their main idea. 

 It was so at the time of the Renaissance and at the Reformation. 

 At the present time educational thought faithfully reflects the 

 welter of conflicting ideas in which we live. 



During the past half century the most characteristic achievement 

 of the public elementary school, in its best democratic form, has been 

 its work of social liberation and of social encouragement. It has 

 opened new avenues of hope, new opportunities of self-realization. 

 Its economic service to the world, at a period when individual 

 buoyancy and initiative were especially needed, has been immense. 



But still greater has been its service in stimulating a belief in 

 ideals among great multitudes of people, who would otherwise have 

 been in grave danger of falling into a state of intellectual indifference 

 bordering upon materialism. At a period of rapid intellectual and 

 social transition it has furnished new motives of action, new hopes 

 for the future. It has helped forward those who were economically 

 and morally strong enough to avail themselves of the new opportun- 



