EDUCATION FOR EFFICIENCY. 363 



EDUCATION FOR EFFICIENCY.* 



By Dr. W. H. MAXWELL, 



SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 



n^HE National Educational Association meets in its forty-fourth 

 -*■ annual convention at the moment when Japan has given the 

 world another great object lesson in the value of education. Ever 

 since Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, the world has stood in awe of 

 that massive and mysterious power which we call Eussia. In that 

 fateful campaign it was not the skill of the Russian commanders or 

 the bravery of the Russian soldiers that wrought the catastrophe; it 

 was the snowflakes — the arrows from the quiver of God — that over- 

 whelmed the might of the invader. Ever since, Russia has gloried in 

 a victory that was not of her own achieving. The world accepted her 

 at her own valuation, and stood in awe. Wrapt in the glamor of an 

 unearned renown, Russia pursued her aggressions practically unop- 

 posed, until her empire stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific 

 Ocean. There her career of conquest has ended. There, once again, 

 has broken out the irrepressible conflict between ignorance and enlight- 

 enment. On the one side stand a people, almost countless in number 

 and rich beyond knowledge in all natural wealth, but ignorant, devoid 

 of initiative, and alienated from their rulers by despotism and cruelty. 

 On the other side stand the Japanese, a people limited in numbers and 

 confined in territory, but born again through the diffusion of knowl- 

 edge and through the universal training for efficiency which has made 

 their inherited patriotism invincible. 



Japan has but repeated at Port Arthur and at Mukden and on the 

 Yellow Sea the lesson of history — the lesson of Marathon, of Zama, of 

 the Invincible Armada, of the Heights of Abraham, of Waterloo, and 

 of Sedan — the lesson that the race which gives its children the most 

 effective training for life, sooner or later becomes a dominant race. 

 Borrowing eagerly from western civilizations, Japan has adopted for 

 her own whatever school exercise or method of teaching gives promise 

 of training for efficiency. Nobly has she repaid her debt to Europe 

 and America. She has demonstrated to the world that the training 

 of the young to skill of hand, to accuracy of vision, to high physical 

 development, to scientific knowledge, to accurate reasoning and to 

 practical patriotism — for these are the staples of Japanese education — 

 is the best and cheapest defense of nations. 



* Address of the President of the National Educational Association, As- 

 bury Park and Ocean Grove, July 3, 1905. 



