EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY. 431 



EDUCATION AND INDUSTEY. 



By Professor EDW. D. JONES, 



UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN. 



EDUCATION is one of the most important undertakings of life. 

 Of the four great institutions by means of which society accom- 

 plishes its purposes, the home, school, church and state, the institution 

 which reduces education to systematic form is one. The evolution of 

 society involves all these institutions in a constant process of readjust- 

 ment to new conditions. Every great social and industrial change has 

 therefore rendered necessary readjustment of the system of education 

 ill use. 



In countries where political privileges are restricted to a few and 

 where economic conditions are stagnant, passport to society is the 

 knowledge of a mass of traditional lore chiefly theological and meta- 

 physical in character, supplemented by the rudiments of the exact 

 sciences. The Eenaissance unlocked for Europe the wealth of classical 

 learning and the fraternity of the learners speedily came to consist of 

 those who had received this knowledge and who could discuss it through 

 the vehicle of the classical languages. The rapid drawing back of the 

 curtain of mystery from the face of the earth during the age of the 

 discoveries and the subsequent slow development of the natural sciences 

 introduced a third great element to the curriculum of educational insti- 

 tutions; namely, science. The organization of the great states of 

 western Europe necessitated the study of politics, history, jurisprudence 

 and public finance. Eventually a home-grown culture in western 

 Europe and America made possible the profitable study of modern lan- 

 guages and literatures. And now comes a new condition, the result of 

 a recent and wonderful evolution, destined to influence the place and 

 function of the school in society as powerfully as any of those that have 

 gone before it. The growth of industry from the crude methods of the 

 handworker, following the dim lights of tradition, to the cooperative 

 effort and applied science of modern times, paralleled as it has been by 

 the evolution of commerce from venturesome and piratical expeditions 

 to a world-wide exchange of goods, which has become as essential to 

 modern society as the circulation of the blood is to the human body, 

 has again made necessary a modification of educational institutions. 

 This marvelous evolution of industry and commerce has created ma- 

 terial for an important group of new sciences, has brought into exist- 

 ence many new professions, and it forms a new world of human endeavor 

 in which new culture and new and worthy ideals must be created and 

 held aloft. Here is room for the work of the school as a patron of 



