148 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



yet limited to men of taste; but for raucli of tlie ugliness, and espe- 

 cially the suburban ugliness, we are indebted to that individual 

 known as the architect and builder. I need not enlarge upon his 

 sins. You will, i^erhaps, see him at his worst in San Francisco, 

 where eleven bay windows are sometimes bestowed upon one small 

 house. 



The characteristic of the architect and builder is excess of action 

 and deficiency of thought. He looks so long and so steadily at the 

 mere process of building, at the operation itself, that he quite forgets 

 to ask whether what he builds is beautiful or suitable. He belittles 

 the graver function, the designing. The putting of architect before 

 builder on his signboard is merely for trade purposes. Even excel- 

 lence of workmanship is no extenuation for such social crimes. ISTo 

 matter how strong and solid and tight an ugly, inconvenient build- 

 ing may be, it remains a social offense, for it has done violence to the 

 higher and essential requirement. 



The same criticism must be applied to the schools. They are 

 not admirable simply because they are alert. They may do with 

 rigor and vigor many things that had better be left undone. How- 

 ever well and thoroughly their methods may be carried out, they are a 

 poor thing, after all, if what they create is not beautiful and seemly. 

 Back of the hundreds of builders who put together the Public 

 Library, the Madison Square Garden, the Pennsylvania Station, 

 stand the several true architects in whose hearts and brains these 

 buildings first took shape. Ten million builders could never alone 

 have created so beautiful a result. It was not in them to do it. And 

 as an old lady once said in speaking of her sister-in-law, " You can't 

 get more out of people, my dear, than there is in them." 



Back of everything that is noble and beautiful you will find a 

 compelling idea. Back of the five hundred thousand teachers in 

 America, who are to-day fashioning sixteen million young minds 

 into patterns beautiful or grotesque, there should stand the com- 

 pelling impulse of a high social idea. 



The main question in education, indeed, I may say the one ques- 

 tion in education, is simply this. What type of men and women do 

 we wish to prevail? What is the social ideal toward which we wish 

 to work? And the one question of method is. What process will pro- 

 duce this type, will realize this ideal? 



I need not point out that the question of method can not possibly 

 be answered until the first question is definitely settled. That would 

 be a perfectly useless journey which had no objective point in view. 

 Yet I think it is no exaggeration to say that the very large majority 

 of teachers and school boards have very vague ideas indeed as to 

 where they want the children to be landed when the formal process 



