EDUCATION-COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT 305 



We may have, therefore, in a locality a fine series of 

 schools, well equipped, well manned, a matter of pride to the 

 people; we may multiply this community by as many towns 

 and cities as there are in the country, but this does not make 

 a national system ; nor will a study, on the part of a foreigner, 

 of this well regulated and well oiled machinery enable him to 

 obtain a comprehensive grasp of our educational life. Educa- 

 tion is a broad term, and means not only the mechanism of 

 instruction, but the national life outside the schools, that vital 

 intelligence of a people which maintains its institutions and 

 establishes its ideals. 



To return to the main proposition: The story of free 

 public education in this country is founded on an altogether 

 different basis from that of continental Europe. We educate 

 all children alike, from their earliest years until the last year 

 or two of the high school course. No discrimination is made 

 or option given except those based upon the mental capacity 

 of the pupil. As some one has tersely put it, " every child in 

 the United States is educated in the possibility of one day 

 becoming president of the country." 



In continental Europe, on the other hand, the average 

 child is destined from infancy to follow the occupation of his 

 father, and it is only accident that throws him from this rut. 

 His training is highly specialized from his earliest years with 

 this object in view, and while he becomes manually the most 

 expert workman in the world in his own particular craft, he 

 has lost sight of the relations of his trade to every other trade, 

 and has never gained that power of initiative essential to the 

 highest success of an individual or of a state. 



We believe the superiority of American workmen and 

 American methods is due much more to the liberal training of 

 our public school children until they are fourteen or fifteen 

 years of age than to the extensive development of any form 

 of special training. First develop the mind on broad and 

 liberal lines so that, as a citizen, the pupil can grasp all sides of 

 a question, and then build on this solid substructure the trade, 

 profession, or specialty which he is to follow. He may not 

 become a wage earner so quickly as under the specialization 



