FINAL ACT OF SECOND PAN AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC CONGRESS. 91 



of Public Instruction in any one of the American Republics, and, in 

 addition, the duties and functions of a Ministry of Public Instruction for 

 the twenty-one American Republics. It is for this reason that the 

 question has been raised in this report, in passing, without attempting to 

 decide it, whether the question of education is not of sufficient importance 

 to establish a union which should be devoted singly and solely to the 

 consideration of educational questions rather than to make it an incident 

 of a union busied with other and important duties. 



But to pass to the duties which any organization must assume and 

 perform in order to give effect to the article. It will be noted that, 

 in the first place, a careful study and investigation and report must be 

 made of treatises dealing with education, and it will be observed that no 

 limitation is placed upon the nature and extent of the study and investiga- 

 tion, other than that such works are to be " of importance to the American 

 countries." Non-American publications are, therefore, to be considered, 

 as well as the Pan American literature on the subject, and, after such 

 study, investigation and report, such works as are deemed to be of 

 importance are to be published either by or under the direction of the 

 department, in Spanish, Portugese, French, or English. 



To accomplish this single purpose requires a very effective organiza- 

 tion and careful and painstaking study and devotion, but it would seem 

 that this is a prerequisite to the success of the undertaking, because it is 

 essential that educators of the different countries should have at their 

 disposal and placed before their eyes such works on education as are of 

 importance to the American countries, in order that American educators 

 may be national agents in the execution of an international policy. 



In the second place, it is to be the duty of the department of education 

 to "keep the different Republics in touch with educational progress," 

 which is a very brief statement of a very difficult duty. Put in simple 

 terms, this clause requires the organization to collect and to classify 

 the facts of educational progress in every one of the American Republics 

 and to distribute such facts in a classified and systematic form to the 

 appropriate authorities thereof. 



In the third place, the organization is required, not merely to survey 

 the literary field, to examine and to report the details of educational 

 progress, but it is specifically charged with the duty of promoting, in each 

 of the twenty-one American Republics, the scientific study of educational 

 problems; that is to say, the organization is to perform the functions 

 of a Minister of Education for each country. 



But this is not all, because the problems are to be examined and studied, 

 not merely from a national but from a Pan American standpoint, thus 



