V IN HUMAN SOCIETY 223 



If elementary education is amended in the way 

 that has been suggested, I think that the school- 

 boards will have quite as much on their hands as 

 they are capable of doing well. The influences 

 under which the members of these bodies are 

 elected do not tend to secure fitness for dealing 

 with scientific or technical education ; and it is 

 the less necessary to burden them with an un- 

 congenial task, as there are other organizations, 

 not only much better fitted to do the work, but 

 already actually doing it. 



In the matter of preliminary scientific educa- 

 tion, the chief of these is the Science and Art 

 Department, which has done more during the 

 last quarter of a century for the teaching of ele- 

 mentary science among the masses of the people 

 than any organization which exists either in this 

 or in any other country. It has become veritably 

 a people's university, so far as physical science is 

 concerned. At the foundation of our old uni- 

 versities they were freely open to the poorest, but 

 the poorest must come to them. In the last 

 quarter of a century, the Science and Art Depart- 

 ment, by means of its classes spread all over the 

 country and open to all, has conveyed instruction 

 to the poorest. The University Extension move- 

 ment shows that our older learned corporations 

 have discovered the propriety of following suit. 



Technical education, in the strict sense, has 

 become a necessity for two reasons. The old 



