October 1, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



425 



What has been said thus far with refer- 

 ence to the imperative need of national 

 standards as a corrective of merely local 

 and provincial standards, leads up, I be- 

 lieve inevitably, to the view that no national 

 standard can be adequate or stable until it 

 has been consciously referred to the world- 

 standard of our time. In endeavoring to 

 establish American standards, we must not 

 stop short of this ultimate step, the critical 

 comparison of the standards proposed for 

 our own land with those recognized by the 

 rest of the civilized world. Otherwise we 

 shall simplj' have passed from one provin- 

 cialism to another— a broader, more con- 

 spicuous, and therefore more glaring — 

 provincialism. 



It may be said of the world-standard in 

 education, as was said of the national stand- 

 ard, that it is already in existence, but only 

 dimly apprehended as yet. There is so 

 much of free intercourse between the cul- 

 ture-nations of the modern world, that a 

 comparison of scholastic ideals and proc- 

 esses is continually going on. An impor- 

 tant section of our current educational 

 literature is devoted to such comparisons. 

 But these comparisons are still for the most 

 part unsystematic and fragmentary. The 

 attempt has hardly been made as yet to 

 determine to what extent a consensus of 

 international opinion has already been 

 reached in any of the central questions in- 

 volved, or what sort of agreement is attain- 

 able by conference and by the systematic 

 interchange of instructors, students, and 

 practitioners in the several professions. 



It would be an interesting academic 

 exercise to trace the gradual and unnoticed 

 development of this intei'national standard 

 since the time when modern nationalism 

 replaced the cultural unity of the medieval 

 world. We may be sure that such an in- 

 vestigation would bring many siarprises. 

 But our present problem is practical rather 

 than historical. The same needs and forces 



which have made the question as to national 

 standards a pressing and vital question, are 

 operative to-day on the international plane. 

 Within the past three years this question 

 has repeatedly come before the Department 

 of State at Washington, on representations 

 from officials of our diplomatic and our 

 consular service. American citizens — 

 physicians, dentists, candidates for higher 

 degrees in foreign universities— have re- 

 peatedly found themselves at a disadvan- 

 tage owing to the lack of a basis for com- 

 parison of their scholastic credentials with 

 the requirements of those foreign countries 

 of which, for the time, they are residents. 

 It is not generally known how delicate and 

 embarrassing are some of the difficulties 

 which have been encoimtered in this field, 

 and how little progress has yet been made 

 toward a satisfactory adjiistment of those 

 difficulties. 



Not only the practical exigencies of the 

 case, but national sentiment as well, must 

 prompt us to seek for such provisions as 

 shall place the products of American edu- 

 cation on a basis of fair comparison with 

 those of other great educational systems. 

 In so far as our works suffer by the com- 

 parison, they should be improved. In so 

 far as the comparison places us in an un- 

 favorable light because of a misunderstand- 

 ing of what we are actually accomplishing, 

 we must see to it that our system shall be 

 more adequately set forth. Our educa- 

 tional relations with the rest of the world 

 can never be on a satisfactory basis till we 

 are in a position to do our full part in de- 

 termining what the world-standard shall 

 be. 



We do not seek to prescribe standards 

 for the rest of the world. We are not 

 willing that the rest of the world should 

 simply prescribe standards for us. But we 

 do seek to gain and maintain an acknowl- 

 edged position among the foremost cialture 

 nations, such that our influence shall not 



