October 8, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



471 



Government can do nothing; each community 

 must work out its own educational salvation; we 

 must wait for the people to act; they should have 

 the kind of schools that they want, and they 

 should be free to develop educationally as fast or 

 as slowly as they may care to; the whole matter 

 of education should be left to them. 



The other type of answer was diametrically 

 opposed to this. It ran: 



Government can and must help in the work of 

 education; the nation has done much, but what it 

 has done is all too little compared with what 

 should have been done in promoting school work. 

 V e are told — and it is an accepted dictum of 

 iimerican life — that the very existence of the 

 nation depends upon the spread of education 

 among its people. Yet works meet for such a 

 faith have not been produced at Washington. 

 The federal government has consigned its chief 

 interest to the care of a bureau, and has accorded 

 to the titular head of all the educational work of 

 this. great country the dignity of a bureau chief. 

 The authority of the United States Commissioner 

 is even less adequate, for in his last report we 

 read: "The Bureau of Education is peculiarly 

 dependent upon the cooperative spirit among the 

 school ofEcers of the country, for it can only ask 

 for information, which is given voluntarily or not 

 at all." The initiative of local communities, and 

 of the states in some cases, acting as a whole, has 

 produced a variety of educational means, method, 

 plans, systems, institutions, results. The nation 

 spends vast sums in them, but there is too little 

 coordination of all this work, too little wise 

 planning and expert counsel, to accomplish the 

 results which should be accomplished. Govern- 

 ment should help by creating an agency to co- 

 ordinate, encourage, initiate and oversee the edu- 

 cational activity of the entire land. The next 

 great step in the advancement of learning among 

 the American people is to enlarge and safeguard 

 its interests, by giving the Commissioner of Edu- 

 cation the rank and the authority of a secretary 

 in the President's cabinet. • 



There is something to be said for both 

 these points of view — much more, we think, 

 for the latter than for the former. The in- 

 terests of education are momentous. Its ac- 

 tivities are so chaotic that it must have a pilot 

 to direct its course. Dr. Draper has shown 

 conclusively that a federal educational plan is 

 needed, in order that the national government 

 may more efficiently administer the educa- 



tional undertakings and responsibility which 

 are now parcelled out among a number of 

 government officers. He has called upon the 

 nation to use the educational office which it 

 has created, and not to neglect and belittle it, 

 but rather to make of it an educational organ- 

 ization worthy of such a people. President 

 Pritehett has called attention to the confusion 

 and false pretense which rub elbows with the 

 standard work of standard institutions in the 

 field of the higher education, and has pointed 

 to a work of standardizing and criticizing ami 

 evaluating college and university incoi-pora- 

 tion, instruction and degree-givingy which 

 must be done by the national government, if 

 it is to be done at all. The national univer- 

 sity at Washington is a project which will not 

 down. What is most needed to bring it into 

 being is a national educational agency, with 

 sufficient authority to pass upon the nation's 

 need for such an institution, and adequate! .v 

 to plan for it in whatever form it is needed. 

 Without some guiding authority to shape it, 

 it is certain to be a many-headed compromise, 

 born of committee deliberations, rather than 

 the powerful head of the nation's educational 

 work, which only a responsible authority can 

 make it. In other countries, the interests of 

 education and the fine arts are generally re- 

 garded as so completely indivisible that they 

 are committed to the care of a single minister 

 of public instruction and the fine arts. So 

 should it be here, and the same unity of in- 

 terest should be recognized by educational and 

 artistic forces everywhere throughout the land. 

 In addition to the administration of the 

 educational work, which is already under the 

 care of the nation, the standardizing and in- 

 specting of the higher instruction of the 

 country, the propagating of a national uni- 

 versity in whatever form may be determined 

 as most desirable, and the fostering of the 

 fine arts as a function of government, there 

 remains for the Secretary of Public Instruc- 

 tion and Pine Arts the work of maintaining a 

 national clearing house to further the activi- 

 ties of primary and secondary education 

 throughout the land. Like the Department of 

 Agriculture, it should be a center for the com- 



