October 8, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



473 



systems, whose eyes are usually turned inward 

 upon their own work, and university depart- 

 ments, whose knowledge of ways and means is 

 by no means complete. The educational office 

 at Washington can be of the greatest service 

 by continuing to do what it is already doing 

 so well, viz., to publish carefully prepared bul- 

 letins upon current educational problems. Its 

 recent bulletin upon the apprenticeship system 

 in the United States furnishes a preliminary 

 survey of the field which had to be made be- 

 fore plans for industrial training could be 

 made with knowledge and with certainty. But 

 there are 10,000 questions which school officers 

 will want to ask, and not a few expert opinions 

 which will be required, and some special 

 studies even which they will want made before 

 instruction along industrial lines can be re- 

 duced to school terms, and properly launched 

 as a subject of study. There are a myriad of 

 points upon which expert opinions are wanted, 

 such as one may get in medicine or in law, 

 when in need of them, but which education 

 has not as yet formulated a definitely satis- 

 factory means of supplying. For illustration. 

 Should education and school management be 

 a matter of state supervision and control, or 

 should they be left to the care of the com- 

 munity alone? This is the old question of a 

 state system versus local organization of 

 schools, but it is not a moot question, for 

 school systems are being reorganized daily, 

 and it must be that experience and use have 

 shown that these plans are not equally ad- 

 vantageous. Again, what is the proper rela- 

 tion of a city school system to the municipal 

 government of the same territory ? The court 

 of appeals of New York State has declared 

 that it is " the settled policy of the state, from 

 an early date, to divorce the business of public 

 education from all other municipal interests 

 or business." Can public education endure 

 unless it maintains this independence of pur- 

 pose, function and control? And yet the 

 rapidly-growing cities of the country are al- 

 lowing their school departments to be annexed 

 to the city hall so completely and so rapidly 

 that freedom to do an educational work bids 

 fair to disappear in many parts of the country. 



Shall the city board of education fix the 

 amount of money required for school purposes 

 each year, or shall the most corrupt and most 

 inefficient of American institutions, the city 

 government, do it? It makes a vast diffei'ence 

 in the effectiveness of a school department 

 how this question is answered, though the total 

 tax rate may remain the same. School de- 

 partments now segregate their expenses and 

 statistics in one way for the commissioner at 

 Washington, in another for the state superin- 

 tendent; and sometimes in a third for the city 

 authorities. The Commissioner of Education 

 is attempting to reduce this chaos to order by 

 securing the adoption of standard forms of 

 school reports; but this necessary reform is 

 greatly hindered by the fact that the accept- 

 ance and use of such standard forms must be 

 a purely voluntary matter, as the commis- 

 sioner can not require it. The Bureau of 

 Education could be of veiy great service by 

 standardizing the different kinds of charges 

 which should be regarded as legitimate claims 

 against the various school funds. As, for in- 

 stance. What items are proper charges against 

 a public school building fund, and what must 

 be charged to contingent funds ? Is new fur- 

 niture put into an old building to be charged 

 to one, or the other ? How about the remodel- 

 ing of buildings to make escape from them 

 easier in case of fire? Must this be classed as 

 repair work, or as building ? Neither the laws 

 nor the decisions of the various states are 

 quite specific upon such points. The need 

 for uniformity of practise is not so much that 

 the proper charges may be made, but that, 

 having been made, caviling critics may not 

 be able successfully to attack them. There is 

 a national municipal system of bookkeeping 

 which unofficially is doing for cities what a 

 similar system worked out by the Bureau of 

 Education should do for the accounting of the 

 schools. What are the health measures which 

 a city school system should undertake? How 

 can it best proceed to enforce the compulsory 

 education law, and bring all its children into 

 school ? What responsibility should it assume 

 for the child-labor law? How can it assist in 

 preventing juvenile delinquency? What part 



