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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLV. No. 1164 



and the significance of public education, is 

 being prepared and sent out. Numerous 

 summer sessions of our leading colleges and 

 universities are contributing much to the 

 dissemination of this newly organized 

 knowledge of administrative principles and 

 procedure among those actively engaged in 

 the educational service. Despite all these 

 recent advances, though, in educational 

 theory and in the organization of our 

 knowledge of proper administrative action, 

 in actual practise throughout the nation 

 our progress at times seems most discour- 

 agingly slow. Only in city-school admin- 

 istration have we been able to make real 

 advances, and these only in certain cities 

 and certain sections of the country. 



Another recent statement that has al- 

 ready become almost a commonplace is 

 that public education, after the close of 

 the present Great "War, will of necessity 

 become a much more important state serv- 

 ice than it has ever been up to the present 

 time. The great world changes which will 

 follow in the decade or two after its close 

 — social, industrial and political — are al- 

 most certain to be far-reaching and vast in 

 extent, and probably wiU greatly modify 

 many of our present educational concep- 

 tions, as well as many of our methods and 

 practices in hitherto undreamed of ways. 

 A much more fundamental education of 

 our people, especially along industrial and 

 technical and political lines, is almost cer- 

 tain to follow. Our present traditional 

 practises and provincialism in the organiza- 

 tion and administration of public education 

 will have to be superseded by a larger and 

 a more forward, as well as a more national 

 outlook. If we are to play our proper part 

 in world affairs in the future — politically, 

 commercially, or industrially — our educa- 

 tional systems must be unified in aims and 

 practises much more than is now the ease, 

 world and life needs must enter more 

 largely than at present into the education 



provided for the masses of our children, 

 and a better-informed intelligence than the 

 local democratic mass must direct our edu- 

 cational efforts, while a much larger na- 

 tionalism in education must take the place 

 of our present provincialism in school 

 affairs. 



"We have then to-day a new interest in 

 proper educational organization and ad- 

 ministration on the part of a small but an 

 increasing number of selected men and 

 women, and we are facing new national 

 and international needs opening up ahead 

 of us which will make heavy demands on 

 those who possess training and competency 

 for the educational service which will be 

 called for. The number who see these 

 rapidly enlarging educational needs and 

 are securing training to meet the future 

 demands is still far too small to supply the 

 trained and competent educational leader- 

 ship that will be needed, but this number 

 may be expected to increase slowly as com- 

 munities offer larger opportunities to such 

 men and women to be of real service. The 

 thesis I want to lay down this afternoon, 

 then, is that it is the lack of opportunity 

 to be of real service which has kept and is 

 still keeping many competent men and 

 women from entering upon or properly 

 preparing for the public educational serv- 

 ice; that this lack of opportunity for real 

 service still is, and until the conditions are 

 changed will continue to be, the greatest 

 obstacle we have to face in securing ra- 

 tional educational progress for our coun- 

 try; and that satisfactory educational 

 progress can not be expected until the ob- 

 structions created by present laws and 

 practises in educational organization and 

 administration are removed by new legis- 

 lation. Let us see what are some of the 

 more important of these obstacles. 



"With us everywhere public education is 

 stiU largely a local affair. The unit of or- 

 ganization is the school district — city, 



