August 9, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



169 



be, I can not tell nor even guess. But if it 

 meets the need, it will be an educational 

 invention of the highest order of excellence. 

 In the third place there is the interna- 

 tional organization of education. Commis- 

 sioner Draper has recently called attention 

 to the tremendous number of men and 

 women engaged in teaching throughout the 

 world to-day. There are not far from three 

 and one half million of them, according to 

 his estimates. And for the most part they 

 are engaged in what is essentially the same 

 work, wherever they may be. The full 

 realization of the unity of this great body 

 of teachers, when it is attained, must have 

 profound consequences for the peace and 

 civilization of the world. Already we are 

 working toward such unity in a number of 

 definite and special ways. Many of these 

 ways are already familiar to all : The visits 

 of teachers and other educational leaders 

 of one country among the schools of other 

 peoples ; systematic efforts of one people to 

 spread a knowledge of their culture and 

 ideals among other peoples, as exemplified 

 in the Alliance Frangaise; the exchange of 

 university professors; and a variety of 

 other procedure. If the diplomatic rela- 

 tions of nations have passed into an eco- 

 nomic stage, it should be added that they 

 are passing into an educational stage. Mr. 

 Barrett, the chief of the Bureau of Amer- 

 ican Republics, urges, with good show of 

 reason, that if we wish better commercial 

 relations with the proud and sensitive 

 peoples of South America, we must first 

 meet them on higher ground, through an 

 understanding and recognition of their 

 culture and education. Already we can see 

 signs of the emergence of world-standards 

 in school education and university educa- 

 tion and particularly in professional educa- 

 tion. It is an immediate and practical need 

 that we put our higher education into shape 

 to deserve, and by deserving to compel, 



recognition, the world over, of our aca- 

 demic and professional degrees. All of 

 these things call for new procedure, new 

 devices, and new coordination of existing 

 agencies. That is, in the language of this 

 discussion, they call for a new exercise of 

 educational iuA^ention in its very widest 

 range. 



Finally, the international need empha- 

 sizes the national need. Such a thing has 

 happened repeatedly in the history of in- 

 ternational relations. What we must do 

 to take and keep our place, among the na- 

 tions of the earth, reveals to us what we 

 mu.st do at home. No one in his senses, I 

 am sure, would propose a centralization of 

 American educational systems. But we 

 need as never before an effective coopera- 

 tion of our state educational organizations, 

 and of our institutions of learning under 

 more private forms of control. And when 

 education is spoken of here, the meaning is 

 education in its widest reach, from the ele- 

 mentary schools through the colleges and 

 universities, from the most general to the 

 most special of its developments, through 

 the several forms of professional instruc- 

 tion, through organized scientific research, 

 through our provision for libraries and 

 museums and those movements which 

 promise for us the making of a really na- 

 tional art. The organization of what may 

 be called our national education in a man- 

 ner suited to the spirit of our institutions 

 and in forms commensurate with our stand- 

 ing among the nations— this is an under- 

 taking which must tax the imagination and 

 make demand for administrative original- 

 ity such as the academic world has seldom 

 seen. But it is a work that is to be done. 

 And it will undoubtedly be the work of 

 many men and women, brought together in 

 intense cooperation, and be extended far 

 beyond the limits of a single generation. 

 It will be a work of national invention. 



