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To fill such

ness of such a board is to govern, not to administer. a place on a board of education is to render to the state service of the highest order.

Acting through its officers, the Board of Education ought to have general control of the entire educational system of the state. This will include not alone the elementary and secondary schools, vocational schools, and any school established for the training of teachers, but also schools for the training of special classes, the educational departments of charitable and penal institutions, and all supplementary educational activities, including those relating to libraries, which are properly a part of the state educational system.

Such oversight will involve the estimation and preparation of a budget for educational expenses, the enforcement of laws relating to schools and other institutions of learning, the classification and unification of the public schools, the establishment of uniform records and reports, the determination of the qualifications of teachers and their certification for the elementary, secondary, and special schools, and the recognition of certificates and diplomas from other states. The board should, as the supervisor of the expenditure of all state money for educational purposes, inspect all institutions and report upon their use of such funds.

The board in coöperation with the state board of health should establish standards for the construction, arrangement, and sanitary equipment of school buildings and school sites; and should direct the medical inspection and study of public health as far as the schools are concerned. Such a program ought to include also a systematic effort to inform the people of the whole state as to the opportunities of their own schools. A serious defect of the present situation lies in the fact that it is not easy for the average parent to obtain disinterested educational advice concerning his children, or unprejudiced information concerning the nearby agencies of education.

The necessity for such a board has already been fully realized by those who have given serious thought to the educational problems of the state. The creation of the existing board of education came as a result of this conviction, and its creation was a long step in the direction of better organization and a clearer differentiation of duties. The existing board is defective, however, particularly in the restricted authority that is given to it and in its ambiguous relation to the superintendent of education. Its reorganization in accordance with the following recommendations would be the necessary initial step for the establishment of a state system of education adapted to the needs of all the people of the state. A

rightly constituted board with competent experts will step by step revise the curriculum of the elementary and secondary schools, provide facilities for the training of teachers, and meet the other problems of state education as they arise.

It is recommended, therefore, that the existing state board of education be reorganized so as to provide for a board of five members to be appointed by the governor, one member to be appointed each year for a term of five years; that this board have general control of the entire educational. system of the state; that the powers and duties now belonging to the present Board of Education, to the Trustees of the Permanent School Fund, to the Trustees of the State Schools of Agriculture, to the Board of Trustees of the State School for Feeble Minded, to the Commissioner of the Deaf, Blind, Idiotic, Feeble-Minded Children of Indigent Parents, and the State Board of Penal Institutions, in so far as the Industrial School is concerned, be transferred to this board; that the chief executive officer of the board be a commissioner of education to be chosen by the board under such conditions and at such compensation as shall guarantee the service of a progressive educational leader; that provision be made for the appointment of not less than four directors or deputy commissioners, one for rural schools, one for secondary schools, one for vocational schools (including agriculture), and one for extension activities. In addition there should be provided in the appropriation for the state board of education a sum of money to cover the expenses of the board, the pay of assistants and of clerks in the office of the commissioner of education, and the necessary traveling expenses. Owing to the impossibility of correctly estimating all of these items in advance, it would be of great advantage, and ultimately in the direction of economy and efficiency, if in addition to the sum set aside for the salaries of the commissioner and his deputies a lump sum were for the first two years placed at the disposal of the board, to be accounted for subsequently in the form of an itemized budget.

4. A Right System of Schools for an American Commonwealth

The extract which follows gives a clear and a very comprehensive statement of the position of the modern state in the education of citizens, and the responsibilities of the state in the matter.

[Pritchett, Henry S., in the 6th An. Rept. Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1911, pp. 119-122.]

The various states of the American Union have with practical unanimity accepted the position that the obligation for general education rests upon the state. This conclusion has been reached in the course of a hundred years of history, during which most of these states have grown from pioneer communities to commonwealths of considerable population and wealth.

The beginnings of the educational systems in all of the states were practically the same. Private initiative led the way. In their earlier history the state governments were only too glad to encourage any effort that looked toward education. Private individuals, denominations, and associations of citizens were encouraged to start educational enterprises, whether they aimed to be elementary schools or institutions of higher learning.

At first in New England and the middle west, and much later in the southern states, with increased population and increased differentiation in employment and increased wealth, the state governments one by one undertook the creation of a general system of public schools, first of elementary and secondary schools, and finally of institutions of higher learning as well, so that in many of the states of the Union one finds to-day a system of general education reaching from elementary school to university, under the control of the state. Alongside of these state tax-supported institutions are a number of institutions under private control whose relation with the state system of education is ill defined and rests in the main upon the ideal of education held by those who conduct the separate institutions. It is only within the last decade that the question of relating these independent institutions to the state-developed system of education has become a pressing one. Until that time education of any sort was held to be so desirable that any kind of school was welcome. Furthermore, the state systems were so incomplete that the privately managed school could find a place in either secondary or higher education. With the gradual rounding out of the elementary and secondary school systems of the various states this situation has

changed, and to-day the state begins to concern itself with the relations of these institutions which exist under its laws, but practically outside of its educational jurisdiction. Only within a few years have the states grown into an educational self-consciousness and have begun to ask themselves how they ought to deal with these detached and unrelated schools. How, in fact, ought they to deal with their own institutions, which in many cases have had as little consideration for the general system of education, and have been as truly competing institutions, as have those that were in the hands of private individuals?

The development of the organized school system resembles curiously in its history the development of the system of railroads. In the pioneer days any railroad built under any circumstances was welcome. It was only as the country grew up, as population became more dense, and as industrial and political problems became more pressing, that the various states turned about to examine what kind of railroad system had grown up under this loose régime, and to seek to bring into the hands of the state once more some sort of authority over systems of railroads that had been allowed to develop in such independence.

The beginnings of this change of attitude on the part of the various states toward educational systems are shown in the appointment in the last three years of commissions in one state or another to deal with the question of education. In Iowa a single board has been appointed to take charge of the three state institutions of higher learning. The state of Oklahoma, with characteristic fearlessness, has appointed a single board to govern eighteen state institutions, of which eleven are educational. The state of Virginia has appointed a commission to examine and to report upon the right relations of all of its institutions of higher learning. A similar commission has been created in Kansas.

In nearly all cases these commissions were originated for the purpose of examining existing state institutions whose lack of coöperation had become evident to the state authorities, but no sooner do such commissions begin their work than they find themselves face to face with a much larger question, namely, what sort of system of schools ought an American commonwealth to foster?

This is a very different question from that which was brought to the attention of these commonwealths in their earlier educational history, as different as the problem of railroad regulation in the central west to-day is from the problem of railroad construction fifty years ago. It is a question that touches every interest in the state, if it is answered fully and wisely, and to an

swer this question fully and wisely required the very best thinking of which civilized and educated men are capable.

It is generally admitted to-day in all countries that the state must furnish to all its citizens the opportunity for a general elementary education. In the more advanced countries it is further recognized that the state must deal also with vocational training, certainly with industrial vocations and perhaps with professions. In a word, a state that to-day addresses itself to the problem of education must consider a system of schools which shall train the whole population in those fundamentals that make for good citizenship, and it must establish as well at the right points of articulation with this system, industrial training schools appropriate to the wants of the various communities, and it may foster in addition a fair number of professional schools for those seeking to enter the professions. It does not follow that because industrial education, for example, is a necessary part of modern educational training, that the state itself must establish the local schools which serve particular communities, any more than it would be called upon to establish local schools to train doctors and lawyers and engineers, but it does mean that the state, in considering its problem of education and the system of schools that it will conduct, must so plan that the system of schools established by it shall minister to the training of the individual in his vocation, whether that vocation be an industry or a profession.

It needs only a statement of this problem to make clear the fact that the question that these state commissions and that the states themselves face to-day is a very much larger problem and a very much more difficult one than the problem that the states have attempted hitherto. For example, the matter of agricultural education is one with which the state has dealt by the establishment of an agricultural and mechanical college, but the experience of forty years has shown that such schools train men for professional life, not for industrial life, and that if men are to be trained effectively for the work of the farmer, local industrial training for agriculture must be established by the separate communities, either with state aid or without. But in any case such schools will not be established successfully unless the state in its educational supervision and in its educational policy provides a system of schools that shall minister to agricultural training.

There are to-day two notable examples of the attempt to deal with this question, the one in Germany, the other in Japan. In the German Empire, as in the United States, the question of education is for the federated states, the local schools being conducted and managed by local agencies, but under the supervision

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