but in proportion as primary education becomes more internal in its purposes, as it relates itself more and more to the ideal possibilities of human nature, the obstacle to this union diminishes.

This reaction against the lower utilitarian type of primary school is a striking lesson for us at this moment. It refutes by the cold logic of fact the notion that the best school for a free people is the school that forces their thoughts forever in the industrial groove or in the narrow circle of immediate interests.

It was as a revelation of national ideals that the education exhibit of the United States made the most profound impression. The limitations of space had favored us. Forced to be typical instead of elaborate, and to follow a classification which ignored geographical boundaries, the exhibit revealed in a striking manner the common elements that pervade all our state and city systems. As we passed from alcove to alcove, which carried the school work on by insensible degrees from the lowest to the highest order, all felt the indwelling principle of unity working onward and upward from the kindergarten to the university, and everywhere working toward external likeness. In this comprehensive view our school exercises took on a deeper meaning. We do not, in the earlier stages, aim at the impartation of stores of well-ordered information, but at the development of power. The idea was emphasized by the statistical charts showing the progress of education in the United States during twenty years. They comprised all classes of institutions; they implied. bonds of union between them all; they showed, by the ever-lengthening period of school life and the ever-increasing attendance upon the high schools, our belief in a long formative period for the child, and in a common heritage of liberal education for all classes. To the French the lesson came like a sudden realization of their cherished dream, but it came with no less force to the more conservative English mind. This fact is sufficiently attested by the extraordinary effort which resulted in the transfer of our material to Manchester. There it stood as an eloquent objectlesson to the men who must guide England in the present educational crisis. It showed the possibility of developing system from diversity without the loss of that local freedom which is cherished alike in this country and in England. It expressed the deep conviction of our people that technical or specialized training should rest upon a broad basis of general culture. Above all, it revealed the orderly impulses and rational intentions which give stability to our national life. Thus at Paris we achieved a triumph, we charmed the eye, we touched the imagination, we imparted lessons which wise men are pondering; but there were also lessons for us to learn. We were not in all things first and best. If such had been our record, nothing would remain to us in future expositions but to write above our vacant education section, "hors de concours" "beyond competition."

LESSONS OF THE EDUCATIONAL EXHIBITS AT PARIS IN 1900

HOWARD J. ROGERS, DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION AND SOCIAL ECONOMY, UNITED STATES COMMISSION TO PARIS EXPOSITION

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:

In discussing this topic, I am under the disadvantage of having twice before been on record concerning the educational features of the Paris Exposition; once in the Outlook, and once at the meeting of superintendents in Chicago last February. I may, therefore, be compelled to depart from Shakespearean ethics and repeat, in substance at least, some things that may have been said; for, naturally, what seemed to me to be the chief educational features of the exposition would be the foundation. for some of the lessons to be drawn therefrom.

"Lessons from the educational exhibits at Paris!" These are quite likely to be as valuable when drawn from negative as from positive sources. Those things which we do not have, and cannot introduce into our educational system, are as oftentimes matters for self-gratulation as otherwise. The comparison of educational methods of countries goes deeper than curriculums, methods, or administrative machinery. It comprises the history of the people, their temperament, their traditions, and the spirit of their institutions. It is the outcome of all these. Education is the embodiment of the spirit, the aspirations, and the compromises of a people.

We speak trippingly at times of comparing educational systems. But do we always realize what we mean?

We may have in a locality a fine series of schools, well equipped, well manned, a matter of pride to the people; we may multiply this community by as many towns and cities as there are in the country, but this does not make a national system; nor will a study, on the part of a foreigner, of this well-regulated and well-oiled machinery enable him to obtain a comprehensive grasp of our educational life. Education is a broad term, and means not only the mechanism of instruction, but the national life outside the schools, that vital intelligence of a people which maintains its institutions and establishes its ideals. How far, then, we can deduce anything of practical value from the study of foreign school systems that will be applicable to our own system depends upon our ability to assume the view-point of the foreigner, and to estimate the hereditary and acquired tendencies of the people.

From this standpoint the comparison of school systems becomes not only a comparison of methods, but a study as well of social and political conditions and their development.

The nations which presented at the Paris Exposition an educational

exhibit complete enough to warrant analysis were the United States, England, France, Russia, Hungary, Japan, Sweden, Belgium, Spain, and Italy. Of these the last four may, for the purposes of this discussion, be omitted. They either contained nothing that could be of use or warning to us, or else what came under the latter heads are included as well in the exhibits of the other nations.

The feature which overshadowed all others in prominence, and which, by its dominance in every exhibit, characterized itself as the foremost educational thought in every foreign country, was industrial education. Whether it came from England, where it appeared in tentative, individual, and irregular forms; or France, where it has reached, under government statutes and municipal control, its highest development; or Hungary and Belgium, where the French dictum is law and the French influence paramount; or Japan, where it is directed rigidly toward those industries which make the wealth and trade of the nation, the object is to train the children of the masses for the trades and crafts which they will pursue thru life, and to minimize the time within which they can become wage-earners and producers of wealth.

My colleague, in her able paper, has set forth the tendencies in Class I of the exposition classification, elementary education. With her deductions I fully agree. The only other one of the six classes which bears directly upon the subject of industrial education is Class 6, industrial and commercial education. The peculiarities of the French system of education, upon which the exposition classification was based, must be borne carefully in mind. Primary instruction, which is the only free education, covers the ages of six to thirteen and sixteen years. Secondary education is entirely distinct from our understanding of the term, and has absolutely no connection with primary education. The course covers the ages of eight to twenty, requires a nominal tuition fee, includes in its curriculum the liberal culture of the humanities, and prepares for the highly specialized university courses. Class 3, superior education; Class 4, art education; and Class 5, agricultural education, are synonymous with our own terms, and need cause no confusion.

The industrial and commercial education included under Class 6 is, so far as France is concerned, the outcome of twenty years of statutory enactments, and of practically twenty-two years of agitation, since it was the dissatisfaction with the exhibit of the French schools at the Paris Exposition of 1878, in addition to appeals from chambers of commerce and large manufactories on the decline of technical skill, which brought about a serious consideration of the subject by the government.

The history of the development of the movement and the struggle between the ministry of public instruction and the ministry of commerce and industries is too long and intricate for repetition here, but the culmination of the controversy came in 1892, when the écoles pratiques de

commerce et d'industrie were established entirely under the jurisdiction of the minister of commerce and industries. These schools are in no sense comparable with the écoles primaires supérieures professionnelles, established under the law of 1880, and referred to in the previous paper, with the exception of the three in the city of Paris, viz., the Écoles Diderot, Boulle, and Estienne. The latter three entirely outclass the écoles professionnelles in the provinces, and are in reality trade schools maintained and supported by the jealous care of the communality of Paris. The écoles pratiques, however, differ from the écoles professionnelles in that the latter aim to give a certain amount of technical instruction as a preparation for apprenticeship, while the former aim to furnish clerks and workmen ready to take their places in the counting-room or workshop. A general education as a basis for the technical training is required, and no boy is admitted who has not fulfilled the conditions of the compulsoryeducation law. On the other hand, in the language of the minister of commerce: "It is essential that special provision should be made at the present time for the requirements of industry and commerce." The situation, from the French standpoint, is well summed up in a circular issued by the minister of commerce, in June, 1893:

The keenness of international competition has revolutionized the conditions of trade. The wholesale use of machinery and minute subdivision of labor have practically extinguished apprenticeship in the workshops. Yet, in view of the constant changes to which machinery is subject, it is evident that there never was a time when it was so requisite that workmen should possess scientific knowledge, and should be thoroly versed in all the requirements of the workshop. It is the special aim of the école pratique to fill the void which now exists both in commerce and industry.

It is these schools wherein the work has been carried on enthusiastically, and under the spur of competition and rivalry, that contributed the exhibits under Class 6 of the exposition. The faculties of the schools demanded a separate building for the exploitation of their courses of study and the products of their workshops, and inasmuch as the ministry. to which they are subordinate was also the ministry by which the exposition was organized and controlled, they naturally received it. For this reason the French exhibits in Class 6 were not found with the main exhibit of French education, but occupied an annex, on the west side of the palace of education. The excellence of this exhibit, the superior quality and finish of the workmanship, and that indefinable touch which characterizes French designing, were far ahead of any similar exhibit in the exposition. In fact, it was above competition. Its only rival was the work of the écoles professionnelles which was exhibited in the Ville de Paris building and covered practically the same field.

If, then, our industrial and social development as a nation demands highly specialized technical training, we have the experience of an alert and fearless nation as a guide. We have for observation the manual training thru all the grades of the elementary school, and the technical

training in the superior and practical schools. Their mistakes can be avoided, their successes adopted. But do our needs demand it? That is the question. The preliminary report of a committee of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, made in New York last July, on "American Industrial Education: What shall it Be?" is presumably the strongest expression to be found for the necessity of manual and technical training in our schools, inasmuch as the sympathies and work of the society are entirely in that direction. Yet nowhere do we find a statement that it should displace any portion of the liberal and cultural education which is offered to the pupils of our schools, but, on the contrary, it is distinctly stated that it must be entirely supplemental to the mindinforming and mind-developing education. Lest there should be any misunderstanding, there is set forth in italics the sound doctrine that "in America all schooling should lead primarily to the elevation and development of the individual, and only secondarily to a greater material prosperity."

The committee further frankly states its inability to agree on the extent to which industrial training should be introduced in the various grades of schools, but confines itself rather to a discussion of the schools wherein all are agreed it should find some place. If, then, a committee of specialists cannot agree on this point, there is little likelihood that the great body of schoolmen will do so. There is probably little desirability that they should do so. Such a consensus of opinion would argue an industrial condition in this country which we do not want to contemplate. The unanimity of France is the last resort of France. We prefer that variety in occupation which accompanies abundance of wealth and opportunity.

The conditions in the United States do not require, nor do our people demand, that there shall be in our courses of study a dominant tendency toward any particular phase of industrial progress. In the European countries the children of the working classes are destined from their earliest years to pursue the occupation of their fathers, and it is only the unexpected which permits them to escape it. With us it is impossible to assign to any child his father's occupation. To attempt to do so would meet with resentment and failure. The conditions which govern our growth and development prevent the possibility of a perpetual or hereditary working class. Such a state can exist only in an old and stratified civilization, where all chances of sudden wealth and preferment have been exhausted, and nothing remains for the masses but to attain the highest possible industrial skill in the arts and trades. This is the rock on which every attempt to adopt foreign methods in toto in American systems must go to wreck. There is no common basis for adjustment. The differences are fundamental and incident to the different theory which underlies the spirit of popular education in the Old World and the New.