this reason it was the more typical. It emphasized a saying of Michael Sadler that "almost every school in England is a type by itself, the embodiment of an idea which to be understood must be studied in its genesis." This is especially true of the secondary schools, which are generally meant when English national education is discussed; but it is true to a degree also of the public elementary schools. Under this head were grouped infant exercises and advanced work in algebra and geometry, in Latin and French, from the higher-grade board schools of London, Birmingham, and other cities, which by a legal evasion are elementary, tho engaged on secondary subjects. When I asked for examples of the best methods in elementary education, the English director showed me exercises from private schools which prepare boys for colleges, like Eton and Harrow, and which were classified with them. This was confusing, tho significant of social distinctions which are never ignored in England.

The English exhibit was marked also by the absence of typical methods, that is, methods of instruction reflected in the work of pupils. Even the art work of English schools has lost that uniform character which once betrayed the overshadowing influence of South Kensington. In England, as in the United States, there is a return to nature for models and motives, altho this movement in England has not entirely supplanted the conventionalized art, nor has it yet attained the unity of idea and procedure noticeable in our own art training. I saw excellent work in every branch of study from English schools, and I saw honest poor work of a kind that may be found in other countries, but which was not shown at Paris. But seldom did the work convey any hint of the method by which the subject had been unfolded. In this general absence of pedagogical uniformity, the one common characteristic of all the English school work, good and mediocre, stood out in bold relief. The stress of English training falls upon the will. The average result is not so high as in France and the United States, nor are the varied kinds and degrees of ability so fully provided for, but the force of the individual is conserved. The work from the Scotch schools appeared to be more uniform than that from the English, but it was not the French uniformity. It bore the English stamp of sturdy independence. This came to me with peculiar impressiveness, for I recognized in it a striking likeness to the efforts of my own old school days in New England. The new education has a more liberal spirit and, possibly, a richer content, but the old struck with unerring judgment the central truth of human nature, that will is power-that truth England re-echoes today.

Notwithstanding the close examination of the educational features of the exhibits, it soon appeared that the jury would give greater weight to national considerations. This was implied by the choice for president of an accomplished diplomat like M. Bourgeois. Twice minister of education.

at critical periods in the recent history of France, and her representative in various foreign services, notably at the Hague conference, he well understood how to preserve the balance between contending interests. The jury rules required that a foreigner should fill the vicepresidency, but the choice of an Englishman for the position was a stroke of diplomacy. What stronger proof of internationl candor and universal good-will was possible under the circumstances?

There are, however, other than diplomatic reasons for giving weight to national considerations in such a case. Every nation has aims and conditions peculiar to itself, and its schools should be judged in relation to these, rather than in comparison with those of other countries. In this view feeble efforts at popular education in countries like Italy, Portugal, and Russia, where the idea is little more than a patriotic hope, may properly be rated, as they were, above their intrinsic value.

The keynote of national enthusiasm was struck in the first foreign exhibit that we visited, the Hungarian, where M. Béla Ujváry explained in glowing terms the growth of the national influence in primary education. Signs of national initiative were apparent, also, in certain departures from French models; for example, in the freer spirit of the Hungarian infant school and the admission of girls to classical studies.

It was in the large national perspective that the anomalies of French public education became intelligible. The word "primary," in the French use, characterizes an entire system of education intended for the common people. It is thoroly permeated with the industrial idea, bound hard and fast to the particular and the limited. Across the corridor was a display of the culture schools, the lycées and the universities, for the directive and professional classes. These schools aim at intellectual detachment from the immediate; they lift man to the sense of his ideal self by unfolding before him the grand spectacle of human history and human achievements, the deeds by which he has proved himself master of his environment and of his destiny. This distinction between the primary and culture schools seemed a puzzling contradiction in a republic that by an inscription on every schoolhouse proclaims liberty, equality, and fraternity, a grand community of ideas, as the end of national education.

But viewed in the great movement of French history, the primary system, with all its limitations, is seen to be a necessary stage in the progress of the republic. By a singular neglect Napoleon omitted primary education from his imperial university. Hence the republic found here a free field for the exercise of its authority. Moreover, it came into existence when the scientific impulse had turned attention from speculative theories of man's nature and destiny to the immediate acts of his being and conditions. The leaders in the educational work were imbued

with the revolutionary doctrines. They believed in individual rights, they dreamed of the return to nature, but these doctrines had assumed with them an aspect unknown to Rousseau and the eighteenth century. They no longer contemplated the individual merely as such, but as the unit of a social order, and inextricably involved therein. Furthermore, the leaders in education were practical men facing an actual situation. Upon them was placed the responsibility of getting the children of the people into the schools which the government had lavishly supplied. In their endeavor to break up the church control of education, they appealed to the industrial classes by their desire for material good.

Thus the prevailing philosophy and an urgent necessity combined to make the primary schools of France positive and practical. All the teaching has this character: it is positive, but in the scientific rather than in the dogmatic sense, and practical, not in the large sense of making the most of the individual, but in the sense of giving him an intelligent view of his surroundings and skill in their use.

But a change is taking place in the spirit of the French primary school. An immense impetus has recently been given to moral and civic instruction. These subjects were, indeed, placed at the head of the program in 1882, but for a long time they found only formal recognition. Suddenly they have become the central subjects. Everything else is subordinated to them or permeated by them. They are not to be taught in a cold, didactic spirit, but in a manner to excite the imagination and the heart. In the official instruction the teacher is urged to inspire in the child the same regard for the notion of God as is excited when it is brought to his mind under the different form of religion. "Teach the child," says the ministerial circular, "that the sincerest form of homage to the divine is obedience to the laws of God as they are revealed to his conscience and to his reason." Thus the ideal self is exalted above the material self. Insensibly, also, the teacher is drawn to a fuller appreciation of the child's nature; for to children the ethical, the ideal in all its aspects, is much nearer than the material and the industrial. The child's mind is not scientific in its action, but philosophic, in a naïve sense of the word, and the school is most effective when it approaches him thru his innate sympathies.

That I do not exaggerate the fact or the significance of this movement in the French schools must be evident to anyone who saw the effort of the French jurors to bring this part of their work to our attention, and their intense satisfaction in the award of a grand prize for their general system of moral instruction.

Along with this subtle transformation in the spirit of French primary education there is manifest a renewed desire to unify the primary and secondary systems. The hopelessness of previous efforts in this direction arose from the opposing views of education embodied in the two systems,

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