travelling industrial supervisors and demonstrators who have charge of the work in the schools, and who, employed twelve months in the year, feel a responsibility toward the parents as well as the children. Better farming methods and better care of the home have resulted from this.

Tendencies toward the Correction of Inequalities due to an Ignorance of Educational Conditions

It is evident from the fragmentary and scattered data upon which this study is based, and its essential incompleteness, that there is much that is not known regarding education in the United States. This has been one of the leading reasons why education has been so backward in so many sections. In a system of administration where so much power is left to the small local unit there is bound to be wide variation. The advantage of this lies in the possibility that through many types of experimentation some outstandingly good plans will be developed, capable of wide application elsewhere. But this advantage will not be realised if there is no widespread knowledge of what is being done elsewhere and a comparative knowledge of the efficiency of home institutions. American people are proud of their own way of doing things and this pride often blinds them to the real facts. Several factors have contributed in late years to throw light on the problems of education, and in particular to show certain sections their relative efficiency as compared with others.

Scientific Study of Education.-The study of teaching and the administration and organisation of education has in the past few years become an important part of the work of our colleges and universities. Introduced primarily for the training of teachers, it has had the corollary of encouraging scientific research upon problems of education. It has in particular encouraged the application of historical, comparative, and statistical methods to education and has turned out experts capable of contributing to the study of this field. As a result an increasing number of studies each year are being added to our information regarding the efficiency and progress of our schools.

One prominent means of furnishing this information has been the school survey, a study of a particular system of schools in comparison with other schools. A city, county, or state, having alert and progressive officials, realising its own ignorance of educational conditions, locally and elsewhere, invites a group of

specialists to make a study of these schools. These experts look over the field, determine a plan of work, gather the data, secure similar data from other schools, and upon this as a basis make suggestions. In this way a great deal of data which otherwise would never be secured has been gathered together and organised, and much knowledge of our real school conditions has become available to the public. Important surveys of cities have been those of New York City; Butte, Montana; Portland, Oregon; San Antonio, Texas; Springfield, Illinois; Salt Lake City, Utah; Denver, Colorado; Leavenworth, Kansas; and Richmond, Virginia. Vermont, Ohio, and Maryland have made important surveys of statewide conditions. A student of education in the United States or elsewhere would do well to secure these surveys as published.

One important feature of these surveys is their use of such standard tests as have been developed. Scientific investigators realised that there was no standard of achievement in any line of school work. No one knew with any degree of definiteness just what a fourth-grade child should be expected to do in arithmetic, nor did teachers have any standard of comparison by which they might judge the relative progress of the pupils in their classes when compared with the progress of pupils in the classes of other teachers. To meet this need investigators have studied the work of children in school, have tested them, and then have given similar tests to children of equal advancement in other schools. The Courtis tests in arithmetic, for example, have been given to thousands of children in many cities in many parts of the United States. With this as a basis, a teacher may know just how her children compare with thousands of others. Similar standard tests have been developed in handwriting, composition, drawing, spelling, reading, and other subjects. Efforts are being made at present to secure similar information with regard to some of the high-school subjects, particularly algebra.

Costs of education similarly have received their share of attention, and efforts are being made to apply to schools the principles of scientific management which have worked so successfully in the business world.

With the training of experts capable of applying scientific methods to the study of education has come their employment in other than incidental capacity in connection with the departments or schools of education of higher institutions of learning. Many cities have entrusted their financial affairs to a business

manager. Others have an educational expert or a bureau of efficiency whose duty it is to collect data, to institute experiments, and to suggest ways and means of remedying errors and securing progress. Some counties and states have appointed similar experts in official positions.

The Work of Private Foundations.-Several great philanthropists have created funds for the promotion and improvement of education in the United States. The most important of these are: (1) The Peabody Education Board, established in 1869 by George Peabody with a grant of $3,000,000 (about $2,000,000 in reality) for the improvement of education in the south. This fund was long used for the promotion of all sorts of educational reforms, particularly in the training of teachers, through institutes, and particularly through the Peabody Normal College (1875) at Nashville. This fund has since been closed by a grant of the major portion of it to the new institution called the George Peabody College for Teachers for the higher training of teachers and to the various departments of education in the state universities of the south. (2) The Russell Sage Foundation, founded by Mrs. Russell Sage in 1907 by a grant of $10,000,000 for the "improvement of social and living conditions in the United States of America." Its activities have been varied, but in education it has been powerful in investigating educational conditions and in establishing methods of measuring educational results. It has helped to spread the doctrine of securing the facts about schools rather than trusting to the prejudices and pride of local communities. (3) The Carnegie Foundation, established by Andrew Carnegie in 1906, has devoted the major portion of its work toward the pensioning of professors in higher institutions of learning. It has, however, devoted a portion of its efforts to the scientific study of education; and in the Vermont Survey made a thorough study of the educational conditions in one state, to its great advantage and improvement. (4) The General Education Board, founded by John D. Rockefeller in 1902, has an endowment of over $40,000,000. Much of the proceeds of this great amount is used to increase endowment funds of colleges and universities, but the board has done such important work in other lines that more extended mention is necessary.

One of the greatest problems to which it has devoted attention has been the upbuilding of education in the south. Here in a section in which poor provision had been made for education it has effected improvements which, without its help, would have

required years to effect. The south was slow in developing public schools. It had neither the organised labour nor the democracy of poor people which contributed to the upbuilding of these schools in the north and west in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Just as it was making beginnings along this line the great Civil War drained the country of its wealth, its men, and its ambition. It also freed a great class of negroes unable to adjust themselves to new conditions. The south was, of course, backward educationally. It was to this problem that the General Education Board addressed itself.

Realising that public education depends upon public support, and that improvements in schools mean added expense and increased taxes, which in turn depend upon increased wealth, the General Education Board first tried to help the people of the south to improve their methods of producing and preserving farm products. Its farm demonstration work influenced the farmers directly, while its corn clubs for boys and its canning clubs for girls reached still more directly into the very hearts of the homes through the children and introduced scientific methods to take the place of tradition. This work became so important and its worth was so clearly realised that the national government has since assumed most of it. The initial capital to start the ball rolling was provided by the Board, and the result is that farm values have increased, paving the way for increased taxation in the support of schools.

The next step lay in the transfer of a portion of this added wealth to the schools. A dozen years ago public secondary schools in the south were little more than a name, rural schools were poorly equipped doing poor work, while the schools for negroes were ill-supported and ill-suited to the needs of the people. The fundamental need of the time was to evangelise the public-school idea, secure more money, better support, more adequate buildings, higher paid teachers, and longer school terms; and the majority of the people of the section did not even realise this. It was here that the General Education Board made its second attack. It provided salaries and travelling expenses for certain men to spread the new point of view, to preach new and better schools, to plead for better support, to act as clearing houses for the best in practice and experiment that is being carried on in this and other countries. These men, although paid by the General Education Board, were appointed by local authorities, and in every sense of the word were a real part of the situation in which they worked. The pro

fessors of secondary education put life into the high-school movement; the rural-school inspectors have bettered the rural schools; while the success of the supervisors of negro schools has been phenomenal. Better buildings, better and higher paid teachers, longer school terms, more adequate programmes of study, and more nearly equal opportunity have been the result. Through its tremendous resources the General Education Board has been able to accomplish in a decade what it would have taken scores of years normally to effect.

The General Education Board is turning its attention also to educational research, particularly in subsidising individuals to make investigations and in conducting surveys of schools, such as its excellent study of educational conditions in Maryland and its forthcoming report on the Gary schools.

X. CONCLUSION

The brief space allotted so vast a subject has necessitated the elimination of many important topics. No mention has been made of the kindergarten, private schools, colleges and universities, school buildings and architecture. There is not space to discuss adequately the methods of teaching, discipline, and government of the schools. One important feature of the school life of the American child is his out-of-class activity in societies, athletics, literary activities, etc. Space has necessitated the elimination of this.

Many of the data are fragmentary. Others are not very recent. So rapidly are conditions changing that in a very few years this account will be out of date. The lack of wide knowledge of educational conditions and the inaccessibility of many statistics are real handicaps in the building of an accurate account of education in the United States.

Certain conditions should stand out in this study. (1) There are many fine schools in the United States and many communities which are progressive educationally. (2) There are many very poor schools and many communities whose educational facilities are altogether inadequate and whose educational ambitions are dull. (3) There is little uniformity in educational conditions, except in the programme of studies, which is precisely the place where there should be little uniformity. (4) The United States as a nation has been changing so rapidly that no fixed educational system could keep pace with this change. It is perhaps fortunate,