part of that forced upon them whether they would or not. The mixing and going qualities of the West made it easy for her people to learn it. Michigan knows it much better than Massachusetts, and Massachusetts somewhat better than 'we. New York must learn it, and when New York learns it the college men of New York will have learned it first.

We have all the colleges, universities, and professional schools that even our great population of nine millions of people needs. We have got in the way of making exactions, not only upon students who want to enter the universities, but also upon those who want to begin professional study, as well as upon those who have completed professional courses and who apply for admission to the professions. We have a very complete scheme covering this whole matter, established in law and in practice. But it must be said that we have colleges, universities, and professional schools that connive with students to avoid the requirements. We are admitting far more candidates to the learned professions than is good for the students, the professions, or the people of the state. We do not need to advance requirements so much—although I suspect that the Court of Appeals might well give fresh consideration to the requirements for admission, and the details of the examinations for admission to the bar as we need to see that we get what we assume to require.

My cursory examination of the large and all-important inquiry leads me to the conclusion that we have a most comprehensive educational system, very well knit together and growing in solidarity. Its most noticeable defect is the lack of the college influence in the affairs of the middle and lower schools. That is more apparent in the body of the state than in New York city. It is due not to the lack of universities and colleges, but to the fact that those we have are not related to the state or to each other, and are without vital connection with the state system of education. We have not yet broken much from the old order so far as the colleges are concerned, and we have not yet entered upon the new order in any appreciable degree or in any adequate or rational way. There are boys and girls in this state who want to go to college and are reasonably prepared to go, who can not go because of the expense. The higher institutions have not got down to the heart of the lower ones. It is a hard problem. It will be remedied because it is right in the pathway of the universal trend in American education. The remedy will not come from fitful and piecemeal state

aid to an institution here and there. Whether it will come from a scheme of general state aid to all of the higher institutions upon some equitable basis which will bind all together and bind all to the entire system of education as contemplated in the original thought of the University of the State of New York, or through free municipal colleges, or through a real state university with campus, and buildings, and faculties which will provide instruction in any study, free to all prepared to take it, is a large and pressing matter which ought to be addressing itself very seriously to the educational opinion of the state.

As suggested at the beginning, this very offhand comparison of state educational systems has not aimed at mathematical exactness. The purpose was not to commend one state, or convict another. If such had been the aim and purpose, there would have been no result, or an unjust result, because it is practically impossible to compare the spirit and outlook of the states; because there is an absence of uniform statistics, and because every one of the states strives for the most and the best in education, and is entirely capable of acting up to its ideas and accomplishing what it undertakes. What is more serious than the absence of data for comparison is the notable absence of information necessary to the rational upbuilding of a reliable and uniformly efficient system of education. From this charge New York is not exempt. We are without the definite knowledge of the children of the state which is vital to our planning, and which must be available to the people of the state before we can expect our plans to have the required public support. The machinery for securing a part of this, which we have attempted through the Act of 1908 providing for an always up-to-date enrollment of all the children of the state between 4 and 18 years, is just being set in operation. It is anticipated that this will not only give us ground for the more complete execution of attendance laws, but also that it will support us in other ways. There is danger that it will not be very well done, but it is that or nothing, and it may lead to something better. It is the one step at a time and the step which one is able to take, that makes the only possible headway. And we not only need more exact statistics, but we need a more expert and and scientific interpretation of statistics. All this is admittedly true in New York; but it is clearly within the fact to say that no other state has approached us in gathering information about children or in collating and interpreting data covering the conditions and the doings in all grades of schools.

It ought to be said that there can be no comparison with other state systems of education without seeing how much more concentrated our system of administration is than any other. Ours is "the New York system." It is the product of the very uniform thinking and the very consistent legislation of the state for more than a century. There is no other state educational organization to be compared with ours in the number of its officers and employees or in the centralization of authority to accomplish ends. In no other way can the state deal efficiently with its always enlarging stream of immigration and with its always more complex social and economic situations. In no other way can it measurably provide training suited to the circumstances of every one and assure to every child what belongs to him. It is the only measurably efficient method for advancing, or even for maintaining, the intellectual, industrial, and humanitarian plane of the Empire State. Because it was entered upon early, it is the more readily accepted now. We need have no misgivings. Of course, organization is only a means to an end, but in this case it is a vital means to an imperative end. Of course, organization is capable of both good and evil. We can not remind ourselves too often that this organization is required to work, without effrontery or offense, with all those who would enlarge educational opportunity and increase the efficiency of the schools. But, quite as much, it must work rationally and firmly against ignorance, inexperience, indifference, and all selfishness. It must recognize and respond to the public educational needs. It must initiate and aid popular sentiment. Certainly it must encourage local initiative and give absolute home rule to all who are really trying to make better schools, within the limitations which have been made general by the well settled opinion and the law of the state. But upon this basis it need not fear, and it may derive satisfaction from the fact that the invariable trend in other states which have difficulties akin to ours, is in the direction of the essential features of our system.

But let this paper have this definite conclusion: New York has reason enough for feeling very well over the peace and promise of her educational situation. But that is not all. She has educational needs. She needs better supervision of the country schools; she needs more complete vital statistics and more informing school statistics; and she needs that the work and the influence of the colleges and universities shall bear much more strongly upon the organization and the work of the middle and the lower schools.

66

MOTIVE IN EDUCATION

Men of genius and courage are discovering and applying new forms of "energy" and power in the physical world. Upon the earth, and through the air, and upon the waters and beneath them, they are driving physical bodies with new shapes, in new ways, and in ever increasing celerity and force. Railroads are making " runs " that have never before been equaled. Motor cars are making some people crazy. An ocean liner comes in every week with a new world record." Men are flying many miles and whither they will through the air, with machines that are heavier than air. American explorers have just accomplished the heroic task of centuries and gained the north pole, while gallant officers and men of the English navy have come within a hundred miles of the south polar axis of the earth. New "world records " no longer surprise us, but we ask quickly about the motive power and want to know exactly how the thing was brought about.

The motive and the power have quite as much to do with accomplishment in the intellectual as in the physical world. The situation, the outlook, the reason, the inspiration, the purpose, the organized effort, the applications, the instrumentalities, and the processes, all have to do with the diffusion of common knowledge and with the gaining of new learning. Let us, with imperative brevity, look back over world history and try to see what has been the motive power of all educational progress, and then let us interpret as best we can the motives that are impelling education in America, and try to realize what the schools ought to do to meet the ideals of the people who have established and who sustain them.

We look in vain for educational motive or progress anywhere in the world before the Christian era, and there has been practically none among the Oriental nations up to the present time, with the one exception of Japan. Of course, some would not agree with me. The disagreement would be more a matter of terms than of fact. Certainly a few scholars grew up among the ancients. Certainly a few of the arts were highly cultivated by a small number of persons. Certainly monarchs used men like beasts of burden to construct a few great works. But this was because they controlled millions upon millions of human beings, and not quite all of them Address before the Kansas State Teachers Association, Topeka, Kansas, November 4, 1909.

could be kept from doing something, by the sodden ignorance and inertness of the great mass. Of course, these great peoples have not altogether escaped the contacts of modernism. It has blown some fresh breezes into their wrinkled faces. Their commercial nerves have been somewhat quickened, and their rulers and leaders have seen enough of the armies and navies and missionaries and consuls of civilization to be compelled to adjust themselves a little to the wonderful development of mediaeval and modern times in Europe and America. No people not absolutely savage- and probably the savage peoples should not be excepted - have failed to give at least some rough tutoring to their children, and ordinarily they have developed some manner of schools. It is far from the purpose to ignore or belittle this tutoring, or the manner of schools which have obtained among the Asiatic peoples. But it is idle to look for modern educational motive among a people numbering hundreds of millions who for the most part live in damp and dismal houses; who believe that disease is a conflict within the man between the spirits of light and the spirits of darkness; two thirds of whose children never grow up, and whose every habit is fixed by superstitious fear. Any real scholarship of such a people is accidental or exotic, and their schools are as heavy and inert as themselves.

The Japanese are so unlike other Asiatic peoples that some experts insist that they are not, like all of their original neighbors, of the Mongolian race. However that may be, something that was apparently inherent led them to move out of themselves and lay hold of the philosophy and the methods of modern education. Forty years ago their government made formal application to the government of the United States to send men of standing to Japan to organize a system of schools upon a basis as much like that of the United States as was consistent with the conditions. The results have been so surprising, so exceedingly creditable to such a people, that they are often credited with more than is strictly true. But much, very much, is true. They have established religious freedom. Of course but one religion prevails, and that is not Christianity. Their schools are of all grades, open to all, and, true to the national characteristics, are highly efficient. As in all countries where hereditary monarchs rule and classes prevail, limited education is practically universal, and liberal education is much circumscribed. In other words, all of the younger children are in efficient elementary schools, and the opportunities for those who are favored by birth or are enough stronger than their fellows to seize what