ment. And knowing that our government rests directly upon the public will, in order that we may preserve it we endeavor to give a safe and proper direction to that public will. We do not, indeed, expect all men to be philosophers or statesmen; but we confidently trust, and our expectation of the duration of our system of government rests upon that trust, that, by the diffusion of general knowledge, and good and virtuous sentiments, the political fabric may be secure as well against open violence and overthrow as against the slow, but sure, undermining of licentiousness."

Here we have in the words of our greatest expounder of the underlying principles of American polity a statement of the philosophical basis upon which our tax supported school system rests. We may wish that these schools did many things differently; we may not have children to send to their classrooms; nevertheless, they are our schools because we are American citizens, and we owe them our loyal service as well as our ungrudging support. Anyone who wishes, for personal, social, or religious reasons, to have his child receive a training other than that which the tax supported schools give, is at liberty to make such provision for his child as he chooses; but he is not thereby released from the obligation resting upon him as a citizen to contribute to the support of the tax supported schools. It follows, too, that the parents of those who are pupils in the tax supported schools have no peculiar rights in connection with the policy of those schools that are not shared by all other citizens. The schools are for the people as a whole, not for those of a district or ward, or of a political party or religious communion, or for those who are either poor or rich. We poison our democracy at its source if we permit any qualification of this fundamental principle.

It is sometimes gravely argued that positions as school officers or teachers should be given only to those who live, at the moment, in the civil community or subdivision in which the school in question is situated. This is the theory that the schools exist not for the people or for the children, but in order that places may be provided for the friends, relatives, and neighbors of those who are charged for the time being with the power of appointment. It is an undemocratic theory,

because it substitutes a privileged class for open competition among the best qualified. Pushed to its logical extreme, it would look first in the ranks of the descendants of the aborigines for persons to appoint to posts in the educational system. Very few Americans live where their grandparents lived, and it is usually those who have come most recently to a city, town, or village who are loudest in insisting that no outsider, as the saying is, be given a place as teacher or superintendent. The democratic theory, on the contrary, asks only for the best, and if the community cannot provide the best it holds that such community should enrich itself by bringing in the best from wherever it is to be had. As teaching becomes a profession, the teacher and school officer will acquire a professional reputation and status which will make short work of town, county, and even state boundaries.

These three principles have been chosen for presentation and emphasis at this time because, although each of them is often denied, I believe them to underlie our whole educational system, and to condition all clear thinking and right action concerning it. They are, briefly, that

1. American education is far wider than the system of tax supported schools and universities, numerous and excellent as those schools and universities are. All schools, colleges, and universities, tax supported or not, are public in the important sense that they all reflect and represent some part or phase of our national life and character.

2. There is no restriction upon the amount, kind, or variety of education which a district, town, or city may furnish, save that which is found in the willingness or unwillingness of citizens to vote the necessary taxes.

3. The tax supported schools are public schools in the fullest possible sense, and are not maintained for the benefit of persons of any special class or condition, or from any motive which may properly be described as charitable or philanthropic.

The constant application of these principles in educational debates and discussions would bring definiteness and clearness into many places that are now dark and uncertain, and would greatly promote the interest which we all have at heart-the conservation and up building of our American democracy.

AMERICAN REFORMS IN EDUCATION.

BY CHARLES W. ELIOT.

[Charles William Eliot, president of Harvard university; born March 20, 1834, in Boston; was graduated from Harvard in 1853; in 1854 he became tutor of mathematics in Harvard, and 1858-63 was assistant professor of mathematics and chemistry at Harvard; 1863-65, he pursued his studies abroad, and in 1865-69 was professor of analytical chemistry in the Massachusetts institute of technology; since 1869, he has been president of Harvard university; he is the author of a Manual of Qualitative Chemical Analysis co-operatively, Five American Contributions to Civilization, and other essays; Educational Reform, Charles Eliot, Landscape Architect, Annual Reports of the President of Harvard University, and many notable addresses on scientific and educational questions which he has delivered in public of which this is one.]

The first great movement of reform was the introduction of freedom in choice of studies-first in universities, or colleges, and later in schools. Like most other large educational movements, this change proceeded from new conditions entirely outside of the proper realm of education. It proceeded from the wonderful development of new knowledges which took place during the first half of the last century, accompanied by the discovery of new principles and methods of scientific investigation. These new knowledges and new methods of inquiry commanded public attention, and created an imperative demand that youth should be instructed in them. The managers of education positively have had no option with regard to the introduction of some sort of elective system. They have been compelled to introduce it. A limited elective system was first introduced into Harvard college in 1826 during the administration of President Josiah Quincy, a layman who came late to an educational post, having previously been a member of congress and mayor of Boston. His two successors in the presidency did not agree with him as to the importance of an election of studies; so they tried to extinguish the system in Harvard college. The second of these two presidents put on record in his own reports his failure completely to extinguish the system, and gave the true reason for the failure-namely, the incoming of such a number of new sciences and of new philosophical and practical intel

lectual interests that it was impossible to restrict the program of studies in the college to the old seven or eight socalled liberal arts. Thus then the great change wrought in the second half of the 19th century in public education was forced on college administrations from without. They had no choice; they must give to the student freedom in choice of study; and they must so specialize the teaching that the professor should have freedom to develop throughout all his career the teaching of a single topic.

Let me attempt to give you an idea of what has been going on since 1870 in this one institution in regard to the teaching of a single subject-political economy. There died in Cambridge not long ago Professor Charles Franklin Dunbar, who, having previously been a man of business and the editor of an influential paper in Boston, was made in 1871 professor of political economy-an immensely important subject, which at that time had no teacher exclusively devoted to it in Harvard university. It merely received a scanty portion of the attention of a professor of natural religion, moral philosophy, and civil polity. In his first year of service Professor Dunbar gave instruction in one course prescribed for juniors, and in that same year he offered one elective course to seniors. Such was the modest beginning of the university's department of political economy. When he died there were in Harvard university three full professors of political economy, one assistant professor, and six instructors. There was no prescribed course, but a large number of optional courses; and any youth who wanted to study political economy with thoroughness could begin that study as a freshman, and continue it for four years, that is, through his whole college course; and then he might devote two or three years' time to it in the graduate school. One thoughtful, resolute, clear headed, just man developed this important department of instruction in one American college, in a little less than thirty years, through freedom for student and teacher alike.

Many persons have a very inadequate conception of the meaning of election of studies. They think of it chiefly as a questionable liberty for a thoughtless student. It is really the sole means of developing thorough far reaching university

instruction in any subject, or in all subjects, and, therefore, is an indispensable means of promoting and stimulating American scholarship. It is as essential to the production of great teachers and great authors as it is to the training of well equipped students.

I pass on to the next fundamental change in American education—a change which is pure, far reaching gain, and which has been wrought out better in America than in any other country. I refer to the change in school discipline. Again, this is a change brought about, not exclusively by professional teachers, but by social forces working through all the community, but especially developed in schools and colleges. Nowadays we realize that the fundamental object in all education is to develop self control and the power to give an intense mental attention; and we realize that self control is not to be cultivated in children under the arbitrary pressure of another's will. As a boy I went to what was considered the best public school in Boston-one famous throughout the country-the Boston Latin school; but I have to testify that the chief disciplinary motive to which I felt myself subjected during my boyhood in that school was fear-fear of the rough tongue of the teacher, fear of the harsh construction put on the childish motive and the childish conduct, and fear of physical pain as an inducement to an unnatural quietness and to mental application. That is a true picture of school discipline before the middle of the last century all over the world, the school world, for thousands of years; but here in about the middle of this very century came a great change. It came partly through the church. Fear began to cease to be the prime religious motive. Men began to find out that systematic theology is an exclusively human science. They began to see that it was a marvelously presumptuous thing in one man, though he was a St. Augustine, a Calvin, or a Dr. Hodge, to undertake to state in the forms of human logic God's scheme for the salvation of men, and to describe the nature and the results of God's justice. Men began to emancipate themselves from the terrors of systematic theology. Then, too, we began to learn all over this country that government should not really be what for thousands of years government had been--the