Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 174, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1917 — World Developments are Bringing About Revolution in Public Education [ARTICLE]

World Developments are Bringing About Revolution in Public Education

By WILLIAM L. CHENERY

In the United States no national policy of education exists. If the man in the street were halted suddenly and his opinion were demanded, he would probably reply that education is very important. Then, after an embarrassing silence, the subject would be dismissed. Yet in no other country does education receive a greater emphasis. Schools with us, however, are matters of local initiative. If the local board of education is wise, the schools will tend to be good. But , the schools vary in every district. ' The state and the nation exercise relatively feeble control over education. Public opinion is more pervasive. There is a subconscious competition between localities, supported by the general feeling that “education is very important?' That, however, is nearly as much as can be said. Public education is, however, in the midst of a revolution. We have always known, or rather asserted, that the success of self-government depends on universal education. Now we are getting fresh emphasis on our creed from other sources. Russia, correspondents have said, is so busy learning that at intervals it seems to have no energy for doing. Eng4and, which appears to be getting its democracy less dramatically, but perhaps not less thoroughly, is having a new revival of learning. - Among the practical measures discussed in England, “first and foremost is the need for more teachers, and better, and for a ’substantial advance in the status and remuneration of what ought to be regarded as a single but highly differentiated pedagogical service, from the kindergarten mistress to the regius professor.” The nation must create better facilities for training teachers, and it should nationalize the system of private scholarships in order to increase the number of young people for .whom higher education is feasible. Twenty-five thousand' national scholarships are suggested as a beginning. The end and purpose of this would be to give a free choice of professions to all able and willing to take the training. Large ideas, these ± but they, are at the basis .of a.genuinely democratic system of education. t