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 Cioil Seroice Reform. 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 BY 
 
 Hon. GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, 
 
 Before the Department of Superintendence of the National 
 Educational Association, at Philadelphia, Pa., 
 
 February 25th, 1891. 
 
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 THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AND CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. 
 
 BY GEORGE WILLIAM CUETIS. 
 
 When my friend, the Superintendent of Public Instruction in the State 
 of New York, who is also the President of this Association, asked me to 
 speak to you this evening, I told him that nothing could surpass my will¬ 
 ingness except my hesitation. I hesitated with the natural reluctance of 
 a man who doubts whether even profound sympathy and interest in a good 
 cause necessarily qualify him to speak to its masters and experts. But 
 again, I felt that his own services to popular education were so valuable 
 and distinguished as to make it the duty of any one whom he thought 
 competent to aid him, however inadequately, in the good work not to de¬ 
 cline. A good citizen is in this like a good soldier, that he repairs at once 
 to the post of duty to w r hich his superior officer assigns him ; and in the 
 cause of popular education there is no good citizen of New York who does 
 not acknowledge the State Superintendent as his superior officer. Espe¬ 
 cially when my friend suggested that a subject to which I have given some 
 thought was one which, in its application to our public school system, 
 might not be altogether without interest for you, I was more emboldened 
 to obey, because in addressing this Association, I recall the remark of the 
 old English squire : “l like to talk with my rector, for in talking with 
 him I am speaking to the whole parish.” Every man might be proud and 
 glad of the opportunity which you offer me, for he would know that in 
 speaking to the higher officers of the public schools from every part of the 
 TJnion he is talking to the whole country. If, indeed, the subject of civil 
 service reform be more familiar to you in its connection with politics you 
 will not fear that I may be betrayed into an untimely political address. 
 For it is the happy distinction of this reform that it appeals with absolute 
 impartiality to both the great parties; while hitherto, both the great 
 
104 
 
 THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION 
 
 parties, like impecunious philanthropists accosted by what the old Eng¬ 
 lish law called a sturdy beggar, have been fain to reply to Reform : “Good 
 Sir, I know the justice of your demand and I feel the righteousness of 
 your appeal, but unluckily I have left my purse at home.” 
 
 Civil service reform, indeed, is rather a question of polity than of pol¬ 
 itics. The evil with which it is concerned is the dangerous abuse of a 
 necessary power of government, the power of appointing and removing 
 public officers and employes. This is a power which has always struck 
 at liberty, and no function of the State, therefore, requires more constant, 
 more careful, and more stringent regulation. The story of the abuse is 
 one of the most shameful pages in our history, with which I must assume 
 your familiarity. We have learned by long experience that the evil known 
 as the spoils system necessarily tends to destroy the self-respect of public 
 servants and to brand the public service itself, so far as it involves this 
 system, with a certain discredit. I appeal to your consciousness if this is 
 not so. We shall all, indeed, agree that there are no nobler American 
 gentlemen than many of those,—and we all have friends among them,— 
 who bear the civil commission of the United States. But none know 
 more fully than they that what the Czar of Russia said to Madame de Stael 
 was true: “Sire,” said the brilliant Frenchwoman, “surely a despotism 
 may be beneficent.” “Aye, madame,” replied the emperor, “but ? tis 
 only a happy accident.” There is not a midshipman in the navy nor a 
 lieutenant in the army who is not always and everywhere proud of the 
 buttons and the gold lace that show him to be a military or naval officer 
 of the United States, to whose guardianship the glory of the flag and the 
 honor of the national name are entrusted. But in the civil service, under 
 the curse of the spoils system, the words office-seeker and office-holder are 
 terms of reproach, and to “ take out of politics ” any branch of the civil 
 service has come to mean to take it out of corruption and make it honest 
 and respectable. Yet, surely, the military or naval service is not in itself 
 more honorable than the civil service of the State. The reproach which 
 lurks in the name of office-holder does not spring from the function but 
 from the tenure. In the civil service the incumbent does not hold, as in 
 all other employments, by his own qualities, his merits, his intelligence, 
 his ability, his integrity, and efficiency, but by the humiliating tenure of 
 another man’s pleasure, a man whom he may sometimes justly despise. 
 
 Civil service reform, therefore, is not a question of mere detail except 
 as all administrative methods must necessarily involve details. It contem¬ 
 plates the greater simplicity, health, and vigor of the whole public service. 
 It aims at the greater strength, dignity, economjq and efficiency of the 
 complete commonwealth. It does not concern some thousands of clerks 
 in executive departments merely, but the character of all public employ¬ 
 ment, the self-respect, the honor and welfare of the citizen, the true 
 function of party, the true spirit of popular government. It assumes both 
 
THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AND CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. 105 
 
 the executive desire to discharge the most important public duty from the 
 highest public motives and the impossibility of executive omniscience. 
 ' It assumes that personal preference and party interest and partisan influ¬ 
 ence are not aids, but hindrances, to the independent exercise of discretion 
 in the discharge of duties which are not political, and the reform law, 
 therefore, presents to the appointing authority for its final choice, irre¬ 
 spective of persons or parties and of every illicit and illegitimate consid¬ 
 eration, only those candidates who have been proved to be fully lit and 
 qualified for the duties of the place to be filled. 
 
 This is the reason and the method of civil service reform. Perhaps 
 you have heard that it is the politics of the moon and the Sunday-school. 
 I hope you have answered that although politics are always an alternative, 
 yet that the politics of the moon are preferable to those of the pit, and the 
 leadership of the Sunday-school better than that of the liquor saloon. 
 Even in politics it is wiser to be on the side of the Decalogue and the 
 Golden Rule than on the other side, and infinitely better to aim at the sun 
 than to be afraid of being supercelestial. So pitiful is the condition to 
 which this moral cancer of our political system has reduced political 
 opinion in this country, that it seems often to hold, and, apparently, 
 often honestly to hold, that nobody can speak of public virtue but a 
 h3 7 pocrite, or commend political honesty but a knave. If sneers were 
 arguments, the world would have been wind-bound long ago. When 
 Columbus proposed to make the egg stand on end, the contemptuous 
 philosophers sneered that only a fool would try to do it. When he did it, 
 they sneered that any fool could do that. Happily, Jason, who tamed the 
 fire-breatliing bulls, did not fear their blasts. The man who, in pursuit 
 of a wise reform, is afraid of the breath of the thing to be reformed, is 
 already defeated. 
 
 Nothing is more familiar than the fact that the evil for which civil 
 service reform offers a remedy is co-extensive with the whole domain of 
 the public service. What is the fundamental and vital branch of that 
 service ? When one of the national political parties, whose last appeal to 
 the country brought it into control of the administration, declared that 
 the reformed system already established by law should be further extended 
 .to all grades of the public service to which it is applicable, the party cer¬ 
 tainly did not mean to include the public school system. But why not ? 
 To what branch of the public service is it more applicable ? In the large 
 sense of the public service maintained by general taxation for the public 
 benefit, is there any department whose constantly greater efficiency is 
 more vital to the national welfare than that which is represented in this 
 Association ? Are the custom-house and the post-office more important 
 branches of the public service than the public school ? Three centuries 
 ago Martin Luther said that the German who would not send his children 
 to school was a traitor to his country ; and if, to-day, as Mr. James Russell 
 
106 
 
 THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION 
 
 Parsons, Jr., Inspector of Academies in New York, tells us in a recent 
 paper, the maintenance of schools is held in the German empire to be the 
 first duty of the State, can it be a secondary duty in a republic ? 
 
 If I were now addressing a naval or military councillor an assembly 
 of customs collectors or treasury inspectors or postmasters or land or 
 Indian agents, should I be speaking to a more important and influential 
 representative body of public officers than that which I have the honor to 
 address ? If an intelligent American were asked what upon the whole is 
 the true symbol of the American republic, what institution represents 
 most distinctively the force which has been most vital in our marvellous 
 national development, would he not answer at once, the common school ? 
 If we were all asked which of our institutions, after those of religion, we 
 could least spare, whose disappearance would forecast the decay of liberty 
 and the eclipse of civilization, should we not all unhesitatingly and unani¬ 
 mously reply, the public school ? An ignorant people cannot long remain 
 a free people. Three hundred years ago, in the Netherlands, Count John 
 of Nassau, the brother of the great William the Silent, urging a system of 
 common schools for “children of quality and for poor families,” said: 
 “ Soldiers and patriots thus educated, with a true knowledge of God and 
 a Christian conscience ; item, churches and schools, good libraries, books 
 and printing-presses, are better than all the armies, arsenals, armories, insti¬ 
 tutions, alliances, and treaties that can be had or imagined in the world.” 
 It was in that spirit and with that conviction that the seeds of our public 
 school system were sown, and with a just instinct, when the suffrage in 
 England was enlarged, twenty years ago, Robert Lowe exclaimed, “and 
 now, gentlemen, let us teach our masters the alphabet.” He knew whereof 
 he affirmed. In 1802 Napoleon said to Pestalozzi that he could not be 
 bothered with questions of A B C. Seventy years later the German army 
 marched out of the school-house and destroyed the Napoleonic empire, 
 while upon its ruins republican France began her national regeneration by 
 reforming and reorganizing her schools. The alphabet is the ally of lib¬ 
 erty, and in any accurate account of the forces that have made America, 
 the public school must stand first. 
 
 If any branch of the public service, therefore, should be resolutely 
 secured against every form of the abuse I have described, should be wholly 
 independent of mere personal or partisan influence, and free from the 
 malignant power of patronage or spoils, it is the public school system. 
 But he knows little of the nature of spoils patronage who supposes that 
 it would suffer any official system whatever to escape its ravages. Twenty 
 years after the friends of King William III. declared abuse of patron¬ 
 age to be one of the reasons for the great English Revolution of 1688, The 
 Tatler , the sparkling satirist of current English life, wdiose pages still show 
 the very form and pressure of the time, describes little specimen notes 
 addressed to men of influence, soliciting patronage, with the delightful in- 
 
THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AND CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. 107 
 
 consequence of all such appeals. “Mr. John Tapi ash, having served all 
 offices and being reduced to poverty, desires your vote for singing clerk of 
 this parish.” Another worthy man has ten children, “ all of whom his 
 wife has suckled herself—therefore humbly desires to be a schoolmaster. ” 
 The Tatler , like its cheery successor The Spectator , chastised folly with a 
 laugh. But has not that old English laugh of a hundred and eighty years 
 ago a little sting for us Americans to-day? In countless American schools 
 would not the laughing Tatler find hosts of masters employed, not for any 
 fitness, but because their children w r ere suckled by their mothers, or for 
 some equally cogent reason ? Is there any doubt that the same patronage 
 which the glorious Revolution of 1688, as it was called, arraigned as sub¬ 
 versive of English liberty, which the greatest American statesmen of all 
 parties and sections, Washington, Adams, Henry Clay, Calhoun, Webster, 
 and Abraham Lincoln, denounced as fatal to American institutions—the 
 same patronage which, in obedience to' public sentiment, Congress passed 
 the reform bill of 1883 to curb and restrain—the patronage at which, 
 speaking for intelligent Europe, Mr. Gladstone courteously expresses his 
 wonder and amazement—the last relic in a free land of monarchial and 
 aristocratic privilege, thrusts its insolent hand into the school-house as 
 into the custom-house and the post-office, and every other public office, 
 making the will of a trustee or member of a school committee or board 
 of education, or some other spoilsmonger, the tenure of the teachers 
 employment ? 
 
 If that be a mischievous, wasteful, demoralizing system in other branches 
 of the public service, what is it in the school ? Every other department 
 deals with the public convenience, as the Post-Office; or with the public 
 finances, as the Treasury; with the public estate, as the Interior Depart¬ 
 ment ; with foreign relations, as the State Department ; with the public 
 defense, as the War and Navy Departments ; or with public litigation, as 
 the Department of Justice. But the public school system pervades the 
 whole country, penetrates every district, touches every village and neigh¬ 
 borhood, and molds the ductile intelligence and character of the citizens 
 of the future. If the fitness of a postmaster, of a customs collector, of a 
 land agent, of an appraiser, is incontestably a public interest, to be ascer¬ 
 tained with all practicable care and certainty, is the selection and fitness 
 of the public school teacher of less concern to the common wealth ? 
 
 We can hardly expect a primary school teacher to say with St. Cyran, 
 the head of the schools of Port Royal, “the charge of the soul of one of 
 these little ones is a higher employment than the government of all the 
 world.” But certainly there should be as much care in selecting the 
 teacher as in selecting a fourth-class clerk in a public office. For what is 
 the key of an effective public school system ? It is not the pupil, who is 
 plastic material, but the artificer who shapes the material. It is not the 
 school property, nor the appropriations for maintenance, indispensable as 
 
108 
 
 THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION 
 
 they are. Reason, experience, the common consent of all great thinkers 
 and all authorities upon the subject agree that the teacher is the school. 
 All the wealth of India or of California could not provide a great school 
 of any degree unless it could secure great teachers. Noble buildings, 
 storied quadrangles, and ancient groves, munificent endowments, museums, 
 laboratories, gymnasiums, libraries, the profuse accumulation of literary 
 and scientific resource, without the teacher is but Pygmalion’s statue un¬ 
 inspired, the body without the soul. 
 
 Not only are the teachers so important a body, but they are by far the 
 most numerous body of public servants. Of the great national executive 
 departments, the Post-Office is most generally diffused. Its service is co¬ 
 extensive with the national domain, and its legend, like that of the ancient 
 Church, is semper, ubique, omnibus. But while there are about 63,000 
 postmasters in the United States, there are nearly one-half of that number 
 of public school teachers in the State of New York alone, and in the United 
 States there are 350,000 public school teachers.. Their salaries amount to 
 $81,000,000, which is probably more than the aggregate salaries of the 
 rest of the civil service. For their own benefit, for the maintenance of 
 free republican institutions, to transmit to their children unimpaired 
 the great heritage of wisely organized civil and religious liberty which they 
 received from their fathers, the citizens of this country tax themselves 
 enormously every year to educate the children in the public schools ; and 
 the only return of this vast outlay for which they look is the intelligence 
 and morality and the material prosperity which inevitably follows public 
 intelligence and morality as the crops follow the quickening sun of April 
 and the soft breath of May. 
 
 Is not every argument for the appointment of the great body of minis¬ 
 terial officers of the government by fitness and character wisely ascertained 
 infinitely stronger when applied to the selection of school teachers ? And 
 if the selection of those officers by methods which secure their independ¬ 
 ence, promote their self-respect, and stimulate their interest and zeal, in¬ 
 stead of destroying greatly increases the efficiency of the public service, 
 elevates the tone of public employment, and removes a reproach from the 
 national name, is it to be apprehended that similar care would harm the 
 character and efficiency of the public schools ? In other branches of the 
 public service, whatever objections may be urged against the reformed 
 system of appointment, it is undeniably better than the system which it 
 supplants. Whatever foolish questions may be asked, whatever possible 
 frauds practiced in an examination, they are wholly insignificant when 
 compared with the unspeakable folly and the certain fraud of appoint¬ 
 ment by patronage or mere personal and partisan favor. There could 
 not be a worse system of selection in all the other branches of the jDublic 
 service. Is it the best one for the great department of primary educa¬ 
 tion ? 
 
THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AND CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. 109 
 
 Yet is it not substantially the present method ? Teacherships in the 
 schools are not popularly regarded as subjects of patronage. But are they 
 not so practically and is it wise that they should remain so ? What is the 
 present system ? 1 believe that the requirement of certification or license 
 
 before appointment is universal in all the States of the Union. The ex¬ 
 amination upon which the certificate or license issues is, then, the cardinal 
 point. What are the vital, essential conditions of effective examination ? 
 To be properly effective the examinations must be uniform, entirely com¬ 
 petent, and wholly independent of the appointing power. The examiners 
 must be sincerely interested in education, familiar with the duties of a 
 teacher and with the requirements of the art of teaching, and capable of 
 conducting an examination to ascertain both the scholastic attainments 
 and the specific professional fitness of the candidates. Wherever these 
 conditions do not exist, the public school system, and therefore the whole 
 community, suffers. It is a common wrong, a common injury. The 
 people of this country tax themselves heavily enough for the support of 
 schools and teachers to entitle them to the best, and to the adoption of 
 all means plainly necessary to secure the best. By whom, then, generally 
 speaking, is this examination conducted ? 
 
 By city boards of education and county commissioners, or trustees 
 or committees, who are appointed by political officers or nominated by 
 party conventions—these are the authorities who examine and certify or 
 license and appoint more than ninety per cent, of the teachers. Is this 
 a reasonable manner of securing public officers qualified for duties so 
 delicate and important as those of teachers in the public schools ? Is it a 
 method which would be likely to secure the most competent service of any 
 kind ? There is indeed an examination, but the examining and certify¬ 
 ing board is appointed by political officers or named by a party conven¬ 
 tion. Is a board so appointed likely to be a board peculiarly qualified to 
 conduct such examinations? Is a party caucus generally intent upon 
 such competence in the candidates whom it nominates ? And when the 
 board so nominated not only examines and certifies or licenses teachers 
 but also appoints them, are such appointments generally or often made for 
 fitness alone ? I speak, of course, of a system, not of individuals. I know 
 how many excellent men are selected even under this method, as I 
 know that in other parts of the public service, under a similar system, 
 most honest, industrious, and efficient officers and clerks were selected. 
 
 I But, as the old English judge said to the horse-thief, you are to be 
 hung, not because you have stolen a horse, but that horses may not be 
 stolen, so the spoils system should be abolished, not because fitness is 
 never considered by it, but because fitness is not its object. Slaves were 
 sometimes kindly treated, but kind treatment was not an argument for 
 slavery. 
 
 The officers who are elected to conduct examinations and license and 
 
110 
 
 THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. 
 
 employ teachers are notoriously often selected without any regard whatever 
 . to their special qualifications for a responsibility so great and for duties so 
 vital. There is 710 limit of eligibility to membership in a board of educa¬ 
 tion or a school committee, and it is probably true that the great multitude 
 of officers appointed to conduct examinations, however well disposed, are 
 totally unfitted properly to conduct them. Among public officers so nomi¬ 
 nated and elected the notable want of actual interest in education, of com¬ 
 prehensive views, of convictions, of actual information and knowledge of 
 teaching are obviously incalculable. The ability to resist personal and 
 political pressure and wrongful influence of every kind and of every degree 
 must be as various as the men. There can be no common standard among 
 them of requirement from a candidate. A candidate who fails in one dis¬ 
 trict may succeed in the adjoining district. Good-nature, ignorance, indif¬ 
 ference, and venality will constantly abuse and betray the great public 
 trust committed to such officers. In every State, even in neighboring 
 local communities, a uniform standard of competence will be impossible. 
 Certificates will be granted, not upon proved qualification and merit alone, 
 but often by personal or political influence, or the same insidious force 
 will withhold the certificates. Is it not plain that under such a system in 
 the department of schools, as in every other department where it is toler¬ 
 ated,, the more conscientious and capable an officer maybe, the greater 
 will be his peril of exciting enmity and inviting his own dismissal ? 
 
 A few years ago a committee of investigation into the management of a 
 great public office by its own party friends reported that the number of 
 persons employed was sometimes three times as large as was necessary, and 
 recommended that half of the force should be dismissed. Political places 
 are created as pensions for useless parasites. So in a school system where 
 the evil practice prevails, not only will incompetence be certified, but the 
 list of certification will surpass the demand. Perhaps it is supposed that 
 a large eligible list is not disadvantageous. But Avhat advantage is there 
 in a copious choice of incompetent teachers who, because of incompetence, 
 will cringe more abjectly and accept smaller wages ? That is a strain 
 which necessarily lowers the character, efficiency, and value of the schools. 
 A competition not of merit but of low wages will follow, aud not the sal¬ 
 ary only but the teaching will be cheapened, the standard lowered, and, 
 like the marble statue with the feet of clay, the whole resplendent system 
 of public education must be weakened by incapacity and inefficiency in the 
 primary schools. 
 
 In a country where the system of spoils is gravely defended by eminent 
 public men and party leaders as indispensable to the public welfare, has 
 the door of the school-house a charm to stay its ravage ? Its fatal results 
 are known everywhere. Will they be unknown here ? However simple 
 and natural under earlier conditions in the country such a system may 
 have been, and however in certain ways it may have answered the purpose, 
 
THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AND CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. HI 
 
 is it the method which in our present situation, with larger experience 
 and broader views and under radically changed conditions, we should delib¬ 
 erately adopt ? Even when such a system was doing its best, it was but a 
 yoke of oxen drawing the chariot of the sun. 
 
 Our public school system in its purpose and scope and general admin¬ 
 istration is our national pride, if not our glory. But, as Americans, fully 
 comprehending what it is, is it not our first and patriotic duty to repair 
 in it whatever imperfections may appear, that it may more and more 
 effectively subserve its purpose ? You know, gentlemen, undoubtedly 
 better than I, that political patronage and personal interests and partiali¬ 
 ties, ignorance and indifference, and mercenary and illicit motives of all 
 kinds do in some degree degrade and demoralize the public school system. 
 You know that in the primary schools the seeds of our future America are 
 sown, and you know how deep in that quick soil of childhood all ignoble 
 dispositions may strike their roots, like poisonous weeds, and with what 
 difficulty they are torn up. A teacher cannot cringe to a superior school 
 officer and flatter and fawn for favor without a loss of self-respect which 
 necessarily affects his manhood, destroys his enthusiasm, and unfits him 
 for his duty. Can any patriotic American state one good reason why a 
 system of selection which is entirely applicable and with the happiest re¬ 
 sults to every other branch of the public service, is unfitted for the most 
 important branch of all, the public school ? It is a simple, reasonable, 
 and perfectly practicable system, and that its principle might be univer¬ 
 sally adopted for the selection of teachers is a proposition which does not 
 seem to me to admit of debate. 
 
 Every objection and adverse argument that has been urged in the 
 general discussion of the question of civil service reform in this country 
 was anticipated in the English consideration of the same subject. The 
 chief opposition, what I may call the last ditch of objection, was that no 
 preliminary examination of general or special information could determine 
 satisfactorily the fitness for his duties of a public officer of any degree. 
 The conclusive reply to this objection was twofold : first, that there was 
 simply a choice of alternatives, and that an impartial preliminary inquiry 
 into fitness was better than no care or inquiry at all, which is the spoils 
 system ; and, second, that final appointment was to be made only after 
 probation or actual test of capacity and fitness. So I can suppose it to be 
 said that examination in scholarship would not test the more important 
 qualifications of a teacher, which are the ability to awaken interest, to 
 impart knowledge, and to keep order—the first and imperative require¬ 
 ment in the American school. But probation would test them as in other 
 employments, and probation is a vital condition of the reformed system. 
 The application of what we call the merit system to the schools is long 
 established and familiar elsewhere. The elementary schools of Germany, 
 for instance, are certainly among the best in the world, and every Gerinan 
 
112 
 
 THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. 
 
 teacher must have had three or four years’ training in a normal school, of 
 which the standard is prescribed by the government, and after two years 
 of provisional service he must pass a second practical examination before 
 he is definitely installed in his work. This is the provision also in France 
 and Austria; and in Ireland, as Mr. Jay, first President of the New York 
 Civil Service Commission, states, the four national examiners of the public 
 schools are selected by competitive examinations. 
 
 The comment upon such facts, perhaps, will be that America is not 
 Germany, France, Austria, or Ireland, and that we are a law unto our¬ 
 selves. True, but among the great qualities which have made America 
 is the common sense which appropriates to American advantage whatever 
 in any country in the world seems to be wise or useful. The habeas corpus 
 and trial by jury were not rejected by us because they came from England. 
 Gunpowder we have also found useful, although India, Arabia, Eng¬ 
 land, or Germany invented it. We do not disdain printing, whether it 
 was the child of Germany or of China; and the mariner’s compass is ours 
 as much as it is Italy’s. As Bacon was said to have taken all knowledge 
 for his province, so America takes all the world and all the wit and wisdom 
 of mankind for its teacher. Germany is an empire and America is a 
 republic ; but if an empire has an admirable school system, nothing so well 
 illustrates republican intelligence as careful observation of it and adapta¬ 
 tion of such parts of it as commend themselves to republican judgment as 
 suitable to republican institutions. We justly hold that teachers should 
 be licensed and appointed upon examination. Then the examinations, the 
 certificates, and the appointments should be absolutely free, so far as pos¬ 
 sible, from personal prejudice or favor, political and interested pressure, 
 or other illegitimate influence. The teacher should feel and the public 
 should know that his selection is due wholly to his proved fitness—a fitness 
 ascertained by carefully considered, impartial, and impersonal tests. It is 
 at least a dozen years too late to deny the value of such a method of selec¬ 
 tion. Its simplicity of operation, its effectiveness, and happy results are 
 incontestable. Mr. Commissioner Eoosevelt says that the spoils system 
 has been practically extirpated in the department service in Washington, 
 and the late Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Windom, said of the reformed 
 system : “ Having been at the head of the department both before and 
 after its adoption, I am able to judge by comparison of the two systems, 
 and have no hesitation in pronouncing the present condition of affairs as 
 preferable in all respects.” 
 
 The public school system of the United States should not stand upon 
 the shifting sands of the whims and prejudices and politics of the district 
 caucus, but upon the solid rock of experience and reason. In every part 
 of the Union it is essentially a State institution. It is maintained by the 
 State upon the highest considerations for the general welfare. The State 
 creates funds constitutionally inviolable, appropriates their income, and 
 
THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AND CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. 113 
 
 lays specific taxes upon all the people for the support of the schools. For 
 the same great and common purpose the authority of the State should 
 secure uniformity of training and examination for teachers, and the ex¬ 
 aminations should be competitive as under the national law for other 
 departments of the public service. In the State of New York great prog¬ 
 ress in this direction has been made in the voluntary adoption by. the 
 school commissioners throughout the State, at the suggestion of the 
 Superintendent of Public Instruction, of uniform simultaneous examina¬ 
 tions for teachers upon conditions essentially competitive. Three grades 
 of certificates are issued ; those of the lower grade only to candidates who 
 reach a minimum of sixty marks in a possible hundred, in the two higher 
 grades only to those who reach seveiity-five marks. The State Super¬ 
 intendent in his report for this year says that “ to this system more than 
 to anything else, and perhaps more than to all other things taken together, 
 is to be attributed the marked increase of interest in the work, the con¬ 
 stantly advancing qualifications, the added attendance upon the normal 
 schools and training classes which are everywhere manifest.'*' Yet the 
 superintendent concedes that the weakness of the scheme lies in the 
 examination of the papers by the local commissioners, who are often elected 
 without regard to their qualifications for such service, and who, even if 
 qualified, diifer greatly in their markings. He therefore recommends to 
 the Legislature the passage of a law providing for the examination and 
 rating of papers by a central board of examiners, as the papers of the 
 academies and secondary schools in New York are examined in the office 
 of the Kegents of the University. 
 
 This recommendation, like that of the National Civil Service Commis¬ 
 sion, that the papers of the national service examinations should be ex¬ 
 amined in Washington, is wise, because a comprehensive and truly effective 
 application of the principles of civil service reform to the public school 
 system can be accomplished only by law. A general law of the State con¬ 
 trolling the action of all school officers will alone avail; a system which 
 shall provide an open competition of merit and secure a tenure beyond 
 personal pleasure. Already, and with the same purpose as the uniform 
 examinations for teachers' certificates, the Legislature of New York passed 
 last year an act requiring that in no city or village having a Superintendent 
 of Schools should any teacher be appointed who had not completed a high 
 school course and been trained for at least a year in a normal school or a 
 training class. This, too, was aimed at the vital point of certification and 
 employment of proved competency only. The bill passed the Legislature 
 but not the executive chamber. Yet it is a bright sign of that untiring 
 American spirit which is not content with good, but reaches out for the 
 better and presses forward and upward toward the best. This school move¬ 
 ment in New York is in strict accord with the wise and generous progressive 
 impulse of the time and country. 
 
 8 
 
114 
 
 THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION 
 
 In such a matter the experience of one State will serve all the States. 
 If in New York it be found that the fitness of the teachers and the effi¬ 
 ciency of the schools are greatly increased by a system of simultaneous and 
 uniform examinations for certificates upon paper prepared by the Depart¬ 
 ment of Instruction, the same happy result would follow in Maine or in 
 Texas. One of the fortunate consequences of our political union is that 
 each State is an object lesson to all the States. In every chief department 
 of public activity—in education, in charity, in the prison system, in the 
 sanitary system—each State experiments for itself, and the Union is the 
 beneficiary of the common intelligence and the common enterprise. No 
 State wishes its public school system to be inferior to that of its neighbors, 
 and if a neighbor takes a step in advance, the whole line instinctively 
 moves, in military phrase, to dress upon it, and to obey the perpetual Ameri¬ 
 can order of the day in the old German field-marshaTs phrase, “Forward, 
 gentlemen.” 
 
 Gentlemen, I cannot stand here in your presence to avail myself of the 
 opportunity which you have generously offered me to plead for a reform 
 which it seems to me in its wise application would greatly promote the 
 welfare of the public school system, without a keener consciousness of the 
 truth that the American public school is the true temple of the people. 
 In every other branch of activity, in religion, in politics, in society, even 
 in charity, we are all divided into sects and parties and clubs and cliques. 
 But, in the public school, citizens of all sects and all parties, of all social 
 sympathies and associations, meet on a common ground with a common 
 interest and a common purpose. It is the American temple dedicated to 
 what we believe the essential condition of popular government, an edu¬ 
 cated people. It is not that we suppose that education can take the place 
 of personal honesty or national love of liberty, but that we believe it to be 
 the means of ennobling personal character and strengthening public virtue. 
 The State gives its children knowledge as a two-edged sword, indeed, with 
 which they may either slay themselves or carve their way to the highest 
 human service. The public school merely opens to the child that oppor¬ 
 tunity of training and developing his powers, his character, and his aims 
 which comes from knowledge of human thought and achievement in all 
 times and countries—an opportunity which he alone can improve for him¬ 
 self. The dignity, the influence, the power of the teacher's office, there¬ 
 fore, are incalculable. Like St. Peter, he holds the sacred keys. Is any 
 public duty more transcendent than that of enabling the duties of that 
 office to be discharged more satisfactorily, of constantly elevating it both 
 in the respect of him who fills it and in the confidence and honor of the 
 public for whom he holds it ? Shall we spare any thought, any effort, any 
 cost, to make the public school what we mean it to be, the corner-stone 
 of the ever loftier and more splendid structure of political .liberty, and to 
 impress upon the teacher by our sympathy and care the central truth of the 
 
UNIVERSITIES AND SCHOOLS. 
 
 115 
 
 school s) r stem that the child is educated by the State, not that he may 
 read and write only, but that the trained power and noble intelligence 
 of the American citizen may tend constantly more and more to purify and 
 perpetuate the American republic ? 
 

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