University of the State of New York THE ELEMENT OF INSPIRATION IN THE SCHOOLS ANNUAL ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE I7TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE ASSOCIATED ACADEMIC PRINCIPALS December 26, 1901 SYRACUSE CITY HALL, SYRACUSE N. Y. BY PRES. ANDREW S. DRAPER, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS THE LiOHARY CF THE SEP 1 1932 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS. R32sm-Mr2-56o ALBANY UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK 1902 It^Kd^ THE LOBY OF THE SEP 1 1932 University of the State of New York -- ... , Mn io i OF II.UNOIS. THE ELEMENT OF INSPIRATION IN THE SCHOOLS BY TKES. ANDREW S. DRAPER, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS The growth of the American school system supplies material for a remarkable, a fascinating, even a patriotic and glorious story. No other great people ever gained such splendid edu- cational conceptions; the masses stand for unlimited educa- tional opportunity to every son and daughter of the people. No other people ever thought of providing schools for every rod of such a wide and sparsely settled territory as ours; no other people ever attempted to provide the best free schools of all grades for all classes in such cities as ours. No other great nation in the world has builded an educational system on such plans — so flexible, so adaptable to the national ends, so express- ive and promotive of the national life. And it has not been done by a monarchy, or by a ministry t arough the use of dicta- torial powers, but by the millions of a great, liberal people, moved by the highest purposes, acting through primary meet- ings and then exercising sovereign powers through representa- tive and responsible assemblages. ^Yhat other people in all history ever overcame the inertia of conditions, ever tri- umphed over the hindrances to cooperative action in the mul- titude, ever supplanted the rule of force with the rule of love and of sense, ever brought scientific investigation and rational and systematic methods to the training of the child so com- pletely and successfully, ever made such munificent public and private gifts to learning, ever took all the great steps leading to such splendid realizations of noble purposes, quickly, unitedly and effectually, as that mighty people which has been com- pounded out of all the peoples of the earth in this free land in the last two generations of men? Some other peoples have done much; some other peoples are doing some things in their schools better than we are doing those things in ours; but it is not too much to say, and as it is true it is a glorious thing to say, that the thinking and the doing of no other people ever resulted in such a comprehensive, such a unique system of popular education as that brought forward by the American people in the last half century of time. 336 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK [26 DEK^ It is not speaking unadvisedly to attribute this splendid ad- vance to the last two generations of men and the last half century of time. No one lacks in appreciation of that fore- sight and heroism of the fathers which laid the foundations of the Republic; but the conditions which have made the modern American school system necessary and possible had not de- veloped in the days of the fathers, and their wisdom and their strenuosity were otherwise abundantly engaged. They were obliged, as we shall be, to leave some things to be done and some glory to be gained by the men and women who possessed the land after them. We are again and again enjoined to look forward and not back, but it will not be a grievous sin if we violate the inspiring injunc- tion in order that we may understand the present more readily, realize the responsibilities which are on us, and look forward more clearly and confidently. A thousand years ago great throngs of people moved out of northern and central Europe and compounded a new nation in Britain. Either because of the constituent elements, or because of some sort of chemical action resulting from the compounding, that nation soon showed some traits which were very unusual and very great. It showed something of an understanding of the Grod-given rights of the individual man,, as well as something of the necessity of organized society; it showed both readiness of initiative and self-control; it showed intelligence which could set rational limits to the prerogative of the king, and even forti- tude which would defy the power of the king, without destroy- ing the kingship or overthrowing the kingdom; it developed the constructive genius to set up a more stable constitutional gov- ernment in larger measure than any other people had ever done; it developed much spiritual life, blemished of course by the superstitions and irrational customs of an age when force ruled and darkness covered the earth; it advanced slowly but steadily in the arts and sciences; it created armies and constructed navies, entered into world relations, dreamed of world con- quests more than it realized world responsibilities, did much wrong but more good, gained in outlook and in conscience and in power through the doing; and finally used its power for the 1901] ANNUAL ADDRESS 337 •enlargement of freedom and the development of law more rationally and forcefully and broadly than had ever been done by any other nation. And its standards of liberty and its gradually unfolding system of law have stood the test of time and of changed conditions, because they rest on foundations which are immutable and accord with fundamental principles which the infinite conscience of the world holds to be unchange- able and eternal. But English freedom did not come to ite full flower in a day. Security was assured before liberty was gained. In the advance some would move faster than others, and differences grew to bitter persecution and fratricidal war. Some broke away and came to the new world and set up government in the wilderness. They brought English traditions and laws and institutions with them. They would leave behind some things not well to take, but they expected in essentials to follow the English models. In their persons and in their political organization they were, were glad to be, and expected to continue to be, subject to the king and parliament of England. In time other great peoples sent colonies to our shores. Some of them brought ideas and institutions of their own. Colonial relations were established. English thought and feeling and usage were somewhat modified, but in essentials the English exercised control and English policies happily prevailed. A new nation resulted. It was not quite like the English nation, but it never ceased to be an English nation. Isolation, work in the open air, led liberty to grow, but respect for govern- ment did not grow. Governmental limitations were irksome. Rule from over the sea was distasteful. Our fathers came to be opposed to parliaments as well as to kings. They came to be jealous of all government that could govern. Their preju- dices carried them almost to chaos, and but for the nerve and .conscientiousness and resourcefulness of their race would have carried them to destruction. Separation was imperative and inevitable. Unhappily it had to come by violence. The fact that independence was gained by war, and was fol- lowed by another war with England, estranged for long years both the older nation and the younger one from the influences 338 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OP NEW YORK [20 DEC. which each most needed and which none but the other could give. In America the heavy burden of conquering the land, the fear of delegated authority and centralized power, the somber hue of the spiritual life, and the coveted isolation, impeded both the intellectual and industrial advance imperative to better liv- ing. The pace was even slower and more uncertain in the new nation than in the old. The average American up to the middle of the 19th century was not far from the intellectual or indus- trial plane of the average Englishman of the time of Elizabeth or of Cromwell. Then history began to repeat itself. The very peoples from whom great throngs went a thousand years before to enter into the building of the English nation began sending yet greater throngs across wider seas to an endless and unexplored country to combine with the resultant stock and compound yet another nation. All the other peoples of the earth have sent their thou- sands and thousands also, and out of all these a new nation and a new civilization have emerged. It is governing and occupying the western world. In all this the English language has pre- vailed, the essentials of English character have dominated, and the fundamentals of English liberty are everywhere prized above all of its possessions as the sacred legacies of the inspired heroes of generations gone. But the new nation is not an English nation. It owes much more to old England than to any other, and perhaps more than to all others, but it has distinguishing traits, brought into its life by other peoples and growing out of its own experience, which are quite its own. It has reached the point where it exerts more influence on English life, and infi- nitely more on the life of every other nation, than England or any other nation does on its life. It is an American nation, known and regarded at every capital and among every people in the world. It has brought forth new ideals and new measures of freedom, physical freedom, social freedom, political freedom, intellectual freedom, religious freedom and industrial freedom. It is still God's truth, and it is God's truth now in a larger sense than ever before, that American youth are free to break through the bar- riers and gain knowledge and power, and win success and fame 1901] ANNUAL ADDRESS 33 ( J as the youth of other lands can not, under their systems, hope to do. It has made a new manner of people through making* more of the individual man; it has created altogether new measures of public power through unwonted combinations of multitudes of forceful men and women; it has centralized and made quickly available the power and authority of a great people in a manner which surprises the world; and better than all else, it has in the years of its great strength, as never before, shown its purpose to use its power to sustain right and justice and decency, to aid the weak and to replace the rule of force by that of reason in all the world relations into which it has been unwittingly drawn through the steps which its self-respect compelled it to take in order to re » a frail and beautiful island at its door from intolerable outrage. Happily, too, only the other day, it completed a treaty with the mother country removing causes which have irritated both peo- ples for half a century, and opening the way for better and more mutually helpful relations and for great world enterprises of the first moment to mankind. We do not approve all that Great Britain does, but who can have so little knowledge of the forces which help on the world advance as to be unable to see the importance of amicable relations between these two great Eng- lish spe;' . constitutional, liberty loving, nearly related nations? Our itional evolution has been more keenly realized by the thi ps of other nations than by those of our own. Their famil- ial with the conditions in other lands is quickening, and their point of view is better. It is somewhat anomalous that the most philosophic and commendaton^ discussions of our consti- tutions and our institutions have been by four great scholars of foreign birth, Francis Lieber, Goldwin Smith, James Bryce and Hermann Eduard von Hoist. While these men analyze judicially and admire with enthusi- asm, there is no lack of educated men of native birth who give 340 UNIVERSITY OP THE STATE OF NEW YORK [26 DEO. their productive energies to little beyond the apprehension of trouble. Our every advance makes them shudder; our very suc- cesses move them to anguish. They are having nothing but their distress for their perplexity. The men and women who make the bone and sinew of the nation are doing their work and eating their bread, and reading their papers and singing their songs and sending their little ones to the schools, and exercising their polit- ical powers, and moving up to higher and yet higher planes of living, with a pride in our institutions which is consuming, and with a confidence in their stability which is absolute. Of course no intelligent man can ignore the fact that all politi- cal life, like all life, is subject to injuries and diseases. The suf- frage is somewhat corrupted. The law is now and then sold out for abhorrent barter in high places. Eank and sometimes brutal partizanship obtrudes itself into official stations created to exe- cute the common will and bound to treat every one with equal justice. Public business is frequently managed horribly by men who have neither the capacity nor the honesty to manage any business, not even their own, safely and well. But sane men are not overcome by this; and patriotic and heroic men go about curing it. The power of our democracy to sustain our unique public institutions has been demonstrated. Political diseases may be less in number, they surely are not less in amount, when a king and his court cause all of them because they have all of the opportunity. Health depends on exercise. Political health depends on the free exercise of political power. There is stronger financial integrity where there are banks than where there are none. There is more political integrity where there is political freedom than where there is none. We have no alternative but to trust the crowd. We need have no fear of results after dis- cussion. There is ground for gratitude at the growth of the American public conscience. If our pure democracy has been dishonored it has been behind closed doors and in supposed secu- rity from public indignation. If there has been some apparent indifference to political evils it has been because we are over- 1901] ANNUAL A I » I > I : I 341 occupied, because the wrongs have been considered relatively unimportant, and because of entire confidence in the power of our democracy to visit abundant retribution on the miscreants before their work shall become a menace to our institutions. Foreigners are amazed at the volume of our legislation. They can not understand it at all. It seems to them that nothing slays fixed, and that there is little to be depended upon. Some of our own doctrinaires are troubled also. But this is a new country. It is growing and advancing more rapidly now than ever before. Xot many things beyond the fundamentals embedded in the con- stitution are expected to stay fixed just yet. Legislation can do little enduring harm. If it violates principles the courts over- throw it; that is not the case in any other land. If it is not sup- ported by sentiment it is not e: ited, or is soon repealed; this is not the rule in any other land. This is the people's land. We have to resort to much legislatic > go forward. It is the glory of our country that her people are given to reading and discus- sion; that sentiment changes and advances; that her laws are not immutable, but are to respond quickly to new T conditions, express new sentiments and help on new purposes. Far more good than harm has come of our much legislation. We have overcome the sodden lethargy of barbarism, the depressing self-satisfaction of settled civilizations, by the spirit of our pure democracy flowing freely, ofttimes in poor form, sometimes witl iful wisdom, out of the acts of our legislative assemblages. Let me use a concrete illustration. Two or thi ars ago I fell in conversation with an accomplished English gentlewoman, chaperoning her nieces who were sight-seeing on the continent. With some ill concealed amusement she asked why American heiresses were so eager to marry English noblemen. It was answered that there were comparatively few such marriages; that in some cases they were legitimate alliances; but of course there were a few very rich people in the states who were ready to give all they had to give for a title of nobility. Remembering what I knew must be the English law I remarked that of course 342 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK [2G DEC. it was all right for an English girl who knew no difference, but that I could not see how an American girl with knowledge of the legal status of the married woman in England could think of becoming an English wife anyway. The English woman was sur- prised and one remark led to another till she inquired whether an American gentleman would not be held to be within his rights, and saying a perfectly proper thing, if he were to declare in pub- lic that he would not allow his wife to go here or there or do this or that. The reply, with pride at least equal to her amusement concerning American heiresses and English lords, was that such an incident could not occur in America, and that one saying such a thing would be held to be a boor and not a gentleman; that an American husband and his wife are equals; that they settle their policies at home and not in public; that each is ordi- narily only too glad to regard the wishes of the other; and that if one is not so minded the public will visit its disapproval on the offender though the law will take no cognizance of the matter till the offense is so grave as to overthrow the home, and then it will intervene and give the property and the custody of the children to the one who has done most to maintain the parity of the parents and the stability of the home. It leads one to reflect on the extent to which the married woman in America has become the product and the maker of American institutions. Our democracy found her, under the English common law, without rights or remedies of any kind beyond the right to live and be exempt from cruel violence. If she had personal property it became the husband's absolutely on marriage; if she had real property it became his for life and he could alienate it in his lifetime or dispose of it by will. If he invested in improved real estate she acquired the bare right to the rents of one third of it so long as she remained his widow T . It was within his legal power to give or will what his wife brought to him to his own relatives. She could not make a will at all. Her services and earnings were his. The children were under his exclusive control. He could educate 1901] ANNUAL ADDRESS 343 them or not a1 his pleasure. He had a motive for keeping them from school, for their labor as well as their mother's was his; and he had the legal right to indict physical chastisement on her as well as on them. We have changed all this, but we could never have done it all at any one time or in any one place. Our statute law has in a crude and piecemeal way, the natural product of our gradu- ally advancing democratic life, given the wife a legal status nearly equal to the husband's, and in doing that has done much more. It has made the wife a companion and helper; it has made the mother a decisive influence in the home; it has changed the character of the home, and in changing the character of the home it has changed the character of the nation for the better. It seems to me that it well illustrates the spirit and the methods by which we advance our American institutions. We might speak of the influence wiiich our democracy has exerted on the religious life of the country. Toleration and discussion and the separation of church and ate incident to the growth of individualism and to equality under the law; the putting aw T ay of superstitions; the refusal to permit the mere wording of creeds written in the middle ages to bind the think- ing and the feeling of modern life; indifference to the mere forms of worship — all of which are inevitable sequences of the intellectual advance, have changed the conceptions of God, have forced the evolution of a theology capable of reconciliation with scientific truth, have lessened the skepticism which existed but which was hidden, have deepened faith in the universal fatherhood of God as they have established the universal brotherhood of man and made the unity of God and all his children vital in the world. There have been few products of our democracy so notable as the advance in our industries and our commerce. We meet all the rest of the world and defeat them easily in fields which can be w r on by multiplying the productive power of our popula- tion through ingenious machinery. The United States conimis- 344 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK [26 DEC. sioner of labor points out that where 1000 paper bags once took 6J hours to make by hand they are now made by the machine in 40 minutes, and that it formerly took 4800 hours to rule both sides of 10 reams of paper, while with modern tools one man does it in 2J hours. Col. Wright adds: "An ordinary farm hand in the United States raises as much grain as three in England, four in France, five in Germany, or six in Austria, which shows what an enormous waste of labor occurs in Europe because the farmers are not possessed of the mechanical appli- ances used in the states." Who can contemplate these things and doubt American preeminence in trade or fail to see that whether we will or no we are facing very great international transformations ? American mowers and reapers, American shoes and clothing, American cash registers and typewriters and bicycles and auto- mobiles and locomotives are invading all lands. I stepped into a shop on the Strand in London to get some shaving soap and remarked that I " supposed Pear's was the best." " It is very good," the clerk said, " but we generally sell Williams'." Amer- ican flour grown in Dakota and milled at Minneapolis is making better bread than they have ever seen before in India. Ameri- can engineers are building cantaliver bridges in Burma and elec- tric subways in London. American machinery is handling coal in Germany and an American trolley road passes the pyramids of Egypt. Mr Frank A. Vanderlip, formerly a student at the L : niversity of Illinois, and recently assistant secretary of the treasury, is responsible for the statement that in the last six years we have sold abroad in produce and manufactures $2,000,- 000,000 more than we have bought, while from the beginning of the government up to six years ago the foreign trade balance in our favor was but $383,000,000. I have recently come on an elaborate editorial from the Lon- don daily telegraph entitled, "America, the universal competi- tor — a continent coming of age." If I could put aside my paper and read the whole of that to you it would be of more service than anything I can say. Let me quote a few sentences: 1901] ANNUAL ADDRESS 345 It is more than questionable whether the average Briton has even yet any sure conception of the overwhelming character of America's natural resources as compared with any European scale. Every factor in her industrial greatness is on the giant measure either of performance or potentiality. She has two long shores upon the two main oceans. Her navigable water- ways are more w T onderful than those of Siberia or Brazil, for they do not flow towards ice like the one or through the dense tropics like the other. There is nothing anywhere in the czar's dominions to compare with the St Lawrence and the Great lakes leading ocean traffic for 2000 miles into the heart of a continent. The American farmer l;as marketed at nearly 40e a bushel in recent seasons corn w T hich it cost him 15c to produce. The United States raises nearly two thirds of the raw cotton in the world. She raises sugar from the cane in the south, from the beet in the west, from sorghum in the center, and from the maple in New England. From California to Florida the country is opulent with orchards. Her harvests are a sea of golden grain stretching over many times the entire area of the British isles. The immense mineral deposits of America are still won in great part near the surface, not by deep shafts, long drifts and expensive workings of older mining countries like our own. The coal area of the United States is far wider than that of all Europe put together. She is now first, both in gold and iron, and produces all the metals but tin. Her herds of horses, cattle, sheep and swine are such as the pastoral imagi- nation of the more primitive world might have seen only in dreams. Her waters swarm w T ith fish. And w^hile there are already 76,000,000 of inhabitants in America there is still 16 times as much space to each soul as in these crowded islands, and 12 times as much as in Germany. I can not ask you to listen longer to a quotation, but let me exploit one sentence of this foreign w 7 riter to make evident the fact that what we have won has not come inevitably, or easily, but has been gained through effort and genius. The sentence is the brief one, " America is now first in gold and iron." We used to get all our steel from England. A little more than 100 years ago the state of Pennsylvania loaned $1500 for five years to enable a man to try to make bar iron into steel " as good as in England." 90 years ago our whole country produced 917 tons in a year, 70 years ago 1600 tons in a year, 50 years ago 6000 tons in a year. It was of inferior quality and cost from 346 UNIVERSITY OP THE STATE OF NEW YORK [26 DEC. 6c to 7c a pound. Commencing in 1864 the Bessemer processes improved the grade and reduced the price to less than lc a pound. Then the iron age passed away, and the steel age came, and the great battle with foreign makers was on in earnest. It has been a battle royal. In 1873 the United States produced 198,000, and Great Britain 653,000 tons of steel. In 1899 the Republic made 10,600,000, and Great Britain 5,000,000 tons. In that year we were making more than 40^ of all the steel made in the world. In 1891 we exported 15,700 tons of steel rails; in 1900 it was 342,000 tons. In 1891 our iron and steel exports were valued at $29,000,000; in 1900 at f 122,000,000. In the last 30 years the British steel rail exports have fallen off 80^. Dur- ing the progress of this great contest the promise has at times seemed to be with the old world and then with the new. Now our triumph has become complete and we seem to have gained a secure hold on the first place in that mighty industrial art which is of more moment to national prosperity and stability than any other. If it is true as has been said that " if a man have better iron than you have he will soon have all your gold," it is not strange that in the last two or three years large amounts of European capital have been withdrawn from the United States, and that England, Germany and Russia have become, for the first time, borrowers of American money. Who can fail to see the signifi- cance of all this or be blind to the fact that it means quite as much to the labor as to the capital of the United States? But let us not be too much puffed up or too rapacious. The foreign trade of Great Britain is almost a matter of life and death with her. We could get on very well by ourselves. We could raise all we need; we could make all we must have; and we could prosper without selling in foreign markets But it is not so with her. She can not meet the needs of hei people out of her own fields. Her workers must depend on materials we send to them. If her manufactures do not command other markets than her own her mills must stop and multitudes of her people must come to want. To send manufactured goods as well as 1901] ANM'AI. ADDRESS 347 raw products to her is clear gain to us. But our clear gain de- pends on her prosperity and her ability to buy. We wish her well for her own sake and for our own. It is so with the other nations. There is a democracy of thrift and fair dealing gov- erned by natural and inviolable laws. Thrift and fair dealing help each other everywhere. Overreaching defeats itself. The industrious are the wiieel horses, and commercial integrity and fair dealing are the leaders of civilization. We may well be on our guard against avarice and insatiable methods. We owe our industrial preeminence to those creatures of our laws, the corporations. Economic conditions and natural laws of trade are forcing them into great combinations. We can not change those conditions, and we are likely to be worsted in a contest against the laws of nature and the inevitable trend of trade. But there is no rule of moral action binding the indi- vidual man which does not rest on men in combinations. Cor- porations are subject to the same moral code as individual men, and they are amenable to the people who created them as indi- vidual men are not. Such of them as use the powers which the people have granted to them to crush individuals and break down the freedom and limit the volume of trade, such as refuse information concerning their affairs and resort to legal subtle- * ties to extort dishonest gain, such as corrupt political action that they may seize prerogatives opposed to the common weal, are to be punished and regulated, or strangled. Such as can not be controlled will be strangled. The people are not going to block the highways of traffic, or break or overthrow the law of contract, but they are not going to be despoiled or defied through the unlawful exercise of privileges which they have conferred and which they can withdraw. The highways of progress must all be strewn with the wreck- age of contests. Along such roads, grappling with such respon- sibilities, democracy is advancing to its eompletest triumphs. It may be more agreeable to some people to be undisturbed, it may be easier to keep isolated, but if democracy were to main- tain exclusiveness and avoid contests at a time when the older 348 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK [26 DEC. forms of government are exerting every effort and resorting to every device to extend their political systems and conquer com- mercial supremacy, then it must know that it is not as worthy of dependence, that it is not as capable of serving the highest purposes of nations, as more consolidated forms of government have proved themselves to be. We accept no such conclusion as that. We have recently said, with almost one voice, in a deliberate and authoritative way unknown to any other political system, that the Republic can of right do anything which any other sovereign nation can of right do. We have recently learned, without suspecting it, that our people stand ready to deal with any internal or ex- ternal problems which world conditions may bring on us. We shall do it without danger to our system; indeed our political system can acquire the strength of manhood only through the doing of it. Our democracy has come to its majority. In the words of the English writer, a continent has come of age. 1 have been looking into our political history, our intellectual and spiritual evolution, our industrial advance and commercial conquests a little, though the fascination of the subject has beguiled me into doing it more at length than I had intended, in order to get a fresh understanding of the people and the interests to be served by the American schools. American schools have from first to last reflected America! nomic and political conditions. It may well be doubted whether the schools determine the course of a people. They may be the implements which break out the roads; they may be the lamps which light the course, but they are the instruments more than the creators of civilizations. Civilizations and their institutions are the product' of the Almighty Power working through the souls of men. The schools have advanced with the growth of the nation and the progress of civilization, but we may very well question whether the schools of our fathers did not better represent their civilization than our schools represent ours. If this is so it does not reflect on us for it was far easier for them to make 1901] ANNUAL ADDRESS 349 schools which could meet the moderate demands of their day than it is for us to understand the tendencies and the claims of these seething times and erect schools which can meet present needs. Let us not forget that there was real teaching before there was much educational philosophy, and before methods were re- duced to forms and expressed in rules. This does not discredit the philosophies, and it is not a reflection on the training in methods which have saved us from chaos in the centers of population and in the large schools at least. It only means that the primitive schools had easier tasks than we have. They could stir enthusiasm easier than we. Teaching depends on the interest of the pupil. The interest of the pupil depends on the adaptation of the subject and the spirit" of the teacher. The troubte with the greater number of children in our larger schools is that they never gain enthusiasm over anything. They live just ordinary, dronish, dead level lives because not touched with the vital spark which would start their machinery into action. The teacher of the early schools worked directly with the individual pupil, understood him better, and was more easily able to do the things which would fire his soul, for the schools were small. Beyond all question we are trying to do too many things. The quantity of work which a child does under duress is not so important as that he shall do something because he likes to do it. Before he can like to do it he must be able to master it completely. He must be able to have the satisfaction of a full triumph. Growth depends on the power to do. The power to do waits on doing. It is not the doing of this particular thing or that; it is not following prescribed formulas containing so many grains of this or that; it is finding pleasure in the doing of something so that one comes to do it easily and acquires the desire and the power to do something harder. That is growth. The early teacher could choose work suited to particular pupils, and was free to do it, for he was a law unto himself. And so teacher and pupil worked together on subjects which they could master and which they therefore enjoyed. They 350 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK [26 DEC accomplished things, and in the doing they gathered the strength and the ambition to do larger things. That was teaching. Aside from the matter of close touch with the individual pupil, there is undoubtedly a loss to the spirit of the school because of the grading of pupils and the segregation of classes. Young pupils gain as much from hearing older ones recite or seeing them fail as from their own books and their own recitations. The mixing of pupils in the one room school did stir thought and generate ambition. The old time school declamation on recurring red-letter days in the regular routine of the early schools was a great stimulant to boys and girls'. It w r as not more in the words that were heard than in the fact that the boys themselves gave expression to them. It is the doing of things which stirs ambition and creates power, even the doing of things w r hich some one else has done. There are plenty of men prominent in affairs who would gladly testify to the uplifting influences of the masterpieces of oratory and literature on their own lives' by means of the school declamation. If I could have my way there would never be another school- house built without an assembly room large enough to accom- modate at one time, and artistic enough to attract, every child who has a place under the roof. At least so much should be done to break the endless monotony of book study and the grade recitation; at least so much to stir the soul through the singing of the multitude and the magnetic touch of the words that are spoken in the crowd. The intensive work of each class in a graded school is prepara- tion for the class beyond rather than preparation for life. The studies multiply rapidly as the grades advance, and the tendency to require the grade below to prepare pupils for all they may have to do in the grade above is irresistible. The teacher is discredited if her pupils can not carry all the work and do all the particular things w T hich have been placed in the schedule of the next grade. The upper school is really the only yard- 1901] ANNUAL ADDRESS 351 stick for an early and accurate measurement of the work of the school below. It is better than none, and for the crowd it has made the schools better than they used to be, but it tends to routine, and it acts against individuality and does not oncourage those personal traits without which one never rises above the level of the crowd. And the grading of the pupils results in the grading of the teachers also. The pupils move on from one grade to the next; too often the teachers are stationary and their work and their outlook completely circumscribed. It is not their fault; they are conscientious enough; they would broaden out and go for- ward if they could. If the administration of the schools is free from the curse of influence, if growth is certain to win a posi- tion of greater influence and better pay, and if steadiness and power are sure to be rewarded with the/ commendation and respect of a community, they will broaden and strengthen and drive the work of the school with a spirit w T hich gives' life and inspiration to pupils. If the reverse of these conditions prevails they must be made of unusual stuff if they do not succumb to the withering routine of the unending grind and become mechan- ical automatons in the pint cup of a single grade. The professionalization of the schools tends to separate them from the people. I am not saying that the advantages of this do not outweigh the disadvantages; I am only calling attention to the fact that there are disadvantages. The schools are not so responsive to popular sentiment. Parents do not understand very much that is going on in them and are impliedly told that it is beyond them and that they can not expect to understand. What their children are trying to do confounds them. They are willing to be confounded if they can only believe that their chil- dren will be better and brighter and stronger than they are, but they can not down their incredulity. Specialization has in some directions been carried to an extent which is absurd, and the confident and conflicting wisdom of educational experts on phys- ical and mental and spiritual subtleties is confounding to people who take such things seriously, and amusing to men and women 352 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OP NEW YORK [26 DEC. of humor and sense. It weakens the relations between the people and the schools. We are accentuating the importance of technic in the schools to an extent altogether unprecedented. For example, we are training for better form in the oral or written expression of thought or of fact. Certainly there is enough need of it. But it can not be denied that it is limiting the range of thought and the freedom of expression. " Pupils are led to think less of what they shall do than of the form and style in which they shall tell of it. Form is not substance, and while substance may. well respect it it is not to be made the slave of form. I am inclined to believe that the literature in general use in the schools makes for culture at the expense of strength. I am in favor of culture but not at the cost of manliness, of inde- pendence, and of power. The literature which was used in the early schools was rather hard for the cutting of intellectual eyeteeth, but once masticated it gave strength. I have in my library a little leather covered book printed in small type on very brown paper, in size about 3 by 5 inches, with 250 pages. I would rather part with any other book or any other set of books I have, for the flyleaf tells me, in very legible penmanship, that it was my father's school reader in 1824 when he was 15 years old. Some of the titles, taken at random, are: "Change of external conditions often adverse to virtue," "The misery of pride," "The vanity of riches," "The mortifications of vice greater than those of virtue." " The pleasures resulting from a proper use of our faculties," "The philosophy which stops at second causes reproved," "The pleasure and benefit of an improved and well directed imagination," etc. These subjects would hardly appeal to a 15 year old boy now, but in the days when they were used they were discussed and digested, and entered into the making of strong if not brilliant character. The tendency has been to regard form and beauty too much, and force and strength too little. Beauty is attractive but it is not exclusively important. It is all right for the schools to teach form, but it must always be remembered that life is more 1901] ANNUAL ADDRESS 353 important than form. If either is to be subordinate life must be uppermost. Beauty in form does not produce effective] in life. Intensiveness in life makes beauty in form. Even the great things in art have not been produced by copyists of form, but by men and women with gifts developed without much out- side aid. The truly great things in literature have not been born of the study of literary style, but of the conflicts of strong minds and the strivings of great souls. And they have not been on things artificial, but on things real, grave, inexorable, on mighty events swept along by the irresistible, underrunning cur- rents of human life. Hear David, waiting in anguish the issue of the battle and assured of victory, asking the first messenger for the informa- tion wmich meant most to him, "Is the young man Absalom safe?" and then in breathless anxiety, of the second messen- ger, " Is the young man Absalom safe? " And Cushi answ r ered, " The enemies of my lord the king, and all that rise against thee to do thee hurt, be as that young man is." And the king was much moved, and w r ent up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and as he went, thus he said: " O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son! " Hear the Greater than David: " Whosoever shall receive this child in my name receiveth me; and whosoever receiveth me receiveth Him that sent me; for he that is least among you all, the same shall be great." Some of us yet feel the effect of the burning verse rising out of the consuming times of the w^ar between the states. Hear Dr Holmes: Flag of the heroes who left us their glory, Borne through the battlefield' s thunder and flame, Blazoned in song and illumined in story, Wave o'er us all who inherit their fame. Hear Mrs Howe in the Battle hymn of the Republic: He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat: Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on. 354 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK [26 DEC. Hear a few familiar sentences from the great Lincoln. In the Springfield depot: " Here my children were born, and here one of them lies buried." In the Newton Bateman letter: " I know that there is a God and that he hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming and I know that His hand is in it." In the Greeley letter: " My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery." " I shall do less whenever I shall believe that what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I believe that doing more will help the cause." " I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views as fast as they shall appear to be true views." " I have here stated my purpose according to my views of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft expressed wish that all men every- where could be free." In the first inaugural: " In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you." " I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection." And in the great climax of his life, the second inaugural: " With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." There is something like a break in grammatical construction in that sentence. You would have difficulty in parsing it. Teachers can not parse any more anyway. Children could once parse; teachers are stranded at the thought of it now. They are adept at putting doubtful literature together; but they have nothing to do with taking great literature apart. And there is more growth in handling a little literature which moves the souls of men for generations than in handling a whole lot which can hardly last the day out. If that culminating sen- 1901] ANNUAL ADDRESS 355 tence in Lincoln's second inaugural had come, in ordinary work from an ordinary child, to any teacher in this state, she would have undertaken to change the form of it; and yet it is enshrined in the hearts of millions of people. I can repeat a passage from Mr Beecher which I read and reread many times in a school reader years ago: "The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind to light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game." A modern literary critic, and all teachers are expected to be that as well as everything else, w r ould discuss that learnedly for a month till the subject-matter and the criticism were both thinner than a postage stamp. " Human owl " would be held anomalous, and " mousing for vermin " trying to flatulent and delicate sensibilities. Yet that is a good sentence for the attention of modern criticism for its form and for other reasons. For one, I am glad Henry Ward Beecher could defy the soft-handed critics and the soft-headed dilettantes altogether. I opened a school reader with a not very ancient titlepage the other day and came on a poem of which this was one of the verses: Children are what their mothers are. No fondest father's fondest care Can fashion so the infant heart As those creative beams that dart, With all their hopes and fears, upon The cradle of a sleeping son. How do you suppose such stuff as that appeals to boys? Boys do not want to be " what their mothers are." That is the very last thing in all the world they are hungering for. Ordinarily they love and respect their mothers, very commonly much more than they are accustomed to talk about. But if they are any- thing like " w T hat their mothers are" their fellows are likely to poke them under the arms and call them feminine and uncom- plimentary names. Boys are not likely to generate enthusiasm over literature w T hich is not adaptable to the natures with which the Almighty 356 UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK [26 DEC. has endowed boys. The normal boy, the boy worth counting, the boy with red blood in his veins, loves action and the litera- ture which describes and suggests it. How the substitution of these older lines on the flight of the earl of Dundee, from that lover of nature and of life whose monuments tower above those of all soldiers and statesmen in the squares of Glasgow and Edinburgh, would strengthen that book and inspire the boys who were allowed to hear and led to understand them: There are hills beyond Pentland and lands beyond Forth. If there's lords in the Lowlands, there's chiefs in the North. There are wild Duniewassals three thousand times three, Will cry lioigh for the bonnets of Bonny Dundee. Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can, Come saddle the horses and call up the men Come open your gates and let me gae free For it's up with the bonnets of Bonny Dundee. Xo doubt girls with no teacher but a man are entitled to sympathy; happily there are few of them. But in the distribu- tion of sympathy let us not forget the boys whose only teacher is a woman. And let the lion's share of pity go to either boys or girls who are subject to a fussy woman or, even worse than that, an effeminate man. So long as present conditions continue in the American schools it will be necessary to make rules for the government of teachers in order to keep the poorer ones from doing positive harm. The weaker the system the more rules there must be and the more inflexible they must be. And rules level down more than they level up. They can not help poor teachers for- ward; they do keep good teachers back. They may prevent positive harm, but they also stand in the way of the vital ele- ment of inspiration in the schools. Teachers, the great mission of your station is to inspire boys and girls, young men and young women. If that is done it mat- ters not so much what else goes undone. You are the repre- sentatives of the greatest civilization the world has ever known, charged with the responsibility of training men and women wha can realize its cost and its worth, who can enter into its pur- 1901] ANNUAL ADDRESS 357 poses, who can still further enrich its life, and still further extend its outposts. You can not hope 1 to do tliat unless you know its history and the great history out of which it has sprung, unless you have drunk deep from the wellspring of its life. You can not hope to do it by merely following the routine of a schedule. It can only be done out of a full and sincere and irrepressible individuality of your own, w 7 hich can realize that the schedule is only the skeleton and that you yourself must provide the juices and the energy for the life of the school. It is to be assumed that you are sane enough to know that freedom is not license and that you have wit enough to do things on your own motion without violating the principles or defying the policies which are imperative to the integrity of our system of popular education. My w r ord for you tonight is that you shall not hesitate to exercise your inborn intellectual freedom; that you shall not let rules and lectures and books and papers and devices and educational subtleties confound and take out of you any originality you ever possessed, and so make your w r ork in the schools insipid. The growth of the country and the political, intellectual and industrial advance have created opportunities for the young people of America which are not presented to the young people of any other land. The teachers are to make these opportuni- ties, w T hat they have cost and what they may lead to, apparent to the schools. The conditions which we have discussed tonight make this task a difficult one. It is one which can be met only out of a rich, an appreciative, and an active life. But if this task is met the others will take care of themselves or be the more easily performed. Tell the boys and girls that no one can hope to be of any consequence in the world who will not w r ork early and late and be patient, and that one w