EDUCATION AND NATIONAL DE VELOPMENT. Education has been an im portant factor in influencing our national de velopment, our institutions, ideals, habits, effi ciency, and general mental attitude. It has in turn been influenced by those permanent fac tors that determine, in large part, the nature and progress of any civilization — the geo graphical, physical and racial factors — and the institutions resulting, particularly those of a political, economic, religious, and social char acter. It is the interaction of all these factors that accounts for the peculiar relation of our education to our national development.
Nations that have a national system of edu cation, directly controlled by the central gov ernment, have the power to influence conspicu ously the character of education so as to pro duce a definite type of national life. Many of the important nations of the past have, through state aid, established, encouraged, and con trolled to a greater or less extent their educa tional institutions,— elementary, secondary, and especially higher. They have likewise fostered and protected libraries, art, literature, and science. Their purpose was to raise the tone of national life, to train leaders for service in church and state, and to teach men their duties to the state, to each other, and to themselves.
In the United States, however, from the founding of the colonies until the present time, education has not been in the hands of the central government. During the colonial period of our history each colony acted independently, in this matter, and when our Constitution was framed the States retained the power to regu late education. Moreover, during the colonial period and until the second quarter of the 19th century, with few exceptions, both colo nies and States left the subject almost wholly in the power of the local units of govern ment, of which the district was the most char acteristic, or trusted to private or other agencies. This led to extreme variations in educational ideals, institutions, and practices, with the re sult that the direct influence of education on national, as distinguished from State or local life, .was small. By this we mean there was little tendency to educate the individual in a way to prepare him for efficient citizenship, with an appreciation of his duties and obliga tions toward the nation. Indeed this was hardly
possible until there was a realization that the local communities were to become parts of a great whole or until the national spirit was born. Since a political basis for national edu cation was lacking schools were maintained largely for the moral and religious development of communities, and the preservation of learn ing for its own sake. After the State systems were formed there was some improvement, but educational policies and institutions were neces sarily largely determined by local or sectional needs.
In spite of this diversity, it is true that gradually the spirit of American education, and to a considerable extent its forms, have tended toward uniformity, with a correspondingly greater influence on national development. This tendency is due to the action of much the same forces that led to the substitution of the principle of union and nationalism for particu larism. In the case of education the process has been voluntary, without the compelling force of general laws issued by the central government. In other words the individual States have been guided by similar ideals and forms of education, because they best express the needs of their people. The more the vari ous sections of the country became one in spirit and institutions, the more the State systems of education have tended to become similar in spirit, practice, and form.
Before the American Revolution two move ments or forces prepared the way for a greater influence of education on national development. First, the tendency to recognize the respon sibility of the state for education, rather than some other agency like the Church or agencies of a private character. This notion appeared first in 1647, in the legislation establishing the educational system of Massachusetts. Second, those forces tending toward the sentiment for and feeling of nationality, based on common political institutions and language, literature, habits of thought, aspirations, and especially on the influence of environment in producing democratic tendencies.