EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES. Every nation has its social ideals and believes in the maintenance of those ideals. Education is the instrument by means of which a nation hopes to realize its ideals. Because different nations have different ideals, there ex ist different systems of education. In Europe the ideals are the resultants of historic forces. Society has developed in strata and the classes in control of the destinies of the various na tions believe in the maintenance of these strata. As an individual is born into a class of society his education is organized chiefly to fit him for the various vocations of that class. This con ception of education has been successfully maintained not only because of the organiza tion of society into castes, but because of the relative stability of the population. Most peo ple live in the community in which their parents lived and it is natural for their children to take up the vocation of their parents. These two factors explain to a great extent the remarkable success of the industrial education movement in Germany. Neither difference in political ideals nor in the age of a national system of education seems to affect this attitude toward education. Prussia with its autocratic concep tion of government and its century-old system of education, is but little more representative of this type of education than is England which is organized politically as a democracy and which developed a national system of education but a generation ago.
Theory of Education in the United States. —The theory upon which education is organ ized in the United States is the very opposite of that which holds in Europe. There are as yet no castes here and few parents are content to have their children continue in the ustationo in life in which they were born. For the first time in history there is an attempt made to realize the educational ideal portrayed by Plato in his (Republic,) viz: That every individual should be doing that in life for which he is best fitted; that education should be so organ ized as to discover for what the individual is best fitted, and then to provide him with the proper and necessary training. This is done,
it must be admitted, crudely and haltingly, but the American democracy is• practically the only great state in which there exists an educational ladder reaching from the kindergarten to the university, in which all parts, elementary, sec ondary and higher, are so articulated that an individual may freely pass from one to the other. In the European systems of education only elementary education is free and it does not articulate with secondary education. The elementary school carries the child to 12 or 14, giving him a rounded elementary education. The secondary school begins at nine and commences to teach subjects not considered in the element ary school, such as mathematics and foreign languages. Even should a child of the masses when he completes the elementary school, then have the ambition and money to continue his education, he would be unprepared to enter the secondary school. There is nothing for him to do but to enter one of the vocational schools for training in some trade or industry. And that is what is expected of him. The American democracy is by no means perfect in all its as pects; but as far as education can accomplish it. it aims to give every individual the opportunity to make the most of his native abilities and to assume the place in society which his abilities justify. This was not always so, and to un derstand the American system of education it exists to-day it is necessary to make a pnef survey of its development since colonial times.