greatest opportunity for specialization in teaching lies, I believe, in preparation to teach agriculture and the group of natural sciences on which agriculture is based, especially chemistry and botany. This is because there are fewer teachers trained to teach agriculture than to give instruction in any other required branch of public school work.

In contrast with the supply of trained teachers note how great is the demand. The rapid and almost universal teaching of agriculture in the public schools is only limited by the supply of teachers who have the necessary preparation or the needed interest and enthusiasm. Here lies one of the functions of the secondary schools-to prepare, at least partially, a great army of teachers with some knowledge of botany and chemistry and the principles of agriculture, and, most of all, with some conception of the high privilege and national usefulness of their future teaching of the principles of agriculture. A preparation thus begun in the secondary schools will often awaken an interest leading to more specialized work at the higher institutions.

The third reason why agriculture deserves a place in the curriculum, whether it be of grammar school, high school, or special agricultural institution, is because the study of agriculture is the most universal means of promoting the economic good of the individual, the community, the State, and the nation.

Consider for a moment what stupendous issues depend upon the productiveness of our fields. In all this recent cry of conservation of our natural resources it is universally recognized that our chief and most permanent asset is the soil, and our only renewable wealth the crops and trees which spring from it and the animals that build their bodies from the earth-born grass.

Up to this time we have properly proclaimed that public education is justified because it is a training for citizenship. We are now ready to define training for citizenship as that which not only best fits the individual to further the political and moral well-being of society, but also that training which fits him or her to conserve and enrich for posterity the mąterial resources of the nation.

The schools can make an effective contribution to the propa

ganda for scientific education and thus add to the economic advantage of every class of our peeple. Our soils, which should grow more productive with the passing years of scientific cropping, are being wasted through careless tillage and ignorant management. Let us be warned by the desolation of some of the abandoned plains of China, by the sterility of once productive Palestine, and by the recurring famines in India. To help to save the nation from calamities like these is a task worthy to be shared by the school, even though the end be economic, for an improved agriculture means a higher plane of living, material, moral, and mental, for the large body of the people.

Fortunately, there is a remedy. This remedy is a double one, namely-first, agricultural investigation; and second, the universal promulgation of present and future knowledge of the laws of scientific agriculture.

[ABSTRACT OF PAPER.]

AMERICAN IDEAS IN EDUCATION.

ELMER S. BROWN.

Commissioner of Education, Washington, D. C.

THE story is told of an Indian family in Alaska, years ago, when the formal education of natives in that region was in its beginnings, who were persuaded with much difficulty to send their children to school. Going to school, as they understood it, meant to learn the white man's wisdom, and the old Indians were not sure that they cared to have their children learn the white man's wisdom. When at last they were persuaded, and one small boy began his daily schooling, he was eagerly ques-. tioned at home concerning the lessons he had learned. The first day he had learned that c-a-t spells cat; a little later that the cat can eat a rat; a little later still that the cow has four legs and a tail. Little by little the wonder grew, that the white man's wisdom had nothing better than this to offer, and at last in sheer disgust the boy was taken from school and left to get on as best he could with the red man's wisdomwoodcraft, witchcraft, tribal customs, and the rest.

I confess to a good deal of sympathy with the point of view of these old Indians. We do, indeed, sometimes forget that

the schools are concerned with imparting the best wisdom of our people. They sometimes lose themselves in training and technique. This has often happened in the history of schools. And yet all down the ages the idea has been present that the schools are to teach the way of wisdom and righteousness, and not simply to cultivate the wits and load the memory with knowledge.

As one walks through the crowded streets or looks on any great concourse of our people, and still more, as one looks abroad over the whole land with a sense of its enormous population and diversified interests, the thought often comes, how great is the service of any leader who can bind this people more closely together by common thoughts and aspirations: by high thoughts and aspirations befitting our national greatness; not lightly held, but really shaping our national sentiments and making their way out into living deeds. Such a result cannot be brought about merely by conscious efforts dealing with altogether new materials. What can be done is to take the ideas which are already abroad in our national life, the ideas which have indeed made our national life what it is, and bring them into clearer emphasis.

With such an end in view, what we have now to do is to review some of the ideas which may in some special sense be called American, even though our hold upon them be not a monopoly, and see if we cannot find ways of giving them a larger place in our American education.

The first great American symbol which meets the immigrant coming to this country is the statue of liberty enlightening the world. To make more clear to all our people what liberty earlier colonists, at least in the minds of the best of our colonial leaders. There is perhaps no one conception for which America stands more distinctly in the eyes of all the world. To make more clear to all our people what liberty means must be a cardinal object of American education.

It is easy to show, but we sometimes forget to show, that the only liberty that is possible in this world is that which comes through self-government. Self-government and freedom, then, are to be taught as two sides of the same shield, two elements, individual so long as our national character shall not be lost in dissolution.

We may think of human life as a passing back and forth on various undertakings along the highroad of our time. If there were no regulation, no restraint, this highroad would be the scene of endless collisions betweeen those moving in opposite directions. Government is regulation which provides that all shall pass to the one side or the other, so that collisions may be avoided and free movement be assured. But if some are given right of way over all others, many may still be crowded to the wall and placed at hopeless disadvantage. Liberty means that the passers on the highway shall themselves, and all of them, have part in making the regulations by which the highway is controlled, that so far as possible none shall have special privilege to override another. This in part is what liberty means in America, that all shall have their share in making the regulations by which free movement is secured to all.

We can hardly conceive of the improvement that would come into our national life in a thousand different directions if the genuine American idea should become firmly fixed in the minds of all our citizens, that the only liberty is that which goes with self-control.

So our idea of government is that which should proceed from the people and in turn should further the independence of the people. Government with us is a way of making people better able to take care of themselves. The national government is to strengthen and not weaken the government of the States; the States are to strengthen and not weaken the local government of counties, municipalities, and other political units. Even when, for the common good, it is found necessary to strengthen the central authority, the end in view is largely that of giving a fair chance to those who would otherwise be overridden. The government of our new outlying possessions is directed mainly to rendering them capable of self-government. Every year our governmental institutions come to be more of the very nature of educational institutions.

For the greatest spirits among the founders of our institutions, liberty meant first of all religious freedom. We cannot overestimate the significance of this historic fact, that our spirit of freedom was grounded in the spirit of religion. Even if in our own day religious freedom is often interpreted to mean freedom to be irreligious, which is indeed some part of

its meaning, by far the strongest strand of historic continuity in the development of our liberties is the sentiment which demands freedom for every man to be religious in the way that for him is most real and inspiring. The most ancient orthodoxy, as well as the most modern religious experiment, finds under these conditions fair encouragement to make its best appeal to men, and fair chance to put its doctrines to the test of present needs. A wonderfully rich and genuine religious life is the outgrowth of these conditions. Because of our religious freedom we may not permit in our public schools instruction in the peculiar tenets of any church. We have instead the privilege of making clear the meaning and value of that freedom which has fostered the religious life of our people and made it a power for peace and righteousness.

One great wave of democracy in this country was religious, and especially Calvinistic in its origin. Another great wave was humanitarian and associated with the ideas of France in revolution. Our own revolution declared that all men were created equal. In all of the varying interpretations of this saying there is a fair measure of agreement among us that men should at least be equal in opportunity, equal before the law, equal as regards the sacredness of their personal rights. The whole meaning of a democracy which aims at such equality is not to be learned in a single generation. It is a lesson set for us, a national lesson which we have as yet mastered only in part. The American people are all at school and must for a long age yet be at school, striving to learn the full meaning of their own democracy.

Even so far as we have gone with this lesson we have learned so much as this, that the ordinary education of the common schools is one of the main things to be cared for in making good for our people this endeavor after equality of opportunity. And so the very existence of the schools together with compulsory attendance laws and laws to relieve children from unsuitable labor, that such attendance may be possible—all of these things are evidence of our attempt to secure for all a fair opportunity, even if any absolute equality is still beyond our reach.

We very well know that equality of education must result in inequality of attainment. Our American democracy does not expect to find any flat uniformity in human nature. It