schools; everywhere an
earnest desire to see the schools do more effectively the school work
which is regarded, on every hand, as imperative.

The facts of school failure are more generally known than the facts of
school success; yet there are successful schools. Indeed, some of the
school systems of the United States are doing remarkably effective work.
Emphasis has been lavished on the failure side of the educational
problem, until public opinion is fairly alive to the necessity of some
action. The time is, therefore, ripe for a positive statement of
educational policy. Many schools have succeeded. Let us read the story
of the good work. Efficient educational systems are in operation. Let us
model the less successful experiments on those more successful ones.

Circumstances force people to live in one place, to see one set of
surroundings and meet one kind of folks, until they are led to believe,
almost inevitably, that their kind is _the_ kind. Schools are the
victims of just such provincialism. Although the school superintendents
and principals, and some of the school teachers meet their co-workers
from other cities, the people whose children attend the schools almost
never have an opportunity to learn intelligently what other schools are
doing. This city develops one educational idea, and that city develops
another idea. Although both ideas may deserve widespread consideration,
and perhaps universal adoption, they will fail to measure up to the full
stature of their value unless the people in all communities learn about
them intelligently.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: "American Education," Andrew S. Draper, Boston;
Houghton Mifflin Co., 1909, pp. 281-83.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 275.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid., p. 281.]

[Footnote 4: Idem.]

[Footnote 5: The Responsibility of the School, E. E. Brown, U. S.
Commissioner of Education. A pamphlet privately printed in
Philadelphia, 1908, containing a series of addresses.]

[Footnote 6: Report on the Programme of Studies in the Public
Schools of Montclair, N. J., Paul H. Hanus, Cambridge, Mass., pp.
7 and 8.]

[Footnote 7: Report on National Vitality, Irving Fisher,
Washington Government Print., 1909, pp. 76-77.]

[Footnote 8: The Problem of Individualizing Instruction, W. F.
Andrew, Education, Vol. 26, p. 135 (1905).]

[Footnote 9: Evolution and Ethics, T. H. Huxley, New York, D.
Appleton & Co., 1902, p. 220