Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/435

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DUCATION is one of the most important undertakings of life. Of the four great institutions by means of which society accomplishes its purposes, the home, school, church and state, the institution which reduces education to systematic form is one. The evolution of society involves all these institutions in a constant process of readjustment to new conditions. Every great social and industrial change has therefore rendered necessary readjustment of the system of education ill use.

In countries where political privileges are restricted to a few and where economic conditions are stagnant, passport to society is the knowledge of a mass of traditional lore chiefly theological and metaphysical in character, supplemented by the rudiments of the exact sciences. The Renaissance unlocked for Europe the wealth of classical learning and the fraternity of the learners speedily came to consist of those who had received this knowledge and who could discuss it through the vehicle of the classical languages. The rapid drawing back of the curtain of mystery from the face of the earth during the age of the discoveries and the subsequent slow development of the natural sciences introduced a third great element to the curriculum of educational institutions; namely, science. The organization of the great states of western Europe necessitated the study of politics, history, jurisprudence and public finance. Eventually a home-grown culture in western Europe and America made possible the profitable study of modern languages and literatures. And now comes a new condition, the result of a recent and wonderful evolution, destined to influence the place and function of the school in society as powerfully as any of those that have gone before it. The growth of industry from the crude methods of the handworker, following the dim lights of tradition, to the cooperative effort and applied science of modern times, paralleled as it has been by the evolution of commerce from venturesome and piratical expeditions to a world-wide exchange of goods, which has become as essential to modern society as the circulation of the blood is to the human body, has again made necessary a modification of educational institutions. This marvelous evolution of industry and commerce has created material for an important group of new sciences, has brought into existence many new professions, and it forms a new world of human endeavor in which new culture and new and worthy ideals must be created and held aloft. Here is room for the work of the school as a patron of