341); in Italy, where divergent racial types are being fused into a new national unity; in Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines (R. 343) where the United States has used education to bring backward peoples up to a new level of culture, and to develop in them firm foundations of national solidarity; in China (R. 335) where an ancient people, speaking numerous dialects, is making the difficult transition from an old culture to the newer western civilization; and in Algiers and Morocco, where the spirit of French nationality is being fused into dark-skinned tribesmen-- everywhere to-day, where public education has really taken hold on the national life, we find the school being used for the promotion of national solidarity and the inculcation of national ideals and national culture. To such an extent has this become true that practically all the pressing problems of the school to-day, in any land, find their ultimate explanation in terms of the new nineteenth-century conceptions of political nationality.
Since the development of world trade routes following long rail and steamship lines, along which people as well as raw materials and manufactured articles pa.s.s to and fro, the entrance of new and diverse peoples into distant national groups has created a new problem of nationalization that before the early nineteenth century was largely unknown. Previous to the nineteenth century the problem was confined almost entirely to peoples conquered and annexed by the fortunes of war.
To-day it is a voluntary migration of peoples, and a migration of such proportions and from such distant and unlike civilizations that the problem of a.s.similating the foreigner has become, particularly in the English-speaking nations and colonies, to which distant and unrelated peoples have turned in largest numbers, [2] a serious national problem.
The migration of 32,102,671 persons to the United States, between 1820 and 1914, from all parts of the world, has been a movement of peoples compared with which the migrations of the Germanic tribes--Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Goths, Visigoths, Vandals, Suevi, Danes, Burgundians, Huns--into the old Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries pale into insignificance.
No such great movement of peoples was ever known before in history, and the a.s.similative power of the American nation has not been equal to the task. The World War revealed the extent of the failure to nationalize the foreigner who has been permitted to come, and brought the question of "Americanization" to the front as one of the most pressing problems connected with American national education. With the world in flux racially as it now is, the problem of the a.s.similation of non-native peoples is one which the schools of every nation which offers political and economic opportunity to other peoples must face. This has called for the organization of special cla.s.ses in the schools, evening and adult instruction, community-center work, nationalization programs, compulsory attendance of children, state oversight of private and religious schools, and other forms of educational undertakings undreamed of in the days when the State first took over the schools from the Church the better to promote literacy and citizenship.
EFFECTS OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. The effects of the great industrial and social changes which we have previously described are written large across the work of the school. As the civilization in the leading world nations has increased in complexity, and the ramifications of the social and industrial life have widened, the school has been called upon to broaden its work, and develop new types of instruction to increase its effectiveness. An education which was entirely satisfactory for the simpler form of social and industrial life of two generations ago has been seen to be utterly inadequate for the needs of the present and the future.
It is the far-reaching change in social and industrial and home-life, brought about by the Industrial Revolution, which underlies most of the pressing problems in educational readjustment to-day. As the industrial life of nations has become more diversified, its parts narrower, and its processes more concealed, new and more extended training has been called for to prepare young people for the work of life; to reveal to them something of the intricacy and interdependence of modern political and industrial and social groups; and to point out to them the importance of each one"s part in the national political and industrial organization.
With the ever-increasing subdivision and specialization of labor, the danger from cla.s.s subdivision has constantly increased, and more and more the school has been called upon to instill into all a political and social consciousness that will lead to unity amid increasing diversity, and to concerted action for the preservation and improvement of the national life.
More education than formerly has also been demanded to enable future citizens to meet intelligently national and personal problems, and with the widening of the suffrage and the spread of democratic ideas there has come a necessary widening of the educational ladder, so that more of the ma.s.ses of the people may climb. Even in nations having the continental- European two-cla.s.s school system, larger educational opportunities for the ma.s.ses have had to be provided. This has come through the provision of middle schools, continuation schools, higher primary schools, and people"s high schools, [3] as in Germany, France (see diagram, p. 598), the Scandinavian countries (p. 713; R. 370), and j.a.pan (p. 720). In nations having an American-type educational ladder, it has led to the multiplication of secondary schools and secondary-school courses, that a larger and larger percentage of the people may be prepared better to meet the increasingly complex and increasingly difficult conditions of modern political, social, and industrial life. In the more advanced and more democratic nations we also note the establishment of systems of evening schools, adult instruction, university extension, science and art instruction in special centers, the multiplication of libraries, and the increasing use of the lecture, the stereopticon, and the public press, for the purpose of keeping the people informed. No nation has done more to extend the advantages of secondary education to its people than has the United States; France has been especially prominent in adult instruction; England has done noteworthy work with university extension and science and art instruction; while the United States has carried the library movement farther than any other land. All these, again, are extensions of educational opportunity to the ma.s.ses of the people in a manner undreamed of a century ago.
UNIVERSITY EXPANSION. The modern university first attained its development in Prussia (pp. 553-55), while in England and in the nations which drew their inspiration from her, the teaching college, with its narrow range of studies and disciplinary instruction (R. 331), continued to dominate higher education until past the middle of the nineteenth century (R. 359).
The old universities of France, aside from Paris, were virtually destroyed in the days of the Revolution, and their re-creation as effective teaching and research inst.i.tutions has been a relatively recent (1896) event. The universities of Italy and Spain ceased to be effective teaching inst.i.tutions centuries ago, and only recently have begun to give evidences of new life.
Within the past three quarters of a century, and in many nations within a much shorter period of time, the university has very generally experienced a new manifestation of popular favor, and is to-day looked upon as perhaps the most important part, viewed from the standpoint of the future welfare of the State, of the entire system of public instruction maintained by the State. In it the leaders for the State are trained; in it the thinking which is to dominate government a quarter-century later is largely done; out of it come the creative geniuses whose work, in dozens of fields of human endeavor, will mould the political, social, and scientific future of the nation (R. 369). Every government depending upon a two-cla.s.s school system must of necessity draw its leaders in the professions, in government, in pure and applied science, and in many other lines from the small but carefully selected cla.s.ses its universities train. In a democracy, depending entirely upon drawing its future leaders from among the ma.s.s, the university becomes an indispensable inst.i.tution for the training of leaders and for the promotion of the national welfare. In a democratic government one of the highest functions of a university is to educate leaders and to create the standards for democracy.
The university has, accordingly, in all lands, recently experienced a great expansion. The German universities have been prominent modern inst.i.tutions for a century and a half. Realizing, as no other people have done, their value in developing skilled leaders for the State, promoting the national welfare, integrating the Empire, and as centers for building up among students of other nationalities a good-will toward Germany, large sums have been spent on their further development since 1871. Within the past quarter-century new and strong French universities have been created, [4] and old universities in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece have been awakened to a new life. The English universities have been made over, since 1870, and new munic.i.p.al universities in Sheffield, Bristol, Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, and London have set new standards in English higher education. The universities of Scotland, Holland, Switzerland, and the Scandinavian countries have also recently attained to world prominence. In Australia, New Zealand, j.a.pan, China, the Philippines, India, Egypt, Palestine, Algiers, and South Africa, new universities have been created to advance the national welfare. The South American nations have also established a number of promising new foundations, and given new life to older ones. Often nations swinging out into the current of western civilization have developed their universities before popular education really got under way.
In no country has the development of university instruction been more rapid than in the United States and Canada. New and important state universities are to-day found in most of the American States and Canadian Provinces, some States maintaining two. These have been relatively recent creations to serve democracy"s needs, and upon the support of these state universities large and increasing sums of money are spent annually. [5] In no nation of the world, too, has private benevolence created and endowed so many private universities of high rank as in the United States, [6] and these have fallen into their proper places as auxiliary agents for the promotion of the national welfare in government, science, art, and the learned professions.
From small collegiate inst.i.tutions with a very limited curriculum, a century ago, stimulated in part by the German example and in part responding to new national needs, universities to-day, in all the leading world nations, have developed into groups of well-organized professional schools, ministering to the great number of special needs of modern life and government. The university development since the middle of the nineteenth century has been greater than at any period before in world history, and with the spread of democracy, dependent as democracy is upon ma.s.s education to obtain its leaders, the university has become "the soul of the State" (R. 369). The university development of the next half- century, the world as a whole considered, may possibly surpa.s.s anything that we have recently witnessed.
THE STATE SCHOOL SYSTEMS AS ORGANIZED. We now find state school systems organized in all the leading world nations. In many the system of public instruction maintained is broad and extensive, beginning often with infant schools or kindergartens, continuing up through elementary schools, middle schools, continuation schools, secondary schools, and normal schools, and culminating in one or more state universities. In addition there are to- day, in many nations, state systems of scientific and technical schools and inst.i.tutions, and vocational schools and schools for special cla.s.ses, to which we shall refer more in detail a little further on. The support of all these systems of public instruction to-day comes largely from the direct or indirect taxation of the wealth of the State. Being now conceived of as essential to the welfare and progress of the State, the State yearly confiscates a portion of every man"s property and uses it to maintain a service deemed vital to its purposes.
The sums spent to-day on education by modern States seem enormous, compared with the sums spent for education under conditions existing a century ago. In England, for example, where the first national aid was granted, in 1833, in the form of a parliamentary grant of 20,000 (approximately $100,000), the parliamentary grants for elementary schools had reached approximately 12,000,000 by 1910, with an additional national aid for universities of over 1,100,000. The year following the World War the grants were 32,853,111. In France a treasury grant of 50,000 francs (approximately $10,000) was first made for primary schools, in 1816. This was doubled in 1829, and in 1831 was raised to a million francs. By 1850, the state aid for primary education had reached 3,000,000 francs; by 1870, 10,000,000 francs; by 1880, 30,000,000; and by 1914, approximately 220,000,000 francs. In addition the State was paying out 25,000,000 francs for secondary schools, and 10,000,000 francs for universities. In the United States the total expenditures for maintenance only of public elementary and secondary schools was $69,107,612, in 1870-71; had reached $214,964,618 by the end of the nineteenth century; and was $640,717,053 in 1915-16, with an additional $101,752,542 for universities. By 1920 the total expenditures for the maintenance of public elementary, secondary, and higher education in the United States will probably total a billion dollars. These rapidly increasing expenditures merely record the changing political conception as to the national importance of enlarging the educational opportunities and advantages of those who are to const.i.tute and direct the future State.
II. SCIENTIFIC
In no phase of the remarkable educational development made by nations, since the middle of the nineteenth century, has there been a more important expansion of the educational service than in the creation of schools dealing with the applications of science to the affairs of the national life. Still more, no extension of instruction into new fields has ever yielded material benefits, increased productivity, alleviated suffering, or multiplied comforts and conveniences as has this new development in applied scientific education during the past three quarters of a century.
SCIENCE INSTRUCTION IN THE SCHOOLS. At first this new work came in, as we have seen (p. 774), but slowly, and its introduction into the secondary schools of France, Germany, England, the United States, and other nations for a time met with bitter opposition from the partisans of the older type of intellectual training. In Germany it was not until after Emperor William II came to the throne (1888) that the _Realschulen_ really found a warm partisan, he demanding (1890), in the name of the national welfare, that the secondary schools "depart entirely from the basis that has existed for centuries--the old monastic education of the Middle Ages"--and that "young Germans and not young Greeks and Romans" be trained in the schools (R. 368). During his reign the _Realschulen_ (six-year course) and _Oberrealschulen_ (nine-year course) were especially favored, while permission to found additional _Gymnasien_ became hard to obtain. The scientific course in the French _Lycees_ similarly did not prosper until after the coming of the Third Republic (1871) and the rise of modern scientific and industrial demands. In England it was not until after 1870 that the endowed secondary schools began to include science instruction, and laboratory instruction in the sciences began to be introduced into the secondary schools of the United States at about the same time. In the United States, too, the first manual-training high school was not established until 1880, but by 1890 the creation of such schools was clearly under way. Other nations--Switzerland, Holland, the Scandinavian countries--also began to include laboratory science instruction in the work of their secondary schools at about the same time. The decade of the seventies witnessed a rising interest in instruction in science which carried such work into the secondary schools of all progressive nations.
To-day, in nearly all lands, we find secondary-school courses in science, or special secondary schools for scientific instruction, occupying a position of at least equal importance with the older cla.s.sical courses or schools. As science instruction has become organized, and a knowledge of the principles of science has become diffused, object lessons, _Realien_, nature study, or elementary science instruction has very generally been put into the elementary or people"s schools for the younger pupils. As a result, young people finishing the elementary schools to-day know more relating to the laws of the universe, and the applications of these laws to human life and industry, than did distinguished scholars two centuries ago.
All this work in the elementary schools, middle schools, people"s high schools, secondary schools, or special technical schools of middle or secondary grade has been of much value in diffusing scientific knowledge and scientific methods of thinking and working among large numbers of people, as well as in revealing to many the possibilities of a scientific career. The great and important development of scientific instruction, however, since about 1860, has been in the fields of advanced applied science or technical education, and has taken place chiefly in new and higher specialized schools and research foundations. The fields in which the greatest scientific advances have been made, and to which we shall here briefly refer, have been engineering, agriculture, and medicine.
THE BEGINNINGS OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION. The beginnings of technical education were made earliest in France, Germany, and the United States, and in the order named. France and German lands, but particularly France, inherited through the monasteries what survived of the old Roman skills and technical arts. In the building of bridges, roads, fortifications, aqueducts, and imposing public buildings, the Romans had shown the possession of engineering ability of a high order. Some of this knowledge was retained by the monks of the early Middle Ages, as is evidenced by the monasteries they erected and the churches they built. Later it pa.s.sed to others, and is evidenced in the great cathedrals and town halls of Europe, and particularly of northern France. In military and civil engineering the French were also the true successors of the Romans. As early as 1747 a special engineering school for bridges and highways (_ecole des Ponts et Chaussees_) had been created, and a little later a special school to train mining engineers (_ecole des Mines_) was added. These were the first of the world"s higher technical schools. After the Revolution, the new need for military and medical knowledge, as well as the general French interest in applied science, led to the creation of a large number of important higher technical inst.i.tutions (list, p. 518), most of which have persisted to the present and been enlarged and extended with time. Napoleon also created a School of Arts and Trades (R. 282), and a number of military schools (p. 590).
In German lands there was early founded a series of trade schools, [7]
which have in time been developed into important technical universities.
After the creation of the Imperial German Empire, in 1871, these schools were especially favored by the government, and their work was raised to a rank equal to that of the older universities. To the excellent training given in these inst.i.tutions the German leadership in applied science and industry, before 1914, was largely due. [8] It has been the particular function of these technical universities to apply scientific knowledge to the industries and the arts, and to show the technical schools beneath and the directors of German industries how further to apply it (R. 371). Of their work a recent _Report_ [9] well says:
While in other countries the development of science has been academic, in Germany every new principle elaborated by science has revolutionized some industry, modified some manufacturing process, or opened up an entirely new field of commercial exploitation. In the chemical industries of Germany ... there is one trained university chemist for every forty working-people. It is important to realize that the development of Germany"s manufactures and commerce has depended not upon the establishment of any monopoly in the domain of science, not upon any special advancement of science within her own boundaries, but primarily upon the practical utilization of the results of scientific research in Germany and other countries.
The creation of the United States Military Academy, at West Point, in 1802, marks the American beginnings in technical education. In 1824 the Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst.i.tute was begun, largely as a manual-labor school after the Fellenberg plan, to give instruction "in the applications of science to the common purposes of life," and about 1850 this developed into one of the earliest of our four-year engineering colleges. In 1846 the United States organized a college for naval engineering, at Annapolis, to do for the Navy what West Point had done for the Army. In 1861 the Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology was founded, opening its doors in 1865. This was the first of a number of important new engineering colleges, and eight others had been established, by private funds, before 1880.
The development in England came a little later. Good engineering schools have since been developed in connection with the new munic.i.p.al universities, while good engineering colleges have also been created at Oxford and Cambridge, as well as at the Scottish and Irish universities.
THE NEW IMPULSES TO DEVELOPMENT. During the first six decades of the nineteenth century, France, the German States, and the United States were slowly moving toward the creation of special schools for technical education. After about 1860 the movement increased with great rapidity. A number of events contributed to this change in rate of development, the most important of which were:
1. The development attained by pure science, by about 1860. (See chapter XXVII, part II, p. 723.)
2. The Industrial Revolution (p. 728), which changed nations from an agricultural to an industrial status, opened up the possibilities of vast world trade, and created enormous demands for technically trained men to supervise and develop the rapidly growing industries of nations.
3. The London Exhibition of 1851, which displayed to the world the applications of science to trade, manufacturing, and the arts, made in particular by England. This opened the eyes of Europe and America to the possibilities of technical education, and led to the creation, in 1853, of a national Department of Science and Art (p. 638) for England. This began the stimulation, by money grants, of technical education and instruction in drawing, and exerted from the first an important influence on English education.
4. The pa.s.sage by the Congress of the United States of the Morrill Land-Grant-College Act, in 1862, which provided for the creation of colleges of engineering, military science, and agriculture, in each of the American States.
5. The militarily successful wars of Prussia against Denmark, in 1864; Austria, 1866; and France, 1870-71. These revealed to other nations the importance of sound military and engineering education for a nation, and so tremendously stimulated German technical education that the new nation soon arose, in many lines, to a position of world industrial leadership (369).
6. The Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia, in 1876, which repeated the work of the London Exhibition of 1851, and gave a new meaning to the scientific and engineering education then developing in the new American Land-Grant Colleges.
7. The work of Virchow in Germany (1856) in developing pathology; of Pasteur in France, after 1859, in establishing the germ theory of disease; the English surgeon Lister, about the same time, in developing antiseptic surgery; and the new work of physiologists and chemists. Combined these have remade medical science, and have opened up immense possibilities for benefiting mankind.
Following these important stimuli to activity, the important nations of the world began the earnest development of technical education, and later medical education, with the result that this new development has affected educational practice all over the world. The new ideas have spread to all continents, and to-day the call for technical education comes not only from the older nations and such new countries as Canada, Australia, South Africa, and the South American States, but from such ancient and backward civilizations as j.a.pan, China, Siam, the Philippines, the East Indies, Egypt, Persia, and Turkey.
In consequence to-day numerous and expensive engineering colleges and research inst.i.tutions are maintained by the important world nations. To- day the trained engineer goes to work his wonders in all corners of the globe, and his task has become primarily that of organizing and directing men in the work of controlling the forces and materials of nature so that they may be made to benefit the human race. So rapid has been the development that, out of the earlier comprehensive type of engineering, to-day dozens of specialized types of engineering education and specialization have been evolved, covering such related fields as civil, mechanical, mining, metallurgical, electrical, architectural, chemical, electro-chemical, marine, naval, sanitary, biological, and public-health engineering. No longer can a nation hope to develop its resources, care properly for the modern needs of its people, or be counted among the important industrial or agricultural nations if it neglects the development of technical education.
SCIENCE APPLIED TO AGRICULTURE. France also was the direct inheritor, through the monks, of the old Roman agricultural knowledge and skills, though up to the nineteenth century no attempt to organize agricultural instruction took place anywhere in Europe. The earliest effort in that direction was a proposal made in 1775 by Abbe Rosier, in France, to Turgot, then Minister of Finance, on "A Plan for a National School of Agriculture." Nothing coming of the proposal, the Abbe submitted the proposal to the National a.s.sembly, in 1789, and the same idea was later presented to Napoleon, but without results. The first person to give practical form to the idea was Fellenberg (p. 546), who conducted his manual-labor agricultural inst.i.tute at Hofwyl, from 1806 to 1844, and inaugurated a plan of educational procedure which was soon afterwards copied in Switzerland, France, the South German States, England, and the United States. One of the earliest inst.i.tutions to be established outside of Switzerland was the Inst.i.tute of Agriculture and Forestry, founded by the Agricultural Society of Wurtemberg, in 1817, at Hohenheim, near Stuttgart.
The earliest schools to teach agriculture in France were the Royal Agronomic Inst.i.tution at Grignon (1827); the Inst.i.tute at Coetbo (1830), and the Agricultural School at San Juan (1833). By 1847 twenty-five agricultural schools were in operation in France, to several of which orphan asylums and penal colonies were attached. In 1848 the French Government reorganized the instruction in agriculture and gave it a national basis. It ordered the creation of a farm school in each department of France; a number of higher schools for agricultural instruction at central places; and a National Agronomic Inst.i.tute for more advanced instruction. A treasury grant of 2,500,000 francs to establish the system was voted. In 1873 elementary instruction in agriculture was ordered given in all village and rural elementary schools.
In the United States a number of agricultural societies were formed early in the century, and a private school of agriculture was opened in Maine, in 1821, and another in Connecticut, in 1824. With the opening-up of the new West to farming and the change of the East to manufacturing, after about 1825, the agitation for agricultural education for a time died out, reappearing in Michigan, in 1850. In that year a new const.i.tution was adopted which required the legislature to create a State School of Agriculture, and in 1857 the Michigan Agricultural College opened its doors. Two years later a "Farmers" High School," which later became the Pennsylvania State College, was opened in central Pennsylvania. In 1862, in the midst of the greatest civil war in history, the American Congress pa.s.sed the very important Morrill Act, which provided for the creation of a college to teach agriculture, mechanic arts, and military science in each of the American States. It was a decade before many of these inst.i.tutions opened, and for a time they amounted to but little. They had but few students, little money, and the instruction was very elementary and but poorly organized. Cornell University, in New York State, was one of the first (1868) of the new inst.i.tutions to get under way and find its work. The Centennial Exposition (1876) gave the needed emphasis to the engineering courses, and by 1880 these were well established. The agricultural courses did not flourish for two decades longer, and the military science not until the World War, Despite feeble beginnings, the result of the aid given by the national government has in time proved very valuable, and to-day very large sums of money are being appropriated by the American States and Territories for instruction in engineering, agriculture, home economics, and related sciences, and large numbers of students are now enrolled for this technical training.
THE RECENT NEW INTEREST IN AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. Since the latter part of the nineteenth century agricultural education has awakened new interest in many lands. The German States have created many schools for instruction in agriculture and forestry. Denmark has regenerated the rural life of the nation (R. 370) by its "People"s High Schools" and its special schools for instruction in agriculture. Italy has recently made special efforts to extend agricultural instruction to its people. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have established agricultural schools. In Algiers, Morocco, j.a.pan, China, the Philippines, and India, good beginnings in agricultural education have been made.
As agricultural knowledge has been worked out and cla.s.sified, and agricultural instruction has become organized, it has become possible to relegate some of the more elementary instruction to the school below. This was done in European nations before it took place in the United States. In 1888 the first American agricultural high school was established in Minnesota. By 1898 there were ten such schools in the United States, but since 1900 the development has been very rapid. By 1920 probably a thousand high schools were offering instruction in agriculture, while elementary instruction in agriculture had been introduced into the rural and village schools of practically every American agricultural State.
The agricultural schools, colleges, and experimental stations established by the national, state, and local educational authorities of different nations have added another new division to the work of public education, and one which is both very costly and very remunerative. Out of the work of these schools has come a vast quant.i.ty of useful knowledge, and hundreds of important applications of science to farm and home life. Old breeds in stock and grains have been improved, new breeds have been derived, and productivity has been greatly increased. Through the teachings of home economics the farmer"s home is being transformed, while the applications of science made in these schools are modifying almost every phase of agricultural life and rural living.
MEDICINE AND SANITARY SCIENCE. Closely related to sanitary, biological, and public-health engineering has been the enormous recent development of medicine and surgery. Within half a century instruction in these subjects has been entirely transformed, and large and costly laboratories and hospitals are now required for the work. There has also been much specialization in medical training, within recent years, and especially has preventive medicine been developed. Extending the newly found biological and medical knowledge to the animal and vegetable worlds has resulted in a similar development of veterinary medicine [10] and plant pathology. A combination of medical knowledge with engineering and chemistry has produced the sanitary engineer, while medical knowledge and applied biology has produced the public-health expert. [11]
So important, too, has the control of all kinds of disease become, now that people, animals, insects, plants, and goods move so freely along the great trade routes of the world, that nations everywhere feel the necessity, now that scientific research has revealed to questioning man the methods of transmission of the diseases which once decimated armies and cities, destroyed stocks, and ruined harvests, of developing ample quarantine service and medical staffs to cope with diseases--human, animal, and plant--from without, and to control those which arise within.
Nations too poor as yet to provide such service for themselves are today having such provision made for them by other nations, or by great national foundations, [12] so that other lands may be protected from the ravages of their diseases and the economic wealth of all may be increased. The element of Christian charity has also entered into the service, the labors of Dr. Grenfell in Labrador, and the work of the Rockefeller medical and surgical boat traveling among the Philippine Islands and its hookworm work on every continent, being good examples of such Christian effort.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 232. THE PEKING UNION MEDICAL COLLEGE A well-equipped center for instruction in western medicine, endowed by the Rockefeller Foundation. A similar school is being created at Shanghai, in central China. Existing medical schools at two other points, and nineteen hospitals scattered over the Republic, have also been aided by this American foundation. In addition, many medical missionaries, Chinese physicians, and nurses have been sent to the United States for study. To improve health standards and living conditions throughout the world is the purpose of the work of the Foundation, which now has work under way on every continent.]
APPLIED SCIENCE THE NATION"S PROTECTOR. To-day applied science stands everywhere as the nation"s protector. Applied in sanitation and preventive medicine it has reduced the death rate, prolonged life, and protects homes from many hidden dangers. In the engineering fields it has transformed the face of the earth and all our ways of living and doing business. Applied to industry it builds factories and railways, and works out new processes to eliminate wastes, improve production, and utilize by-products.
Thousands of labor-saving inventions owe their origin to a new truth worked out in some laboratory, and applied in another. Applied chemistry has wrought wonders in advancing industry, protecting the public welfare, eliminating unnecessary labor, and making life richer for all.
To-day the engineer with his railway and irrigating dam and power plant in the desert has replaced the monk as the vanguard of the forces of civilization. The scientist in his laboratory in part replaces armies and navies as the protector of the nation"s safety. The scientifically trained Red Cross nurse is fast replacing the unskilled devotion of the older Sister of Charity. The doctor and the surgeon at the medical mission are carrying a very practical type of Christian civilization into far-away lands. The laboratory expert in the quarantine station has succeeded the priest with bell and book in keeping pestilence away from the land. The public-health officer in the little town, and the sanitary engineer in the city, protect the health and happiness of millions of homes. The plant pathologist and veterinarian guard the crops and herds from which food and clothing are derived. The scientific experts in plant and animal industries work steadily to improve breeds and increase yields. When one compares present-day scientific knowledge with that represented in the thirteenth-century Encyclopaedia of Bartholomew Anglicus (R. 77); our modern knowledge of diseases with the theories as to disease advanced by Hippocrates (p. 197), and taught for so many centuries in Christian Europe; our modern knowledge of bacterial transmission with the mediaeval theories of Divine wrath and diabolic action; our modern ability to annihilate time and s.p.a.ce compared with early nineteenth-century conditions; or modern applied science with the very limited technical knowledge possessed by the guilds of the later Middle Ages--the stories of Aladdin and his wonderful lamp seem to have been even more than realized in our practical everyday life.
Engineering, agriculture, and modern medicine stand as three of the great applications of modern science to human affairs, and as three of the most important and costly additions to state educational effort made since the time when nations began to accept the political philosophy of the eighteenth-century reformers and to take over the school from the Church, because by so doing the interests of the State could better be advanced thereby.
III. VOCATIONAL
WHAT IS VOCATIONAL EDUCATION? In a certain sense, all education is vocational, in that it aims to prepare one for some vocation in life. In Greece and Rome education was vocational, in that it prepared one to be a citizen in the State. During the Middle Ages education was to prepare for a vocation in the Church. Later the vocation of a scholar appeared, and still later that of a gentleman. In modern times a large range of state services have been opened up as vocations. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, with the extension of educational advantages to increasing numbers of the people, preparation for more intelligent living and citizenship have come to be new motives in education. To-day we no longer use the term vocational education in this rather general sense, but restrict its use to the specific training of individuals for some useful employment. Training for law, medicine, the ministry, teaching, engineering, scientific agriculture, nursing, and commerce are examples of vocational education in its higher ranges. The development of education along these lines has previously been described. In this division of this chapter we shall use the term in a still more common and still more restricted sense, as meaning the training of the younger people of a State to do well certain specific things, by teaching them processes and the practical applications of knowledge, chiefly science and art, to the work of the vocation they expect to follow to earn their living. The Report of the American Commission on National Aid to Vocational Education (1914) defined vocational education (p. 16) as follows: