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The Relations of tiie Educational 
Institutions of Illinois* 

PRESIDENT A S. DRAPER, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS. 

[Delivered before the Illinois State Teachers' Association, 
December 28, 1899.] 

Each of the American states has an individuality pecu- 
liar to itself. Early history, economic conditions, and 
state pride have produced it. So the separate institutions 
of the different states show characteristics which dis- 
tinguish them from similar institutions in the other states. 
This is strikingly true of the public educational systems 
of the states. These are so prominent in the affairs of 
the people, they are so highly cherished, and so repre- 
sentative of the common thought, are so costly and have 
come to be so wholly dependent upon the taxing power, 
and so subject to the general control of the law-making 
power of the state, that they are very likely to have an 
organization and sustain a life especially their own. 

That organization may be closely knit together, or it 
may be a disjointed affair; the different parts may sustain 
one another, or they may continually pound against each 
other; and that life may be weak, or it may be strong and 
forceful; it may be a sluggish and fitful stream, or it may 
be a free-running, onrushing river in the affairs of the 
people of the commonwealth. It is in considerable 
measure conditioned upon the people themselves; it is in 



* Reprinted from Intelligence of January 15, 1900. 



large measure dependent upon the intelligence, the 
training, the spirit and the perspective of the officials who 
manage and the teachers who instruct the schools. The 
people gladly follow a rational and confident leadership. 
They cannot avoid following an irrational or nerveless 
leadership except by revolt, by a new organization and 
thru new leaders: and successful revolutions are rare and 
difficult in education as in statecraft. 

This ie as true of Illinois as of the other states. Per- 
haps it is truer of Illinois than of other states. One who 
has spent more than half his expectancy of life in another 
state and who has had opportunities for observing the 
educational systems of many states cannot but note 
differences; he could not say that the differences are 
altogether or generally in favor of one or the other of 
the states, for unquestionably there are strong points and 
weak points with each; he could not assume, without un- 
due temerity, even after some years of residence, to know 
the historic causes which have produced or to understand 
the underrunning currents which fix present conditions 
and limit future action ; nor could he, without unpardon- 
able effrontery, assume the right to decide upon the steps 
which are practicable and best to make the educational 
system of Illinois most promotive of the highest interests 
of the state and a model of excellence among the state 
educational systems of the country. 

That knowledge and that right is with the men and 
women who have grown up in Illinois, whose lives have 
been the product of her life, whose supreme pleasure lies 
in contributing to her greatness, whose experience has 
been in her schools, and who are not unadvised of the 
educational progress of the world. In a state which is 
without educational factions, in which there is manifest 



cordiality and oneness of purpose among all who can lay 
any claim to professional relations with the schools, and 
particularly in a state which leads all the others in attend- 
ance upon national educational assemblages, there can 
be no lack of qualified advisers or of disinterestedness in 
their professional advice. 

Yet one who has lived for five years among the faithful, 
has lived according to law, and has kept mostly within 
his own bailiwick, and so far as allowed has put his ener- 
gies into sawing wood on his own plantation, may now be 
allowed to break out and roam around in other fields a 
little, and even indulge in some observations upon edu- 
cational matters of common interest to us all. 

It may be bold to say that there is an absence of edu- 
cational solidarity in Illinois. There is apparently no 
lack of desire for systematic unity of organization and of 
action. There is certainly no lack of educational cordial- 
ity in this state. I never had the honor of association 
with a people more cordial one with another, more genu- 
inely fraternal in word and spirit, more high-minded in 
their educational ideals, or more heartily enthusiastic at 
home and vigorous abroad in the realization of those 
ideals than are the educational people of t the State of 
Illinois. In any matter of concern to the people of a 
single community upon which they are agreed they will 
labor with all the desperation and scientific team-work of 
a 'varsity football team on Thanksgiving Day to carry 
their project over the goal line. If money is needed they 
will go to the bottom of their rather long wallets and, if 
need be, sell the best part of their clothes and fight it out 
in their stocking feet to prevent being beaten. When a 
dozen towns have a new state normal school in sight, they 
want it so badly, they contend for it with such an abun- 



dance of resources, such uniform cheerfulness, and such 
vigor of action, that they simply neutralize the efforts of 
each other for months together. Surely there is no lack 
of educational sagacity, educational thrift, or educational 
energy in Illinois. 

But is there not lack of state educational unity and 
effectiveness? Are we all working together as we might? 
Do we carry the weight we ought among all the busy 
affairs of this splendid commonwealth? Last year this 
association with unanimity decided to sustain an ex- 
ceedingly mild proposition looking to the repression of 
frauds and the protection of the time- honored educational 
degrees. Not only did this association declare for it, but 
all of the educational influences of the state declared for 
it. Not only all that, but the proposition was right upon 
principle. Yet when it appeared in the General As- 
sembly, without being understood, without any assigned 
reason, it was almost spitefully thrown out the backdoor. 
The incident is recalled only because it is a convenient 
and concrete illustration of the fact that the educational 
forces of the whole state do not work together effectually 
to accomplish general ends. The illustration does not 
stand alone. More apt ones may be found in the absence 
of legislation binding the schools together more closely 
into a symmetrical system ensuring the support of each, 
while enlarging the influence and increasing t he force ful- 
ness of the collective body. 

Our American system of schools is the system of the 
several states. We have no national system of education, 
except as the systems of the states combine to make one, 
and as their similarities tend to make it harmonious and 
symmetrical. A national committee of school men in 
session at the nation's capitol the other day declined to 



recommend the founding of a national university on the 
ground that it is a function of the general government to 
encourage and aid, but not to provide or control educa- 
tional instrumentalities. That is the function of the sev- 
eral states. That is necessarily so now, because the edu- 
cational system has come to depend upon the taxing 
power, and that power, for this purpose at least, is ex- 
clusively with the states. 

It is the policy of the states; it is more, — it is the essen- 
tial of the American system of government, that the 
schools shall be managed by the people thru their local 
assemblages or elections. But it is the function of the 
states to see that the schools justify the exercise of the 
taxing power for the purpose and to the extent it is em- 
ployed and that they serve the people and are adequate 
to the support of free institutions. If local communi- 
ties do this it is well. If their intelligence and their 
generosity lead them to do more than barely meet the 
technical requirements of our manner of life it is so much 
the better. If they fail to meet the requirements, which 
the state in its wisdom is bound to establish, then it is 
the function of the state to compel them to do so. 

I am not going far enough in this proposition. It is all 
true; but more is true. We must move to more advanced 
ground. So much would be true if our free states existed 
for security alone, but they do not exist for security 
alone— they exist to afford opportunity to each indi- 
vidual and to help on the intellectual and moral progress 
of the whole mass. There is an educational flavor about 
the very word "state." The essence of the term "nation" 
is strength, or fighting power, but of "state" it is greater 
intellectual activity, keener moral sense, and steady ad- 
vance to higher living. There may be, and frequently is, 



entire security without, any personal liberty in a nation. 
That must not be so in a free, self -governing state. Se- 
curity, liberty, progress, these must always remain the 
marks of an American state. 

States can only ensure the end of their existence thru 
machinery. They are not, and cannot be infallible. They 
must do things and they must set the pace. They see and 
act thru agents and officers. What they do must be sup- 
ported by the sentiment of the people. The quality of 
state work depends upon the personal qualities and the 
legal standing of their officers and agents. But state 
activity is initiated by those people who are especially 
interested in a particular thing, and state action in turn 
arrests the attention and influences the opinion of the 
whole mass. In a word, the educational action of a state 
is the result of the knowledge, the thought, the energy, 
the good team-work of the educational forces of the state. 

The educational policy of a state is difficult of formu- 
lation: its educational machinery is slow in construction. 
The masses are not alive to the true lines of pedagogical 
progress. They cannot be. The people who do not know 
are the last people to know that they do not know. They 
think they do know, and are reluctant to surrender au- 
thority to specialists. Yet the greatness of a state de- 
pends upon willingness to follow experts. But confidence 
is a plant of slow growth, and it is hard to follow experts 
when so many experts who really have the right to speak 
with authority upon something talk with so much con- 
fidence upon everything. The educational action of a 
state depends upon the consolidation of educational 
opinion, upon keeping sane collectively, upon not under- 
taking everything, upon the power to see which of all the 
things proposed are really of moment, upon acquiring the 



habit of accomplishing what is undertaken. 

The educational action of the State of Illinois has been 
disjointed. Educational opinion has been slow in con- 
solidating. It is so in the early history of all states; but 
it has been strikingly so here. The size and shape of the 
state, as well as the history of its settlement, have con- 
tributed to this. The state extends over more than six 
degrees of latitude. It is a long way from Galena to 
Cairo. The consolidation of opinion, the framing and the 
execution of plans flow from the intermingling of kindred 
spirits. In the early times for some months of the year 
the walking was poor. Possibly a larger retarding in- 
fluence than the geography of the state was the differ- 
ences in traditions and ideals of the different peoples who 
settled it. The southern half of the state was first set- 
tled. It was settled by a people who were certainly not 
indifferent to schools and not wanting in culture, but 
whose feelings upon the relations of mankind and whose 
educational perspective were not upon parallel lines with 
those of the people who at a later date settled the north- 
ern half of the state. We have really come to be one 
people in this country with educational aspirations, if not 
educational instrumentalities, common to all. Recent 
events have done much to make it so, and every one is 
thankful for it. But it was not always so. The north 
and the south were terms which, not leng ago, denoted 
peoples whose feelings and plans were widely differenti- 
ated. The real border line between these peoples, the 
line which was laid down not by government engineers 
but fixed by human sympathies, and which ran across this 
country from the Atlantic to the advance line of civiliza- 
tion to the westward, crossed Illinois not very far from 
the center of its north and south axis. The people who 



controlled things to the south of that line, for obvious 
reasons, idealized the private academy more than the 
common school. And they were people who formed and 
maintained their own opinions. And they established 
the government and gave the earliest impulses to the 
educational work of the state. 

It took a long time for later ideas, even in the heads of 
a virile people, to overcome and support all this. There 
is nothing strange about it, and nothing that reflects upon 
any one. We have come to be able to talk about history 
without hysterics. There was a natural and obvious 
evolution, but it was necessarily slow. It is not yet com- 
pleted. It is going forward more rapidly and strongly in 
later years. We are socially inclined and the traveling 
has improved. We hold a convention now every week or 
two. Sentiment is fixed. It supports a public educa- 
tional system of all grades for all people at common cost. 
It is for us, the educational representatives of one of the 
greatest states in the Union, to initiate the steps which 
will give the sentiment of the state its realization by 
stopping waste, knitting the parts together, giving aid 
where it is most needed, and rounding out 8 complete and 
symmetrical organization which shall have the aim and 
possess the power to diffuse educational opportunity, and 
opportunity for the best there is in education, thruout 
every part of the commonwealth. 

We have our full complement of educational institu- 
tions. First there is a free elementary school near every 
one's door. These were established as soon as the pioneer 
had settled upon the prairie. They came as naturally as 
a stream follows a channel. As towns have grown their 
character has been somewhat changed. They are adapt- 
able to surrounding conditions, and have served and are 



serving the needs of the people exceedingly well. They 
are not incapable of improvement. In the country they 
frequently need better buildings and more modern appli- 
ances and conveniences. In our great city upon the lake, 
as in all of the leading American cities, they are contend- 
ing for their integrity and pedagogical independence 
against the spoils-hunter who flourishes in a pure de- 
mocracy. In city and country the teaching force needs 
to be protected, helped, regulated, and inspired to the 
end that the work may be rationally laid out and the 
teaching ha?e life and power in it. 

There is a free high school in almost every town. There 
should be one to which every child in the state could 
have free access and the legal right to go. These second- 
ary schools should average better than they do. Outside 
of the leading cities, where with scarcely an exception 
they are excellent, they do not fit for the colleges as ade- 
quately as they ought. If they do not adequately pre- 
pare for the colleges they do not prepare for life as they 
should. They lack financial support, and thoroly pre- 
pared teachers are scarce. Something more than a fine 
building which ministers to civic pride is necessary to 
make a good secondary school. It would seem as tho 
some decisive step should be taken by the state to en- 
courage and ad ihe secondary schools. It might well do 
it directly by payments from its treasury upon some com- 
prehensive plan which would stimulate the cities and 
townships to give more and make better schools. If it 
will not do that it should at least remove limitations and 
let local communities do all they would be willing to do 
in that direction. 

There are four state normal schools, and a fifth trying 
to hatch itself. The two older schools are excellent in- 



10 

stitutions, very likely without superiors anywhere in the 
world. The two newer ones have been placed under the 
leadership of men who cannot fail, at a very early day, to 
carry them to the very first rank in character and useful- 
ness. Illinois has done very well lately in providing for 
state normal schools. That provision has been none too 
bountiful. There are none too many of them. They will 
not be able to assure professionally trained teachers for 
the elementary schools, and how inadequate the teaching 
seems now unless by one who has been professionally 
trained. Yet the state would be wiser if it would stop 
now and be guided by experience yet to come before 
establishing more normal schools. A few normal schools 
which give inspiration and genuine pedagogical life to 
the elementary school system will be of infinitely greater 
educational value to the state than a larger number 
which fail in this. 

Then there is the State University. It was late in 
being opened. It was slow in gaining headway. But it 
was placed upon a broad foundation at the beginning. 
Its work is unfolding in many directions. It has, as com- 
pared with former years, been liberally sustained in the 
later ones. Yet it has to stand a hard blow once in 
awhile; it gives thanks that it can now do it and yet live. 
Let no one imagine that it is rich; it is far from it; with a 
student body equalling or approaching in numbers those 
of its great rivals it has not half of their financial sup- 
port. Illinois has undertaken to offer free instruction in 
any study and of the highest grade to anyone who is pre- 
pared and will come and take it. As 1 understand it, no 
true Illinoisan will be content until this surpasses in 
amount and quality what is offered by any other state. 
There is no trouble about attaining this distinction if the 



11 

people who are interested in public education in Illinois 
continue to extend to the State University the sympathy 
which they have in late years given, and if the state 
itself give3 the authoritative and moneyed support it may 
easily give and never feel it. And the Trustees and 
Faculty of the University will try earnestly to merit this 
sympathy, and they intend, if this support is not given, 
to transfer the responsibility for it to other shoulders than 
their own. 

But these tax- supported institutions are not all the in- 
stitutions of the public educational system of the state. 
There is the great university established by the Methodist 
Church upon the shores of Lake Michigan and ably pre- 
sided over by my friend who occupies our chair to-night, 
(President Henry Wade Rogers), which is an important 
element in the public educational affairs of Illinois. There 
is in the heart of our great imperial city another great uni- 
versity which was founded in munificence and came full- 
fledged into life. It has been something of an example, 
and certainly much of an inspiration, to the educational 
interests of Illinois. What Mr. Rockefeller gave to the 
University of Chicago was an unanswerable argument as 
to what Illinois and her people must do for her State 
University if she would not have private individuals and 
surrounding states winking at each other over her in- 
activity. It was not only unanswerable: it was effective. 
Let him repeat it as often as he will and let others do 
likewise as often as they will. 

There are many smaller colleges founded by different 
religious denominations primarily to promote denomina- 
tional ends. More than three- fourths of all the institu- 
tions of higher learning in this country have been founded 
in this way and for this end. As such they are- entitled 



12 

to commendation and support. Bat they have done more 
than promote denominational ends. Until a compara- 
tively recent date they were practically the only seats of 
advanced learning in America. As such they have been 
and are likely to continue to be influential factors in the 
public educational system. In the last decade or two a 
vast number of professional and technical schools and 
commercial schools have been founded thru philanthropic 
beneficence or started for private gain. They all exist 
by the authority or at least by the leave of the state, and 
they all influence the educational work of the state. Most 
of them influence it beneficially, and all who do are en- 
titled to thanks, to fraternal regard, and to helpful co- 
operation. 

It would oe a fatal error if in enumerating the educa- 
tional forces of Illinois we should pass by the elementary 
and parochial school system of the old Mother Church of 
Borne. She maintains it for the benefit of such of her 
fellowship as are unwilling to leave their children to the 
secular instruction of the tax supported schools. She 
does it at her own cost. We regret that her view of the 
matter is what it is, but we respect her all the same for 
holding it. We can and do fraternize if we disagree in 
opinion . We all understand the matter. The essentials 
of the public system are fixed ; they are believed to be im- 
perative to good citizenship and to progress. No one 
expects them to be materially modified. The Roman 
Church expects to continue her policy indefinitely ; it is a 
matter of faith ; she will hold to it. She is beginning to 
add advanced institutions, if not as a church policy then 
as the happy result of her continuing prosperity and her 
increasing sagacity. When the Roman Catholic bishop 
of Peoria, himself a force in the educational affairs of 



13 

America, erects and opens an advanced institution of 
learning, at his personal cost, it is not only a significant 
event, but it is one which should impel every friend of 
popular education to rise and make his grateful acknowl- 
edgment to him. 

The natural relation between all educational institu- 
tions is one of mutual concord and helpfulness. In pre- 
eminent degree the educational institutions of Illinois 
sustain that relation to one another. We would not have 
to travel far into some other states to find that the state 
university and the normal schools do not affectionately 
embrace each other, or that the tax-supported institutions 
and the denominational colleges have each other in their 
grasp, but at the throat. Bat it is not so in Illinois. If 
we do not help each other as much as we might, we at 
least do live agreeably together and we would gladly aid 
each other more if just the right opportunity were pre- 
sented to us. 

It is possible that we do not appreciate as completely as 
we will later the extent to which we may aid each grade 
or class of educational work by leaving it exclusively to 
the schools of that class to carry on. For example, where 
the elementary and secondary work, or the secondary and 
higher work have been j ambled together confusion is inevit- 
able, and nervelessness is the logical result. For example 
again, the necessity of normal schools, and several of them, 
carrying on professional work and making everything else 
subordinate to the main idea for which they are main- 
tained is quite obvious; but if those normal schools were 
to become state academies, appealing in a miscellaneous 
way to the elementary schools for students, and supply- 
ing them with about the same facilities they would get in 
a good high school, they would do much harm and no 



14 

good because they would thus discourage the mainte- 
nance of a good high school in every town. And yet again, 
if the colleges and universities do the work which the 
high schools should do, or if they bend over backward and 
demand that the high schools do more than they can do 
or ought to do, they discourage rather than supplement 
and encourage their most important allies. The same re- 
sult follows if the colleges and universities do the grade 
of normal work which the normal schools are established 
to do, rather than supplement their courses and extend 
professional work to points where the normal schools are 
not likely to carry it, and yet where it must be carried if 
the pedagogical life of the whole system is to be continu- 
ally reinforced and teachers are to be trained with a 
breadth and strength of scholarship and with pedagogi- 
cal insight equal to the needs of the secondary schools. 

In a word, a vigorous system of public education will be 
comprised of a series of divisions or grades of schools, 
each of which has an autonomy of its own and is allowed to 
do and is held responsible for the work which falls upon 
it, but all of which connect together and form a continu- 
ous pathway from the kindergarten to the time honored 
collegiate and university degrees. A cleancut and syste- 
matic organization, with responsibility upon and freedom in 
the different parts and which is yet complete and has gen - 
eral outlines that are symmetrical, which is self confident 
and has pride in its work, which has the means of pro- 
tecting its good name from the operations of impostors, 
which knows its rights, but which is neither fooling with 
politics nor seeking favors, which can resist assaults and 
accomplish things, which neither sneaks nor blusters, 
which doesn't care to be in the newspapers but goes 
quietly on its way, and which comes to be publicly under- 



15 

stood and finds security in public confidence, is impera- 
tive to any efficient system of popular education. 

I am very far from inferring that we are lacking in all 
these requisites or in most of them. I am only trying to 
point out the relations which I think we should sustain to 
each other and the ends towards which we should work. It 
is idle to assume that we have an educational heaven ex- 
cept when we are talking to the folks in the east who are 
monumentally ignorant of western school work and to 
whom we can claim anything without fear of being dis- 
puted. Our claims are nearly good; it will be better that 
we go on and make them completely so by the time we 
have to prove them. The conditions in Illinois are favor- 
able. The relations are entirely agreeable. The state 
can do whatever she thinks well to do. There is little or 
nothing in the way. What is needed is a decisive step to- 
wards a more perfect general organization, towards more 
effective co-operation between the parts, towards more 
scientific team work, towards more concentration of 
thought upon general educational policies and more cen- 
tralization of power in the interests of greater general ef- 
ectiveness. 

If this step is to be taken it must be taken by the state: 
it must be done by putting the office of State Superintend- 
ent of Public Instruction upon a better footing, and it 
must be done upon the motion of the educational forces of 
the state. 

The state is raising, thru the high power of taxation, a 
power which it alone can exercise or authorize, many mil- 
lions of dollars each year for schools. Its citizens are giv- 
ing many millions more. Yet it expends less money by 
far and exerts less authority in supervising the expendi- 
ture and in binding together the instrumentalities thru 



1G 
which it is expended, in improving the processes which it 
has set in operation and in extending its advantages equit- 
ably to all parts of the state than it does for almost any 
purpose to which it puts its hand. Compare the offices 
of the Secretary of State, the Auditor, the Treasurer, the 
Attorney general, with that of the Superintendent of Pub- 
lic Instruction and mark the large difference. Not that 
the cost of maintenance of the other state offices is too 
much; I have no thought that it is; that of the office of Su- 
perintendent is wholly inadequate. The state spends 
more in state supervision of insurance, and of railroads, 
than of instruction. It costs more to look after live stock 
than schools. The live stock ought to be looked after ade- 
quately, and probably the doing of it costs no more than 
is needed. The same is true of charities, and of factories, 
and of health, and of every other interest the state takes 
in hand. It costs the state more to look after the matter 
of ensuring proper clemency to its criminals than in di- 
rect supervision of its educational system. Not that it is 
doing more than it ought in these other directions, but 
that it is not doing as much as it ought in direct state 
supervision of the enormous expenditures which the peo- 
ple are forced to pay and which they ordinarily pay very 
willingly for popular education. 

The State Superintendent is not only without proper 
support thru which to accomplish things, but he is with- 
out discretion and authority to accomplish things. He 
needs assistants in the office and on the field, who shall 
inspect and inspire, and lay plans, and he needs to have 
it known that the power of the state is behind him so that he 
may make sure of getting what information and all the 
information he needs, so that he can require that deficien- 
cies be supplied, and abuses corrected, and so that the 



17 

combining and energizing influence of the commonwealth 
shall be felt in all our educational affairs. In a word, the 
State Superintendent of Public Instruction needs a posi- 
tion with moneyed support and statutory powers which give 
him, naturally and logically and conclusively, the right 
to lead on the field; the right to arrange and classify and 
organize, and the right to speak with authority to the Gen- 
eral Assembly in the interest of the common educational 
life and the common educational progress. 

Let me add, in order to prevent the possibility of mis- 
interpretation, that it would be a peculiar pleasure to me, 
as I am sure it would be to all of you, and in my opinion 
it would be a special advantage to the state if this could 
be done while the office is filled by a man so experienced 
and capable, so just and direct, so gifted in perspective, 
and so devoted to his craft and all the craftsmen as the 
present Superintendent. He fills his offica of very limited 
opportunity acceptably; he would dignify it if its support 
and its opportunities were as great as our great state with 
its vast educational interests should make them. 

There is no trouble about individual or community ini- 
tiative for educational advancement in Illinois. The cities 
and the prairies are full of it up to the limit of their 
understanding and legal powers. What is wanted is the 
working out of well considered general plans, and then 
concert of action in carrying out plans. To do this we 
must have a state educational clearing house where infor- 
mation centers and where sentiment crystallizes and where 
policies are carefully formulated; a state educational dy- 
namo room where good educational power is generated 
and in such quantities that the selfish, the indifferent, or 
the half advised will not care to resist or ignore it. 

We are all bound together educationally. We do not 



18 

feel it as we ought. Each part is dependent upon every 
other part. The elementary schools feed the secondary 
schools, and the secondary feed the normals, and the col- 
leges and universities. But in turn the advanced schools 
determine the character of the secondary schools, and the 
secondary schools fix the plane and fiber of the primary. 
Professional training is requisite to the best teaching in 
every grade whether it be the kindergarten or the univer- 
sity. The success of one college does not drain another: 
it inspires the other and inclines more people to send their 
sons and daughters to college. Any original work in edu- 
cation at the university is an incentive to everybody with 
his eyes open. The educational thrift of one community 
stirs and directs the thought of other communities. The 
college presidents and faculties understand all this, at least 
as well as other people do, and they are jealous of their right 
to share in the common burdens and have their influence 
count in giving the educational system of the state a foot- 
ing which is substantia], and in helping to push it for- 
ward on advancing lines which are historically and scien- 
tifically correct. 

It is not for colleges to determine what the common 
educational fellowship shall undertake in Illinois. That 
is to come from experience and discussion and to be set- 
tled in general council. We should espouse the most im- 
portant movements which seem possible of accomplish- 
ment. If we are wise we will elect between the things 
which are desirable and take up those which are both de- 
sirable and practicable and get in the habit of succeeding 
in what we undertake. 

There are numberless things which suggest themselves. 
As I can ask questions, altho I cannot answer them, I may 
be pardoned for doing that which I can do. 



19 

Is it not time that the State School Fund were increased 
so that the wealthier districts should give more help to 
the poorer districts, and educational advantages thus be 
more equally diffused thruout the state? 

Ought not the state to do more to ensure the improve- 
ment of the rural schoolhouses and their surroundings? 

Cannot the work in ungraded schools be more thoroly 
systematized and connected with something beyond? 

Ought not the compulsory attendance upon some school 
of every child between given ages to be taken up anew? 
Could we not profit by experience and adjust the views of 
the authorities of the private schools, as well as those of 
the prison and police authorities, the labor authorities, 
the charities people, and all the rest, to a plan which 
would have the support of all who recognize the desirabil- 
ity of the end in view? 

Does not*the whole matter of examining and certifying 
teachers need recasting so that teachers shall be relieved 
from the multiplicity of examinations, so that certificates 
shall have recognized value thruout the state, so that ex- 
perience and merit shall have wider appreciation and lar- 
ger reward, and so that a real teaching profession may 
have the opportunity of development? 

Ought not a statutory recognition to be given to gradu- 
ates from approved colleges and universities as sufficient 
prima facie proof of qualifications in subject matter for 
teaching in the schools; and ought not this when coupled 
with a reasonable quantity of professional training, or 
with a reasonable time of successful teaching experience, 
to entitle one to relief from the necessity of subsequent 
examinations? 

Ought not there to be a closer organic relation between 
the work of the college and university educational depart- 



20 

merits, the courses in the normal schools, the teachers' in- 
stitutes, and the examinations for certificates, to the end 
that one instrumentality shall connect with and help an- 
other and teachers and intending teachers be aided rather 
than confused thereby ? 

Ought not the number of certificates issued to be limit- 
ed to about the number of teachers employed, and certifi- 
cates given to the most meritorious candidates, to the end 
that where there are more persons who want to teach than 
there are schools the most deserviDg shall have the pref- 
erence, the schools get the strongest teachers, the compe- 
tition between good teachers and indifferent ones be 
lessened and the public respect for teachers and their 
compensation enlarged thereby? 

Is it not practicable to somewhat extend professional 
teaching in the elementary schools thru a system of teach- 
ers' training classes in approved secondary schools sus- 
tained in part at least at the general expense? Would not 
something of this kind advance the good cause of profes- 
sional training in the popular mind? Would it not aid 
high schools in some measure? Would it not sharpen the 
appetite of a larger number of future teachers for the 
better pedagogical work of the normal schools? 

Is it not desirable to give some general encouragement 
to secondary schools? They are more costly than ele- 
mentary schools. They are imperative to the steady ad- 
vancement of the elementary schools. They constitute an 
imperative and all important link in the whole educational 
scheme. Their relative importance as a preparation for 
life as well as for college has been much increased in re- 
cent years. Many communities cannot adequately sus- 
tain them. Can we not at least start on the road towards 
a consummation which shall give every child of Illinois a 



21 

legal right to a good high school education within reason- 
able distance of his home? 

Is the library doing what it might in our general edu- 
cational work? Cannot something more be done to enlarge 
the opportunities of teacbers and pupils for the reading 
which will be most helpful to them and in some measure 
to direct and measure their work therein? 

Are we not bound to declare yet more strenuously 
for the complete emancipation of educational work from 
political domination in the larger cities and to give yet 
more heroic aid to those who are in the front of a contest 
involving not only the respectability but the life of that 
proud institution, the American common school, at the 
great centers of population in the United States? 

Ought not Illinois to do more in the way of training 
the eye to exactness and the hand to deftness in the in- 
dustrial arts? Is it enough to do a little, a very little of 
this in the high school grade? Ought not the spirit and 
the methods of the kindergarten, in adaptable form, to be 
continued thru the whole system? Shall we always let 
intellectual culture stand for much, and skilled labor, in- 
dustrial resourcefulness, and the habit of doing things, 
count for little in the standards of the schools? Is not 
work the best kind of education, and does not the highest 
end of purely democratic government lie in developing 
and training the worker with a certainty of leading to 
higher intellectual life rather than in training the intellect 
with the expectation of producing the worker? Is there 
not in all this much to be observed in laying out the poli- 
cies of the schools? 

And is nob the whole educational system injured by dis- 
honest and wholly unsubstantial concerns which pretend 
to do what every one with any knowledge and any hon- 



22 

esty knows they cannot do, who yet confuse and rob the in- 
experienced, and lower the standards and demoralize the 
work of the schools? And is not the educational system 
the system of the state; and is it not the function of the 
state to dishearten demagoguery, to punish swindling 
and to take care of its own? 

In recapitulation and in conclusion: from my outlook, 
which it must be admitted has given me only limited 
knowledge as yet, I should say that the educational con- 
ditions in Illinois are highly encouraging; the people are 
favorable to a comprehensive system of schools, and their 
resources are ample; community educational initiative has 
been plentiful; all grades of educational work have been 
organized and the relations of the workers are thoroly har- 
monious; no one is asking support at the expense of an- 
other ;beyond this, state policies have not yet become well 
established; there is plenty to do in the way of rounding 
out a perfect system; what is to be done should be deter- 
mined by the friends of education in council; it will not 
be done except on their motion, for the most part; it can 
only be done by the state thru legislation : legislation will 
be secured and general policies executed thru state lead- 
ership which binds the educational influences of the state 
together and gives authoritative expression to them; the 
natural and logical leadership of the educational forces 
of the commonwealth is in the State Superintendent of 
Public Instruction; to give him the opportunity and the 
right to lead, his office should be put upon a higher plane 
with increased facilities and considerably enlarged au- 
thority. 

This is a very great state. It is the gateway between 
the great east and the great west. It is a wide gateway, 



23 

but the millions who go and come must pass thru it 
Its thrift is un measurable and its resources inexhaust- 
ible. It has developed a metropolis which is the marvel 
of the great century just drawing to a close. The phases 
of human life are diversified: the conditions of the people 
as unlike and intense as anywhere in the world. We have 
all classes, all nationalities, all creeds. Under popular 
government, with wide open suffrage, and with the won- 
derful future that is opening to us, the interests of popu- 
lar education cannot be left to chance, to the uncertain 
support or the precarious business management of indi- 
viduals or local communities. All who will aid in the 
good cause will have encouragement and honor, will be 
given helpful co-operation, not in a ragged aggregation of 
isolated schools, but in a comprehensive school system, 
commencing at the kindergarten and ending in the 
University; a system moving along general lines, thoroly 
established in the policy of the state, and reaching every 
home from the rugged Wisconsin border to the low point 
where the Ohio joins the "Father of Waters" in his mag- 
nificent sweep to the sea. 



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NOV 30 1900 



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