National characteristics, American; United States -- Civilization
Furthermore, the free intercourse and exchange of population between the
States have made for unity in the higher education. Methods which have
proved successful in one community have been imitated and adopted in
others. Experiments tried at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Columbia have
been repeated in the West and South. Teachers trained in the older
colleges have helped to organize and develop the new ones.
Nor has this process of assimilation been confined to American ideas and
models. European methods have been carefully studied and adapted to the
needs and conditions of the United States. I happen to know of a new
Institute of Technology which has been recently founded in Texas by a
gift of eight millions of dollars. The president-elect is a scientific
man who has already studied in France and Germany and achieved
distinction in his department. But before he touches the building and
organization of his new Institute, he is sent to Europe for a year to
see the oldest and the newest and the best that has been done there. In
fact, the Republic of Learning to-day is the true Cosmopolis. It knows
no barriers of nationality. It seeks truth and wisdom everywhere, and
wherever it finds them, it claims them for its own.
The spirit of voluntary coöperation for the promotion of the common
order, of which I spoke in a previous lecture, has made itself felt in
education by the formation of Teachers' Associations in the various
States, and groups of States, and by the foundation of the National
Educational Association, a voluntary body incorporated in the District
of Columbia, "to elevate the character and advance the interests of the
profession of teaching, and to promote the cause of education in the
United States."
Finally, while there is no national centre of authority for education in
the United States, there is a strong central force of encouragement and
enlightenment. The Federal Government shows its interest in education in
several ways: First, in the enormous grants of public lands which it has
made from the beginning for the endowment of common schools and higher
institutions in the various States.
Second, in the control and support of the United States Military Academy
at West Point, the Naval Academy at Annapolis, the Indian Schools, the
National Museum, and the Congressional Library, and in the provision
which it makes for agricultural and mechanical schools in different
parts of the country. The annual budget for these purposes runs from
twelve to twenty millions of dollars a year.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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