England finally established a state elementary school system. Schools were put under the management of locally elected school boards, much as they still are in our country. Occasionally, London officials would find it impossible to get answers to their letters from one or the other of these boards. Letter after letter would be sent but no answer came. Eventually the mystery cleared up. It was simply that in the particular localities no member of the board could read or write! Needless to say the situation remedied itself rapidly once England followed the Continent and made elementary schooling free, universal, and compulsory.

England has been wholly literate for well over half a century. Le me say in passing that we are not yet wholly literate. As Presiden: Kennedy remarked in a recent address, we have at least 8 million functional illiterates, persons who may know the letters of the alphabet and be able to read some words and sign their names, but to whom work instructions and labels on medicine bottles are unintelligible We have the schools, but the teaching of English is poor.

Also we still have a serious school attendance problem. Compulsory schooling is not as well enforced here as abroad, where during the com pulsory period school attendance in countries such as England, Holland, Switzerland, Germany, and so forth, is just about 100 percent subnormal children being cared for in special schools.

I know this is getting tedious but I want to repeat once more that the 8 or 9 years of compulsory education, so long common in Europe. represent as many hours of classroom instruction as 11 to 12 years here. Most American States require no more than 10 years of com pulsory attendance. In 1958, 25 percent of our children left school having had 10 years or less of schooling. In 1948, it was more than 50 percent. It needs saying over and over again that many of our children receive fewer hours of schooling than is required of all children in advanced European countries. There is sufficient similarity in our present situation as compared to that of England a century ago to give us pause. Unfortunately most Americans have been fulled by illusory cliches and believe that "only we educate all our children.

ENGLISH HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE 19TH CENTURY

well

Nineteenth century English higher education likewise was inade quate to the needs of the times. Here too the Continent was ahead of England. From the Middle Ages, England inherited many endowed educational foundations. These were taken over by the Anglican church, in accordance with her claim to be the legal successor to the medieval church, and inheritor of all the rights and privileges of that church, including exclusive control over education. Under Anglican management these endowed schools and colleges, originally intended to provide higher education for "poor scholars," became the "endowed preserves of the upper classes." They were extremely expensive establishments catering to the small percentage of youth whose parents were upper- and upper-middle-class persons of wealth. Although the church considered herself the educator of England's future leaders, endowed schools were managed for the benefit of the "fellows" as the teachers paid out of endowment income were called-rather than for the benefit of the students. Curriculums comprised the subjects the fellows could teach rather than the subjects the students needed to learn.

The fellows themselves had been trained in a narrow classicism and passed it on to their pupils in turn. Under church management the great private boarding schools and England's two universities, Oxford and Cambridge, formed a closed education circle in which teacher and student came from the same social class and went through the same course of classical studies. There were many grammar-type schools in 19th century England in which a 16th century student would have felt quite at home. He would even have found the same Latin texts being used. Much the same was true of English universities. Urged to reform its archaic organization, midcentury Oxford replied that she operated under an up-to-date statute; by this she meant the Laudian code enacted early in the 17th century!

Under Anglican management higher education was accessible to but a small number of children. As late as 1860 Prussia, with a population slightly below that of England, had six times as many students in secondary school, and many of these were doing work that in England was deferred to the 3-year college course leading to her bachelor's degree. Prussia also had twice as many university students and these were studying for doctoral or professional degrees while nearly all English students were still rounding out their general or undergraduate education. Not only did fewer English children have access to higher education than Prussians and other continentals, but the education they did receive had little relevance to the needs of the times.

Young Englishmen who were expected eventually to occupy positions of leadership in an England that had become the world's foremost industrial nation and a great trading empire were given almost no instruction in modern languages, mathematics, and the sciences. These had long since been added to the curriculums of "classical" secondary schools on the Continent. Moreover the Continent had two alternative higher secondary schools, one a semiclassical-modern language, the other a mathematics-science school. Students with various talents and interests could find schooling that suited their particular objectives. The Anglican churchmen considered nothing but a classical and literary education "suitable for gentlemen."

Equally narrow was the range of subjects offered at English universities. To quote Sir Eric Ashby:

On paper the pattern of Oxford was consistent with its generic status as a medieval university. It had a dual function: as a group of colleges where young men could study the trivium and quadrivium as a preliminary to their professional training; and as a group of professional schools providing advanced study in theology, medicine, and law.

The first of these functions was discharged by tutors who taught all the subjects required for the bachelor's degree ancient history, Latin and Greek, poetry, philosophy and logic, mathematics. Ashby said of these tutors, that "they were in fact schoolmasters." The second function of the university "though nominally recognized, was actually ignored." As late as 1852 the Regius professor of medicine reported that he had discontinued his lectures. He formerly had 10 students a year and the numbers had dwindled to 4. Professors in the sciences likewise had few students. Through most of the 19th century medical and legal education was provided outside the universities. Though England produced noted scientists, "British universities except fortuitously and incidentally played no part whatever."

HIGHER EDUCATION ON THE CONTINENT IN THE 19TH CENTURY

On the Continent, meanwhile, a radical modernization of th medieval university had taken place. It was begun in Prussia. T: University of Berlin, founded in 1809, was the first truly moder university. Subsequently it became the model for most continett universities. While Oxford and Cambridge lost their profession faculties, except in Anglican theology, and became almost who undergraduate, continental universities eliminated undergradu studies and became graduate institutions where teaching end bes research were combined, to their mutual benefit. Undergradua work formerly done in universities was now transferred to the acaden secondary schools.

Matthew Arnold noted in one of his studies of continental scho systems, that Oxford and Cambridge were not universities in t continental sense of the term. They were a species of acade". secondary schools

where youth of the upper class prolong to a very great age, and under some ver admirable influences their school education *** they are still, in fact, schon and do not carry education beyond the stage of general and school education The examination for the degree of bachelor of arts, which we place at the end our 3 years' university course, is merely the Abiturientenezamen of Germany, épreuve du baccalauréat of France, placed in both of these countries at the entra: to university studies instead of, as with us, at their close.

This, I should like to mention, is no longer true of the Englis bachelor's degree which is now awarded for largely graduate work, b. it is still true of most if not all American bachelor's degrees.

SCIENCE IN THE 19TH CENTURY IN ENGLAND AND ON THE CONTINENT

England's higher education facilities were thus qualitatively s quantitatively inferior to those of continental state school systers Worse still, they were particularly inferior in science which by t time already had become the very touchstone of a country's ed tional system. Science was almost completely neglected in Englan While laboratories had long since become standard in continents secondary schools, they were still not even dreamed of in Engla An interesting comparison was made by England's eminent chen Edward Frankland, in an article written for the magazine Nat April 6, 1871. "We in this country," he wrote, are in regard scientific discovery "conspicuous for our prominent position in t rear." To support this statement he gave the results of an inqu.” into the comparative activity of England and other countries chemical research.

In 1866, a total of 1,273 papers on new discoveries were published by 805 chemists, 1.58 papers being thus the average product of ea investigator. Of these Germany contributed 777 papers by 44 authors, or 1.75 papers to each author; France 245 papers by 17 authors, or 1.44 papers per author; while the United Kingdom cor tributed 127 papers by 97 authors, or 1.31 papers per author. H goes on to say, that

from a purely national point of view, our case is even worse than it appears to be from a comparison of these figures, since a considerable proportion of the pa contributed by the United Kingdom were the work of chemists born and educate in Germany.

In 1845 England had established the Royal College of Chemistry. An astute American observer of Victorian England, George Haines IV, aptly calls it "a sort of German chemical laboratory in England. For some 20 years this college was staffed by imported German university professors who taught chemistry to the English and set up chemical industries in England-for all the world as if they were assisting a "point 4" country. Many of the allegedly English chemistry papers listed by Frankland were written by these German scientists. In passing, I note that there was no reverse export of English professors to the Continent.

To prevent us from feeling smug, it is well to remember that basic research for the atomic bomb was done in Europe, the idea to build the bomb was conceived by émigré European scientists, and these made up a very large part of the talent that ultimately produced the bomb and thus hastened the end of the war in the Pacific,

I tried awhile back to estimate how we stand in higher education. As throughout our educational system, we seem at first sight to have huge quantities of students in the classroom, but when the time they have spent in studies and the quality of their work is figured in, one can find no great numerical advantage over Europe. Qualitatively, European education is better. We have been as slow as England was to recognize our true educational situation. In both our countries insularity contributed to widespread ignorance of the status of education abroad.

NINETEENTH CENTURY ENGLAND'S ISOLATION FROM THE CONTINENT

England's educational isolation from the Continent lasted almost four centuries. It began when Henry VIII rejected the supremacy of the Pope and made himself head of the Church of England. This church for a long time had no affiliation with either the Catholic or any of the Protestant churches. It has been suggested that England's insularity, at least in part, was a consequence of the fact that Anglicanism has no coreligionists in the rest of Europe. The case of Scotland is cited to support this explanation. Calvinist Scotland kept its ties with continental Calvinist churches and universities, especially those of Holland. For these reasons Scottish education remained competitive with the Continent.

This explanation seems reasonable, given the fact that until well into the last century schoolteachers in Europe, especially those in higher education, continued as in the Middle Ages to be clergymen or theologians waiting for a clerical position. A century ago most of our own college presidents also were theologians. It may well be that these clergyman schoolteachers would be more interested in what was being done in foreign schools if the teaching staffs of these schools were religious confreres.

OUR EDUCATIONAL ISOLATION

Since the takeover by progressive educationists, we too have been living through a period of educational isolation from the rest of the Western World. Before Dewey, American educators were fully conversant with education abroad, they had the same traditional conception of the nature and objectives of formal schooling and so

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there was mutual exchange of educational ideas. But progressivism looks upon the school from a viewpoint diametrically opposite to what is traditional in the West. This viewpoint has never been adopted as the basis of public education in any other Western nation. For s brief period, the progressive theory of education was, however, officially adopted by Soviet Russia for her schools. Our progressives now have no confreres abroad.

So they have kept us in isolation from European education and given us a good deal of misinformation that has prevented us from recognizing in time that we were falling behind. American educationists find nothing in European education they consider of the least value to us, so one can but wonder why they take so many trips abroad at taxpayer's expense. Englishmen eventually rediscovered that their educational needs did not differ fundamentally from those of other Europeans. So, in time, may we. I hope it will not take 400 years I hope it will not even take 40 years.

EDUCATIONAL ROLE OF THE CHURCH IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE

England throughout the Middle Ages had, of course, been as one with the rest of Europe, for the medieval church was the educator of all Christendom. The same church-managed universities and unversity-preparatory grammar schools were to be found on both sides of the channel. In England, too, the church had pursued her enlightened policy of seeking out talent no matter how humble its abode and of educating poor scholars free of charge in return for entering her service. She did this because she understood better than the medieval civil governments that, to prosper, any organization must staff itself with able men. As the number of able men is never ade quate to the need, the church disregarded the class prejudices of the times and sought out bright children, no matter what their social origin. Many talented poor boys got a good education at her grammar schools and universities. The cost of educating them was borne by direct church aid, by tithes, by endowments and other grants. Or may properly say that the medieval church ran a European pubix school system for higher education.

The students nearly always became ecclesiastics. This gave the church a monopoly of Europe's professional talent. Since they had no separate educational facilities of their own, civil rulers had to make use of this talent; ecclesiastics filled the chief offices of state Many, though well educated, were of humble origin. Trevelyan in his History of England notes that this was true of the Tudor monarchy's greatest public servants.

In medieval Europe there was no clear-cut distinction between spiritual and lay power. Both were in a sense corulers, though each felt that by rights the other should be subservient. In practice they compromised by agreeing that certain functions were properly those of the church and others the domain of the lay ruler. Education was clearly understood to be in the church's domain.

EUROPEAN EDUCATION AFTER THE REFORMATION

The church's European public school system went to pieces in the Reformation and the ensuing religious wars that tore Europe apart Church property, including that devoted to education, was confiscated