The San Francisco call., 1899-07-13
NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL HSSOClA-
TION.

THE meeting of the National Educational Asso-
! cation at Los Angeles is an event of marked
significance Since the days of Thomas Arnold
of Rugby who was pronounced the greatest school
master who lived, pedagogy has become a
science depending as much upon principles and rules
as upon men and women. 1t has been found that In
education as in all other characteristics of modern
civilization no permanent be solely based
upon personal capacity, and that law and system,
which are the noiseess order of the universe, are
also the potential energies through which alone hu
man intelligence can be raised and htted Tor the
higher functions of self-government.
There were two incidents in the first days pro-
ceedings of this great association that to some ex
tent affected the symmetry if they did not mar the
harmony of the occasion. In receiving the mass OF
educators representing the highest intelligence,
training and refinement that national institutions
have produced the Governor of this State, with his
usual lack of tact and with his usual
coarse disregard of fact, referred to our Cali
fornia pioneers as merely the physical agents Of
American progress-welding the ak, the shovel, the
pick and the pow, and rudey preparing virgin ter
ritory for the higher cultivation that has come to us
at last In that assemblage there many dis
nguished men who could have told different story.
In the entire history of the world ancient and mod
ern no such movement of elevated humanity is re-
corded as the migration to California in I84o Scho-
ars statesmen, juriss, scientists, men who repre-
sented the best strains of blood and the finest educa
tional opportunities of the age the represen-
tatives of the Union and OF the world who entered
into the possession of the territorial acquisition that
extended the American republic to the Pacific. The
convention that framed original constitution
the inspiring power of the compromise measures of
1880 which were the crowning glory of national
life as it then existed The common school system
of this State eaped into comparative perfection when
the long contest ended and without preliminary tute
age California received into the Union During
our entire history both private and public education
has fourished with almost unexampled vigor Our
two universities with all their accessories stand
monuments to the intelligent grasp to the sagacity
and to the deep-seated patriotism of the California
pioneers
The address of Dr. w. T. Harris, United States
Commissioner Of Education of different com
pexion 1t was pervaded by deep thought and elo-
quently phrased But it stamped by some views
on the question of expansion that will attract COM
ment and can hardly be expected to command the
assent of the Government. He used this language:
"The United States upift whole nations. Is not
this better than to build Chinese wall about our
libertes?" The United States has endeavored to
guard the prosperity of its citizens by the policy
of protection and its racial purity by the exclusion
laws 1t has been considered for hundred and
twenty-five years or thereabouts that this continent
was sufficient field for the exercise OF develop
ing qualities, and that national occupation was
the production and the maintenance of Caucasian
republic 1t is only lately that under a variety Of
pretexts it has been proposed that we should form
partnership with Great Britain for the enforced
tension of our civilization to the inferior of
Asia and of the Antilles. The development of impe-
rialstic IDEAS under humanitarian disguises, has al
ready threatened constitutional system, into
which it is the special function of the American COM
mon school system to ndoctrinate American youth.
1t is an undesirable element in advancing cultivation
to have the theory and the practice of our country
reversed and sentiments avowed and inculcated that
are inconsistent with the special mission that has
| far separated the United States from the monarchy
and from the imperialism of Europe
DR.. Harris is admirable for his capacity, but we
sincerely that before the association adjourns,
there may be modification of views that can
not accept sound and that have tendency to alter
the currents of American patriotism.