The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1900-02-28
EDUCATORS IN SESSION.
Annual Conference of the National
Association at Chicago.

AsNocthttoh ht NnicAEO'
Chicago. Feb. 27-The annual confer
ence of the department. of superintendent
of the National Educational Association
opened in University Han OF the Fine Arts
building to-day. The department num-
bers among Us members more than forty
college presidents and many professors
and superintendents of schools. Those
present included President Charles w.
Eliot of Harvard President Benjamin Ide
Wheeler of the University of California,
DR.. Nicholas NJ. Butter of Columbia Uni
verslty, President David Starr Jordan Of
Leland Stamford University, Supt. II.
Benjamin Andrews of Chicago, Miss Es-
telie Reed, superintendent of Indian
schools; Bishop Samuel Fellows, Prof. Ira
Remsen, Johns Hopkins University; DIR.
William T. Harris. United States commits
sioner of education; President Andrew $.
Draper of the University of Illinois, Presi-
dent w. r. Harper of the University OF
Chicago President Edwin A. Alderman
of the University of North Carolina.
Or. N. NJ. Butter of Columbia Uni
versity who spoke on The Status of Ed
ucation at the Close of the Century," was
the speaker of the day. He said in part:
Developments so rapid, changes so start
ling, inventions so undreamed of crowd
each other in a whirl of confusing Inn
ages when we try 10 picture this centure
and to note its salient facts. More lead
ers of enterprise and more captains Of in
dustry have appeared during this 100 years
than in all previous recorded history The
average of human intelligence and of hui
man efficiency has been raised to a point.
in the United States, certainly which q
few hundred years ago would have en-
tailed notoriety and perhaps distinction
prosperity and querulousness, desire and
happiness, have all multiplied together.
How can all this be interpreted
1.-THE wisest answer seems to me to be
this: The nineteenth century is pre-em-
inently the period of individual liberty.
political, religious, intellectual Industrial
and les manifold triumphs and achieve
ments are due to the large opportunities
which have been granted TO individual mi.
tiative and to individual expression. The
greatness, the shortcomings and the con-
tradictons of the nineteenth century are
alike due to this.
Education, as n matter Of course, has
always borne the impress of the civiliza-
ton whose product Ii was. From the
fourteenth century to the nineteenth the
demand for indvidualism for representa-
ton in the schools has been heard, now
earnest and reasonable, now passionate
and incoherent. Politics and religion so
far overshadowed education In Importance
that it was a long time before there was
any widespread recognition of the closer
relation in which education stood to them
On this matter the seventeenth and the
eighteenth centuries brought great light,
and there was new hope for the schools.
False and partial as we must hold much
of the French and English philosophy of
the eighteenth century to be, it is never
theess to be credited with having convinc-
| ed the world that fundamental principle
bound together rational progress in poll
tics, In religion and in education. To this
conviction the nineteenth century has
| chung most tenaciously. The result has
been an unexampled and dazzling expan-
sion of educational endeavor and accom-
plishment.