ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE PARENTS 
 ASSOCIATION of the SCHOOL of EDUCATION on 
 5 JUNE 1911 by ANITA McCORMICK BLAINE 
 
This, our school, had its original and only true foun- 
 dation in the mind and heart in the purpose, of 
 Col. Francis W. Parker. In its second phase, in which it 
 was intended to be freed of all trammels for its work, 
 it was founded (at the first instance of my wish, and 
 Col. Parker's consent) by the efforts of its Trustees, 
 Owen F. Aldis, Henry B. Favill, Cyrus Bentley, Stanley 
 McCormick and myself; and of Col. Parker and of his 
 faculty. 
 
 In its third phase it had its foundation in a great con- 
 course of elements the appreciation of its work and of 
 its principles and of its possibilities by President Wil- 
 liam E. Harper ; the sympathetic joining with it of the 
 faculties of three of the University's schools and of the 
 University's .Department of Education and the consent 
 to join the University, of all of its own authorities 
 which included its whole faculty. 
 
 To present to you all of the ideals which determined 
 this broad foundation and they make a mass which 
 must surely help to move on this old world is more 
 than I am able to do. 
 
 I realize that in asking me to speak to you on this 
 subject you have had in mind the limitations which I 
 have in dealing with it. For that reason I am not stag- 
 gered by the thought. For another reason I am not 
 staggered by it: As I have known this work in educa- 
 tion, its aims and its ideals have not been divergent. I 
 do not need to analyze for you widely separating threads 
 with their actions and interactions. With all the vary- 
 ing ideas and viewpoints of such a great concourse of 
 so manv active and independent minds, the purposes of 
 
this work have been in one great stream the goals have 
 all been at one great end. So that if I lead you to this 
 stream, even though it be down one small rivulet, it is 
 still to one large stream I bring you. For, in this 
 current of educational effort, clashing and warring 
 and disputing as the ideas have been just as clash- 
 ing and warring and disputing as ideas must 
 be that are vital to the individual and to the world 
 they have been below that, as I have known the work, 
 singularly and deeply harmonious. I take it that 
 currents that are deep are swept onwards so much the 
 more irresistibly, that the eddies do not stay the prog- 
 ress, nor separate nor retard the flow. And so, though 
 I bring you to the ideals that dominated the work of 
 the school, through my own medium, I have not the feel- 
 ing that this is out of harmony with the greater force 
 you find there. 
 
 However, I must ask you, as I go on, to bear clearly 
 in mind that what I am giving you is my own stand- 
 point from which I have viewed this great school work. 
 
 At the outset of taking up the subject you have given 
 me, it came to me to try wholly to depict Col. Parker's 
 viewpoint towards his school and then perhaps to add, 
 of my own, views about the work, and parts of the work, 
 that I should particularly want to emphasize. 
 
 The great difficulty about this process is that when I 
 attempt the statement of Col. Parker's viewpoint towards 
 his own school, I am so entirely inadequate for the de- 
 scription. Many others could give you that so much bet- 
 ter than I could notably our Miss Cooke, who carries 
 on Col. Parker's work on the North Side and equally 
 notably, many members of his faculty whom you have 
 with you. 
 
3 
 
 I had the thought at one moment of asking to divide 
 this hour and to persuade Miss Cooke to give you her 
 interpretation of Col. Parker's work. I quickly retreat- 
 ed from this thought for the reason that if you had the 
 chance to listen to Miss Cooke I should gain no hearing 
 at all and I could not think of losing this rare oppor- 
 tunity for an audience. 
 
 I earnestly entreat you, now that I shall have had my 
 chance of taxing you to my satisfaction, to give your- 
 selves, the pleasure, if you can persuade her, of hearing 
 the statement of the school work which Miss Cooke gave 
 to the Parker School this spring. We felt that it was 
 as vivid and comprehensive a statement of this complex- 
 subject as we had had. 
 
 Leaving you in anticipation of that possibility as a 
 reward of patience, may I then draw you on with me? 
 and let fall upon your head the retribution of your own 
 choice. 
 
 The composite seeming not a hopeful attempt, I shall 
 not try to give you the technical description of Col. Par- 
 ker's school work nor separate myself from my own 
 view of it. This will not be the full statement of the 
 ideals of the school which my title calls for, and no one 
 statement could cover those in full no one viewpoint 
 compass them. 
 
 But I will ask you, then, to remember that it does not 
 necessarily follow from my statement that the more re- 
 sponsible factors in the school work would be repre- 
 sented therein, and if you promise to keep this in mind, 
 I shall go freely forward and give you what seems the 
 only thing to attempt the ideals of our school as seen 
 in the foundation of it by one factor in that great and 
 comprehensive process. 
 
One other preliminary word is quite necessary to 
 say : That I shall not attempt to at all points make clear 
 wherein the school did not fulfill its whole ideal in its 
 performance. 
 
 It is unnecessary to state that it did not do so. To 
 speak of its ideals is to indicate that it reached out to- 
 wards goals beyond its grasp which it had not yet per- 
 fectly attained. What you ask for today is a picture of 
 those goals. To analyze the shortcomings and find the 
 reasons and cures for those, is the process of school 
 work. This I am not attempting to describe in this mo- 
 ment. I am but trying to pass on to you and I fear it 
 will be but faintly that alluring picture which I got 
 glimpse of when I first entered Col. Parker's school 
 the ideal growing ground for a child a picture that 
 itself has grown and grown as one gazes on it and 
 dwells in it. 
 
 The ideals the aims of its existence of this school 
 which was Col. Parker's are now yours and ours by 
 affection and courtesy! Let me once and for all en- 
 treat you whenever you approach this vital subject of 
 the work of a school that is trying to set a standard for 
 children, that you take great care to make the distinc- 
 tions which give the essential idea. This move in ed- 
 ucation in general has been open, naturally and rightly, 
 to a vast amount of criticism. We cannot approach the 
 subject without meeting it on every hand. This school 
 has challenged attention by its fundamental importance, 
 and also more or less by its power to attract attention 
 by its results. Its real upholders have always welcomed 
 criticism courted suggestion as a great avenue of 
 help and ignored the carping criticism which was man- 
 ifestly trying to pick flaws for the pleasure of that in- 
 
teresting ocupation, for which new territory always 
 offers so many easy and attractive opportunities. But 
 there is a vast ainount of keenly interested criticism 
 which shoots wide of the mark, because it proceeds from 
 a lack of understanding of the real ideas contained in 
 the terms used. I have often been engulfed by the 
 hopeless and helpless feeling that that situation leaves 
 one in, when it is realized that a word will not straighten 
 the issue, and that the critic will not give more than 
 passing attention to the matter. The confusion is often 
 deeper and more important, however, than the momen- 
 tary missing of the point by casual beholders. For real 
 criticism is the meat and drink of constructive work in 
 education, or in anything else, and we can ill afford to 
 have it mixed with the poison of a misunderstanding of 
 the real idea. 
 
 It is the frequent vision of this confusion which leads 
 me to beg you to make the correct distinctions in deal- 
 ing with this subject. 
 
 The subject of a serious effort to advance education a 
 point further in its evolution, is worth clear thinking 
 on it. 
 
 Loose thought does more to becloud issues than we 
 are aware of. So much so-called thought is but a game 
 of follow-the-leader that it becomes an important mat- 
 ter for the leaders not to perpetuate side-tracking lines 
 of mistake. This, no doubt, is an unnecessary reflection 
 or suggestion to make within a University atmosphere. 
 I must be pardoned for making it, on the score of com- 
 ing into the sacred precincts from the philistine, ple- 
 beian sections of the city of the country of the world. 
 But even in coming out of the outer darkness or be- 
 cause of that it seems worth while to point out the 
 
pitfalls that may catch the steps of the unwary, who 
 may stray from the pure light of University thought. 
 
 Such familiar battle grounds for mastery of the cor- 
 rect interpretation come at once to mind as the com- 
 mon error of making the poor, jaded word discipline 
 do service for the birch rod, and the power of the will, 
 alike, and tearing it limb from limb in separating these 
 two impersonations of it. The result in the casual be- 
 holder is, nine times out of ten, the retention of the 
 more dramatic fact of the relegation of the birch rod 
 to the dust heap and the conclusion, immediate and 
 final, that Discipline all Discipline is gone bag and 
 baggage to the same quarter. 
 
 An equally ready to hand spot of confusion is the 
 well worn topic of interest. Because interest in the 
 mind of the child may be considered a sine quo non of 
 good work, therefore your non-distinction-drawer, whip- 
 ping poor interest around the stump of all of his own 
 preconceived ideas, pictures your education as tied to 
 the apron string of every passing whim of each sep- 
 arate and individual child of every group a confusing 
 enough result, surely, in the mind of the believer, if not 
 in the actual fact. 
 
 These errors of the common herd are, as we have 
 said, irrelevant in this presence. 
 
 But they serve to illustrate common mistakes which 
 can be corrected only by the uncommon clearness of 
 the thinking few and therefore they may be alluded 
 to pleadingly by a commoner. 
 
 May I then proceed to draw one distinction which I 
 think lies at the root of the whole matter? 
 
 The first aim of this school, as I have seen it, was 
 
to improve the conditions of school life for all children 
 to improve them by its immediate discoveries for its 
 own pupils and, by that demonstration, and its influ- 
 ence, for all the children in the world if possible to 
 reach so far. 
 
 This does not fall within the territory of just trying 
 to do what is and has been done in a yet better or more 
 perfect way. It has in it a very different meaning, viz. : 
 to change more or less radically, as the ease may be, the 
 existing conditions in schools for children; and it in- 
 volves clearly a choice. If the former idea is quite right, 
 then the other is not to be followed. If the later idea 
 is right, then the former idea is in some sense wrong. 
 This division or choice is not always a clear one by 
 any means. Known schools would not necessarily fall 
 into the one category or the other. But yet in what Col. 
 Parker set forth to do for children in schools is involved 
 in an essential way an element of choice an element of 
 negativing another way which largely obtained and 
 which he found to be not the right condition for chil- 
 dren's education, and which his purpose was to super- 
 sede as largely as possible. 
 
 Thus, in the aim of his school to improve the condi- 
 tions for children, is contained an arraignment of a for- 
 mer, and what it would have been his life hope to call 
 an outgrown, idea in the education of children. I think 
 any understanding of the ideas of this school must pro 
 ceed from a realization of that former state and those 
 elements in it which Col. Parker's work set forth to 
 eradicate it must proceed from an arraignment! 
 
 Holding the former way, then, at the bar, we must 
 make counts against it in all solemnity. 
 
 It received the pupil from the hands of its parents, 
 
8 
 
 but it did not take all of him. At the gate of the school 
 he, like the Gaul he was to learn so much about, was 
 divided into three parts. His parents were told to rp 
 tain two of them, keeping entire charge of his charac- 
 ter formation and his physical well being. The school 
 assumed the task of developing his head machine. 
 
 Due notice being thus given of what the school at 
 tempted and what it did not attempt to do, it could with 
 perfect good faith wash its hands of all it had not un- 
 dertaken and this it proceeded to do. It held its pu- 
 pils then as little integers for head work, and its edu- 
 cational work went on, on that theory. It became then 
 an irrelevant almost an impertinent question if one 
 ventured to inquire, whether such and such a part of 
 school work was a salutary influence on the pupil's char- 
 acter or whether the school life was conducive to the 
 pupil's health. 
 
 Those were questions for the home to deal with 
 wholly! Any particularly benign teacher might enter 
 that realm with her advice. But it was by no possible 
 construction her responsibility. 
 
 It is strange to stop to consider, in this conception 
 of the school's function for children, what a large pro- 
 portion of time and influence the school was willing to 
 assume in the lives of children, on this basis of partial 
 responsibility. 
 
 By this division the school took no particular account 
 of the pupil's physical development, and the pupil had 
 no particular way through the school of acquiring a 
 greater store of strength than nature had started him 
 with. The quota of gymnastics in schools in general 
 would hardly make an appreciable limit to this state- 
 ment. It is quite fair to say that it was not considered 
 
9 
 
 the school's especial business to conserve or increase 
 the pupil's store of physical vigor. 
 
 Dealing, as the school set forth to do, then, with the 
 head work of the child, it would be fair to hope that 
 that would be done with enlightenment. But it is more 
 in keeping to expect that a narrow and partial concep- 
 tion of the whole realm of school work would be followed 
 by a limited conception in the field which it did assume. 
 And this we find to be the case. 
 
 In the ancien regime the pedagogic process must be 
 declared to be faulty. 
 
 It consisted mainly in the stuffing of the pupil's mind 
 with the thoughts and conclusions of others, and the 
 requirement from him of the repetition of these too 
 often word for word as his contribution. 
 
 It was not only the stuffing of his mind with foreign 
 material, but in such unrelated nuggets as to make no 
 mass which he could by any process of his own assim- 
 ilate. 
 
 The result of this pedagogic conception was, no think- 
 ing process on the part of the pupil and no possession 
 by him of such material as he had succeeded in uttering 
 by rote. 
 
 The standards set up by the schools of yesterday were 
 in every case the standards set by others. They were 
 labeled by names made sacred by an awe, which severed 
 them from all real connection with the mind of the pupil. 
 
 With the leverage of distance and the power of su- 
 perstitious reverence, the hold they gained over the pu- 
 pil was absolute so that it would never occur to a pupil 
 to have any confidence in any departure whatever of 
 his own. These standards became an absolute measure 
 
10 
 
 of excellence not from intrinsic appreciation, but from 
 artificial stamp and acceptance. The result was a com- 
 plete stoppage of any originality and a prime emphasis 
 on imitation. 
 
 Discipline in the olden time was a method invented 
 for dealing with inevitably refractory human nature 
 a means of catching the refraction in the shoot, and 
 bringing it into line for the easement of trouble for the 
 population in general, and for individual teachers in 
 particular. It was a method applied on the outside 
 prickers of one sort or another, which the refractory one 
 would come up against and wish for his own comfort in 
 the end to steer clear of a process convenient enough 
 for an ease-loving and thought-shirking adulthood, but 
 not producing in the pupil any real control whatsoever. 
 
 From the foregoing elements, it is not a surprise to 
 reach the predicament the old education found itself in. 
 With no physical joy to expect, no work of one's own, 
 but only plodding through the repetition of the work 
 of others, no free play to find one's own metier, noth- 
 ing wanted but strict adherence to a stamped pattern; 
 with spikes of tongues and glances, reprimands and 
 marks (meaning other reprimands) on every side to pre- 
 vent any deviation from the lines as laid down, an in- 
 centive for such work was needed and needed badly. 
 
 And. alas, the school which should flash the beacon 
 light of high motive from hilltop to hilltop for human- 
 ity fell into the device, common to all authorities need- 
 ing to hold their populace within their power, resorted 
 to the appeal to the lower elements of human nature 
 the fear of punishment and the hope of gain the appeal 
 to the selfish desire to escape censure, and to excel 
 above others. 
 
11 
 
 It does not follow from a clear seeing of these ele- 
 ments in the old education, that all school-rooms or all 
 schools contained them. 
 
 Minds in all ages have done their part within sys- 
 tems on plans wholly of their own inspiration minds 
 have found themselves, in spite of all barriers forcing 
 the contrary. 
 
 Schools have always been full of the surprises of 
 minds corning upon revivifying connections of ideas 
 on their own unbounded uprising personality on one 
 and another teacher, who sees and inspires and lives 
 have been built on the foundations laid by such chance 
 teachers. 
 
 But that does not go so far as to negative the state- 
 ment that, in the ordinary course and by the accepted 
 plan, at the last end of the old education, all was but 
 left to be overcome. The end was but to begin, and per- 
 haps the best result was the common cry that nothing 
 was remembered. 
 
 In the realm of the physical, it was to put an adult 
 mind on the subject and get out of the circumstances 
 what could be rescued and the effort probably too late 
 at that. 
 
 If to think was. needed, it was to begin by getting out 
 of and forgetting well-worn ruts. 
 
 If a personality demanded recognition, it was at the 
 cost of eradicating the almost ineradicable stamp. If 
 control was to be reached, it was needed to begin all 
 over again in the school of experience. 
 
 If co-operation could hold sway (instead of fierce 
 rivalry and competition), it was only by uprooting that 
 
12 
 
 sturdy plant of selfishness, developed by careful culti- 
 vation through all the period of youth. 
 
 We are used to crying out against human nature and 
 railing against our civilization. I wonder if it often 
 enough occurs to us that our civilization is made by the 
 people of it and that we are making in turn the civiliza- 
 tion of tomorrow. 
 
 The minds that must mount, will. How many more 
 might soar if we gave them the chance! How many 
 thousands and millions may be losing their lights, in the 
 treadmill of educational process! 
 
 It is no doubt divinely true that we must be born 
 again but is it divinely necessary that our educational 
 process should leave that so wholly outside of its doors? 
 Might not that be a gradual rebirth in which our edu- 
 cation should play the leading part? 
 
 It is a thankless task to arraign with no outlook of 
 possibility and hope. 
 
 We are never driven to this necessity in scoring ways 
 past for children for there are always ways to come. 
 For them, ever and anon, teachers arise prophets to 
 hold aloft torches to light new paths, and while we spur 
 our search by glancing at the steps we wish to leave, 
 we may concentrate our efforts more on that better way 
 of discerning the footsteps traced ahead and, by the 
 flicker of the light in advance, find which steps are the 
 ones to follow and which to improve. 
 
 Col. Parker was one such prophet. 
 
 He founded our school in the spirit of a prophet for 
 the purpose of seeking and finding light to shed on the 
 path of mankind. 
 
 His school was designed to touch the lives of as many 
 
13 
 
 children as it could reach, with its magic wand; bnt 
 more than that, to be a school of the prophets, where 
 new light should ever be sought and found tested and 
 disseminated by new minds marching on and on drawn 
 by the irresistible call of the children giving new and 
 new waves of light, in devotion to them. 
 
 Tt was in this part of the picture of the future that 
 Col. Parker chiefly exulted when he came with his school 
 within this University the vision of the stream of young 
 things setting forth for their life work, catching sight 
 of the teacher's vision, coming within these gates, and 
 his being able to add of his store to the storehouse of 
 the University, for their preparation for a high mission. 
 
 Children were a mission to Col. Parker. To teach 
 them, really, as they might be taught, he held out to his 
 students as the highest mission on this earth. He could 
 not touch the question of teaching in any other spirit. 
 
 Children were received from their parents in his 
 school as a sacred trust. There was no dividing of ter- 
 ritory here no separating of functions which left the 
 real child falling between two. The child was in himself 
 a trinity yes, physical, intellectual, spiritual but one 
 godhead. 
 
 There was no agreement for division of duties. "When 
 the child was the school's, he was one whole splendid 
 opportunity and responsibility. It was not that the 
 school would do all for him but that what it did do 
 it would do wholly for all of him and if it did not thus 
 help the home to do the same, in its still higher ground, 
 it failed. 
 
 The child was considered first as a physical being. It 
 was realized that his whole life up to the adult point is 
 based on growth. 
 
14 
 
 It is the first necessity to rate power from the physical 
 standpoint. How unscientific we are how dull! We 
 take growing things whose chief element is growth no 
 two of whom grow precisely alike each one being a law 
 unto himself yet we rate and grade them for work by 
 arbitrary years, and erect standards for each year by 
 which they must toe the mark. Then we give them the 
 totally false feeling that at such and such moments, such 
 and such things, arbitrarily decided, must be accom- 
 plished, and we call them forward or backward as they 
 go beyond or behind these nicely adjusted facts of our 
 own making, and by so doing cut away all chance of a 
 right adjustment by hopelessly twisting their own ideas 
 of themselves. 
 
 The school must rate the children's work as it would 
 fit their clothes, to their physical proportions and then, 
 having the right adjustment, build in all ways to con- 
 serve and increase their physical store taking account 
 at all points of their need for physical overflow and a 
 chance for physical exuberance. Gymnastics and danc- 
 ing and physical games, for development in different 
 kinds, all made part of the school day. 
 
 Free periods, even for a few moments between classes, 
 for a run, it seems to me, should be brought about. 
 
 One of the dreams of the second foundation of the 
 school was a great playground where perhaps all of the 
 second half of the school day could be spent out of doors 
 in work and play. 
 
 I am sure that it is a serious and important thing for 
 our country, with our more and more rushing life and 
 our concentration in cities, that the schools should take 
 big hold of the physical side of children's lives and build 
 
15 
 
 for the future a sturdier race than we can say we are 
 today. 
 
 In the pedagogic field, how shall we describe Col. Par- 
 ker in his school? The thought of it reminds me of a new 
 elemental thing in its beginnings; and his exuberant 
 joy, in the freedom and courage of his experiments, 
 makes me think of the god Pan with his reeds finding 
 every day new and diviner sounds and giving them forth 
 to the listening, waiting earth. 
 
 He set forth on his quest to overturn school methods. 
 He had no pattern to move by. He studied under the 
 leaders of thought in Germany in his studying days 
 but that only furnished him with food for thought, not 
 with a plan. Where was the school in this country thaf 
 was making departures'? 
 
 In our most vital spots, as of our children, we are 
 most conservative, perhaps to their detriment. 
 
 Col. Parker truly set forth alone. Your own John 
 Dewey and his came next in time, came equal in cour- 
 age and initiative, and alongside in plan. 
 
 Col. Parker broke into unploughed territory and 
 verily broke the ground. He discarded all precedents. 
 His school practice was determined by two factors: 
 
 1st. The prime fundamental principles he clung 
 to for children. 
 
 2nd. These, guided, in their application, by his 
 own fine intuitive sense for children. 
 
 Col. Parker's principles for teaching were few and 
 clear as I understand them. 
 
 He held that the child is the unit, for teaching not 
 society. He aimed for the development of the individual 
 to all of his highest powers, to serve and to make so- 
 
16 
 
 ciety, not the training of individuals necessarily to fit 
 society the finished product of today. 
 
 He held that the child 's mind is as a plant to let grow 
 not as a box to fill. 
 
 He held that thinking is the growth process, and de- 
 veloped thinking the result to attain that there is no 
 learning without thinking and that, therefore, all teach- 
 ing is but to put the mind in contact real contact 
 with a subject in order to let the mind act. He held that 
 a recitation without thought on the part of the child was 
 no recitation. 
 
 He held that activity was a necessary condition of 
 thinking and also a necessary product of thinking 
 therefore activity must be present in the child's attitude 
 towards his work and also as an outcome of his work, 
 in expression of some kind. 
 
 He held that freedom is a necessary condition of 
 activity, and therefore trammels must be taken away. 
 
 He held that interest is a concomitant of activity of 
 thinking, in freedom, and therefore a test to apply to 
 the whole. If real interest in the work was lacking, 
 something was wrong and then his way would be, not 
 to sugar-coat, to tickle the palate, but to diagnose. 
 
 He held that to enable the mind to grow by thinking, 
 it must have intellectual food ; that this must be fitted in 
 kind and variety to the child's place in his intellectual 
 development, and chosen with a view to growth not to 
 filling. 
 
 The function of the teacher was to lead to the pas- 
 tures green and the still waters to spread the table- 
 to furnish the opportunity and let the child feed and 
 grow. 
 
17 
 
 He held that the whole round world belonged to every 
 child, and that to bring that circle aright to the child 
 was the great realm of the teacher not in unrelated, 
 incoherent masses could it break on the child, without 
 overwhelming and confusing him but in correlated con- 
 tacts, with man and nature, in ever enlarging circles, 
 could he at last possess the whole earth. 
 
 He held that all of the child's powers should be used 
 towards the gradual but complete possession of nature 
 including man in that category and to this end, that 
 the acquiring of all necessary intellectual tools and fa- 
 cilities should be in the course of this thought-building 
 process, in order to prevent waste of energy and time. 
 
 Col. Parker would not have given up one of his intel- 
 lectual dogmas for any person but he would have given 
 them all up for a child! 
 
 The second but truly the chief and most final and de- 
 termining factor in his school work was his intuitive 
 sense .of child nature what it wanted what it needed 
 what dwarfed it or twisted it what expanded it; and 
 any preconceived ideas that did not measure, in practice, 
 the manifest good of the children, would not have been 
 held for a moment. He was like a gardener tending be- 
 loved plants as he went about his school and he put his 
 finger unerringly on the needed elements a little more 
 sunshine here or shade there and the plants throve won- 
 drously and grew apace. 
 
 What did this sense for children consist of? It is 
 difficult to say, but into it went an unbounded belief in 
 them a sympathetic understanding of them and joy in 
 them a love of them which included them all. 
 
 In teaching, there is the intellectual element and there 
 
18 
 
 is the spiritual and I think we must come to see that 
 the spiritual must be the predominating element in the 
 end. It must have the real ascendancy the final de- 
 cisive voice the ultimate authority. This is most im- 
 portant nearest to the beginnings of life, where the foun- 
 dations are laid, in the impressionable years. But I 
 wonder if the age 'comes at all, during education, when 
 it is not equally true. With Col. Parker this was the 
 guiding star of his whole work. 
 
 I am keenly aware, as I have tried to speak of these 
 elements in education, that I have not stated them in 
 technical terms. I am almost as keenly aware that I 
 have no great wish to do so. 
 
 It is undoubtedly necessary and serviceable, when one 
 is closely analyzing psychological processes, or pulling 
 one nerve filament from another, to distinguish between 
 them, to have exact technical terms for the true under- 
 standing of the matter. 
 
 But the adoption of them, without that close, urgent 
 need of their use, is a dangerous and hampering thing. 
 And when one is talking about the teaching of children, 
 there are broader issues involved than these close anal- 
 yses, and I have a feeling that to try to closely analyze 
 and condense, into technical statements, matters that are 
 too big and broad for that treatment, is to arrive at 
 more of falsehood than of truth. 
 
 I do not think that Col. Parker s.tated well his prin- 
 ciples and beliefs in education. He always said that 
 John Dewey spoke for him better than he could s.peak 
 for himself. 
 
 But he saw and one difficulty in his promulgating 
 what he saw, was that he said it so inadequately. But 
 
19 
 
 he carried out his views for the children in a marvelous 
 fashion, and the main point for the children was not the 
 phrasing but the doing. 
 
 Did Col. Parker have a pride in the intellectual side 
 of his school work? 
 
 There is hardly a point in the world where that arch 
 enemy of the best and highest good does not gain some 
 foothold. I do not know I could not say he had none. 
 It might be that his intellectual creed, like other creeds, 
 had fences built around some of its tenets holding some 
 regions untouchable. 
 
 But if this were so, it boots not. 
 
 If so, it would only mean that what he held for chil- 
 dren was so great, that it was too great for his own 
 grasp. For the deepest fundamental principles of Col. 
 Parker's school were on such untouchable ground that 
 to put any mere intellectual theories into the same cat- 
 egory must be to lower them. 
 
 It may be that, with a touch of pride, Col. Parker 
 hedged about some of the lesser holdings of his peda- 
 gogic doctrine and if so, all would suffer from a dis- 
 turbed proportion but even if so, we cannot let that 
 rob us of the greatness of his greatest. 
 
 The great, the pre-eminent, the undying part of Col. 
 Parker's move in education was to free, to lift, the 
 soul of the child therefore the soul of humanity. I do 
 not want to use that term in such a way that it could 
 provoke the discussion of what is the soul, and whether 
 there is a soul. If I could ask you, each one, to supply 
 your own term, to mean the highest development of the 
 inner nature of man that is what I would like to do. 
 I use soul onlv because I know no better one. 
 
20 
 
 The great move in education that he made was to put 
 that soul that highest possible character development 
 as the one standard, the one aim, the one goal, of 
 school work its accomplishment the one final' test of 
 the work. He put his school at the disposal of that 
 achievement. All that would further it might stand 
 all that would help it must be had, if possible anything 
 that would hinder it must be done away with. 
 
 I am afraid Col. Parker did not live and work long 
 enough to let us realize what that truly meant the 
 vital difference between that and the basis that most of 
 our educational 1 institutions are on young and old alike. 
 
 They are doing the expected thing, the accepted work, 
 and are doing, in addition, as much as they can towards 
 improvement of the ideas in education, and of the in- 
 dividual pupils. 
 
 Discussions of betterings of school processes for chil- 
 dren is very apt to bring to a close with, "We would do 
 so and so, if we could". 
 
 It does not follow that we should all be pace-setters 
 we may not have the conviction or the power for that 
 But it helps all, when one can be such. It is worth while 
 to see what such a one is really doing. Even so much, 
 it sometimes seems, it is difficult to grasp the full 
 force of. 
 
 Col. Parker in his school could do all things that he 
 was convinced were for the good of the children, be- 
 cause he would. And it was really doing not only say- 
 ing, or writing in a catalogue. All interests all au- 
 thorities even himself, his whole school, and every- 
 thing connected with it, were subjected to the one pur- 
 pose to find the best the very best thing for children 
 
21 
 
 and no other purpose was admitted within the walls 
 to stay. 
 
 And of the best, that best of the best the child's soul 
 was paramount. Neither angels nor principalities 
 could have kept in that school a measure that would 
 injure a child's soul, so far as its head could know it. 
 
 Of what would injure a child's soul he took all coun- 
 sel of his faculty primarily. They, being his chosen 
 counselors and in the heart of the machine, their advice 
 was weighty with him. 
 
 (He believed in the initiative in school management. 
 I am not sure he would have advocated the referendum, 
 for when there was a final word to say it had to be his. 
 The recall, I am sure, would never have been needed!) 
 
 All and any light Gol. Parker courted from far or 
 near. Any who could contribute thought for a child had 
 a hearing. And from it all, and the depths of his own 
 convictions, conclusions were reached and then there 
 was never a question about action. 
 
 Artificiality of every sort was swept away. The only 
 standard that was set for a child was that child's best. 
 The world's leaders were not brought to him as arbiters, 
 but as friends. Each child was made a king in his own 
 domain, and what he gave of that princely possession, 
 was a gift to all. 
 
 Discipline, as all else, was evoked from within, not 
 laid on from without and it was evoked wholly on the 
 basis of usefulness to the community the real basis. 
 
 If it became necessary at any point to protect the 
 community arbitrarily, that could be done. It is amaz- 
 ing how seldom it was needed. With all the forces work 
 ing towards self-control, how could it otherwise than 
 
22 
 
 come about rightly and completely developing a true 
 responsibility? 
 
 The finest flower of Col. Parker's work was in his final 
 appeal to the child's motive and incentive. He never 
 allowed an appeal to be made directly or indirectly to 
 the lower, selfish instinct of a human being in his care 
 unless it might be in a humor which would dispose of it, 
 as a serious consideration, perhaps more effectually than 
 silence. 
 
 Thus all competition that is, of the get-ahead-of-the- 
 other-fellow sort was wiped out. 
 
 When he took this stand, it took more courage than it 
 would today although I cannot say that even today ed- 
 ucation has declared competition an outworn way. 
 
 In that day, to abolish rating marks among pupils 
 would have been considered a step towards pandemo- 
 nium. But Col. Parker would have said that even if 
 so, pandemonium would have been better than creating 
 greed for glory, and at another's expense. 
 
 But of course it did not produce pandemonium the 
 courage of the right step never does. It produced only 
 added fervor in the pupil greater interest in the real is- 
 sue of one's work, when the false issue of its rating by 
 some one else, in comparison with some one else, was 
 eliminated. And competition (except in the field of the 
 friendly rivalry of play where the gamboling spirit 
 makes it a thing of joy!), competition took its proper 
 place, and became competition with oneself to do ever 
 better and better work. Vulgar, sordid competition was 
 wiped out of existence in its selfish aspects and co-op- 
 eration came to take its place. 
 
 The question for every pupil at every turn was not, 
 
23 
 
 how much can I get ahead of my brother? but, how much 
 can I help my brother to do also? 
 
 If Col. Parker's school had no other reason for exist- 
 ence in fact or in memory, this alone would furnish cause 
 for its continuance need that it should live and not 
 die that in one spot, in the world, credits for self were 
 not counted up for miserly, selfish gain; inches or dots 
 or lines or figures were not closely estimated in order 
 to rate one ahead of another. 
 
 Competition was lost sight of in the effort to help, 
 and to do better oneself, in order to help more co- 
 operation loomed up big and beautiful for a cause for 
 work and the joy of it with others in a community 
 spirit where contribution was so diverse and so over- 
 flowing that efforts to rate it became an absurdity, ef- 
 forts to increase it a joy. 
 
 Can the ideals of our school be told in words? 
 
 They flow from the purpose of the foundation. They 
 change in shape and color in detail as they go for- 
 ward as a river finds new channels from its very force. 
 
 They are to build on the old losing none of its 
 strengths but, with reverence, to add forever new lights. 
 
 They are to make that great art of teaching come to 
 seem the greatest thing in the world, so that ideals may 
 become realities in all schools. 
 
 They are to take the child all children and build 
 them better bodies keener, truer minds and through 
 all, at all moments and in all experiences, lead them to be 
 finer spirits. 
 
 And the saving clause, as we think of how we cannot, 
 perhaps, do it all ourselves, is that, as we drop even stray 
 
24 
 
 gems of ideals, the children pick them up and play will 
 them and weave them into their lives to do it all better. 
 
 I feel sure that when the millenium comes, it will come 
 to us through the ideals of our schools. 
 
CIS, 
 65-3