Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

by Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

This survey had been confined almost entirely to the exhibits of the United States. It need hardly be said that in no foreign country do women play so important a part in education, and on account of the mode of installation it would have been impossible to distinguish between their work and that of men in the foreign exhibits. Mention may, however, be made of the fact that the exhibits of French industrial schools for girls and of the French lycées for girls, which were of a very high order, were substantially the work of women. In the Swedish section there was a very admirable exhibit of secondary schools for girls and coeducational schools, which had been planned and installed by Miss Mathilda Widegren. In the English section were shown very remarkable specimens of art work in jewelry and silver repoussé designed and executed by women students. As the foreign exhibits specified did not come under the jury of group 1, I am unable to report the awards which they received.

The increasing recognition of the value of women's services is indicated by the increase in the proportion of women called to serve upon the exposition juries. The jury of group 1 included three women, of whom two were foreigners, namely, Miss Elizabeth Fischer, a teacher from Halle, Germany, and Miss Mathilda Widegren, associate principal of a private school in Sweden. These three members were all women of great experience in the matters with respect to which they were called to judge, and their abilities were most cordially and heartily recognized by their colleagues. Indeed, in view of the place in education which is now accorded to women in our own country and in the leading countries of Europe, I should unhesitatingly say that it is for the advantage of women and of society in general that their work should not be separately exhibited, but should rather form an integral part of a collective exhibit. This principle, indeed, might not apply to certain specialties which have heretofore been exclusively or almost exclusively practiced by men, or which (like artistic needlework) have a particularly feminine character.

ANNA TOLMAN SMITH, Member of the International Jury, Group 1, Louisiana Purchase Exposition.

BUREAU OF EDUCATION,
Washington, D.C.

As chairman of the committee to report on the work of the jury, Miss
Smith writes:

REPORT OF A COMMITTEE OF THE JURY OF GROUP 1.

The material presented for the consideration of the jury of group No. 1 (elementary education) comprised on the part of the United States the exhibit of public education as organized in 34 States and Territories, in 6 cities (presented as separate units), and in 15 foreign countries. In number, extent, and complexity these exhibits surpassed all previous collections of the kind; the separate entries ran up into the thousands, representing for the most part such important collections as the exhibits of cities, counties, and groups of rural schools, all deserving careful attention.

The examination of this material in the brief time allowed (twenty days) was a severe task, and would have been impossible but for the circumstance that, with two exceptions, the exhibits were all placed in one building. For the first time in the history of expositions the chief collective activity of civilized peoples was honored by an edifice planned and erected for itself alone. This concentration of the material under the general direction of an experienced and able chief, thoroughly familiar with the arrangements and of unfailing courtesy and helpfulness, alone brought the work assigned the jury of group 1 within the bounds of possible achievement. Their efforts were furthered also by the expert qualification of each and every member of the group by the system and perfect harmony in which they worked, and by the exceptional ability of their official staff: Chairman, Dr. E.O. Lyte; vice-chairman, Mr. B. Buisson, representing the French Government; secretary, Mr. Morales de Los Rios, representing the Cuban Government.

The details of the group organization are shown by the minutes of the secretary, which also present a full record of its daily action and findings. It remains here only to speak of salient features of this particular division of the exposition, whose effects can not be indicated nor estimated by any system of awards.

The installations of the various exhibits had been carefully planned and were, as a rule, effective, and in many cases extremely beautiful. The United States has made notable progress in this respect since the Chicago Exposition of 1893, and even since the Paris Exposition in 1900, and in the present exposition several of our States and cities offer fine models of the exhibitor's art. This is the case especially with Missouri and St. Louis; the latter in particular has realized the double purpose of challenging popular attention and satisfying critical taste. The art of effective exposition, whether worked out with noble simplicity or rich decorative accessories, requires on the one hand intelligent selection and coordination of the material, and on the other skill in the treatment of space and artistic elements. No small part of the value of an educational exhibit lies in its esthetic quality, since this reveals not less clearly than the methods and results of school training the inherent genius of a people. This International Exposition has been rich in this quality, on account both of the number of different nations participating and the care taken by each to give distinctive character to its display. This is marked in the exhibits of elementary education, which in nearly all European countries forms a complete whole, distinct from other grades, and having the definite purpose of maintaining an established social order or national type through the intellectual, manual, and artistic training of the masses. The presentation of elementary education as an independent unit indeed well accords with the conditions in nearly all countries excepting our own. Elsewhere, as a rule, elementary education forms a complete system, having its separate administration, purposes, and ideals. In this respect the United States presents a notable contrast to the chief countries of the Old World, and one strikingly illustrated in this exposition. In our own country education is conceived as an integral process steadily developing from the kindergarten to the university. To this conception corresponds the sequence of elementary and high schools united under a common administration and by close scholastic bonds. Hence a measure of violence is done both to elementary and secondary education as here organized by the endeavor to view them separately. On the other hand, a portion of the elementary education of foreign countries, notably of France and Germany, does not enter at all into the sum total of the impressions recorded by the jury of either group, because of the social distinctions that underlie in those countries the classification of schools as elementary and secondary. These anomalous conditions affect particularly the classification and judgment of the various agencies for the training of teachers (that is, normal schools, teachers' training colleges, and auxiliary agencies, such as normal classes in academies or other secondary schools, teachers' institutes, etc). In the chief foreign countries professional schools of this kind are easily classified by virtue of their administrative relations, but in our own country the different orders of pedagogical training merge into each other almost imperceptibly because they are all based upon the same fundamental conception of the teaching profession.