ABSTRACT
The American passion for education has its significant results from its very nature, and certain results by way of by-product that were also not without their importance. The American tradition is almost coeval with the provision of schools and colleges; there is the urge to education wherever there is a reasonably sized community with something like a stable life. American education, in fact, is set in the background of two principles which it has never been possible completely to reconcile. The first, and perhaps historically the older, is a faith in the social value of the mind disciplined by instruction to understand the world about it; the second, which was given its main emphasis after the Revolution by westward expansion, is the belief that once the adolescent can read and write and has mastered the simple mysteries of arithmetic, life itself is the best school to which they can be sent.
