THESE CHANGES AND THE SCHOOL. It is these vast and far-reaching political,
industrial, and social changes which have been the great actuating forces
behind the evolution and expansion of the state school systems which we
have so far described. The American and French political revolutions, with
their new philosophy of political equality and state control of education,
clearly inaugurated the movement for taking over the school from the
Church and the making of it an important instrument of the State. The
extension of the suffrage to new classes gave a clear political motive for
the school, and to train young people to read and write and know the
constitutional bases of liberty became a political necessity. The
industrial revolution which followed, bringing in its train such extensive
changes in labor and in the conditions surrounding home and child life,
has since completely altered the face of the earlier educational problem.
What was simple once has since become complex, and the complexity has
increased with time. Once the ability to read and write and cipher
distinguished the educated man from the uneducated; to-day the man or
woman who knows only these simple arts is an uneducated person, hardly fit
to cope with the struggle for existence in a modern world, and certainly
not fitted to participate in the complex political and industrial life of
which, in all advanced nations, he or she [23] to-day forms a part.