I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION
BY PROFESSOR H. W. HOLMES
IN all profitable thinking about modern education one central fact is stated or assumed—the fact that education has become a public enterprise. To think of it as a matter mainly of private interest, to discuss it chiefly in terms of personal development, is to ignore the achieved conditions of civilized life and the clear trend of progress. The spread of public schools is but the obvious outward sign of a growing conviction concerning all educational endeavor. That conviction was long ago proclaimed and has now become a guide to action—the conviction that the community has a vital stake in the education of every child. Education is a common concern not merely because there are many children to be educated, but because there can be no significant outcome in the education of any child which is not of importance, not to him only, but also to others, immediately to many, more remotely to all.