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Croly, Herbert David, 1869-1930

"The Promise of American Life"

Or an
inquiry might be made as to whether the educational system of the
country, which should remain under exclusive state jurisdiction, is well
adapted to the extremely complicated purpose of endowing its various
pupils with the general and special training most helpful to the
creation of genuine individuals, useful public servants, and loyal and
contented citizens of their own states. In this matter of education the
state governments, particularly in the North, have shown abundant and
encouraging good will; but it is characteristic of their general
inefficiency that a good will has found its expression in a
comparatively bad way.
It would serve no good purpose to push any farther the list of excellent
objects to which the state governments might devote their liberated and
liberalized energies. We need only add that they would then be capable,
not merely of more efficient separate action, but also of far more
profitable cooeperation. In case the states were emancipated from their
existing powerless subjection to individual, special, and parochial
interests, the advantages of a system of federated states would be
immediately raised to the limit.


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