XV
DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION
All just government is a transient device to make ordered progress possible. In the kingdom of heaven there would be no government, for if all human beings saw the best, loved the best and willed the best, the function of government would be at an end. Obviously there is no hope or fear that we shall get into the kingdom of heaven soon, and the necessity for government will exist for an indefinitely long time. Nevertheless, government is due to the imperfection of human nature and, as stated, its aim is ordered progress. Progress without order is anarchy; order without progress is stagnation and death.
It must frankly be admitted, moreover, that democracy is not the shortest road to good government nor to economic efficiency. That we recognize this as a people is proved by the drift of our opinion and of the changes in our lesser institutions. Take, for instance, our city government. A few decades ago our cities were so notoriously misgoverned that they were the scandal of the world. Our boards of aldermen or councilmen, representing ward constituencies, with all sorts of local strings tied to them, were clumsy and unwieldy and easily subject to corruption.
So, about twenty years ago, all across the country went the cry, "Get a good mayor, and give him a free hand." That is the way our great industries are conducted: a wise captain of industry is secured and given full control. Being a practical people, and imagining ourselves to be much more practical than really we are, we said, let us conduct our city business in the same way. Why not? Plato showed long ago that you can get the best government in the shortest time by getting a good tyrant, and giving him a free hand.
There arc just two objections. The first is incidental: it is exceedingly difficult to keep your tyrant good. Arbitrary authority over one's fellows is about the most corrupting influence known to man. No one is great and good enough to be entrusted with it. Responsible power sobers and educates, irresponsible power corrupts. Nevertheless we pay the price of this error and learn the lesson.
The other objection is more significant. It is the effect on the rank and file of the citizenship, for the meaning of democracy is not immediate results in government, but the education of the citizen, and that education can come only by fulfilling the functions of citizenship. Thus it is better to be the free citizen of a democracy, with all the waste and temporary inefficiency democracy involves, than to be the inert slave of the most perfect paternal despotism ever devised by man. Thus the movement away from democratic city government is gravely to be questioned, no matter what economic results it secures.
The same argument applies to more recent changes, as the commission form of city government. As in the previous case, reacting upon the scandalous situation, we said, "Let us choose the three to five best men in the community, and let them run the city's business for us." Nearly every time this change has been made, the result has been an immediate cleaning up of the city government; but why? Chiefly because "a new broom sweeps clean,"—not so much for the reason that it is new, as because you are interested in the instrument. You can get a dirty room remarkably clean with an old broom, if you will sweep hard enough. The cleaning up is due, not primarily to the instrument, but to the hand that wields it.
To speak less figuratively: the cleaning up of the city government with the inauguration of the commission system, came because the change was made by an awakening of the good people of the community. Good people have a habit, however, of going to sleep in an astoundingly short time; but the gang never sleeps. Now suppose, while the good people are dozing in semi-somnolence, assured that the new broom will sweep of itself, the gang gets together and elects the three to five worst gangsters in the city to be the commission? Is it not evident that the very added efficiency of the instrument means greater graft and corruption?
Equally the argument applies to the most recent device suggested—the city manager plan. As we have largely taken our schools out of politics, and have a non-partisan educational expert as superintendent, so it is suggested we should conduct our city business. Again, suppose the gang appoints the city manager: he will be an expert in graft, rather than in government.
The moment a people gets to trusting to a device it is headed for danger. There is just one safeguard of democracy, and that is to keep the good people awake and at the task all the time. Some instruments are better and some are worse, but the instrument never does the work, it is the hand and brain that wield it.
If there is one field where we could reasonably expect to find pure democracy, it is in our higher educational institutions. In a college or university, where a group of young men and women, and a group of older men and women are gathered apart, out of the severer economic struggle, dedicated to ideal ends: there, surely, we could expect pure democracy in organization and relationship; yet the tendency has been steadily toward autocracy. One can count the fingers of both hands and not cover the list of college and university presidents who have taken office during the last fifteen years, only on condition that they have complete authority over the educational policy of the institution, and often over its financial policy as well. The reason is obvious: we run a railroad efficiently by getting a good president and giving him arbitrary control; why not a university?
There are just the two objections cited above: even in a university, it is difficult to keep your tyrant good. This, again, is the minor objection. The real evil is in the effect upon the rank and file of those governed by the autocrat. There are men in university faculties to-day who say, privately, that if they could get any other opportunity, they would resign to-morrow, for they feel like clerks in a department store, with no opportunity to help determine the educational policy of the institutions of which they are integral parts.
The German university, under all the autocracy and bureaucracy of the German state, is more democratic in its organization than our own. Its faculty is a self-governing body, electing to its own membership. The Rectorship is an honor conferred for the year on some faculty member for superior worth and scholarship. Each member of the faculty may thus feel the self-respect and dignity, resulting from the power and initiative he possesses as a free citizen of the institution.
Let me suggest what would be the ideal democratic organization of a college or university. Why not apply the same division of functions of government that has proved so successful in the state? The board of Trustees is the natural judiciary; the President, the executive. The faculty is the legislative body, with the student body as a sort of lower house, cooperating in enacting the legislation for its own government. Where has such a plan been tried?
If the primary purpose of democracy is thus, not immediate results in government, but the education of the citizen, on the other hand, democracy rests, for its safety and progress, on the ever better education of the citizen. Under the older forms of human society, laws may be passed and executed that are far in advance of public opinion. That cannot be done in a democracy. The law may be a slight step in advance, and so perhaps educate public opinion to its level; but if it goes beyond that step, after the first flurry of interest in the law is past, it remains a dead letter on the statute books—worse than useless, because cultivating that dangerous disrespect for all law, which we have seen growing upon us as a people.
Thus from either side, the problem of democracy is a problem of education. It rests upon education, its aim is education. In a democracy, the supreme function of the state is, not to establish a military system for defense, or a police system for protection, it is not the enforcement of public and private contract: it is to take the children and youth of each generation and develop them into men and women able to fulfill the responsibility and enjoy the opportunity of free citizenship in a free society.