The educational substitutes, now in vogue, are many, and varied, and, of their kind, good. They can show results, and results that challenge competition. Mr. Samuel Gompers, for example, writes with pardonable complacency of himself: “When I think of the education I got in the London streets, the training acquired by work in the shop, the discipline growing out of attempts to build an organization to accomplish definite results, of the rich cultural opportunities through human contacts, I know that my educational opportunities have been very unusual.”
This is, in a measure, true, and it is not the first time that such opportunities have been lauded to the skies. “If a lad does not learn in the streets,” said Robert Louis Stevenson, “it is because he has no faculty of learning.”—“Books! Don’t talk to me of books!” said Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. “My books are cards and men.” It will even be remembered that old Weller boasted to Mr. Pickwick of the tuition he had afforded Sam by turning him at a tender age into the London gutters, to learn what lessons they could teach.
Nevertheless, there is an education that owes nothing to streets, or to work-shops, or to games of chance. It was not in the “full, vivid, instructive hours of truancy” that Stevenson acquired his knowledge of the English language, which he wrote with unexampled vigour and grace. It is not “human contact” that can be always trusted to teach men how to pronounce that language correctly. This is an educational nicety disregarded by a practical and busy world. One of the best-informed women I ever knew, who had been honoured by several degrees, and who had turned her knowledge to good account, could never pronounce the test word, America. One of the ablest and most influential lawyers I ever knew, a college man with an imposing library, came no nearer to success. The lady said “Armorica,” as if she were speaking of ancient Brittany. The gentleman said “Amurrica,” probably to make himself intelligible to the large and patriotic audiences which he addressed so frequently and so successfully. The license allowed to youth may be held accountable for such Puck’s tricks as these, as well as for grammatical lapses. A superintendent of public schools in Illinois has decided on his own authority that common usage may supplant time-worn rules of speech; and that such a sentence as “It is I,” being “outlawed” by common usage, need no longer be forced upon children who prefer to say “It is me.”
Because the direct products of education are so limited, and the by-products of such notable importance, we permit ourselves to speak contemptuously concerning things which must be learned from books, without any deep understanding of things which must be learned from people armed with books, and backed by the authority of tradition. When Goethe said that the education of an Englishman gave him courage to be what nature had made him, he illuminated, after his wont, a somewhat shadowy subject. William James struck the same note, and amplified it, not too exhaustively, in “Talks to Teachers”: “An English gentleman is a bundle of specifically qualified reactions, a creature who, for all the emergencies of life, has his line of behaviour distinctly marked out for him in advance.”
If this be the result of a system which, to learned Germans, lucid Frenchmen, and progressive Americans, has seemed inadequate, they may revise, or at least suspend, their judgment. And Englishmen who have humorously lamented the wasted years of youth (“May I be taught Greek in the next world if I know what I did learn at school!” said the novelist, James Payn), need no longer be under the obligation of expressing more dissatisfaction than they feel.
In the United States the educational by-products are less clear-cut, because the force of tradition is weaker, and because too many boys are taught too long by women. The difficulty of obtaining male teachers has accustomed us to this anomaly, and we have even been heard to murmur sweet phrases concerning the elevating nature of feminine influence. But the fact remains that a boy is destined to grow into a man, and for this contingency no woman can prepare him. Only men, and men of purpose and principle, can harden him into the mould of manhood. It is a question of character, which great by-product of education cannot be safely undervalued even in a busy and clever age. “It was always through enfeeblement of character,” says Gustave Le Bon, “and not through enfeeblement of intellect, that the great peoples disappeared from history.”
And this truth paves the way for an assertion which, however controvertible, is not without strong support. Of all the direct products of education (of education as an end in itself, and not as an approach to something else), a knowledge of history is most essential. So, at least, it seems to me, though I speak with diffidence, being well aware that makers of history, writers of history, and teachers of history, have agreed that it is an elusive, deceptive and disputable study. Yet it is the heart of all things, and every intellectual by-path leads to this central theme. Most firmly do I believe with “the little Queen-Anne man” that
“The proper study of mankind is man”;
and how shall we reach him save through the pages of history? It is the foundation upon which are reared the superstructures of sociology, psychology, philosophy and ethics. It is our clue to the problems of the race. It is the gateway through which we glimpse the noble and terrible things which have stirred the human soul.
A cultivated American poet has said that men of his craft “should know history inside out, and take as much interest in the days of Nebuchadnezzar as in the days of Pierpont Morgan.” This is a spacious demand. The vast sweep of time is more than one man can master, and the poet is absolved by the terms of his art from severe study. He may know as much history as Matthew Arnold, or as little as Herrick, who lived through great episodes, and did not seem to be aware of them. But Mr. Benét is wise in recognizing the inspiration of history, its emotional and imaginative appeal. New York and Pierpont Morgan have their tale to tell; and so has the dark shadow of the Babylonian conqueror, who was so feared that, while he lived, his subjects dared not laugh; and when he died, and went to his appointed place, the poor inmates of Hell trembled lest he had come to rule over them in place of their master, Satan.