History of Human Society

by Frank W. Blackmar

Research an Educational Process.—Increased knowledge comes from observation or systematic investigation in the laboratory. Every child has by nature the primary element of research, a curiosity to know things. Too often this is suppressed by conventional education instead of continued into systematic investigation. One of the great defects of the public school is the failure to keep alive, on the part of the student, the desire to know things. Undue emphasis on instruction, a mere imparting of knowledge, causes the student to shift the responsibility of his education upon the teacher, who, after all, can do no more than help the student to select the line of study, and direct him in methods of acquiring. Together teacher and student can select the trail, and the teacher, because he has been over it, can direct the student over its rough ways, saving him time and energy.

Perhaps the greatest weakness in popular government to-day is indifference of citizens to civic affairs. This leads to a shifting of responsibility of public affairs frequently to those least competent to conduct them. Perhaps a training in individual responsibility in the schools and more vital instruction in citizenship would prepare the coming generation to make democracy efficient and safe to the world. The results of research are of great practical benefit to the so-called common man in the ordinary pursuits of life. The scientist in the laboratory, spending days and nights in research, finally discovers a new process which becomes a life-saver or a time-saver to general mankind. Yet the people usually accept this as a matter of fact as something that just happened. They forget the man in the laboratory and exploit the results of his labor for their own personal gain.

How often the human mind is in error, and unobserving, not to see that the discovery of truth and its adaptation to ordinary life is one of the fundamental causes of the progress of the race. Man has advanced in proportion as he has become possessed of the secrets of nature and has adapted them to his service. The number of ways he touches nature and forces her to yield her treasures, adapting them to his use, determines the possibility of progress.

The so-called "common man," the universal type of our democracy, is worthy of our admiration. He has his life of toil and his round of duties alternating with pleasure, bearing the burdens of life cheerfully, with human touch with his fellows; amid sorrow and joy, duty and pleasure, storm and sunshine, he lives a normal existence and passes on the torch of life to others. But the man who shuts himself in his laboratory, lives like a monk, losing for a time the human touch, spends long days of toil and "nights devoid of ease" until he discovers a truth or makes an invention that makes millions glad, is entitled to our highest reverence. The ordinary man and the investigator are complementary factors of progress and both essential to democracy.

The Diffusion of Knowledge Necessary to Democracy.—Always in progress is a deflecting tendency, separating the educated class from the uneducated. This is not on account of the aristocracy of learning, but because of group activity, the educated man following a pursuit different from the man of practical affairs. Hence the effort to broadcast knowledge through lectures, university extension, and the radio is essential to the progress of the whole community. One phase of enlightenment is much neglected, that of making clear that the object of the scholar and the object of the man of practical affairs should be the same—that of establishing higher ideals of life and providing means for approximating these ideals. It frequently occurs that the individual who has centred his life on the accumulation of wealth ignores the educator and has a contempt for the impractical scholar, as he terms him. Not infrequently state legislatures, when considering appropriations for education, have shown more interest in hogs and cattle than in the welfare of children.

It would be well if the psychology of the common mind would change so as to grasp the importance of education and scientific investigation to every-day life. Does it occur to the man who seats himself in his car to whisk away across the country in the pursuit of ordinary business, to pause to inquire who discovered gasoline or who invented the gasoline-engine? Does he realize that some patient investigator in the laboratory has made it possible for even a child to thus utilize the forces of nature and thus shorten time and ignore space? Whence comes the improvement of live-stock in this country? Compare the cattle of early New England with those on modern farms. Was the little scrubby stock of our forefathers replaced by large, sleek, well-bred cattle through accident? No, it was by the discovery of investigators and its practical adaptation by breeders. Compare the vineyards and the orchards of the early history of the nation, the grains and the grasses, or the fruits and the flowers with those of present cultivation. What else but investigation, discovery, and adaptation wrought the change?

My common neighbor, when your child's poor body is racked with pain and likely to die, and the skilled surgeon places the child on the operating-table, administers the anaesthetic to make him insensible to pain, and with knowledge gained by investigation operates with such skill as to save the child's life and restore him to health, are you not ready to say that scientific investigation is a blessing to all mankind? Whence comes this power to restore health? Is it a dispensation from heaven? Yes, a dispensation brought about through the patient toil and sacrifice of those zealous for the discovery of truth. What of the knowledge that leads to the mastery of the yellow-fever bacillus, of the typhoid germ, to the fight against tuberculosis and other enemies of mankind? Again, it is the man in the laboratory who is the first great cause that makes it possible for humanity to protect itself from disease.

Could our methods of transportation by steamship, railroad, or air, our great manufacturing processes, our vast machinery, or our scientific agriculture exist without scientific research? Nothing touches ordinary life with such potent force as the results of the investigation in the laboratory. Clearly it is understood by the thoughtful that education in all of its phases is a democratic process, and a democratic need, for its results are for everybody. Knowledge is thus humanized, and the educated and the non-educated must co-operate to keep the human touch.

Educational Progress.—One of the landmarks of the present century of progress will be the perfecting of educational systems. Education is no longer for the exclusive few, developing an aristocracy of learning for the elevation of a single class; it has become universal. The large number of universities throughout the world, well endowed and well equipped, the multitudes of secondary schools, and the universality of the primary schools, now render it possible for every individual to become intelligent and enlightened.

But these conditions are comparatively recent, so that millions of individuals to-day, even in the midst of great educational systems, remain entirely unlettered. Nevertheless, the persistent effort on the part of people everywhere to have good schools, with the best methods of instruction, certainly must have its effect in bringing the masses of unlearned into the realm of letters. The practical tendency of modern education, by which discipline and culture may be given while at the same time preparing the student for the active duties of life, makes education more necessary for all persons and classes. The great changes that have taken place in methods of instruction and in the materials of scientific investigation, and the tendency to develop the man as well as to furnish him with information, evince the masterly progress of educational systems, and demonstrate their great worth.