Much the same thing, as everyday observation shows, occurs in the case of full-grown men and women. The judicious have long grieved at the gullibility with which people who are by no means illiterate and uneducated accept and act upon the most preposterous suggestions of the fraudulent advertiser, from the patent-medicine man to the swindling promoter. Political mountebanks and charlatans daily ride into power through nothing else than skilfully working on the suggestibility of the voters. So, too, religious cults, no matter how fantastic, gain a foothold and a following. “I am Elijah,” some one announces, and straightway a multitude proclaim him Elijah. “There is no such thing as disease,” says another, and thousands take up the cry, accepting the absurd suggestion with as much unthinking readiness as was shown by the French boys who, although they had concrete evidence to the contrary, accepted their master’s deceptive statements.
What these, and even more glaring evidences of undue suggestibility, really mean is that there is something wrong with our educational methods. Appreciating this, there is an increasing tendency to criticise and condemn the school system. “Our common schools,” exclaims President Emeritus Charles W. Eliot, of Harvard University, “have failed signally to cultivate general intelligence, as is evinced by the failure to deal adequately with the liquor problem, by the prevalence of gambling, of strikes accompanied by violence, and by the persistency of the spoils system.” From the standpoint also of mere efficiency much complaint is made. The charge is even heard that the public schools of to-day make for mediocrity, and that instead of fostering they in reality retard the development of a child’s intellect. In the words of a recent critic (The Psychological Clinic, vol. iv., p. 141):
“The public school attempts the impossible feat of making a course for all children, irrespective of strength, mentality, inheritance, or home environment—whether they are to be lawyers or blacksmiths, artisans or mathematicians. Plainly, this course cannot suit all children. Is it, then, adapted to the bright child? Doctor Witmer, Professor of Psychology in the University of Pennsylvania, says, ‘The public schools are not giving the bright child a square deal. He is marking time, waiting for the lame duck to catch up.’ Is the course intended to fit the dull pupil? Evidently not, in view of the tears shed by the many who, despite their efforts, fail to keep up to grade.
“It has been suggested that the course has been designed for the average pupil. The ‘average’ pupil does not exist. You cannot strike an average between a goose and an eagle, nor can you add a dull pupil and a bright pupil together and get anything. A course of study based on this idea is not fitted to any one. Instead, then, of a school to fit the pupil, the pupil is made to fit the school. The lock-step masquerades under the name of discipline. The rigid curriculum tends with each passing year to produce more and more the type of factory employés, obliterating individuality and forcing all into the same mould.”
That there is a large measure of truth in these criticisms cannot be denied, and our school authorities to-day are bestirring themselves to effect sundry greatly needed reforms. But is it wholly fair to cast on the schools the blame for human irrationalities of thought and conduct? Nay, is it not possible, in view of the fact that habits are formed so early in life, that the real trouble may be that the material with which the schools have to work—the children of the nation—is more or less unworkable by the time it gets to the schools? Is it not reasonable to assume that neglect of proper instruction in the pre-school period has permitted the formation of faulty and well-nigh unchangeable modes of thinking and feeling?
“But,” I hear a puzzled parent protest, “do you mean that the formal education of the child should be begun before he has reached school age? Would you have us lay on the tender mind the burden of actual study?”
I mean precisely that. Not only do I believe that the postponement of formal education to “school age” is a serious pedagogical error, but I also believe that “actual study,” properly directed, would by no means prove such a “burden” on the mind of the child as most people take for granted.
I am willing to go further than this, and to contend, for reasons which I shall endeavour to make clear, that if the formal education of children were begun earlier than is the rule at present, and if it were carried out with the supplementary aid of education through a really good example and a really well arranged environment, our boys and girls would develop not only into morally superior men and women, but also into men and women of mental attainments fairly comparable with those to-day displayed by the comparative few acclaimed as men and women of “genius.”