VI
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION
VI
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION
The Spirit of America shows its ingrained individualism nowhere more clearly than in education. First, by the breadth of the provision which it makes, up to a certain point, for everybody who wishes to be educated. Second, by the entire absence of anything like a centralized control of education. Third, by the remarkable evolution of different types of educational institutions and the liberty of choice which they offer to each student.
All this is in the nature of evidence to the existence of a fifth quality in the Spirit of America, closely connected with the sense of self-reliance and a strong will-power, intimately related to the love of fair play and common order,—a keen appreciation of the value of personal development.
Here again, as in the previous lectures, what we have to observe and follow is not a logical syllogism, nor a geometrical proposition neatly and accurately worked out. It is a natural process of self-realization. It is the history of the soul of a people learning how to think for itself. As in government, in social order, in organized industry, so in education, America has followed, not the line of least resistance, nor the line of abstract doctrine, but the line of vital impulse.