One of our modern fallacies is that education is a cure for all the ails and weaknesses of life. There never was a greater mistake. When we think of humanity in its deranged and weakened condition and the constant liability to err—a liability that is inherent in all men—learned and unlearned—making them subject to temptations and crime which at any moment may blast their lives, we must be cautious about believing that education alone can make men and women honest and virtuous. Education is only a means to an end, and serves its purpose best when joined to moral training and industrious habits as taught in a well regulated life. Without moral training, education alone will only generate a type of cunning crookedness, that will be dangerous alike to the home and the republic at large.
I believe that education in its best and broadest sense, means not only mental culture, but carefully trained habits of industry, together with morality and religion as founded on the basic principles of the Decalogue and the Sermon on the Mount—all of which tend to promote the happiness of the human family.
John Howard, the Morning Star of Prison Reform, who in his day encouraged popular education, was careful to say, “Make men diligent and you will tend to make them honest,” and he added that he did not believe education of the head would amount to much unless it was followed by “education of heart and hands.”
Within recent years Christian penologists are almost unanimous in the opinion that mental training alone has little influence in decreasing crime. Nor does it follow that in countries where illiteracy stands high that crime is greater than in countries where the opposite is true. In Spain, where two-thirds of the people are illiterate there is less crime, according to the population, than in Massachusetts where nine-tenths of the people can read and write.
So also in rural settlements where there is always less educational privileges than in large cities, crime is vastly less in the former than in the latter.
In the early history of this country petty crimes were usually committed against domestic products, but with the advance of our present civilization such crimes are nothing compared to stealing railroads, coal mines, gold mines, safe cracking, colossal swindling and bank wrecking in which millions are stolen yearly. And all of these crimes are the work of well educated men.
Victor Hugo says, “He who opens a school closes a prison,” which is true if that school teaches the morality of the ten commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, but not otherwise.
In Great Britain in 1880 the number of pupils in the schools increased to 3,895,324, while the prisoners numbered only 30,719; but the greatest decrease in the prison population is seen in 1899, when the school pupils numbered 5,601,249, while the prison population fell to 17,687. That is to say, the prison population decreased 38 per cent. while the population of the country increased 11 per cent.
Notwithstanding all that may be said, it is our humble opinion after years of observation that criminality is largely the result of ignorance, idleness and indolent habits. Since I have been in the habit of visiting reformatories I have often thought of Isaac Watts’ philosophy, “Satan finds mischief for idle hands to do.” It is the young loafer and idler who is around the streets night and day “killing time” that gets into trouble. Whenever parents rear their children in idleness they simply sap the foundations of personal character and fit them for criminality. A report of the Elmira Reformatory shows that of thousands of persons who were received into that institution since it was first opened over 83 per cent. are classed as laborers and idlers.
For more than fifty years it has been said that a greater advance in education would reduce crime to a large extent. But this is only true in part. Secular education does not reduce murder, forgery, grand larceny, embezzlements and other heinous crimes. There must be moral education. Indeed, such offences are usually the work of well educated men.