The Inventions of the Idiot

by John Kendrick Bangs

"We are," returned the Idiot. "That's one thing about University Extension. It makes us philosophic. It has made a stoic of my dear old daddy."

"Oh yes!" cried Mr. Pedagog. "You have a father, haven't you? I had forgotten that."

"Wherein," said the Idiot, "we differ. I haven't forgotten that I have one, and, by-the-way, it is from him that I first heard of University Extension. He lives in a small manufacturing town not many miles from here, and is distinguished in the town because, without being stingy, he lives within his means. He has a way of paying his grocer's bills which makes of him a marked man. He hasn't much more money than he needs, but when the University Extension movement reached the town he was interested. The prime movers in the enterprise went to him and asked him if he wouldn't help it along, dilating upon the benefits which would accrue to those whose education stopped short with graduation from the high-schools. It was most plausible. The notion that for ten cents a lecture the working masses could learn something about art, history, and letters, could gather in something about the sciences, and all that, appealed to him, and while he could afford it much more ill than the smart people, the four hundred of the town, he chipped in. He paid fifty dollars and was made an honorary manager. He was proud enough of it, too, and he wrote a long, enthusiastic letter to me about it. It was a great thing, and he hoped the State, which had been appealed to to help the movement along, would take a hand in it. 'If we educate the masses to understand and to appreciate the artistic, the beautiful,' he wrote, 'we need have little fear for the future. Ignorance is the greatest foe we have to contend against in our national development, and it is the only thing that can overthrow a nation such as ours is.' And then what happened? Professor Peterkin came along and delivered ten or a dozen lectures. The masses went once or twice and found the platform occupied by a man who talked to them about Romanticism and Realism; who told them that Dickens was trash; who exalted Tolstoi and Ibsen; but who never let them into the secret of what Romanticism was, and who kept them equally in the dark as to the significance of Realism. They also found the best seats in the lecture-hall occupied by the smart set in full evening-dress, who talked almost as much and as loudly as did Professor Peterkin. The masses did not even learn manners at Professor Peterkin's first and second lectures, and the third and fourth found them conspicuous by their absence. All they learned was that they were ignorant, and that other people were better than they, and what my father learned was that he had subscribed fifty dollars to promote a series of social functions for the diversion of the four hundred and the aggrandizement of Professor Peterkin. He started in for what might be called Romanticism, and he got a Realism that he did not like in less time than it takes to tell of it, and to-day in that town University Extension is such a fad that when, some weeks ago, the swell club of that place talked of appointing Thursday evening as its club night, it was found to be impossible, for the reason that it might interfere with the attendance upon the University Extension lectures. That, Mr. Pedagog, is a matter of history and can be proven, and last night's audience confirmed the impression which I had formed from what my father had told me. Professor Peterkin's lectures are interesting to you, a school-master, but they are pure Greek to me, who would like to know more about letters. I would gather more instruction from your table-talk in an hour than I could from Professor Peterkin's whole course."

"You flatter me," said Mr. Pedagog.

"No," returned the Idiot. "If you knew how little the ignorant gain from Peterkin you would not necessarily call it flattery if one should say he learned more from your conversation over a griddle-cake."

"You misconceive the whole situation, I think, nevertheless," said Mr. Whitechoker. "As I understand it, supplementary lectures, and examinations based on them, are held after the lectures, when the practical instruction is given with great thoroughness."

"I'm glad you spoke of that," said the Idiot. "I had forgotten that part of it. Professor Peterkin received pay for his lectures, which dealt in theories only; plain Mr. Barton, who delivered the supplementary lectures, got nothing. Professor Peterkin taught nothing, but he represented University Extension. Plain Mr. Barton did the work and represented nothing. Both reached society. Neither reached the masses. In my native town plain Mr. Barton's supplementary lectures, which were simply an effort to unravel the Peterkin complications, were attended by the same people in smaller crowds—people of social standing who were curious enough to devote an hour a week to an endeavor to find out the meaning of what Professor Peterkin had told them at the function the week before. The students examined were mostly ladies, and I happen to know that in a large proportion they were ladies whose husbands could have afforded to pay Professor Peterkin his salary ten times over as a private tutor."

"As I look at it," said Mr. Pedagog, gravely, "it does not make much difference to whom your instruction is given, so long as it instructs. What if these lectures do interest those who are comparatively well off? Your society woman may be as much in need of an extended education as your factory girl. The University Extension idea is to convey knowledge to people who would not otherwise get it. It simply sets out to improve minds. If the social mind needs improvement, why not improve it? Why condemn a system because it does not discriminate in the minds selected for improvement?"

"I don't condemn a system which sets out to improve minds irrespective of conditions," replied the Idiot. "But I should most assuredly condemn a man, or a set of men, who induced me to subscribe to a bread fund for the poor and who afterwards expended that money on cream-cakes for the Czar of Russia. The fact that the Czar of Russia wanted the cream-cakes and was willing to accept them would not affect my feelings in the matter, though I have no doubt the people in charge of the fund would find themselves far more conspicuous for having departed from the original idea. Some of them might be knighted for it if the Czar happened to be passionately fond of cream-cakes."

"Then, having attacked this system, what would you have? Would you have University Extension stop?" asked the Bibliomaniac.