The school system is the greatest saving fund which the American people possess. The total value of school property is greater than the entire fortune of the richest American. Each year the people spend upon their schools a sum sufficient to construct a Panama Canal or a transcontinental railway system. Thus the public school is the greatest public investment in the United States.
It is one thing to invest, and quite a different matter to be assured a fair return on the investment. Nevertheless, the individual investor believes in his right to a fair return. From their public investments, the people, in fairness, can demand no more; in justice to themselves, they may accept no less. Are they receiving a fair return? The people of the United States have invested nearly a billion dollars in the public school system; each year they contribute nearly half a billion dollars more toward the same end. Are they getting what they pay for?
Turn to another section of the Report of the Commissioner of Education, and note how, in mild alarm, he protests against teachers’ salaries so low “that it is clearly impossible to hire the services of men and women of good native ability and sufficient scholarship, training and experience to enable them to do satisfactory work;” against the schoolhouses, which are “cheap, insanitary, uncomfortable and unattractive;” against “thousands of schools” in which “one teacher teaches from twenty to thirty classes a day;” against “courses of study ill-adapted to the interest of country children or the needs of country life;” against “a small enrollment of the total children of school age,” and a school attendance so low that “the average of the entire school population is only 80½ days per year.”[15]
The tone of these statements is certainly not reassuring. Perhaps it is high time that the citizens inquired into the status of their educational securities—their public school system.
V Have We Fulfilled the Object of Education?
The object of education is complete living. A perfect educational system would prepare those participating in it to live every phase of their lives, and to derive from life all possible benefit. Any educational system which enables men to live completely is therefore fulfilling its function. On the other hand, an educational system which does not prepare for life is not meeting the necessary requirements.
Charles Dickens, in his characteristic way, thus describes in “Hard Times” a public school class under the title “Murdering the Innocents:”
“‘In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts.’
“The speaker and the school master swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim. So Mr. M’Choakumchild (the school master) began in his best manner. He went to work on this preparatory lesson, not unlike Morgiana in the Forty Thieves—looking into all the vessels ranged before him, one after another, to see what they contained. Say, good Mr. M’Choakumchild: when from thy store thou shalt fill each jar brim full by and by, dost thou think thou wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within, or sometimes only maim him and distort him!”
Is the picture overdrawn? Are there grades in our large American cities where conditions similar to those just portrayed may be found? Every parent who has a child in the public schools, every taxpayer who contributes to school support, has a right to a direct, impartial and honest answer to that question.