The pioneer democracy of America itself is responsible for a method of instruction typically American. The superstitious faith in education was the basis of a system whereby many busy, middle-aged persons whose early advantages had been limited, by means of attractive summaries, outlines, and handbooks, could acquaint themselves with the names of men, books, and events which form the Binet-Simon test of culture, and enable the initiate to hold up his head in circles where the best that has been thought or said in the world is habitually referred to. This method is carried out in hundreds of cultural camp-meetings every summer, by thousands of popular lectures, in countless programmes of study for women’s clubs. Unfortunately it is coming to be not only the typical but the only method of general education in America. Chautauqua has penetrated the college and the university. Better that our fathers had died, their intellectual thirst unsatisfied, than that they had left this legacy of mental soft drinks for their children.
Thus far I have had the college chiefly in mind, but the same observations apply equally to the secondary school. The elective system has made its way thither, and indeed one of the chief difficulties of organizing a college curriculum for the general student which shall represent something in the way of finding things out, of reasoning from facts to conclusions, and of training in voluntary attention, is that of determining any common ground on the basis of previous attainment. Not only the elective system but the Chautauqua method has largely permeated our high schools. The teachers, often on annual appointment, more than the college instructors, with comparative security of tenure, are dependent on the favour of pupils, a favour to be maintained in competition with dances, movies, and The Saturday Evening Post, by interesting them. It is therefore a common thing for teachers to repeat in diluted form the courses which they took in college—and which in the original were at best no saturate solutions of the subject. The other day, on visiting a class in Shakespeare at a Y.M.C.A. school, I ventured to suggest to the teacher that the method used was rather advanced. “Ah, but my daughter at high school,” he said, “is having Professor Blank’s course in the mediæval drama.” Now such a course intended for graduate students investigating sources, influences, and variations among saints’ plays and mystery plays, could have no educational value in material or method for a high-school pupil, but it was, no doubt, as interesting as a Persian tale.
Inasmuch as the colleges and the secondary schools are both uncertain as regards the meaning and aim of general education, it is not surprising to find the grade schools also at sea, their pupils the victims both of meaningless tradition and reckless experiment. The tradition of our grade schools, educational experts tell us, was brought by Horace Mann from Prussia. There the Volkschule was designed for the children of the people, who should be trained with a view to remaining in the station in which they had been born. At least, it may be conceded, the German designers of the system had a purpose in mind, and knew the means to attain it; but both purpose and means are strangely at variance with American conditions and ideals. Other experts have pointed out the extraordinary retarding of the educational process after the first years, when the child learns by a natural objective method some of the most difficult processes of physical life, accomplishing extraordinary feats of understanding and control; and some of the most hopeful experiments in primary education look toward continuing this natural method for a longer time. At present the principle of regimentation seems to be the most important one in the grade school, and as the pace is necessarily that of the slowest, the pupils in general have a large amount of slack rope which it is the problem of principals and teachers to draw in and coil up. Altogether the grade school represents a degree of waste and misdirection which would in itself account for the tendencies toward mental caprice or stagnation which are evident in the pupils who proceed from it.
Thus the parallel which Professor Wendell established between our educational system and the mediæval church would seem to have a certain foundation. In the colleges, as in the monasteries, we have a group of ascetic specialists, sustained in their labours by an apocalyptic vision of a world which they can set on fire, and in which no flesh can live; and a mass of idle, pleasure-loving youth of both sexes, except where some Abbot Samson arises, with strong-arm methods momentarily to reduce them to order and industry. In the high schools, as in the cathedrals, we have great congregations inspired by the music, the lights, the incense, assisting at a ceremony of which the meaning is as little understood as the miracle of the mass. In the grade schools, as in the parish churches, we have the humble workers, like Chaucer’s poor parson of the town, trying with pathetic endeavour to meet the needs and satisfy the desires of their flocks, under conditions of an educational and political tyranny no less galling than was the ecclesiastical.
But, we may well enquire, whence does this system draw its power to impose itself upon the masses?—for even superstition must have a sign which the blind can read, and a source of appeal to human nature. The answer bears out still further Professor Wendell’s parallel. The mediæval church drew its authority from God, and to impose that authority upon the masses it invented the method of propaganda. It claimed to be able to release men from the burden which oppressed them most heavily, their sins, and in conjunction with the secular power it enforced its claims against all gainsayers, treating the obstinate among them with a series of penalties, penance, excommunication, the stake. Education finds its authority in the human reason, and likewise imposes that authority by propaganda. It too claims the power of salvation from the evils which oppress men most sorely to-day—the social maladjustments, “lynchings, strikes, trusts, immigration, racial controversies”—and it is in alliance with the secular power to preserve its monopoly of social remedies from the competition of anything like direct action. Now it is clear that in the religion of Christ in its pure form the church had a basis for its claims to possess a power against sin, and a means of salvation. Similarly it may be maintained that human reason, allowed to act freely and disinterestedly, would be sufficient to cope with the evils of our time and bring about a social salvation. Indeed, it is curious to remark how nearly the intellectual conclusions of reason have come to coincide with the intuitive wisdom of Jesus. The church was faithless to its mission by alliance with temporal power, by substituting its own advancement for the will of God, by becoming an end in itself. Education likewise is by way of being faithless to itself, by alliance with secular power, political and financial, by the substitution of its own institutional advancement for disinterested service of truth, by becoming likewise an end in itself.
In one of the most remarkable pronouncements of the present commencement season, President Hopkins of Dartmouth College summarized the influences which make against what he calls Verihood. They are first, Insufficiency of mentality, or over-professionalization of point of view; second, Inertia of mentality or closed mindedness; and third, False emphasis of mentality or propaganda. The late war and its evil aftermath have put in high relief the extent of this third influence. President Hopkins speaks as one of the Cardinal Archbishops of Education, and I quote his words with the authority which his personality and position give them:
“Now that the war is passed, the spirit of propaganda still remains in the reluctance with which is returned to an impatient people the ancient right of access to knowledge of the truth, the right of free assembly, and the right of freedom of speech. Meanwhile the hesitancy with which these are returned breeds in large groups vague suspicion and acrimonious distrust of that which is published as truth, and which actually is true, so that on all sides we hear the query whether we are being indulged with what is considered good for us, or with that which constitutes the facts. Thus we impair the validity of truth and open the door and give opportunity for authority which is not justly theirs to be ascribed to falsehood and deceit.”
The war was a test which showed how feeble was the hold of American education upon the principle which alone can give it validity. Nowhere was the suppression of freedom of mind, of truth, so energetic, so vindictive as in the schools. Instances crowd upon the mind. I remember attending the trial of a teacher before a committee of the New York School Board, the point being whether his reasons for not entering with his class upon a discussion of the Soviet government concealed a latent sympathy with that form of social organization. The pupils were ranged in two groups, Jews and Gentiles, and were summoned in turn to give their testimony—they had previously been educated in the important functions of modern American society, espionage, and mass action. Another occasion is commemorated by the New York Evening Post, the teacher being on trial for disloyalty and the chief count in his indictment that he desired an early peace; and his accuser, one Dr. John Tildsley, an Archdeacon or superintendent of the diocese of New York under Bishop Ettinger:
“Are you interested in having this man discharged?”
“I am,” said Dr. Tildsley.