Civilization in the United States: An inquiry by thirty Americans

by Unknown

“You want a prolongation of all this world misery?”

“To a certain extent, yes,” said Dr. Tildsley.

Nor did the sabotage of truth stop with school boards and superintendents. A colleague of mine writing a chapter of a text-book in modern history made the statement that the British government entered the war because of an understanding with France, the invasion of Belgium being the pretext which appealed to popular enthusiasm—to which a great publishing house responded that this statement would arouse much indignation among the American people, and must therefore be suppressed.

We need not be surprised that since the war education has not shown a disinterested and impartial attitude toward the phenomena of human affairs, a reliance on the method of trial and error, of experiment and testimony, which it has evolved. Teachers who are openly, or even latently, in sympathy with a form of social organization other than the régime of private control of capital are banned from schools and colleges with candle, with book, and with bell. Text-books which do not agree with the convenient view of international relations are barred. Superintendents like Ettinger and Tildsley in New York are the devoted apologists for the system to which they owe their greatness. To its position among the vested interests of the world, to the prosperity of its higher clergy, education has sacrificed its loyalty to that which alone can give it authority.

The prevention of freedom of thought and enquiry is of course necessary so long as the purpose of education is to produce belief rather than to stimulate thought. The belief which it is the function of education to propagate is that in the existing order. Hence we find the vast effort known as “Americanization,” which is for the most part a perfect example of American education at the present day. The spirit of “Americanization” is to consider the individual not with reference to his inward growth of mind and spirit, but solely with a view to his worldly success, and his relation to the existing order of society, to which it is considered that the individual will find his highest happiness and usefulness in contributing. This programme naturally enough finds a sponsor in the American Legion, but it is truly disconcerting to find the National Education Association entering into alliance with this super-legal body, appointing a standing committee to act in co-operation with the Legion throughout the year, accepting the offer of the Legion to give lectures in the schools, and endorsing the principle of the Lusk Law in New York, which imposes the test of an oath of allegiance to the Government as a requirement for a teacher’s certificate.

We have now the chief reason why education remains the dominant superstition of our time; but one may still wonder how an institution which is apparently so uncertain of its purpose and methods can continue to exercise such influence on the minds and hearts of men. The answer is, of course, that education is not in the least doubtful of its purpose and methods. Though the humble and obscure teacher, like the Lollard parson, may puzzle his brains about the why and how and purpose of his being here, his superiors, the bishops, the papal curia, know the reason. Education is the propaganda department of the State, and the existing social system. Its resolute insistence upon the essential rightness of things as they are, coupled with its modest promise to reform them if necessary, is the basis of the touching confidence with which it is received. It further imposes itself upon the credulity of the people by the magnificence of its establishment. The academic splendour of the commencement season when the hierarchs bestow their favours, and honour each other and their patrons by higher degrees, is of enormous value in impressing the public. Especially to the uneducated does this majesty appeal. That an institution which holds so fair an outlook on society, which is on such easy and sympathetic terms with all that is important in the nation, which commands the avenues by which men go forward in the world, should be able to guarantee success in life to its worshippers is nothing at which to be surprised. Hence we find the poor of different grades making every sacrifice to send sons and daughters through high school, through college, in the same pathetic faith with which they once burned candles to win respite for the souls of their dead.

There are reasons, however, for thinking that the superstition is passing. In the first place, nowhere do we find more scepticism in regard to the pretensions of education than among those who have been educated, and this number is rapidly increasing. In the second place, the alliance between education and a social system depending on private capital is too obvious, and the abrogation of the true functions of the former is too complete. The so-called Americanization campaign is so crude an attempt to put something over that even the unsophisticated foreigner whom it is intended to impress watches the pictures or reads the pamphlets which set forth the happy estate of the American workman, with his tongue in his cheek. The social groups which feel aggrieved under the present order are marking their defection by seceding from the educational system and setting up labour universities of their own. So serious is this secession that New York has passed the Lusk Law, designed to bring the independent movement under State control. In the third place, the claim of education to be an open sesame to success in life is contradicted by the position of its most constant votaries, the teachers. The prestige which used to attach to the priests of learning and which placed them above the lure of riches has vanished; their economic station has declined until even college professors have fallen into the servantless class, which means the proletariat. Truly for such as they to declare that education means success in life is a dismal paradox.

Another sign of approaching reformation in the educational system is to be found in the frankly corrupt practices which infest it. Here the parallel to the mediæval church is not exact, for in the latter it was the monasteries and religious houses that were the chief sources of offence, while the colleges and private institutions of higher learning which correspond to them are singularly free from anything worse than wasteful internal politics. It is the public educational system which by reason of its contact with political government partakes most palpably of the corruption that attends the democratic State. It is unnecessary to mention the forms which this corruption takes where a school board of trustees by political appointment is given the exploitation of the schools—the favouritism in appointments and promotions, the graft in text-books and equipment, the speculation in real estate and building contracts, the alienation of school property. There is scarcely a large city in the country in which pupils and teachers alike are not shamefully and scandalously defrauded by action of school trustees which can be characterized in the mildest terms as wilful mismanagement conducing to private profit.

There are two things necessary to the reform of education. One is democratic control, that is, management of institutions of teaching by the teachers. It is to be noted that this is the demand everywhere of labour which respects itself—control of the means of production and responsibility for the result. Surely the teachers should be one of the first groups of toilers to be so trusted. Under democratic control the spoliation of the schools by politicians, the sacrifice of education to propaganda, the tyranny of the hierarchy can be successfully resisted. Once the teachers are released from servile bondage to the public through the political masters who control appointments and promotions, they will deal with their problems with more authority, and be independent of the suffrage of the pupils. Through joint responsibility of the workers for the product they will arrive at that esprit de corps which consists in thinking in terms of the enterprise rather than of the job, and from which we may expect a true method of education. Already the movement toward democratic control of teaching is taking form in school systems and colleges. There are a hundred and fifty unions of teachers affiliated with the American Federation of Labour. But the true analogy is not between teachers and labour, but between education and other professions. To quote Dr. H. M. Kallen:

“To the discoverers and creators of Knowledge, and to its transmitters and distributors, to these and to no one else beside belongs the control of education. It is as absurd that any but teachers and investigators should govern the art of education as that any but medical practitioners and investigators should govern the art of medicine.”