OUR SUBLIME FAITH IN SCHOOLING
I
Is it not sublime? Really there appears to be no limit to the demands that are made on our schools and colleges. They are supposed to ground the rising generation in the principles and practise of good citizenship, in morality, and to some extent in religion; to develop the power to think (an endlessly difficult matter), the ability to enjoy nature and art, the desire to be useful; to instil habits of industry, self-control and wholesome living; and withal to impart memoriter a mass of miscellaneous book-knowledge such as can be tested by examination. Of late, too, we hear more and more that the schools should fit the young for some specific business in life—for a job, that is. In short we look to the schools to inculcate all the possible virtues of mind and character, and at the same time to turn out what the newest jargon calls efficient social units. And then there are special problems, more acute in some places than in others, such as the induction of alien children into the mysteries of the English language and American ways.
Now all that makes a pretty big task. It is safe to say that an army of Pestalozzis, Arnolds and Horace Manns, if we could command their services and give them all the money they might ask for, would never perform it to our entire satisfaction. Here and there we should find loose ends of failure. What wonder, then, if the schoolma'am, mostly an ordinary sort of well-meaning mortal, who is the victim of routine and must do her appointed work under hopeless conditions of "mass-treatment"—what wonder if many people are saying that the schoolma'am does not seem to measure up to her mission? It is not altogether strange that she is being overtaken by the fate of Hamlet, whose tragic calamity it was, according to Goethe, to be obliged to shoulder a burden that was too heavy for him. In reading educational literature, one is sometimes reminded of those tribal gods from whom all things are demanded, and whom it is therefore proper to scold or to flog if anything goes wrong. For illustration let me quote a recent deliverance culled from a newspaper. It is by a man of some distinction, whose name I do not give because the language is probably nothing but a reporter's paraphrase. In speaking to an audience on "the fundamental trouble with conditions and the cause of the unrest today," the gentleman is said to have laid it all to "our national educational system, which is teaching the youth of our land to be consumers instead of producers, and only to acquire instead of to serve."
There we have it in a nutshell. It is the schools which are really to blame for the manifold ills that so many people are talking about. If we only had the right kind of schools—teaching the right things in the right way—our whole sea of troubles would quickly turn into pleasant arable land. Historical pundits are just now much interested in what is called the economic interpretation of history; that is, the theory that the whole history of man, including his religions and philosophies and ethnic movements, his flowerings of art, his Periclean and Augustan Ages, his Protestant Reformations and French Revolutions—has been determined primarily by economic conditions. And now, behold, the economic conditions themselves are the work of the schoolma'am. Verily, das Ewigweibliche zieht uns hinan with a vengeance!
The newest thing is to have the schools cure the ancient ills that grow out of the pressure of sex—a subject that of late seems to claim more than its fair share of the limelight. The Paris dressmakers, accustomed for ages to attire women very seductively for evening exhibition, suddenly take to attiring them rather less seductively for the street. And lo, the Puritan eye is shocked. There are visions of social ruin à la Sodom and Gomorrah. Coincidently the theaters, newspapers and wofsmiths (Mr. Howells' word, wof meaning work-of-fiction), go in for the public washing of dirty linen, the existence and dirtiness of which have been known for some thousands of years. At the same time a new race of "sociologists" seek to alarm us by stirring up the foul pool of social vice and talking about it as if the filth were a thing of the day before yesterday. Result: a pretty general demand that the schools teach sex hygiene and physiology, in order that the boys and girls may be warned betimes of the dangers that lie in wait for them. I am not arguing that children should not be told the truth about these things. I am merely animadverting on the growing tendency to put everything on the schools.
II
The natural and intended inference from what precedes is that we demand too much of the schools—more than any schools could possibly do and do well. The result is that they are often blamed unreasonably, and that reasonable criticism is apt to be resented as unjust. There is wide-spread complaint of shortcomings—some even speak of the "failure" of popular education,—but the teachers reply with perfect truth that they are doing the best they can. The truth is, however, that there is more or less floundering due to multiplicity of aims, dispersion of effort, and the lack of a simple dominating principle by which to gage the relative importance of things. It is time for educationists to take sober thought and decide, if they can, what is on the whole the most valuable among the possible results of good schooling. If we could somehow reach a working agreement on that point, the path of wisdom would be tolerably clear: we should require our schools to drive hard at the particular thing deemed most essential, no matter how many smatterings might have to be thrown overboard. It were better for the nation to lose somewhat of its sublime faith in schooling, if by expecting less it might get a surer and more valuable return on its enormous investment. The best of teachers, in kindergarten, high school or university, can never give the best that is in him unless he has a fairly definite idea of what it is all for. Only then can he see the main issue in its proper relation to the side-issues of his routine. Let us then attack this question with holy boldness—somewhat in the spirit of a prudent householder considering what one thing would be best worth saving if his house should take fire.