[2209] Burckhardt, Renaissance in Italien, 465.
CHAPTER XIX
EDUCATION, HISTORY
The superstition of education.—The loss from education; "missionary-made men."—Schools make persons all on one pattern; orthodoxy.—Criticism.—Reactions of the mores and education on each other.—The limitations of the historian.—Overvaluation of history.—Success and the favor of God.—Philosophic faiths and the study of history.—Democracy and history.—The study of history and the study of the mores.—The most essential element of education.—The history of the mores is needed.
Introduction. The one thing which justifies popular education for all children is the immense value of men of genius to the society. We have no means of discerning and recognizing, in their early childhood, the ones who have genius. If we could do so it would be a good bargain to pay great sums for them, and to educate them at public expense. Our popular education may be justly regarded as a system of selecting them. The pupils retire from the schools when they think that "they do not want any more schooling." Of course thousands withdraw for one who keeps on. It is a very expensive system, and the expense all falls on the taxpayers. The beneficiaries are left entirely free to spend their lives wherever they please. If the system is sound and just it must be so by virtue of some common interest of all the people of the United States in the social services of men of talent and genius in any part of the United States.
699. The superstition of education. Popular education and certain faiths about popular education are in the mores of our time. We regard illiteracy as an abomination. We ascribe to elementary book learning power to form character, make good citizens, keep family mores pure, elevate morals, establish individual character, civilize barbarians, and cure social vice and disease. We apply schooling as a remedy for every social phenomenon which we do not like. The information given by schools and colleges, the attendant drill in manners, the ritual of the mores practiced in schools, and the mental dexterity produced by school exercises fit individuals to carry on the struggle for existence better. A literate man can produce wealth better than an illiterate man. Avenues are also opened by school work through which influences may be brought to bear on the reason and conscience which will mold character. Not even the increased production of wealth, much less the improvement of character, are assured results. Our faith in the power of book learning is excessive and unfounded. It is a superstition of the age. The education which forms character and produces faith in sound principles of life comes through personal influence and example. It is borne on the mores. It is taken in from the habits and atmosphere of a school, not from the school text-books. School work opens an opportunity that a thing may be, but the probability that it will be depends on the persons, and it may be nil or contrary to what is desired. High attainments in school enhance the power obtained, but the ethical value of it all depends on how it is used. These facts are often misused or exaggerated in modern educational controversies, but their reality cannot be denied. Book learning is addressed to the intellect, not to the feelings, but the feelings are the spring of action.
700. The loss from education. Missionary-made men. Education has always been recognized as a means of individual success and group strength. In barbarism the children are educated by their elders, especially the little boys by the big ones, but the whole mental outfit possessed by the group is transmitted to the children, and all the mores pass by this tradition. It is to be noticed, therefore, that in our modern education the sense of the term has been much narrowed, since we mean by it book learning or schooling. Teachers are not wanting who teach manners and mores out of zeal and ambition, and families and churches can be found which duly supplement the work of schools, but the institutions follow no set plan of coöperation, and one or another of them fails in its part. The modern superstition of education contains a great error. It is forgotten that there is always a loss and offset from education in its narrow sense. Petrie, speaking from observation and experience of Egyptian peasants, says: "The harm is that you manufacture idiots. Some of the peasantry are taught to read and write, and the result of this burden, which their fathers bore not, is that they become fools. I cannot say this too plainly: An Egyptian who has had reading and writing thrust on him is, in every case that I have met with, half-witted, silly, or incapable of taking care of himself. His intellect and his health have been undermined by the forcing of education."[2210] Petrie's doctrine is that each generation of men of low civilization can be advanced beyond the preceding one only by a very small percentage. He does not lay stress on the stimulation of vanity and false pride. If he is right, his doctrine explains the complaints of "missionary-made men" which we hear from Miss Kingsley and others, and such social results as are described by Becke.[2211] Amongst ourselves also the increase of insanity, nervous diseases, crime, and suicide must be ascribed in part to the constant and more intense brain strain, especially in youth. Women also, as they participate more in the competition of life, have to get more education, and they fall under the diseases also. The cases of child suicide are the most startling product of our ways of education. These personal and social diseases are a part of the price we pay for "higher civilization." They are an offset to education and they go with it. It would be great ignorance of the course of effort in societal matters not to know that such diseased reactions must always be expected.
701. Schools make persons all on one pattern. Orthodoxy. School education, unless it is regulated by the best knowledge and good sense, will produce men and women who are all of one pattern, as if turned in a lathe. When priests managed schools it was their intention to reach just this result. They carried in their heads ideals of the Christian man and woman, and they wanted to educate all to this model. Public schools in a democracy may work in the same way. Any institution which runs for years in the same hands will produce a type. The examination papers show the pet ideas of the examiners. It must not be forgotten that the scholars set about the making of folkways for themselves, just as members of a grown society do. In time they adopt codes, standards, preferred types, and fashions. They select their own leaders, whom they follow with enthusiasm. They have their pet heroes and fashion themselves upon the same. Their traditions become stereotyped and authoritative. The type of product becomes fixed. It makes some kind of compromise with the set purposes of the teachers and administrators, and the persons who issue from the schools become recognizable by the characteristics of the type. It is said that the graduates of Jesuit colleges on the continent of Europe are thus recognizable. In England the graduates of Oxford and Cambridge are easily to be distinguished from other Englishmen. In the continental schools and barracks, in newspapers, books, etc., what is developed by education is dynastic sentiment, national sentiment, soldierly sentiment; still again, under the same and other opportunities, religious and ecclesiastical sentiments, and by other influences, also class and rank sentiments.[2212] In a democracy there is always a tendency towards big results on a pattern. An orthodoxy is produced in regard to all the great doctrines of life. It consists of the most worn and commonplace opinions which are current in the masses. It may be found in newspapers and popular literature. It is intensely provincial and philistine. It does not extend to those things on which the masses have not pronounced, and by its freedom and elasticity in regard to these it often produces erroneous judgments as to its general character. The popular opinions always contain broad fallacies, half-truths, and glib generalizations of fifty years before. If a teacher is to be displaced by a board of trustees because he is a free-trader, or a gold man, or a silver man, or disapproves of a war in which the ruling clique has involved the country, or because he thinks that Hamilton was a great statesman and Jefferson an insignificant one, or because he says that he has found some proof that alcohol is not always bad for the system, we might as well go back to the dominion in education of the theologians. They were strenuous about theology, but they let other things alone. The boards of trustees are almost always made up of "practical men," and if their faiths, ideas, and prejudices are to make the norm of education, the schools will turn out boys and girls compressed to that pattern. There is no wickedness in any disinterested and sincere opinion. That is what we all pretend to admit, but there are very few of us who really act by it. We seem likely to have orthodox history (especially of our own country), political science, political economy, and sociology before long.[2213] It will be defined by school boards who are party politicians. As fast as physics, chemistry, geology, biology, bookkeeping, and the rest come into conflict with interests, and put forth results which have a pecuniary effect (which is sure to happen in the not remote future), then the popular orthodoxy will be extended to them, and it will be enforced as "democratic." The reason is because there will be a desire that children shall be taught just that one thing which is "right" in the view and interest of those in control, and nothing else. That is exactly the view which the ecclesiastics formerly took when they had control. Mathematics is the only discipline which could be taught under that rule. As to other subjects we do not know the "right answers," speaking universally and for all time. We only know how things look now on our best study, and that is all we can teach. In fact, this is the reason why the orthodox answers of the school boards and trustees are mischievous. They teach that there are absolute and universal facts of knowledge, whereas we ought to teach that all our knowledge is subject to unlimited verification and revision. The men turned out under the former system, and the latter, will be very different agents in the face of all questions of philosophy, citizenship, finance, and industry.