In the education of the young generation the purpose of the nation is to
bring up the child as a good man, as a liberal-minded citizen, devoted
soul and body to the interests of social welfare. This purpose in the
education of the young citizen is of the utmost importance in every
society, but it is a vital need in a democratic society. We do not want
narrow-minded patriots devoted to party-factions, nor bigoted
sectarians, nor greedy _entrepreneurs_ fastening in trusts, like so many
barnacles, on the body-politic. We do not want ringleaders and mobs,
unscrupulous bosses and easily led voters. What we need is men having at
heart the welfare of their fellow-men.
The purpose of the education provided by the nation for its young
generation is the rearing of healthy, talented, broad-minded citizens.
We need, above all, good citizens, active and intelligent, with a
knowledge of life and with a delicate sense of discrimination and
detection of evil in all its protean forms; we need strong-minded
citizens with grit and courage to resist oppression and root out evil
wherever it is found. A strong sense of recognition of evil should be
the social sense of every well-educated citizen as a safeguard of social
and national life. _The principle of recognition of evil under all its
guises is at the basis of the true education of man._
Is it not strange that this vital principle of education, the
recognition of evil,—a fundamental principle with the great thinkers of
humanity,—should remain so sadly neglected by our educators and public
instructors? Our educators are owl-wise, our teachers are pedants and
all their ambition is the turning out of smooth, well-polished
philistines. It is a sad case of the blind leading the blind.
It is certainly unfortunate that the favored type of superintendent of
our public education should be such a hopeless philistine, possessed of
all the conceit of the mediocre business man. Routine is his ideal.
Originality and genius are spurned and suppressed. Our
school-superintendent with his well-organized training-shop is proud of
the fact that there is no place for genius in our schools.
Unfortunate and degraded is the nation that has handed over its
childhood and youth to guidance and control by hide-bound mediocrity.
Our school-managers are respected by the laity as great educators and
are looked up to by the teachers as able business men. Their merit is
routine, discipline and the hiring of cheap teaching-employees.
It is certainly a great misfortune to the nation that a good number of
our would-be scientific pedagogues are such mediocrities, with so absurd
an exaggeration of their importance that they are well satisfied if the
mass of their pupils turn out exact reproductions of the silly
pedagogue. What can be expected of a nation that entrusts the fate of
its young generation to the care or carelessness of young girls, to the
ire of old maids, and to pettifogging officials with their educational
red tape, discipline and routine,—petty bureaucrats animated with a
hatred towards talent and genius?
The goody-goody schoolma’am, the mandarin-schoolmaster, the
philistine-pedagogue, the pedant-administrator with his business
capacities, have proved themselves incompetent to deal with the
education of the young. They stifle talent, they stupefy the intellect,
they paralyze the will, they suppress genius, they benumb the faculties
of our children. The educator, with his pseudo-scientific,
pseudo-psychological pseudogogics, can only bring up a set of
philistines with firm, set habits,—marionettes,—dolls.
Business is put above learning, administration above education,
discipline and order above cultivation of genius and talent. Our schools
and colleges are controlled by business men. The school-boards, the
boards of trustees of almost every school and college in the country
consist mainly of manufacturers, storekeepers, tradesmen, bulls and
bears of Wall street and the market-place. What wonder that they bring
with them the ideals and methods of the factory, the store, the bank and
the saloon. If the saloon controls politics, the shop controls
education.
Business men are no more competent to run schools and colleges than
astronomers are fit to run hotels and theaters. Our whole educational
system is vicious. A popular scientific journal entered a protest
against the vulgarization of our colleges, the department-store trade
methods of our universities, but to no avail. The popular hero, the
administrative business superintendent still holds sway, and poisons the
sources of our social life by debasing the very foundation of our
national education.