From time to time the “educational” methods of our philistine teachers
are brought to light. A girl is forced by a schoolma’am of one of our
large cities to stay in a corner for hours, because she unintentionally
transgressed against the barrack-discipline of the school-regulations.
When the parents became afraid of the girl’s health and naturally took
her out of school, the little girl was dragged before the court by the
truant officer. Fortunately “the judge turned to the truant officer and
asked him how the girl could be a truant, if she had been suspended. He
didn’t believe in breaking children’s wills.”
In another city a pupil of genius was excluded from school because “he
did not fall in with the system” laid out by the “very able
business-superintendent.” A schoolmistress conceives the happy idea of
converting two of her refractory pupils into pin-cushions for the
edification of her class. An “educational” administrative superintendent
of a large, prosperous community told a lady who brought to him her son,
an extraordinarily able boy, “I shall not take your boy into my
high-school, in spite of his knowledge.” When the mother asked him to
listen to her, he lost patience and told her with all the force of his
school-authority, “Madam, put a rope around his neck, weigh him well
down with bricks!”
A principal of a high school in one of the prominent New England towns
dismisses a highly talented pupil because, to quote verbatim from the
original school document, “He is not amenable to the discipline of the
school, as his school life has been too short to establish him in the
habit of obedience.” “His intellect,” the principal’s official letter
goes on to say, “remains a marvel to us, but we do not feel, and in this
I think I speak for all, that he is in the right place.” In other words,
in the opinion of those remarkable pedagogues, educators and teachers,
the school is not the right place for talent and genius!
A superintendent of schools in lecturing before an audience of
“subordinate teachers” told them emphatically that _there was no place
for genius in our schools_. Dear old fogies, one can well understand
your indignation! Here we have worked out some fine methods, clever
rules, beautiful systems and then comes genius and upsets the whole
structure! It is a shame! Genius cannot fit into the pigeon-holes of the
office desk. Choke genius, and things will move smoothly in the school
and the office.
Not long ago we were informed by one of those successful
college-mandarins, lionized by office-clerks, superintendents and
tradesmen, that he could measure education by the foot-rule! Our Regents
are supposed to raise the level of education by a vicious system of
examination and coaching, a system which Professor James, in a private
conversation with me, has aptly characterized as “idiotic.”
Our schools brand their pupils by a system of marks, while our foremost
colleges measure the knowledge and education of their students by the
number of “points” passed. The student may pass either in Logic or
Blacksmithing. It does not matter which, provided he makes up a certain
number of “points”!
College-committees refuse admission to young students of genius, because
“it is against the policy and the principles of the university.”
College-professors expel promising students from the lecture-room for
“the good of the class as a whole,” because the students “happen to
handle their hats in the middle of a lecture.” This, you see, interferes
with class discipline. _Fiat justitia, pereat mundus._ Let genius
perish, provided the system lives. Why not suppress all genius, as a
disturbing element, for “the good of the classes,” for the weal of the
commonwealth? Education of man and cultivation of genius, indeed! This
is not school policy.
We school and drill our children and youth in schoolma’am mannerism,
school master mind-ankylosis, school-superintendent stiff-joint
ceremonialism, factory regulations and office-discipline. We give our
pupils and students artisan-inspiration and business-spirituality.
Originality is suppressed. Individuality is crushed. Mediocrity is at a
premium. That is why our country has such clever business men, such
cunning artisans, such resourceful politicians, such adroit leaders of
new cults, but no scientists, no artists, no philosophers, no statesmen,
no genuine talent and no true genius.
School-teachers have in all ages been mediocre in intellect and
incompetent. Leibnitz is regarded as a dullard and Newton is considered
as a blockhead. Never, however, in the history of mankind have school
teachers fallen to such a low level of mediocrity as in our times and in
our country. For it is not the amount of knowledge that counts in true
education, but originality and independence of thought that are of
importance in education. But independence and originality of thought are
just the very elements that are suppressed by our modern barrack-system
of education. No wonder that military men claim that the best
“education” is given in military schools.
We are not aware that the incubus of officialdom, and the succubus of
bureaucracy have taken possession of our schools. The red tape of
officialdom, like a poisonous weed, grows luxuriantly in our schools and
chokes the life of our young generation. Instead of growing into a
people of great independent thinkers, the nation is in danger of fast
becoming a crowd of well-drilled, well-disciplined, commonplace
individuals, with strong philistine habits and notions of hopeless
mediocrity.
In levelling education to mediocrity we imagine that we uphold the
democratic spirit of our institutions. Our American sensibilities are
shocked when the president of one of our leading colleges dares to
recommend to his college that it should cease catering to the average
student. We think it un-American, rank treason to our democratic spirit
when a college president has the courage to proclaim the principle that
“To form the mind and character of one man of marked talent, not to say
genius, would be worth more to the community which he would serve than
the routine training of hundreds of undergraduates.”
We are optimistic, we believe in the pernicious superstition that genius
needs no help, that talent will take care of itself. Our kitchen clocks
and dollar timepieces need careful handling, but our chronometers and
astronomical clocks can run by themselves.
The truth is, however, that the purpose of the school and the college is
not to create an intellectual aristocracy, but to educate, to bring out
the individuality, the originality, the latent powers of talent and
genius present in what we unfortunately regard as “the average student.”
Follow Mill’s advice. Instead of aiming at athletics, social
connections, vocations and generally at the professional art of
money-making, “Aim at something noble. Make your system such that a
great man may be formed by it, and there will be a manhood in your
little men, of which you do not dream.”
Awaken in early childhood the critical spirit of man; awaken, early in
the child’s life, love of knowledge, love of truth, of art and
literature for their own sake, and you arouse man’s genius. We have
average mediocre students, because we have mediocre teachers,
department-store superintendents, clerkly principals and deans with
bookkeepers’ souls, because our schools and colleges deliberately aim at
mediocrity.
Ribot in describing the degenerated Byzantine Greeks tells us that their
leaders were mediocrities and their great men commonplace personalities.
Is the American nation drifting in the same direction? It was the system
of cultivation of independent thought that awakened the Greek mind to
its highest achievements in arts, science and philosophy; it was the
deadly Byzantine bureaucratic red tape with its cut-and-dried
theological discipline that dried up the sources of Greek genius. We are
in danger of building up a Byzantine empire with large institutions and
big corporations, but with small minds and dwarfed individualities. Like
the Byzantines we begin to value administration above individuality and
official, red-tape ceremonialism above originality.
We wish even to turn our schools into practical school-shops. We shall
in time become a nation of well-trained clerks and clever artisans. The
time is at hand when we shall be justified in writing over the gates of
our school-shops “mediocrity made here!”