people for self-government, the United States owe it primarily to the
happy blending of the principles of National Union and State Independence
that, taking all in all, hitherto their history has been the most
striking and convincing vindication of republican institutions; and
it is hardly questioned that, but for the happy blending of these two
principles, a republic comprising half the North American continent and
possessed of all the requisites of vitality never would nor could have
existed. Upon their being “an indestructible Union of indestructible
States,” the vitality of the United States absolutely depends. That,
with this principle as the foundation, the domain of a republic _can_
be almost indefinitely extended, without thereby destroying its vital
energies, has been irrefutably demonstrated. But does that mean, that
the United States have definitively solved the problem of keeping the
vital forces of a republic covering a vast area unimpaired? By no means.
Only the preliminary question has been settled by them for all time to
come, what the indispensable prerequisite of its solution is, and they
have thus far succeeded in preserving their vitality. But even as to
themselves, the solution of the problem itself has to be repeated over
and over again, not only by generation after generation, but every year
and every day. The hour never will, never can come, when the American
people can, with impunity, say: the task is accomplished; let us rest
and enjoy the fruits. It never can come, because the problem itself is
in a continuous state of transformation. Though the changes be so slow,
that they are imperceptible to the keenest eye trying to follow them up
from year to year, they are none the less real, and if they are not duly
heeded, the penalty will have to be paid some time in one way or another.
While the fundamental principle, the blending of National Union and
State Independence, is irreversible, the attempt to make its application
immutable, would be fatal. I say the attempt, for actually to do it, is,
in the nature of things, impossible. The American people are not only
constitutionally a nation. The civil war did not result in the permanent
disruption of the Union, but in welding it more indissolubly together,
because, with the single exception of slavery, the facts coincided with
the law. In spite of the tremendous sectionalising influence exercised
by slavery, the nationalisation in feeling, thinking, and interests had
made such progress under the operation and protection of the law of the
land, that it could stand as severe a test, as any consolidated State can
boast of having stood. The causes, to which it was due, that the facts
were in conformity with the law, have been ever since unremittingly at
work,—the counter-tendencies have disappeared with the abolishment of
slavery,—and, independent of that, those causes are every year acquiring
a greater force. The actual nationalisation, therefore, goes steadily on,
whether we like it or not, and though the constitutional nationalisation
be allowed to remain unchanged. While the legal status under the
Constitution may not be altered for ever so long, we are confronted by
constantly changing conditions. If we do not conform in what we do and
leave undone to the irrepressible changes of this evolutionary process,
the maintenance of the principle of blending National Union and State
Independence will avail us but little. The vital energies will dry up
and ebb away, for while we have kept the form, we have become strangers
to the spirit which renders it a magic force. Nor ought the dividing
line between political parties to run, as in days of yore, on the
question of State rights and consolidation. All discriminating patriots
must be as well State rights men as consolidationists, respectively
conscious supporters and promoters of further nationalisation. Where and
how ought State independence to be strengthened, so as to prevent an
over-consolidation by the silent working of those nationalising causes,
which it is impossible to stem? and: Where and how ought consolidation,
respectively nationalisation, to be promoted, in order to make the
working of those nationalising causes conducive to the true interests
of the people and to the invigorating of republican institutions? These
are the two questions which the American people have constantly to ask
themselves. On the discretion and discernment displayed in trying to find
the correct answers must it depend, whether the federative principle will
work as well in the future, as it has done in the past.
If these propositions must be admitted, it can be proved that in no
respect is conscious and systematic nationalisation more imperatively
needed than in regard to education. At first sight this assertion may
seem worse than extravagant. I am, however, not afraid to submit my case
to the jury of the American people, if I am but conceded the legal right
of every criminal, to be heard ere I am judged.
Education is the bed-rock on which this republic rests. However
excellent its political institutions be, its decay and ultimate
downfall is inevitable, if the people fail to do their full duty by
themselves in this respect. For, in a democratic republic, political
institutions are live forces only so far as the people have the mental
and moral requirements for working them well, and these mental and moral
requirements can be attained only by education. It is, therefore, in the
strictest sense of the word, a _vital_ question for the republic that
every one of its sons and daughters receive not only some schooling, but
that the education of all be proper and adequate. That is a tremendous
task. It constantly grows in scope and intricacy, and at the same time,
it becomes of more and more import that it be well accomplished. With
the people rests the ultimate decision in everything, and the problems
confronting the commonwealth are assuming more and more a character,
taxing the highest statesmanship to the utmost. Thus the claims upon
the intelligence and the moral soundness of the people are fast being
strained far beyond anything ever known by any former generation in this
or any other country. And lack of the required intelligence and moral
soundness in any one State necessarily affects the whole Union. A State
that is derelict to its duty in the education of its people, wrongs not
only itself, but also the nation. By its share in the federal government,
every State is directly instrumental in laying down the law for the whole
country. All the States are thereby made to participate in the payment
of the penalty for its intellectual and moral deficiencies. This is,
however, by no means the only way in which they are made to suffer by
them. What the law does with regard to everything rendered federal by the
Constitution; commerce, travel, and interchange of population do in other
respects. They are unremittingly and with ever increasing intensity at
work, multiplying and rendering more close the organic relations between
all the parts of the vast domain, every water-way, railroad-track, and
telegraph line performing the functions of the veins in the animal
organism. If the blood be poisoned in one limb, the virus cannot be
prevented from working its way into the whole system.
To admit that education is in the highest degree a national
_interest_, and to deny its being a national _concern_, is, however, a
self-contradiction. To contest either the right or the duty of a nation
to acknowledge every national interest a national concern, and to deal
with it accordingly, is a palpable absurdity. Not as to the Whether, but
only as to the How, can the people be restricted by the Constitution. A
constitution imposing upon the people an injunction to minister to the
needs of the commonwealth, would be as great a political monstrosity as a
constitution providing for the dissolution of the state.
This doctrine will not be allowed to pass unchallenged. I shall be
asked whether I set myself against the universally accepted fundamental
principle of American constitutional law, that the federal government
has no powers but those granted to it by the Constitution. I do not.
“Where, then,” my interlocutor will go on, “do you find the express grant
or the implied power?” Nowhere. “Then you advocate a constitutional
amendment to the effect indicated by you?” I do not. I know that such an
amendment could not get the vote of a single state, and if there were a
possibility of its being adopted by the constitutional number of states,
I should be found, to the last, among those fighting it tooth and nail.
I can hardly conceive of a more suicidal measure than the adoption of
such an amendment. Just because education is the bed-rock on which the
republic rests, is it of vital importance that it does not become a
federal affair. Self-reliance and responsibility are the main pillars
supporting a democratic commonwealth. Kill, in the people of a state
and the population of its subdivisions, the habit of self-reliance and
the sense of responsibility in regard to the substratum of the whole
political and social structure, and they will wither and shrivel up in
regard to everything else. The compulsion to tax themselves directly for
the establishment and maintenance of schools and the being in close touch
with those entrusted with the direction of the educational work are an
inestimable boon to the people.
Even if it were economically possible to do without direct taxes,
political reasons would peremptorily forbid their abolishment. On
account of their moral effect, no state could dispense with them, and
least of all a democracy. All indirect taxes are paid more or less
unconsciously; the people, however, must be kept conscious that the
public purse means their own pockets. The more they lose sight of
this, the wider the door is opened to paternalism, and paternalism is
a more deadly enemy of liberty than despotism and tyranny. These, if
any vitality be left in the people, ultimately kindle the desire for
liberty, while paternalism acts upon it as an opiate and ends by killing
it through the systematic enervation of self-government. If this is
to be kept alive not only in form, but also in essence and in spirit,
the people must constantly be held to teach themselves in illustrating
by their own acts the irrefutable truth, that not the rights, but the
self-imposed duties are the vital principle of true democracy. Nothing,
however, is more apt to drive this all-important fact irresistibly
home, implanting it ineradicably in their whole feeling and in their
conscious thinking, than the necessity to vote, as directly as possible,
out of their own pockets the money required for preserving intact and
in vigor the prerequisite of _all_ that is needed for the preservation
of the nation’s vitality. If it be not deemed irreverent, I should
say that every dollar a man voluntarily votes out of his pocket to
provide for the educational needs of the community, preaches to him a
political “Sermon on the Mount.” “Liberty and self-government,” it says,
“must be paid for;—state and society are in their very essence ethical
conceptions;—they must totter, fall, and crumble to pieces, unless
they rest on an ethical foundation;—to preserve, broaden, and deepen
this foundation, by providing for the required intellectual and moral
equipment of the generations in whose hands the future destinies of the
commonwealth will lie, is the paramount duty of the people;—no one has
the right to exempt himself from doing his share in the fulfilment of
this duty, for the heirloom of the past, enjoyed by the present, is but a
trust to be left, with accrued interest, to the future;—the fulfilment of
this duty ought to be considered rather a privilege than a sacrifice, for
every farthing paid for the maintenance of the humblest village school is
an integral part of the nation’s life-insurance premium;—glory in this
responsibility to the whole country, for it constitutes you, with the
wealthiest and mightiest, a joint builder of its greatness;—glory in thus
bearing witness by the fruit of the sweat of your brow, that you, too,
are sworn in on the creed that man does not live by bread alone;—glory in
and render thanks for being thus held to keep ablaze in your own bosom
and help kindle in the bosom of the lowliest child of the community, the
sacred fire of idealism.”
That by many, perhaps by most people, this appeal is not heard in
distinct words, I do not contest. But that is no reason to make light of
it. Utterly lost it never is. Something of it sinks into the mind even
of the dullest and most hard-hearted, though it be but in the form of
a faint and vague feeling. To make them lose this, is to deprive them
of the best they have. Democracy is not a mill-pond, on which a fragile
boat can outride the wildest tempest. It is the open sea, on which the
proudest and stoutest craft is sure to be swamped, sooner or later,
if it be not properly ballasted. True idealism, however, never was a
more essential part of the ballast, than in these times and in this
country. It stands more in need of it than any other state, because its
unparalleled opportunities are appallingly powerful incentives to plunge
headlong into the materialistic tendencies of the age. Therefore, it is
ruthless to lay hands on anything tending to keep alive and foster true
idealism in the people. For this reason it would be, in my opinion,—not
in intention, but in effect,—a dastardly crime, under any plea whatever,
to release the people from the obligation to provide in their local
organisations for the education of their youths.
Therefore, I even deem it upon the whole more beneficial than detrimental
that many of the higher and most of the highest educational institutions
of the country are the free gift of high-minded men and women to the
people. I have never agreed with those who have contended in this country
that the duty of the commonwealth does not extend beyond providing for
primary and, at the most, to some extent for secondary education, and
that it would not be fair and proper to tax all for the establishment
and maintenance of colleges and universities, which, in the nature of
the case, only a small minority can frequent. It would be hard to name
a more promising sign of the times, than that this doctrine has of late
lost so much of its former hold upon public opinion, that one would
have to search long for an advocate of it in its original rigor. It
is eminently in the interest of all, that there be an ample number of
men and women who have received the highest education. Therefore, it
is evidently not only justified, but imperative, that the commonwealth
furnish the means for supplying its want. But if the views held in this
respect on the continent of Europe had prevailed in the United States,
the American people would have been the poorer of one of the vastest and
most grateful fields for manifesting idealistic public-spiritedness. An
inestimable loss, for idealistic public-spiritedness is not the least of
the causes to which it is due that American democracy has stood the test;
and idealistic public-spiritedness, like every virtue, grows stronger and
more fruitful by being practised. Every donation for educational purposes
prompts others to follow suit, and is, apart from its direct beneficent
effects, a most valuable object-lesson to the whole nation. With equal
impressiveness, the rich and the poor are reminded of the treasures which
“neither moth nor rust doth corrupt.” On every educational institution
brought into existence in such a way are indelibly inscribed the two
magic words to which this country owes it greatness: Help yourself,
and Public Spirit; every one of them is a living protest, as well
against paternalism—whether it present itself in the socialistic or
in any other garb—as against the setting up of the golden calf as the
idol of the republic. Therefore, everything tending to seriously check
these manifestations of idealism and public spirit in regard to higher
education would be deplorable, even if it were in itself commendable, for
paternalism and materialism are too rampant to leave anything undone that
is calculated to keep them down.
To contend that the existing decentralisation in regard to education must
be done away with, would, for these reasons, be a truly Quixotic charge
upon windmills: the venture must result in broken bones. It cannot, and,
if it could, ought not to be done, for this decentralisation is the
natural outgrowth of the whole historical development of the commonwealth
and in perfect accordance with the underlying principle of its political
and social structure. But it would be strange logic to conclude from
this that it can have worked no harm, or that the evil consequences it
may have had cannot be remedied. Can it be denied that, apart from the
primary schools, it sounds almost like mockery to speak of an American
system of education? If we look at the schools of a higher grade, we are
confronted by a bewildering chaos, and the nearer the top, the worse the
confusion becomes. That the effects of this are not altogether good, will
be universally admitted, though opinions will differ as to the weight
that ought to be attached to the bad consequences in the aggregate and
severally. To me, some of them seem to be of a very serious character,
and I hold that they must from year to year become of more consequence.
To say that somebody has been through a “high school,” does not convey
sufficiently definite information as to either the kind or the amount of
instruction he has received. To know that somebody is a graduate of an
“academy,” a “college,” a “university,” means to know next to nothing as
to his mental equipment. To gauge our man, we must inquire, What academy,
what college, what university? Having learned that, we are in hundreds
of cases not a whit wiser than before. We have to ask for the calendar
of the institution, and, after having read that, we shall often be still
pretty much at sea, for, as the Germans say, “paper is patient,” and the
printing of a first-class programme implies by no means of necessity
first-class instruction. This may be considered by some of little or no
moment, because the degrees confer no rights whatever. But they are,
nevertheless, not senseless gewgaws. If they be deemed such, their
abolishment must be insisted upon, for then they are as much out of place
in this country as orders or other meaningless titles. They are intended
to be certificates of knowledge and mental training. If they lose this
character, they are nothing, or worse than nothing. It is, however,
self-evident that they must be deprived of this character, exactly to
the extent that the educational institutions bearing the same name and
conferring the same degrees differ from each other. Do you not think it
more than likely that, if a law were passed making it obligatory to add
to the letters indicating a degree the name of the institution by which
it was conferred, an astounding number of ornamental tails to names would
be cut off forever?
This would not be done, if the degrees merely failed to be definite and
reliable certificates of knowledge and mental training. They do positive
harm, because the institutions conferring them have little more in common
than the name, their educational standard differing in the extremes,
as much as the crippled shrub and the sturdy oak. While the public do
not know what value to attach to the degree, a large percentage of the
recipients are betrayed into offensive and pernicious self-deception.
Upon the official averment of their _alma mater_, they lay the flattering
unction to their soul that they have received a much better intellectual
outfit than they really possess. These institutions practically reverse
the precept of the Greek sage: not “know thyself,” but “deceive thyself”
is the maxim imprinted on their diplomas. And this self-deception is a
subtle, contagious virus. It is at least doubtful, whether more will
take warning by looking through the false pretense, or be lured by it
into the same mistaken notions as to the requirements of genuine higher
education. To have practically no fixed standards for the different
grades of higher education must as inevitably have mischievous effects
upon the intellectual life of a people, as its economic life must be
demoralised by allowing everybody to coin money of the same outward
appearance, but of any alloy he pleases. Not that harm has been done by
the almost unlimited freedom enjoyed by the educational institutions
owing their existence to private munificence, is to be wondered at; it
is astonishing that the deleterious effects have not been much worse.
A premium is offered for sailing under a false flag. If a college may
be called a university, and an academy a college, it would be more
than surprising if the grander name were not frequently preferred, for
it flatters alike the vanity of the donors, the instructors, and the
pupils, and will—with more or less reason—be expected to work as a bait.
With the name goes the right to confer degrees, and the exercising of
this privilege is to serve the same purposes. But the name renders it
necessary to keep up appearances, and that is an expensive pleasure. The
masquerading in a pretentious guise cuts down the allowance of wholesome
food. Worthless universities instead of good colleges, inferior colleges
instead of satisfactory academies and fitting schools, are but too often
the result. No name will deprive the rose of its sweet scent; but the
buttercup cannot, with impunity, call itself a rose.
The worst, however, is, that even the best institutions of the higher
order are made to pay a heavy penalty for the shortcomings of those of
the lower rank. Not getting the proper material, they do not turn out
as good work as they in themselves might do. Much valuable time, which
ought to be devoted to going on with the building, must be spent in
mending and strengthening the deficient foundation, which, after all,
does not acquire the requisite solidity, because mending is necessarily
patchwork. Nor is the damage confined to the pupils that have been sent
up from inefficient schools. These act as a drag upon those who have
come adequately prepared. To render matters worse, the deficiencies are
neither the same with all, nor is it known beforehand where they will be
found and how far they will extend. Neither are the curricula the same,
nor is there any guaranty that the same curriculum means the same work
done. Here so many things have been taught, that everything has suffered
in regard to thoroughness. There, specialisation has commenced so early,
that the basis is too narrow and too shallow. Training for a special
purpose has encroached upon education. All these difficulties greatly
hamper the institution. But they do more. They exercise a strong pressure
upon it to stray from the right path, for they are powerful incentives to
yield to the evil tendency, more to measure, than to weigh the work done.
This is, in my opinion, the most deplorable of all the bad consequences
which the lack of a uniform system, resulting from the decentralisation
of education, has thus far had; and it is all the more dangerous, because
the measuring principle is so well fitted to be clad in the seductive
garb of a lucid and clear-cut system.
I do not expect that every one of my propositions will be universally
assented to. But can any unprejudiced observer dispute that there is
enough truth in what I have said to prompt the people seriously to
ponder the question, where this is going to end? If no conscious,
energetic, and concerted effort be made to counteract the evil effects
of decentralisation, the very fact of higher education having assumed
such a kaleidoscopic character renders inevitable its becoming more
and more kaleidoscopic. The founders, boards of trustees, presidents,
and faculties of new institutions are almost compelled to give their
individual notions on higher education, to a dangerous extent,
free scope. Having a hundred different patterns presented to their
consideration, the temptation is well-nigh irresistible not to adopt any
one of them, but to devise a new one. A new experimenting laboratory is
set up. That its experiments will be, positively or negatively, of some
value, is to be supposed. In most cases, however, the public interest
would have been better served by a good factory, renouncing the risky
ambition of dabbling with new inventions.