foreign nations, come finally those impulses which are not peculiar to
any one nation, but spring up in every country out of the lower
instincts and pleasures. Everywhere in the world mere love of diversion
tries to step in and to usurp the place of æsthetic pleasure. Everywhere
curiosity and sensational abandon are apt to undermine purely logical
interests, and everywhere a mere excitability tries to assume the rôle
of moral ardour. Everywhere the weak and trivial moral, æsthetic, and
intellectual appeals of the variety stage may come to be preferred over
the serious appeals of the drama. It is said that this tendency, which
was always deeply rooted in man’s nature, is felt more noticeably in our
nervous and excitable times than it was in the old days. In a similar
way one may say that it shows out still stronger in America than it does
in other countries. The reason for this is clear. Political democracy is
responsible for part of it; for in the name of that equality which it
postulates, it instinctively lends more countenance to the æsthetic
tastes, the judgment, and the moral inspiration of the butcher, the
baker and candlestick-maker than is really desirable if one has at heart
the development of absolute culture. Perhaps an even more important
factor is the purely economic circumstance that in America the masses
possess a greater purchasing power than in any other country, and for
this reason are able to exert a more immediate influence on the
intellectual life of the land. The great public is not more trivial in
the United States than elsewhere; it is rather, as in every democracy,
more mature and self-contained; but in America this great public is more
than elsewhere in the material position to buy great newspapers, and to
support theatres; and is thus able to exert a degrading influence on the
intellectual level of both newspaper and theatre.
In this way, then, the tendency of the lower classes toward those things
which are trivial may sometimes conceal the fine traits in the picture
of the national intellectual life; just as the readiness for imitation
may, for a time, bring in many a foreign trait. But nevertheless, there
is in fact a clearly recognizable, a free and independent intellectual
life, which everywhere reveals the opposition or the balance between
Puritanism and utilitarianism, and which is everywhere dominated by that
single wish which is common both to Puritans and to utilitarians—the
desire for the best possible development of the individual, the desire
for self-perfection.
Since, however, it remains a somewhat artificial abstraction to pick out
a single trait—even if that is the most typical—from the intellectual
make-up of the nation, so of course it is understood from the outset
that all the other peculiarities of the American work together with this
one to colour and shape his real intellectual life. Everywhere, for
instance, one notes the easily kindled enthusiasm of the American and
his inexhaustible versatility, his religious temperament and his
strongly marked feeling of decorum, his lively sense of justice and his
energy, and perhaps most of all his whimsical humour. Each one of these
admirable traits involves some corresponding failing. It is natural that
impetuous enthusiasm should not make for that dogged persistence which
so often has brought victory to various German intellectual movements;
so, too, a nice feeling for form grows easily impatient when it is a
question of intellectual work requiring a broad and somewhat careless
handling. Devotion to the supersensuous is inclined to lead to
superstition and mysticism, while a too sensitive feeling for fair play
may develop into hysterical sympathy for that which is merely puny;
versatility, as is well known, is only too apt to come out in fickle
dilettante activities, and the humour that bobs up at every moment
destroys easily enough the dignity of the most serious occasion. And yet
all this, whether good or bad, is a secondary matter. The spirit of
self-perfection remains the central point, and it must be always from
this point that we survey the whole field.
A social community which believes its chief duty to be the highest
perfection of the individual will direct its main attentions to the
church and the school. The church life in America is, for political
reasons, almost entirely separated from the influence of the state; but
the force with which every person is drawn into some church circle has
not for this reason lost, but rather gained, strength. The whole social
machine is devised in the interests of religion, and the impatience of
the sects and churches against one another is slight indeed as compared
with the intolerance of the churches as a whole against irreligion. The
boundaries are drawn as widely as possible, so that ethical culture or
even Christian Science may be included under the head of religion; but
countless purely social influences make strongly toward bringing the
spirit of worship in some wise into every man’s life, so that an hour of
consecration precedes the week of work, and every one in the midst of
his earthly turmoil heeds the thought of eternity, in whatever way he
will. And these social means are even stronger than any political ones
could be.
There is very much which contributes to deepen the religious feeling of
the people and to increase the efficiency of the churches. The very
numerousness of the different sects is not the least factor in this
direction, for it allows every individual conscience to find somewhere
its peculiar religious satisfaction. An additional impulse is the high
position which woman occupies, for she is more religiously endowed than
man. And yet another factor is the many social functions which the
churches have taken on themselves. In this last there is much that may
seem to the stranger too secular: the church which is at the same time a
club, a circulating library, and a place to lounge in, seems at first
sight to lose something of its dignity; but just because it has woven
itself in by such countless threads to the web of daily life, it has
come to pass that no part of the social fabric is quite independent of
it. Of course the external appearance of a large city does not strongly
indicate this state of things; but the town and country on the other
hand give evidence of the strong religious tendency of the population,
even to the superficial observer; and he will not understand the
Americans if he leaves out of account their religious inwardness. The
influence of religion is the only one which is stronger than that of
politics itself, and the accomplished professional politicians are sharp
to guide their party away from any dangerous competition with that
factor.
The church owes its power more or less to the unconscious sentiments in
the soul of the people, whereas the high position and support of the
public school is the one end toward which the conscious volition of the
entire nation is bent with firmest determination. One must picture to
one’s self the huge extent of the thinly populated country, the
incomparable diversity of the population which has come in, bringing
many differences of race and language, and finally the outlay of
strength which has been necessary to open up the soil to cultivation, in
order to have an idea of what huge labours it has taken to plant the
land from the Atlantic to the Pacific with a thick sowing of schools.
The desire for the best possible school system is for the American
actually more than a social duty—it has become a passion; and although
here and there it may have gone astray, it has never been afraid of any
difficulty.
The European who is accustomed to see the question of education left to
the government can hardly realize with what intensity this entire
population participates in the solution of theoretical problems and in
the overcoming of practical difficulties. No weekly paper or magazine
and no lecture programme of any association of thinking men could be
found in which questions of nurture and education are not treated.
Pedagogical publications are innumerable, and the number of those who
are technically informed is nearly identical with the number of those
who have brought up children. The discussions in Germany over, we may
say, high schools and technical schools, over modern and ancient
languages, or the higher education of women, interest a relatively small
circle as compared with similar discussions in America. The mere fact
that this effort toward the best school instruction has so deeply taken
hold of all classes of society, and that it leads all parties and sects
and all parts of the country to a united and self-conscious struggle
forward is in itself of the highest value for the education of the whole
people.
In the broad basis of the public school is built a great system of
higher instruction, and the European does not easily find the right
point of view from which to take this. The hundreds of colleges,
universities, professional schools, and polytechnics seem to the casual
observer very often like a merely heterogeneous and disordered
collection of separate institutions, because there seems to be no common
standard, no general level, no common point of view, and no common end;
in short, there seems to be no system. And nevertheless, there is at the
bottom of it all an excellent system. It is here that one finds the most
elaborate and astonishing achievement of the American spirit, held
together in one system by the principle of imperceptible gradations; and
no other organization, specially no mere imitation of foreign examples,
could so completely bring to expression the American desire for
self-perfection.
The topics of school and university would not make up one-half of the
history of American popular education. In no other country of the world
is the nation so much and so systematically instructed outside of the
school as in America, and the thousand forms in which popular education
is provided for those who have grown beyond the schools, are once more a
lively testimony to the tireless instinct for personal perfection.
Evening schools, summer schools, university extension courses, lecture
institutes, society classes, and debating clubs, all work together to
that end; and to omit these would be to give no true history of American
culture. The background of all this, however, is the great national
stock of public library books, from which even the poorest person can
find the best books and study them amid the most delightful
surroundings.
The popular educational libraries, together with the amazingly profuse
newspaper and magazine literature, succeed in reaching the whole people;
and, in turn, these institutions would not have become so large as they
are if the people themselves had not possessed a strong desire for
improvement. This thirst for reading is again nothing new; for
Hopkinson, who was acquainted with both England and America in the
middle of the eighteenth century, reported with surprise the difference
in this respect between the two countries. And since that time the
development has gone on and on until to-day the magazines are printed by
the hundreds of thousands, and historical romances in editions of half a
million copies; while public libraries exist not only in every small
city, but even in the villages, and those in the large cities are housed
in buildings which are truly monuments of architecture. As the influence
of books has grown, the native literature has increased and the arts of
modelling and sculpture have come forward at an equal pace, as means of
popular culture. Museums have arisen, orchestras been established, the
theatre developed, and an intellectual life has sprung up which is ready
to measure itself against the best that European culture has produced.
But the real foundation of this is even to-day not the creative genius,
but the average citizen, in his striving after self-perfection and
culture.
Once every year the American people go through a period of formal
meditation and moral reflection. In the month of June all the schools
close. Colleges and universities shut their doors for the long summer
vacation; and then, at the end of the year of study, according to an old
American custom, some serious message is delivered to those who are
about to leave the institutions. To make such a farewell speech is
accounted an honour, depending, of course, on the rank of the
institution, and the best men in the country are glad to be asked. Thus
it happens that, in the few weeks of June, hundreds of the leading
men—scholars, statesmen, novelists, reformers, politicians, officials,
and philanthropists—vie with one another in impressing on the youth the
best, deepest, and most inspiring sentiments; and since these speeches
are copied in the newspapers and magazines, they are virtually said to
the whole people. The more important utterances generally arouse
discussions in the columns of the newspapers, and so the month of June
comes to be a time of reflection and meditation, and of a certain
refreshment of inspiration and a revival of moral strength. Now, if one
looks over these speeches, one sees that they generally are concerned
with one of two great themes. Some of them appeal to the youth, saying;
Learn and cultivate yourselves, for this is the only way in which you
will arrive at becoming useful members of society: while the others
urge; Cultivate yourselves, for there is in life nothing more precious
than a full and harmonious development of the soul. The latter sentiment
is that of the Puritan, while the former is that of the utilitarian. And
yet the individualistic tendency is in both cases the same. In both
cases youth is urged to find its goal in the perfection of the
individual.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
_The Schools and Popular Education_
The Dutch population of New Amsterdam started a school system in the
year 1621. The first public Latin school was founded in Boston in the
year 1635. The other colonies soon followed. Clearly the English
governor of Virginia, Berkeley, had not quite grasped the spirit of the
New World, when at about that time he wrote home, that, thank God, no
public schools and no printing-press existed here, and when he added his
hope that they would not be introduced for a hundred years, since
learning brings irreligion and disobedience into the world, and the
printing-press disseminates them and fights against the best intentions
of the government. For that matter it was precisely Virginia which was
the first colony, even before Boston and New York, to consider the
question of education. As early as 1619 the treasurer of the Virginia
Company had proposed, in the English Parliament, that 15,000 acres of
land should be set aside in the interests of a school for higher
education. The English churches became interested in the plan, and an
abundant supply of money was got together. Ground and buildings had been
procured for lower and higher instruction and all was in working order,
when in 1622 the fearful Indian war upset everything. The buildings were
destroyed, and all thought of public education was for a long time given
up. This is how that condition came about which so well pleased Governor
Berkeley. But this mishap to the Virginia colony shows at once how the
American system of education has not been able to progress in any
systematic way, but has suffered frequent reverses through war or
political disturbance. And it has developed in the different parts of
the country at a very different pace, sometimes even in quite different
directions. It was not until after the Civil War—that is, within the
last thirty years—that these differences have to a large extent been
wiped out. It is only to-day that one can speak of a general American
system. The outsider will, therefore, come to a better understanding of
the American educational system if he begins his study with conditions
as they are to-day, for they are more unified and therefore easier to
understand, than if he were to try to understand how the present has
historically come from the complicated and rather uninteresting past.
So we shall not ask how the educational system has developed, but rather
what it is to-day and what it aims to be. Even the present-day
conditions may easily lead a German into some confusion, because he is
naturally inclined to compare them with the conditions at home, and such
a comparison is not always easy. Therefore, we must picture to ourselves
first of all the fundamental points in the system, and describe its
principal variations from the conditions in Germany. A few broad strokes
will suffice for a first inspection.
The unit of the system in its completest form is a four years’ course of
instruction. For the easier survey we may think of a boundary drawn at
what in Germany would be between the Obersekunda and Prima of a
Gymnasium or Realschule. Now, three such units of the system lie before
and two after this line of demarcation. The son of a well-to-do family,
who is to study medicine in Harvard University, will probably reach this
line of demarcation in his eighteenth year. If he is advanced according
to the normal scheme he will have entered a primary school at six years
of age, the grammar school at ten, and the high school at fourteen. Thus
he will complete a twelve years’ course in the public schools. Now he
crosses our line of demarcation in his eighteenth year and enters
college. And as soon as he has finished his four years’ course in
college he begins his medical studies in the university, and he is
twenty-six years old when he has finished. If we count in two years of
early preparation in the kindergarten, we shall see that the whole
scheme of education involves twenty-two years of study. Now, it is
indeed possible that our young medical student will have progressed
somewhat more rapidly; perhaps he will have reached the high school
after six instead of eight years of study; perhaps he will finish his
college course in three years, and it may be that he will never have
gone to kindergarten. But we have at first to concern ourselves with the
complete plan of education, not with the various changes and
abbreviations of it, which are very properly allowed and even favoured.
The line which we call the great boundary is the time when the lad
enters college. Now, what is the great significance of this moment? The
German, who thinks in terms of Gymnasium and Universität, is almost sure
to fall into a misapprehension; for college is neither the one nor the
other. So far as the studies themselves go, it coincides rather well
with the Prima of the Gymnasium and the first two or three semesters in
the philosophical faculty of the German university. And yet even this by
no means tells one what a college really is. Above all, it does not
explain why the American makes the chief division at the time of
entering college, while the German makes it when he enters the medical
or law school. This needs to be explained most clearly, because very
important factors are here involved, which bear on the future of
American civilization. And so we must give especial attention to college
and the professional schools. But that discussion is to be reserved for
the chapter on the universities. For the present, we have only to deal
with the system of instruction in those schools which prepare for
college.
And so, leaving the kindergarten out of the question, we shall deal with
those three institutions which we have called primary, grammar, and high
schools. Usually, the first two of these are classed together as one
eight years’ course of training. The European will be struck at once
that in this system there is only one normal plan of public education.
The future merchant, who goes to the high school and ends his studies in
the eighteenth year, has to follow the same course of study in the
primary and grammar schools as the peasant and labourer who studies only
until his fourteenth year, and then leaves school to work in the field
or the factory. And this young merchant, although he goes into business
when he is eighteen years old, pursues exactly the same studies as the
student who is later to go to college and the university. Now in fact,
in just this connection the actual conditions are admirably adapted to
the most diverse requirements; the public schools find an admirable
complement in private schools; and, more than that, certain very
complicated differentiations have been brought about within the single
school, in order to overcome the most serious defects of this
uniformity. Nevertheless, the principle remains; the system is uniform,
and the American himself finds therein its chief merit.
The motive for this is clear. Every one, even the most humble, should
find his way open; every one must be able to press on as far as his own
intelligence permits; in other words—words which the American pedagogue
is very fond of uttering—the public school is to make the spirit of
caste impossible. It is to wipe out the boundaries between the different
classes of society, and it is to see to it, that if the farmer’s lad of
some remote village feels within himself some higher aspiration, and
wants to go beyond the grammar school to the high school and even to
college, he shall find no obstacle in his way. His advance must not be
impeded by his suddenly finding that his entrance into the high school
would need some different sort of previous training.
This general intermingling of the classes of society is thought to be
the panacea of democracy. The younger generations are to be removed from
all those influences which keep their parents apart, and out of all the
classes of society the sturdiest youth are to be free of all prejudice
and free to rise to the highest positions. Only in this wise can new
sound blood flow through the social organism; only so can the great
evils incident to the formation of castes which have hindered old Europe
in its mighty progress be from the very outset avoided. The classic myth
relates of the hero who gained his strength because he kissed the earth.
In this way the American people believe that they will become strong
only by returning with every fresh generation to the soil, and if the
German Gymnasia were a hundred times better than they are, and if they
were able to prepare a boy from early childhood for the highest
intellectual accomplishment, America would still find them unsuited to
her needs, because from the outset they are designed for only a small
portion of the people, and for this reason they make it almost
impossible for the great mass of boys to proceed to the universities
from the ordinary public schools.
All of this is the traditional confession of belief of the pedagogue of
the New World. But now since America, in the most recent times, has
nevertheless begun to grow in its social structure considerably more
like antiquated Europe, and sees itself less and less able to overcome
the tendencies to a spirit of caste, so a sort of mild compromise has
been made between the democratic creed and aristocratic tendencies,
especially in the large cities of the East. Nevertheless, any one who
keeps his eyes open will admit that, so far as the public school goes,
intellectual self-perfection is in every way favoured, so that every
single child of the people may rise as high as he will. Grammar school
leads to the high school, and the high school leads to college.
There is another factor which is closely related to the foregoing.
Education is free and obligatory. In olden times there was more the
tendency for the parents of the children, rather than for the general
taxpayer, to pay for the maintenance of the schools. Indeed, there were
times in which the remission of the special school tax was considered
almost an act of charity, which only the poorest of the parents would
accept. But now it is quite different. The school system knows no
difference between rich and poor, and it is a fundamental principle that
the support of the schools is a matter for the whole community. The only
question is in regard to the high school, since after all only a small
percentage of school children comes as far as the high school; and it is
unjust, some say, to burden the general taxpayer with the expenses of
such school.
Nevertheless, on this point the opinions of those have won who conceive
that it is the duty of the community to nurture any effort toward
self-culture, even in the poorest child. The chief motive in olden
times, wherefore the expenses of the schools were paid by all, was that
the school was leading toward religion; to-day the official motive for
the application of taxes to the maintenance of schools is the conviction
that only an educated and cultivated people can rule itself. The right
to vote, it is said, presupposes the right to an education by means of
which every citizen becomes able to read the papers of the day and to
form his own independent opinion on public matters. But since every
public school is open also to the daughters of the citizens who possibly
want the right to vote, but do not so far have it, it becomes clear that
the above-mentioned political motive is not the whole of the matter. It
is enough for technical discussions of taxation, but what the community
is really working for is the greatest possible number of the most highly
educated individuals. Free instruction is further supplemented in
various states—as, for instance, in Massachusetts—by supplying
text-books gratis. Some other states go so far as to supply the needy
children with clothing. The obligatory character of education goes with
the fact that it is free. In this respect, too, the laws of different
states are widely divergent. Some require seven, others eight, still
others even nine years, of school training. And the school year itself
is fixed differently in different states.