At Plymouth, Massachusetts, there stands the monument which memorializes
the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers and the ideals for which they stood.
The Pilgrim Monument lifts aloft five sculptured figures, each symbolic
of one of the moving and controlling principles of early New England
life. The large central figure bears the name of Faith. At each of the
four corners stands one of four others—Freedom, Law, Morality,
and Education.
These things represent fundamental principles in the moulding of our
nation and its life. We have all profited more than we have realized from
the fact that they had a place in the characters, minds, and purposes of
our forefathers. Each is highly important, but the Pilgrims would have
been seriously in error if they had failed to include the last named.
That they did not fail to include it is evidenced by the fact that, very
early in the colonial history of America, representative leaders met in
conference on the question of establishing a free system of public
schools. There is hardly a better recommendation for a nation or a more
dependable indication of its quality than the fact that its system of
free public schools dates almost back to the time of its original
settlement. Such is the case with America. At no period in her history
has she been unaccustomed to the sight of the pedagogue.
America has been made what she is largely by means of the public school.
If she is democratic, it is largely because the public school has so
faithfully sown the seeds of democracy in the thinking of her boys and
girls in their plastic periods. In so far as she is clean and righteous,
the fact is largely due to the teaching the children have received in the
public schools. Their work in character-building, their inculcation of the
principles of scientific temperance, and now their efforts to teach
Americanism to all classes and ages have all been good seed sown in
fertile and productive soil. Today every schoolhouse is a symbol of
freedom, of democracy, and of productive efficiency. To neglect the
schools would be to neglect the source of much that is entirely necessary
in the nation’s life.
What America did for herself by means of the school in the days when her
interests did not reach beyond her own borders, she has since done by the
same means in the territories for which she has assumed responsibility.
Since Spain ceded the Philippines to us, the life of their people has
been entirely regenerated. The old insanitary cities with their shacks
and their squalor have changed into orderly and well-improved
municipalities. The unkempt and ignorant people are now bright,
industrious, and efficient. A practically savage land has become a
civilized one in slightly more than two decades.
Alaska has been transformed from a fruitless wilderness into a territory
of awakened and forward-looking people. They have developed such
industries as their land would support. They have achieved a large degree
of economic independence. They acquitted themselves with as great credit
as did almost any of the states in the various responsibilities incident
to the war. They have cleaned up their towns and developed their social
institutions. Through their town meetings, they are becoming more and more
a self-governing people.
Hawaii is rapidly learning to make the most of herself. Porto Rico is
doing the same. The new Virgin Islands will follow along in the same
course the others have travelled. Cuba has developed in the last twenty
years largely because of the start American leadership, organization, and
education gave her. Panama has been revolutionized by American influence.
There are, of course, a number of answers to the question as to why all
this has happened. One of the chiefest of them, however, is the work of
the public school system inaugurated wherever the hand of America holds
sway for any length of time. Even the leadership, the scientific
attainment, the medical skill, the genius for organization, and the
commercial power that have entered into the moulding of these new
civilizations all owe themselves, in greater or less degree, to the public
school and to the work of the teacher.
Our plight would be sorry indeed had it not been for the presence of the
little red school house among us. No country has ever gotten along without
it and escaped the penalty which Fate is certain to impose. The situation
in Russia now is undoubtedly largely the result of the age-long lack of an
adequate educational system. Civilization simply cannot be moulded without
the patient and painstaking work of the pedagogue.
Bismarck once said that whatever one would put into the state he must
first put into the schools. This was a great utterance, and its truth has
been repeatedly demonstrated in the years since. His own country used the
principle wrongly, but her use of it demonstrated its correctness. When
William II came to the German throne, he did not long retain Bismarck as
his chancellor, but he did follow many of Bismarck’s policies to the end
of his career. This was one of them.
Imperial Germany was largely built upon this principle. The educational
system from the beginner’s classes to the universities was standardized
and utilized to inculcate the Pan-German theory of the state and its
development. Philosophy was prostituted to this end. Literature and art
were bought by the state for its own purposes. History was written with
the ambitions of the state in view. According to the German theory, this
was perfectly proper, for, as General von Bernhardi once said, “There is
no power above the state.” The result is familiar. A loyal nation and a
mighty military power were built up by first putting into the schools what
the leaders wished to inject into the life of the state.
Under German guidance, Turkey did much the same thing.
When Abd-ul-Hamid II was dethroned in 1909, and the Young Turk party came
into power, an imperialistic program was undertaken in behalf of the
Ottoman state. One of the first things done was to standardize the
educational system and set it to work to weave the Ottoman spirit and
faith into the lives of the young.
The leading military spirit of Turkey for centuries was the organization
of soldiers called the Janizaries. This organization was started in the
fourteenth century by Orkhan, son of Osman. The first members of it were
the children exacted as tribute from conquered Christian peoples. It was
kept up afterward by levying a tax on Christian towns to be paid in
children. These children of Christian parents were trained to be Turks,
Mohammedans, and soldiers, and they became all three things with a
vengeance. They were the most loyal Turks, the most fanatical Mohammedans,
and the most cruel soldiers. Such is the force of education. One may take
a vine and train it in any direction. One may take a young life and make
of it what he will.
Germany and Turkey used the power of the school wrongly, of course, but
they demonstrated what can be done with it. It is as great a force for
weal as it is for woe, and America has thus far used it for the doing of
good things rather than evil. The possibilities of education in either
direction are practically boundless.
When one speaks of the public school system, he speaks really of an army
of teachers. A school has buildings and books, but it is really made and
determined by the teacher. One may have a school without either a building
or a book, but he cannot have one without a teacher.
The nation cannot recognize its obligation to the teacher too soon or too
completely. He has never received his just due, and the time has come when
we need to take an inventory of the service he has rendered and reward him
in some fair proportion to it. What we do for him we really do for the
country and its future.