In their normal and proper relations, money and learning are very helpful
each to the other. Money is not only a desirable thing but a necessary one
in the work of building up our educational systems. Certain items of
material equipment nothing but money can provide. It is also the only
thing which can obtain certain purely educational values in the way of
teaching talent. As educational processes become more elaborate and
complete, they cost more.
On the other hand, education exerts a natural and favorable reaction upon
money-making. In this country, where the educational aim is not so much to
turn out gentlemen of leisure as it is to manufacture sons of toil, school
training is one of the greatest aids in the increase of earning capacity.
Statistics proving by figures that the product of the schools can make
more money than the uneducated man can do are familiar to us all. This is
not the highest possible motive for the getting of an education, but it is
a motive which is worth considering.
However, there is something about great economic wealth in a country which
seems to make against the interest of education. This is a surprising
fact, but it is a fact nevertheless. One might most easily think the
reverse would be true. Certainly it is true that the greater wealth a
country possesses the more it could afford to invest in education if it
cared to do so. It looks like a safe assumption that a long step in the
direction of intellectual greatness would have been taken when a people
becomes great commercially. However, this assumption is not borne out by
the facts. There seems to be more truth, especially from the educational
viewpoint, in the idea that where wealth accumulates, men decay.
This principle is nothing new. It seems to be clearly indicated in
history. At least one instance may be cited from the story of quite
ancient times to indicate how true to form things have always run.
The Phoenician Empire was one of the most remarkable dominions of the
ancient world. Geographically it was small. It was only about 140 miles
long and 15 miles wide, skirted by the sea on one side and by a mountain
range on the other. With the well-known Semitic genius for trading, its
people planted colonies, operated mines, and established trading points
on many rivers and seas. The volume of their trade was never surpassed
until that day, centuries afterward, when the discovery of America opened
up a new world to exploitation.
In the process of their trading, the Phoenicians carried letters and arts
to many Old World lands. They were not their own letters and arts. All
the intellectual treasures they had were borrowed from others. They were
too busy buying and selling to take time to develop any of their own.
Consequently, the only monument to Phoenicia that remains today is the
memory of her commercial greatness. She concerned herself only with that
which was temporary. She built nothing that could endure.
That period which was characterized by the most serious search for
knowledge in America came during the poorer days of our people. The
educational facilities of that period were meager. The highest diploma
then given represented a degree of learning which almost anyone may
easily obtain now. Yet those were days when young people endured the most
severe sacrifice in order to obtain a measure of educational advantage for
themselves. From the modern educational viewpoint, the little red school
house at the cross roads may look like a rather poor affair, but it housed
some tremendously earnest spirits. Some of our most distinguished public
servants were there prepared for usefulness to their times.
In those days, poverty threw some severe limitations around the young
person seeking an education. At the same time, it provided a great
incentive to go forward, and it placed behind the obtaining of an
education a motive that was of great credit and value. Many young people
defeated the limitations of poverty by winning scholarships. This within
itself was of great value because it required a high standard of
studentship. Its advantage is unknown in the institution which caters to
rich men’s sons.
We have been through our periods of poverty that pinched boys and girls
into preparing themselves for better things. We have also had our periods
of economic independence. We have just emerged from one of actual
prodigality. Its unfavorable effect upon education cannot escape our eyes.
Conditions incident to the war write a few entries on the credit side of
the ledger. It put many soldier boys into schools for technical training.
It helped to awaken the country to its weakness along these lines. These
things, however, were overshadowed by the way in which the recent period
of swollen incomes made against learning.
The high wages of the war period and of the time immediately following it
lured from the schools a vast number who would otherwise have remained.
The economic incentive to getting an education was removed. It was a time
when a boy could obtain high wages without learning. In many cases he
could go into the shops and get better pay than his instructors were
receiving for work that demanded thorough preparation and
intense application.
Statistics showing how much more money the educated man could make had
lost their meaning. The time had come when brawn possessed greater
earning capacity than brain. School men all over the country had hard
work to keep their schools from going to pieces because of the depletion
in attendance which they suffered.
It was only natural that this situation should make teachers restless.
Their pay had never been adequate, and now they saw it dwindling to a
still smaller figure in comparison with that of a day laborer. The morale
of the teaching force was disturbed everywhere. Many teachers found other
work. The American school faced a crisis. That crisis seems now to be
passing, partly because teachers are being better compensated and partly
because the abnormal production, the prodigal buying, and the inflated
wages of the war period are over.
The same disturbance showed itself on college faculties. One state
university lost twenty-three men in a single year because the whole
country was growing rich and leaving them poorer than they were before.
One prominent member of a certain university faculty resigned to enter
the employ of a firm headed by one of his former students.
Technical schools had the same trouble. During 1919 when the country was
literally rolling in wealth, there was very little increase in the amount
of money placed at the disposal of agricultural schools in America.
Meanwhile, the various industries with their offers of better salaries
had taken many of the best teachers from these institutions. The Secretary
of Agriculture hoisted the danger signal by declaring that our nation must
have a well-balanced program of research and that the most capable staffs
possible must be secured and maintained.
One of the chief troubles with a great commercial period is its
preoccupation with material things. Minds become cloyed; hearts grow dull;
and souls grow no wings with which to lift themselves above the mire and
the clay. When a generation gets too busy to read books, hear music, and
encourage learning, it is an easy thing for its sons to assume that a job
is better than an education.