THE SCOPE OF PUBLIC-SCHOOL EDUCATION.
Our system of Public-School Education is a result of the faith of the
people in the need of universal intelligence for the maintenance of
popular government. Does this system include moral training? Since
the teaching of religious doctrines is precluded, this, I imagine, is
what we are to consider in discussing the Scope of Public-School
Education. The equivalents of scope are aim, end, opportunity, range
of view; and the equivalents of education are training, discipline,
development, instruction. The proper meaning of the word education, it
seems, is not a drawing out, but a training up, as vines are trained to
lay hold of and rise by means of what is stronger than themselves. My
subject, then, is the aim, end, opportunity, and range of view of
public-school education, which to be education at all, in any true
sense, must be a training, discipline, development, and instruction of
man's whole being, physical, intellectual, and moral. This, I suppose,
is what Herbert Spencer means when he defines education to be a
preparation for complete living. Montaigne says the end of education
is wisdom and virtue; Comenius declares it to be knowledge, virtue, and
religion; Milton, likeness to God through virtue and faith; Locke,
health of body, virtue, and good manners; Herbart, virtue, which is the
realization in each one of the idea of inner freedom; while Kant and
Fichte declare it to consist chiefly in the formation of character.
All these thinkers agree that the supreme end of education is spiritual
or ethical. The controlling aim, then, should be, not to impart
information, but to upbuild the being which makes us human, to form
habits of right thinking and doing. The ideal is virtually that of
Israel,--that righteousness is life,--though the Greek ideal of beauty
and freedom may not be excluded. It is the doctrine that manners make
the man, that conduct is three-fourths of life, leaving but one-fourth
for intellectual activity and aesthetic enjoyment; and into this fourth
of life but few ever enter in any real way, while all are called and
may learn to do good and avoid evil.
"In the end," says Ruskin, "the God of heaven and earth loves active,
modest, and kind people, and hates idle, proud, greedy, and cruel
ones." We can all learn to become active, modest, and kind; to turn
from idleness, pride, greed, and cruelty. But we cannot all make
ourselves capable of living in the high regions of pure thought and
ideal beauty; and for the few even who are able to do this, it is still
true that conduct is three-fourths of life.
"The end of man," says Buechner, "is conversion into carbonic acid,
water, and ammonia." This also is an ideal, and he thinks we should be
pleased to know that in dying we give back to the universe what had
been lent. He moralizes too; but if all we can know of our destiny is
that we shall be converted into carbonic acid, water, and ammonia, the
sermon may be omitted. On such a faith it is not possible to found a
satisfactory system of education. Men will always refuse to think thus
meanly of themselves, and in answer to those who would persuade them
that they are but brutes, they will, with perfect confidence, claim
kinship with God; for from an utterly frivolous view of life both our
reason and our instinct turn.
The Scope of Public-School Education is to co-operate with the
physical, social, and religious environment to form good and wise men
and women. Unless we bear in mind that the school is but one of
several educational agencies, we shall not form a right estimate of its
office. It depends almost wholly for its success upon the kind of
material furnished it by the home, the state, and the church; and, to
confine our view to our own country, I have little hesitation in
affirming that our home life, our social and political life, and our
religious life have contributed far more to make us what we are than
any and all of our schools. The school, unless it works in harmony
with these great forces, can do little more than sharpen the wits.
Many of the teachers of our Indian schools are doubtless competent and
earnest; but their pupils, when they return to their tribes, quickly
lose what they have gained, because they are thrown into an environment
which annuls the ideals that prevailed in the school. The controlling
aim of our teachers should be, therefore, to bring their pedagogical
action into harmony with what is best in the domestic, social, and
religious life of the child; for this is the foundation on which they
must build, and to weaken it is to expose the whole structure to ruin.
Hence the teacher's attitude toward the child should be that of
sympathy with him in his love for his parents, his country, and his
religion. His reason is still feeble, and his life is largely one of
feeling; and the fountain-heads of his purest and noblest feelings are
precisely his parents, his country, and his religion, and to tamper
with them is to poison the wells whence he draws the water of life. To
assume and hold this attitude with sincerity and tact is difficult; it
requires both character and culture; it implies a genuine love of
mankind and of human excellence; reverence for whatever uplifts,
purifies, and strengthens the heart; knowledge of the world, of
literature, and of history, united with an earnest desire to do
whatever may be possible to lead each pupil toward life in its
completeness, which is health and healthful activity of body and mind
and heart and soul.
As the heart makes the home, the teacher makes the school. What we
need above all things, wherever the young are gathered for education,
is not a showy building, or costly apparatus, or improved methods or
text-books, but a living, loving, illumined human being who has deep
faith in the power of education and a real desire to bring it to bear
upon those who are intrusted to him. This applies to the primary
school with as much force as to the high school and university. Those
who think, and they are, I imagine, the vast majority, that any one who
can read and write, who knows something of arithmetic, geography, and
history, is competent to educate young children, have not even the most
elementary notions of what education is.
What the teacher is, not what he utters and inculcates, is the
important thing. The life he lives, and whatever reveals that life to
his pupils; his unconscious behavior, even; above all, what in his
inmost soul he hopes, believes, and loves, have far deeper and more
potent influence than mere lessons can ever have. It is precisely here
that we Americans, whose talent is predominantly practical and
inventive, are apt to go astray. We have won such marvellous victories
with our practical sense and inventive genius that we have grown
accustomed to look to them for aid, whatever the nature of the
difficulty or problem may be. Machinery can be made to do much, and to
do well what it does. With its help we move rapidly; we bring the ends
of the earth into instantaneous communication; we print the daily
history of the world and throw it before every door; we plough and we
sow and we reap; we build cities, and we fill our houses with whatever
conduces to comfort or luxury. All this and much more machinery
enables us to do. But it cannot create life, nor can it, in any
effective way, promote vital processes. Now, education is essentially
a vital process. It is a furthering of life; and as the living proceed
from the living, they can rise into the wider world of ideas and
conduct only by the help of the living; and as in the physical realm
every animal begets after its own likeness, so also in the spiritual
the teacher can give but what he has. If the well-spring of truth and
love has run dry within himself, he teaches in vain. His words will no
more bring forth life than desert winds will clothe arid sands with
verdure. Much talking and writing about education have chiefly helped
to obscure a matter which is really plain. The purpose of the public
school is or should be not to form a mechanic or a specialist of any
kind, but to form a true man or woman. Hence the number of things we
teach the child is of small moment. Those schools, in fact, in which
the greatest number of things are taught give, as a rule, the least
education. The character of the Roman people, which enabled them to
dominate the earth and to give laws to the world, was formed before
they had schools, and when their schools were most flourishing they
themselves were in rapid moral and social dissolution. We make
education and religion too much a social affair, and too little a
personal affair. Their essence lies in their power to transform the
individual, and it is only in transforming him that they recreate the
wider life of the community. The Founder of Christianity addressed
himself to the individual, and gave little heed to the state or other
environment. He looked to a purified inner source of life to create
for itself a worthier environment, and simply ignored devices for
working sudden and startling changes. They who have entered into the
hidden meaning of this secret and this method turn in utter incredulity
from the schemes of declaimers and agitators.
The men who fill the world, each with his plan for reforming and saving
it, may have their uses, since the poet tells us there are uses in
adversity, which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a
precious jewel in its head; but to one deafened by their discordant and
clamorous voices, the good purpose they serve seems to be as mythical
as the jewel in the toad's head.
Have not those who mistake their crotchets for Nature's laws invaded
our schools? Have they not succeeded in forming a public opinion and
in setting devices at work which render education, in the true sense of
the word, if not impossible, difficult? Literature is a criticism of
life, made by those who are in love with life, and have the deepest
faith in its possibilities; and all criticism which is inspired by
sympathy and faith and controlled by knowledge is helpful. Complacent
thoughts are rarely true, and hardly ever useful. It is a prompting of
nature to turn from what we have to what we lack, for thus only is
there hope of amendment and progress. We are, to quote Emerson,
"Built of furtherance and pursuing,
Not of spent deeds, but of doing."
Hence the wise and the strong dwell not upon their virtues and
accomplishments, but strive to learn wherein they fail, for it is in
correcting this they desire to labor. They wish to know the truth
about themselves, are willing to try to see themselves as others see
them, that self-knowledge may make self-improvement possible. They
turn from flattery, for they understand that flattery is insult. Now,
if this is the attitude of wise and strong men, how much more should it
not be that of a wise and strong people? Whenever persons or things
are viewed as related in some special way to ourselves, our opinions of
them will hardly be free from bias. When, for instance, I think or
speak of my country, my religion, my friends, my enemies, I find it
difficult to put away the prejudice which my self-esteem and vanity
create, and which, like a haze, ever surrounds me to color or obscure
the pure light of reason. It cannot do us harm to have our defects and
shortcomings pointed out to us; but to be told by demagogues and
declaimers that we are the greatest, the most enlightened, the most
virtuous people which exists or has existed, can surely do us no good.
If it is true, we should not dwell upon it, for this will but distract
us from striving for the things in which we are deficient; and if it is
false, it can only mislead us and nourish a foolish conceit. It is the
orator's misfortune to be compelled to think of his audience rather
than of truth. It is his business to please, persuade, and convince;
and men are pleased with flattering lies, persuaded and convinced by
appeals to passion and interest. Happier is the writer, who need not
think of a reader, but finds his reward in the truth he expresses.
It is not possible for an enlightened mind not to take profound
interest in our great system of public education. To do this he need
not think it the best system. He may deem it defective in important
requisites. He may hold, as I hold, that the system is of minor
importance, the kind of teacher being all important. But if he loves
his country, if he loves human excellence, if he has faith in man's
capacity for growth, he cannot but turn his thoughts, with abiding
attention and sympathy, to the generous and determined efforts of a
powerful and vigorous people to educate themselves. Were our
public-school system nothing more than the nation's profession of faith
in the transforming power of education, it would be an omen of good and
a ground for hope; and one cannot do more useful work than to help to
form a public opinion which will accept with thankfulness the free play
of all sincere minds about this great question, and which will cause
the genuine lovers of our country to turn in contempt from the clamors
politicians and bigots are apt to raise when an honest man utters
honest thought on this all-important subject.
I am willing to assume and to accept as a fact that our theological
differences make it impossible to introduce the teaching of any
religious creed into the public school. I take the system as it
is,--that is, as a system of secular education,--and I address myself
more directly to the question proposed: What is or should be its scope?
The fact that religious instruction is excluded makes it all the more
necessary that humanizing and ethical aims should be kept constantly in
view. Whoever teaches in a public school should be profoundly
convinced that man is more than an animal which may be taught cunning
and quickness. A weed in blossom may have a certain beauty, but it
will bear no fruit; and so the boy or youth one often meets, with his
irreverent smartness, his precocious pseudo-knowledge of a hundred
things, may excite a kind of interest, but he gives little promise of a
noble future. The flower of his life is the blossom of the weed, which
in its decay will poison the air, or, at the best, serve but to
fertilize the soil. If we are to work to good purpose we must take our
stand, with the great thinkers and educators, on the broad field of
man's nature, and act in the light of the only true ideal of
education,--that its end is wisdom, virtue, knowledge, power,
reverence, faith, health, behavior, hope, and love; in a word, whatever
powers and capacities make for intelligence, for conduct, for
character, for completeness of life. Not for a moment should we permit
ourselves to be deluded by the thought that because the teaching of
religious creeds is excluded, therefore we may make no appeal to the
fountain-heads which sleep within every breast, the welling of whose
waters alone has power to make us human. If we are forbidden to turn
the current into this or that channel, we are not forbidden to
recognize the universal truth that man lives by faith, hope, and love,
by imagination and desire, and that it is precisely for this reason
that he is educable. We move irresistibly in the lines of our real
faith and desire, and the educator's great purpose is to help us to
believe in what is high and to desire what is good. Since for the
irreverent and vulgar spirit nothing is high or good, reverence, and
the refinement which is the fruit of true intelligence, urge
ceaselessly their claims on the teacher's attention. Goethe, I
suppose, was little enough of a Christian to satisfy the demands of an
agnostic cripple even, and yet he held that the best thing in man is
the thrill of awe; and that the chief business of education is to
cultivate reverence for whatever is above, beneath, around, and within
us. This he believed to be the only philosophical and healthful
attitude of mind and heart towards the universe, seen and unseen. May
not the meanest flower that blows bring thoughts that lie too deep for
tears? Is not reverence a part of all the sweetest and purest feelings
which bind us to father and mother, to friends and home and country?
Is it not the very bloom and fragrance, not only of the highest
religious faith, but also of the best culture? Let the thrill of awe
cease to vibrate, and you will have a world in which money is more than
man, office better than honesty, and books like "Innocents Abroad" or
"Peck's Bad Boy" more indicative of the kind of man we form than are
the noblest works of genius. What is the great aim of the primary
school, if it is not the nutrition of feeling? The child is weak in
mind, weak in will, but he is most impressionable. Feeble in thought,
he is strong in capacity to feel the emotions which are the sap of the
tree of moral life. He responds quickly to the appeals of love,
tenderness, and sympathy. He is alive to whatever is noble, heroic,
and venerable. He desires the approbation of others, especially of
those whom he believes to be true and high and pure, he has
unquestioning faith, not only in God but in great men, who, for him,
indeed, are earthly gods. Is not his father a divine man, whose mere
word drives away all fear and fills him with confidence? The touch of
his mother's hand stills his pain; if he is frightened, her voice is
enough to soothe him to sleep. To imagine that we are educating this
being of infinite sensibility and impressionability when we do little
else than teach him to read, write, and cipher, is to cherish a
delusion. It is not his destiny to become a reading, writing, and
ciphering machine, but to become a man who believes, hopes, and loves;
who holds to sovereign truth, and is swayed by sympathy; who looks up
with reverence and awe to the heavens, and hearkens with cheerful
obedience to the call of duty; who has habits of right thinking and
well doing which have become a law unto him, a second nature. And if
it be said that we all recognize this to be so, but that it is not the
business of the school to help to form such a man; that it does its
work when it sharpens the wits, I will answer with the words of William
von Humboldt: "Whatever we wish to see introduced into the life of a
nation must first be introduced into its schools."
Now, what we wish to see introduced into the life of the nation is not
the power of shrewd men, wholly absorbed in the striving for wealth,
reckless of the means by which it is gotten, and who, whether they
succeed or whether they fail, look upon money as the equivalent of the
best things man knows or has; who therefore think that the highest
purpose of government, as of other social forces and institutions, is
to make it easy for all to get abundance of gold and to live in sloven
plenty; but what we wish to see introduced into the life of the nation
is the power of intelligence and virtue, of wisdom and conduct. We
believe, and in fact know, that humanity, justice, truthfulness,
honesty, honor, fidelity, courage, integrity, reverence, purity, and
self-respect are higher and mightier than anything mere sharpened wits
can accomplish. But if these virtues, which constitute nearly the
whole sum of man's strength and worth, are to be introduced into the
life of the nation, they must be introduced into the schools, into the
process of education. We must recognize, not in theory alone but in
practice, that the chief end of education is ethical, since conduct is
three-fourths of human life. The aim must be to make men true in
thought and word, pure in desire, faithful in act, upright in deed; men
who understand that the highest good does not lie in the possession of
anything whatsoever, but that it lies in power and quality of being;
for whom what we are and not what we have is the guiding principle; who
know that the best work is not that for which we receive most pay, but
that which is most favorable to life, physical, moral, intellectual,
and religious; since man does not exist for work or the Sabbath, but
work and rest exist for him, that he may thrive and become more human
and more divine. We must cease to tell boys and girls that education
will enable them to get hold of the good things of which they believe
the world to be full; we must make them realize rather that the best
thing in the world is a noble man or woman, and to be that is the only
certain way to a worthy and contented life. All talk about patriotism
which implies that it is possible to be a patriot or a good citizen
without being a true and good man, is sophistical and hollow. How
shall he who cares not for his better self care for his country?
We must look, as educators, most closely to those sides of the national
life where there is the greatest menace of ruin. It is plain that our
besetting sin, as a people, is not intemperance or unchastity, but
dishonesty. From the watering and manipulating of stocks to the
adulteration of food and drink, from the booming of towns and lands to
the selling of votes and the buying of office, from the halls of
Congress to the policeman's beat, from the capitalist who controls
trusts and syndicates to the mechanic who does inferior work, the taint
of dishonesty is everywhere. We distrust one another, distrust those
who manage public affairs, distrust our own fixed will to suffer the
worst that may befall rather than cheat or steal or lie. Dishonesty
hangs, like mephitic air, about our newspapers, our legislative
assemblies, the municipal government of our towns and cities, about our
churches even, since our religion itself seems to lack that highest
kind of honesty, the downright and thorough sincerity which is its
life-breath.
If the teacher in the public school may not insist that an honest man
is the noblest work of God, he may teach at least that he who fails in
honesty fails in the most essential quality of manhood, enters into
warfare with the forces which have made him what he is, and which
secure him the possession of what he holds dearer than himself, since
he barters for it his self-respect; that the dishonest man is an
anarchist and dissocialist, one who does what in him lies to destroy
credit, and the sense of the sacredness of property, obedience to law,
and belief in the rights of man. If our teachers are to work in the
light of an ideal, if they are to have a conscious end in view, as all
who strive intelligently must have, if they are to hold a principle
which will give unity to their methods, they must seek it in the idea
of morality, of conduct, which is three-fourths of life.
I myself am persuaded that the real and philosophical basis of morality
is the being of God, a being absolute, infinite, unimaginable,
inconceivable, of whom our highest and nearest thought is that he is
not only almighty, but all-wise and all-good as well. But it is
possible, I think, to cultivate the moral sense without directly and
expressly assigning to it this philosophical and religious basis; for
goodness is largely its own evidence, as virtue is its own reward. It
all depends on the teacher. Life produces life, life develops life;
and if the teacher have within himself a living sense of the
all-importance of conduct, if he thoroughly realize that what we call
knowledge is but a small part of man's life, his influence will nourish
the feelings by which character is evolved. The germ of a moral idea
is always an emotion, and that which impels to right action is the
emotion rather than the idea. The teachings of the heart remain
forever, and they are the most important; for what we love, genuinely
believe in, and desire decides what we are and may become. Hence the
true educator, even in giving technical instruction, strives not merely
to make a workman, but to make also a man, whose being shall be touched
to finer issues by spiritual powers, who shall be upheld by faith in
the worth and sacredness of life, and in the education by which it is
transformed, enriched, purified, and ennobled. He understands that an
educated man, who, in the common acceptation of the phrase, is one who
knows something, who knows many things, is, in truth, simply one who
has acquired habits of right thinking and right doing. The culture
which we wish to see prevail throughout our country is not learning and
literary skill; it is character and intellectual openness,--that higher
humanity which is latent within us all; which is power, wisdom, truth,
goodness, love, sympathy, grace, and beauty; whose surpassing
excellence the poor may know as well as the rich; whose charm the
multitude may feel as well as the chosen few.
"He who speaks of the people," says Guicciardini, "speaks, in sooth, of
a foolish animal, a prey to a thousand errors, a thousand confusions,
without taste, without affection, without firmness." The scope of our
public-school education is to make common-places of this kind, by which
all literature is pervaded, so false as to be absurd; and when this end
shall have been attained, Democracy will have won its noblest victory.
How shall we find the secret from which hope of such success will
spring? By so forming and directing the power of public opinion, of
national approval, and of money, as to make the best men and women
willing and ready to enter the teacher's profession. The kind of man
who educates is the test of the kind of education given, and there is
properly no other test. When we Americans shall have learned to
believe with all our hearts and with all the strength of irresistible
conviction that a true educator is a more important, in every way a
more useful, sort of man than a great railway king, or pork butcher, or
captain of industry, or grain buyer, or stock manipulator, we shall
have begun to make ourselves capable of perceiving the real scope of
public-school education.