EDUCATION IN AMERICA
A fundamental idea with the American is to educate children. This is
carried to the extent of making it an offense not to send those above a
certain age to school, while State or town officers, called "truant
police," are on the alert to arrest all such children who are not in
school. The following was told me by a Government official in
Washington, who had obtained it from a well-known literary man who
witnessed the incident. The literary man was invited to visit a Boston
school of the lower grade, where he found the teacher, an attractive
woman, engaged in teaching a class of "youngsters," the progeny of the
working class. After the visitor had listened to the recitations for
some time, he remarked to the teacher, "How do you account for the
neatness and cleanliness of these children?" "Oh, I insist upon it," was
the reply. "The Board of Education does not anticipate all the
desiderata, but I make them come clean and make it a part of the
course;" then rising and tapping on the table, she said, "Prepare for
the sixth exercise." All the children stood up. "One," said the teacher,
whereupon each pupil took out a clean cloth handkerchief. "Two," counted
the teacher, and with one concerted blast every pupil blew his or her
nose in clarion notes. "Three," came again after a few seconds, and the
handkerchiefs were replaced. At "four" the student body sank back to
their seats without even smiling, or without having "cracked a smile."
You could search the world over and not find a prototype. It goes
without saying that the teacher was a wit and wag, but the lesson of
handkerchiefs and their use was inculcated.
Education is a part of the scheme to make all Americans equal. A more
splendid _system_ it is impossible to conceive. Every possible facility
is afforded the poorest family to educate their children. Public schools
loom up everywhere, and are increased as rapidly as the children, so
there is no excuse for ignorance. The schools are graded, and there is
no expense or fee. The parents pay a tax, a small sum, those who have no
children being taxed as well as those who have many. There are schools
to train boys to any trade; normal free schools to make teachers; night
schools for working boys; commercial schools to educate clerks; ship
schools to train sailors and engineers. Then come the great
universities, in part free, with all the splendid paraphernalia, some
being State institutions and others memorials of dead millionaires.
Then there are the great technical schools, as well as universities
(where one can study Chinese, if desired). There are schools of art,
law, medicine, nature, forestry, sculpture; schools to teach one how to
write, how to dress, how to eat, and how to keep well; schools to teach
one how to write advertisements, to cultivate the memory, to grow
strong; schools for shooting, boxing, fencing; schools for nurses and
cooks; summer schools; winter schools.
And yet the American is not profoundly educated. He has too much within
his reach. I have been distinctly surprised at crude specimens I have
met who were graduates of great universities. The well-educated
Englishman, German, and American are different things. The American is
far behind in the best sense, which I am inclined to think is due to
the teachers. Any one can get through a normal school and become a
teacher who can pass the examination, and I have seen some singular
instances. If all the teachers were obliged to pass examinations in
culture, refinement, and the art of _conveying_ knowledge, there would
be a falling of pedagogic heads. The free and over education of the poor
places them at once above their parents. They are free, and the daughter
of a ditch laborer, whose wife is a floor scrubber, upon being educated
is ashamed of her parents, learns to play the piano, apes the rich, and
is at least unhappy.
The result is, there remains no peasant class. The effect of education
on the country boy is to make him despise the farm and go to the city,
to become a clerk and ape the fashions of the wealthy at six or eight
dollars a week. He has been educated up to the standard of his "boss"
and to be his equal. The overeducation of the poor is a heartless thing.
The women vie with the men, and as a result women graduates, taking
positions at half the price that men demand, crowd them out of the
fields of skilled labor, whereas the man, not crowded out, should,
normally, marry the girl. In power, strength, and progress the American
nation stands first in the world, and all this may be due to splendid
educational facilities. But this is not everything. There result strife,
unhappiness, envy, and a craze for riches. I do not think the Americans
as a race are as happy as the Chinese. Religious denominations try to
have their own schools, so that children shall not be captured by other
denominations. Thus the Roman Catholics have parochial schools, under
priests and sisters, and colleges of various grades. They oppose the use
of the Bible in the public school, and in some States their influence
has helped to suppress its use. The Quakers, with a following of only
eighty thousand, have colleges and schools. The Methodists have
universities, as have the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and others. All
denominations have institutions of learning. These schools are in the
hands of clergymen, and are often endowed or supported by wealthy
members of the denomination.
A remarkable feature of American life is the college of correspondence.
A man or firm advertises to teach by correspondence at so much a month.
Many branches are taught, and if the student is in earnest a certain
amount of information can thus be accumulated. Among the people I have
met I have observed a lack of what I term full, broad education,
producing a well-rounded mind, which is rare except among the class
that stands first in America--the refined, cultured, educated man of an
old family, who is the product of many generations. The curriculum of
the high school in America would in China seem sufficient to equip a
student for any position in diplomatic life; but I have found that a
majority of graduates become clerks in a grocery or in other shops, car
conductors, or commercial travelers, where Latin, Greek, and other
higher studies are absolutely useless. The brightest educational sign I
see in America is the attention given to manual training. In schools
boys are taught some trade or are allowed to experiment in the trades in
order to find out their natural bent, so that the boy can be educated
with his future in view. As a result of education, women appear in
nearly every field except that of manual labor on farms, which is
performed in America only by alien women.
The richest men in America to-day, the multi-millionaires, are not the
product of the universities, but mainly of the public schools. Carnegie,
Rockefeller, Schwab, men of the great steel combine, the oil magnates,
the great railway magnates, the great mine owners, were all men of
limited education at the beginning. Among great merchants, however, the
university man is found, and among the Harvard and Yale graduates, for
example, may be found some of America's most distinguished men. But
Lincoln, the martyred President, had the most limited education, and
among public men the majority have been the product of the public
school, which suggests that great men are natural geniuses, who will
attain prominence despite the lack of education. The best-educated men
in America to my mind are the graduates of West Point and Annapolis, the
military and naval academies. These two institutions are extremely
rigorous, and are open to the most humble citizens. They so transform
men in four years that people would hardly recognize them. The result is
a highly educated, refined, cultivated, practical man, with a high sense
of honor and patriotism. If America would have a school of this kind in
every State there would be no limit to her power in two decades.
Despite education, the great mass of the people are superficial; they
have a smattering of this and that. An employer of several thousand men
told the Superintendent of Education of the District of Columbia that he
had selected the brightest boy graduate of a high school for a position
which required only a knowledge of simple arithmetic. The graduate
proved to be totally unfit for the position and was discharged. Later he
became the driver of a team of horses. America abounds in thousands of
educational institutions, yet there is not one so well endowed that it
can say to the world we wish no more money. It is singular that some
multi-millionaire does not grasp this opportunity to donate one hundred
millions to a great national school or university, to be placed at
Washington, where the buildings would all be lessons in architecture of
marble after the plans of a world's fair. Instead they leave a few
thousands here and a few there. Carnegie, the leading millionaire, gives
libraries to cities all over the States, each of which bears the name of
the giver. The object is too obvious, and is cheap in conception. In San
Francisco some years ago a citizen tried the same experiment. He
proposed to give the city a large number of fountains. When they were
finished _each_ one was seen to be surmounted by his own statue. A few
were put up, how many I do not recall, but one night some citizens
waited on a statue, fastened a rope to its neck, and hauled it down. So
peculiar are the Americans that I believe if Mr. Carnegie should place
his name on ten thousand libraries, with the object of attaining undying
fame, the people, by a concerted effort, would forget all about him in a
few decades. Such an attempt does not appeal to any side of the American
character. I have known the best Americans, but Mr. Carnegie has not
known the best of his own countrymen or he would not attempt to
perpetuate his memory in this way.