IV

But perhaps you would maintain that this statement of the case, while in

general true, does not help us out in practice. After all, how are we to

impress pupils with this ideal of persistence and with these ideals of

getting and applying information, and with this ideal of investigation?

I maintain that these important useful ideals may be effectively

impressed almost from the very outset of school life. The teaching of

every subject affords innumerable opportunities to force home their

lessons. In fact, it must be a very gradual process--a process in which

the concrete instances are numerous and rich and impressive. From these

concrete instances, the general truth may in time emerge. Certainly the

chances that it will emerge are greatly multiplied if we ourselves

recognize its worth and importance, and lead our pupils to see in each

concrete case the operation of the general principle. After all, the

chief reason why so much of our education miscarries, why so few pupils

gain the strength and the power that we expect all to gain, lies in the

inability of the average individual to draw a general conclusion from

concrete cases--to see the general in the particular. We have insisted

so strenuously upon concrete instruction that we have perhaps failed

also to insist that fact without law is blind, and that observation

without induction is stupidity gone to seed.

Let me give a concrete instance of what I mean. Not long ago, I visited

an eighth-grade class during a geography period. It was at the time when

the discovery of the Pole had just set the whole civilized world by the

ears, and the teacher was doing something that many good teachers do on

occasions of this sort: she was turning the vivid interest of the moment

to educative purposes. The pupils had read Peary's account of his trip

and they were discussing its details in class. Now that exercise was

vastly more than an interesting information lesson, for Peary's

achievement became, under the skillful touch of that teacher, a type of

all human achievement. I wish that I could reproduce that lesson for

you--how vividly she pictured the situation that confronted the

explorer,--the bitter cold, the shifting ice, the treacherous open

leads, the lack of game or other sources of food supply, the long

marches on scant rations, the short hours and the uncomfortable

conditions of sleep; and how from these that fundamental lesson of pluck

and endurance and courage came forth naturally without preaching the

moral or indulging in sentimental "goody-goodyism." And then the other

and equally important part of the lesson,--how pluck and courage in

themselves could never have solved the problem; how knowledge was

essential, and how that knowledge had been gained: some of it from the

experience of early explorers,--how to avoid the dreaded scurvy, how to

build a ship that could withstand the tremendous pressure of the floes;

and some from the Eskimos,--how to live in that barren region, and how

to travel with dogs and sledges;--and some, too, from Peary's own early

experiences,--how he had struggled for twenty years to reach the goal,

and had added this experience to that until finally the prize was his.

We may differ as to the value of Peary's deed, but that it stands as a

type of what success in any undertaking means, no one can deny. And this

was the lesson that these eighth-grade pupils were absorbing,--the

world-old lesson before which all others fade into insignificance,--the

lesson, namely, that achievement can be gained only by those who are

willing to pay the price.

And I imagine that when that class is studying the continent of Africa

in their geography work, they will learn something more than the names

of rivers and mountains and boundaries and products,--I imagine that

they will link these facts with the names and deeds of the men who gave

them to the world. And when they study history, it will be vastly more

than a bare recital of dates and events,--it will be alive with these

great lessons of struggle and triumph,--for history, after all, is only

the record of human achievement. And if those pupils do not find these

same lessons coming out of their own little conquests,--if the problems

of arithmetic do not furnish an opportunity to conquer the pressure

ridges of partial payments or the Polar night of bank discount, or if

the intricacies of formal grammar do not resolve themselves into the

North Pole of correct expression,--I have misjudged that teacher's

capacities; for the great triumph of teaching is to get our pupils to

see the fundamental and the eternal in things that are seemingly trivial

and transitory. We are fond of dividing school studies into the cultural

and the practical, into the humanities and the sciences. Believe me,

there is no study worth the teaching that is not practical at basis, and

there is no practical study that has not its human interest and its

humanizing influence--if only we go to some pains to search them out.

V

I have said that the most useful thing that education can do is to imbue

the pupil with the ideal of effortful achievement which will lead him to

do cheerfully and effectively the disagreeable tasks that fall to his

lot. I have said that the next most useful thing that it can do is to

give him a general method of solving the problems that he meets. Is

there any other useful outcome of a general nature that we may rank in

importance with these two? I believe that there is, and I can perhaps

tell you what I mean by another reference to a concrete case. I know a

man who lacks this third factor, although he possesses the other two in

a very generous measure. He is full of ambition, persistence, and

courage. He is master of the rational method of solving the problems

that beset him. He does his work intelligently and effectively. And yet

he has failed to make a good living. Why? Simply because of his standard

of what constitutes a good living. Measured by my standard, he is doing

excellently well. Measured by his own standard, he is a miserable

failure. He is depressed and gloomy and out of harmony with the world,

simply because he has no other standard for a good living than a

financial one. He is by profession a civil engineer. His work is much

more remunerative than is that of many other callings. He has it in him

to attain to professional distinction in that work. But to this

opportunity he is blind. In the great industrial center in which he

works, he is constantly irritated by the evidences of wealth and luxury

beyond what he himself enjoys. The millionaire captain of industry is

his hero, and because he is not numbered among this class, he looks at

the world through the bluest kind of spectacles.

Now, to my mind that man's education failed somewhere, and its failure

lay in the fact that it did not develop in him ideals of success that

would have made him immune to these irritating factors. We have often

heard it said that education should rid the mind of the incubus of

superstition, and one very important effect of universal education is

that it does offer to all men an explanation of the phenomena that

formerly weighted down the mind with fear and dread, and opened an easy

ingress to the forces of superstition and fraud and error. Education has

accomplished this function, I think, passably well with respect to the

more obvious sources of superstition. Necromancy and magic, demonism and

witchcraft, have long since been relegated to the limbo of exposed

fraud. Their conquest has been one of the most significant advances that

man has made above the savage. The truths of science have at last

triumphed, and, as education has diffused these truths among the masses,

the triumph has become almost universal.

But there are other forms of superstition besides those I have

mentioned,--other instances of a false perspective, of distorted values,

of inadequate standards. If belief in witchcraft or in magic is bad

because it falls short of an adequate interpretation of nature,--if it

is false because it is inconsistent with human experience,--then the

worship of Mammon that my engineer friend represents is tenfold worse

than witchcraft, measured by the same standards. If there is any lesson

that human history teaches with compelling force, it is surely this:

Every race which has yielded to the demon of individualism and the lust

for gold and self-gratification has gone down the swift and certain road

to national decay. Every race that, through unusual material prosperity,

has lost its grip on the eternal verities of self-sacrifice and

self-denial has left the lesson of its downfall written large upon the

pages of history. I repeat that if superstition consists in believing

something that is inconsistent with rational human experience, then our

present worship of the golden calf is by far the most dangerous form of

superstition that has ever befuddled the human intellect.

But, you ask, what can education do to alleviate a condition of this

sort? How may the weak influence of the school make itself felt in an

environment that has crystallized on every hand this unfortunate

standard? Individualism is in the air. It is the dominant spirit of the

times. It is reënforced upon every side by the unmistakable evidences of

national prosperity. It is easy to preach the simple life, but who will

live it unless he has to? It is easy to say that man should have social

and not individual standards of success and achievement, but what effect

will your puerile assertion have upon the situation that confronts us?

Yes; it is easier to be a pessimist than an optimist. It is far easier

to lie back and let things run their course than it is to strike out

into midstream and make what must be for the pioneer a fatal effort to

stem the current. But is the situation absolutely hopeless? If the

forces of education can lift the Japanese people from barbarism to

enlightenment in two generations; if education can in a single century

transform Germany from the weakest to the strongest power on the

continent of Europe; if five short years of a certain type of education

can change the course of destiny in China;--are we warranted in our

assumption that we hold a weak weapon in this fight against Mammon?

I have intimated that the attitude of my engineer friend toward life is

the result of twisted ideals. A good many young men are going out into

life with a similar defect in their education. They gain their ideals,

not from the great wellsprings of human experience as represented in

history and literature, in religion and art, but from the environment

around them, and consequently they become victims of this superstition

from the outset. As a trainer of teachers, I hold it to be one important

part of my duty to fortify my students as strongly as I can against this

false standard of which my engineer friend is the victim. It is just as

much a part of my duty to give my students effective and consistent

standards of what a good living consists in as it is to give them the

technical knowledge and skill that will enable them to make a good

living. If my students who are to become teachers have standards of

living and standards of success that are inconsistent with the great

ideal of social service for which teaching stands, then I have fallen

far short of success in my work. If they are constantly irritated by the

evidences of luxury beyond their means, if this irritation sours their

dispositions and checks their spontaneity, their efficiency as teachers

is greatly lessened or perhaps entirely negated. And if my engineer

friend places worldly emoluments upon a higher plane than professional

efficiency, I dread for the safety of the bridges that he builds. His

education as an engineer should have fortified him against just such a

contingency. It should have left him with the ideal of craftsmanship

supreme in his life. And if his technical education failed to do this,

his general education ought, at least, to have given him a bias in the

right direction.

I believe that all forms of vocational and professional education are

not so strong in this respect as they should be. Again you say to me,

What can education do when the spirit of the times speaks so strongly on

the other side? But what is education for if it is not to preserve midst

the chaos and confusion of troublous times the great truths that the

race has wrung from its experience? How different might have been the

fate of Rome, if Rome had possessed an educational system touching every

child in the Empire, and if, during the years that witnessed her decay

and downfall, those schools could have kept steadily, persistently at

work, impressing upon every member of each successive generation the

virtues that made the old Romans strong and virile--the virtues that

enabled them to lay the foundations of an empire that crumbled in ruins

once these truths were forgotten. Is it not the specific task of

education to represent in each generation the human experiences that

have been tried and tested and found to work,--to represent these in the

face of opposition if need be,--to be faithful to the trusteeship of the

most priceless legacy that the past has left to the present and to the

future? If this is not our function in the scheme of things, then what

is our function? Is it to stand with bated breath to catch the first

whisper that will usher in the next change? Is it to surrender all

initiative and simply allow ourselves to be tossed hither and yon by the

waves and cross-waves of a fickle public opinion? Is it to cower in

dread of a criticism that is not only unjust but often ill-advised of

the real conditions under which we are doing our work?

I take it that none of us is ready to answer these questions in the

affirmative. Deep down in our hearts we know that we have a useful work

to do, and we know that we are doing it passably well. We also know our

defects and shortcomings at least as well as one who has never faced our

problems and tried to solve them. And it is from this latter type that

most of the drastic criticism, especially of the elementary and

secondary school, emanates. I confess that my gorge rises within me when

I read or hear the invectives that are being hurled against teaching as

a profession (and against the work of the elementary and secondary

school in particular) by men who know nothing of this work at first

hand. This is the greatest handicap under which the profession of

teaching labors. In every other important field of human activity a man

must present his credentials before he takes his seat at the council

table, and even then he must sit and listen respectfully to his elders

for a while before he ventures a criticism or even a suggestion. This

plan may have its defects. It may keep things on too conservative a

basis; but it avoids the danger into which we as a profession have

fallen,--the danger of "half-baked" theories and unmatured policies.

To-day the only man that can get a respectable hearing at our great

national educational meetings is the man who has something new and

bizarre to propose. And the more startling the proposal, the greater is

the measure of adulation that he receives. The result of this is a

continual straining for effect, an enormous annual crop of fads and

fancies, which, though most of them are happily short-lived, keep us in

a state of continual turmoil and confusion.

* * * * *

Now, it goes without saying that there are many ways of making education

hit the mark of utility in addition to those that I have mentioned. The

teachers down in the lower grades who are teaching little children the

arts of reading and writing and computation are doing vastly more in a

practical direction than they are ever given credit for doing; for

reading and writing and the manipulation of numbers are, next to oral

speech itself, the prime necessities in the social and industrial world.

These arts are being taught to-day better than they have ever been

taught before,--and the technique of their teaching is undergoing

constant refinement and improvement.

The school can do and is doing other useful things. Some schools are

training their pupils to be well mannered and courteous and considerate

of the rights of others. They are teaching children one of the most

basic and fundamental laws of human life; namely, that there are some

things that a gentleman cannot do and some things that society will not

stand. How many a painful experience in solving this very problem of

getting a living could be avoided if one had only learned this lesson

passing well! What a pity it is that some schools that stand to-day for

what we call educational progress are failing in just this

particular--are sending out into the world an annual crop of boys and

girls who must learn the great lesson of self-control and a proper

respect for the rights of others in the bitter school of experience,--a

school in which the rod will never be spared, but whose chastening

scourge comes sometimes, alas, too late!

There is no feature of school life which has not its almost infinite

possibilities of utility. But after all, are not the basic and

fundamental things these ideals that I have named? And should not we who

teach stand for idealism in its widest sense? Should we not ourselves

subscribe an undying fidelity to those great ideals for which teaching

must stand,--to the ideal of social service which lies at the basis of

our craft, to the ideals of effort and discipline that make a nation

great and its children strong, to the ideal of science that dissipates

the black night of ignorance and superstition, to the ideal of culture

that humanizes mankind?