Education: Free and Compulsory

If everyone is constantly learning, and each child’s life is his education, why the need for formal education? The need for formal instruction stems from the fact that a child’s faculties are undeveloped and only potential, and that they need experience in order to develop. In order for this exercise to take place, the child needs the environmental materials on which he can operate, and with which he can work. Now it is clear that for a large segment of his general education, he does not need systematic, formal instruction. The space is almost always available for his physical faculties to develop and exercise. For this, no formal instruction is needed. If food and shelter are provided for him, he will grow physically without much instruction. His relationships with others — members of the family and outsiders — will develop spontaneously in the process of living. In all of these matters, a child will spontaneously exercise his faculties on these materials abundant in the world around him. Those precepts that are needed can be imparted relatively simply without need for systematic study.

But there is one area of education where direct spontaneity and a few precepts will not suffice. This is the area of formal study, specifically the area of intellectual knowledge. That knowledge beyond the direct area of his daily life involves a far greater exercise of reasoning powers. This knowledge must be imparted by the use of observation and deductive reasoning, and such a body of thought takes a good deal of time to learn. Furthermore, it must be learned systematically, since reasoning proceeds in orderly, logical steps, organizing observation into a body of systematic knowledge.

The child, lacking the observations and the developed reasoning powers, will never learn these subjects by himself alone, as he can other things. He could not observe and deduce them by his own unaided mental powers. He may learn them from the oral explanations of an instructor, or from the written testimony of books, or from a combination of both. The advantage of the book is that it can set forth the subject fully and systematically; the advantage of the teacher is that, in addition to previous knowledge from the book, he knows and deals with the child directly, and can explain the salient or unclear points. Generally, it has been found that a combination of book and teacher is best for formal instruction.

Formal instruction, therefore, deals with the body of knowledge on certain definite subjects. These subjects are: first of all, reading, so that the child has a superb tool for future acquisition of knowledge, and as a later corollary, the various “language arts” such as spelling and grammar. Writing is another powerful key in the child’s mental development. After these tools are mastered, instruction naturally proceeds in logical development: reading to be spent on such subjects as the world’s natural laws (natural science); the record of man’s development, his ends and actions (history, geography); and later the “moral sciences” of human behavior (economics, politics, philosophy, psychology); and man’s imaginative studies of man (literature). Writing branches out into essays on these various subjects, and into composition. A third elementary tool of great power is arithmetic, beginning with simple numbers and leading up into more developed branches of mathematics. Of these fundamental subjects, reading is of first importance, and for this learning of the alphabet is the primary and logical tool.

It has become fashionable to deride stress of the “three Rs,” but it is obvious that they are of enormous importance, that the sooner they are thoroughly learned, the sooner the child will be able to absorb the vast area of knowledge that constitutes the great heritage of human civilization. They are the keys that unlock the doors of human knowledge, and the doors to the flowering and development of the child’s mental powers. It is also clear that the only necessity and use for systematic formal teaching arises in these technical subjects, since knowledge of them must be presented systematically. There is clearly no need for formal instruction in “how to play,” in “getting along with the group,” in “selecting a dentist,” and the multitude of similar “courses” given in “modern education.” And, since there is no need for formal teaching in physical or directly spontaneous areas, there is no need for instruction in “physical education” or in finger-painting. 2

• 2Later on in life, of course, the youth may well take specific courses in athletics, painting, or music, but this is far different, since it would be systematic study of the subject as a specialty.