The Theory of Education in the United States

V

WITH regard to the third idea that enters into our educational theory, the idea that good government and a generally wholesome public order are conditioned upon having a literate citizenry, not much need be said. We have already mentioned Mr. Jefferson’s strong insistence on this doctrine, and we may now recall the warmth and enthusiasm that he showed for it in a letter congratulating a Spanish correspondent on some steps that the Spanish Government was proposing to take against illiteracy. Mr. Jefferson’s reasoning was that citizens who could read had the means of being correctly informed about public affairs, and that if they were correctly informed they might be trusted to do the right thing about them. There are certain defects in this reasoning upon which we need not dwell. We may observe, however, without at all disparaging literacy, that in general the mere ability to read raises no very extravagant presumptions upon the person who has it. Surely everything depends upon what he reads, and upon the purpose that guides him in reading it. It is interesting to note that one who might be called Mr. Jefferson’s contemporary (he died when Mr. Jefferson was nine years old) furnishes us with precisely the right criticism upon this point. This was Joseph Butler, bishop of Durham, the revered author of the Analogy, and one of the four greatest in all the Church of England’s long roster of great men. Bishop Butler made the acute observation that the majority of men are much more apt at passing things through their minds than they are at thinking about them. Hence, he said, considering the kind of thing we read and the kind of attention we bestow on it, very little of our time is more idly spent than the time spent in reading. For evidence of this one has but to look at our large literate population, to remark its intellectual interests, the general furniture of its mind, as these are revealed by what it reads; by the colossal, the unconscionable, volume of garbage annually shot upon the public from the presses of the country, largely in the form of newspapers and periodicals, On the other hand, too, we may regard the negative testimony furnished by the extremely exiguous existence among us of anything like a serious literature, especially a serious periodical literature. It must be clear, I think, that any expectations put upon the saving grace of literacy are illusory.

We have found, then, three most serious errors in the theory upon which the mechanics of our educational system were designed. This theory contemplates a fantastic and impracticable idea of equality, a fantastic and impracticable idea of democracy, and a fantastically exaggerated idea of the importance of literacy in assuring the support of a sound and enlightened public order. It is not necessary, I think, to go further in the examination of our educational theory, after finding in it three errors of the first magnitude. We may now go on to observe how directly certain structural defects and mechanical failures in our system, and certain misconceptions of function as well, are traceable to these errors of theory. Before doing so, however, let us notice how well these errors complement one another, and how orderly they fall in behind the admirable sentiment that we noticed at the outset of our discussion. First, there was this strong sentiment for one’s children, and for their progress in a civilised life. The conception of a civilised life, of its nature, and of the way to enter into it, was and is often most imperfect, but no matter; the sentiment was in itself noble and disinterested. One’s children should have, at any cost or sacrifice, all the education they could get. Then, playing directly into the hand of this sentiment, there was the idea of equality prompting the belief that they were all capable of taking in and assimilating what there was to be had; and then the idea of democracy, prompting the belief that the whole subject-matter of education should be common property, not common in a true and proper sense, but, roughly, in the sense that so much of it as was not manageable by everybody should be disallowed and disregarded. Then finally, all this had the general sanction of a pseudo-patriotic idea that in thus doing one’s best for one’s children, one was also doing something significant in the way of service to one’s country.

You may see easily, I think, how this theory would work out in practice, and what sort of mechanism would naturally be required to make it effective; hence you may see just what sort of educational system would grow up under the conditions set by this theory. I think further that if you compare the kind of system that you thus imagine with the system that we actually have, you will find a very close correspondence between them; and that the more you particularise the comparison, point by point, the closer you will find the correspondence to be.