Serious complaint is made and for years has been made of the failures of the whole system of education as conducted, from the primary grades to the university and the theological seminary. These complaints are not made by mere carping critics, but by the leading and most responsible educators of the whole country. One of the leading magazines-the Cosmopolitan- published a series of articles extending through a whole year, pointing out the serious defects in the system, under the significant inquiry, "Does a College Education Educate?" The articles were written by acknowledged masters in education. The Outlook, one of the leading religious weeklies of the country, has had much to say in the same direction. The Ladies' Home Journal, in the delightfully plain and winning style of its editor, has not spared to declare whole and wholesome counsel in the matter. President Eliot, of Harvard University, one of the leading educators not only of the United States, but of the world, being in position to speak with authority on the subject, has done so in no uncertain terms: in set addresses to educators pointing out that "the shortcomings and failures in American education, and the disappointments concerning its results, have been many and grievous." Even the United States Senate was obliged to take cognizance of this subject; and with disappointing results.
A few illustrative extracts are here presented. At the annual meeting of the Connecticut State Teachers' Association in New Haven, Oct. 17, 1902, President Eliot, of Harvard, delivered an address "advocating the expenditure of more money for education in the United States on the ground that the shortcomings and failures in American education have been many and grievous." The following is a summary in his own words of the evidences of the failure of popular education:-
1. Drunkenness.-"For more than two generations we have been struggling with the barbarous vice of drunkenness, but have not yet discovered a successful method of dealing with it. The legislation of the states has been variable and in moral significance uncertain.
"In some of the states of the Union we have been depending on prohibitory legislation, but the intelligence of the people has been insufficient either to enforce such legislation or to substitute better."
2. Gambling.-"The persistence of gambling in the United States is another disappointing thing to the advocates of popular education, for gambling is an extraordinarily unintelligent form of pleasurable excitement. It is a prevalent vice among all savage people, but one which a moderate cultivation of the intelligence. a very little foresight, and the least sense of responsibility should be sufficient to eradicate."
3. Bad Government.-"It must be confessed that the results of universal suffrage are not in all respects what we should have expected from a people supposed to be prepared at school for an intelligent exercise of suffrage. We have discovered from actual observation that universal suffrage often produces bad government, especially in large cities."
4. Crime, Mob, and Riot.-"It is a reproach to popular education that the gravest crimes of violence are committed in great number all over the United States, in the older states as well as in the new, by individuals and by mobs, and with a large measure of impunity. The population produces a considerable number of burglars, robbers, rioters, lynchers, and murderers, and is not intelligent enough either to suppress or to exterminate these criminals."
5. Bad Reading.-"The nature of the daily reading supplied to the American public affords much ground for discouragement." "Since one invaluable result of education is a taste for good reading, the purchase by the people of thousands of tons of ephemeral reading matter, which is not good in either form or substance, shows that one great end of popular education has not been attained."
6. The. Popular Theater.-"The popular taste is for trivial spectacles, burlesque, vulgar vaudeville, extravaganza, and melodrama, and the stage often presents to unmoved audiences scenes and situations of an unwholesome sort."
7. Medical Delusions.-"Americans ... are the greatest consumers of patent medicines in the known world, and the most credulous patrons of all sorts of 'medicine men' and women, and of novel healing arts."
8. Labor Strikes.-"That labor strikes should occur more and more frequently, and be more and more widespread, has been another serious disappointment in regard to the outcome of popular education. As we have all seen lately, the strike is often resorted to for reasons not made public, or, at least, not made public until after the strike has taken place."
On "the educational processes of our time"-the prevailing "skeptical, analytical, critical process of inquiry and investigation ;" the process in which "Doubt is the pedagogue which leads the pupil to knowledge;" the Outlook, April 21, 1900, remarks:-
"'Does he study the human body?-Dissection and anatomy are the foundations of his study.
"Chemistry?-The laboratory furnishes him the means of analysis and inquiry into physical substances.
"History?-He questions the statements which have been unquestioned heretofore, ransacks libraries for authorities in ancient volumes and more ancient documents.
"Literature?-The poem which he read only to enjoy he now subjects to the scalpel, inquires whether it really is beautiful, why it is beautiful, how its meter should be classified, how its figures have been constructed.
"Philosophy?-He subjects his own consciousness to a process of vivisection in an endeavor to ascertain the physiology and anatomy of the human spirit, brings his soul into the laboratory that he may learn its chemical constituents.
"Meanwhile the constructive and synthetic process is relegated to a second place, or lost sight of altogether.
"Does he study medicine?-He gives more attention to diagnosis than to therapeutics, to the analysis of disease than to the problem how to overcome it.
"Law?-He spends more time in analyzing cases than in developing power to grasp great principles and apply them in the administration of justice to varying conditions.
"The classics?-It is strange if he has not at graduation spent more weeks in the syntax and grammar of the language than he has spent hours in acquiring and appreciating the thought and the spirit of the great classic authors. It has been well and truly said of the modern student that he does not study grammar to understand Homer, he reads Homer to get the Greek grammar.
"His historical study has given him dates, events, a mental historical chart; perhaps, too, it has given him a scholar's power to discriminate between the true and the false, the historical and the mythical in ancient legends; but not to many has it given an understanding of the significance of events, a comprehension of, or even any new light upon, the real meaning of the life of man on the earth.
"Has he been studying philosophy?-Happy is he if, as a result of his analysis of self-consciousness, he has not become morbid respecting his own inner life, or cynically skeptical concerning the inner life of others.
"It is doubtless in the realm of ethics and religion that the disastrous results of a too exclusive analytical process and a too exclusive critical spirit are seen.
"Carrying the same spirit, applying the same methods, to the investigation of religion, the Bible becomes to him simply a collection of ancient literature, whose sources, structure, and forms he studies, whose spirit he, at least for the time, forgets; worship is a ritual whose origin, rise, and development he investigates; whose real significance as an expression of penitence, gratitude, and consecration he loses sight of altogether. Faith, is a series of tenets whose biological development the traces: or a form of consciousness whose relation to brain action he inquires into; or whose growth by evolutionary processes out of earlier states he endeavors to retrace: forgetting meanwhile what is the meaning of the experience itself as a present fact in human life, what vital force and significance it possesses,
"Vivisection is almost sure sooner or later to become a post-mortem; and the subject of it, whether it be a flower, a body, an author, or an experience, generally dies under the scalpel. It is for this reason that so many students in school, academy, and college lose, not merely their theology, which is perhaps no great loss, but their religion, which is an irreparable loss, while they are acquiring an education."
The city of Washington is credited with having the best schools and the best school system in the United States. But there came to the United States Senate Committee on District of Columbia so many complaints concerning the work done in those schools that the Senate appointed a committee to investigate the whole subject. What this committee found will be suggested by the following notice of their report to the Senate, published in the literary supplement of the New York Times, June 23, 1900, under the heading "Queer School Work" :-
"There was an investigation to find about what was the condition of the pupils on their entrance into the high schools at the average age of fourteen. At that point they had had all the schooling they were expected to get in arithmetic: they had been studying the history of their country for five years; and they were, in the words of the trustees, believed to be 'able to dispose correctly of almost any English sentence.' Practically they had reached the limit of the advantages that the great body of the children in any large city can get from the public schools, and were supposed to be ready for that 'higher' teaching which only a small fraction of those children can afford to take.
"It seems that in Washington the methods of teaching are supposed to be of a peculiarly advanced character, and 'the one best adapted to train the minds of children and youth, and to teach them to think and to express themselves clearly.' As early as in the fifth grade, when the children are about ten years old, emphasis is 'laid upon powers and roots, square measure, cubic measure, cube root,' History was taught so that 'the child possessed a clear, connected, sequential view of the whole subject selected.' In the teaching of English the process is thus described:-
" 'The work of the fourth grade, of finding the base of the sentence, was continued, more and more difficult sentences being mastered; the idea asserted was differentiated as to identity, condition, place, time, size, etc., and action; and finally the idea was analyzed for its elements. Here the child began the study of the parts of speech, in addition to being required to know the sentence-as a whole, its parts, bases, modifiers, asserters- whether emphatic, potential, absolute, etc., and what is asserted.'
"The result of the examinations, which were framed by the Civil Service Commission, was distinctly discouraging. In arithmetic, where nothing was required but a knowledge of the four fundamental rules and fractions, the pupils of only one school, some 350 out of 1,300, attained the average of 70 per cent, the lowest that would admit to the eligible list for common clerical work, while less than 30 per cent in all the schools reached that average, and only 7 per cent attained a marking of 90 per cent, which is the average of those who succeed in entering the service. As the schooling in arithmetic was completed, this is a bad showing.
"In history it was worse yet. Only 3.6 per cent made 90, only 19 per cent made 70, and the total average was but 53.1 per cent. One of the questions asked was as follows:-
"''Give a brief account of the Puritans, or of the Pilgrims, stating why so called, the country from which they came, their reasons for emigrating, where they settled, and some of their characteristics, habits, and customs.'
"Some of the answers throw light on the 'clear, connected, sequential view of the whole subject,' which the pupils are supposed by the fond trustees to get. For instance:-
"'Pilgrims were called pilgrims because they pilgrimed and journed.'
"'The pilgrims prayed for providence which was at times granted to them.'
"'The exiles from england were called Pilgrims after the rocky coast of Plymouth upon which they landed.'
"'The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth rock early in the spring in a small boat called the May-Flower. When they landed they were few in number. Being opposed to the weather many died. Their clothing was not very thick for winter and their shelter did not protect the cold, wind, rain, and snow from coming in.'
"These answers also give some idea of the ability acquired by the pupils to 'dispose quickly of almost any English sentence,' as do the varied modes of spelling the names of states. Florida appears as Florida, Florido, Florada, Floridy, and floriday. Massachusetts becomes in succession Massachusettes, Massachuesettes, Masschusetts, Masschusettes, masschsuetts, Massachtusettes, and Massachewsettes.
"We have no wish to condemn the entire system of teaching in Washington from this report: it does not reveal enough about it. And we are well aware of the diabolic ingenuity of stupidity of which even welltaught children are sometimes capable; but we submit that children in the state disclosed by the facts we have cited are not fit subjects for 'higher' tuition, and that until the results of effort below the grade they have reached are very much better, the money and energy expended on that higher tuition are wasted-and worse."
When such is the record as to the educational work in the supposedly best school system in the United States, what must it be in the worst! And that this is most probably a fair showing is confirmed by the fact that, in 1900, Columbia University found itself compelled to make the common spelling-book a fixture in its curriculum, because of the barbarous inability to spell that was revealed in the matriculation papers of college graduates who applied for admission.
On the need of "a better system of education" in this country a contributor to the Outlook, in 1899, said:-
"There must be in this country a better system of education, a system that is in closer touch with life, and that fits rather than unfits for life. There must be something in our common schools that will make for self-respect, and for that respect for others that is a part of true self-respect; something that will develop faithfulness and intelligence and pride in work; something that will link head and hands by indissoluble bonds. Domestic science and manual training in schools will gradually give a greater respect for manual labor; and with this respect, should go a greater diffusion of manual labor; for the lack in our present system is quite as much on the side of employers as of employed.
"An intelligent and many-sided woman recently remarked to me that Queen Victoria would be a better woman if she made her own bed daily. While it may not be practicable for queens to make their own beds, or for the President of the United States to chop his own wood, there never will be faithfulness, respect, and intelligence on the side of the workers unless the same attitude toward work is found in the employers."
This same thought and the need of industrial education was emphasized in l901 by the introduction in the House of Representatives in Congress the following:-
"A Bill"
"To establish a general system of industrial education in the territories of the United States and insular dependencies.
"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled: That there shall be established in all the territories subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States, including the District of Columbia and the recently-acquired islands, a system of primary industrial education, to the end that all children may become intelligent, skilful, efficient, and self-supporting citizens.
"Section 2.-That in these schools agriculture and the ordinary arts of civilized life shall be taught practically to all youth who apply between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. Instruction shall include the sciences which underlie these arts, and every pupil shall be required to work with his hands not less than four hours daily under the direction of such schools, with adequate farms, buildings, and a competent force of teachers, and that such schools be free of debt; provided further, that all pupils shall work with their hands for four hours daily for five days of each week of the term."
Of the need and the value of this, Prof. Edward Daniells, of Washington, D. C., wrote thus:-
"This system will cost millions, but it will soon return tenfold.
"Ignorance is the curse of the land! Not of books, but that more dangerous kind that, wrapped in the conceit of shallow culture, poses for learning and deceives the masses! The old monkish system has had its day; what was good in it has been lost in the growth of the moss and fungus of ages. The mentality of childhood is stunted, dwarfed, and smothered. In the cities it is already yielding to nature study, manual training, and some slight ameliorations. But the country youth are growing up in hopeless savagery in many states."
In urging "The Needs of American Public Education" in order to redeem it from its "many and grievous shortcomings and failures," in a public address delivered before the Rhode Island Institute of Instruction, Oct. 23, 1902, President Eliot so admirably covered the whole ground that we can do no better than to present the principal points of that address.
Schoolhouses and Grounds
He urged increased expenditure of money, and this money spent first of all in making all school buildings as nearly as possible perfectly fire-proof and sanitary. To this latter end he offered the following wise suggestion:-
"All flues, ducts, and boxes for the reception and conveyance of cold or hot air should be so built and disposed that their interiors can be cleaned. Any one who has examined with a lens the extraordinary amount of animal and vegetable mailer which accumulates on a sheet of 'tangle-foot' fly-paper placed in a cold-air box, at any season of the year when the ground is not covered with snow, will heartily concur in this prescription. The observance of these rules would, of course, demand additional initial expenditure on school buildings, but would diminish the cost of maintenance."
As to the school grounds, he presented the following beautiful thought :-
"Whether in town or country, a large open space, yard, or garden should surround every school building, and should be kept with neatness and decorated with shrubs and flowers."
Health of the Pupils
"Next to this improvement in schoolhouses and schoolyards comes improvement in the sanitary control and management of schools. This control requires the services of skilful physicians; and such a physician should be officially connected with every large school. It should be his duty to watch for contagious diseases, to prevent the too early return to school of children who have suffered from such diseases, to take thought for the eyes of the children lest they be injured in reading or writing by bad postures or bad light, to advise concerning the rectification of remediable bodily defects in any of the children under his supervision, to give advice at homes about the diet and sleep of the children whose nutrition is visibly defective, and, in short, to be the protector, counselor, and friend of the children and their parents with regard to health, normal growth, and the preservation of all the senses in good condition.
"Such medical supervision of school-children would be costly, but it would be the most rewarding school expenditure that a community could make, even from the industrial or commercial point of view, since nothing impairs the well-being and productiveness of a community so much as sickness and premature disability or death. As in an individual, so in a nation, health and strength are the foundations of productiveness and prosperity."
Better Teachers
"The next object for additional expenditure is better teachers. Of course, teachers should know well the subjects which they are to teach; but that is by no means sufficient. Every teacher should also know the best, methods of teaching his subjects. College professors heretofore have been apt to think that knowledge of the subject to be taught was the sufficient qualification of a teacher; but all colleges, as well as all schools, have suffered immeasurable losses as a result of this delusion."
Better Teaching
"With better teachers, numerous other improvements would come in, as, for instance, a better teaching of literature and of history, and better biological and geographical instruction, these natural history studies being pursued by the pupils in the open air as well as in the school-rooms.
"I have elsewhere urged that all public open spaces, whether country parks, forests, beaches, city squares, gardens, or parkways, should be utilized for the instruction of the children of the public schools by teachers capable of interesting them in the phenomena of plant and animal life. But this means quite a new breed of common-school teachers.
"The teaching of geography in the open air is a delightful form of instruction; but it requires a teacher fully possessed of the principles of physiography, and knowing how to illustrate these principles on a small scale in gutters, brooks, gullies, ravines, hillsides, and hilltops.
"Some nature study of this desirable sort has been already introduced into American schools; but it is not persisted in through years enough of the school course. There is needed much more of this sort of study, beginning in the kindergarten and going through the high school."
Better Programs
"An expensive improvement in the public schools, but one urgently needed, is the enrichment of the school program for the years between nine and fourteen, and the introduction of selection among studies as early as ten years of age. Unless this is done, and done soon, the public schools will cease to be resorted to by the children of well-to-do Americans. The private and endowed schools offer a choice of foreign languages, for instance, as early as ten years of age and even earlier; and everybody knows that this is the age at which to begin the study of foreign languages, whether ancient or modern. In large cities it seems to be already settled that the private and endowed schools get the children of all parents who can afford to pay their charges. One reason for this result is that the programs of the public schools are distinctly inferior to the programs of the good private and endowed schools; and they are inferior at precisely this point- they have too limited a range of studies in the years between nine and fourteen. It is, of course, not desirable that each individual child should pursue a great variety of studies; but it is essential that each individual child should have access to a variety of studies."
Manual Training
"In many scattered places in the United States perfect demonstration has already been given that manual training and instruction in the mechanical arts and trades are, in the first place, valuable as means of mental and moral training, and, in the second place, useful for the individual toward obtaining a livelihood, and for the nation toward developing its industries. Accordingly, manual training schools, mechanic arts high schools and trade schools ought to become habitual parts of the American school system; and normal schools and colleges ought to provide optional instruction in these subjects, since all public school teachers ought to understand them. Such schools are more expensive than schools which do not require mechanical apparatus and the service of good mechanics as instructors; but there can be no doubt, that they will repay promptly their cost to the community which maintains them."
Vacation Schools
"Vacation schools have also demonstrated their great usefulness in cities and large towns. The best ones offer manual training for both boys and girls, as well as book work, and are heartily welcomed by both parents and children. They combat effectively the mistaken policy of long vacations for children who can not escape from the crowded city streets and tenements. Indeed, the experience recently gained in city vacation schools and in the summer courses of colleges and universities proves that the long summer vacation of nine to thirteen weeks is by no means necessary to the health of either school-children or maturer students. The best method is to keep the pupil in vigor all the year by means of frequent recesses during school hours, free half-days twice a week, and occasional respites of a week.
"Then the vacation school in summer should offer a distinct variety of work in subjects different from those pursued the rest of the year; for children and adults alike find great refreshment in mere change of work. For example, the competent college professor may indeed seek change of air and scene during the summer vacation, but it is for the purpose of doing under advantageous conditions a kind of intellectual work different from that which engrosses him in term-time, and not with the intention of keeping his mind vacant or inert.
''Furthermore, vacation schools in the poor quarters of closely-built cities are downright refuges from the physical squalor and moral dangers of the streets. It is obvious that vacation schools on an adequate scale must cause a serious addition to school expenditure of a city or large town; for they require the services of an additional corps of teachers, and they need additional apparatus, materials, and service. It is equally obvious that these schools are urgently needed by a large proportion of the population on grounds which are simultaneously physical, mental, and moral."
The Church Recreant
"The church and its ministers can not be said to have risen in public estimation since the Civil War.
Its control over education has distinctly diminished.
In some of its branches it seems to cling to archaic metaphysics and morbid poetic imaginings; in others it apparently inclines to take refuge in decorums, pomps, costumes, and observances. On the whole, ... it has shown little readiness to rely on the intense reality of the universal sentiments to which Jesus appealed, or to go back to the simple preaching of the gospel of brotherhood and unity-of love to God and love to man. So the church as a whole has to-day no influence whatever on many millions of our fellow-countrymen-called Jews or Christians, Protestants or Catholics though they be.
"We still believe that the voluntary church is the best of churches; because a religion which is accepted under compulsion is really no religion at all for the individual soul, though it may be a social embellishment or a prop for the state. Yet, believing thus, we have to admit that the voluntary church in the United States has no hold on a large and increasing part of the population.
"By no positive fault of their own, but by a sort of negative incapacity, legislature, court, and church seem to be passing through some transition which temporarily impairs their power. . . . To redeem and vivify legislatures, courts, and churches, what agency is so promising as education?"
The Need of the Masses
"We should ask ourselves what better remedy than wise popular education, what other remedy, can be imagined for the new evils which threaten society because of the new facilities for making huge combinations of producers, or middlemen; of farmers, or miners, or manufacturers; of rich or poor; of laborers or capitalists?
"Masses of men are much more excitable than average individuals, and will do in gregarious passion things which the individuals who compose the masses would not do. A crowd is dangerously liable to sudden rage or-what is worse-sudden terror, and either emotion may overpower the sense of responsibility and annihilate for the moment both prudence and mercy. There never was a time when common sentiments and desires could be so quickly massed, never a time when the force of multitudes could be so effectively concentrated at a selected point for a common purpose.
"Against this formidable danger there is only one trustworthy defense. The masses of the people must be taught to use their reason, to seek the truth, and to love justice and mercy. There is no safety for democratic society in truth held, or justice loved, by the few; the MILLIONS must mean to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God. The millions must be taught to discuss, not fight; to trust publicity, not secrecy; and to take timely public precautions against every kind of selfish oppression. . . . The common schools should impart the elements of physical, mental, and moral training, and in morals the elements are by far the most valuable part.
"Concerning an educated individual, we may fairly ask, Can he see straight? can he recognize the fact? Next, can he draw a just inference from established facts? Thirdly, has he self-control? or do his passions run away with him? or untoward events daunt him? These are fair tests of his mental and moral capacity. One other test we may fairly apply to an educated individual-does he continue to grow in power and in wisdom throughout his life? His body ceases to grow at twenty-five or thirty years of age-does his soul continue to grow?"
A writer in one of England's leading magazines, of February, 1903, the Nineteenth Century, in an article entitled "The Disadvantages of Education," covers practically the same ground as did President Eliot in his addresses: and to the same end-the shortcomings and failures of education in England, consequently the urgent demand for. reform, yet with the recognition of the truth that "not only in Great Britain, but everywhere, it seems clear that it would be unreasonable to expect that the schools should reform themselves. Therefore reforms must come from outside, unless education is to remain what it is-an elaborate sham, with science in its mouth, but in reality a course of cramming, destructive to common sense."
The extracts presented in this chapter most forcibly emphasize not only the world's sore need of a better system of education, but also the world's knowledge of this need, and its longing for that which will satisfy the need. These extracts also emphasize the truth that nothing short of a system of education built upon the principles advocated in this book-true Christian education-can ever possibly satisfy this great need of a better system of education. The defects and demands of popular education, as presented in these extracts, show that only an education that is positively Christian in the very spirit and power and morals of genuine Christianity, can ever answer the call. President Eliot, in very words, calls for such an education as will cause "the millions" of "democratic society" to ''mean to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God." In very words his goal is "the perfecting of an intelligent individual citizenship in a Christian democracy."