CHAPTER VI
Weakness Of System Apart From Lack Of Religion
There is no attempt made in this work to criticize the curriculum of the public school system, nor the qualifications of teachers, nor the methods used, nor the results obtained. Such criticisms are raised frequently by those far more competent than we are to speak.
Observations which we might be inclined to make, were it not outside our scope, were embodied in an article written for the December, 1938, number of the Atlantic Monthly by J. Anton de Haas, who claims to have been a professor in four American Universities and one Europeon.
The reader will bear with us while we quote from that article.
The Student Gets Through Easily
“In Holland we have, as here, three types of schools—the elementary, the secondary, and the university. Their positions are clearly defined and separated.
“The elementary school has as its purpose to give to the pupils a command of the tools with which to acquire knowledge, and a rudimentary acquaintance with the world in which they live.
“The secondary schools have the purpose to impart such information as any person needs to possess to be fully aware of the physical, cultural, political, and economic world—in other words, the indispensable minimum of knowledge for a modern and intelligent person.
“The university, on the other hand, provides for specialized professional training and for research in all fields of knowledge.
“The real backbone of the system is the secondary school. Here the pupils learn four modern languages well enough to be able to read, write, and speak them. They study chemistry, physics, mathematics, botany, sociology, economics, civics, astronomy, drawing, geography, and history. Throughout the five years of this school the subjects are coordinated with each other. No subject is dropped after having been taken up, and when the five-year course is completed the student passes a searching examination covering nineteen different subjects. It consists of a two weeks’ written test, followed by a two weeks’ oral test. The examinations are given by a committee selected by the central office of education from high school and university faculties. Practically all my teachers in the high school held doctor’s degrees in the subjects they were teaching, and taught only the subject in which they were trained. And we learned by the only process that has yet shown results: we learned by constant drill and hard work.
“Of course, we did not enjoy this rigid discipline. There was mighty little time left for play or for spectacular athletic feats.
Knowledge Subordinated to Method
“When I was working my way through an American university by teaching French and German in a secondary school, the principal came to me one day very much disturbed. The teacher of chemistry had fallen ill and there was no one who could take his place. The honor was therefore conferred upon me. ‘Can you do it?" he asked. And I, by that time sufficiently Americanized to know what answer was demanded, responded with sadness in my heart, but with the expected confidence in my tone: 'I can try' And so I became the expert in chemistry.
“This new work thus wished on me was appalling enough, but what made it really difficult was the comforting statement that followed the assignment: ‘After all, they are not here to learn chemistry, but to learn the laboratory method!’ That was indeed a new slant on my problem. I was greatly puzzled. In my crude innocence I had always believed—in fact, had been encouraged to believe—that one studied a subject in order to acquire accurate knowledge of that particular field. Evidently I had always been wrong. One studies a subject to learn some kind of method. Now for two years in my high school I had spent four hours a week in a laboratory in a course of elementary qualitative analysis. But I must confess I never knew there was such a thing as a laboratory method, which one could acquire by the mysterious process of not learning chemistry.
“Being young and anxious to learn. I asked for advice from others. I made a most surprising discovery: every subject was apparently taught for some equally mysterious purpose. One studied mathematics, not to learn to add and subtract, or to solve complicated mathematical problems—heaven forbid! One studied mathematics to discipline the mind.
“French was studied, like Latin, not to learn the language in order to enlarge one’s cultural horizons—that was an exploded and antiquated notion; foreign languages were studied to enable the students to understand their own language.
“How could I undertake to teach chemistry under these circumstances, not having the remotest idea what was to be found at the end of the road along which my poor students and I were to travel? I asked for more advice. I found it m the Department of Education of our university. My visit to one of the leading men in the department gave me much to think about — but clarified nothing.
“I was told that although I knew a good deal of chemistry I was totally unfit to tell others of my knowledge, since I did not possess the right method. ‘You mean the laboratory method?’ I asked hesitatingly, conscious of my inferiority. ‘Young man, that is a by-product. What I mean is that with the right method any good teacher can teach almost any subject. Before you undertake to teach chemistry, you need, not more knowledge of chemistry, but knowledge of teaching method.' ...
“The teachers now teaching in our grammar schools and high schools are inadequately equipped with a knowledge of the subjects they are required to teach. Many of them are called upon to teach subjects with which they have only the most superficial acquaintance. They have spent so much time in departments of ‘education' learning how to teach, that they have been deprived of an opportunity to learn what to teach.
“If there is one thing the world does not need it is more leadership. The battle being waged politically and internationally is essentially one between leaders craving action and those who know too much to act. Nor have we been wholly unaware in this country that something is not quite right. The egocentric mentality of youth, who more than ever before are convinced that this is the day when ‘youth will be served’ and that the world is largely if not entirely run for their benefit, has led to some protests. But our educators are undaunted. If something is wrong it can easily be corrected. What we now need is more attention to ‘character building.' Thank heavens, another intangible.
Character Formation Too Vague
“Now to me all this seems absurd. I am old-fashioned enough to adhere to the old notion that character is, as it were, the subtle essence of a person’s inherited characteristics, his environment, and his habit of life. I have always thought that honesty with one’s self, intellectual honesty, was the first step on the road to character building, and that a decent regard for others, born of a clear understanding of their problems and desires, though different from our own, was the next step.
“But I am wrong again. We are now, so the newspapers inform me, going to give special attention to character building. I can just imagine a teacher saying to a group of undisciplined and spoiled youths, ‘Now, children, we are going to devote the next half hour to character building.'
“Have we gone insane? Maybe not quite, but we are certainly on the road. And don’t blame the teachers altogether. They are usually quite helpless. Many, if not most of them, are definitely opposed to all this falderol and firmly believe in the old ways of acquiring knowledge. They still believe that an individual needs certain fundamental knowledge to fit into society, that this knowledge can be acquired only by hard work, and that the by-product is a character formed by intellectual honesty and disciplined thought and action. But they are helpless. Why?
“Look at your local schools some day and compare their administrative burdens with those of, say, twenty years ago. Principals and vice principals, curriculum directors, psychological advisers, stenographers and filing clerks—I shall not undertake to enumerate them. We of the old school wonder why all this is necessary. Why all this elaborate office machinery, why all these files and files of cards and folders, why all this entourage of the executive?
Is This Teaching?
‘The American system sets up, not the world and its requirements as the standard, but the child. Thus, as the child passes along the assembly line, the progress of the product must be constantly inspected, just as they do it in the Ford plant.
“The process starts with the psychological test. The child's I.Q. is registered. And that is only the beginning. From then on, the teacher’s time is occupied far more with checks and counterchecks and inspections than with acquiring more knowledge of the subject or with teaching. And my observation is that most of this record compilation is totally useless.
“Some years ago our daughter, attending a public high school, was not receiving very good grades in arithmetic. We went to the school to see if possibly the teachers could suggest some way in which we could assist her to make a better showing. We were ushered into the august presence of the chief executive. A clerk was summoned, and a search was made in the elaborate filing system that lined the walls of an adjoining room. Triumphantly a folder was extracted and placed on the desk. Deep silence and a close examination of the statistical data followed. Then came the pronouncement: ‘You have no cause for worry; her I.Q. is all right!’ This certainly soothed my ragged nerves; but I had never doubted her I.Q. I did not even know what it was or where she carried it. I wanted to know about her arithmetic. It was explained to me, in that condescending and kindly fashion which the expert so frequently assumes when addressing the rank outsider, that my worry regarding arithmetic was quite irrelevant. Her I.Q. being what it was, the system being what it was, the outcome was assured. The assembly-line technique would not fail her.
“We removed our daughter from the assembly line and from the further administrative protection of this perfectly systematized educational factory and sent her to a school where they did not know the difference between an I.Q. and a bullfrog. She is doing excellent work now, unhampered by executive interference and periodic inspection.
“Once you make method the centre of your system, the need for constant supervision, checking. and revision of technique becomes easily evident. Teaching now becomes a matter of organization and administrative control and not of knowledge. The professional administrators, through their constant contact with State Boards of Education, state legislators, and town officers, have learned about all that politicians can teach. They, and the select few among the teachers’ colleges, have by now secured a strangle hold on a substantial part of the educational system of the country.
“Let us tell the youngsters, ‘We think this is what you need to learn to be an intelligent, modern citizen of the world. Now go to it. We don’t care whether it will increase your earning power. Neither are we going to tell you that you come to college not to learn but to make social contacts. This is not a country club.’
Mortimer J. Adler, writing in Harper's, October, 1940, said:
“This pre-war generation has been made what it is by its teachers, these colleagues of mine, justifiably respected in their special fields, yet undermining all the merits of their teaching by a false philosophy ... Public education in the United States is run by men and women who have been inoculated with pragmatic liberalism at leading schools of education ... Students are taught: There is no wrong or right: Whoever wins is right; Whatever works is good! Justice is nothing but the will of the stronger.”
President Hutchins of the University of Chicago, (June, 1940) said:
“In order to believe in democracy we must believe that there is a difference between truth and falsity, good and bad, right and wrong, and that truth, goodness and right are objective (not subjective) standards, even though they cannot be experimentally verified ... Are we prepared to defend these principles?
Of course we are not. For forty years and more our intellectual leaders have been telling us that they are not true. They have been telling us that nothing is true that cannot be subject to experimental verification. In the whole realm of social thought there can be nothing but opinion. Since there is nothing but opinion, everybody is entitled to his own opinion ... If everything is a matter of opinion, force becomes the only way of settling differences of opinion. And, of course, if success is the test of rightness, right is on the side of the heavier battalions.”
Wilford M. Aikin, of the Progressive Education Association, wrote an article for the New York Times Magazine, for September 7, 1941, in which he deplored the failure of the public school system to give the people of America what they were promised when that system was introduced by Horace Mann one hundred years ago.
After pointing out that our schools and colleges have lost sight of their major responsibility to the nation, that they have forgotten the chief purpose of their existence, that few of those graduating from college have a clear understanding of the democratic ideals of life or of their great responsibility for the common welfare, that American youths are confused, without guiding principles of belief and action, Mr. Aiken notes these weaknesses in the system:
“First, our educational institutions have been trying to do so many excellent things that the big thing has been crowded out. We have demanded that the schools teach not only English, science, mathematics, foreign language and history, but health, safety, home-making, the arts, shop work, trades, shorthand, typing, agriculture and scores of other subjects.
“Secondly, to enter college the student must have spent at least two years in the study of the language of another people, but he need not have spent one hour in the study of his own nation's history, ideals or problems. To be graduated from college the student must have a reading knowledge of at least one modern foreign language, but he can have his diploma with no knowledge or understanding of the United States and its problems except what he has learned just by living here.”
Speaking to 2000 of the world’s most prominent scientists and educators, during the observance of the Jubilee of the Chicago University, Robert M. Hutchins, on September 25, 1941, blamed them for the “failure of education."
Dr. Hutchins also made this significant comment:
“It is paradoxical that now when we need trained technicians and skilled mechanics for national defense we cannot find them though millions were, we thought, trained for just such work in the last ten years."
Allowing Children to Follow Their "Urges”
There is a tendency in the field of education today to disregard this heart and soul culture completely, and even to cater to the “urges” of the child.
Former President Taft in an address at the commencement exercises of a Business College in Philadelphia, January 21, 1914, criticized the present-day tendency to defer to the likes and dislikes of children, he said:
“We are coddling our boys and girls. We are giving them too much freedom; we are humoring their callow preferences and desires, and we are not, through obedience and authority, teaching them the lessons that are essential to making them successful and useful members of the community. And more than this, we are seeking to cure defects in our education, as well as in our society, by more democracy. We have seen the ridiculous exhibition of school children striking because some favorite principal was transferred to another school, and we find the newspapers stimulating such movements, and weak-minded parents looking with pride upon the courage and enterprise of their offspring.“
The Catholic Church does not hold to the Calvinistic theory that human nature became utterly depraved through the fall of the first man who possessed it. It believes that all men did inherit a less perfect human nature, with a darker understanding and a weaker will than they would have inherited otherwise.
But the Church still maintains that the mind and will of man can control his lower appetites, and that his glory consists in perfecting his nature and not in degrading it; and surely the history of mankind offers clear proof that the world has had innumerable people who became well nigh perfect by pursuing the spiritual life. By aiming at the acquisition of virtue, they checked their inclinations to evil and prevented any vice from taking root in their lives; they acquired a high degree of morality[...]