American Faith In Education

In an article under the caption "The American Intellect," Professor Barrett Wendell, in Lord Acton's "Cambridge Modern History" defines America's most prominent characteristic as "superstitions devotion to education." He declares that American "faith in the saving grace of education seems more deeply rooted than even religion itself."

This may not be just the proper way of expressing a fact with which everybody is familiar, but from the point of view of the state it is undoubtedly entirely true. Religious training in America is very properly left to the individual and the state does not meddle with this training of its subjects. Nevertheless religious faith is a deep rooted growth throughout our civilization. Our secular education is built upon that kind of a foundation and undoubtedly that is a reason of the great faith of many in public education. And this faith is unquestionably well founded. Public education has probably had more to do with the development and promotion of American institutions than any other agency, if not more than all others combined. Without the ennobling influence of education leading to enlightenment and growth and liberality and morality, our institutions could never have withstood the severe tests to which they have been put.

In America there has been and is going on an assimilation of such a heterogeneous mass of humanity as has never before taken place in any country. Public education has been depended upon in the past to Americanize this conglomerate mass of humanity and fashion it for American citizenship. And it has performed its work remarkably well. The strain has been severe and anxious questionings arise from time to time as to the continued ability of our educational institutions to do this work, but all this leads but to more strenuous efforts to put the educational system on a higher plane.

There are probably those among us who look upon education as a sort of patent medicine warranted to cure all social ills, but the number to whom our educational system is become an unintelligent form is not large. We are not always able to see how the grave difficulties which confront us in fashioning the heterogeneous mass constantly coming to us into our own mold and in such moments we are apt to fall back blindly possibly upon education, nevertheless the powers that direct educational matters are generally the most intelligent and alert and high minded of all public agencies. There is advantage in putting the great machinery of education to the keen scrutiny of doubt.

And for the good of our entire civilization there should be and there will be no faltering in our "faith in the saving grace of education." It is to be hoped the time will not come when this faith will degenerate into a superstition, but that it will ever be an intelligent force, seeking always to improve our practice.