Citizenship And The School

Room 2-1 was comfortably fllled last night at the opening lecture of the summer school course and those who were present were treated to a splendid address on "Citizenship and the School," by Professor Calvin Thomas. The address oecupied about forty minutes in delivery and is well worth reproduction. Our limited space however, will not adïnit of more than brief extracts, and these we give below. The foundations of our public school system were laid by men who had an abiding faith in the saving power of knowledge. Knowledge to them was the bulwark of popular liberty. Ko tax is paid more willingly than that paid for the support of our schools. The people feel tliat our schools somehow liold in keeping the welfare of the community and of the republic. Is this feeling well-founded? Is popular education, considered as a promoter of "good government and the happiness of mankind," actually doing what was expected of it by the fathers? If not wliere lies the difficulty? President Eliot, of Harvard, discussed this question in The Forum of December, 1892, under the title "Wherein Popular Education has Failed." Professor Thomas proceeds to discuss the subject in hand with direct reference to the scholarly paper of President Eliot. President Eliot began by saying that there is serious and general disappointment at the results of popular education. "If general education does not promote general contentment it does not promote public happiuess." One of the effects of educatiou, to his mind, should be to make people think and act more reasonably. There is no evidence of increasing rationality among [the mass of the people. They do not act upon sober reflection. Education has not promoted equality, it has not done away with cruel war. The question before us now is, granting the existence of these evils, do these constitute a valid indictmentot' our system of public instruction? Are we on the wrong track in our confidence in popular education or did people in times past form unreasonable expectations with regard to it? In the first place contentment is not the summum bonum. Contentment means stagnation. Civilization is the outgrowth of man's uneasiness. I am not playing upon words. It is literally true, as Carlyle says, that man's greatness grows out of his unhappiness. The aim of our social effort is not happiness, but welfare. That people are discontented is no sign that popular education bas failed. All the uneasiness we witness is but a sign of healthy life. Xo doubt many of the agitations we observe are ill-judged and chimenea], but the discontent f rom which all these spring is not in itself a thing to be deplored. There is danger to-day that the children of the well-todo may look upon their school and college course as a fashionable routine devised to give them a social standing and so enable them to be happy. Life is'to be enioyed, but the truest enjoyment comes through unselfish devotion to some cause feit to be more important than one's personal pleasure. There is a real though slow increase in rationality. Is it not possible, after all, to overestimate the importance for average life and citizenship of the ability to reason correctly from facts? President Eliot deplores the fact that in the schools, both lower and higher, more attentiou is not given to the observational studies in order to develop in the student reasoning power "the all important object of education." I am a hearty friend of scientiflc education, but I doubt whether any scientific training that can possibly be given in school will rapidly revolutionize popular modes of thinking and acting. Most of the reasoning done by the average man is not reasoning froin facts which lie can verify, but from premises which he can not verify, even if he so desired. They are given him by inherited traditions, by the social tendencies of the time, by the doctrines of his cburch or party and by his social instincts. The education which will protect us from believing in exploded superstitions, therefore, is simply that education which will bring us iu every possible way into fullest sympathy with the intellectual life of our own time. When all has been done that can be done by means of school training to develop the power of reasoning accurately from facts, there will still be large room for differences of opinión upon fundamental premises which can not be settled by an appeal to any facts "within reach. In conclusión the Professor said that if popular education bas hitherto failed to produce in full measure the results it ought to produce, the source of the iailure is to be sought in the moral rather than in tlie purely intellectual sphere of our public instruction. A hearty respect for the Golden Rule coupled with a will to live by it, is worth more to the community as au attribute of average citizenship, than is any skill iu argumentation. The problem is a difficult one. Help must come frorn the direct influence of the teacher's personality upon the character of the growing child. We want teachers who know somethiug of the psychology of childhood. We must insist on a higher standard of preparation for teaching. Then af ter all is done we must expect no sudden transformation. Let us be content to sow our seed and abide the harvest, nor despair of popular education.