Notes on Education

THE COMMON SCHOOL

"The Curse in Education" is the curious title of an essay in the "North American Review" by Rebecca Harding Davis. It is an argument against popular education, though here and there the author makes a half-hearted denial of the purpose for which she has written; but she believes the common schools responsible for much of the evil in American life, and she goes pretty close to saying what she believes. One naturally feels the momentary vexation of Rebecca Harding Davis over our system of education, in reading what she writes; for she knows too much or not enough. She has learned to write, but not to reason; and her argument is based on the old fallacy of drawing a conclusion that the premises do not warrant. From two or three facts in her own experience she goes to a universal judgment. But after all, she has given people much pleasure and not a little instruction as an author, she reasons at least as well as if she were an ignorant woman, and it would be neither logical nor generous to wish her at the wash tub or the cook stove, because she doesn't know an undistributed middle term when she sees it.

She says that out of ninety-one convicts in a Pennsylvania penitentiary, seventy-four were educated. She does not venture to infer that education, therefore, breeds crime; but that it gives crime tools to use. How many nice people are there in Pennslyvania who can read and write, and yet never saw the inside of a penitentiary? It may be true that education gives crime tools to use; but it also gives virtue, industry,

enterprise tools to use; and it can only be considered bad if we concede that the people in a mass are criminals, and that our only security is in their ignorance. The writer passes to the consideration of two communities that came under her observation. "About fifteen years ago," she says, "I was in a lonely corner of Louisiana—a district of pale green prairies sloping down to the gulf, dotted with the half-cultivated farms of the French Acadians. There they had been since they left Acadie years before. An isolated, separate clan, they had retained the character, the handicrafts and the bits of homely, useful knowledge which they brought with them, and also the same utter ignorance of the outer world. Very few of them could read or write. The men tilled the fields on the shores of the black bayoux which crept lazily through the banks of purple and yellow fleurs-de-lis, and the women in their cabins wove the soft, gay cotton stuffs in which they all were clad. They had no railways, no school-houses, no bosses with schemes for making big fortunes, no politics and no newspapers. For years, there had not been a case from among them in the parish court of theft or adultery or murder. They worked enough to keep them from want; they went to mass in the morning, and to a dance at night. They were faithful husbands, loyal friends, tender mothers; a single-minded, honest, merry folk. What more would you have?" The assumption here is that the Acadian innocence was due to the fact that the people could not read and write, but possibly there were other influences that made for virtue and happiness. In sharp contrast a New England village is pictured, with three great schools and a public library, boys educated beyond their sphere of life, unwilling to work and without capital to go into business, and girls knowing a little of various philosophies and two or three

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languages, but not content to live by cooking and washing or to marry farm laborers, moping and looking “at the world in false lights through their tears,” and joining "the great army of half starved, hysteric, morbid women in New England-the most useless figures, perhaps, in the world's swarming myriads." In this case the assumption is that the general unrest and discontent are due to education; and that mere ignorance would mean bliss. It may be that both these scenes described faithfully; but does that in Louisiana represent fairly the ignorant communities of the world, and does that in New England represent fairly the educated communities? And after all, if one were to concede that the life among the French Acadians is higher than that in a Massachusetts village, of what avail would it be, since it is the latter that is in touch with our age and environment, not the former?

Shakespeare represents the rebellious populace of England in a former age as not only ignorant, but the champions of ignorance. When the mob captures the Clerk of Chatham, and brings him before Jack Cade, the accusation is that "he can read and write and cast accounts." "We took him," says the accusers, "setting of boys' copies." And they added: "Has a book in his pocket with red letters in it." And Cade asks sternly: "Dost thou use to write thy name? or hast a mark to thyself, like an honest, plain-dealing man?" Condemnation follows the confession of a little learning. When Lord Say is brought before him for judgment Cade hurries him to death under this severe charge: Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school; and whereas, before, our forefathers had no other books but the score and tally, thou hast caused printing to be used, and contrary to the king, his crown and dignity thou hast built a paper

mill. It will be proved to thy face that thou hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun, a verb, and such abominable words as no Christian can endure to hear." In our day things are reversed, and it is the common people that glorify education, and those who aspire to rank as aristocracy who oppose it, and with reason, for knowledge makes for equality, equal opportunity, and equal rights. It means a forward swing in the progress of the world. Rebecca Harding Davis sneers at the boy who ventures to dream that he may be our foremost citizen and the girl who hopes to be the first lady of the land; but the philosophy of that sneer would condemn Lincoln to ignorance in a log cabin for life and Grant to the drudgery of a tan-yard. To quarrel with popular education is to quarrel with republicanism, with Americanism, with modern civilization, with the age you live in.

We have to deal with the world into which we were born. In our own era our duty lies; and we can not escape from our environment. We may struggle against the drift of events or go with the tide, but the age has us in its grasp; and it is as children of the new century and citizens of the great republic that we must live our lives and do our work, not elsewhere, not in the past, not in the future. The nation's security depends on intelligence, not ignorance; democracy implies general knowledge; and civilization grows with communion, not in isolation. You cannot abdicate your birthright, shrink from its responsibilities nor put aside the struggle for the advance along the line of American ideals. We may long for some land of forgetfulness, where the lotos dust is blown about the spicy downs; but we shall never find it, nor should we be happy there. There is a story of the poet Ossian-that after a disastrous battle a fair maiden, riding a white horse with flowing mane and hooves of gold, met him, and declared her

love. She had come from the far-off Island of Perpetual Youth, galloping over the crest of the waves, and she asked him to mount with her and journey away to that haven of rest and love. The hero mounted behind her, and the white horse, with the golden hooves, strode out across the western sea, and as they went the maid sang of the fair island where there waited for him a hundred harps of richest tone, a hundred steeds of swiftest pace, a hundred kine of choicest breed. At last it rose among the waves as it were out of the setting sun. The hero dwelt there a hundred years in happiness, for bliss was so great in the Island of Perpetual Youth that Ossian's merriest earthly song seemed sad. Yet at times the human longing came upon the hero, and once when he sat alone by the shore of the sea, a broken spear-shaft drifted up at his feet. The marks of stern human strife were on the weapon and the stains of human blood; and on a sudden, a fierce desire for the life he had left and for the dear companionship of friends and comrades came into his heart. The regretful islanders knew that any attempt to check the fatal longing would be vain, and he was sent away in peace, only to find his generation passed away, his opportunities lost, and his strength and prowess gone the moment he touched his native soil. There may be times and places when education merely for servile uses is best; in our day and in our land, the highest use is essential-the development of intelligent manhood and womanhood.-May 11, 1899.

COLLEGE MEN AND MARRIAGE

The press associations are unkind to President Eliot. He is reported as saying at Harvard that college men postpone marriage too long, and "that the highly educated part of the American people does not increase