Class *- Ti 'Z 'ZJb Book kLQ- Copyright N° COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. IDOLS IDOLS OF EDUCATION SELECTED AND ANNOTATED By CHARLES MILLS GAYLEY Ephriam is joined to idols. Hos. iv, 17 NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY MCMX V **>* ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN COPYRIGHT, 19 IO, BY DOUBLED AY, PAGE & COMPANY PUBLISHED, FEBRUARY, I9IO ift AHb •t 18 TO JAMES BURRILL ANGELL STATESMAN AND ADMINISTRATOR SCHOLAR, ORATOR AND TEACHER COUNSELLOR FRIEND MOULDER OF UNIVERSITIES MAKER OF MEN CONTENTS PAGE I. A World of Opportunity . 3 -rll. An Indifferent Generation . 11 > III. The Bandar-log ... 17 IV. The Man of Argos . . .27 \/ V. The Staggers and the Care- less Lapse .... 33 VI. The Advance of Democracy . 49 VII. Idols of the Tribe . . . 57 VIII. Idols of the Academic Mar- ket-place . . . . 69 IX. Some Wages of Inevitable Grace, Caprice, and Quick Returns 81 X. The Collapse of Culture . 91 *- XI. Some Wages of Pedantry . 105 CONTENTS PAGE XII. Some Wages of Play . .113 XIII. The Collapse of Discipline . 121 XIV. Idols of the Academic Cave . 131 XV. Some "Idols" of My Own . 143 XVI. Some More "Idols" of My Own 157 XVII. Obiter Dicta .... 175 A WORLD OF OPPORTUNITY IDOLS A WORLD OF OPPORTUNITY THE world was never better worth preparing for. The panorama un- rolled before the mind was never more gorgeous: — a new renaissance revealing reaches unimagined; prophesying splen- dour unimaginable; unveiling mysteries of time and space and natural law and human potency. Archaeology uncovers with a spade the world of Ariadne and of Minos, of Aga- memnon and of Priam. Where Jason launched the Argo, paintings are un- earthed that antedate Apelles. Mum- mied crocodiles disgorge their papyri: [3] IDOLS and we read the administrative record of the Ptolemies. Bacchylides breaks the silence of centuries; himself Menander mounts the stage, and in no borrowed Roman sock; and Aristotle reappears to shed fresh light upon the constitution of the Athenians. History availing herself of cognate sci- ences deciphers documents and conditions anew; and the vision of the past is rein- terpreted in terms of social and economic actuality. Emigrations and conquests become a modern tale of commerce and industrial stress. Csesar and Agrippina, Cromwell and Marie Antoinette, are all to read again; and the Bard of Venusia acquires a new and startling modernity as the literary advance agent of a pluto- cratic wine firm. As in a "glass pros- pective" literature is viewed; and kalei- doscopic transformations of gest and bal- [4] IDOLS lad, epic and drama, cross-sections of the crypt of fiction, dazzle the eye of critic and philologist and poet. With golden keys of psychology, his- tory and philology, the anthropologist unlocks the mind of primitive man. The student of the holier things invades the Temple itself; and from day to day the sacramental doors swing back on age- long galleries of worship. Taking fresh heart of ethics, econo- mics wears a new and most seductive smile. No longer the minimizing of material cost, but the maximizing of vital value, she regards. She seeks the psychic income, the margin of leisure for the soul, the margin of health for the body: the greatest of national assets — the true wealth of nations. To the mod- ern problems of social and political theory and of jurisprudence, of municipal and [5] IDOLS national and colonial administration, a similar fascination of beneficent discov- ery attracts; and to that development of international politics which aims at con- stitutional law rather than the substantive private law of nations. Geology multiplies her seons, and as- tronomy her glittering fields. " Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps" of new dis- covered cause "arise." "The idea of the electron has broken the frame work of the old physics to pieces, has revived ancient atomistic hypotheses, and made of them principles," and radio-activity " has opened to the explorer a New Amer- ica full of wealth yet unknown." The science of the law of celestial movements has given birth to the science of the sub- stance of celestial bodies ; and, with astro- physics, we study more narrowly than ever our one star, and its outcasts, the [6] IDOLS planets. We wonderingly contemplate the transport of matter from star to star — and from planet to planet, maybe, of life. Geology has given birth to physi- ography. We pass from inorganic to organic, and probe the interaction of physical environment and animate nature. In evolutionary science they are saying that new species leap into being at a wave of the wand of mutation; and the war between Mendelism and Darwinism wages. The knighthood of the Quest of Life enrolls in the order of psychic mystery or the order of mechanism, and presses on. Though neither win to the Grail, each wins nearer to its law. By the delicate ministrations of surgery, life is prolonged. Immunization lifts ever higher her red cross. Engineering advances, agriculture [7] IDOLS advances, commerce expands. We com- pass the earth, we swim the seas, we ride the air. Our voices pierce the inter- vals of space, and our thoughts the unplumbed waves of ether. And from her watch-tower scrutinizing all — science, pure and applied, history and art, mechanism and spirit, teleology, evolution — the science of sciences, Divine Philosophy rounds out her calm survey. Never more tempting, more vital, the problem than that which she faces now; the problem of the funda- mental character of personality. "In the light of all this evolution or mutation, what is God?" she asks. "Is he, too, but a cosmic process in which we assist; or an eternal standard of perfection against which we measure ourselves and in terms of which we strive?" [8] AN INDIFFERENT GENERATION AN INDIFFERENT GENERATION THE world of learning was never better worth preparing for. Why is it, then, that from every university in the land, and from every serious journal, there goes up the cry, "Our young people were never more indifferent". How many nights a week does the student spend in pursuits non-academic; how great a proportion of his days? What with so-called "college activities," by which he must prove his allegiance to the University, and social functions by which he must recreate his jaded soul, no margin is left for the one and only college activity — which is study. Class meetings, business meetings, committee [no IDOLS meetings, editorial meetings, football ral- lies, baseball rallies, pyjama rallies, vica- rious athletics on the bleachers, garrulous athletics in dining room and parlour and on the porch, rehearsals of the glee club, rehearsals of the mandolin club and of the banjo, rehearsals for dramatics (a word to stand the hair on end), college dances and class banquets, fraternity dances and suppers, preparations for the dances and banquets, more committees for the preparations; a running up and down the campus for ephemeral items for ephemeral articles in ephemeral papers, a soliciting of advertisements, a running up and down for subscrip- tions to the dances and the dinners, and the papers and the clubs; a running up and down in college politics, making tickets, pulling wires, adjusting combina- tions, canvassing for votes — canvas- [12] IDOLS sing the girls for votes, spending hours at sorority houses for votes — spending hours at sorority houses for sentiment; talking rubbish unceasingly, thinking rubbish, revamping rubbish — rubbish about high jinks, rubbish about low, rubbish ahout rallies, rubbish about pseudo-civic honour, rubbish about girls ; — what margin of leisure is left for the one activity of the college, which is study? In Oxford and Cambridge, than which no universities have turned out finer, cleaner, more manly, more highly culti- vated, and more practically trained scholars, statesmen, empire builders, or more generous enthusiasts for general athletics and clean sport — in Oxford and Cambridge the purpose is study, and the honours are paid to the scholar. There are no undergraduate newspapers, [13] IDOLS no class meetings, no college politics, no football rallies, no business managers, no claques for organized applause, no yell leaders, no dances, no social func- tions of the mass. Social intercourse during term between the sexes is strictly forbidden; and it is a matter of college loyalty to live up to the rule. Of non- academic activities there are but two — athletics and conversation. They are not a function but a recreation; nor are they limited to specialists whose reputa- tion is professed. Young Oxonians, in general, lead a serene and undistracted, but rich and wholesome life. They cul- tivate athletics because each is an active devotee of some form of sport. And conversation — in junior commons, in the informal clubs, in study or in tutor's room — it is an education, a passion, an art. [14] THE BANDAR-LOG •- THE BANDAR-LOG A FOREIGNER, attending, in an American university, an assembly of student speakers, will be justified in con- cluding that the university exists for nothing but so-called "student activi- ties." The real purpose of the university will not be mentioned, for usually our undergraduates live two lives — distinct; one utterly non-academic. The non- academic is for them the real ; the schol- arly an encroachment. The student who regards the scholarly as paramount is deficient in "allegiance to his university." Athletics meanwhile, which should play a necessary part in the physical, and therefore spiritual, development of [17] IDOLS all students, are relegated to ten per cent, of the students. The rest assist — on the bleachers. The ninety per cent, are killing two birds with one stone. They are taking second-hand exercise; and, by their grotesque and infantile applause, they are displaying what they call their "loyalty." Those nodes, coenaeque deum of history and poetry and philosophical discourse, to the memory of which the older gene- ration reverts with rapture, have faded in this light of common day. In the hurry of mundane pursuit the student rarely halts to read, rarely to consider ; rarely to discuss the concerns of the larger life. President Schurman has recently said that there has been no decline of scholar- ship in the people's universities; but only in the older institutions of the East, to which rich parents send their sons [18] IDOLS with the view to the advantages of social position; and that in the people's uni- versities the social standing of students has never cut so much figure as scholar- ship. The assurance is comfortable; but it obscures the issue. If by "social standing" the President of Cornell means position in the coteries of wealth, fashion, conviviality, it may be that " social stand- ing" bulks larger in the older university than in the university of the state. But the fact is, that in student esteem, East and West, social standing means no such thing: it means the position achieved by prominence in non-academic or "campus" activities. And in student esteem such prominence cuts a far more important figure than that of either wealth or scholarship. Such prominence has been gaining ground for fifteen years. So long as the social pressure of the [19] IDOLS university is toward mundane pursuits, it will be vain to expect the student to achieve distinction in that for which the university stands. This false standard of prominence, with its feigned allegiance to the inter- ests of the University, has produced that class of student which, adapting from the Jungle Book, I call the "Bandar-log." "Mowgli had never seen an Indian city before, and though this was almost a heap of ruins it seemed very wonderful and splendid. Some king had built it long ago on a little hill The Bandar-logs called the place their city, and pretended to despise the jungle people because they lived in the forest. And yet they never knew what the build- ings were made for nor how to use them. They would sit in circles in the hall of [20] IDOLS the King's council-chamber and scratch for flees and pretend to be men; or they would run in and out of the roofless houses and collect pieces of plaster and old bricks in the corner and forget where they had hidden them, and fight and cry in scuffling crowds, and then break off to play up and down the terraces of the King's garden, where they would shake the rose trees and the oranges in sport to see the fruit and flowers fall. They explored all the passages and dark tun- nels in the palace, and the hundreds of little dark rooms, but they never remem- bered what they had seen and what they had not, and so drifted about in ones and twos or crowds, telling one another that they were doing as men did — or shouting 'there are none in the jungle so wise and good and clever and strong and gentle as the Bandar-log.' Then [21] IDOLS they would tire and seek the treetop, hoping the jungle people would notice them . . . and then they joined hands and danced about and sang their fool- ish songs. 'They have no law,' said Mowgli to himself, 'no hunting call and no leaders' . . . And he could not help laughing when they cried, 'we are great, we are free, we are wonderful . . . we all say so, and so it must be true . . . you shall carry our words back to the jungle people that they may notice us in future.'" The Bandar-log is with us. Busy to no purpose, imitative, aimless; boast- ful but unreliant; inquisitive but quickly losing his interest; fitful, inconsequential, platitudinous, forgetful; noisy, sudden, ineffectual.— The Bandar-log must go. Because it is the spirit of the American university to prove the things that are [22] IDOLS new, to hold fast that which is good; to face abuses boldly and to reform them; because I am the son of an American university, and have grown in her teach- ing, and in my observation of many universities and many schools, to regard the evil as transitory and abuses as remediable, I have ventured, in this essay to set down simply, and with a frankness that I trust may not be misconstrued, some of the vagaries of our educational system at the present time, and some of the reasons for their existence. For I am sure that in the recognition of the cause is to be found the means of cure. [23] THE MAN OF ARGOS THE MAN OF ARGOS ANOTHER class also of students L makes, though unconsciously, for the wane of general scholarship — the class of the prematurely vocational. It is not futile, like that of the Bandar-log, but earnest, and with a definite end in view. Still, unwisely guided to imma- ture choice and hasty study of a pro- fession, it not only misses the liberal equipment necessary for the ultimate mastery of life, but indirectly diverts the general scope of education from its true ideals. The spirit of the Renaissance, says a modern historian of poetry, is portrayed in a picture by Moretto. It is of a [27] IDOLS young Venetian noble. "The face is that of one in the full prime of life and of great physical strength; very handsome, heavy and yet tremulously sensitive, the large eyes gazing at some thing unseen, and seeming to dream of vastness. On his bonnet is a golden plaque with three words of Greek inscribed on it — lov \Cav woOco — "Oh, but I am consumed with excess of desire." If this be the motto of the Renais- sance, what shall we say is the motto of to-day? Not lov \lav ttoOco; no creed of vague insatiable yearning, but rather the irdvTa avrUa 7rod(o — the lust for immediate and universal possession: as who should cry, "I want no little here below, I want it all, and quick." In one of his odes, Pindar, lauding [28] IDOLS the older times when the Muse had not yet learned to work for hire, breaks off "but now she biddeth us observe the saying of the Man of Argos, 'Money maketh man ' ' — xPVf JLara > XPVP' ai? &vvp. If not money, then sudden success — that is the criterion of the Man of Argos, to-day. The Bandar-log and the Argive retard the advance of scholarship in the uni- versity; and not the university alone is responsible for their presence, but the elementary school as well. [29] THE STAGGERS AND THE CARELESS LAPSE THE STAGGERS AND THE CARELESS LAPSE OF THE effectiveness of the public schools in the several states, the universities of each state respectively may judge. From Harvard, Yale and Princeton to California and Stanford the judgment is a groan. Is the fault with 'the schools ? or is the standard of require- ment too high? or is the basis of con- clusion in each case too narrow? The reply may best be given by one who examines pupils of all states. "Probably nowhere else," writes Colonel Larned of the United States Military Academy, in the North Ameri- can Review of September, 1908, "prob- [33] IDOLS ably nowhere else can the general effectiveness of our public schools be so well gauged as at the academies at West Point and Annapolis. Their candidates are drawn from every Con- gressional District of every state and territory of the Union, and largely from the class of our citizens who send their children to the primary and high schools supported by the states." The subjects of examination are elementary: algebra, geometry, grammar, composition and literature, geography, and history. "The examinations are written, and abundant time is given for their com- pletion, even by those of inferior capacity and preparation. The papers are marked on a scale of one hundred as a maximum; sixty-six being the normal minimum standard of proficiency." Generally speaking, deficiency in one [34] IDOLS subject constitutes deficiency in the whole examination. Out of 314 candidates who attempted the entrance papers in March, 1908, 265 failed: 56 in one sub- ject, 209 in two or more subjects. Of the failures there were 44 per cent, in algebra; 61 per cent, in geometry; 37 per cent, in grammar; 40 per cent, in composition and literature. "Out of the 314 examined mentally it appears that 295, or 90 per cent., had been educated in public schools, and that the average num- ber of years of attendance in these schools was nine years, eleven months. Separa- ting this into primary and secondary attendance, we find that the average at- tendance in High Schools was three years, three months ; and in Grammar Schools, six years, eight months. 103 candidates had private schooling wholly or in part, 135 had college education of one year or [35] IDOLS more ; 1 89 studied the classics. Of the 135 who had gone so far as a college education of one year or more, 82 failed to enter. "Altogether," comments the writer, "it is a sorry showing, from what- ever standpoint it is viewed. . . . Many of these young men secured their nominations through competitive examinations; and few, if any, could have been taken haphazard, with no regard to qualification and antecedents; while all could have been employed some nine months in private preparation. That 314 youths, nearly all trained in our costly public schools, with an average of almost ten years' attendance (supple- mented in the case of one-third of their number by private schooling, and, in the case of 43 per cent., by college train- ing) should show 84 per cent, of failure and the various deficiencies analyzed [36] IDOLS above, is surely a state of affairs that should make the judicious grieve and our educators sit up and take notice. "If," continues the compiler of this unanswerable arraignment, "if educa- tion is concerned with mental develop- ment alone, it is fair to ask: If 16,596,- 503 boys and girls, taught in our public schools at a cost of $376,996,472, aver- age no better in intellectual attainments than is evidenced by the foregoing, does the result justify the outlay and the ten or more years' apprenticeship of youth it demands?" The boy enters our colleges " a badly damaged article." One-sidedly prepared, or not prepared at all, he goes through college accumulating courses, but not education; desperately selecting studies least foreign to his slender capability for assimilation, [37] IDOLS or most easy to slur, or most likely to turn to superficial ends. He is by no means always lazy, nor oblivious that now is the chance of his life; but he has no core of knowledge to which the facts he fum- bles may cling, no keen-edged lingu- istic or scientific tools with which to cut to the heart of the matter; no memory trained and enriched, no taste, no imagi- nation, no judgment balanced by frequent trial, no habits of remorseless application. He has bluff but not confidence; he has promise, but not power. The subjects of his study have not been correlated. The goal has been neither discipline nor intrinsic worth. He has probably never studied one thing thoroughly. He has not been guided ; he has not been taught ; he has not conquered work. He has been distracted; he has been amused. In college he is thrown with comrades [38] IDOLS of like equipment. None probably has had all the fundamentals requisite to any one study. A heterogenous con- course, fortuitous, divergent, immane. To the individuals of such a class, no teacher could impart drill or rationally progressive information: Not Orbilius, not Erasmus. In the humanities, espe- cially, it is impossible to drive a class abreast. And if the tutor tries tandem, what with one-third springhalt of French, another hamstrung of German, another spavined of Latin, the ninety-and-nine infested with bots prejudicial to Greek, the course is doomed — cast " Into the staggers and the careless lapse Of youth and ignorance." We turn out from our American departments of the liberal arts, many clean and manly men, noble and earn- est women. But how many even of [39] IDOLS these know the rudiments of one sub- ject thoroughly, can think clearly, reason accurately, express a thought lucidly, effectively, correctly? How many can spell, how many write a letter not illit- erate, how many use a diction simple, pure and idiomatic, clearly enounced, justly pronounced? How many know the difference between Sennacherib and a floating rib, the Maid of Orleans and the Maid of Athens, the Witch of Endor and the Widow of Nain, Dionysius and Dionysus, the Jewels of Cornelia and the diamond necklace, the Lion of Judah and the Lion of the North? Or, if some have some vague impression of some of these things, for how many do they possess an historical or literary flavour? If a speaker refer to Apollyon or the Houyhnhms, to the Delectable Mountains, or Mount Hymettus, or the [40] IDOLS Horn of Roncesvalles ; if he quote a line of Horace, a French bon mot or a German commonplace; if he refer to the Seven against Thebes, the Electra, the Bucolics, the Telemaque, the Sor- rows of Werther, to Giotto's O or Botti- celli's Spring, to Gargantua or Pompilia, how many eyes light with recognition ? I do not mean in an assembly of technical or professional students, but of "liberal" students. And if some students of litera- ture and history have definite acquaint- ance with some of these things, have they also definite acquaintance with the fundamentals of philosophy, mathe- matics and science, no less significant? With what real command of any foreign language do our students go forth? It is well for us that the peoples of Europe are the most courteous of men. Long ago they learned from Aristotle that it [41] IDOLS was inartistic to laugh at painful impo- tence or deformity. If these imperfections hold true of our graduates of literary departments, they hold, so far as elementary culture is concerned, even more frequently true of our vocational students. But those who pursue the practical arts and the sciences have no less occasion to speak, to write, to communicate, expound, con- vince, persuade than the humanists: they too are working for and with men. To the vocational student the studies that not only instruct but educate, that make not only for knowledge but for power, for efficiency characterized by judgment and taste — to the vocational student the humanities are not, by neces- sity or immutable decree, alien. Illiteracy is not a hall-mark exclu- sively reserved to the student body. [42] IDOLS Our Ph. D.'s are lamentably prone to error in the use of their own tongue. Of the later crop of instructors in universi- ties, some say "he don't," "hospi'table," "luckrative," "exquisite," "minerology" — confessing that "they hadn't ought to"; others never fail, they "fall down"; they never win, they "win out"; they are never at a loss, though they are frequently "up against it." When they lecture in plain clothes, the outcome is a dis 'course; when in a dinner jacket, an ad'dress. Recently, a specialist, already teaching in an Eastern college, was highly recom- mended for an instructorship in a Western university by the authorities of the Eastern university where he had published an ostensibly learned thesis and secured his degree of Doctor of Philosophy. In writing he "refered" to a previous letter, and in conversation [43] IDOLS suggested that we "leave things go as they are. " We did. To rehearse such amenities would be invidious, were they not of every-day occurrence, and the offenders dulled by custom and con- genial apathy. Our graduates are characterized by lack of information, lack of grasp, lack of culture. This is no prejudiced account of the case. It is attested by the ver- dict of our leaders at the bar, on the bench, in the pulpit and in the hospital, and by our captains of industry. Also by educated foreigners. Our Rhodes schol- ars should certainly represent the flower of our scholarship. But even kindly critics in Oxford, while admiring the sociability, good sense, good humour, broad outlook of the American student, will tell you: "The American student is, with few exceptions, deficient in his [44] IDOLS own language, spoken or written; and has but the smattering of any other. He is more often superficial than ours, and is more easily satisfied. He does not seem to understand what it is inde- pendently to master a subject, to grasp it in all its ramifications, and retain it in his memory as a whole." This criti- cism, be it noted, applies more particu- larly to our students of the humanities. In the pursuit of natural science and in the special discipline of the law our Rhodes scholars have made a better showing. But in general, their cultural, especially linguistic, limitations, are a raising of the eyebrow for don and student of English training. [45] THE ADVANCE OF DEMOCRACY THE ADVANCE OF DEMOCRACY THE Bandar-log and the Man of Argos are the product of condi- tions: the advance of democracy and the bewilderment of education. Since the latter condition reflects demands presented by the former, it is in contem- porary makeshifts of education that we shall find the ultimate cause of woe. The demands of democracy are not a matter to scold about: They are a condition to face. Democracy has ar- rived. It has achieved its privileges, its responsibilities too. It has arrived in social comfort and social unrest; in industrial promise and industrial per- plexity; in commercial expansion and [49] IDOLS commercial lure; in political potency and political menace. It has arrived in education. It has arrived with unlet- tered zeal and unfettered authority; scornful of tradition, oblivious of diffi- culties, impatient of delay. It has ar- rived with its ideal: The greatest hap- piness for the greatest number. It regards learning as a means, not also an end in itself. With democracy the means is the practical; the end is the profit- able, the immediate, for the greatest number. With these preconceptions democracy has arrived- The old culture cannot supply the school with teachers. De- mocracy is supplying its own teach- ers. They have the flavour of their kind: only too commonly they regard education as a means and means alone, for profit and profit alone. The few [50] IDOLS who think otherwise, how can they stem the tide? In the elementary schools it is impossible to discriminate between the crowd and the individual; between mediocrity or incapacity on one hand, and excellence on the other. The pace is determined by the pupil somewhat below the average. Approved by teach- ers — honest and zealous to be sure, but in many cases none the less unlet- tered — this pupil still below the average invades the high school. In its turn, the high school struggles to stem the tide. The high school has teachers more critical and better trained, but it, too, must regard the greatest happiness of the greatest number. The greatest num- ber debouches upon the university. The son or daughter of every taxpayer has an inalienable right to a university educa- tion; hence to the bachelor's degree. [51] IDOLS Democracy objects to flood gates. Its ideal is not the efficiency of the fit. This sudden and overwhelming de- mand for education, in itself of glori- ous promise, is attended by material penalties still other than those which we have noted in passing: the insufficiency of teachers' salaries, for instance, and the resulting feminization of our schools. Of the latter, suffice it here to say, that it partly accounts for the disrepute into which the humanities have fallen, for, entrusted to women, the languages, lit- erature, and history have come to be regarded as feminine and ineffectual studies; and for the cosseting of boys, and the consequent undisciplined char- acter of the rising generation of men. In our universities, the tremendous influx of students, the confusion, the rush and hurry of modern life, have contributed [52] IDOLS to the effect, finally, that we have lost, as Professor Birge has said, "the sweet serenity of books, and have not gained the freedom of pure research. We have lost the independence born of detach- ment from life, and have not gained the poise of practical efficiency. We have lost the sense of mastery of ourselves and of our public, and in all things we have become experimental. In brief, we have suffered and are suffering from that distraction of spirit which always accom- panies great and rapidly acquired gains; gains too large to be quickly mastered or readily put to full and easy use." [53] IDOLS OF THE TRIBE IDOLS OF THE TRIBE ROGER BACON, long ago, and after him, Francis, in their quest of truth, perceived that there were four grounds of human error. Of these the first is "the false appearances that are imposed upon us by the general nature of the mind" of man. The mind is always prone to accept the affirmative or active as proof rather than the nega- tive; so that if you hit the mark a few times you forget the many that you missed it. You worship Neptune for the numerous pictures in his temple of those that escaped shipwreck, but you omit to ask, "Where are the pictures of those that were drowned?" And because you [57] IDOLS are mentally equipped to seek uniformity, you ascribe to "Nature a greater equal- ity and uniformity than is, in truth." In this refractory mind of man "the beams of things" do not "reflect accord- ing to their true incidence"; hence our fundamental superstitions, fallacies which Francis Bacon calls the Idols, or delu- sions, of the Race, or Tribe. In matters of education the dearest delusion of our Tribe to-day is that the university should reflect the "public. This is the idol of the Popular Voice. Once the university is joined to this idol, it is joined to all the idols of that Pantheon. It accepts the fallacy that our sons and daughters are equally gifted and zealous, and hence that each must profit by the higher education. This is the idol of Inevitable Grace; that is, of grace innate and irresistible by which every youth is [58] IDOLS predestinated to intellectual life, "with- out any foresight of faith or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature, as conditions or causes moving him there- unto," or anything in the tutor. No Calvinistic favour this, by which some are chosen while others are ordained to ignorance and sloth; but a favour not contemplated in the Westminster Con- fession, by which all are elect and all, in due season, effectually called to learn- ing, and quickened and renewed by the Spirit of Zeal, and so enabled to answer this call and embrace the Grace offered and conveyed in it. The university is then joined to the idol of Numbers. And of these worships the shibboleth is "mediocrity": for to raise the standard of university requirement is to discrim- inate between candidates, and to doubt [59] IDOLS Inevitable Grace; while to decrease the bloated registration is a sacrilege which Numbers will avenge with curtailment of prosperity. And the ritual march is by lock-step: for tests, competition and awards are alien to the American spirit thus misrepresented — save athletic com- petition: that is a divine exception. The university is next joined to the idol of Quick Returns. It accepts the fallacy of utilitarian purpose; and hence, that a profession must be chosen pre- maturely and immaturely entered; and hence that studies are not for discipline or intrinsic worth but, from the primary school to the Ph. D., for purely voca- tional value; and hence that every incip- ient vocation from making toy boats and paper mats to making tariffs and balloons must find its place in every school and in every grade for every [60] IDOLS man-or-woman child. And since the man-or-woman child may find per- chance a vocation in the liberal arts, the child must bestride both horses, though with the usual aerial result. And our students — they worship the idol of Incidental Issues: the fallacy that the aim of the university is deliber- ately to make character. As if character were worth anything without mind, and were any other, as President Wilson has wisely said, than the by-product of duty performed; or that the duty of the student were any other than to study. They accept the fallacy that the gauge of studentship is popularity, and that popularity during academic years is to be won by hasty achievement and the babbling strenuous life, by allegiance to a perverted image of the Alma Mater, by gregariousness, by playing at citi- [61] IDOLS zenship. Of this popularity the out- ward and visible index is mundane prominence and the lightly proffered laurel of the campus. I said that the dearest delusion of the Tribe was that the university should reflect the public. But this delusion requires also that our universities be continually figuring in the public eye. So far as such activity is necessary to the building up of schools, and to the education of a community to an under- standing of the ideals and the needs of higher education, it is not only legitimate but laudable. But when, under the name of university extension our uni- versities undertake the higher education of the periphery, in dilletantism or methods of research, they run the risk of university attenuation and simulation. [62] IDOLS When, not dispassionately, they figure in public issues, they lay themselves open to the charge of partisanship. Time was when academic etiquette for- bade the university professor to partici- pate in political contests. Now there are who dare to inject the university into prejudiced affairs; even into crimi- nal cases pending in the courts. They have joined themselves to the idol of Parade. To this same false policy of figuring in the public eye our universities bow when they sanction amphitheatrical spec- tacles, at some of which money enough passes hands to build a battleship. Football is a most desirable recreation; and a moral and physical discipline of value to every able-bodied boy. Nay more, athletics, physical sport and emu- lation are necessary to spiritual health. [63] IDOLS Even excess in them is better, it has often been said, than that moral evil should abound. But is the alternative necessary? Must we have either gladi- ators or degenerates? Need athletics be professionalized, be specialized? Do specialized athletics benefit the morals of the ninety and nine who don't play ? Do they not rather spoil sport, detract from time and tendency to exercise for oneself? Do they not substitute hysteria for muscular development ? Football is a noble game; but it is with disgust that one views its degeneration from an exhilarating pastime for all into a profession of the few, a source of newspaper notoriety, a cause of extrava- gance, orgiastic self-abandonment, and educational shipwreck. This comes of bowing to the idol of Parade. The university should not adopt the [64] IDOLS idols of the community. It should set the ideals. The American university is, and ever must be, democratic. It offers education to all who can profit by it. But education itself is aristo- cratic — of the best and for the best. The educated are those who, having striven, are the chosen few. [65| IDOLS OF THE ACADEMIC MARKET- PLACE IDOLS OF THE ACADEMIC MARKET- PLACE BEWILDERED by the advance of democracy, educators not only have accepted fallacies of the Tribe, but have attempted to justify their acceptance by further fallacies of their own — based some upon a juggling with words, others upon the authority of some Pundit (living or dead) , others upon individual ignorance and conceit. These are respectively, what Bacon has called the idols of the Market- place, the idols of the Lecture-room or Theatre, the idols of the Cave. Idols of the Market - place are fallacies proceeding from the misconception of words. Since we educators are an imi- [69] IDOLS tative race, many of these misconceptions have been fostered or confirmed by the influence of some great name, Rousseau or Froebel, or Jacotot, or another; that is to say, by authority. Consequently, the idols of the Market-place are some- times also idols of the Theatre, which is to say, of the Lecture-room, or master by whose words we swear. "He that will write well in any tongue must follow this counsel of Aristotle, to speak as the common people speak, but think as wise men think." From dis- regard of such counsel, many of our aca- demic fallacies concerning education have arisen. We are involved in questions and differences because we have followed the false appearances of words, instead of setting down in the beginning the defi- nitions in which as wise men we may [70] IDOLS concur. In what definition of educa- tion is it possible that wise men may con- cur ? All will agree that education is a process : not that of play, nor yet of work ; but of artistic activity. Play meanders pleasantly toward an external end of no significance. Work drives straight for an end beyond that is pleasant because of its worth. The process of art has an end but not beyond. Its end is in itself; and it is pleasurable in its activity because its true activity is a result. From play the artistic process differs because its end is signifi- cant; from work it differs because its end is in its activity, and because its activity possesses the pleasure of worth. It is like religion: a process continually begun, and in its incompleteness complete. Its ideal is incapable of temporal fulfilment, but still, in each moment of development, it is spiritually perfect. [71] IDOLS Education, then, is an art — the art of the individual realizing himself as a member of a society whose tabernacle is here but whose home is a house not built with hands. Education is the pro- cess of knowing the best, enjoying the best, producing the best in knowledge, conduct and the arts. Realization, expression of self, physical, intellectual, social, emotional, is its means and end. It implies faith in a moral order and continuing process, of which it is itself an integral and active part. It is remarkable with what persistency the race of educators has indulged ex- tremes. There has been accorded from time to time an apostle of the golden mean. But his disciples have ever pro- ceeded to the ulterior limit: Among the ancients to the pole of self-culture or to the pole of uncultured service; in the [72] IDOLS dark ages to the ideal of the cloister or the ideal of the castle, to joyless learning or to feudal, and feminine, approval; in the middle ages to the bigotry of the obscurantist or the allurement of the material; in the Renaissance to contempt of the ancients or to neo-paganism — to theological quibbles or to Castiglione, to the bonfire of vanities or the carnal songs of Lorenzo; in the Reformation, to compulsory discipline or the apotheosis of natural freedom; in the succeeding age to pedantry or deportment. Still later appear Rousseau and the phil- anthropists with the "return to nature," the worship of individuality, the methods of coddling and play; and then Jacotot — and the equal fitness of all for higher education, the exaggeration of inductive methods, the chimerical equivalence of studies. And now has arrived the sub- [73 1] IDOLS ordination of the art to pure profit, or vaudeville, or seminars for sucklings. Always the fallacy of the extreme ! . — If education is not for the fit it must be for imbeciles; if not for culture, for Mam- mon ; if not for knowledge, for power ; if not of incunabula, of turbines and lim- ericks; if not by the cat-o'-nine-tails, by gumdrops. Why the mean of a Plato or a Quintilian could not obtain — the sanity of Melanchthon or Erasmus, of Sturm or Comenius, of Milton or the Port Royal, of Pestalozzi, Friedrich Wolf or Thomas Arnold, — Heaven only knows, which, in its unscrutable purpose has permitted the race of educators, following the devices of their own heart, to go astray after idols. To know, to feel, to do aright and best, each and all in all and each of the [74] IDOLS fields of human activity, that is the art of education. If we exaggerate one of these functions to the neglect of the rest, our education is no longer an ideal but an idol. If, forgetting that education is an art, we try to make of it a pleasant meandering, we set up the idol of Play. If, forgetting that the activity of Art is of intrinsic value and delight, we glorify the empty means and merit of drudgery, then we have erected the idol of Pedantry: we beat the air for discipline, shuffle in and out of corners the straw of arid learning, and choke ourselves with the dust of our own sweeping. If we fix our eyes on the cash, we bow to the tribal idol of Quick Returns. If we forget that, as an art, there is for education a progres- sive ideal and a law of progress, too, we bow to the idol of Caprice. We [75] IDOLS fall not only into the fallacies already enumerated but into the fallacy of the equivalence of studies, the fallacy of shifting, the fallacy of dissipation. In Art each factor is in relation to the rest, and all to the whole: we proceed fatu- ously upon the assumption that the part is the whole; and therefore each part equal to each; and therefore one study as good as any other. In Art the means, which is the end, is relative, progressive: we assume comfortably that studies are independent of each other, that we can take any in any order, pass an examination and have done. In Art the end, which is the means, is absolute and self-referred and ideal: we figure that, by dissipating our energies, we shall happen to hit, here and now, the ideal. Disregarding the progressive unity of education we bow to Caprice. [76] IDOLS The idols of the academic market- place to-day are Caprice and Quick Returns and Play, and, in unexpected corners, Pedantry, against which in reac- tion these three were set up. Of these, Quick Returns was borrowed from the tribe; and not alone, for of this sub- vention are other tribal gods too numer- ous to rehearse — specially Numbers and Inevitable Grace and Incidental Issues and Parade. To one or other of these false worships are due the wane of scholarship, the utilitarian tendency, the excrescence of non-academic activ- ities, the neglected discipline in our education at the present time. The blame is by no means wholly to be laid at the door of the university. It attaches, also, to our system of elementary edu- cation. [77] SOME WAGES OF INEVITABLE GRACE, CAPRICE AND QUICK RETURNS SOME WAGES OF INEVITABLE GRACE, CAPRICE AND QUICK RETURNS TO LAY the blame upon any one university innovation, such as the system of admission by diploma, or the elective system, or the foundation of pro- fessional schools and of departments of graduate research, is to misjudge the matter. Each of these may have con- tributed indirectly to the present imperfec- tion of general education ; but each in its inception was a response to the demands not only of democracy but of advancing science. The fault in these innovations is not inherent in the theory but in the abuse. The abuse is in the application. In the continued extension, for instance, [81] IDOLS of the accrediting system, but with per- functory or timid supervision, in some states, to schools that have exhausted the advantages of its fostering care, and have reached a self-sufficing and somewhat restive independence. Or in the careless supervision of schools that have not yet attained to the stature of wisdom and efficiency requisite for the performance of their duty as door- keepers of the higher education. In either case the test, the emulation and award, which are essential to the success of the system are slighted. The adminis- trators are bowing to the idol of Inevit- able Grace; the university is overrun with pupils accredited by sloth or fear or favour; and the accrediting system, which is the pride of Germany and many of our American states, is discredited. Is it any wonder that in revulsion, there [82] IDOLS is talk of admitting on diploma hon- our pupils only, or of testing all in some unannounced subject, or of examining every one in every subject as in older universities ? Nor should we lay the blame for our present insufficiencies entirely upon the elective system. The fault, again, is in the abuse. In itself the elective system is reasonable, is necessary, is of the temper and the time. Only reluc- tantly was the old curriculum modified, the new welcomed. And as the new developed, offering as it seemed a royal highway through broader fields of cul- ture and new fields of practice, to higher classical scholarship, to scientific investi- gation, evoking in students a more mature and earnest spirit, gratulation gained. Why is it that, of latter days, the highway has been crowded with students scat- IDOLS tering and smattering as they go, and chattering down the ditch of ease that is the descent of Avernus? or that the broad driveway itself, like that in Arkan- sas, has dwindled to a country road, then shrunk to a by-path, and finally to a squirrel track and run up a tree and into a hole ? Why the inconsequentiality on the one hand, and on the other the blinding bigotry of the shut mind ? Because in its application the system has been abused. Partly because, in many universities, there has not been a proper demarcation between the funda- mental cultural studies and methods of the first two years, and the more advanced studies, with their methods preparatory to profession or research, of the later years. Because, also, students have not always been sufficiently guided in their choice by the arrangement and gradation [84] IDOLS of cognate electives in comprehensive groups. Also, because the system has been pushed steadily down through high school, grammar school, primary school, to the kindergarten, where, the climate being unduly congenial, it has gone completely to seed. The free choice of studies is not for children, nor for most of the teachers of them. From year to year increasingly the schools have provided the university with pupils crammed with sweets of Individual Caprice. Spoiled by untimely appli- ance of the elective theory, how can pupils profit by the system when they reach the stage where first they should have encountered it? Between the unpreparedness of the student for a liberal education and the sometimes too highly specialized method and interests of his university instructor, the liberal [85] IDOLS education drops out ; or, if it is attempted by the instructor of the fine, old, well- read and humanly interested type, it is attempted in vain. The school of research is not entirely to blame nor the professional schools; each has its place. In fact, it is fre- quently in such schools alone — and here I include the undergraduate voca- tional colleges of engineering and the like — that a thorough disciplinary and informational curriculum is, or can be, pursued. And it is to be remarked that in the vocational school the methods of the old unyielding curriculum are largely retained; and so far as the achievement of their material end is concerned, retained with signal success. But how great the loss, how slender the success, compared with what might have been achieved if students had enjoyed [86] IDOLS in the lower grades the thorough liberal education to which they were entitled, before entering upon the vocations of life! How great the loss for lawyer, physician, engineer, captain of industry or of commerce, student of theology — how great, too, for the specialized Doc- tor of Philosophy who, though keen in the methods of some science, may never have savoured a verse of the classics or gleaned the elements of philosophy or history or art! Their teachers had seduced them to the worship of the idol of Quick Returns. [87] THE COLLAPSE OF CULTURE THE COLLAPSE OF CULTURE A GENERATION ago the scientists warred for recognition as edu- cators of youth. They deserved to win; and they won. To know the law of the natural world is indispens- able to him who would understand aright the law of the social. A fun- damental and sympathetic acquaintance with at least one science, such as physics or chemistry, is as integral a part of culture as a fundamental and sympathetic ac- quaintance with the humanities. The conflict is no longer between science and culture; for science is a face of culture. The war now is between the ideal of culture and the idol of Quick Returns. [91] IDOLS In preparation for the technical pro- fessions and for medicine the culture of science is of course nowadays not neglected, but the culture of the human- ities too frequently is. In preparation for law, for theology, for teaching, for certain branches of humanistic research, the culture of science is frequently omitted, the culture of the classical humanities slighted. In either case the education which should precede vocation is lacking; and the pursuit of the vocation becomes arid and material. The training of imagination, emotion, induction, to be derived from a study of our historical and literary heritage, is especially necessary to the professions and to the nation; and especially, to-day, is it cast to the winds. The riches and uplift of the humanities are bartered for a mess of pottage. (Education is to enjoy the best and [92] IDOLS produce the best as well as to know the( best. How can one enjoy without know- ing; how can one produce in the freedom of self-realization, without enjoying? What was it Fletcher of Saltoun said ? — The songs of a nation, the poetry of a nation, the music of a nation, the art of a nation, the history of a nation, the ideals of a nation, aye, and of a world — these are the joy of life, these the impulse to law and conduct, and discovery and creation, and patriotism and religion. Without the \ humanities what man can be educated ? j what vocation is more than a meal-check ? What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? What were a world without Romance ? Since spoken word man's spirit stirred Beyond his belly-need, What is is Thine of fair design In thought and craft and deed [93] IDOLS Each stroke aright of toil and fight, That was and that shall be, And hope too high, wherefore we die, Has birth and worth in Thee. Especially downtrodden of men is our heritage from antiquity. Man will al- ways be the heir of all the ages. To sat- isfy him with the heritage of a recent yesterday, the modern languages and literatures, modern history and poetry and economics, strive in vain. He remains the child of the ages, but a child deprived of his full heritage — deprived, by a constructive inhibition in our schools, of the imaginative, moral, and historical training of the Bible, and of the inestimable riches of its literature, — deprived by delusions of Quick Returns and blind Caprice of ancient history, poetry, philosophy, the back- ground of all that is new — deprived [94] IDOLS of the classics. Upon a first hand acquaintance with Greek and Latin clas- sics, the appreciation of English and of ( all modern literature depends. The knowledge of the history of institutions and of art depends upon a knowledge of the classics. The knowledge of phil- osophy depends upon a knowledge of the classics. Equipment for liberal scholarship of any kind depends upon a knowledge of the classics. No better training in logical processes was ever devised than the philological discipline of the classics. No discipline more thoroughly systematized, more uniform, more definite, more rigorous. No better . training in the use of one's own language \ than translation from the classics. No * better school of poetry or of oratory than * the classics. No better gallery of lives — which to contemplate is to know that [95] IDOLS virtue is its own reward and vice its own penalty. To the abandonment of the classics with their sweet simplicity and their majesty, their orderly restraint and their severe regard, I attribute in no small degree the declining ability to think clearly, to speak and write lucidly, pre- cisely, effectively, the declining love of noble letters and noble art — the declin- ing respect for tradition and authority, for the heritage and the faith — the declining splendour of the ideal. Shall Man, who is the heir of the society of all the ages, experience no quiver of historic sense, have no glimmer of that liberal art and life which led his rude forefathers to the enlightenment of civilization? Twenty-nine years ago, the Right Reverend Samuel Smith Harris, Bishop of Michigan, pleading from the platform [96] IDOLS of a great university for the rights and privileges of complete education, said: "The allurements of mammon and world- liness are too often permitted to call our ingenuous youth from the proper business of the school and college. Short roads and by-paths are opened up to tempt them to abandon the proper work of education and to go prematurely to schools of pro- fessional and technical instruction. The consequence is the sending forth of half- educated men and inexperienced men to plead the causes, and heal the diseases, and lead the thinking of the generation. Let us all protest against this great evil; for unless it is counteracted it will lead to the impoverishment of the age." It has led to the impoverishment of the age. The neglect of the humanities is trace- able, also, to the pedagogical doctrine [97] IDOLS t of the equivalence of studies : a tenet I of Caprice. But there is, in fact, no such thing as equivalence of studies in discipline, or in informational value, for life. The humanities and the sciences train faculties the same, or different, in different conjunctions and in different de- grees. They, severally, impart information that has different values for life, or that is appropriate to different callings in life. If, in obedience to the new psych- ology, we surrender the theory of the superior discipline of certain studies, twe still hold to the superior educational \worth of certain studies because of their intrinsic value for life. In other words, granting that as one of our eminent new psychologists has said, "Conscien- tious pursuit of any intellectual occupa- tion results in rendering the mind more efficient in all other lines of work," [98] IDOLS there is still a greater "residual value in the character of the subject-matter" of certain studies than of others. But even in the matter of discipline, it is essential that the mental machine be trained to run not in one rut but in the several grooves "of procedure needful in the main divisions of the world of mind." And of these procedures that which demands mental concentration in the highest degree develops best the ability to grapple mentally and morally with the manifold problems of life. That which is capable, because of long centuries of educational experience, of conveying a discipline most nearly uni- form is most to be desired in the train- ing of the youth of a democratic republic. From this point of view we do not sur- render the theory of the superiority of the discipline for life as a whole afforded [99] IDOLS by the humanities. The dictum of one whose words have found ready acceptance these past thirty years, that "the object of a liberal and a scientific education is fundamentally the same, namely, training for power," is one of the most vicious fallacies that ever afflicted education. Power is not the only object; nor is the power the same; nor is the training the same; nor are those other objects, knowledge and cultivated judgment, the same. One does not, of course, base an advo- cacy of the compulsory study of the humanities on the sole ground of formal discipline, or of their initial distaste- fulness to many — though to persevere and to conquer are essential factors in education; but one does most emphat- ically decline to eliminate from the curriculum the comprehensive knowl- [100] IDOLS edge and power for life which the humanities, properly taught, convey, in favour of vocational preparation, which is a kind of child-labour in disguise, or of education by capricious choice. All that has been said of the compulsory study of the humanities applies mutatis mutandis to the compulsory study of science. To culture both are essential. [101] SOME WAGES OF PEDANTRY SOME WAGES OF PEDANTRY IN NO slight measure the worship of Caprice and Quick Returns and Inevitable Grace owes its supremacy to the irrationality of the despotism of the idol, once supreme, Pedantry. For the reaction against the classics some of our classicists are most to blame; more broadly, for the reaction against humani- ties, some of our, so-called, humanists. In a time when the scientific and the practical clamoured for their rights the humanists babbled of the ideal, mean- ing the unpractical. In a time when the ideal, worshipped in spirit and in truth, might have saved the humanities, the teachers of the humanities were [105] IDOLS busy repelling worshippers from the shrine with a mystic mumble of glosses, textual variants, codices, collations, with a processional methodology and grave- clothes in monstrance of crumbled com- mentators, with grammatic genuflections, and a horrific jargon of umlauts, and all that windpipe and gullet liturgy of anatomical phonetics. Forgetting the spirit of the poetry and history that they professed, they were insisting that even the child should imbibe devices esoterically scientific, utterly un cultural. So Pedantry stirred a revo- lution against its own despotism, and the humanities, having joined themselves to Pedantry, fell. And in the read- justment there arose the trinity of idols which presides over this paragraph. Also there arose that anarchy of aca- demic life, that riot of non-studious [106] IDOLS activities whose deity is the idol of Incidental Issues. He may be called afso False Culture; and his high priests are the Hero of the Campus and the Bandar-log. For, teachers of the humanities having deserted culture and taken to stopping the mouth of the hungry with a stone, the hungry repu- diated the stone and imagined for them- selves a false culture — of the circus, stadium and coliseum, of the stage and music-hall and toy-Tammany, such as they might be expected to devise. But since youth must have ideals they draw over their idol the cloak of loyalty to the university. Such evils has the reaction against Pedantry produced. But Pedantry still counts his idolaters. We, of the faculties, continue to invent enormities. We are justly proud of our schools of [107] IDOLS graduate research. They have pro- duced much in the service of true schol- arship, which is life. But, too often, we have divorced scholarship from life: indeed, life were inept not to file the petition himself. We have, too often, done all we could to make scholarship stupid; if not stupid, unintelligible. Too often we have reduced literature to a card catalogue, and history to tis- sues and bones. We have reasserted the creed that learning to be real must be dark, to be deep must be narrow. We have multiplied levels and stopes with never a vein in sight. We have invented the thesis. We have invented the thesis that cannot survive unless it is buried in footnotes. Studying muni- cipal law we have invented the thesis on the Town Pump. Revelling in the High History of the Holy Grail we have [108] IDOLS written reams, to evoke a yawn. As fearing lest the fountain of the classics might be exhausted, we have taught them in thimblefuls, dosing them out. As fearing lest the epic survey of history may be fiction, and desiring to make historians of all freshmen, we have taught them documentary research, which is for freshmen foolishness. We revert as fast as we can to the evils of ignorance and pedantry, by entrust- ing our younger students to green spe- cialists, who astonish and dismay with the disjectis mewhris indigestaque mole of their investigations. Any specialist would be bad enough; but a green specialist, that is iniquity. The green specialist is not foisted upon the freshman by the cult of Pedantry alone; but by stringency of poverty. Only too many of our young instructors [109] IDOLS are narrow and technical, as compared with those of the previous generation when liberally educated men could afford to teach; when living was cheap, and the standard of living, modest. But that is another story. Only too often our brightest graduates don't teach; they seek more lucrative professions. The Carnegie Foundation is, we hope, contributing to the solution of the prob- lem. Though a professor may live poor all his life, he need no longer anticipate the poor-house for his family. [110] SOME WAGES OF PLAY L^^^cl*^ $^^ lz^$^^<~~~r ^, SOME WAGES OF PLAY PLAY is essential to healthy develop- ment. And the capabilities of the individual should be considered in the scheme of education. But play is not a factor in education. To the wor- ship of the idol of Play, set up in the academic market-place, we especially attribute the lapses of mental and moral discipline, unfortunately common among our young people of to-day. "Follow nature," said Erasmus, revolt- ing against the unnatural compulsion and technicality of monkish education. "Don't shut boys and girls in cloisters against their will! Don't roar at them and beat them! Don't overwork the [113] IDOLS memory! Make studies interesting! You can teach letters as if in play." And pedagogical extremists, rejecting the birch, have overdone the balm. Montaigne overdid it. Locke overdid it. Rousseau and the philanthropists overdid it. Finally appeared Froebel, and his kindergarten overdid it, to death. Since Froebel began to have statues in our cities, discipline has disappeared out of our schools; the memory, for lack of exercise, is atrophied — it is a breeder of disease, a tonsil, a vermiform appen- dix — remains but to cut it out ; the child is no longer "born for the uni- verse," but for himself; not subject to the common training of his kind, but to his own sweet will. In the kindergarten he learns that there is no such thing as application, no such word as "must." So with coddling and dawdling and [114] IDOLS marking time, and playing at work and "working" the "dear teacher," he emerges, not merely inert of mind and morals, but pervert. May one suggest that bodily exercise, ventilation, and the pursuit of happi- ness can be secured without turning education into " ring-around-a-rosey " ? The justification of the kindergarten, where children play at bees and birds and butterflies, is as a day nursery. The public day nursery is a blessing to those whose pre-scholastic childhood would otherwise be lived in tenements and slums; but the blessing should not be availed of by parents who can amuse their offspring out of the private purse until such time as they are put to school in earnest. To indulge day nurseries in our public schools is to indulge in misdirected effort and expense. [115] IDOLS It is to indulge both parents and chil- dren in a misconception of the nature of education — a misconception based upon a criminal fallacy and fraught with criminal results. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones. The first line Shakespeare wrote for Rousseau, the second for Froebel. Rousseau and Froebel are the high priests of the idol of Play. From the idea that education is a playful and cosseting operation proceeds to some extent the commitment of gram- mar schools and high schools to the tender sex. For the noble women in our schools, serving according to their lights and capabilities, I have the sin- cerest admiration. They are the natu- ral protectors and instructors of the [116] IDOLS early childhood of both sexes. But con- cerning the system which commits almost exclusively to women the disci- pline of maturing boys, I entertain mis- givings, mitigated only by the pathos of the conditions that seem to have rendered the system necessary. From the com- bination of Froebelism and Feminization, of education by amusement and educa- tion by women, much of our lack of discipline proceeds. Boys of twelve and coming men of sixteen cannot be shaped by play. They cannot be shaped for the awful choice of good and evil by cosseting. Honour and obedience are not a matter of amusement or of eye-service. Only men know the temptations of young manhood and only to men will young manhood confide its needs. Only by men can young men be disciplined to [117] IDOLS do what they must. And only so does bitter duty become superlatively sweet. By active participation or by example the undisciplined product of our undisciplinary education swells the mob. The effect is evident in the lack of reverence for tradition, for authority, for order, for righteousness. In the lack of patriotism — the highest civic ideal. [118] THE COLLAPSE OF DISCIPLINE THE COLLAPSE OF DISCIPLINE CI AID an officer of the army to me, the ^-J other day, an officer of high rank and long experience — and he expressly permits me to repeat his words: "The fatal defect in the efficiency of the Uni- ted States Army is the lack of training inherent in the course of education through which the youth of the country have passed. Intelligent military dis- cipline depends upon true patriotism, patriotism in turn upon early discipline. Patriotism is almost a negligible quantity in the United States Army. There is not an officer of experience in our army who, deep down in his heart, is not convinced that for these reasons, [121] IDOLS in the initial contact of our army with a foreign army of the first class, we should meet with disaster." These be bitter words; but I cite them for what they are undoubtedly worth. Note that the speaker is here referring not to the volunteer forces of the various states. Voluntary service implies early training, probably in the home. Of the patriotism and adaptability of these forces to military discipline no one entertains a doubt. My military friend refers to our standing army. And though I have made frequent inquiry I have yet to find an officer of our army who does not respect his criticism. He refers tc our standing army, and to the difficulty of maintain- ing not discipline, but the "intelligent military discipline that rests upon patri- otism." Patriotism rests upon a train- ing in youth which inculcates obedience, [122] IDOLS unselfishness, devotion to a higher self. The lack of that spirit on the part of the un-American ized immigrants who enter the army is intelligible. But when we are informed that recruits who have passed through our lower schools, cannot, in spite of the wisdom, patience, and efficiency of our American officers, be moulded to the intelligent discipline that depends upon patriotism, what apology have we educators to prefer? Froebelism. What apology our cities and States? Feminization. With all their appropriation for mate- rial comfort in the schools, for mech- anism and method — hydra-headed and microcephalous — they have failed to segregate funds sufficient to win men to the ranks of education. Some fine men there are; more Miss Nancys. Some fine women, infinitely superior [123] IDOLS to the Miss Nancys ; and a mob of mobile maidens meditating matrimony. This is not alliteration : it is fact. The average salary in our public schools is $330 per annum. Eighty per cent, of the teachers in our schools are women. And the average professional life of our women teachers is three years. Are they starved into matrimony? or do they coquet a while on cream-puff salaries ? Under such conditions, even if women were suited to discipline our maturing boys, which they are not — what continuity of mental, what of moral discipline, can we expect ? If it be objected that the roots of discipline and hence of patriotism are not in the school but the home, I reply that it is our duty, as educators, to discipline parents for the home. And discipline is not — to bow down to the idol of Play. [124] IDOLS Education, as I have said, is the process of knowing the best, enjoying the best, producing the best; but not in the realms of truth and taste alone: in the realm of duty, too. The goal of all study is service to humanity; more directly, service to the home, to society, and to the state. That service can be rendered only by the man who is sane of body as well as of soul. To that sanity the essential is duty performed; physical duty as well as mental and moral. But that duty must be ration- ally determined and rigidly exacted. So far as the physical welfare of our pupils in the public schools is concerned it would appear that whatever effort is exercised is neither rational nor rigid. Turning again to the examination for entrance to West Point, we note that of a grand total of 351 candidates, [125] IDOLS 100 were found to be physically defec- tive. "This," says Colonel Larned, "is perhaps the most serious feature of the exhibit. . . . Public education surely has something to do with the physical well-being of our children; and the benefit to the community of its sys- tematic occupation with their develop- ment and care in this regard is in no respect inferior to the importance of its function as a mind-trainer. If the standard of mind-development is that here shown, then most assuredly ten years of systematic body-training would produce a benefit to the average child vastly superior." Those of us who have had experience with a system of compulsory gymnastics and military drill in state universities can entertain no doubt of the tonic effect, moral as well as physical. The system should [126] IDOLS certainly be extended to our public schools. For a like reason and in like way, affairs intellectual in our system of edu- cation must be reformed. We not only fail of discipline, we vitiate the possi- bilities of moral training inherent in study, so long as we encourage caprice in the choice of studies and trifling in their pursuit; and, as the last Report of the Commissioner of Education informs us, allow our pupils in the public schools to take 225 holidays in the year. I agree with the officer whose statistics of the United States Military Academy I have quoted, that, "properly adapted" to the various needs and possibilities of citizenship, "the military training and system" of West Point, with its prescribed scheme of studies, its motive powers of control [ 127 ] IDOLS and award would, if introduced into our lower and collegiate schools, do more for the development of our youth in physical efficiency, scholarship, judg- ment, taste, character, in short in preparation for citizenship — than any system now pursued. Save so far as a general choice between industrial or academic schooling is conceded, the pupil should encounter no elective sys- tem until he is ready to enter upon the true university course which now begins with the beginning of the junior year, and even then a system so rationalized that the perils do not outweigh the privileges. [128] IDOLS OF THE ACADEMIC CAVE IDOLS OF THE ACADEMIC CAVE THE long and short of it is that we, educators, don't educate. We are fuddled with educational fads; and we fuddle the schools in turn. From the universities the cry goes up, "How do more than we do?" By doing fewer things and better; by requiring more of the schools. From the schools the cry goes up, "The universities require too much already. How do more than we can?" By doing fewer things and better. The universities do not require too much, nor so much as, in the near future, they will require. The schools are trying not much but many things. They are fuddled with fads of pedago- [131] IDOLS gic ignorance and conceit. They can do more by trying less: Less number and variety of studies, less dawdling over them, less futile and mortal repe- tition, less subdivision into arbitrary cabins and compartments and two-inch treads of knowledge, less fear of over- taxing the memory, less coddling of the child, less experimentation with half- fledged theories of pedagogy, and with fads that are the source of laughter to gods and men. They can do more by trying less: Less spelling of words without syllables, and of syllables with- out letters; less baby arithmetic, and ten-year old arithmetic, and fifteen- year old arithmetic; less partial pay- ments, and discounts, and calculations on stocks and bonds, for girls and those who having escaped being girls may also escape Wall Street; less encyclopedic [132] IDOLS jumble of geography; less literary criti- cism and more grammar; at least two or three less of the weary repetitions of United States history. Fewer dif- ferent kinds of effort, in other words — and more intellectual effort in funda- mentals on the part of the child. Some accuracy in something. Less experi- mentation with half -fledged theories of pedagogy, and with fads that are the laughter of gods and men. Less worship of the idols of the Cave. The waste of time is appalling; and it is ultimately traceable in our element- ary schools, to the worship of idols of the Cave. "My little boy," writes Peter McArthur, My little boy is eight years old, He goes to school each day; He doesn't mind the tasks they set — They seem to him but play. [133] IDOLS He heads his class at raffia work, And also takes the lead At making dinky paper boats — But I wish that he could read. They teach him physiology, And oh, it chills our hearts To hear our prattling innocent Mix up his inward parts. He also learns astronomy And names the stars by night; Of course he's very up-to-date, But I wish that he could write. They teach him things botanical, They teach him how to draw; He babbles of mythology And gravitation's law; The discoveries of science With him are quite a fad. They tell me he's a clever boy, But I wish that he could add. From such schools pupils are sent to the high school deficient not only in knowl- [134] IDOLS edge but in discipline; and in these new grades further waste of time is consequently inevitable. With proper teaching, at least three priceless years could be saved of a schoolboy's life by the age of eighteen. It is the opinion of our most able superintendents of schools that reform is impossible until we have more com- petent teachers. It is impossible until we cease our fads of pedagogic igno- rance and conceit. At present we are chopping wood with a dull axe. But instead of grinding the axe we step aside to chew tobacco and theorize. Teachers when incompetent are so, prin- cipally, because they are ignorant. Our theorists are to blame. They try to dissipate the ignorance of teachers, not by teaching them some one thing which they shall teach, but by teaching them [135] IDOLS how to teach all things that they do not know. I have the profoundest respect for historians and philosophers of education, themselves learned men in special fields, like the late Professors Payne and Hins- dale, and the Honourable William T. Harris, and the heads of educational departments in some of our great uni- versities. But the sciolists who, ignor- ant of any art or science, dabble in all — who walk up and down in our schools, prating of the science of education (as if there were yet any such science), and tempting aside the learner from learning what is tried and fast in the subject that he would teach (be it history or Latin or English), to the pursuit of so-called laws, principles, methods, not yet concurred in by the wise, not yet possible to be derived from facts not [136] IDOLS yet ascertained, still less observed and systematized — such sciolists do not command respect. We have sympathy for the undergraduate whose instructor in pedagogy advised her to drop Greek and take Ventilation of the School- room. "I came to college to get an education," she replied, "not a teach- er's certificate." In our graduate cur- riculum there is a place for the history of education ; and for practice in teaching — for though a teacher, like a poet, is born, not made, the self-made man must try himself on a few times before he is fin- ished. But the place is not in the under- graduate, still less in the usual so-called "Normal" School course. Most of the methods and theories of the sciolists are fallacies of ignorance and personal con- ceit — what Bacon calls idols of the Cave. They waste the time of the earn- [137] IDOLS est student; they delude the incompetent into a profession that demands not so much method as scholarship and innate aptitude; and they bewilder the schools. These, then, are some of the idols, to which American education has done homage: idols of the Tribe — the Popu- lar Voice, Inevitable Grace, Numbers, Quick Returns, Parade, and False Culture; idols of the Market-place and Theatre — Caprice and Pedantry and Play; and the idols of the Cave. But the homage is the error of a troubled dream, whose image, when we awake, we shall despise. Some of the remedies have already been implied. Others, knowing that it is not the better part of valour, I shall venture to suggest. Hav- ing heard that Ephraim was joined to his idols, I have not let him alone. I [ 138 ] IDOLS have committed the indiscretion of writ- ing a book about him — a Zoar of a book, to be sure; but then, I have laid myself open. If now, in addition, I write of ideals, what will Ephraim call them ? [139] SOME " IDOLS " OF MY OWN SOME " IDOLS " OF MY OWN MR. HOMER EDMISTON, in an article on Classical Education in America, has recently maintained that the essential excuse for learning " is the mastery and possession, complete and permanent, of knowledge and forms of skill that prepare for the business of life." And, with such learning in mind, he extols the method of apprentice- ship — "a few pupils with a similar bent and promise under a master who works" — the method that, during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, produced in art and the handicrafts generations of disciples, many of them more excellent than their masters. [143] IDOLS Now, so far as the learning of an art or handicraft goes, there is some truth in this contention. But mere learning is not education. And if it were, the ques- tion would still remain how to impart it in such caravanseries as now pose for universities and public schools ? To provide on the one hand for that mastery of special knowledge, and of special forms of skill, which prepares for a special business in life; and, on the other hand, to provide for that broader discipline which prepares for the general business of life; and so to arrive at true education — that is the problem. To begin with, our preparatory schools, from lowest to highest, must be tho- roughly differentiated as industrial and academic. And these being the main educational courses in our schools, bridges [144] IDOLS must be provided from one to the other, at appropriate intervals: at ten and four- teen years of age; or, perhaps better still, at twelve and fifteen — the lines of division marking the introductory, and the ad- vanced, high school. By such bridges the lad who, beginning with the industrial and commercial, develops an adaptability to the academic, may pass over to it; or the lad, who, beginning with the aca- demic, betrays aptitude for the industrial, or is compelled thereto, may prepare himself for a career none the less useful that it is not ordinarily called professional. It must no longer be possible to say that we are " far behind European coun- tries in the matter of fitting girls and boys for a trade"; that the American school- boy too often "does not know what to do when turned away from school" ; or that, [145] IDOLS as in New York, "one-fourth of the boys leave the public school before graduation, because they are * sick of it.'" They are sick of it, because not enough of them have gone straight to the industrial school ; and because the industrial school itself is neither sufficiently practical nor suffic- iently ideal. In the industrial schools of the future manual and commercial train- ing must of course predominate, but not, as now, to the exclusion of the essentials and ideals of literature, history and pure sci- ence. There must be training of imagi- nation, sensibility, civic interest: these things are poetry of nature and humanity alike. And the industrial discipline itself must be practical and purpose- ful. It must not be, as too frequently now, arid and meaningless because ex- perimental; nor on account of unwieldy classes, as now, must it be superficial. I [146] IDOLS would propose that such schools avail themselves of the cooperation of trades- unions. In this way, alone, will the prac- tice that makes practical, as well as pur- poseful, be assured. Pupils should be apprenticed by twos and threes, or in somewhat larger squads, to the masters of actual industry — even during the years of the school course. And the months, or weeks, or hours, of such apprenticeship, genuine in quality but not excessive in amount, should reasonably contribute to- ward the completion of the requirements of the industrial curriculum. In such manner, I believe that the best feature of mediaeval training can be revived, and at the same time adapted to the broader needs and opportunities of the modern. In the academic schools the prelimi- nary to reform is the elimination of [147] IDOLS incompetency and irrelevancy. The ex- ample of Germany, France and England, shows that years may be saved. To ob- ject that American conditions are different from European is to beg the question. They are different — economic, social, civil, intellectual; but the difference is in our favour. To urge that the Ameri- can purpose is different is disingenuous. The purpose is everywhere the same — to get ready for life: the business of it, a business in it. We do not get ready for life by an ignorant loitering. Let us eli- minate incompetency and irrelevancy from our common schools; and encourage our best high schools to take over the first two years of work now covered by our colleges. So doing, we shall not only multiply cen- tres of academic learning that prepare for life in their several communities and that uplift those communities, we shall hasten [148] IDOLS the advent of the true university that prepares for the higher walks of life and uplifts the nation. I am not advocating the addition of years in time to the high school course, but of years in achievement. I am advocat- ing, if you will, a twelve-year common school in which, by the time the boy is ready to enter college, two years have been saved : saved from waste and added to wisdom. Our best school-masters tell us that even three years might be saved. Our best schools save one or two already. Our schoolboy of sixteen should do the work he is now beginning in college at eighteen. It is a question not of longer schooling but of better; and the response must come from the teacher. What we need is an educative system and teachers who are educated. Some one adds "and homes that educate." Yes: but [149] IDOLS schools to educate the homes. To defer reform in the schools till the homes are reformed is to defer education till nobody needs it. What we need is an educative system and teachers who are educated. If the university should require that, within the next six years, the high school shall accom- plish one year of work more than at pres- sent, the high school will require that, within the next three years, the eight grades below it shall have accomplished one year more of work than at present. Within twelve years our best universities will have relegated the courses of the Lower Division, that is to say, of their present freshman and sophomore years, to the high school. By the elimination of fads, frivolity and ignorance from the educational system of our preparatory schools, and the substitution of systema- [150] IDOLS tized instruction in fundamentals, the pupil will be enabled to enter the uni- versity at eighteen, prepared to do the work with which the university should begin, that is, the work of our present third, or junior year. Our academic high school will devote itself to one common drill for all, a drill prescribed and thorough in the humani- ties prerequisite to the liberal study of any higher profession. If the high school be of six years, it may profitably fall into two divisions: the introductory, taking pupils from the twelfth to the fifteenth year; and the advanced. The former will fit the pupil who ceases his schooling at fifteen for apprenticeship in a business or professional occupation. Having be- gun his study of foreign languages in the elementary school at ten, as he should, he will at fifteen have acquired the fund- [151] IDOLS amentals of two, and the elements of a science, of mathematics, English, history, geography and civil government, suffi- cient for an introduction to independent culture and the conduct of life. He will be where the pupil of seventeen now is. The advanced high school will fit pupils for college. Its graduate of eighteen will be where the pupil of twenty now is, or should be. He will enter the university, not only equipped with three foreign languages — one ancient and two mod- ern, or two ancient and one modern — but with a significant knowledge of English, history, mathematics, and sci- ence — which is a humanity — to his credit, besides. There will naturally be those who, having completed the reformed school curriculum, will desire, because of limited means, to proceed immediately to the pro- [152] IDOLS fessional schools. And for some time to come, I imagine that such proceeding will be permitted. They will unfortu- nately forfeit the more liberal training of the collegiate course; but, more tho- roughly and broadly prepared than now for the professional course, they will enter upon the career of life not only at an earlier age but with greater prom- ise of success than at present would be possible. [153] SOME MORE "IDOLS" OF MY OWN SOME MORE "IDOLS" OF MY OWN fTlHE student entering the collegiate -*• department of the university will choose between systems of study different from those now offered — systems organ- ized and rationalized ; one as a liberal intro- duction to vocational studies ; the other as a vocational discipline in liberal studies. He will take his B. A. or his B. S. in a rational course of academic studies — at twenty-one; and his Ph.D., or his pro- fessional or technical, advanced degree at twenty-three or twenty-four, with a liberal education as the basis of all. He has been grounded in the funda- mentals of education. If he has already resolved upon a career in law, or medi- [157] IDOLS cine, or theology, in engineering or any other of the professions of applied science, he will enter upon a system that may be called liberal-vocational: vocational in outlook and aim, but liberal in breadth and method. His election of a curric- ulum or "school" will be free within the limits which he has set for himself ; but his selection of studies within that school will be confined to the groups of cognate dis- ciplines prescribed for its proper function. His attitude toward education will be altogether other than that which now too frequently obtains. He has but three years for the normal completion of his curriculum; and of that curriculum the requirements will not, as now, be satisfied by the mere heaping up of " credits " on dis- continuous "courses," but by the ability to pass examinations upon divisions of study more comprehensive than any subsidiary [158] IDOLS "course" or "courses" conducted in class. These general examinations will, more- over, be entrusted not to the lecturer or tutor who has in part covered the sub- jects in course, but to independent com- missions of specialists. The "snap" and "snap professor" will lapse into desuetude. The student will rest upon his own respon- sibility. He will have little leisure for nonsense, or temptation toward the sham culture and strenuous parade of "student activities." No discipline that is set be- fore him can appear meaningless if it form a practical and integral part of the training which he himself has elected to pursue. Nor will the Latin or Greek, the history or science, the modern lan- guages or the political and economic theory prescribed by the system which he has elected be any the less liberal in educa- tional effect for the conduct of life, [159] IDOLS because it happens to be pursued in the rational attempt to fit oneself for an occupation in life. Such a student if he look toward law as his chosen career, will proceed in his academic course at once to liberal studies in jurisprudence. The liberal vocational system, upon which he enters, premises the fundamental disciplines. It does not, on that account, duplicate the purely professional course of the Law School. The technical training of that course lies beyond. The curriculum which he now undertakes provides for ultimate higher vocational ends by an immediate train- ing in liberal methods and materials. He will not be plunged into the codes and statutes of a particular state. He will pursue studies general and comparative. He will be drilled, and he will drill him- self, in history, constitutional and polit- [160] IDOLS ical, American and European; in political theory and economy; in formal logic and practical argumentation; in master- pieces of prose, Latin and English; in the Institutes of Gaius and Justinian, at first hand; in Plato's Republic and Aris- totle's Politics, at first hand if he can; in Gneist, Savigny and De Tocqueville at first hand, because he can; in the prin- ciples of jurisprudence and the history of legal institutions; and in international law. He will pursue a course none the less liberal in its culture because voca- tional in its interest; none the less vo- cational in intent because, in method and scope, liberal. His course is rational because wisely prescribed ; but with some margin of choice for the tasting of sciences or arts not prescribed. The liberal- vocational student is not grabbing for quick returns. He takes his bachelor's [161] IDOLS degree in three years thus spent; and in two more, strictly professional, his higher degree, and begins the practice of law. In theology a similar system of rational study for the bachelor's degree will be provided: liberal in linguistic, historical, philosophical, scientific scope; and on that account all the more practical in the long run. In medicine, too, a system of training in one division, which, strictly prescribed, shall include a discipline in correlated disciplines of science and art. And in commerce, and in engineering and the other branches of applied science. But in every case the liberal shall precede or accompany; and in every case there shall be reserved to the student a reasonable possibility of tasting unrelated disciplines. If, on the other hand, our freshman of the new dispensation enter college [162] IDOLS not yet fixed in his choice of a career — if he desire yet a season to fit himself for the general business of life, he will find prepared for his emergency, too, a rational system of study. The material and end shall, as he desires, be liberal; but the method will be none the less severe, purposeful, vocational. He enters upon a vocational discipline in liberal studies. As things now are in most of our uni- versities, such a student choosing at random and unguided, from his junior year on, subjects unrelated in material, method and sequence, bladders himself out with "ragged notions and babble- ments." If, perchance, he devote him- self to one subject alone, English, Sans- krit, or entomology, he issues narrow of beam and unballasted of wit. My pro- posal is that we do not ride him on a merry-go-round, or clap him into a [163] IDOLS straight- jacket : that we educate him. That we give him, in the preparatory school, the liberal foundation requisite for the business of life; that we give him in college the vocational method for a business in life, even though that business be cultural or scientific. He may choose the classics, or the modern languages, or English, or history, or the natural sciences as the core of his college course. But he will be placed in a school of disciplines prescribed for the end that he professes. He will not be suffered to pursue his subject out of relation to others requisite to rounded culture on the one hand, and to vocational opportunity on the other. He will not be permitted to devote two or three mor- tal years to English, for instance, out of relation to other modern poetry, to classical as well as to Germanic or Ro- [164] IDOLS mance philology, out of relation to polit- cal and social history, and to philosophy. Nowadays we seem to think that when the Junior (who is not quite the equal of our future Freshman) has chosen his "major" or special study, he has passed the stage when guidance of choice is necessary. We let him narrow himself to the special study, or let him group about it what accessories he will. He emerges technically learned, perhaps ; but with an immaturity of training and an innocence of correlations. His house of life is a piti- ful attic; and its underpinning wobbles. For such a youth, whether he tend toward a career of teaching or of learning for learning's sake, the curriculum must be rationalized. His special subject or group must be studied as a factor of a "school" in which the disciplines are strictly prescribed — liberal in material [165] IDOLS and end, but of vocational applicability in method. Whatever freedom of elec- tive he may have, after once electing his school, must be within the limits per- scribed by his instructors. His stand- ards, too, must rise above the levels of the daily class and course. He must, as I have before insisted, be thrown upon his own responsibility; he must pass examinations set upon his own reading, by those who do not know him. These examinations should sift out the "pass" men from the "honour" men; and the results should be published. We must rid ourselves of the fallacy of Inevitable Grace. Students should not be allowed to think that no one cares how well they do, or ill. Students should not be allowed to feed themselves through college hand- to-mouth on school-boy quizzes and per- sonally conducted examinations; leaning, [ 166 ] IDOLS when faint, upon the instructor like sick kittens against a hot brick. Emulation may be damnable, but it is the spice of life. Inevitable Grace may be divine, but it never won a job: a pulpit or a professor's chair, a shoemaker's awl or a seat on change, or a human soul. If we of the faculties shed some of our delusions; if we simply see to it that the student sees what he is driving at, and why, and make him drive and drive hard, he will no longer delude himself into the belief that by extra-curriculum activities he best pre- pares himself for life. We shall not only enhance scholarship but relegate campus activities to an existence which, because inconspicuous, will offer opportunity for genuine self-sacrifice to their supporters. This is not to relegate all liberal studies to the high school; it is not to turn the [167] IDOLS university into a congeries of professional schools; it is not to squeeze the college out of existence. It is to elevate the university college in degree, to rationalize it in kind. If by "college" we mean a home of outworn ideals, or ideals that have lost their wits — a refuge for aim- less studies, headless theories, footless methods, the sooner we squeeze the "college" out the better. But the "col- lege" is not the asylum of delusions. It is not of the ideal because unpractical, but of the practical because ideal. If what I urge is to vocationalize the liberal studies so that they may prepare one for an occupation in life, it is also to liberalize the vocational that they may prepare one for the conduct of life — the business inherently undefined, not within the forecast of the individual, the business of finding oneself, of turning [168] IDOLS within the boat's length, of steaming forward in unknown seas. The pro- posal is, in brief, that the college abandon the fallacy of indiscriminate electives; or of a self-chosen, baseless and inade- quate group, incapable of superstructure; or of a major — an isolated study — that may lead to pedantry or the super- ficial practical, but never to the educa- tion that is for life. The proposal is to rationalize our systems of study. There is in President Hadley's reiterated epi- gram: "The ideal college education is one where a student learns things that he is not going to use in after life, by methods that he is going to use," a Chestertonian virtue. It teases truth, but comforts while it mocks. The ideal college education is precisely not what President Hadley says it is, but what you see he might have said: It is where a [169] IDOLS student learns things and methods that he is going to use in after life; but not the things and methods that he is going to use for one use only. The latter learning is of the professional school. This rationalizing of the college may seem to some of my readers new and therefore impracticable; but it is not new at all. The curricula of the uni- versities of Oxford and Cambridge, lead- ing to the degree of bachelor of arts, which we in America have been prone to regard as purely cultural and hence unpractical, have for years been more practical than our American curricula now are. Their Final Honour Schools in the Literae Humaniores, English, Modern History and Oriental Languages are liberal of the vocational character- istics already described. Their schools of Jurisprudence and Theology are liberal- [170] IDOLS vocational. Their final schools, whether for honours or not, in the departments mentioned above, and in Mathematics, Natural Sciences, and Medicine, pre- suppose a basis in the Holy Scriptures, classics, mathematics, history, philosophy, logic and a modern foreign language. Their most vocational of courses leading to the bachelor's degree, the medical, turns out men of culture. Their most liberal, that in the Literae Humaniores, especially despised by our practical peda- gogues as of idle culture, monastic, anti- quated, for the aristocratic few, is in fact the most practical propaedeutic to any profession, and for any class of society, in the English-speaking world, to-day. [171] OBITER DICTA OBITER DICTA TET us, with a higher grade of fresh- -■— * men entering our universities, and with systems of study to offer them, insist that scholarship be supreme. Let us encourage intellectual emulation by the methods that I have suggested — by eliminating the "snap" and its pro- fessor, by modifying the merit of "heaped- up" courses, by moulding the student but, still, throwing him more upon his unaided effort, by emphasizing scope, im- partiality and rigour of examination, and by enforcing publicity of award and of awarded responsibilities. So doing, we shall offset the culture of Incidental Issues, Parade and Play. We shall [175] IDOLS explode the folly of athletics at long range; abate the hysteria of the ludi maximi. As to the extravagance incident upon gladiatorial combats — let us, at once, eliminate all that savours of pro- fessionalism and the Flavian Amphi- theatre. Let us, at once, revise the rules of the game that necessitate pugi- listic proficiency, and, hence, protracted periods of professional inurement, and, hence, salaried coaches and trainers and such like lanistae, masseurs and scrapers and oilers, and training tables and special gratuities of food and raiment, and hence colossal expenditures, and colossal risks, and corvees and benevolences, and colossal gate-receipts. Let us abolish the nightmare of frantic excess and car- nal hostility, and strife and blood and dust. Let us make of football not a menace to morals and manners, life and [176] IDOLS limb, but a generous rivalry, a pastime in which all may engage, a clean and wholesome sport. In brief, let us culti- vate athletics for education; not for the "thug" or the "bookie" or the "bum." A serious obstacle to education is the ever-increasing mass of the university. The more we subdivide the better. But the more spontaneous the cleavage — the more characteristic the constituent groups, the more cohesive each, and the more manageable. In our Greek-letter fraternities, and in similar house-clubs we have even now a germ of marvellous academic potentiality. Our fraternities are American in origin and in spirit. Their process is of natural selection. Their membership includes instructors as well as students. In the fraternity is one solution of the difficulty of num- bers. Let us persuade our fraternities [177] IDOLS to revise the policy of choosing members, once in a while, for promise of scholar- ship. And let us found within our fra- ternities and house-clubs graduate fellow- ships with residence in the house. Such fellowships will not only elevate the standard of the sodalities themselves, but constitute the initial step toward the realization of a system of colleges of resident students and instructors, mu- tually stimulating, within the university. Of the common sense of our students, of their desire to benefit by the oppor- tunities offered them, I have no doubt. The essential of reform is that we, of the faculties, do our duty. In one of Frank Norris's novels there is a sailing master who fears that his captain hav- ing failed to reach the Pole, will take to writing books and lecturing. "I wouldn't be so main sorry," says the [178] IDOLS broken-hearted tar to the heroine, "I wouldn't be so main sorry that he won't reach the Pole, as that he quit trying. . . . The danger don't figure; what he'd have to go through with don't fig- ure; nothing in the world don't figure; it's his work; God A'mighty cut him out for that, and he's got to do it. Ain't you got any influence with him, Miss? Won't you talk good talk to him ? Don't let him chuck; don't let him get soft. Make him be a Man and not a pro- fessor." Let us be Men. Let us keep unde- sirables out of the university. Let us eliminate the obsolete features, and com- bine the best, of the admission by exam- ination and the admission by accredit- ing. Let us say to the Bandar-log, " You may swing by your tail if you will, when you're not in the Palace; but if you [179] IDOLS don't come down now and find out what the Palace is for, and do it, you shall go back to the jungle and swing by your tail forever." Let us cultivate closer personal relations with our young men that they may be neither futile nor utili- tarian, neither Bandar-logs nor Men of Argos — that their youth may not be "a blunder, their manhood a vain strug- gle, their old age a regret." Let us be none the less learned, but, let us not be merely specialists. Let us be Men. Let us pay less attention to mechanism and more to teaching, inspiring, humanizing. Let us make the college the gateway, not of loafing and vain delights and dis- sipated energies and immaterial triumphs, not of mistaken ideals — utilitarian or professional, profitless learning or vacu- ous method — but of the glorious world of conduct and opportunity, of life. [180] IDOLS Our remedies lie in ourselves. And even though this generation of students and of teachers may have failed of the ideal, we shall know that, for the next, some idols have been swept away. THE END [181] FEB One copy del. to Cat. Div.