As A c******n Saw Us

Chapter 12

EDUCATION IN AMERICA

A fundamental idea with the American is to educate children. This is carried to the extent of making it an offense not to send those above a certain age to school, while State or town officers, called "truant police," are on the alert to arrest all such children who are not in school. The following was told me by a Government official in Washington, who had obtained it from a well-known literary man who witnessed the incident. The literary man was invited to visit a Boston school of the lower grade, where he found the teacher, an attractive woman, engaged in teaching a class of "youngsters," the progeny of the working class. After the visitor had listened to the recitations for some time, he remarked to the teacher, "How do you account for the neatness and cleanliness of these children?" "Oh, I insist upon it," was the reply. "The Board of Education does not anticipate all the desiderata, but I make them come clean and make it a part of the course;" then rising and tapping on the table, she said, "Prepare for the sixth exercise." All the children stood up. "One," said the teacher, whereupon each pupil took out a clean cloth handkerchief. "Two," counted the teacher, and with one concerted blast every pupil blew his or her nose in clarion notes. "Three," came again after a few seconds, and the handkerchiefs were replaced. At "four" the student body sank back to their seats without even smiling, or without having "cracked a smile." You could search the world over and not find a prototype. It goes without saying that the teacher was a wit and wag, but the lesson of handkerchiefs and their use was inculcated.

Education is a part of the scheme to make all Americans equal. A more splendid system it is impossible to conceive. Every possible facility is afforded the poorest family to educate their children. Public schools loom up everywhere, and are increased as rapidly as the children, so there is no excuse for ignorance. The schools are graded, and there is no expense or fee. The parents pay a tax, a small sum, those who have no children being taxed as well as those who have many. There are schools to train boys to any trade; normal free schools to make teachers; night schools for working boys; commercial schools to educate clerks; ship schools to train sailors and engineers. Then come the great universities, in part free, with all the splendid paraphernalia, some being State institutions and others memorials of dead millionaires. Then there are the great technical schools, as well as universities (where one can study Chinese, if desired). There are schools of art, law, medicine, nature, forestry, sculpture; schools to teach one how to write, how to dress, how to eat, and how to keep well; schools to teach one how to write advertisements, to cultivate the memory, to grow strong; schools for shooting, boxing, fencing; schools for nurses and cooks; summer schools; winter schools.

And yet the American is not profoundly educated. He has too much within his reach. I have been distinctly surprised at crude specimens I have met who were graduates of great universities. The well-educated Englishman, German, and American are different things. The American is far behind in the best sense, which I am inclined to think is due to the teachers. Any one can get through a normal school and become a teacher who can pass the examination, and I have seen some singular instances. If all the teachers were obliged to pass examinations in culture, refinement, and the art of conveying knowledge, there would be a falling of pedagogic heads. The free and over education of the poor places them at once above their parents. They are free, and the daughter of a ditch laborer, whose wife is a floor scrubber, upon being educated is ashamed of her parents, learns to play the piano, apes the rich, and is at least unhappy.

The result is, there remains no peasant class. The effect of education on the country boy is to make him despise the farm and go to the city, to become a clerk and ape the fashions of the wealthy at six or eight dollars a week. He has been educated up to the standard of his "boss" and to be his equal. The overeducation of the poor is a heartless thing. The women vie with the men, and as a result women graduates, taking positions at half the price that men demand, crowd them out of the fields of skilled labor, whereas the man, not crowded out, should, normally, marry the girl. In power, strength, and progress the American nation stands first in the world, and all this may be due to splendid educational facilities. But this is not everything. There result strife, unhappiness, envy, and a craze for riches. I do not think the Americans as a race are as happy as the Chinese. Religious denominations try to have their own schools, so that children shall not be captured by other denominations. Thus the Roman Catholics have parochial schools, under priests and sisters, and colleges of various grades. They oppose the use of the Bible in the public school, and in some States their influence has helped to suppress its use. The Quakers, with a following of only eighty thousand, have colleges and schools. The Methodists have universities, as have the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and others. All denominations have institutions of learning. These schools are in the hands of clergymen, and are often endowed or supported by wealthy members of the denomination.

A remarkable feature of American life is the college of correspondence. A man or firm advertises to teach by correspondence at so much a month. Many branches are taught, and if the student is in earnest a certain amount of information can thus be accumulated. Among the people I have met I have observed a lack of what I term full, broad education, producing a well-rounded mind, which is rare except among the class that stands first in America--the refined, cultured, educated man of an old family, who is the product of many generations. The curriculum of the high school in America would in China seem sufficient to equip a student for any position in diplomatic life; but I have found that a majority of graduates become clerks in a grocery or in other shops, car conductors, or commercial travelers, where Latin, Greek, and other higher studies are absolutely useless. The brightest educational sign I see in America is the attention given to manual training. In schools boys are taught some trade or are allowed to experiment in the trades in order to find out their natural bent, so that the boy can be educated with his future in view. As a result of education, women appear in nearly every field except that of manual labor on farms, which is performed in America only by alien women.

The richest men in America to-day, the multi-millionaires, are not the product of the universities, but mainly of the public schools. Carnegie, Rockefeller, Schwab, men of the great steel combine, the oil magnates, the great railway magnates, the great mine owners, were all men of limited education at the beginning. Among great merchants, however, the university man is found, and among the Harvard and Yale graduates, for example, may be found some of America's most distinguished men. But Lincoln, the martyred President, had the most limited education, and among public men the majority have been the product of the public school, which suggests that great men are natural geniuses, who will attain prominence despite the lack of education. The best-educated men in America to my mind are the graduates of West Point and Annapolis, the military and naval academies. These two institutions are extremely rigorous, and are open to the most humble citizens. They so transform men in four years that people would hardly recognize them. The result is a highly educated, refined, cultivated, practical man, with a high sense of honor and patriotism. If America would have a school of this kind in every State there would be no limit to her power in two decades.

Despite education, the great mass of the people are superficial; they have a smattering of this and that. An employer of several thousand men told the Superintendent of Education of the District of Columbia that he had selected the brightest boy graduate of a high school for a position which required only a knowledge of simple arithmetic. The graduate proved to be totally unfit for the position and was discharged. Later he became the driver of a team of horses. America abounds in thousands of educational institutions, yet there is not one so well endowed that it can say to the world we wish no more money. It is singular that some multi-millionaire does not grasp this opportunity to donate one hundred millions to a great national school or university, to be placed at Washington, where the buildings would all be lessons in architecture of marble after the plans of a world's fair. Instead they leave a few thousands here and a few there. Carnegie, the leading millionaire, gives libraries to cities all over the States, each of which bears the name of the giver. The object is too obvious, and is cheap in conception. In San Francisco some years ago a citizen tried the same experiment. He proposed to give the city a large number of fountains. When they were finished each one was seen to be surmounted by his own statue. A few were put up, how many I do not recall, but one night some citizens waited on a statue, fastened a rope to its neck, and hauled it down. So peculiar are the Americans that I believe if Mr. Carnegie should place his name on ten thousand libraries, with the object of attaining undying fame, the people, by a concerted effort, would forget all about him in a few decades. Such an attempt does not appeal to any side of the American character. I have known the best Americans, but Mr. Carnegie has not known the best of his own countrymen or he would not attempt to perpetuate his memory in this way.