84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY 



By J. McKEEN CATTELL 



IN our complicated civilization a change in any direction may have 

 unforeseen effects in other directions. If we do away with an 

 aristocracy of birth, we leave room for a plutocracy and for politics 

 as a trade; if we learn to use machinery, we throw into quasi-slavery 

 a large part of the people; if we improve the means of communication 

 and transportation, we build the tenement districts of the cities; if 

 we develop a system of credits and exchange, we get public debts, pan- 

 ics, lockouts and congested wealth; if we use reason more, the surer 

 instincts atrophy. 



One of the cases where notable progress has yielded sinister by- 

 l^roducts is the tendency of the school to weaken the family. Civiliza- 

 tion may persist and progress without the family; but human and 

 pre-human societies have been so completely based on it that no one 

 can foresee the results of its destruction. Mankind will last only so 

 long as children are born and cared for; and no plausible substitute 

 for the family has been proposed. It is in any case evident that the 

 premature weakening of the family will bring disaster; our reasoned 

 efforts should at present be directed to its support and toward adjust- 

 ing to it our newer adventures. 



The school by its nature weakens the family, for it takes the chil- 

 dren away from home and gives them interests not centered in the 

 home. Within certain limits it may be a gain to polish homely wits 

 and supply a new and wider outlook. The family can withstand a 

 certain amount of aggression and may even be the better for it. But 

 the notion is wide-spread that the more years a child spends in school, 

 the more days in the year and the more hours in the day, the better 

 it is, and that the scholastic trivialities inherited from the idle classes 

 are the proper material for education. There is even approval of places 

 like kindergartens and girls boarding schools, which are harmful both 

 to the family and to the individual. 



The sacrifice of the family to the school under the best of condi- 

 tions is serious enough; it is distressing to see methods used that are 

 wantonly destructive. If children are really more cultivated than 

 their parents there is inevitable discord. We can only say that the 

 older generation must suffer for the newer, the present family for the 

 better family that is to be. But the emphasis on superficial book 



