844 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ures are necessary to mend them. If 

 "we see whence our trouble has come, 

 we shall not be at any serious loss as to 

 remedies. The faults of our political 

 system, or rather the vices which attend 

 its practical working, are closely con- 

 nected, in our opinion, with a defective 

 system of popular education. The pub- 

 lic-school system is a gigantic creation 

 of law. It did not grow any more than 

 the tariff ; it was made, and made under 

 the influence of arbitrary conceptions as 

 to what a school system for the whole 

 people should be. Being made for the 

 whole people, special adaptations could 

 not be thought of. Consequently, the 

 work it does is like mill work, and all 

 who come out of it show one uniform 

 pattern. There is no cultivation of in- 

 dividuality, and, broadly speaking, all 

 ideal elements are banished from the 

 education imparted. The result is that 

 the one really dominant trait in the 

 swarms of youths sent out year after 

 year from the public schools is a con- 

 suming desire to make money, and 

 to make it in the easiest way possible. 

 What the state has done is not so much 

 to educate in any worthy sense, as to 

 increase the keenness of competition by 

 promoting an unnatural uniformity of 

 tastes and aims. And, as the universal 

 ambition is not only to make money but 

 to make it fast and easily, it is not sur- 

 prising that those who do not see how 

 they are going to do this by honest 

 means betake themselves to means that 

 are not honest. It would be an inter- 

 esting and instructive thing to know 

 how many school - bred young men 

 are at this moment engaged in va- 

 rious forms of " fake " business. What 

 these individuals learned at school was 

 that education was chiefly useful as a 

 means of making money, and now they 

 are trying to turn their education to 

 such account as they find possible. 



If habits of industry were taught in 

 the schools, that alone would be a great 

 gain ; but in general it is not so. The 

 idle have ample opportunity to idle, and 



even those who have no natural pro- 

 pensity that way are more or less habit- 

 uated to idleness, owing to the simple 

 fact that the teachers are not able to 

 keep their classes fully occupied. That 

 much moral harm is thus wrought to 

 thousands of boys we have no doubt 

 whatever. Then education is not val- 

 ued, simply because it is apparently so 

 cheap; and this again has a vulgariz- 

 ing and demoralizing effect. Education 

 ought to be valued, and, if it is not, it 

 will be lacking in the moral virtue 

 which it ought to possess. It may fur- 

 ther be asked whether the drill of 

 school renders those who are subjected 

 to it more resourceful or less resource- 

 ful. Is there not a danger lest a habit 

 be formed of looking for direction and 

 not exercising individual powers of 

 thought and will ? We have no wish to 

 dogmatize on such a question, but the 

 conclusion to us is irresistible that the 

 public- school system, as a whole, is a vast 

 attack on the individuality of the rising 

 generation, and that by destroying nat- 

 ural dissimilarities between the units of 

 the population, and thus making com- 

 petition fiercer, it throws a great num- 

 ber out of adjustment to their environ- 

 ment, either as destitute of employment 

 or as in a manner compelled to some 

 more or less criminal means of making 

 a living. 



It is a most unpopular thing, we are 

 aware, to hint at the possibility of 

 " over-education," but might we venture 

 to suggest that there may be, and is in a 

 multitude of cases, misplaced or super- 

 fluous education ? A man not only does 

 not need a university degree to enable 

 him to drive a street car, but the pos- 

 session of a imiversity training is not 

 likely to sweeten for him that particular 

 kind of toil. We hold it to be entirely 

 possible to supersaturate a community 

 with university "advantages" ; money 

 liberally, vigorously, and unwisely ap- 

 plied will do it. 



We fully believe that other elements 

 than those we have indicated enter into 



