128 



The Journal of Heredity 



Teachers blame parents for neglect, but 

 schools teach nothing about children 

 or parental responsibility. Thus we 

 reach the paradox that education, in 

 the most general and fundamental 

 sense that relates to the parental 

 contacts, is left out of account by our 

 "institutions of learning." An over- 

 grown school system is disintegrating 

 the family organization of society. 

 To serve as the basis of a genuine, con- 

 structive educational reform, the spe- 

 cial educational value of the parental 

 contacts needs to be discovered and 

 elaborated, and such information 

 widely disseminated, like our recently 

 acquired knowledge of the wonderful 

 functions of the vitamines of common 

 foods. 



Tracing the evolution of our school 

 system may explain this blind spot in 

 our educational eyesight. The system 

 was inherited from Europe, and goes 

 back, as we know, to Mediaeval times, 

 when the only schools were in the 

 monasteries. The decay of civilization 

 in the Roman Empire was so complete 

 that only the monastic institutions 

 survived, where a little of the light of 

 civilization was kept burning through 

 the night of the Dark Ages. Men took 

 refuge from a ruined world and sought 

 in the monasteries a life as far as 

 possible from any interest in the bear- 

 ing and raising of children, except as 

 objects of pity in orphan asylums, to 

 rescue more brands from the burning. 

 The idea of escape or retirement from 

 the world is still dominant in scholastic 

 institutions. Our universities are 

 "semi-monastic," as an eminent educa- 

 tor has said. Schools of lower rank 

 are faced toward the universities, away 

 from home and family life. 



African savages think that they 

 become civilized by putting on clothes, 

 but our mediaeval ancestors fell under 

 the ob.'^■ession of the school, and we still 

 are afflicted with a pathetic belief in 

 going to school as an essential of 

 mental development, notwithstanding 

 all evidence to the contrary. Clothes 

 undoubtedly are useful for some pur- 

 poses, and schools also are useful, for 

 the purposes that they can accomplish. 

 But savages injure themselves with 

 clothes, and schools have limitations 

 and detriments that need to be recog- 



nized and avoided, in the interest of 

 true education. 



In recent efforts to make education 

 more practical we have made our 

 schools more like factories, not more 

 like homes. In our mechanically 

 graded schools, with children of the 

 same age and mental development kept 

 strictly together, we have gone to the 

 extreme of denying contacts with 

 parents, or even with older children. A 

 book has been written on "The Artifi- 

 cial Production of Stupidity in 

 Schools," but scarcely makes a begin- 

 ning of the subject. Ellen Key has a 

 chapter on "Soul Murder in the 

 Schools," with this fundamental indict- 

 ment : 



"The desire for knowledge, the 

 capacity for acting by oneself, the 

 gift of observation, all qualities 

 children bring with them to school, 

 have, as a rule, at the close of the 

 school period disappeared. They 

 have not been transformed into 

 actual knowledge or interests. This 

 is the result of children spending 

 almost the whole of their life from 

 the sixth to the eighteenth year at 

 the school desk, hour by hour, month 

 by month, term by term. ..." 

 It should not surprise us that "our 

 vast, complex system of education is 

 failing to educate," since it is very 

 poorly adapted to the purpose. Yet 

 the system goes on increasing in size 

 and complexity, having a momentum 

 of its own, because we are all trained to 

 believe that the mental development of 

 children depends on the school machin- 

 ery. "This is what we believe, though 

 we know it is not so," as a Christian 

 Indian said in recounting a heathen 

 tradition. We know that more de- 

 pends on the home than on the school 

 and that the responsibilities of parents 

 are many times greater than those of 

 teachers. The system provides special 

 schools, examinations and licenses to 

 certify the competence of teachers. 

 Competence of parents becomes a prac- 

 tical concern only as we attain a con- 

 structive, eugenic purpose. In the 

 words of the Reverend George Herbert : 

 "Studie this art, make it thy great 



design; 

 And if Gods image move thee not, let 

 thine." 



