SOME CONCEPTIONS OF EDUCATION

To compass education in a general conception, which will define its aims and relationships, calls for positive views on the values of life. For education serves life; and a judgment on what is worth while in education is therefore in some measure a confession of opinion on what is worth while in life. Historically, successive conceptions of education have been in fair accord with successive conceptions of the duties, opportunities, and relationships of men. To define these things is a never-ending business, which each generation must take up anew; and each generation must take up anew, in the same way, the business of defining education. This does not mean that nothing is gained by the labor of thought which goes into the criticism of life and of education for the service of life. We build on what has gone before and our thinking determines in part what is to come; but our thinking never covers all the facts, never quite catches up with life, but is ever challenged afresh to new attempts at finality.

Education is larger than schooling. It cannot be defined solely in terms of studies and school discipline. Indeed, one central problem of the school is to make its influences work together with those of the home, the church, the playground, the neighborhood, industry, and civic life. To bring all possible influences to bear on the individual for his development, and yet to leave him free to find and to possess himself; to make education a process

which does not run counter to nature in human beings, but which liberates them, nevertheless, from the bonds and limitations of the merely natural; to bring the demands and opportunities of civilization into a concrete and effective form in a programme of education which shall allow for individual differences and still create common loyalties here is a task for thought and imagination as well as for practical effort. Education cannot ride on vague generalizations about virtue or the ends of life, nor can it ride on narrow views of immediate need. An educational programme is a test for the most far-reaching philosophies and for the simplest common-sense.

The essays in this section present no single or unified view of education; but they conceive education in relation to modern needs and purposes. Each is a fresh and vigorous endeavor to set forth essentials in education for the life of the modern world. It is not without significance that two of them were written by laymen.

THE EDUCATED PERSON

EDWARD YEOMANS

I

BECAUSE you believe in a good cause, said Dr. Johnson, is no reason why you should feel called upon to defend it, for by your manner of defense you may do your cause much harm. This, however, is a case where in multitude of counsel there may be some wisdom. Some kind of answer may evolve from the discussion of the above topic, which will be better than a pontifical statement from a person who has no doubt at all about his qualification to give an irrefutable opinion, like the old Doctor himself.

And if nothing does emerge; if there is no precipitate which you can filter out from the cubic contents of words, and weigh; and if that precipitate is not some kind of yeast which, added to the present educational dough, will help it to rise, then let us admit that something ex cathedra is needed.

This contributor pretends to no experience as a practitioner in the schools. He has been engaged in the workshop and market place and, like any man so employed, has gone about on all kinds of errands and has met all kinds of people, in the cities and in the country and in small towns — magnates, business people, professional people, teachers, skilled and unskilled workmen, and children.

The public schools and the parochial schools are engaged in pouring out millions, and have been for years,

and the private schools and colleges and technical schools, thousands; and any man going his way in and out among the inhabitants of the earth meets them, talks to them, dines with them, employs them, and in all sorts of ways gets the taste of them and a good many cross-sections for careful examination. He sees them in offices, in shops, in schools, in clubs, in churches, on trains and on streetcars and on street corners, and in their homes - city, suburban, and country.

Each one registers. They "punch your time-clock," so to speak, and on the dial there is an impression. It is a dial you have fixed up for yourself - an old one, with the old marks on it pasted over with new ones; and there are two main divisions, one marked "satisfactory," and the other, "unsatisfactory."

Some people have the words "useful" and "not useful" (to them); and some have the words "interesting" and "uninteresting"; and, perhaps, some "educated" and uneducated"; and a few may go so far as to divide their dial into "good" and "bad." But that is about the limit of presumption.

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But if you have "satisfactory" and "unsatisfactory," that means, of course, to you.

And when, therefore, you say that you find that ninety per cent of the product of schools and colleges whom you meet have registered under "unsatisfactory," it does not follow at all that they would register that way on any other dial which is only a very roundabout way of saying that you disclaim any superiority for your time-clock. You found it nailed to the wall of your vestibule when you were old enough to look about at the furniture which had been bequeathed you, and which you have been dusting up and patching up ever since. You are entitled to use this clock, and you get a great deal of exhilaration in using it; but that you should insist on anybody but yourself