1

LECTURE XII.

HOW FAR DOES AMERICAN EDUCATION SATISFY THE NEEDS OF AMERICAN LIFE?

BY MRS. JULIA Ward Howe.

MUST, at the outset, salute with profound respect this much-esteemed assemblage, and ask its members what I, a child and a learner still, can teach to those who are critical experts in the facts and methods of education?

I remember, at this moment, that I was invited last year to speak before the School of Philosophy in Concord. Those who gave this invitation prayed that I would not entertain them with any efforts in the direction of formal metaphysics, but that I would communicate to them, as far as possible, simple and strict views of modern society, as it would appear to one who, in observing it, should desire to apprehend the characteristics of human nature. It occurs to me that you, in like manner, have sent for me in order that I may give you impressions which bear upon education, rather than suggest devices for its improvement.

Of the importance of education it cannot be necessary for me to speak in this place. Yet a sense of this importance sometimes so overcomes me that I must cry aloud, in order to relieve my fear and my sorrow, sorrow for the great points so often overlooked in the past, fear lest they may be as badly neglected in the future. When we see whole generations trained to deeds of cruelty, to practices of superstition, to lives of selfishness and covetousness which are as barbarous as either, we can only pray that the power and patience of true teaching may be multiplied. We must pray that generations to come, which will be born. equally helpless, and will follow each other with the same rapidity, may be so trained as to show the noble and happy side of human nature, and to attain the stature of the perfect man.

Parents and teachers are the guardians of society. They hold in trust its moral and intellectual life. There are piteous moments in which some frightful crime, some more frightful wave of social demoralization, cause both to be appealed to and held responsible for individual shortcomings which are public misfortunes. "How have you educated the children?" asks society of the teachers. "How have you bred them?" ask the teachers of the parents. Thus the fiery ball of blame is thrown from one hand to another. Perhaps at last it falls to the ground.

With the best of breeding and education, man remains a creature of accidents and contradictions. Yet no one will deny that right training has power to overcome unfortunate inclinations, nor that the best education brings with it the best morality.

Types of character are an important study in view of the great task which is set before us, the education of the human race. All human beings are much alike in some respects. They differ widely in others.

Each individual has also some trait peculiar to himself, some original virtue or original sin which rivets him in his own place in the revolving social sphere.

To profit at once by the general characteristics of humanity, by the distinguishing features of the moral groups to which individuals belong, and by the specialties of endowment which belong to individuals, this is at once necessary and not easy to accomplish. We may more easily find the teacher inclined to visit upon the pupil his human faults as if they were exceptional enormities, to ignore the child's proper type of character, and to encounter the individual in that spirit of opposition which makes human beings instinctively and at once inimical to each other.

So the teacher's business is threefold, and in its prosecution he becomes a learner. He must study every pupil committed to his charge, first as hu

man, then as belonging to a group, lastly as an individual.

Worthy ideas of human nature and an adequate understanding of it are the first requisites of a teacher; are in fact things of necessity, whose absence no amount of skill or erudition can make good for it is plain that no one who thinks meanly of human nature will be able to present to his pupils any noble or worthy human ideal. The question which Christ rejected when it referred to a physical defect may well be asked in view of the mental and moral disabilities of individuals. "Did this man sin, or his teachers?" we may ask when we meet with one so ignorant or so obstinate as to be blind to the common truth of things. There is a close and curious logic in social results by which they may always be traced back to efficient causes. This logic, if properly followed up, would, I think, teach us that a want of reverence, a false standard of dignity and merit, often seen among Americans at the present time, spring primarily out of defective education. The public standard with regard to these things is undoubtedly powerful, and often misleading; but I doubt whether the teacher in the first place starts the child in life with a clear idea of what he is to seek, and how he is to seek it. Success in life may be so presented to the mind of the child as to involve, if attained, a moral failure success of the militant, combatant kind, —

getting ahead of other people, outwitting them, amassing money without rendering real service, and gathering reputation without merit. The pseudo-Christianity of Old-World dogma is weak to-day among those who teach and train; but has the intrinsic Christianity of labor and service taken its place? Do Americans consider it noble to live idly and to be served by inferiors, so long after Christ's teaching that the true servant is the true master?

Mastery over self, the source of all true and solid dominion, will never be acquired upon the easy plane of smartness and superficial civility. And at this point it seems to me that we may notice two opposite directions in which youth may be trained: one of these leads to the love of luxury, following and flattering a natural instinct; the other leads to the love of uses, which is attained through moral training.

Luxury follows tastes, and is chiefly intent upon the means of gratifying them. A child, at least an ordinary one, will very easily come to consider it the great object of his life to get and keep what he likes best. Such a one, if pampered at the outset, will learn to roll himself closely in a silken sheet of indulgence. He will assume the attitude of one who has a right to insist that all things shall minister to his pleasure and convenience. Not this the Spartan, —the Germanic training. Not