Education and Propaganda

I

LIBERALS the world over are prone to insist that all interference with educational freedom is obnoxious because it hinders the teaching of the truth. We persist in talking as if truth were something tangible and universal. While the world is being rent asunder by deep conflicts over vital issues this assumption is revealed as rather naïve. Neutral truth there is: trees grow, men die. Such things are worth knowing about, and to familiarize children with them is undoubtedly part of education. But is it all? What is the truth about George Washington? If we knew it, would it necessarily be equally valuable from an educational standpoint? To ask these trite questions is to suggest the answer. But what is the truth about the World War? Those most informed disagree most violently. What is the truth about Communism? It would be hard to find two real students who would be in agreement as to the answer to that question. Yet are not Communism and the World War both matters worth knowing about? Do they not both touch vital problems regarding which every educated person is going to have some opinion anyway?

One is tempted to say that these and others of similar nature are altogether the most important questions there are. War and peace and the just organization of society are questions on which our outlook will be profoundly affected by our general ethical views, or, rather, convictions. Education which had nothing to offer in regard to them, which insisted upon a studied indifference to all issues like them, would be arid indeed. It might be heavily endowed and spend millions upon counting the most distant stars; if that were all, institutions dispensing that kind of information would be golden geese, but they would be barren and worthless. Neutrality is valuable, but it is not enough. We must not try to answer the challenge of contemporary creeds by alleging mental truth as the essence of education. For the vital issues are the most controversial ones. Academic freedom vindicated in terms of neutral truth appears a farce in an age when deep-rooted convictions battle for supremacy.

Unhappily, therefore, teaching in a university must be faced in the light of propaganda as well as education, particularly in all fields involving fundamental social and international conflicts. The critical onslaughts of Marxists and Fascists alike have brought into the limelight the problematical nature of education without propaganda. What they call education we call propaganda, and vice versa. This confusion of terms is bewildering and perhaps discouraging to one who is engaged in education, for the educator scorns the propagandist, just as the propagandist fears the educator. The distinction between the two cannot be lightly dismissed as one between sincerity and insincerity, or between ability and the lack of it. There is sincerity on both sides, and ability, too. The distinction between education and propaganda is often so complex and obscure that those engaged in one of these activities are honestly unable to say just which it is. And yet the distinction must be made clear. The uncomprehending placidity of liberal circles can no longer be maintained in these days of fundamental social conflict.

It is due to passionate disagreements on social matters that the whole question of education versus propaganda has been made so acute. In countries where the revolutionary myths, whether Fascist or Communist, have triumphed, all educational work is frankly ‘ coördinated’ with the revolutionary ideology. Whether it be materialism or race doctrines, the ramifications of such a revolutionary ideology are very widespread. They certainly cover everything I am interested in studying and teaching at present: history, politics, economics, sociology. Upon closer inspection even academic freedom, which we guard so jealously, turns out to be the freedom to teach what corresponds to the prevailing creed. Being, broadly speaking, a Christian progressive, I am to-day entirely free to say whatever comes into my head, for only ideas in accord with such an American middle-class view are apt to come into my head. If I were similarly in agreement with Communist or Nazi ideas, should I not possess just as much freedom in the Soviet Union or in Nazi Germany? I think that the answer must be in the affirmative.

The opposite question is not much harder to answer: how much freedom should I have to expound Marxist or Fascist doctrines in America to-day? Not a great deal. There are, of course, a few instructors with Marxist or Fascist leanings in the American universities; there is also a handful of ‘liberals’ in the universities of Fascist Italy and of Nazi Germany. But that does not prove much. Fundamentally this whole problem transcends the purely personal question of what you and I are able to do or even why we are doing it. The real crux of the matter lies beyond these personal worries, in the realm of social values: is all education propaganda?

II

Before attempting to define the contrast between education and propaganda, a glance at the history of the word ‘propaganda’ might help. The word owes its existence to the renewed proselytizing zeal of the reformed Catholic Church after the Council of Trent. A committee of cardinals was constituted to propagate the faith. Much of the pioneering missionary work on this continent and in Asia was carried on under their direction. The Spanish mission houses of Southern California and Mexico testify with mute eloquence to the devotion with which this ‘propaganda’ was carried on. If we understand the word in this original sense, much of what is best in education is undoubtedly propaganda. But such a comprehensive definition does not make propaganda identical with education. The missionaries had to educate the people before they could even begin to instruct them in the principles of the Catholic faith, just as the Communist propagandists must educate the worker so that he will understand the elements of Marxist materialism. But such education is incidental to the central propaganda goal, which was and is to secure the adherence to an organization. Propaganda always aims at getting people either to do or not to do some very particular thing. Education, on the other hand, is fundamentally concerned with moulding and developing a human being in terms of an ideal,as far as his nature allows it. A person may be born a Catholic and he may be perfectly ready to remain one. Catholic education would then aim at making him a ‘true,’ an ideal Catholic. The same observation holds for all other kinds of education. Education always aims at the perfection of the human being.

The distinction between education and propaganda suggested by these ‘definitions’ is not a complete one. Education and propaganda are related activities. Education in its efforts to mould and develop a human being, to make him a more perfect person, must employ standards. If I endeavor to make a student as perfect a person as I know how to make him, I shall, of course, do it in terms of what seems perfection to me. I may be a Christian, while you are a Communist and he is a Nazi, still others are Buddhists, Mohammedans, or what not. Each of these ‘ creeds ’ claims to possess a vision of human perfection. This claim, this faith, is a vital part of any creed. Perhaps they are all wrong, but as long as we admit that human beings require form, we can perceive the external similarity in the educational efforts of these rival claimants. If we believe in one of these creeds with all our heart, we shall find it harder to perceive this similarity of alien pedagogic endeavor, but it is there. Believing strongly in the Christian ideal, I find it very hard to ‘understand’ Communist and Nazi education, but with some effort I can see how its proponents understand it. All these efforts to mould human beings according to some ideal, according to some standard of what is good, beautiful, and just, constitute genuine education.

The propagandist, who is essentially a practical organization man, takes a very different stand in matters of creed. He inclines toward a manipulative view of all matters touching his creed. It is always a question of what an issue will do to his organization, be it the Soviet Union or the Nazi Party. When dealing with spiritual and intellectual matters the propagandist must always ask: ‘What is their material, physical value? Do they strengthen or weaken us?’ The creed itself, of course, may entail disadvantages from a propagandist point of view. In such cases the propagandist keeps still about such an article of the creed, whereas the educator could not allow such ‘opportunism. ’ If the article happens to be of central importance, the educator must bring it to light and examine it. All politically active creeds have had this problem to face; all have been rent by the conflict between the educational and the propagandist view. When Jesus said, ‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God,’ He thought of the corrupting effect of wealth. But power is just as bad, and what He said of the rich man might readily be said of the powerful man. Engrossed in the maintenance of his power, he refuses to face a question that might conflict with his creed: he becomes a propagandist.

This difference between the propagandist as an organization man and the educator as a true believer, a visionary perfectionist, and the bitter melancholy of the eternal struggle between the two have been challengingly depicted by Dostoevski. In ‘The Great Inquisitor,’ which forms a part of the Brothers Karamazov, he has Jesus reappear in sixteenth-century Spain. The Inquisition takes Him into custody, and in the ensuing examination the Great Inquisitor tries to show Jesus that it is impossible to allow Him to go about preaching the Word. It would bring the organization tumbling to the ground. ‘All has been given by Thee to the Pope,’ the Great Inquisitor remarks to the Son of Man, ‘and all, therefore, is still in the Pope’s hands, and there is no need for you to come now at all. Thou must not meddle for the time, at least. . . . Thou didst Thyself lay the foundation for the destruction of Thy kingdom, and no one is more to blame for it. ... I swear, man is weaker and baser by nature than Thou hast believed him. Can he, can he do what Thou didst? . . . We have corrected Thy work and have founded it upon miracle, mystery and authority. ... We have taken the sword of Cæsar, and in taking it, of course, have rejected Thee and followed him. Oh, ages are yet to come of the confusion of free thought, of their science and cannibalism. . . . And all will be happy, all the millions of creatures except the hundred thousand who rule over them. For only we, we who guard the mystery, shall be unhappy. . . . What I say to Thee will come to pass, and our dominion will be built up. I repeat, to-morrow Thou shalt see that obedient flock who at a sign from me will hasten to heap up the hot cinders upon the pile on which I shall burn Thee for coming to hinder us. For if anyone has ever deserved our fires, it is Thou. To-morrow I shall burn Thee. Dixi.’ Here we have the primordial conflict, two worlds unalterably opposed. The educator is striving toward the one, the propagandist contentedly dwelling in the other.

This difference in creed reveals the basic bifurcation in purpose which leads the educator off in another direction from the propagandist, after having shared a common road. Without attention to these differences in purpose, it is impossible to keep education and propaganda distinct. Many contemporary writers on the subject forget this. Propaganda is described as an endeavor to change human attitudes. Such a definition confuses propaganda and education, for much education also changes human attitudes. As a result, some authors have flatly claimed that most education should be considered propaganda. Artificially narrowing the scope of education, they assert that education, properly speaking, is merely ‘the imparting of knowledge or skill which has reached the scientific stage.’ In other words, all matters subject to value judgments are propaganda rather than education. Biology would then be education, whereas English literature would not. Such a view has the great appeal of making possible an absolute distinction between education and propaganda. For the teaching of the three R’s has nothing to do with propaganda. Biology contributes very little to the moulding of the human personality. But such a limitation of what constitutes education is entirely artificial. It omits the essence of education. The moulding and developing of human beings, in the image of an ideal, necessarily involves values. Changing attitudes is an essential part of it. But such changing of attitudes is merely an external manifestation of the deeper social purposes of both education and propaganda.

III

Unfortunately for anyone who likes absolute, water-tight distinctions, human purposes are never entirely unrelated. The purposes of the educator and of the propagandist, while markedly set off from each other in emphasis, are yet linked by unbreakable ties to the common creed as represented by the organization which stands for it. Neither the educator nor the propagandist can do without the other. The educator needs the support of the organization which the propagandist creates; the propagandist is helped by the efforts of the educator to mould human beings in accordance with whatever ideal he holds. Indeed, the human organization which identifies itself with the ideal (the Catholic Church, the Soviet Union, the Hitler government) is dependent upon the efforts of the educator. Yet true education, in its turn, produces the propagandist’s most severe critics. By instilling the ‘ideal’ into youth, education creates an outlook which is apt to be bitterly disappointed when confronted with the reality. The fanatic ‘ believer ’ is the most dangerous enemy of the organization. It is easy for the opportunist running the organization to deal with the outsider; it is hard to cope with opposition bom of insistence upon the confessed ideals. The Communist can easily denounce the capitalist, the Nazi bait the Communist. But they find it very disturbing to be confronted with individuals who are more insistent upon their own ideals than they are themselves. All régimes built on faith eventually deal with such radical extremists by violence: Cromwell smashed the Levelers, Hitler decapitated Roehm and his Brown Shirts, Stalin uprooted Trotsky and his radical followers.

Such constantly recurring conflicts, even among believers of the same faith, may make one wonder if it is not perhaps an idle dream to want the masses to be influenced by the educator rather than the propagandist, Plato certainly proposed such ‘true’ education only for his guardians — that is, the élite. The masses engaged in agriculture, crafts, and trade were merely to be taught what their special function required. But such an unreal view could be taken by Plato because the profound formative forces of the family as the transmitter of traditional culture were of little interest to him. Under modern conditions, with the weakening of these forces, we have shapeless masses with their hodgepodge of beliefs sprawling all over the landscape. They are pushed about by whatever ism can claim their attention — usually by having the loudest voice. If the individual in them remains unformed and undeveloped, they are apt to turn into a fearsome mob of robots at the slightest provocation. Hence education, real education, is absolutely essential, if civilization is to be maintained. The propagandist implications of all such education must not deter us. They oblige us, however, to make up our mind as to where we stand. In other words, no education programme can be understood without an answer to the central question: which ideal of perfection does the educator pursue? Nor can we gauge rightly any onslaught of propaganda unless we know which organization the propagandist wishes us to support.

Let us now see how each of them works in certain concrete cases. We have already mentioned the Catholic Christian approach. The Christian ideal as expounded by Jesus Christ in the New Testament is supposed to offer the standard. To be sure, great differences of opinion have developed as to the meaning of the New Testament; within and against the Church much controversy has raged. But the Catholic Church has always settled any such conflicts authoritatively. Concerning many such controversial points the Church has built up an elaborate body of doctrine which one must know to comprehend its ideal as understood by it. This means that the educators have to be educated. A man merely able to read could not, after interpreting the Gospels for himself, go forth as a Catholic educator. In other words, education is authoritatively furnished with a guide, moral as well as spiritual, and an elaborate hierarchy guards this guide, this ideal, against possible misconstructions. When the village teacher and the village preacher expound this doctrine, and when they endeavor to mould the young, they do so according to this standard or set of standards. They will, for example, teach the children the sacrament of marriage, though very little is found about this phase of human life in the New Testament, and to an uninstructed reader certain stories may even seem entirely contrary to the accepted doctrine of the Church. What we find, then, is an authoritatively fixed body of doctrine as to what constitutes the human ideal of Catholic Christianity, and a hierarchy of human beings, thoroughly acquainted with the basic tenets and the serious controversial points of the doctrine, who endeavor to mould human conduct in terms of this ideal.

IV

It is obvious that such a hierarchy, such an elaborate human organization, needs financial and other support on a large scale. Propaganda is directed toward securing that support. The need for such support is lessened by the weakening of rivals — another goal of propaganda. Propaganda, consequently, may be either positive or negative. This appears as a further striking contrast between education and propaganda. For education can never truly extend to those who believe in another creed. It may, of course, happen that nonbelievers, particularly children, are going to schools whose educational ideal is more or less at variance with the ideal at home. In fact, it is the curse of a great deal of American education that such variations are inevitable as a result of the multiplicity of the children’s backgrounds. The general vagueness of educational standards has its deepest root in this confusion of faiths. Under such conditions, the educator is obliged to neglect the essential in favor of the technical parts of education. The three R’s, natural science, cooking, typewriting, crafts, sport, are the retreats of educators stranded without a deeper moral goal. Education has deteriorated into technical training.

The position of the propagandist is quite different. In fact, the more homogeneous the community is in its faith, the less room there is for his activities. He is primarily concerned with the nonbelievers. He hopes to sway those who are wavering and to bring them into line; those who are stubbornly opposed he must seek to frighten into inaction. The propagandist activities of the Catholic Church have always varied greatly according to the percentage of nonbelievers in a given territory, and so they ought to, by and large. In a country where most people are Catholic, propaganda can take the form of holding non-Catholics up to contempt or ridicule. At the same time, it can allow considerable latitude to Catholics in living up to their standards. Infringements of these standards will not undermine the position of the Church as an organization.

In countries with a very small group of Catholics, propaganda will be largely submerged in education; for it will be restricted to gaining individual adherents. At the same time, propaganda in such conditions will be much concerned with counteracting hostile propaganda by other groups. It may, in fact, be decided that the best propaganda is no propaganda. As for the few Catholics, the propagandist will be inclined to insist upon strict maintenance of the ideal, in so far as it does not conflict with other prevailing doctrines. He will make the believer ‘toe the line’ as much as possible. In this respect, too, he will be closely linked with the educator. We can perceive here why the missionaries in nonChristian lands, who were the first servants of propaganda, were primarily educators as well. From all Catholics the propagandist will seek to gain a maximum amount of financial support. In days gone by he also sought to persuade them to give their lives by joining the military forces; these days may soon be here again.

The most striking difference between Catholic Christian propaganda and education on one hand, and Communist and Fascist propaganda and education on the other, is that their order of importance is reversed. In both these latter-day creeds propaganda looms as the more significant activity of the two. Neither of them has a clearly worked out human ideal, though both of them have certain ideals. It is well known that the Fascists of all brands extol the qualities of the warrior; ‘a fighting spirit, courage, valor’ — these and similar expressions abound in their speeches and writings. This neopaganism is markedly at variance with Christian conceptions, though the two ethics are claimed by some to be not absolutely irreconcilable.

Nor is this neopaganism entirely without precedent. The late Renaissance held similar virtues dear. Friedrich Nietzsche cried out for them with hysterical violence amid the smug complacency of the late nineteenth century. The cowboys of the Wild West lived them with the gusto of children on a spree. Much educational effort in Fascist countries is devoted to the building up of such qualities. In the Balilla and the Hitler-Jugend the young are brought under the influence of these ideas in a setting which strongly appeals to their emotional desires for identifying themselves with the group, which is so marked a trait of most adolescents. In the schools and universities, history and other social studies are taught with constant reference to the military and the heroic. Even fields like anatomy are brought within the fold. A whole special branch of learning, military science, has blossomed forth within the last three years in Germany.

The Nazis in particular make much to-do about the tradition-bound (or rather, in their materialistic jargon, soil-bound) folkways. They have popularized these ideas through the wellknown slogans about blood and soil, Blut und Boden, now mockingly contracted by many Germans into Blubo. They hold up the peasant alongside the warrior as a specially desirable human type, and they have attempted to provide him with a distinct and honorific status. This feature of their outlook has educational ramifications also. Young workers and students are made to work on farms in the summer, living with peasants in the country. The hope is that they may thus become familiar with and more sympathetic to this form of life. The Fascists have not gone quite as far along these lines. Rather, Mussolini has concluded a concordat with the Church, and has surrendered a considerable part of the educational problem to Catholicism, to the great disgust of many of his anticlericalist supporters.

Communism, on the other hand, has struggled with the idea of the ‘massman.’ This mass-man is presumably an extrovert who completely identifies himself with the group to which he belongs — a conception of man which has been castigated and ridiculed by a good many writers, such as Aldous Huxley in his Brave New World or Ortega y Gasset in The Revolt of the Masses. Such a man is not without precedent, either. Rousseau called for him in the Social Contract with characteristic impetuosity. English and, even more, American life affords plenty of illustrations such as the ‘real college spirit’ and the town booster. All the nations were full of them at the outbreak of the war and during its early stages. The Communists frankly claim such a being as their human ideal. The activist, socially impelled and directed; on the way, but vague as to destination; unselfish in a formless humanitarian sense; ready at all times to coöperate in whatever is decreed by the presumed representatives of the community at large; intelligent, alert, rationally-minded; unemotional in a personal sense — such a person would fulfill many of the most persistent ideals of this group as to what a human being should be like. In brief, Fascism and Communism have their standards for the human being, and their special objectives in the realm of moulding these beings into a pattern.

V

Propaganda, however, far surpasses educational activities in the esteem of Communists and Fascists alike, though both will deny it. Their predominant interest in natural things, whether wealth or power, makes them both place great faith in activity. Propaganda is action, is doing things, making up stories, getting them printed and broadcast, launching ceremonies, parades, demonstrations, and so forth. Education is planting things and watching them grow, and is limited by the inherent inclinations and capacities of both educator and educated. An onion won’t grow up to be an oak, no matter what you do, and while the tree which bears no fruit may be chopped off and thrown into the fire, there are many different fruits to be nurtured and harvested. Education is long-range work, while propaganda is immediate, pulsing with busy and pressing activity, suffering no delay. Such phrases as ‘We acted with lightning speed’ are typical for these dictatorial régimes, as is the expression ‘We struck a decisive blow.’ You can never strike a decisive blow in education. These restless assertions seem a curious contrast and yet they are entirely consonant with such arrogant presumptions as the Communists’ claim that their régime is initiating the millennium, or the Nazis’ boast that their order will last ‘at least a thousand years.’ Why at least, one wonders.

In fact, the mass support of these oligarchies of self-possessed fanatics is so ephemeral that it can be held together only by a constant feverish activity which is skillfully directed toward tapping every available ‘stereotype’ in the particular community through frantic efforts to work up recurrent trances of mob militancy. This is the true significance of popular consultations, five-year plans, and all the other forms of focusing mass attention upon a specific detailed objective. This propaganda task is much more complex than is usually supposed. Take the number of separate groups Goebbels’s propaganda has to cope with in Germany to-day. It is bewildering, indeed. Loyal party followers and disaffected partisans, opportunist joiners and moderate opposition elements, Communists and non-Aryans, and finally the uncompromising genuine Christians, both Protestant and Catholic — all these have to be dealt with. Some have to be aroused, some persuaded, still others terrorized. For a concluding argument, the clash between Nazidom and the Christian Churches may serve.

The opposition Hitler’s race doctrines have stirred up among genuine Christians, both Protestant and Catholic, has proved a veritable hornets’ nest. Strangely, in following Machiavelli, Hitler showed himself well aware of the general danger of offending the religious views of a people. You must never do that, he wrote in Mein Kampf. Presumably he did not and does not realize how completely the race doctrine contravenes Christian fundamentals. Christ came to preach the religious community of all men through faith. In doing so, He challenged the tribal particularism of the Mediterranean world. That was the reason for the fierce persecution the early Christians had to endure. Germans with a firm conviction on this subject have been placed in a similar position. At this point, propaganda efforts break down. Even the Nazis hesitate to disturb religious services. As in Stuart England, the pulpit has become the gathering point of political opposition. Free speech, driven from the street and the assembly hall, finds a fragile home in the Church. This situation brings to light with striking clarity what has been noted before: that in the final showdown both propaganda and education turn upon effective organization. Organization is not sufficient, but it is necessary.

VI

It is at this point that the primordial weakness of liberalism manifests itself. The liberal creed, while certainly a creed like those we have discussed before, lacks doctrinal and organizational support in the day of crisis. Having grown up as an opposition to older authoritarian creeds, it never developed into a closely knit unit itself. To be sure, in its early days of struggle, the Freemasons constituted such a fighting army. There was a doctrine, there were authorities to settle any disputes which might arise over its interpretation, and a body of skillful propagandists to spread it among potential adherents and to strike potential opponents with fear. But the inherent weakness of the creed lay in its negative character. It denounced authority: how then could authority be justified within its own organization after the old authorities had yielded? It questioned discipline: how then could discipline be maintained within its own ranks? It ridiculed doctrine and dogma: how were these pillars of education and propaganda to be kept standing under the liberal edifice? Brooks Adams once showed, in a brilliant volume dealing with the Bay State puritanism in the seventeenth century, that the doctrine of a free conscience could not be part of an organized religion, for it would give rise to ever new breakups. It could similarly be shown, by tracing the story of liberalism in the nineteenth century, that its basic doctrines were nails for its own coffin.

It may well be that we shall see a revival of liberalism as a reaction to the present sweep of authoritarian rule. But unless such a revival can be tied to effective and organized education and propaganda, it will not last. Those of us who really have faith in the development of the free personality as the ultimate ideal of humanity, in social justice and constitutional government as means toward achieving that ideal, must not lean upon the fragile reed of neutral truth as the central tenet of our education. We must acknowledge our faith and reject those who deny it. Immanuel Kant freed us from the necessity of proving faith by showing that all such proofs are frauds. Yet to have a faith is still imperative.

Objectivity, so absolutely essential in scientific work, can be striven for on the basis of faith. So can truth. Objective truth as an ideal is, in fact, part of our Christian heritage. It cannot be maintained as an ideal except within the context of the ethic to which it belongs. Our universities are an institutional embodiment of this ideal. If we are to maintain them, we must not be afraid of the education or even of the propaganda implied in the maintenance of the human ideal whose general ethic they express. ‘Who is not for me is against me’ is a view, hard and profound, which we must not allow the various Antichrists of the present time to monopolize. This truth was first pronounced by Him upon whose ethic the modern world has been built. It is as essential to our faith as to all its rivals.