A Hired Man Speaks

I

SINCE 1915 I have held appointments as full professor in four American universities and one European university. I am not an executive — not a president, nor a dean, nor even an assistant dean; merely what may be called a hired man.

The first commencement address through which I suffered was a pathetically insistent plea urging the listeners to accept the proposition that America had the most remarkable educational system in the western world. I listened; I was impressed, but not convinced. As a matter of fact, thirty-five years of intimate contact with the system have failed to convince me. I have conscientiously tried to find out what is wrong with the system. These are my observations.

It seems to me that we are suffering from three distinct maladies. Each of them is sufficiently serious to cause pernicious anæmia in any educational system. We lack clearly defined objectives. We sacrifice contents to method. School administration is a poorly coordinated mixture of two methods of management, the one admirably adapted to industrial concerns, the other suited to a church dramatic society.

All this may sound flippant, but, believe me, I am serious. More than that, I am worried. On every hand I can see influences at work which promise to make matters much worse before they may become better.

The three diseases are so clearly related and interact upon each other to such an extent that it is almost impossible to separate them in our discussion. My reactions may be understood more clearly when I explain the aims of the system of which I am the product. In Holland we have, as here, three types of schools — the elementary, the secondary, and the university. Their positions are clearly defined and separated.

The elementary school has as its purpose to give to the pupils a command of the tools with which to acquire knowledge, and a rudimentary acquaintance with the world in which they live.

The secondary schools have the purpose to impart such information as any person needs to possess to be fully aware of the physical, cultural, political, and economic world — in other words, the indispensable minimum of knowledge for a modern intelligent person.

The university, on the other hand, provides for specialized professional training and for research in all fields of knowledge.

The real backbone of the system is the secondary school. Here the pupils learn four modern languages well enough to be able to read, write, and speak them. They study chemistry, physics, mathematics, botany, sociology, economics, civics, astronomy, drawing, geography, and history. Throughout the five years of this school the subjects are coördinated with each other. No subject is dropped after having been taken up, and when the five-year course is completed the student passes a searching examination covering nineteen different subjects. It consists of a two weeks’ written test, followed by a two weeks’ oral test. The examinations are given by a committee selected by the central office of education from high school and university faculties. Practically all my teachers in the high school held doctor’s degrees in the subjects they were teaching, and taught only the subject in which they were trained. And we learned by the only process that has yet shown results: we learned by constant drill and hard work.

Of course, we did not enjoy this rigid discipline. There was mighty little time left for play or for spectacular athletic feats. But we seemed to survive, and I never heard of any student having a nervous breakdown. I believe that life insurance statistics do not show an abnormally high rate of early deaths among the alumni of the system.

When I was working my way through an American university by teaching French and German in a secondary school, the principal came to me one day very much disturbed. The teacher of chemistry had fallen ill and there was no one who could take his place. The honor was therefore conferred upon me. ‘Can you do it?’ he asked. And I, by that time sufficiently Americanized to know what answer was demanded, responded with sadness in my heart, but with the expected confidence in my tone: ‘I can try.’ And so I became the expert in chemistry.

The new work thus wished on me was appalling enough, but what made it really difficult was the comforting statement that followed the assignment: ‘After all, they are not here to learn chemistry, but to learn the laboratory method!’ That was indeed a new slant on my problem. I was greatly puzzled. In my crude innocence I had always believed — in fact, had been encouraged to believe — that one studied a subject in order to acquire accurate knowledge of that particular field. Evidently I had always been wrong. One studies a subject to learn some kind of method. Now for two years in my high school I had spent four hours a week in a laboratory in a course of elementary qualitative analysis. But I must confess I never knew there was such a thing as a laboratory method which one could acquire by the mysterious process of not learning chemistry.

Being young and anxious to learn, I asked for advice from others. I made a most surprising discovery: every subject was apparently taught for some equally mysterious purpose. One studied mathematics, not to learn to add and subtract, or to solve complicated mathematical problems — heaven forbid! One studied mathematics to discipline the mind.

French was studied, like Latin, not to learn the language in order to enlarge one’s cultural horizons — that was an exploded and antiquated notion; foreign languages were studied to enable the students to understand their own language.

How could I undertake to teach chemistry under these circumstances, not having the remotest idea what was to be found at the end of the road along which my poor students and I were to travel? I asked for more advice. I found it in the Department of Education of our university. My visit to one of the leading men in the department gave me much to think about — but clarified nothing.

I was told that although I knew a good deal of chemistry I was totally unfit to tell others of my knowledge, since I did not possess the right method. ‘You mean the laboratory method?’ I asked hesitatingly, conscious of my inferiority. ‘Young man, that is a by-product. What I mean is that with the right method any good teacher can teach almost any subject. Before you undertake to teach chemistry, you need, not more knowledge of chemistry, but knowledge of teaching method.’

After thanking my learned adviser, I returned to the school and taught chemistry. To this day I don’t know whether the students learned the laboratory method, nor whether my method was right or wrong. But tins early experience has not been forgotten.

II

Curiously enough, thirty years later I heard it stated that the function of a university professor could be reduced to that of a traffic policeman; given the right kind of book, all he needs to do is to direct the discussion. Again method!

It is an old axiom that the good teacher must so direct the study of his pupils that he may in time become superfluous, but it has taken the American system to discover that a teacher with real knowledge of the subject to be taught can be dispensed with altogether — given the right book and the right method. I have observed this philosophy in operation, and to me it seems to be the expression of a sense of inadequacy and defeat. The pupils do not learn any chemistry. They fail to acquire a knowledge of languages or of history. Is the system a failure? Mercy, no! You expect the wrong thing. You are ignorant of the true purpose behind it all. We do not teach a subject to accomplish such a crude and banal result as the conveying of knowledge of the subject! We have outgrown that notion long ago. We are teaching all these things in order to give something far more valuable, far more intangible — the right attitude of mind, the right method of approach; by means of these acquisitions the whole complicated world of facts will just open up before the students. We give them the keys that will unlock all intellectual mysteries.

I have always been skeptical of all this. I have had a suspicion, which has grown into a conviction, that the setting up of an intangible aim finds its explanation, not in a clearer vision of the purposes of education, but in a desire to set up an aim of values which defy measurement. No one can now be charged with failure. Who, indeed, can determine whether the student has gained in ‘intellectual grasp,’ ‘social awareness,’ and all those other intangibles now regarded as educational aims?

The teachers now teaching in our grammar schools and high schools are inadequately equipped with a knowledge of the subjects they are required to teach. Many of them are called upon to teach subjects with which they have only the most superficial acquaintance. They have spent so much time in departments of ‘education,’ learning how to teach, that they have been deprived of an opportunity to learn what to teach.

There is no short cut in educational procedure. There is no escaping the fact that acquiring knowledge is a slow, laborious process, and takes drill, hard work, and competent guidance. The overemphasis of method would not be so disastrous if along with it had not come an overemphasis of the wrong method. Our educational system has sold out to the demands of big business. To the business ‘executive’ the slow process of arriving at sound conclusions by a thorough investigation of all available facts is always annoying. He is a man of action; he demands action, and ‘action now.’ His success is due largely to this decisiveness. Since in many business situations one guess is as good as another, the ability to find a short cut is at a premium. A rough examination of facts — a decision based on a hunch — is frequently the only method that can be used because there is little time to do the job of deciding more thoroughly. If he guesses right, the executive gains a reputation of deep insight; if he guesses wrong, he can often find an alibi in labor trouble or an unwise policy on the part of the federal administration.

The business man is not hesitant in expressing his contempt for the theorist, for the man who refuses to act until he has exhausted all means of acquiring information upon which to base a decision. What the world needs, so he tells his fellow members of the Chamber of Commerce, is leadership — men like himself—doers, not thinkers: we need men who abhor hesitation and approach all questions ‘realistically,’unhampered by accurate knowledge. In colleges that train youth for the business world it is proper that these principles should be accepted. But when these principles are set up as guides in the teaching of literature, art, and the sciences it is another matter. In cultivating the garden of our mind we are mainly concerned with the beauty of the flowers, not with the marketability of the fruits.

The purse strings are controlled by the ‘leaders,’ and endowments must of necessity be secured from the same sources. The needs expressed by them become the ends of our educational systems. We are now training for leadership. And the school authorities feel obliged to offer apologies if, in spite of their devoted endeavors, some of the human material emerges, not as doers, but as thinkers.

No longer does the student labor to gain in understanding, to see the world in all its complex interrelationships, to enlarge his horizon, to gain in wisdom. He studies to become an effective doer. Impatient with time-consuming and action-retarding investigation and thought, he is encouraged to seek short cuts, gradually becoming imbued with the principle that it is better to act unwisely than not to act at all.

The modern school no longer believes there is a satisfaction that comes from knowing a thing thoroughly, from the successful accomplishing of a task. We are modern now. No one can be expected to have the slightest interest in anything whose practical use is not immediately clear to him. The student is being trained to act. He is encouraged to ask, ‘How does this knowledge contribute to effective action? Of what possible use can it be to me?’

Nowhere else in the world have I ever heard the question asked, ‘What is a college education worth?’ Our educational institutions prepare impressive statistics to prove the correlation between a college degree and earning power in such widely separate fields as selling automobiles and preaching the gospel. But what sane person could ever have doubted that a man with more knowledge than the average would be in a position to get ahead a little faster in whatever he undertook? And when we consider that the school system — to some extent, at least — eliminates the worst numskulls, can anyone be surprised to discover that the more intelligent students who get a degree, if only in virtue of academic longevity, will make a somewhat better showing? However, to the business man, with his awe for statistics, such graphs and colored charts are convincing. Now that we have shown our financial backers that the acquisition of knowledge has proved not too great a handicap in the one field in which our real interest is centred — the field of money making — we are ready to proceed.

But notice what standards we have set for ourselves. We have completely capitulated. We are committed to a training for action. We ourselves have set up earning power as the test of educational success. I wonder where Shakespeare would have been classified, or if college statisticians would have conveniently neglected to include Spinoza in their calculations so as not to spoil the convincing character of their success curves.

But our ‘educators,’ who are ever looking for more intangible objectives, have grasped with avidity this new motto, ‘Training for Leadership!’ What a blessing from heaven! How can anyone tell whether the product is finished? How does one become a leader? What qualities are demanded besides ruthlessness and lack of consideration for others? Here indeed is a smoke screen behind which failure may be hidden.

Our educational system now has as its motto, ‘No one can be expected to learn unless he secs the value of what he is about to learn.’ The next step is: ‘We will arouse your interest by showing you how the knowledge may be used.’ And the next step becomes inevitably: ‘No one can acquire knowledge unless he can do something about it while he is learning.’

So the small child studying Greek history is given a project to carve a Greek temple out of soap, and in the more advanced stages the student is asked to render decisions concerning the conduct of the United States Steel Corporation without his ever having seen a steel plant.

To mature minds such mental exercises are undoubtedly stimulating, and a splendid training for young executives; to the immature the effect is fatal. Like the morons driving high-powered engines of destruction on the public highways, they develop a conquering sense of power without a corresponding sense of their own limitations. The individual is given a deep-rooted confidence in his own judgment. He becomes the judge of values. What he considers worth-while is the criterion. Given the right I.Q., he can’t go wrong; or, in the words of the title of Pinero’s ultramodern play which reflects so subtly the philosophy of Fascism, ‘Right you are if you think you are.’

III

Our theory is complete. Action, knowledge for action, knowledge through action, knowledge is action. And the world is reaping the whirlwind which it has sown.

If there is one thing the world does not need it is more leadership. The battle being waged politically and internationally is essentially one between leaders craving action and those who know too much to act. Nor have we been wholly unaware in this country that something is not quite right. The egocentric mentality of youth, who more than ever before are convinced that this is the day when ‘youth will be served’ and that the world is largely if not entirely run for their benefit, has led to some protests. But our educators are undaunted. If something is wrong it can easily be corrected. What we now need is more attention to ‘character building.’ Thank heavens, another intangible.

Now to me all this seems absurd. I am old-fashioned enough to adhere to the old notion that character is, as it were, the subtle essence of a person’s inherited characteristics, his environment, and his habit of life. I have always thought that honesty with one’s self, intellectual honesty, was the first step on the road to character building, and that a decent regard for others, born of a clear understanding of their problems and desires, though different from our own, was the next step.

But I am wrong again. We are now, so the newspapers inform me, going to give special attention to character building. I can just imagine a teacher saying to a group of undisciplined and spoiled young brats, ‘Now, children, we are going to devote the next half hour to character building.’

Have we gone insane? Maybe not quite, but we are certainly on the road. And don’t blame the teachers altogether. They are usually quite helpless. Many, if not most of them, arc definitely opposed to all this falderol and firmly believe in the old way of acquiring knowledge. They still believe that an individual needs certain fundamental knowledge to fit into society, that this knowledge can be acquired only by hard work, and that the by-product is a character formed by intellectual honesty and disciplined thought and action. But they are helpless. Why?

Enter the executive.

To any visitor from abroad, the most impressive thing in the United States, next to the wonder of sky-reaching and unoccupied steel structures like the Empire State Building, is the group of business executives. Nowhere else, per worker employed, do we find so many mahogany desks and Oriental carpets devoted to the use of executives as we do in this country. It is indeed fortunate that our industry can afford to bear this burden of administrative overhead, but to the ignorant visitor from abroad it looks like a top-heavy structure. As one visitor said to me, ‘You have gone administration mad.'

I do not know anything about these matters, and, not possessing adequate statistical data, am not prepared to render judgment. All I ask is that you look at your local schools some day and compare their administrative burdens with those of, say, twenty years ago. Principals and vice principals, curriculum directors, psychological advisers, stenographers and filing clerks — I shall not undertake to enumerate them. We of the old school wonder why all this is necessary. Why all this elaborate office machinery, why all these files and files of cards and folders, why all this entourage of the executive? Under the system of which I am a product no such executive staff existed, nor does it exist to-day. What do they all do? How do they occupy themselves? There is only one way they can keep busy. They supervise, check, correct, direct, and improve method.

The American system sets up, not the world and its requirements as the standard, but the child. Thus, as the child passes along the assembly line, the progress of the product must be constantly inspected, just as they do it in the Ford plant.

The process starts with the psychological test. The child’s I.Q. is registered. And that is only the beginning. From then on, the teacher’s time is occupied far more with checks and counterchecks and inspections than with acquiring more knowledge of the subject or with teaching. And my observation is that most of this record compilation is totally useless.

Some years ago our daughter, attending a public high school, was not receiving very good grades in arithmetic. We went to the school to see if possibly the teachers could suggest some way in which we could assist her to make a better showing. We were ushered into the august presence of the chief executive. A clerk was summoned, and a search was made in the elaborate filing system that lined the walls of an adjoining room. Triumphantly a folder was extracted and placed on the desk. Deep silence and a close examination of the statistical data followed. Then came the pronouncement: ‘You have no cause for worry; her I.Q. is all right!’ This certainly soothed my ragged nerves; but I had never doubted her I.Q. I did not even know what it was or where she carried it. I wanted to know about her arithmetic. It was explained to me, in that condescending and kindly fashion which the expert so frequently assumes when addressing the rank outsider, that my worry regarding arithmetic was quite irrelevant. Her I.Q. being what it was, the system being what it was, the outcome was assured. The assembly-line technique would not fail her.

Me removed our daughter from the assembly line and from the further administrative protection of this perfectly systematized educational factory and sent her to a school where they did not know the difference between an I.Q. and a bullfrog. She is doing excellent work now, unhampered by executive interference and periodic inspection.

To use, if f may, an unacademic expression, ‘How do they get that way?’

That is not difficult to answer. Once you make method the centre of your system, the need for constant supervision, checking, and revision of technique becomes easily evident. Teaching now becomes a matter of organization and administrative control and not of knowledge. The professional administrators, through their constant contact with State Boards of Education, state legislators, and town officers, have learned about all that politicians can teach. They, and the select few among the teachers’ colleges, have by now secured a strangle hold on a substantial part of the educational system of the country.

They speak the language of business and of politics. Their importance and in dispensability increase with the dimensions of the administrative force. In order to demonstrate that they are wide-awake and ‘on the job,’ they must constantly place before the controllers of the purse strings a new theory — a new experiment. The business man understands this. He would not offer you a 1936 Ford in 1937. It is not difficult for him to grasp that a school must be similarly ‘up to date.’ He is baffled by the pseudo-psychological lingo of the expert ‘educator,’ but it has a strange fascination for him.

Now the poor teachers are caught. They cannot refuse to accept the new ideas. Their advice is usually not asked and certainly not followed. They dare not protest. The ‘administrator’ has too much knowledge of the methods of business administration, lie speaks of ‘coöperation’ and interprets it, as the business executive, to mean ‘I’ll tell you what to do — you just do it.’ Should the teachers protest, they would soon discover that the school administrator has also learned the good American method of management by ‘shake-up.’ As one reorganization plan follows closely upon the heels of another, with no one knowing where the lightning will strike next, intelligent opposition is effectively unnerved.

Our universities have, on the whole, been little affected by all this, probably owing to the fact that the administrative direction has not been in the hands of professional administrators, or of those trained in schools of education where method was set up as superior to contents.

Yet it would be incorrect to assume that the universities have escaped entirely. To be sure, the academic independence of the university professor has been preserved to a most surprising extent; but subtle influences are at work to undermine it. The largest single danger in our university life comes again from the tendency to copy the pattern of management of big business. In our universities in Holland, all important decisions are made by the faculty or its representative body, the senate; and each professor in turn, in the order of seniority, occupies the post of presiding officer of this body.

When entering upon his activities in an American university the professor discovers that democracy has no place in the educational world. To be sure, faculty meetings are held, but in too many instances they are merely opportunities for the members of the faculty to blow off steam, and are intended only too often merely to give the impression that faculties are being consulted. Decisions are made in many institutions by the super-executives. That is the way the Standard Oil Company operates, so who can doubt that the same method will also bring the best results in directing the work of a university?

This suppression of the democratic principle is most in evidence in our state institutions, where more or less successful business men are often brought in to direct the affairs of the institution. This is quite logical to the man who worships method. Is not the ‘method of management,’ like the ‘method of teaching,’ of universal application?

IV

Is there a remedy? I believe there is. I also believe it will not be applied. The first cure will lie in a clearer and more courageous definition of what we hope to achieve. Since our plan of operation is what it is, we must continue to face the need for elementary courses in our institutions of higher learning. But we should make a sharp division between those courses which are merely supplying what the students failed to receive in preparatory school and those which are of true university character.

Now there is every reason to encourage as many as are willing to come to expose themselves to the elementary subjects; and two years of college should be enough to satisfy this demand. But the point is that we must stop avoiding the issue. They come to learn. Then let us not find alibis. Let us tell the youngsters, ‘We think this is what you need to learn to be an intelligent, modern citizen of the world. Now go to it. We don’t care whether it will increase your earning power. In fact, we are mean enough to hope it will not. Neither are we going to tell you that you come to college not to learn but to make “social contacts.” This is not a country club.’

If any students are left in the institution after the first two years, we may then decide who is fitted by intellectual capacity, knowledge, and general adaptability to continue and get the benefit of specialized professional training.

As far as the administrative side of the university is concerned, it is not too much to ask that the democratic spirit about which we hear so much in this country be reflected in the one place where it can exist most, naturally. If, because of their size, universities in this country need business managers, let us have them, but let us separate as sharply as possible the academic from the administrative functions. The able-bodied, able-minded, and full-grown men who constitute the faculty can safely be granted the democratic right of sharing more fully in directing the policies of the institution than is now generally the case.

But most of our trouble does not lie in the universities, but in the grammar and high schools. There the first step in advance must be found in better pay for the better-trained teachers. Once the quality of the teaching staff has been improved, more democratic control of the schools by the teachers must be introduced. And this implies that the pernicious interference in school matters by high-strung Parent-Teacher Associations must end. These associations have undoubtedly done some good in isolated instances, but in many cases they have merely added to the dark fears that surround the underpaid teachers. They have only too often opened wide the gates for lay interference with the school system, and have frequently proved the means of shouldering upon the schools the burdens of neglected parental responsibilities. If your teachers know their jobs, if they have been selected because they have had the necessary equipment and experience, why not leave them alone? Would you organize a family doctors’ association to supervise the operating-room technique of your physicians ?

Once the teachers are free from outside interference and from the fear of arbitrary executive discipline, once they know their subjects thoroughly, I have little fear that they will find it necessary to hide behind method and intangible aims to cover up the lack of results. They themselves will insist that one studies a subject to learn it, and that one learns it because it is better to know the world in all its aspects than to be ignorant. And Johnnie, working late hours to keep up with his lessons, will in time discover that there is a joy in learning things for the sake of learning, that the most effective way of arousing one’s interest is to complete successfully a distasteful and difficult task; and his character will develop as the by-product of disciplined living and thinking.

But I have been dreaming of a world that will never be. I am sorry if I have spoken out of turn. We have the greatest school system in the world. A recurring world crisis is upon us, and battleships must be built. We cannot now consider increasing the pay of our teachers; nor is it necessary, for in the immortal words of a legislator of Massachusetts, the cradle of our American culture, ‘Teachers is cheap.’