Independent Schools and the Humanities
by CLAUDE M. FUESS
1
As THE demands of war grow more insistent, the humanities in education—that is, polite learning as distinguished from manual or directly vocational training — tend to recede or to disappear, and our American secondary schools which preserve the liberal arts in their classrooms find themselves on the defensive. Some very earnest people believe that for the emergency our young men, except those physically unfit, should devote themselves exclusively to the business of waging war.
The crisis, we are told, demands the relentless mobilization of our entire resources, human as well as material. Why, then, waste the time of our youth on any subject not strictly military? The killing of the enemy requires no acquaintance with Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” or Wordsworth’s “Daffodils.” The operation of a tommy gun does not depend on knowledge of the Aeneid. As for etchings and sonatas, they are luxuries which, it is said, we can ill afford at a moment when a soldier’s whole attention should be focused on destruction. This theory insists that, during a war, education should concentrate on what is immediately essential for personal and national survival, and forget everything else.
To a considerable degree this policy has been followed. The colleges and universities, dealing with young men at exactly the age when they are eligible for induction, clearly had no option but to transform themselves temporarily into armed camps, in full coöperation with the Army and Navy. Numerous public high schools have changed their courses for seventeen-year-olds to include the study of pre-flight aeronautics.
The independent schools — privately endowed and not operated for profit — have also promptly modified their curriculums by introducing such courses as communications (including the Morse code), navigation, map reading, and automobile mechanics, and by laying more st ress on bodybuilding and rifle shooting. But these schools have made these additions while retaining their traditional educational philosophy.
What reasons have the independent secondary schools for their action? In the first place they are convinced that for the training of future officers this procedure can be fully justified. The recent mental tests for the Navy V-12 and Army A-12 programs proved that boys with a cultural background actually earned higher ratings than candidates from the vocational schools. The betterknown independent Schools had astonishing records, qualifying in some cases virtually one hundred per cent of their applicants, whereas the average for the country at large was approximately twenty per cent.
The reasons for the relatively high standing of Deerfield, St. Paul’s, Exeter, Andover, and other institutions of the same general type have been variously stated as a greater degree of selectivity, superior instruction in mathematics and science, and more mature age groups. All these doubtless contributed to the result; but a truer answer lies in the fact that the more liberal teaching offered by these schools stimulates reflection, sensitivity, and alertness, all of which aid in passing examinations and reaching decisions.
The potency of the humanities in molding officer material is vouched for by generals and admirals. It is significant that the Army and Navy programs at the colleges include not only mathematics and physics and other technical subjects, but also English and history. To the ability to determine the correct range for gunfire or to interpret topographical mysteries the services would presumably like other qualities added. Leadership is an intangible quality and not always the product of scientific knowledge.
Most, thoughtful persons agree that we should recapture the liberal arts when this war is over; but it is fully as desirable to retain them now as far as possible in dealing with boys under eighteen. The choice is obviously not clear-cut, between the two extremes of all or nothing. Even the most conservative faculty can modify its requirements so that a few “war subjects" are included in the daily schedule. On the other hand, it would be hazardous for Hill or Lawrenceville, casting aside what has made them successful in preparing boys for college, to undertake a job which the military schools are doing far better for those who desire that form of training. The proper function of the independent schools is to adapt themselves to changed conditions without losing what has been fundamental in their theory of education.
2
JUST what do we mean when we speak of the humanities in a secondary-school program? It was long customary to identify the liberal arts with Greek and Latin, largely because these far-spread tongues, the delight, of scholars, were an international medium for the study of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic, and for the exchange of ideas. Today, however, only a few schools offer Greek, and the number of Latin masters is not increasing. Regrettable though this trend may be, it would be absurd to ignore it. The humanities are no longer exclusively concerned with Athens and Rome. French and Spanish are coming into their own as cultural subjects, especially since in North Africa, and perhaps later along the Rhine, a bilingual or polyglot lieutenant may possess a military asset.
In addition to the languages, ancient and modern, which over the centuries have been woven into the peacetime pattern, certain other material has usually been included in any secondary program frankly based on the humanities. As Professor Rand pointed out in his recent Atlantic article, “Bring Back the Liberal Arts,”the quadrivium, far from ignoring the physical sciences, stressed arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy; and these are still respected as among the sternest of the old-fashioned disciplines. To the list must be added chemistry, physics, and biology, some advanced mathematics, together with history, English, the fine arts, and religion or sacred studies. Philosophy, one of the most inspiring as well as the most elusive of the artes liberales, is beyond the intellectual range of most schoolboys, and the same may be said of sociology and economics, except in their simplest phases.
Now this standard program for times of peace can, with entire propriety and consistency, be fitted to the necessities of an embattled nation. The schools already know how to do it. In teaching the modern languages, more attention can be devoted to their day-by-day use in armies of occupation. In the physical sciences, especial emphasis can be laid on those formulas most likely to be required on the battlefield. Mathematics is indispensable in nearly every tactical movement on the ocean, on the ground, or in the air.
Both the President and Mr. John T. Whitaker, following Abraham Lincoln, have warned us that we cannot escape history; and American citizens in these days are entitled to know the events and the avenues of thought leading up to the present conflict. Indeed, rightly interpreted, with due analysis of trends, motives, and personalities, history is not only the most fascinating of pursuits but also offers the best justification of our present, crusade. English, inevitably placed among the cultural subjects, now appears to be also a prerequisite in the strenuous competition for a commission. The United States Naval Academy quotes approvingly the words of John Paul Jones: —
None other than a gentleman, as well as a seaman . . . is qualified to support the character of a commissioned officer in the Navy; nor is any man fit to command a ship of war who is not capable of communicating his ideas on paper in language that becomes his rank.
It may be argued without sentimentality that a few minutes spent on art or music or set aside for religious communion and prayer are conducive to good morale. Such recreative interludes feed the spirit and furnish a potential officer with proper perspective. Emotions may be distilled which will lend confidence to men under arms.
The hour is probably close at hand when the diploma from school will be for thousands their only symbol of academic accomplishment. It is important, then, to arrange for boys between fourteen and eighteen — between adolescence and the induction age — a reasonably complete and coherent course of study which will equip them either for military duty or for college.
I am not, however, suggesting that the honor graduates from the independent schools should be exempted from the draft and reserved for special functions. They would themselves resent any such segregation, and it would clearly be unjust. All I claim is that a sound apprenticeship in the humanities will make any intelligent youth a better officer as well as a better college undergraduate and ultimately a better citizen. This is true no matter what profession he may undertake. A representative of the School of Engineering at the University of Virginia is quoted as saying: “Unless I am very much mistaken, the technical schools in America are going to insist on more of the humanities in the future.” If this is a widespread opinion, — and I am convinced that it is, — it would be a grave error for the independent schools now to abandon the liberal arts.
3
To force our teachers of Latin and French to become instructors in machine gunnery is to take a further step in losing what we are fighting for. We can, of course, choose to turn ourselves into a grimly practical people, forgetting literature and painting and music and the soul of man, as totalitarian Germany has apparently done. In the early 1930’s, at Andover and several other New England schools, one or two German boys were admitted annually on an exchange basis. They were carefully selected by their own government and were the cream of the Nazi youth—rugged, observant, shrewd, and diplomatic. Although we were not fully aware of it at the time, they had been subjected at home to deliberate propaganda, aimed to make them trusted agents of the Hitler order. Their study of history, geography, chemistry, and other subjects had all been intentionally directed towards one goal.
Theirs was the precise opposite of a liberal, or even of an ethical, education. The leaders of Nazi Germany had staked their very existence on a mighty gamble, establishing a scheme of indoctrination in which everything was subordinated to preparation for service to the state. As I talked with these embryonic Führers, I was impressed by their smartness and efficiency, but also by their intolerance and arrogance as well as a glint of fanaticism in their eyes. I was sure that our American boys, although less hard and less regimented, and perhaps then less aware of their coming responsibilities, had had a more healthful experience. To what kind of post-war society will these German boys return in Munich and Berlin!
For such consequences it is the teacher rather than the curriculum that merits the blame or praise, since it is the teacher who creates the classroom mood and exercises the authority. Whether or not any branch of knowledge is “liberal” depends partly upon how it is taught. For many generations Greek has been a so-called “dead” language; yet the right masters have made it throb with vitality. Even in drawing geometric diagrams we can be stirred by thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls. On the other hand, although history has been regarded as one of the humanities, we have all known instructors who have presented it in dull and desiccated form, merely bones and no living flesh.
It may therefore be profitable to permit stimulating teachers of draft age to continue their task of molding the young men who will in a few months be wearing uniforms. To withdraw a first-rate English master from his school routine, make him a sergeant, and assign him as company clerk or headquarters stenographer is to cast him in the wrong role in the war drama. He may well have been doing his full share towards the victory while sitting on the platform in “Room 14.” The regulations now permit the deferment of instructors in mathematics and the sciences. Exemptions might well be granted to teachers of acknowledged skill and influence in other subjects.
Properly taught, the liberal arts do something more than provide details and statistics. They really nourish the spirit by encouraging breadth of vision, ability to weigh evidence, a nice sense of relative values, and tolerance of others’ opinions. These virtues are not easily acquired, but the difficulties involved should not discourage a pupil from making a long-range choice.
It was Mr. Dooley who said, with humorous exaggeration, “Childher’ shuddn’t be sent to school to larn, but to larn how to larn. I don’t care what ye larn thim so long as ‘tis onpleasant to thim.” The price is worth paying. In the recently established training schools for officers those candidates have a distinct advantage who can think for themselves, who have developed resourcefulness through selfdiscipline, who comprehend reasons and principles as well as procedures, — and, above all, who have not been confined intellectually to a narrow groove.
Clearly, however, this type of education is not designed for everyone, any more than premedical training is suited to a prospective shoe salesman. Hundreds of thousands of boys possess aptitudes largely manual or mechanical — skills indispensable in peace or war but having little to do with the mind. These are better off in trade or vocational institutions.
But the time will soon come in this country when every child of the right natural capacity will have the opportunity of exposure to the humanities. Such a policy is doubtless not feasible under the tension of war, but it is bound to be adopted if the essence of our democratic civilization is not to vanish. Scholarships at school and college will some day be awarded at government expense to those who show promise of meeting the exacting standards. Until such a system is devised, it is important that a few schools at least keep alive the liberal arts tradition.
The boys who in June were graduated from the independent schools and went out under the various service programs to join units at camps and colleges are planning today for their own future after demobilization. Dozens have been in my office to talk over their plans, and the majority expect eventually to resume their formal education. To these young alumni a background of the humanities means more than just agreeable memories. It means a preparation for a broader, richer living. To adopt now a secondary-school philosophy chiefly practical would be to deprive future graduates of what has meant so much to the seniors of 1943. These seniors, although aware of their immediate military obligation, would like to become well-rounded men. The Armed Forces Institute will offer them intermittent chances for study while they are in service, but nothing can really be an adequate substitute for the humanities, absorbed slowly but continuously from fourteen to eighteen, when the soul is suscept ible and the mind still plastic.
In these times, then, students in the independent schools are being encouraged to work harder and longer — to submit themselves uncomplainingly to bodybuilding, to spend some of their unscheduled hours in specialized military preparation, but also to continue with their cultural education. Boys so trained will not fail as officers. Even at the front they will still remember and hope. We must see that they do not return to a sordidly utilitarian world.