Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

“ Out of these great historic movements have come modern scholarship, the inestimable boon of religious liberty, the firm establishment of the idea of the reign of law in an orderly universe, the conception of government as in the interests of the governed, the substitution of democracy and political equality for the rule of a class or an autocratic power, and the assertion of the right to an education at public expense as a birthright of every child. ”

“ The shock of the contest into which western Christendom had been plunged by the challenge of Luther had been felt in every corner of Europe, and the culmination of a century of warfare was then raging, with all the bitterness and brutality that a religious motive develops. Christian Europe was too filled with an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust and hatred to be in any mood to consider reforms for the improvement of the education of mankind. ”

“ At the bottom of all this work and service lie the new human-liberty conceptions first worked out and formulated for the world by little Greece, In time the ideas to which they gave expression have become the heritage of what we know as our western civilization, and the warp and woof of the intellectual and political life of the modern world. As a result of the Industrial Revolution, and of the new political and commercial and social forces of our time, this western civilization, using education as its great constructive tool, is now spreading to every continent on the globe. ”

“ To enjoy our rights and liberties, we must understand them; their security and protection ought to be the first object of a free people; and it is a well-established fact that no nation has ever continued long in the enjoyment of civil and political freedom, which was not both virtuous and enlightened; and believing that the advancement of literature always has been, and ever will be the means of developing more fully the rights of man, that the mind of every citizen in a republic is the common property of society, and constitutes the basis of its strength and happiness ”

“ Here also we find, for the first time, the thinkers of the State deeply concerned with the education of the youth of the State, and viewing education as a necessity to make life worth living and secure the State from dangers, both within and without. To prepare men by a severe but simple and honest training to fear the gods, to do honest work, to despise comfort and vice, to obey the laws, to respect their neighbors and themselves, and to reverence the wisdom of their race, was the aim of this old education. ”

“ The Athenian Greeks were a highly artistic and imaginative rather than a practical people. They spent their energy on other matters than government and conquest. As a result the world will be forever indebted to them for an art and a literature of incomparable beauty and richness which still charms mankind; a philosophy which deeply influenced the early Christian religion, and has ever since tinged the thinking of the western world; and for many important beginnings in scientific knowledge which were lost for ages to a world that had no interest in or use for science. ”

“ Thus it happens that the chronicles of the monks and the lives of the saints, charming and interesting as they are in their naïveté, their simplicity, their trustful credulity, and their pictures of a life and an attitude of mind so remote from ours, are filled with incidents given as facts that test the greatest faith, strain the most vivid imagination, and shock that innate respect for reality, that it is the purpose of modern education to inculcate. ”

“ To convince the masses of the people that the scheme of state schools was not only practicable, but also the best and most economical means for giving their children the benefits of an education; to convince propertied citizens that taxation for education was in the interests of both public and private welfare; to convince legislators that it was safe to vote for free-school bills; and to overcome the opposition due to apathy, religious jealousies, and private interests, was the work of years. ”

“ In the hands of an uneducated proletariat democracy is a dangerous instrument. In Russia, Mexico, and in certain of the Central American Republics we see what a democracy results in in the hands of an uneducated people. There, too often, the revolver instead of the ballot box is used to settle public issues, and instead of orderly government under law we have a reign of injustice and anarchy. Only by the slow but sure means of general education of the masses in character and in the fundamental bases of liberty under law can governments that are safe and intelligent be created. ”

“ So depraved was the age, and so wretched were the educational practices of his time, that, in spite of the malevolent impulse which was his driving force, what he wrote actually contained many excellent ideas, pointed the way to better practices, and became an inspiration for others who, unlike Rousseau, were deeply interested in problems of education and child welfare. One cannot study Rousseau's writings as a whole, see him in his eighteenth-century setting, know of his personal life, and not feel that the far-reaching reforms produced by his Émile are among the strangest facts in history. ”

“ Finally, after the long mediaeval night, came "time's burst of dawn," first and for a long time confined to Italy, but later extending to all northern lands, and in the century of revival and rediscovery and reconstruction the Greek passion for truth and the Greek courage to trust reason were reawakened, and once more made the heritage of the western world. Once again the Greek spirit, the spirit of freedom and progress and trust in the power of truth, became the impulse that was to guide and dominate the future. ”

“ A student of the writings of the eighteenth-century reform philosophers, and deeply imbued with the reform spirit of his time, he attempted to abolish ancient privileges, establish a uniform code of justice, encourage education, free the serfs, abolish feudal tenure, grant religious toleration, curb the power of the Pope and the Church, break the power of the local Diets, centralize the State, and "introduce a uniform level of democratic simplicity under his own absolute sway." ”

“ Twenty-two years ago, on entering Stanford University as a Professor of Education and being given the history of the subject to teach, I found it necessary, almost from the first, to begin the construction of a Syllabus of Lectures which would permit of my teaching the subject more as a phase of the history of the rise and progress of our Western civilization than would any existing text. Through such a study it is possible to give, better than by any other means, that vision of world progress which throws such a flood of light over all our educational efforts. ”

“ The imagination of the twentieth century cannot fathom the poverty of the eighteenth. The great development of mines and manufactures, which has brought ease and independence within the reach of industrious labour everywhere, had hardly begun; employment was so scarce and intermittent, and wages were so low, that the working classes lived in hovels, dressed in rags, and were familiar with the pangs of hunger; while those who were forced to look to the rates for hovels, rags, and food sufficient to maintain a miserable life numbered a sixth of the whole population. ”

“ At the same time a great and ever-increasing specialization of human effort is taking place on all sides, and with new and ever more difficult social, political, educational, industrial, commercial, and human-life problems constantly presenting themselves for solution. The world has become both larger and smaller than it used to be, and even its remote parts are now being linked up, to a degree that a century ago would not have been deemed possible, with the future welfare of the nations which so long bore the brunt of the struggle for the preservation and advancement of civilization. ”

“ Still more, Pestalozzi possessed a deep and abiding faith, new at the time, in the power of education as a means of regenerating society. He had begun his work by trying to "teach beggars to live like men," and his belief in the potency of education in working this transformation, so touchingly expressed in his Leonard and Gertrude, never left him. He believed that each human being could be raised through the influence of education to the level of an intellectually free and morally independent life, and that every human being was entitled to the right to attain such freedom and independence. ”

“ While in the treatment major emphasis has been given to modern times, I have nevertheless tried to show how all modern education has been after all a development, a culmination, a flowering-out of forces and impulses which go far back in history for their origin. In a civilization such as we of to-day enjoy, with roots so deeply embedded in the past as is ours, any adequate understanding of world practices and of present-day world problems in education calls for some tracing of development to give proper background and perspective. ”

“ What the Revival of Learning was to the classical scholars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the movement for scientific knowledge and its application to human affairs was to the nineteenth. It changed the outlook of man on the problems of life, vastly enlarged the intellectual horizon, and gave a new trend to education and to scholarly effort. What the scholars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had been slowly gathering together as interesting and classified phenomena, the scientific scholars of the nineteenth century organized, interpreted, expanded, and applied. ”

“ Seeing the educational purpose in far clearer perspective than had those who had gone before him, he showed that education must have for its function the preparation of man to live in organized society, and that character and social morality, rather than individual development, must in consequence be the larger aims. Froebel, possessed of something of the same insight, and seeing clearly the educational importance of activity and expression, had opened up for children a wealth of new contacts with the world about them in the new type of educational institution which he created. ”

“ The Protestant Revolts were the first great revolutionary wave, the Puritan revolution in England was another, the formation of the American Republic and the institution of constitutional government and religious freedom another, while the French Revolution brought the rising movement to a head and swept away, in a deluge of blood, the very foundations of the mediaeval system. Along with much that was disastrous, the French Revolution accomplished after all much that was of greatest importance for human progress. ”

“ Civil government is no fit agency for the training of families or of souls.... Throw the people on their own resources in education, as you did in industry; and be assured, that, in a nation so full of intelligence and spirit, Freedom and Competition will give the same stimulus to improvement in our schools, as they have done in our manufactures, our husbandry, our shipping, and our commerce. ”

“ The establishment of the free public high school and the state university represent the crowning achievements of those who struggled to found a state-supported educational system fitted to the needs of great democratic States. Probably no other influences have done more to unify the American People, reconcile diverse points of view, eliminate state jealousies, set ideals for the people, and train leaders for the service of the States and of the Nation than the academies, high schools, and colleges scattered over the land. ”