Popular education

“ Indeed, it is a question not of schools but of civilization, whether mental training, from the three R's to science and philosophy, shall really make men better, as the theory of popular education assumes, and whether the genius and talent of the few who can receive and bear it can be brought to the full maturity of a knowledge fully facultized—a question paramount, even in a republic, to the general education of the many.
The illusion is that beginnings are hard. They are easy. Almost any mind can advance a little way into almost any subject. ”

“ I might speak, too, of the expediency of introducing into popular education a more social element, of teaching less rivalry and discontent, more knowledge of the mutual duties of different members of the community and of the connection of those duties with our happiness. ”

“ In the present volume the author has endeavored so to present the subject of popular education, which should have reference to the whole man—the body, the mind, and the heart—and so to unfold its nature, advantages, and claims, as to make it every where acceptable. Nay, more, he would have a good common education considered as the inalienable right of every child in the community, and have it placed first among the necessaries of life. For the better accomplishment of his object, he has freely drawn from the writings of practical educators, his aim being usefulness rather than originality. ”

“ A field of activity and value in popular education is involved, scarcely secondary to that of the public schools, appealing to the general reader, the taxpayer, and, above all, to the well-wisher for democratic political institutions and representative government in the future. ”

“ What is a professional education but a liberal education taking a special direction?
Can it now be said, with any truth, that our nominally-educated young men go out into the world equipped with that general knowledge of the sciences of law and government, and political economy, with that knowledge of ethics and philosophy, with that acquaintance with modern history and of the condition of the world they live in, and with that real taste for modern literature, which should form the equipments of every man calling himself educated? ”

“ Roughly, our popular education is still governed by the idea of equipping the young person with such a quantum of knowledge as he may be supposed to require in order to make a living and gain some sort of settled place in life. ”

“ The objects and advantages of education heretofore considered apply equally to men of every nation and clime, under whatever form of government they may chance to dwell. It is otherwise in regard to the political necessity of popular education. ”

“ Under Popular Education may be included an acquaintance with Reading, Writing, English Grammar, Geography, and the leading principles of Science; such information in fact as would enable the people to avail themselves of the lessons contained in books, and to discharge with ease and propriety the various avocations of common life. The advantages of Popular Education as thus defined are so diversified and so connected with the whole intertexture of society, as to render it impracticable on the present occasion to trace them out fully. ”

“ I have ill fulfilled my purpose if, in claiming for science a larger share in public education, I have in any way depreciated literature, art, or philosophy, for every subject which adds to culture aids in human development. I only contend that in public education there should be a free play to the scientific faculty, so that the youths who possess it should learn the richness of their possession during the educative process. ”

“ There was never a country in the world which could so easily exhibit this heroism as ours; never anywhere the State has made such efficient provision for popular education, where intellectual entertainment is so within reach of youthful ambition. ”

“ If the parents in the community, whose standards of life are the highest, and whose ideas are the most enlightened, would as a class co-operate in the advancement of common education, the charge that our public schools produce on the whole second-rate acquirements, and second-rate morals and manners, would soon be refuted, and the cause of popular education would cease to be handicapped, as it is at present, by the coolness of the well-to-do class. ”

“ If we want to know how to teach the masses and to help them to contentment, happiness, occupation of mind, {192} uplifting entertainment, cheerful amusement and, above all, to conscious democratic government, here is the model of it as it can be found nowhere else. I commend it to those who are teaching and who, realizing the failure of our modern education in many ways, are looking about for the remedies that will help to make our popular education more efficient. ”

“ The superstition of education. Popular education and certain faiths about popular education are in the mores of our time. We regard illiteracy as an abomination. We ascribe to elementary book learning power to form character, make good citizens, keep family mores pure, elevate morals, establish individual character, civilize barbarians, and cure social vice and disease. We apply schooling as a remedy for every social phenomenon which we do not like. ”

“ The State must, therefore, take all means within its power to promote and encourage popular education, and furnish this intelligence of the people through her public schools."
At first sight such principles seem to be true, and the people in general will accept them. Experience teaches that the public will accept, without question, almost any maxim or problem, provided it be formulated in such a manner as to convey some specific meaning that does not demand reflection or complex examination. ”

“ Meanwhile much would be gained if we could once clearly see, and begin to act on the principle, that the chief end of popular education should be, not a smattering of knowledges, but the development of social-minded character. ”

“ Back of everything that is noble and beautiful you will find a compelling idea. Back of the five hundred thousand teachers in America, who are to-day fashioning sixteen million young minds into patterns beautiful or grotesque, there should stand the compelling impulse of a high social idea.
The main question in education, indeed, I may say the one question in education, is simply this. What type of men and women do we wish to prevail? What is the social ideal toward which we wish to work? ”

“ But, we are told, the public-school system educates the people more rapidly than private education could possibly do—educates a greater number in a given time. Does that settle the question? Does the quality of education, do the moral influences accompanying it, count for nothing? Whether would it be better to give five hundred an education destitute of moralizing and idealizing influences, or three hundred an education penetrated by those influences, trusting to the action of the smaller number to promote social order and harmony? ”

“ But if it were far less limited, popular education would fail to perform its most important office if it failed so to conduct that instruction as to stimulate the desire to learn, and to teach how to learn things which cannot be taught at school. ”

“ It must aim rather to quicken than to fill the brain. Instead of merely cramming the memory, it must endeavor so to train, practise, discipline and inspire the mind that it may become observing, active, inquisitive, receptive, and thus easily accessible to those instructive and elevating influences which may afterward, in contact with men and things, be brought to bear upon it. [Applause.] Popular education will thus enable the masses of the people, to whom more extensive and higher instruction is unattainable, to follow the progress of civilization and to become an active part of it. ”

“ Every succeeding section of the last chapter went to show more and more clearly that, in proportion as the benign influences of a correct education are diffused among and enjoyed by the members of any community, will existing evils of every kind be diminished, and blessings be increased in number and degree. The subject of popular education, then, claims, and should receive, the sympathy and active support of every philanthropist and Christian, without regard to country or clime. ”

“ Where a good system of popular education is well administered in a country, and, as a consequence, intelligence, industry, and morality become universal among its citizens, they will eventually become a wealthy, and a highly-prosperous and happy community, even though they derive their subsistence from a naturally unfruitful soil ”

“ Whatever influence I may gain will be used towards a thorough reconstruction of our system of popular schooling. I believe nothing serious can be done until we have a truly civic education for the masses of the people. ”

“ I am afraid the remark is too honest, and comes from the same origin as the maxim of the tyrant, "If you would rule the world quietly, you must keep it amused." I notice too that the ground on which eminent public servants urge the claims of popular education is fear; 'This country is filling up with thousands and millions of voters, and you must educate them to keep them from our throats.' We do not believe that any education, any system of philosophy, any influence of genius, will ever give depth of insight to a superficial mind. ”

“ But so surely and certainly has this latent feeling of opposition to popular education given way before the prevalence of more enlightened views, that, even in the most monarchical countries of Europe, the desire felt and the efforts put forth for the diffusion of public education in all its comprehensiveness and fulness have been remarkable. ”

“ The spread of popular secondary education, the rapid increase and distribution of wealth, have placed a college education within the reach of those lacking both scholarly ambition and the traditions of culture, but to whom have come the opportunity and desire for social betterment. ”

“ Conventions of the friends of education have already done much to correct popular errors in relation to this subject, and have contributed largely to the formation of sound and rational views in relation to its importance in the communities where they have been held. ”

“ But a great and wealthy society like ours ought very well to be able to nourish one or two great seats for the augmentation of true learning, and at the same time make sure that young men—and again I say, especially young women—should have good education of the higher kind within reach of their own hearths. ”

“ All this will conduce to the practicability and efficacy of education. It will be an education to fit them for an education to be introduced with the progress of that fitness; intellectual culture finding a felicitous adaptation of the soil. We may then adopt with some confidence a public system, or stimulate and assist all independent local exertions for the instruction of the people in the rudiments of literature and general knowledge; and religion too, if you will. ”

“ All State education is a sort of dynamo machine for polarizing the popular mind; for turning and holding its lines of force in the direction supposed to be most effective for State purposes. ”

“ Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of the schools—intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it—this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life. ”

“ Science, history, philosophy, literature, must [43] no longer be the luxuries of the ‘educated’ classes; all classes must be educated and sit down to these things of the mind as they do to their daily bread. History must afford its pageants, science its wonders, literature its intimacies, philosophy its speculations, religion its assurances to every man, and his education must have prepared him for wanderings in these realms of gold. ”

“ Not a question have I ever heard in any school meeting of the necessity of educating every American child—at any cost. Think of it! Think how far we have come in that respect, in seventy—yes, fifty—years. Universal education has become a settled axiom of our life. ”

“ Our education is by no means entirely the product of organized schools. Our hired teachers and printed books are not all that act on our powers to develop them. Life is one grand school, and its every circumstance a teacher. Society pours in its influence upon us like the thousand streams that flood the ocean.
Scholastic men and women speak of book education; there is also a life education—that great, common arena where men and women do battle with the forces around them. ”

“ High school and college can give much, but these are never on their programmes. All the book processes that we go to the schools for and commonly call our 'education' give no more than opportunity to win the indispensables of education. ”

“ As an immediate consequence of the part necessarily played by learning in our industrial and commercial life under modern conditions, public education has become the mainspring of national prosperity. ”

“ For, whatever may be the decision of the long-vexed question between the advantages of public and those of private education, few persons will deny that they produce marked differences in the formation of character. ”