WANTING IS--WHAT?

Stigmatizing the American people as simple and unsophisticated because they put their trust in an unsuccessful school system. Dr. George Sylvester Counts attacks the major weaknesses of modern educational methods in the current New Republic. His target is the downright hypocrisy of pedagogical institution, which would be too upright. The way in which the indecisive, blind policy of the public schools turns out a product highly uneducated is convincingly set forth. Dr. Counts takes as his thesis the faults of the schools which would straddle every question, be all things to all men, a course which emasculates their powers of leadership and blights the initiative and resolution of their pupils. If a school is to inculcate any doctrine, he asserts, it should do so avowedly, and maintain no pretense of open-mindedness.

As to the indications and proofs of failure, the author is probably correct. The American people has for years looked to the little red schoolhouse to remake the world, and has showered money on educational machinery to bring about a millennium. This has failed miserably; typical products of the methods in use are the Philistines, the Babbitts, who cramp all progress by their unthinking complacency. A further indictment of the public school system is evident in the predominance of youth among the criminals and gangsters. Warden Lawes has recently stated that in the last few years he has often looked at his prisoners and wondered whether he is running a penitentiary or a preparatory school. The notable absence of culture in the ranks of successful business men and the number of minors engaged in criminal occupations can both be laid at the door of educational failure.

The flaws touched by Dr. Counts, however, are mainly symptomatic and superficial. The basic shortcoming of the public schools is their lack of purpose. For the most part they are neither cultural nor vocational; they try to be both. There is no definition of the aims of the system. The whole situation betrays one weakness; the inertia of educators, who make very little attempt to diagnose the ills of their machine, and who are so lacking in decision as to be unable to make necessary reforms when glaring faults point to their own remedies. Until officials take the matter in hand, and decide why they are educating, and how it should be done, American schools will continue to swallow money and time aimlessly to the detriment of the pupils, and consequently of the community.