Education in America: 12. A Philosophy of Growth

Dr. Roche is Director of Seminars for the Foundation for Economic Education. He has taught history and philosophy in college and maintains a special interest in American edu­cation.

In this examination of educa­tion in America, we find substan­tial gaps between the ideal we envision and the reality we face. Closing those gaps by construct­ing a comprehensive educational "system" seems unrealistic, not only because it is difficult to focus any system upon the individual, but also because society rejects any such attempt. We must re­member, however, that the process of education is epitomized by ceaseless questioning, even when the answers seem difficult or dis­tant. In the best sense of education, each of us must ask, and finally answer, his own questions. Ethical considerations, in the final analysis, are matters of individual conscience. Unless each of us is free to ask and answer the proper questions, matters of ethical im­port can hardly be considered, much less decided.

Furthermore, none of us can accurately gauge the mind of an­other. Those with least apparent promise often come forth with astounding creativity. Education must offer challenge and variety to awaken the individual con­science and draw forth unique qualities and capacities. Looking for the best in others and allow­ing their free development, letting people be themselves, affords each the opportunity to achieve his own potential. Such a view of educa­tion implies no "system," no "es­tablishment," in the usual sense.

The central fact of our present educational structure is its failure to allow for individuality. In­creasingly institutionalized educa­tion emphasizes the collectivity over the individual, denies the significance of religious sanction in the lives of men, insists upon relativity as the highest standard of morality. The result has been a lowering of standards and an erosion of the dignity and worth of the individual—the very anti­thesis of genuine education.

The Aim of Education

The task of the educator is primarily that of liberation. The individual needs to be freed from his limitations in order to de­velop his potentialities and be­come a better man than he would otherwise have been. This is the most radical presumption of all. If we assume that the individual can develop his unique potentiali­ties only in freedom, implicit in that assumption is that different people have different capacities and varying rates of progress. Thus, genuine education implies discrimination and difference as distinguished from the dead level of equality.

Once this individual quality of education is understood, it be­comes apparent that "social util­ity" is not an appropriate measure of the student’s achievement. Re­spect for the individual requires that his education be measured in terms of his growth, his becoming. The object and the measure of genuine education remains the in­dividual. Development of individ­ual personality, not social con­formity, should be education’s concern. Education is the process by which the individual gains pos­session of his soul and becomes a human being fully responsive to his capacities.

In a practical sense, genuine education trains students to think for themselves. Mere indoctrina­tion will not suffice:

Cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make that man another you. One’s enough.¹

If education is to provide the opportunity for the full develop­ment of personality and independ­ent thought, it must also provide a frame of reference giving mean­ing to that independence. Rever­ence for truth is quite as impor­tant as development of personal uniqueness. Thoreau’s remark that "in the long run men hit only what they aim at," should serve to remind us that education must also give status and direction to man’s moral existence, convincing the individual that man is more than merely animal and therefore possesses correspondingly higher obligations and aspirations.

We may now define in a more pre­cise manner the aim of education. It is to guide man in the evolving dyna­mism through which he shapes him­self as a human person—armed with knowledge, strength of judgment, and moral virtues—while at the same time conveying to him the spiritual heritage of the nation and the civili­zation in which he is involved, and preserving in this way the century-old achievements of generations.²

Who Is the Educator?

Emerson once criticized the uto­pian quality of his own work, say­ing, "I found when I had finished my new lecture that it was a very good house, only the architect had unfortunately omitted the stairs." Such a demanding view of educa­tion as outlined in these pages runs the risk of being a "house without stairs." Especially in view of the present institutional struc­ture, what educator can perform such a demanding task?

Fortunately, we need not wait for institutional reform if we wish substantially to improve the education of our young. Not all education occurs in the school. Ed­ucation, like charity, begins at home. If the task of reforming a giant educational structure serv­ing millions of children seems too large, could each of us at least as­sume responsibility for the proper mental and moral development of a single child? The individual need not feel impotent when he has be­fore him a task on a scale which he can comprehend as an individ­ual, especially when that task is the development of human person­ality, surely the single most im­portant undertaking in the world. There is one catch: If the effort is to have the chance to succeed, the individual educator of the in­dividual child must want to meet the challenge.

… people, I am certain, greatly un­derestimate the power of men to achieve their real choices. But the choices must be real and primary, not secondary ones. Men will often say that they want such and such a thing, and true, they do want such and such a thing, but it turns out that they want something else more. It is what they want most that they will be most active, ingenious, imaginative, and tireless in seeking. When a person decides that he really wants some­thing, he finds he can surpass him­self; he can change circumstances and attain to a goal that in his duller hours seemed unattainable. As an old teacher of mine used to say, "When you have done your utmost, something will be given to you." But first must come the honest desire.³

Parents

Unfortunately, many parents have been unwilling to assume primary responsibility for their offspring. It is true that the mod­ern school has tended to assume functions for which it was ill-suited, thus becoming a poor sub­stitute for the parent, but the primary blame must rest with the negligence of many parents.

The selfishness of more and more of our contemporary parents also manifests itself in neglect of chil­dren. Parents all too often pity them­selves, run away from their plain duty, their chief job, their greatest avenue to the respect of God and of honest men. They place their own wel­fare, even their amusements ahead of the well-being of their sons and daughters. They may, and usually do, see that the boys and girls are clothed, fed, washed, have their teeth attended to; but to make pals of them, to live with them, to laugh and cry and work and play with them, loving­ly but firmly to discipline them, this takes too much time and effort alto­gether. The American parent tends increasingly to pamper himself or herself. In consequence little is taught to the children by precept and less by example. Then the parents dump their progeny at the feet of the schoolmaster and schoolmistress and say, "Here, we have no time to bring these youngsters up, nor have we any stom­ach for the job. You take them over, as totally as possible, and do what we will not do for our own. Train them in character; that is what you get paid for."⁴

Before we can impart self-dis­cipline to our children, we must first possess that quality ourselves. We cannot solve the problem of raising children by pretending to make the schools responsible; nor can we solve the problem of ex­ercising authority by transferring that authority to the children themselves.

Let us have a little severe hard work, good, clean, well-written exer­cises, well-pronounced words, well set-down sums: and as far as head­work goes, no more…. Let us have a bit of solid, hard, tidy work….

And one must do this to children, not only to love them, but to make them free and proud: If a boy slouches out of a door, throw a book at him, like lightning; don’t stand for the degenerate, nervous, twisting, wistful, pathetic centreless children we are cursed with: or the fat and self – satisfied, sheep – in – the – pasture children who are becoming more com­mon: or the impudent, I’m-as-good as-anybody smirking children who are far too numerous.⁵

How many parents would face up to such a responsibility in their own home? How many would tol­erate, much less encourage, a school operated on such "old-fash­ioned" principles? The process of character building is a demand­ing, day-by-day job. The job im­plies great expectations in the child, plus the parent’s willingness to give the sustained time and ef­fort to insist that the expectation is fulfilled.

Not only must the parent be prepared to give of himself to ac­complish the task, but he must be prepared to set the proper exam­ple. Does this demand a great deal of each of us? Yes, indeed! And no amount of tax collection and PTA activity can serve as a substitute. Any area of life where we achieve success demands time, energy, patience—expenditure of self. Surely the building of a fam­ily and the raising of children can be no exception. It is not enough to know what is right; we must also live that knowledge. "If one’s wisdom exceeds one’s deeds, the wisdom will not endure." This is a highly individual task, one which cannot be successfully collectivized.

Teachers

Does such parental responsibil­ity rule out the importance of the teacher? Indeed not. The dedicat­ed teacher, who has mastered him­self and who would spend his life in helping the young to master their lives, is engaged in one of the highest callings. Without such men and women, the school as an extension of parental responsibil­ity would be impossible. In fact, it has been the devotion to duty of many teachers and administra­tors which has enabled our educa­tional system to keep operating successfully, despite bureaucratic rigidity and parental flight from responsibility. Still, the good teacher is fighting a losing fight unless the home enforces the dis­cipline and standards necessary to support the learning experience of the classroom. Ultimately, failures in education rest with the individ­ual parents who are willing to ac­cept less than the best, and un­willing to fulfill their own respon­sibilities. Our children finally re­ceive an education which is an accurate reflection of the princi­ples accepted by adult society.

Public Funding of Education

The Bundy Report on urban ed­ucation, financed by the Ford Foundation, has described the current educational bureaucracy as "a system already grown rigid in its negative powers," and has warned that power and respon­sibility must go hand in hand. This was to have been achieved by the now famous "decentralization." In practical terms, the re­sults of decentralization in New York City Public Schools have been a resounding failure. The en­tire nation has watched public ed­ucation in Ocean Hill-Brownsville literally come to a halt. But this is not the failure of a genuine at­tempt at decentralization. The people have insisted that schools be publicly funded, and yet pre­tended that somehow this would not affect the decision-making process in neighborhood schools. Power and responsibility have not been allowed to flow together. The individual parents in Ocean Hill-Brownsville should have a say in the education of their children; they also should pay for that ed­ucation. So long as they lack that responsibility, it is not surprising that they act irresponsibly.

Across this nation, those par­ents who would exercise respon­sible choice in the education of their children are penalized for their responsible behavior. Par­ents who would place their chil­dren in a private school more responsive to their values and at­titudes are advised by the tax collector, "First support the state’s educational philosophy; then, if you have any surplus re­sources, you may pursue your ed­ucational philosophy."

Education in America has be­come a reflection of the insistence that education be a function of government, cost free to partici­pating students, fully financed at taxpayer expense. What originat­ed as local schooling, supported by taxation in the immediate com­munity (and therefore somewhat responsive to local and parental wishes) has inexorably moved to­ward bureaucratic bigness—the fate of all publicly funded proj­ects. On the local level, the parent finds the system less and less responsive to his concerns. Mean­while, power has tended to gravi­tate from the little red school­house to the State House and from the State House to Washington. Control of the purse strings has brought control of education.

The remaining private educa­tional institutions on all levels face exorbitant costs as they try to compete for scarce educational resources. How are they to attract students and faculty in view of the expensive plants, research fa­cilities, salary scales, and subsi­dized tuition offered by "public" institutions? Many have suc­cumbed to the lure of state and Federal aid, losing self-control in the process.

Proposals for Relief

There have been various propo­sals for relief of this bureaucratic congestion, among them the idea of "decentralization." But recent events should make it clear that no genuine decentralization can occur under public funding. The effect of socialized finance in any project, education included, is to­ward more centralized control, not less.

Another proposal is to allow the individual tax credit for income spent or given for educational pur­poses. This, too, might serve as a holding action, though it still fails to deal with the underlying moral issue. Why should the money of one citizen be taken by force to finance the education of other peo­ples’ children, any more than to finance the building of other peo­ples’ homes, the gasoline for other peoples’ cars, the payment of other peoples’ medical expenses? I have yet to hear a compelling moral ar­gument justifying coercion for such a purpose.

So long as we are willing to allow an immoral premise to dom­inate our educational endeavors, we must be willing to live with ugly results. The only lasting solu­tion is to remove education from the hands of government, restor­ing responsibility to the student and the parent.

The response at that point tends to be, "Why, if there were no pub­lic education, parents wouldn’t send their children to school!" I have yet to meet the person who will not send his children to school. It is always those other people who would supposedly be remiss in their duty. A parallel case may be discovered in the ar­guments of the last century con­cerning organized religion. The original argument for a state-supported church was that religion would fail if people were given their choice whether or not to sup­port organized religion. The iden­tical argument is advanced today in regard to education, despite the fact that religion thrives after more than a century of separation of church from state. Is there any compelling reason why voluntary support of education should not be given a similar opportunity?

Ultimate Solution Lies in Freedom and Responsibility

Educational reform must begin with parents as individuals, with the recognition that better up­bringing for their children lies in their hands, not in the hands of the state. If and when enough par­ents begin living their lives self-responsibly and apply such prin­ciples to their children who are an extension of self, a new education­al day will have dawned. The an­swer, then, is not to "throw the rascals out," substituting good men for bad in the political con­trol of collectivized education. In­stead, let each act in his own small orbit, with his own children, with those whom he influences directly. If one’s example and understand­ing are of high enough quality, the educational picture will begin to change no matter what course politicalized education might take.

Those who effect great revolu­tions are always small in number. Such people need not wait to be­come a majority. No one else can do the job except those who under-stand what needs to be done. The disruptive influence of political centralization in education will continue until it has been over­shadowed and rendered meaning­less by a moral force of sufficient intensity, a force generated by in­dividuals who understand what is at stake and who serve notice by their own example that a better way exists to educate our young.

This article concludes the series on Education in America.

—FOOTNOTES—

¹ Emerson: A Modern Anthology, ed. by Alfred Kazin and Daniel Aaron, p. 363.

² Jacques Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, p. 10.

³ Richard Weaver, Life without Preju­dice, p. 119.

⁴ Bernard Iddings Bell, Crisis in Edu­cation, pp. 98-99.

⁵ G. H. Bantock, Freedom and Author­ity in Education, pp. 175, 177.