4-1 W5^ Education and Intelligence By Andrew Fleming V^est Dean of the Graduate School Princeton University (Reprinted from the New York Times and Philadelphia Public Ledger of September 23, 1911) W:> * .'.:■■ V - » .'.•>* ' A- ■■/■■ ■» » tt *, STATE HOEIAAL SCHOOL Education and Intelligence By Andrew Fleming West Dean of the Graduate School Princeton University 2 3 3^ 7 LOS ANGELES STy^^TE NORMAL Princeton, New Jersey October, 1911 Education and Intelligence TO ask whether educated men should be intel- ligent may seem at first sight merely a flippant way of putting a senseless ques- tion. Most persons, including even those who do not think much about such matters, believe that in some way or other an increase of intelligence "Is the sure outcome of "getting an education." The wise saying of Descartes that "the end of educa- tion is the development of intelligence" is often quoted to the same effect, and it is a common opinion that a man knovv'n as "educated" is thereby certified to the world as being really intelligent. We somehow feel that this ought to be so — to be something to be depended on in each instance — and, in fact, it is so in a restricted sense. As we examine the foundations of educational theory and the results of history, we are glad to find ourselves justified in believing that every diligent human being of even moderate capacity becomes much more intelligent by means of school or college training than he would have been or perhaps could have been without it. This v/e feel is as surely true as that the soil will yield richer fruit by proper cultivation. From the truth at the root of this belief spring all schools, colleges, and institutions of knowledge the world over. But when we examine the actual results of our education, noting the irreconcilable differences Education and Intelligence among educated men regarding essential questions and observing the occasional chaotic condition of educated opinion, we can find no adequate explana- tion if we ignore the patent fact that a good many of our so-called "educated men" are not really in- telligent — that they are in fact men of unintelligent intellectual behavior, some of them superficially versed in a number of things somewhat badly under- stood, some of them sharply clear in a narrow way — precise to the dot in little things and helpless in all else, some only vaguely aware or wholly un- aware of the relative importance of different topics, and usually lacking in steady, sensible judgment. And these are but a few instances — for the varieties of aberration from the clear white light of real intelligence are as many as the hues of the spec- trum. I am not referring here to the natural tempera- mental differences in men, which education may tone but cannot destroy, nor to the errors of crass untrained ignorance which, like dulness itself, seem to be ineradicable. But I am thinking here of the pall of ignorance that seems so much darker when it rests on a man who is supposedly educated — for here his ignorance is unconscious and his situation is thereby made the more pathetic. The "light" that is in him is "darkness," and is all the m.ore hopeless because it is supposed by its possessor to be "light." In such cases a man often utters what he thinks, supposing it to be what he knows. These Education and Intelligence are the "educated men" who do not discern be- tween opinion and truth, nor see the relative im- portance of things, nor waken to appreciate what things mean when they happen outside the famiUar routine of the ordinary. I fully believe that among honest men of school and college training this is the chief intellectual cause of discord. It is the hardest obstacle, excepting stupid dulness and moral baseness, to the progress of true education. Do we realize that in our preoccupation with the machinery of education, our ready applause of this and that novelty and our eagerness to turn all to utilitarian ends, irrespective of the abiding in- visible values, we are forgetting the all-important and controlling truth of the matter? This truth is that education is a warfare against ignorance — the old, ancient, inveterate ignorance to which the human race is newly born with every generation that enters the world. This is the one ever-old and ever-new material to be mastered and trans- formed — the vast opaque resisting mass which must first be illumined from without and then made lu- minous within by the processes of education. It is on the existence of this ever-recurring need the existence of institutions of knowledge depends — for to make the darkness light is the one ceaseless v/ork of education and of educated men. "Truth is one ; error is manifold" is the saying credited to Pythagoras. The unity of truth, its close congruences, its luminous clearness "having Education and Intelligence no part dark," its blending harmonies, each answer- ing to the other without discord — this has been the enchanting vision which has dominated the search for knowledge since man began to think. And we cannot but believe, we must believe, we do believe that truth everywhere is in agreement with itself. It is one. But manifold indeed are the varieties of unsound theory and manifold the delusions of the supposedly but not really educated from the ancient fallacy of "perpetual motion" to the vagaries of "child psychology" and the fads which now beguile childhood with the notion that organized play is study. To include these vagaries under one class seems impossible, except by negation. We can say of them that they are not coherent, not consistent, not productive of intelligence in any strong sense. Their one common negative trait is detachment from appreciation of the important rela- tions of knowledge. Perhaps we can turn this around a little and get some sort of a partial posi- tive characterization by describing their nature as fractional, dissevering, centrifugal. Put them all together and they will never make a co-operating system. So far as they work at all, they work best singly and scatteringly. And yet they do not work well. Take a few instances. The superficially educated man gets "out of his depth" as soon as he tries to think deeply, the narrowly trained man cannot see broadly be- cause he uses his mind like an eye at a keyhole, Education and Intelligence the mechanically educated man cannot detect the life behind the mechanism, the man of commonplace cannot soar beyond the uninterestingly obvious, the miscellaneously minded man cannot "collect his thoughts" and so thinks anything that "comes into his head," — and none of these is really awake to the essential humor and sadness of his plight. They flock together after their several kinds, forming the divided and sometimes hostile clans of unintelligent knowledge. They have missed the unity of truth which would have made them one. Such "educated men" stand and must stand below the plane of general balanced knowledge — for which another name is intelligence. They are the cause not only of sharp positive disagreements in education but at times of chaotic confusion, which is even worse. We have opened too large a vista for this brief paper. A glance here and there by way of sug- gestion is all that can be attempted. In doing so we shall have to omit the myriad instances where lack of intelligence is displayed in the common affairs of life, and to confine our attention to the supposedly educated men who are interested in matters of education. And even here a very few illustrations must suffice. Our system of American education, if such it may be called, is in certain important respects our just pride. The "sense of achievement," which seemed to Matthew Arnold the distinctive note of our civilization, is evident in our schools of all 8 Education and Intelligence grades from the lowest to the highest. We have taken old traditions and shaped them anew to suit our ever-changing life. If they did not suit, we discarded them. Then, too, we have been making new traditions — some of them overnight. That we have been free to do so is a matter of congratula- tion. At least we are not "hide-bound," so we say. No "Procrustean bed" (that overworked metaphor!) for us. An immense amount of work has been done with conscience, persistence, and en- thusiasm. Almost every new idea introduced has been given a trial and "worked for all it was worth." We have had educational discussion in torrents and a deluge of publication. There has been freedom to say anything and try anything that seemed worth saying or trying. On certain sides of this somewhat tumultuous and multiform development we have been marvel- ously successful, particularly in regard to the labo- rious devotion of our teachers and the perfecting of the externals of education. The liberal pecuniary provision made by our several States and cities, the construction of our newer schoolhouses, their equip- ment, the well-planned playgrounds, the arrange- ments for securing good air and light, the general sanitation, the length of school time, the prompt- ness and order with which masses of pupils are moved and taught, the school clock that will strike to meet any programme, the devices for making study easy and pleasant, the fire drill, the refresh- Education and Intelligence ment counters, manual training appliances, the clear- print books — these and a thousand other big and little things subservient to education in an external way have been perfected better in our land than elsewhere. Even a "Faculty Business Accelerator" of electrical contrivance is announced, providing a sort of self-registering electric chair (ominous thought!) for each professor to sit in. Nevertheless, making every allowance for amusingly extreme in- stances, we are first in the world in this matter of usable educational machinery. All this has been done with knowledge — quick- witted, watchful, ready knowledge. And we are heartily thankful therefor. But, in the best sense of the word, it has not been done with intelligence, which is something more than knowledge and some- thing which in its highest form becomes wisdom. A disproportionate amount of energy has been given to the machinery. Due regard has not been paid to the relative value of the outer mechanism of edu- cation when compared with the invisible processes to be used and the invisible end to be attained in dealing with the pupil's high possibilities as a de- veloping human being. It is these alone which make any machinery useful. It is these which should dominate all scholars, teachers, managers, and officers in every stage of education from the timid beginnings in the primary school to the end of university studies. No doubt this conviction is generally acknowl- 10 Education and Intelligence edged to be true and is often in operative action. Yet what do we actually find in very many in- stances? — so many as to indicate that the evil is prevalent and threatening. We find the outer de- vices and routine mistaken for the inner life of education. What is more tedious and dispiriting in such schools than the mechanized teaching which ensues, class after class, section after section, "going through" the routine with the same "lock-step," and the teacher expected and required to deliver the "tale of the bricks" in the shape of so many pupils molded alike? It is no wonder such uniform "re- sults" are mediocre. Not only the individuality of the student, but of the teacher, becomes subjected to the "pedagogic cramp." It is no wonder that a majority of our public school teachers, no matter how promising at the start, succumb to this routine in a very few years, and pass the rest of their career feeding material to the machinery. Three or four years, in the opinion of one who was in position to know the truth of the matter, (Dr. William T. Harris, our late Commissioner of Education,) is the time to be allowed for the occurrence of this slump. There is and must be some recoil from this extreme, so long as teachers and scholars are human beings. It seems to be found, however, only in resorting under the guise of study to pleasant di- versions which are not studies at all— diverting the pupil, indeed, from lifeless routine and also diverting him from intellectual effort. Thus one extreme leads Education and Intelligence 11 to another. This, inevitable as it is under such conditions, is not intelligent. Are our American boys and girls so feeble-minded that they cannot stand thorough training in things of the mind? Must a study be "made easy to escape being dull"? Are we unable to match ourselves with the schools of Germany, France, England, and Scotland? It may be humbling to our pride to admit it, and yet if we are aware of the facts we must know that we do not equal the Old World schools in this all-important matter of intelligent thoroughness. From the overbelief in machinery, routine and rules (on which visible helps all weak teachers lean, instead of making the machinery their servant) it is easy to slide into acquiescence with the notion that the visible side is the chief thing, and that the real end of education is "practical," "vocational," "something you can see the use of" (a most un- couth phrase), something that will "help a man to make a living." Here the utilitarian impulse, good always and good only when followed as subordinate to something higher — the making of a good life — comes in with almost irresistible sweep. Of course nine-tenths of those who go to school must "make a living." Of course their education should help to this end. Of course it is folly to give them or any one else a "useless" training. Of course very many will be lucky to get so much as even a "practical" training. And of course the early "practical" training is the best many can take and 12 Education and Intelligence appreciate. It is some help — perhaps all they can get. And they must have it. It is their hard lot not to be able to get or appreciate more. Full provision should be made and is rapidly being made to supply what they need and can take. Yet so long as it remains true that "man shall not live by bread alone," all men, so far as they can possibly get the chance, should be trained to be breadwinners — and something more. It is this "something more" which has always measured, and we may well believe will always measure, the differ- ence between subjection and freedom, between the man who cannot rise in the intellectual and moral scale and the man who can. As a mere matter of national economy, and quite apart from its over- whelming moral importance, it "pays" a nation to have as many as possible of its citizens educated in "something more" than breadwinning. It "pays" to have well-educated men in great abundance for the sake of order and tranquillity, for the increase of national wealth, for the diminution of crime, for the measureless material benefits which flow from the spread of intelligence and enlightenment. It is this "something more" which, in the last analysis, makes the difference between the higher and lower forms of civilization. All this is especially true of our universities, the very citadels of intelligence, the guardians in trust of the higher intellectual life of our nation. They are menaced now, as never before, by the as- Education and Intelligence saults of "practical," "vocational" training— not with the laudable view of adding this to a liberal education, but of placing it side by side in hostile rivalry. So far as this has been done it has operated to kill liberal studies. The obvious, the particular, the practical, the immediately useful, have to a large extent driven out the great studies of universal value, the studies slowly acquired, tonic to thought, widely applicable, life-long in their value and in- dispensable to the highest civilization. The cheaper metal is driving out the gold. There is something intolerant in the movement. If it prevails our uni- versities will be degraded. They will become some- thing else than universities, and something inferior. It is a new ignorance which is rising. That there should be ample place outside and a place inside universities for technical and vocational train- ing is to be admitted. But the important point in this connection is that the vocational training should not be placed in a relation which destroys or even menaces the liberal arts and sciences — the very soul of university life. The movement is ignorant in that it fails to perceive that the relation of technical to liberal studies in a university is not co-ordinate but subordinate. In a university that team must be driven tandem and not abreast. Technical training is particular, liberal education is universal in its nature. And the things of universal range are the supreme concern of a university. In a university, always and everywhere, the particular must be less 14 Education and Intelligence than the general, the obviously useful less than the permanently valuable, and the "living" less than the whole life. The university defenders of the value of disinterested truth and knowledge, of "wis- dom and understanding" whose "price is above rubies" — and far above all the "vocational values" — have now no more urgent duty than to expose and resist this fundamentally unintelligent move- ment. At such a time it is most encouraging to notice the resolute stand taken on this very question by so highly informed a statesman as Arthur Bal- four, in his address this July, and the following editorial comment thereon from the London Times: "We often hear it said that learning should have a practical purpose; and that sounds reason- able enough until we inquire what is meant by practical. Then we usually find that practical means money-getting. We are told that learning is only valuable if it helps a man in the struggle for life. But if that is ever generally believed, the universities will change their nature and our civilization will become only an elaborately organized barbarism. Universities rose into being and flourished in power and splendor because their business was to help not the individual in his struggle for life but the world in its effort to rise above the struggle for life." This is the whole case in a nutshell. It is well to stop here, or other questions will crowd in thick and fast upon us. We return to our query: Should educated men be intelligent? It Education and Intelligence 15 is not a flippant but a serious inquiry. It means that particular knowledge is not enough; it means that general knowledge is needed also. It means that the highest intelligence is none too great to cope with the problems of American education. It means that every man who has "had an education" should realize that he ought to know intelligently and, with growing experience, wisely. It means that he ought to discard narrowness, personal prej- udice, amateur knowledge, "half-baked" impres- sions, facile judgments, and to realize surely the difference between what he thinks he thinks, what he thinks he knows, and what he knows he knows. These are the stages of enlightenment from mid- night to dawn to noon. And, above all, if he is to understand wisely any problem of education, let him not only give time and thought to it but subject his forming opinions, without diffidence or arrogance, to the criticism of others. It will save him much trouble later. It will reveal to him the difference between the small and the great, the valuable and the worthless, the illusory and the real, the fleeting and the enduring, in his thought. It will cleanse his mind and so make it clearer. And as he ad- vances, ever thrusting out the structure of his knowledge on larger lines, he begins to see the size and sweep of the vast work of education, in which his own part seems and is so tiny. It is only then he becomes able to take the impersonal attitude — so much overwhelmed by the spectacle of what 16 Education and Intelligence education means as the progressive organization of wise, universal knowledge, with all its parts down to the least in due order and "having no part dark," that he loses sight of self and its restraining nar- rowness, and thereby qualifies himself to observe and know things as an intelligent educated man. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-LOS ANGELES ■^' L 007 901 668 9 ll^ljlf OUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 001291257 UCLA-Young Research Library LB41 .W52 y L 009 618 026 ■>m^'^ n:^