On Titles
It is customary in the Chit Chat Club to give such titles to papers as will hint, but not quite reveal, their content. I should begin, therefore, by defining my terms. Strictly defined, a parameter is “the third proportional to any given diameter and its conjugate (or, in the parabola, to any abscissa on a given diameter and the corresponding ordinate).” I am sure this definition will make my meaning clear to all of you who are familiar with conic sections.
Like so many mathematical terms, parameter has been borrowed by the social sciences. Its meaning then becomes more general, not to say elusive. The dictionary says it is “a quantity that is constant (as distinct from the ordinary variables) in a particular case considered, but which varies in different cases.” If I may translate this into simpler words – for my purposes, parameters are the fundamental, longer-run, and relatively unchanging limits and constraints within which we must operate.
I do not wish to bore you with current controversies or with the economics of education—a doubly dismal subject at the moment. What I do wish to do is express my prejudiced opinions on a number of educational subjects that I think are important, though few people seem to pay much attention to them.
The noun “education” and the verb “to educate” have long histories; but one small note in the Oxford English Dictionary may cover much of what I might say by way of historical introduction. After the first definition of education as “the process of nourishing or rearing a child,” the Dictionary proceeds to a second definition in which the emphasis is thrown not on the child but on the society he will enter. This process of “bringing up a young person with reference to social station, kind of manners and habits acquired, calling and employment” is exemplified by two significant quotations. In The Taming of the Shrew, Christopher Sly describes himself as “by birth a pedlar, by education a card-maker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present profession a tinker.” The second citation is from John Milton, who believed that “a complete and generous education fits a man to perform all the offices of peace and war.”
The Dictionary adds a note that use of the word “education” in this sense of preparation for one’s predestined station in life is now obsolete. That note must serve for my introduction. What survives is my subject, which the Dictionary defines as “the systematic instruction, schooling or training given to the young in preparation for the work of life.”
All over the world, these official systems of education are designed not to teach the young to follow in the footsteps of their elders but to prepare them for what is vaguely described as “the work of life.” The costs of these systems of formal education mount, but the results are criticized—not least by the young, who are themselves criticized for being what their elders have made them.
Even in our own affluent country, and most of all in our affluent state, the taxpayer begins to rebel against the cost of providing buildings and equipment, teachers and administrators, and now buses. There seems no limit to the proliferation of educational demands, or to the costs of meeting them. Between 1960 and 1968, the costs of higher education in the United States rose from $6.6 to $20 billion a year. Ministers of finance in the rich countries now conduct a running battle with the professional educators—or should I say educationists. In the poor countries, the problem is more extensive but on a lower level. China has solved it with a little red book. India builds little schoolhouses, which may also turn out to be red. Meantime, the young people, rich and poor alike, are subjected to what Harriet Martineau long ago called “the education of circumstances,” and this in fact may be more brutally formative than any system of organized instruction.
Education has become a problem because it has ceased to be a privilege and has become a universal right. The problem is most acute in our country because rights have been cherished and given priority over duties ever since the rebellion against authority established the United States. Increasing affluence has made it possible to extend the universal right to education far beyond mere literacy. But how far is far enough? And how far can even an affluent society afford to extend it?
I have known one completely logical advocate of individual liberty who denied that the state had any duty to provide even elementary education for the young; but there can be few, even among the older generation, who would agree with him. Universal primary education has been accepted as necessary in all democratic societies. It was the great Marquess of Salisbury, descendant of a long line of Cecils, who remarked when the Reform Act of 1867 was passed by the British Parliament: “Now we must educate our masters.” In the American form of democracy—which the Athenians would have called mob-rule—the necessity was obvious from the beginning. Thomas Jefferson asserted it in a resounding non-sequitur and the words are engraved on his memorial: “God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Establish the law for educating the common people. This it is the business of the State to effect and on a general plan.” The decision of the Supreme Court of California, that every child is entitled to an equal share of educational expenditures, delivered as I was preparing this paper, is a logical sequel.
Over the last two centuries, primary education has been made compulsory and the school-leaving age has continually been raised. More recently, the school-entering age has been progressively lowered, so that from nursery school to high school now encompasses a decade. From high school through university takes another decade, only half of which is compulsory, though there is increasing social and economic pressure for larger numbers to take at least a first university degree. Those who aspire to professional status must take even longer. It is seldom possible to qualify in most professions much before the age of thirty. So education must cope with larger numbers over a longer time-span. In the United States, the number of university students doubled between 1960 and 1970.
It can perhaps be argued that school, or even college, is as good a place as any in which to keep the young occupied while their parents work—or play. Child labor is no longer needed in the affluent western world. Even on the farm, most household and related chores went out with electricity. Apprenticeship has practically disappeared. It is no longer necessary to spend years learning a handicraft. Except where it is used partly to restrict entry into remunerative occupations such as carpentry, plumbing, and medicine, the long years of personal training are not required. Moreover, the unskilled jobs disappear. Primary and secondary production employ fewer hands. The navvy and miner and general laborer and even the typist are replaced by machines. Unskilled and semi-skilled young people must find occupation in what are called the service industries. Increasingly these require some degree of technical knowledge, which is best acquired in school. The occupation which grows most rapidly is, in fact, teaching. Next comes the public service as government expands. The new scientific and technical occupations change so rapidly that they demand generalized rather than specific skills—mainly elementary mathematics and not so much scientific knowledge as a scientific attitude to new problems. The pattern of employment changes rapidly, and specific skills are not readily transferable from one occupation to another. Unless they have unusual capacity, the so-called engineers who lose their jobs in the defense-related industries drop to the taxicab level.
I am not going to embark at this point on the vexed question of inherited or acquired ability; but clearly, this question will arise despite all the efforts to bury it. The latest authoritative article is in the Atlantic for September. The sub-headings on the cover raise some very awkward issues—Is there an emerging ruling class of the intelligent? Is there a permanent lower class of the unintelligent? Does I.Q. testing discriminate against the poor and the black? I do not intend here to discuss these questions. But one sentence of Mr. Herrnstein’s article is relevant to what I have just said and this I will quote: “Technological unemployment is not just a matter of ‘dislocation’ or ‘retraining’ if the jobs created are beyond the native capacity of the newly unemployed.”
The economic as well as the political, social, and theological aspects of educational measurements are charged with emotion. As we meet here, an impressive scientific conference assembled by the N.I.H. is concluding its preliminary exploration of the political, social, and theological parameters of genetic research. The economic problem, however, is likely to be debated not by scientific experts in a quiet conference, but by revolutionaries in the streets. Unless, on the basis of proved experiment, we face up to the issues of education as well as unemployment, poverty, and welfare, there may be bombs rather than heated arguments.
For greater numbers over longer periods, education must now go far beyond the elements of learning to read, write, and calculate. Moreover, it must extend over the troublesome years of adolescence and must therefore expand into areas of learning that call for, but seldom receive, skilled presentation by wise and experienced teachers. If it is to bridge the gap between the simplicities of school and the complexities of the modern world, of which the university is now a vital part, it must provide expensive libraries and laboratories, as well as highly trained organizers and teachers.
These needs, or at least the need for skilled teachers, have not been met, especially in the crucial adolescent ages. The high schools have attempted to graft the new democratic and employment preparation onto academic subjects and standards derived from the essentially aristocratic models of a simpler age. In the 19th century, the English governing class took over what were originally public schools endowed for poor scholars and developed them into efficient instruments for training a ruling elite. Their ultimate aim was to produce men of simple faith and high courage to govern an empire by sheer force of character. The older schools and universities of the eastern United States were largely modeled on the English tradition. Until recently, they contributed a disproportionate share of leadership in government, the professions, and business. It is easy to forget that Yale is older than all but four of the colleges at Cambridge, and Harvard is older still.
Later, the Germans organized the education of a scientific proletariat while the power to rule remained largely with the landowning class, who were as pious and reactionary as their English counterparts. The French developed exclusive colleges emphasizing intellectual, largely verbal, logic from which were recruited the civil servants and soldiers who administered the country in the interests of the ruling few, including themselves.
None of these models was suitable for the American democracy, which was suspicious of privilege and intellect and lacked both discipline and a common faith. But the academic tradition permeated the schools as well as the universities. The Ph.D. became the symbol of scholarship. Pedants insisted on teaching the minutiae they had learned, which the young didn’t really need to know—irregular verbs and experiments that science had long passed by. Meantime, the fundamental skills were neglected. The handicraft skills had been lost long before when those who could keep accounts displaced those who could create beauty from glass and wood and stone and metal. Now the languages, including mathematics, and literary, historical, and philosophic learning were pushed aside by a proliferation of new, frilly subjects.
A blinded friend of mine used to beg his guides to remember that he saw only what they told him. He needed first to know the basic facts—size, shape, material, color, texture. If his guide’s description centered on some oddity of decoration, he got a completely distorted impression. Because the schools laid such emphasis on the odd bits and pieces of learning, generations of children never learned to speak a foreign language and missed the great vistas of scientific exploration. They never penetrated beyond the grammar to the glory that was Greece and were alienated from Shakespeare by textual exegesis. The mechanics of local politics obscured the lessons of history. As for the working of the economy, after one summer school experience, one of my colleagues complained that his problem wasn’t so much what teachers didn’t know, but the amount they knew that was wrong.
It was not till the growth of the midwestern and western states shifted the center of gravity of the American population and the great influx of immigrants made it more polyglot that the element of tradition and privilege began to wane. The revolt against the classical tradition was symbolized by the founding of Stanford in 1885. The schools and colleges of the United States were never an explicit instrument for training a ruling elite. But they have been greatly influenced by the requirements rather than the needs of the learned professions. At first, it was the training of ministers of religion, then of lawyers and medical men, and, as the German influence spread, of scientists and researchers whose techniques and jargon spread into the social sciences and even, alas, into the humanities.
The influence of the professions still persists—not merely in the specialized graduate schools, but throughout the university, and therefore throughout the high schools. The basic purpose of the high schools continued to be the preparation of students for the university and therefore for entry into the learned professions.
The original purpose of the secondary schools was to initiate the young into their intellectual heritage. To this was added the task of turning millions of immigrant children of diverse backgrounds into loyal Americans. In fact, the schools tried to apply John Milton’s prescription of “a complete and generous education” in order to fit all our young people for “all the offices of peace and war.” This high ambition has foundered on the inability of the teaching profession to distinguish principle from detail and on the need to prepare for examinations that open the doors to the professions. There have always been teachers of exceptional sympathy and skill who were masters of their material and knew how to win the respect and enlist the interest of the young. But these men are rare, and in fact, male teachers are rare.
One of the secrets of success in the best English public schools was the employment of young men who were good scholars and noted athletes. After the first ascent of Everest, for example, Repton employed George Lowe, who would have led the next attempt on the summit if Hillary and Tenzing hadn’t succeeded. There was truth in the Duke of Wellington’s statement that the battle of Waterloo had been won on the playing fields of Eton. In the United States, the teaching profession has been so poorly paid and so ill-regarded that it has seldom attracted first-rate young men. The teachers’ trade unions, thanks to our guest, have now become formidable political lobbies, but how much do they know about education and the “work of life?” Perhaps we should paraphrase Clemenceau—education is too serious a business to be left to the educators.
The professional educators in the university departments of education seldom win the respect of their academic colleagues. They do not attract or inspire the best students. It might have been thought that an enlightened and rich democracy would have chosen the best and wisest scholars to guide the young through adolescence. But a brilliant student or a successful athlete is counseled to avoid teaching and seek a profession where the fame and rewards are commensurate with achievement. The typical attitude was summed up in an Australian dialect poem, The Sentimental Bloke. The bloke is naturally ambitious for his firstborn son and muses as he contemplates his “son and bloomin’ heir”:
“Doreen, she says he’s got a poet’s eyes,
But I ain’t got no use for them soft guys
I think we ought to make ‘im somethin’ great,
A bookie, or a champeen heavy-weight.”
Personally, I have long advocated that the athletic departments of the universities should be separated from academic requirements and set up as wholly-owned, profit-making subsidiaries under professional managers. I am glad to see that some steps are now being taken toward this desirable goal. The World Series could be played in the U.C. Stadium while the reduced accommodation at Candlestick Park was used for friendly intramural games. The stadium could be an asset instead of a liability to the university. The latest statistics show that of the 27,000 students at Berkeley, those who participate in spectator sports number 831.
Democracies will pour out money for material objects—buildings, playing fields, equipment, laboratories, even libraries—but they will not pay for teachers. They will pay for administrators because they have marketable skills. As the academic saying goes: Another offer is worth two degrees. But the scholar who can win the respect of his pupils—especially one whose subject has little relation to the marketplace—must work for the love of his craft and his pupils, and the public is content to let him do so. The school teacher has no status in the community.
In my view, the high schools are too much influenced by the academic tradition of the universities and particularly by the requirements of the learned professions. They have never been able to concentrate on the task of preparing adolescents for the work of life. The teachers imitate their professors, and the children know it. The final years of high school are largely wasted because the pupils outgrow their instructors.
Where is the money to come from to train and reward better teachers? Some funds could be saved by eliminating frills and concentrating on the basic subjects. But the bulk must come from taxes, more equitably levied and administered. What I am arguing is that more should go on salaries and less on buildings and equipment. I should even be prepared to reduce the university budget and limit student enrollment if it were necessary to raise the standards of the secondary schools.
Before ending my argument, I should at least mention some of the problems of university costs. Most of them, I am convinced, arise because what Clark Kerr called the “multiversity” tries to cover the whole range of professional training as well as the “complete and generous education” that John Milton wrote about. It has therefore become unmanageable. The professional schools have elbowed the older disciplines into the holes and corners of the university. The best advice one could offer to a university president would be: “If you want a solvent institution, never aspire to a medical school and a teaching hospital.” It is of course necessary to train medical practitioners, and for this, teaching hospitals are essential; but do they have to be in the university? The practice of medicine is now fragmented into specialties. It rests on an ever-broadening base of scientific experiment. In this fragmentation and broadening, the patient is in some danger of being forgotten.
There can be no doubt that medical science has made and is making great strides, and those who are fortunate enough to have access to its newest advances benefit enormously. But it is very expensive and very demanding of space and time and attention. It has seemed to me that the creation of an autonomous Medical Center, a university in itself, is a step in the right direction. The alternative, of course, or perhaps the complement, is to encourage and foster liberal arts colleges where the young can really get “a complete and generous education” without being overshadowed by the schools that prepare graduates for the various professions—medicine, dentistry, law, teaching, forestry, engineering, business, optometry, and all the rest. These professional schools should be financed on their own merits. What we need to do is to destroy the multiversity and put the professional schools on an independent basis. They could make their own conditions of entrance, develop their own curricula, set their own standards, and manage their own finances. If the secondary schools and liberal arts colleges were functioning properly, the professional schools need not worry unduly about providing the elements of a liberal education.
They would face problems, of course, but they face them now. Every profession has the problem of maintaining standards. There are constant pressures for dilution, for example, of medical training. The churches have been diluted already, and so, in many respects, has the professoriate of the multiversities. A particularly acute problem now arises in the legal profession. Democracy breeds lawyers. They gravitate to government but are equally pervasive in business and ordinary affairs of life.
On our first visit to India in 1949, the year following independence, we watched the graduation ceremony at the University of Delhi. There were six or eight nurses and about an equal number of medicos, but wave after wave of lawyers. I asked a wise Indian friend about this. He drew my attention to the story of a British official visiting a remote village. An old woman complained that her husband had left her penniless. The official listened until suddenly the new young wife, moved by her predecessor’s misery, took the old woman into her arms and promised to look after her. My Indian friend pointed out that the case so simply settled by administrative listening would have provided employment for many law graduates, without remedy for anyone, but in all probability, lasting embitterment.
But I can illustrate the problem from nearer home. The Hastings College of the Law is flooded with applicants, many of whom were admitted before they went on military service and now claim their prior right. A substantial number of places, however, are reserved for minority groups. They argue that they are urged to seek redress of their grievances within the law, but they lack advocates of their own race whom they can trust. Moreover, a substantial proportion of criminal cases before the courts involve minority citizens. So more minority lawyers are needed. But last year, all the examination failures at Hastings were Black. The Black students argue that they do not need to know all branches of the law, since what they need most are trial lawyers. They demand preferential treatment, by which they mean lower standards. At the same time, they insist that they are entitled to a racial quota of court officials and judges. The legal profession already has problems of discipline and procedure. Is there any reason why the university should add their problems to its own?
If I may venture to summarize this diffuse and discursive argument in a phrase, it would be that our formal system of education misses the tide. Nature gives us two chances with the young. In the first year or two of life, a child’s complete dependence gives the mother a chance to start it off properly. My Māori friend, Sir Peter Buck, whose biography I have just written, maintained in his M.D. thesis that “we imbibe our fears at our mother’s breast. The schools and teachings of a father appeal to us as we grow older.” In adolescence, when the creative urge stirs, we have the second chance—primarily for the male influence. But American education is weakest precisely at this critical age, and we can never redeem the lost opportunity.
Like all academics, I am prepared to maintain that, with all its waste and inefficiency, the educational system pays off. Without it, we should be poorer spiritually and in material goods. But I am not prepared to defend every item in its budget, because anyone can see expenditures that are extravagant and nonsensical. I once listened to the report of a computerized study for which the Ford Foundation provided half a million dollars. It was a study of the international crises that preceded World War I. With great elaboration, the investigator compiled what he called the conceptual data—men under arms, ships, and guns. These were all numbers, already quantified. But he also had to calculate what he called the conflictual data, so he ranked speeches and editorials in vitriolic order from 1 to 10. Then he had numbers to feed into the computer. I came out with a colleague who remarked that the conclusion seemed to be that nations were like people. If they got mad enough, they would fight, even when the odds were against them—to which he added: “I’m Irish, and I knew that all along.” I could think of better ways of using half a million dollars. So I am not prepared to defend all educational expenditures. Nor do I believe that my academic colleagues should be the sole judges of what is necessary. Indeed, I think it possible that the educational system might be a better one after it survives the lean years it is now going through.
Admiral Spruance once told me that when he was Chief of Staff of the U.S. Navy, he always felt the battle plans were better when they had been reviewed after a budget cut. This could be true also of the educational system. No man, not even a professor, is the best judge of his own cause.