schools that all this is the price civilization exacts from us. In simpler societies, in preindustrial, self-sufficient, and isolated communities such as pioneer America-a child did not need much formal instruction to become a successful man or woman and a useful citizen. Parents, relatives, friends, though quite untrained as teachers, were able to, and usually did do the whole job of educating. A large part of education still takes place in the home where the ratio of instructor to learner is much the most favorable: sometimes one parent to one child, a close approximation to the log with Mark Hopkins on one end and the student at the other. EUROPEAN SCHOOLS CONCENTRATE ON DEVELOPING A STUDENT'S MENTAL ABILITIES European schools do their technical job better than our schools because they make it the pivot of their efforts. It is true that besides intellectual training, the schools abroad, as those here, have been entrusted with certain responsibilities that are not "intellectual" in nature. All good schools try to awaken their pupils' esthetic, artistic, and musical sensibilities since these can so greatly enrich an individual's life. Art and music are to be found in virtually all curricula. All goods schools give attention to their pupils' bodily health through physical education, games, and sports. There usually are also regular medical and dental checkups and often provision is made for serving inexpensive lunches. Apart from these responsibilities, European schools concentrate on developing their student's mental abilities. Even when they provide courses in manual subjects, they teach them in a manner that will awaken the unacademic child's interest in academic subjects through his experience with mechanical work. In England, for instance, deliberate efforts are made to use commercial courses to guide children into an appreciation of the importance of English, shop courses to demonstrate the importance of mathematics and science, household courses for the girls to awaken interest in chemistry. There is general agreement abroad that a school must accomplish three difficult tasks: First, it must transmit to the pupil a substantial body of knowledge; second, it must develop in him the necessary intellectual skill to apply this knowledge to the problems he will encounter in adult life; and third, it must inculcate in him the habit of judging issues on the basis of verified fact and logical reasoning. In carrying out this assignment good teachers are often able to transmit, as if by osmosis, such other desirable attitudes and habits as conscientiousness and stick-to-itiveness, intellectual honesty, friendliness toward classmates, a pleasant way of speaking, polite manners. These are extra dividends in a good school. But they can never take the place of its principal task which is to develop the mind. To perform these difficult assignments, schools need every minute of the time they have the child in their care. In this country they only have him during one-sixth of his waking hours, the same length of time average children spend in front of the TV set! To perform these three tasks schools also need intelligent, professionally trained teachers who have mastered their subjects and who have teaching skill. European teachers at all levels of schooling are better educated and better trained for their profession than our teachers. AMERICAN REFORM IN THESE AREAS URGENTLY NEEDED That European schools do the technical task better is only natural, given the fact that they devote the lion's share of the curriculum to basic education and have the teachers with requisite intellectual and educational qualifications. In contrast, our schools dissipate their energies on marginally useful courses, on life-adjustment training, on stuff that can be done by the family or by other agencies, while neglecting the one thing that no other agency can do. The one thing only the school can do, and that is to enhance mental capacity by providing a challenging course of studies. Far too many of our teachers do not possess the intellectual and educational qualifications that would permit them to offer such a course of studies. There is an easy way out, and many of our schools are using it. They teach simpler things that are easy to teach, easy to learn, and more fun besides how to be lovable, likable, and datable, how to be a good consumer, etc. These aren't subjects you can grade, the way you can grade mathematics or science or languages, but they are good for hiding the ignorance of both teacher and pupil. And because this sort of thing goes on, our schools fail to perform their technical task. This is why reform is urgently needed. SCHOOL REFORM A RECURRING NEED School reform is nothing new or unusual. At one time or another almost every country has found its schools no longer functioning in accord with the needs of changing times. Schools have to be continuously examined to make certain they stick to their assigned role among the country's various agencies for social improvement and progress. Of course, reform is always painful to those whose habitual ways will be upset. In no country has it been accomplished without travail. And the educational establishment of almost every country has fought against reform. IMPETUS TO SCHOOL REFORM FROM OUTSIDE THE PROFESSION If you look into this matter you will find that the impetus leading to school reform nearly always came from persons outside the educational hierarchy. The long battle for reform of England's ancient endowed schools and universities in the 19th century found most of the educators ranged on the side of the status quo. The reformers were men of the most varied kind. They were novelists and poets, physicians and scientists, persons of independent means and others who could spare for this labor only the time left them after earning a living. There were few educators. Those engaged in teaching had a vested interest in the status quo, for in it they had an assured place; just as in this country not many public school educators are actively promoting reform, and these few in most cases only jumped on the bandwagon after lay critics had aroused public indignation at the schools. Most American educators still refuse to acknowledge that our school system is scholastically deficient, even though its deficiencies are now being documented in detail by many serious and well-informed critics. The "party line," adopted in the 1940's, still is that critics are maladjusted persons-"ax grinders"-taking out their frustra tions on the schools, or that they all are part of a sinister conspiracy engaged in a calculated and far-reaching plot to destroy the public school system; or that they are irresponsible calamity howlers and so on ad nauseum. The educators still claim we have the world's oldest if not the only-system of universal primary education; that any "unbiased critic" must acknowledge American education to be "strikingly good;" that we have 25 percent of our youth in "higher" education against 5 percent of European youth. These are glaring misstatements based on a gamut of illusions about our schools that have been so assiduously promoted and for such a long time that many Americans have come to believe them implicitly. PRESENT REFORM DELAYED BY LACK OF PUBLIC AWARENESS Reform is being held up because the public does not fully realize how badly we need to improve scholastic standards in order to be educationally competitive. Most Americans are not aware of the extent and seriousness of our school dropout problem which makes a mockery of the boast that we educate all our children. Particularly unfortunate is our habit of equating our colleges with European universities when in fact, as compared with Europe, most of our colleges are vocational or secondary schools and even our best liberal arts colleges attain university levels only in the "major" the student takes in his last 2 college years. Chapter IV of my recent book, "Swiss Schools and Ours: Why Theirs Are Better," deals exhaustively with this particular illusion. May I ask that it be included in the record. Mr. CANNON. It will be included in the record. (The matter referred to follows:) CHAPTER IV. THE CONTINENTAL UNIVERSITY-SWISS SCHOOLS AND OURS: WHY THEIRS ARE BETTER H. G. Rickover (copyright 1962 by the Council for Basic Education) Despite Europe's political fragmentation, one can speak of the continental university as an institution common to all advanced nations. Whatever may be its date or place of foundation it will be within a broadly uniform pattern; not the same today as it was in the 12th or 13th century,1 and, of course, with some national disparities. But the relationship between a modern continental university 2 and the studium generale from which it has evolved is readily discernible. It still is, as it has always been, an association of scholars who seek and teach the highest truth-learning that is universal, not particular to any one country.3 The degrees awarded by universities of different continental nations remain to this day roughly equivalent and show a recognizable relationship to those issued under medieval charters; these were themselves equivalent because, out of a desire to obtain the jus ubique docendi, the right to teach anywhere in Christendom, the universities almost from the beginning sought to secure charters from one of the two universal sovereigns, Pope or emperor. This meant they had to accept uniform regulation of their degrees. Down through eight centuries the tradition has never quite died out to look to a professor's scholarship rather than his origin when sending out "calls" to fill a vacancy. Neither has the custom of medieval students to "wander" across Europe from university to university. Now most of their wandering takes place within their own country, but not a few stray across political boundaries for a semester or two at a foreign university to attend lectures by some particularly good man in their field. The linguistic proficiencies of continental students and the basic similarity of continental universities facilitate this intellectually fruitful habit. 1 These were the centuries when the university took form and began to spread northward from Italy, but Salerno and Pavia had universities in the 9th, Bologna and Paris in the 11th century. 2 The term "university" came into use in the 14th century. 3 The university was originally and for a long time called a studium generale, to distinguish it from local institutions, called studium particulare. The university established itself, set up its goals and standards, and developed its basic structure and procedures at a time when the Continent was spiritually and intellectually unified and all education was in the hands of a single church; even politically, much of the Continent was then loosely joined in the Holy Roman Empire. The memory of Europe's unity under Rome lived on through the Middle Ages, to be buried only after Reformation and Renaissance broke the Continent into three warring religions (Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist) and a host of newly independent states. But the Middle Ages have bequeathed to the present an ideal of unity at the summit of man's intellectual potential, a readiness to emulate excellence as such, without reference to the nation where it comes into being. This reinforces the sense of solidarity common to scholars and serves to hold the universities of disunited, often mutually antagonistic, continental nations to a roughly identical pattern.1 Recognition that at the highest level learning ceases to be parochial or national has been a constant throughout the long history of the continental university. Since modern continental school systems are integrated with and oriented toward the university, teachers abroad tend to be less given to the kind of educational chauvinism that impels uninformed schoolmen in this country to make tactless and intemperate remarks about foreign schools, such as calling European education élitist, archaic, fossilized rote learning. But then we are, educationally speaking, extremely young compared to the Continent. We lack its long tradition of intellectual unity and respect for learning. We need to be better informed about higher education abroad. The widespread notion that continental universities are and have always been institutions attended only by upper class youth is at variance with historical fact, as will presently be seen. We are hopelessly confused about the concept of exclusiveness. The continental university is and always has been exclusive in the sense that it shuts out the incompetent. This is an inevitable consequence of the specific task this institution performs. It is task-centered, truth-centered, and this automatically limits admission to people of a given intellectual caliber. continental university is a specialized educational institution doing an important and difficult task that is today and has for hundreds of years been highly respected abroad. Witness the medieval saying: Three nations are more fortunate than all others; the Germans because they have the emperor, the Italians because they have the Pope, the French because they have the University of Paris. The We are wont to look somewhat disdainfully on the Middle Ages as a period of ignorance and superstition, lacking the amenities we consider essential to civilized life. Yet that "benighted" age had a quixotic veneration for learning wholly at variance with our own sophisticated antieggheadism. It was then naively believed that knowledge was well worth the long and painful effort its acquisition entailed; that it gained a man not only personal happiness but "status" as well. The papal charter of the University of Basle (founded 1459) speaks of the hard and persistent labor by which students may obtain what is called-in the highflown language of medieval pronunciamentos-"the pearl or jewel of scientific knowledge (scientiae margaritam)” and with it "one of the greatest happinesses accorded mortal man by the grace of God." This pearl is the key to a good and happy life, it "bestows its favors on the untaught and raises to the heights men born in the lowliest circumstances," for "as learned men they are placed far above all who are unlearned, indeed made alike to God (deo similem reddit).” This is an intellectual "élite" concept we seem unable to grasp, since for us the word "élite" conjures up nothing but false claims to superiority based upon the accident of birth. Yet through the greater part of its history the continental university was not "fashionable" in the social sense. Medieval professors and students certainly were more often poor than well to do. Scholars were for the most part in clerical orders and were usually expected to live communally in bare, unheated dormitories." 5 • Excellence wherever it appears tends to be emulated; national likes and dislikes carry surprisingly little weight. The University of Paris copied Italian models; Heidelberg humbly stated in its charter (1386) that it would seek to copy Paris; during the Renaissance northern Europe copied Italian university practices; in the 19th century the whole Continent modeled its universities after that of Berlin (1809). Yet Germans never liked Frenchmen much, northern Europeans did not admire Italians, the Scandinavians and Swiss had no love for Prussia. 5 Until 1854 Oxford and Cambridge dons were required to be in [Anglican] orders. 6 On the Continent, university residence halls disappeared when lay students began to grow in numbers; young gentlemen had no taste for life in such monastic environments. That the residential college survives in England to this day may be due to the fact that it was far more generously endowed than continental dormitories and thus could provide a style of life acceptable to young English gentlemen. It is interesting to note that one of the reasons higher education is so much more expensive in our country than on the Continent is that our universities have followed the English example and are usually residential. We tend to think of this residential feature as an essential part of higher education but it is merely a remnant from the monastic past of the university. The medieval university had something of the aspect of a "learned" monastery. It was usually built with money given by well-to-do persons as pious deathbed bequests; tithes helped support clerical scholars, just as they defrayed the cost of monasteries and church services in general. The number of students was of course very small compared to modern times. This was inevitable, for only machine production makes it possible to support large numbers of young people in the classroom. Preindustrial Europe could not have financed a mass education system; it then took the labor of some 10 peasants to feed 1 "unproductive" person. But to conclude from this fact that the university was "aristocratic" misreads medieval conditions. The life of scholars was one of intellectual but not of social or financial privilege. University men constituted an élite, not of class but of merit. When the Reformation ended the monopoly of the church as universal educator and the newly independent states took over responsibility for public education, they discovered it was difficult to induce the sons of well-to-do families to undertake the long studies required of "learned" professionals. Yet by then statecraft had advanced to a point where increasingly such university trained men were needed for positions in the higher civil service and as lawyers, doctors, and theologians. Oddly, at that time it was theologians who were at a premium. The 16th and 17th centuries were a time of constant religious war, waxing now hot, now cold, with virtually every one of the hundreds of new small states drawn into the conflict. Princes needed learned theologians to provide them with an intellectual defense of the established state religion. Good theologians were a major national asset, rather as scientists are coming to be in our age of continuous technological war and for similar reasons. To obtain enough professionals, the new states had to underwrite the education of talented poor boys. Many princes used confiscated church property to maintain residential university preparatory schools where all or most students were on full scholarship (in return for a promise to enter the service of the state).? It was an age of mercantilism when each state tried to be as self-sufficient educationally as it tried to be economically; when human talent was hoarded just as were gold and silver bullion.8 In Protestant states, reasons of state were reinforced by religious imperatives, combining to spark the first complete public school systems.9 For a good Protestant it was almost sinful to be illiterate, since Bible reading was so important a part of his faith. From this time dates the custom of charging ministers with the duty to teach in elementary schools. By an ordinance of its suzerain Berne (1532), Protestant clergymen in the canton Vaud were required to instruct village children so that they might be able to read the Scriptures; a law of 1628 made attendance at school obligatory. It has been said that "the Reformation was the cradle of popular or mass education." 10 Luther and Melanchthon constantly urged the Protestant princes to establish free and compulsory elementary schooling. Of great importance to the development of the continental university was the appearance of a new kind of school, designed to meet the needs of States too small or too poor to support full universities, yet anxious to train needed professionals within their own borders. It evolved out of the medieval Latin school to which were added some courses normally given at the medieval university. This new type of school was called Gymnasium illustre, or Academicum, or Collegium humanitatis. Some of these schools became famous-notably Sturm's Strasbourg school-and eventually were transformed into universities. But what was more 11 7 An interesting sidelight on the talent search then going on is given by the Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel school law of 1651 which expressly required village schoolteachers to be on the lookout for bright boys and to teach them Latin so they would be prepared to enter the free university preparatory schools. On the Continent (in contrast to England) scholarship students who were poor did not lose out against the influx of middle- and upper-class students until the 18th century; it was the status accorded the upper echelons of civil servants in monarchies that upgraded the universities. Maturity schools, however, retained scholarships often running to 10 percent of places; most of the pupils there came from middle-class families. States tried to keep their professionals from emigrating as they tried to keep their money from flowing off through high imports; some forbade studies at foreign universities. These mercantilist practices were swept away by the ideas of the French Revolution, but they had served a good purpose in getting school systems started. Occasionally such school systems yielded an unexpected dividend, as when they rescued a genius like Kepler from an extraordinarily unfavorable home background and gave him a free education. Given his unprepossessing personality and many handicaps, a modern Kepler might well not have as good an opportunity to realize his potentialities if he were born in some educationally backward region of our own country. One wonders also whether he would get by the screening process set up by our better colleges (personality, extracurricular activities, etc.). 9 Followed in short order by various Catholic states. 10 By Francois Guex in describing school development in the canton of Vaud. See his Histoire de l'instruction et de l'éducation (Lausanne, Paris, 1908), pp. 5, 61, 657. In 1537 a Latin school and academy were established; Vaud thus had one of the first complete school systems. 11 Besides Strasbourg, Berne, Lausanne, Zürich, etc. |