The Crisis in Contemporary Education

8/6/2019 The Crisis in Contemporary Education

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THE CRISIS IN CONTEMPORARY EDUCATION

Mortimer J. Adler

Published in The Social Frontier, February, 1939, Vol. V, No. 42, pp. 140-145.

Crisis is a turning point. In pneumonia, it is the point at which the patient gets either better

or worse. But the present crisis in education is different. Things can't get worse. They can only get

better. We have reached an extreme in the swing of the pendulum. Progressive education in all its

forms was a sound and genuine reaction against the extreme aridity and empty formalism of

classical education, which had reached the limit of its own degradation at the end of the last

century. Unhappily, as always, the reaction went too far. The opposite extreme has given us an

educational program which is equally preposterous, though for different reasons. Professor Dewey

himself has of late scored the excesses of some of his would-be followers. What is obviously

indicated, to avoid a false issue which offers a choice between undesirable extremes, is a moderateposition, one which would agree with progressivism in correcting the abuses of the classical

program but which would rectify progressivism itself by retaining whatever was essentially right in

the classical approach. If one sets out to remedy abuses, one should remember that one is doing so

because something good has been spoiled. The trouble with most reforms is that they start out to

remove flaws and end by throwing the good away with the bad. We must eliminate the present

excesses of progressive education without discarding the basic insights which motivated the

movement.

There is no name readily available for designating the middle position. Traditionalismindicates that tradition, as well as progress and novelty, is a factor in education, but the name itself

fails to mention the latter factors.Essentialism -- apart from its being a barbaric name -- has been

used for a doctrine that does not seem to me an adequate formulation of the moderate policy. For

want of a name, therefore, I shall refer to the solution of our difficulties as the Hutchins program.

As I understand it, this combines what was vital in classicism -- formal discipline and tradition --

with what is sound in progressivism -- the emphasis upon the present rather than upon the past and

the insistence upon activity as indispensable to the learning process. Tradition and invention are the

two factors which constitute every living culture: without invention, a culture dies; without

tradition, a culture cannot begin to live. So we must have these two factors, in the right proportion

and order, in education if the educational process is to preserve and enhance culture. In these terms

I shall defend the reforms proposed by President Hutchins. I say "defend" because they have been

so widely, so violently, so blindly attacked.

Much of the attack has been name-calling and does not deserve serious attention. If the real

issues were properly understood, there would be an end to all this nonsense about fascism and

authoritarianism, for it would be clear that to ask for discipline in education is not to advocate

Prussian drill and the goose step; to ask for the abolition of the elective system is not to desire

totalitarian regimentation; to emphasize the rule of reason in human life is not to abridge our

liberties. It is only license we retain without the discipline of reason. The Hutchins program

cherishes all the goods which seem to motivate its opponents : it is forward-looking, valuing the

cultural heritage the past transmits only for the sake of intelligent, i.e., prospective, living in the

present; it is truly liberal, if the essence of liberalism is respect for persons made free and

independent by the discipline of their rational powers; it is fundamentally democratic, for it abidesby the principle of universal, popular education, though it distinguishes liberal and vocational

training and realizes that even democracies need leaders.


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I shall try, therefore, to locate the crucial issues and to discuss them briefly, in the hope that

objections arising from misconceptions will be answered and that the real basis for demanding the

reform of contemporary education will be understood. I may even hope that with such clarification,

name-calling may cease, though I dare not hope that rational argument will overcome the inertia of

the vested interests.

There are two basic issues which divide President Hutchins and his opponents. Both arephilosophical. The first has to do with the nature of knowledge and the distinction between science

and philosophy, as different kinds of knowledge having different histories and different utilities.

The second has to do with the nature of man, whether he is merely an animal whose biological

destiny is adjustment in the struggle for existence, or, though an animal, also rational and having a

uniquely human destiny of self-perfection. The educational consequences of affirming that man is a

rational animal, different in kind and not merely in degree of intelligence, and that philosophy is

more eminently knowledge than science, having a validity is which is independent of scientific

findings, and a utility superior to that of science -- these determine the main points in the Hutchins

program. The errors of progressive education are similarly determined by the educational

consequences of the opposing denials.

It would be naive to suppose that these issues could be adequately argued in short scope.

Even in a fairly long book, I have failed to argue these matters with rhetorical effectiveness.1Not

only does the resolution of these issues rest upon profound and extensive considerations, but the

mere statement of the affirmative theses arouses so many and such violent prejudices in minds

which have suffered the kind of education which their denial has sanctioned, that it is almost

impossible to get a hearing, even from persons who call themselves liberal. It almost seems that

being educated under the Hutchins program is a necessary prerequisite for understanding the

educational philosophy on which it turns. Similarly, the educational philosophy of our teachers'

colleges is received as the obvious truth by those who have been educated under its auspices.Butunless everything is just a matter of opinion, and the might of the majority makes right, these issues

are genuine, and the truth lies only on one side. Furthermore, philosophic truth is not a private

intuition. It is capable of such explication and demonstration that it becomes the public property of

all minds free enough from prejudice to be convinced by evidence and reasons.

Since adequate argument is not possible here, I must content myself with trying to sharpen

the issues thernselves. I choose to do this in a frankly polemic manner -- for there is no point in

concealing an adherence to the truth as one sees it -- by defining the philosophical errors which

underlie progressive education. I shall discuss, first, the twin myths of progress and utility which

are the misleading notions of pragmatic positivism; second, the false educational psychology

which denies or ignores man's rationality; and, finally, the way in which the progressive program

has been determined by these errors.

1. It is no play on words to say that the myth of universal progress, progress in all things,

lies at the heart of progressive education. This myth of progress is a nineteenth-century notion, due

partly to positivism and partly to illicit extensions of the doctrine of evolution.2 Progress differs

from change in that it is change in a definite direction and is measured by standards which evaluate

stages in a process as better and worse. The growth of a plant or animal is a progress from infancy

to maturity, to the point where the organism reaches its biological perfection. But everywhere in

nature growth is followed by decline, maturity by senescence. The one possible exception to the

1 What Man Has Made of Man, New York, 1937. Reviews by Hook in The Nation, Ayres in The New Republic;

Leighton in The Christian Century, etc. indicate not only the failure of communication, but also the reasons for it. Ihave discussed these reasons in a recent monograph on St. Thomas and the GEntiles, Milwaukee, 1938.

2 Vd. J. Maritain, Theonas, New York, 1933: Ch. 7-11.


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rule that natural progress is not interminable is that which the panorama of evolution appears to

present. But even here, taking the facts as they are usually told in the story of evolution, it is only

by a questionable extrapolation of the curve that one could conclude that there is interminable

progress in the development of forms of life. Yet it was just this uncritically reached conclusion

which propagated the notion that the law of progress rules all things, and that as we move into the

future we go endlessly from worse to better, from lower to higher.

The other source of this myth of progress was a view of cultural history, dictated by

positivism. If one supposes, as the positivists do, that science is the only form of valid, general

knowledge about the world, and that the technical application of science to the control of things is

the only kind of utility which knowledge has, then there appears to be uninterrupted and

interminable progress in human affairs as well as in nature. For does not Auguste Comte tell us that

there are three stages in human history -- the superstitious or religious; the speculative, conjectural,

or philosophical; and the stage of positive knowledge, or the scientific -- and is this not progress? In

the era of science itself does not every century see the ever increasing scope of scientific

knowledge and the ever enlarging domain of technology? As the years roll by, we have more and

better knowledge, bigger and better inventions or utilities. The positivists are so enraptured by this

picture of progress and by the dreams of the future it generates that they are somehow able to forgetthat in our moral and political affairs a Hitler and a Mussolini and their followers are not much of

an improvement upon a Nero or a Caligula and the gangs they led. But this flaw in the picture must

not be forgotten, for it is the clue to one of the two great exceptions to the law of progress in human

affairs which make the notion of universal and perpetual progress a deceptive illusion.

The first exception is human nature itself. If we can discriminate between nature and

nurture, we can understand the sense in which human nature is constant throughout all the

variations of culture and all the transformations of history. Man is a biological species, and if a

species means anything it means a constant nature which is transmitted from generation to

generation. When that constancy fails, when another specific nature is generated, we have, whether

by mutation or otherwise, the origin of a new species. It must follow, then, that so long as what is

generated remains specifically man, human nature remains constant from generation to generation.

By human nature I mean the native abilities and the organic needs which everywhere constitute the

same animal, known as man.3

The second exception is more difficult to discuss, for it turns on the essential difference

between philosophy and science. The positivists cannot accept biological science and deny the

specific constancy of man; they can remain positivists and still recognize how the unchanging

character of human nature explains the failure of progress in social and political affairs. But they

cannot remain positivists and agree that philosophy is knowledge which is not only nonscientific in

its method but also independent in its validity of all the ever changing findings and formulations ofresearch. Since I cannot argue the point here, I shall try only to indicate how affirming philosophy

affects our view of cultural history.

As I have said elsewhere,4 the positivist is right in his effort to de-ontologize science, to

define science as knowledge of phenomenal relationships, generalizing the correlation of diverse

sensibles and being totally unconcerned with substances and causes. He is wrong only when he is a

negativist, that is, when he denies philosophy, which is ontological knowledge, which is concerned

with substances and causes, and which seeks to penetrate beneath the sensible to the intelligible.

3 To say that human nature is constant, that man's specific nature remains the same through the generations, is not to

deny the kind of variations within the human group which are rightly called individual differences. There are, of course,

definite limits even to this individual variability, There is a relative constancy in the range of these differences and aninvariance in their distribution, from generation to generation.

4 Vd. What Man Has Made of Man, Lect. I, Notes 6, 7, 16a, 47.


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There is a clear distinction here between the formal objects or noetic aims of science and

philosophy; and that distinction is accompanied by a distinction in method. All human knowledge

arises from sense-experience, but the activity of the senses alone can account for no generalizations

of the sort which distinguish both science and philosophy from history. Intelligence or reason must

work reflectively, analytically, inductively over the materials of sense-experience. These two

factors, sense and reason, observation and reflection, experience and thought, are common to both

science and philosophy. The difference in their methods lies in the fact that science requires specialexperience, the data achieved by all kinds of research, investigation whether experimental or

otherwise; whereas philosophy arises from reflection about the common experience of mankind, the

experience which all men have everywhere and at all times as a result of the noninvestigative use of

their senses, and which is always the same because the sensitive powers of man are as constant as

his nature and the natural world on which they operate is the same.

From this distinction in object and method arises a basic difference in the historical careers

of science and philosophy. Science is progressive, and interminably so, as long as men are

ingenious and industrious in their efforts at research. There are no apparent limitations to the

progress in scientific knowledge except the width, breadth, and depth of the world to be

investigated. But philosophy does not grow with an enlargement of experience. Its data are alwaysthe same. It grows only by a refinement in the intellectual prowess itself, by profounder insight, by

better analysis. Its development is restricted by the limitations of man's intellectual powers; and if

our ancestors have accumulated philosophic wisdom, we can improve little on their work. I am

saying no more here than what Whitehead means when he says that the history of European

philosophy is nothing but a series of footnotes to Plato.5 I cannot resist adding that Aristotle wrote

most of the footnotes.

In short, there is perpetual progress in scientific knowledge because of the nature of science

itself, the contingency of its conclusions as relative to the available data; but there is no such

progress in philosophy or wisdom because its conclusions are not contingent, and the relevantexperience is always the same. The historical movement of science is a straight line ever upward.

The historical movement of philosophy is a deepening spiral, in every turn of which the same truths

and the same errors reappear. Professor Gilson has magnificently demonstrated this in his William

James Lectures on "The Unity of Philosophical Experience."6

The essential difference between science and philosophy bears not only on the myth of

progress, but also on the utility myth. The positivist, regarding only science as knowledge, thinks

that the only utility knowledge can have is to give man control over the operable things of nature.

But the things which we can control are utilities only in the sense of means. None of them is an end

in itself. Clearly the difference between intelligent and unintelligent operation lies in referring

means to ends. Furthermore, everyone can see that science is the kind of knowledge which can beused for evil purposes as well as good, according as the means it provides us with are ordered to the

right or the wrong ends. But what determines the ordering of means to ends, and what provides the

criteria for judging ends as good and bad? Either this is mere opinion, and again might makes right,

or it is knowledge. But it is clearly not scientific knowledge, for otherwise science could protect

itself and all mankind from the misuses to which it is so readily put. It is philosophical knowledge,

which in the practical order is called morals and politics, that must direct us in intelligent operation

toward the right ends. The utility of philosophy is thus superior to that of science, and what is even

more obvious, science without moral wisdom -- a command of utilities without right direction -- is

a dangerous thing. The more science we have, the more we are in need of wisdom to prevent its

5 "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotesto Plato" (Process and Reality, New York. 1029: p. 63).

6 New York, 1937. Vd. esp. Ch. 4, 8, 11, 12.


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misuse. The imminent tragedy of the contemporary world is written in the fact that positivisticmodern culture has magnified science and almost completely emancipated itself from wisdom.

One further point must be added. Philosophy's independence of science holds in the

practical as well as in the theoretical sphere. We have not progressed in moral wisdom. All the

advances in science have not changed the moral and political problems which men face, except to

make them more difficult because men have more implements at hand to gain their ends.

2. I turn now to the psychological error concerning man's nature. So-called "scientific

psychology," which has its roots in the physiological laboratory and its ideology from the

evolutionary speculations of nineteenth-century materialism, regards man as an animal different

from others only in degree of intelligence or in such accidental matters as erect posture. Man is a

bundle of reflexes which can be conditioned, as in other animals, by the positive and negative

stimuli of pleasure and pain; he learns as other animals do, by trial and error -- or if he has insight,

as thegestaltists claim, so do all other animals; his habits are all sensori-motor coordinations, thearchetype of which is the reflex arc. When to the experimental literature are added views which

have their origin in the clinic or on the psychoanalytical couch, man's rationality, if admitted at all,

is reduced to the craft whereby his ego is forced by his id to rationalize the basic instinctive driveswhich get him into social conflicts. His behavior originates with and is controlled by his visceral

urges, and intelligence is their servant, reason their cunning.

It should be apparent, though it is seldom seen, that such a conception of human nature

makes it impossible to explain how man can be a scientist, not to mention a philosopher. Scientific

truth, which man possesses, and the scientific method which he employs, cannot be accounted for

in terms of conditioned reflexes or sensori-motor coordinations, except by the most obvious verbal

legerdemain. The very ideal of science -- that the truth, to whatever extent it is achieved, is

objective and independent of our passions and urges -- must be an illusion, if reason operates only

in the service of the gut and under its dictation. With the scientific ideal goes all the rest of morality,

for all ideals become illusions which thinly conceal man's brutishness. The paradox still remains,

however, that man is the only animal which finds it necessary to fool himself with ideals.

The opposite view, which makes the issue, can be simply stated, though not here argued.

Man is a rational animal, and in possessing rationality, which is not just animal intelligence to a

higher degree, he is essentially, that is, specifically, different from brutes. Man has all the powers

possessed by brute animals: he has vegetative powers; he has sensitive, appetitive, and locomotive

powers. But in addition he has an intellect, and this power, the power of understanding, of

abstracting, judging, reasoning, no other animal has.7 It is by the exercise of this power that man is

an artist, a scientist, a philosopher; that he lives socially by conventions determined by himself

rather than instinctively as other social animals do; that he has a syntactical language for thecommunication of knowledge and commands; that he is able freely to choose the means by which

he attains the end he desires because he understands it to be good.

Opposite educational consequences follow from choosing opposite sides in these two issues.

If man is a rational animal, constant in nature throughout history, then there must be

certain constant features in every sound educational program, regardless of culture or epoch. The

basic education of a rational animal is the discipline of his rational powers and the cultivation of his

intellect. This discipline is achieved by the liberal arts, the arts of reading and listening, of writing

7 "To expatiate upon the importance of thought would be absurd. The traditional definition of man as 'the thinking

animal' fixes thought as the essential difference between man and the brutes, -- surely an important matter" (Dewey,How We Thank, 1st. ed., 1910: p. 14). Cf. ibid., 2nd. ed., 1933, p. 17: "We all acknowledge, in words at least, that

ability to think is highly important; it is regarded as the distinguishing power that marks man off from the lower

animals."


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and speaking, and, perforce, of thinking, since man is a social animal as well as a rational one and

his intellectual life is lived in a community which can exist only through the communication of

men. The three R's, which always signified the formal disciplines, are the essence of liberal or

general education. They cannot be inculcated by college courses in logic or mathematics or

classical languages. That was the error of classical education, which the progressivist rightly

condemned. One learns to write and read only by performing these acts, but since reading and

writing are intellectual arts, the habits must be formed under the discipline of rules of art; moreover,intellectual habits cannot be formed intelligently unless the rules themselves are understood. The

program of liberal education consists of the liberal arts, acquired as habits through performance

under intelligible disciplines. In short, the A.B. degree should be awarded for competence in

reading, writing, and rechoning.

But one cannot learn to read and write without subject matter. The reason is trained in its

proper operations by these arts, but the intellect is not cultivated by them. That can be accomplished

only through furnishing it with knowledge and wisdom, by acquainting it with truth, by giving it a

mastery of ideas. At this point, the other basic feature of liberal education appears, namely, the great

books, the master productions in all fields, philosophy, science, history, and belles-lettres. They are

not only the material which must be used to teach students how to read and write, but theyconstitute the cultural tradition by which the intellects of each generation must first be cultivated.

Note, here, how the myth of progress is denied. If there is philosophical wisdom as well as

scientific knowledge, if the former consists of insights and ideas that change little from time to

time, and if even the latter has many abiding concepts and a relatively constant method, if the great

works of literature as well as of philosophy touch upon the permanent moral problems of mankind

and express the universal convictions of men involved in moral conflict -- if these things are so,

then the great books of ancient and medieval, as well as modern, times are a repository of

knowledge and wisdom, a tradition of culture which must initiate each new generation. The reading

of these books is not for antiquarian purposes; the interest is not archaeological or philological.

That was the type of interest which dominated the humanistic course in the German gymnasium,

and was "classical education" at its worst. Rather the books are to be read because they are as

contemporary today as when they were written, and that because the problems they deal with and

the ideas they present are not subject to the law of perpetual and interminable progress. The fact

that the ancients and medievals were wrong in many matters of scientific knowledge, the fact that

even Newton and Galileo were wrong in their turn, makes no difference to the philosophical

accomplishments of these periods, nor even to the insights and procedures of the great masters of

science.

There is not space here to expound fully the curriculum for liberal education which

President Hutchins has proposed and which is in operation at St. John's College in Annapolis.

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I ammerely indicating how the emphasis upon the liberal arts and the great books follows from and is

justified by the fundamental theses which distinguish his educational philosophy. If the educational

system were properly divided into three parts -- elementary, secondary or collegiate, and university

-- what I have here called liberal or general education would occur at the second level. At the

lowest level, elementary education would inculcate the fundamental routines of language and

mathematics and stimulate the imagination and the talents for fine arts, thus preparing for college in

a manner quite unlike that determined by college board examinations. At the university level, which

might begin at what is now the junior year of college, if the A.B. were advanced as the degree for

secondary education, would come all the specialized and professional studies. A man can be well

trained as a chemist or a historian, a lawyer or a physician, only after he has been fundamentally

educated, after he has learned to read and write and has some ideas. If general education

8 Vd. The Higher Learning in America, New Haven, 1936. For a description of what is going on at St. John's, see the

new program bulletin, obtainable from the college upon request.


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emphasizes the permanent studies -- the liberal arts and the cultural tradition -- specialized

education, at the university level, is the place for the progressive studies, the studies in which

novelty and invention predominate.

If one examines the education which now prevails from the elementary school through to

the university, one discovers that the opposite theses are at work. Influenced by the myths of

progress and utility, failing to recognize the constancy of human nature, and denying, implicitly orexplicitly, man's distinctive rationality, the existing system has completely discarded the permanent

studies or, what is almost as bad, put them in the university where they are out of place. In terms of

a false educational psychology which misinterpreted experiments on the transfer of trainings as

showing there is no point to formal discipline, not enough effort is made to teach students how to

read and write. If man has an intellect it can be disciplined despite all the findings on the limited

transferability of training from one set of sensori-motor coordinations to another. In terms of

pragmatic positivism, the cultural tradition is ignored because there is nothing worth knowing

except the most recent results of scientific research. Any book older than yesterday is hardly worth

reading, for by the law of progress we must have advanced to a new and better stage of knowledge.

We must teach students how to face contemporary problems, and each generation must pull itself

up by its own bootstraps, for the problems are ever changing and the past can afford no help at all.

Because man is viewed as having only an animal career and not a human destiny, interest

and adjustment have taken the place of discipline and cultivation as the watchwords of educational

policy. The whole aim of education changes, for adjustment leads to the cult of success, the "ideal"

of getting ahead by beating your neighbor. The emphasis on the interests of the student makes him a

buyer instead of as patient, and the teacher becomes a salesman rather than a doctor prescribing the

cure for ignorance and incompetence. It is the student who is the master under the elective system,

which was invented because of the excessive proliferation of scientific courses in the curriculum,

and has been perpetuated by that perversion of educational policy which makes the young, i.e., the

relatively ignorant and incompetent, choose their own road to learning, according to the fickle

interests of their immaturity. Extracurricular activities originated in response to interests that were

tangential to the main business of education, but in many schools they have become the curriculum,

and the substantial studies have been thrown out. They are not even extracurricular. Many college

curriculums offer courses from A to Z without discrimination; and the university, instead of being a

hierarchy of studies and a community of scholars, is a collection of specialties, together only in

geographical proximity.

Elementary education is devoid of discipline. The basic routines in language and

mathematics have been dropped or corrupted. Memory is not cultivated. Social studies, current

events, manual arts and games occupy the major time. Secondary or collegiate education fails even

more, though in part the failure is due to the inadequate preparation given in the elementaryschools. Our Bachelors of Arts cannot read, write, or speak their own language well; neither they

nor, for that matter, our Masters of Arts, are acquainted with the liberal arts. They cannot read and

they have not read the great books in all fieids.9 They do not possess the leading ideas or understand

the basic problems which are permanently human. They have been fed for years on textbooks and

lecture courses which hand out predigested materials; and, as a result, they are chaotically informed

9 An article explaining precisely what it means to say that our college graduates cannot read will soon be published. Of

course, they can read in the sense in which all of us can read the newspapers, popular magazines, and even school text-

books. There is another sense of 'reading,' however, in which it, along with listening consists of the basic intellectual

operations by which one learns from the discourse of others. If a book is worth reading, it must exceed the immediate

grasp of the student; otherwise it could not educate or elevate him, for we are educated only by our betters. Reading isthe process whereby a student, working on a book without extrinsic aids, moves himself from a state of understanding

less to one of understanding more. It would take at least four years of disciplined practice to learn how to read in this

way.


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and viciously indoctrinated with the local prejudices of professors and their textbooks.10As a final

consequence, education at the graduate and professional level has been necessarily debased. Law

schools must teach reading; graduate schools struggle to get Ph.D. candidates to write simple, clear

English.

I conclude with the question: What are the chances of this deplorable situation being

remedied? What chance is there of the Hutchins reform being effected? I ask this question, ofcourse, on the assumption that the truth lies on his side of the basic issues, and with the insight that

his program is the moderate one between the extremes of a dead classicism and a progressivism run

amuck. Even granted this, I must confess that I am pessimistic, for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, there is the inertia of vested interests, which perpetuate existing human

institutions. Organized education is one of the largest rackets in this country, and the teachers'

colleges, especially such influential ones as those at Columbia, Chicago, and California, are thegangs which control what goes on, in ways that do not always meet the eye and would not standinspection. To call education a racket is, of ourse, to speak metaphorically, but the comparison has

point. Reforming education will have to use racket-busting techniques or it will not succeed.

In the second place, there is the vicious circle in the teaching profession itself. The teachers

of today were taught by the teachers of yesterday and teach the teachers of tomorrow. When this

vicious circle, which has always existed, gets standardized by schools of education, in which a

philosophy of education becomes an official program imposed upon the profession and the system

by various accrediting agencies, degrees, requirements for promotion, and so forth, the circle

becomes almost impregnable. Even if the great mass of teachers were to feel that there is something

wrong with education, they could do nothing about it. They have been subjugated; worse than that,

they have been indoctrinated by the reigning philosophy so that they no longer have enough free

judgment to be critical; but worst of all, they themselves have been so inadequately educated that

they would be hindered from understanding the principles or taking part in the execution of the

reform being proposed. For the most part, the members of the teaching profession are overtrained

and undereducated. Teaching is an art and a teacher must be trained, but since the technique is one

of communicating knowledge and inculcating discipline, it is not educational psychology and

courses in method and pedagogy which train a teacher, but the liberal arts. Further, a teacher should

have a cultivated mind, generally cultivated regardless of his field of special interest, for he must be

the visible and moving representative of the cultural tradition to his students. But how can he be

this if he has no acquaintance with the cultural heritage, if he cannot read well, and if he is not well

read?

Finally, there is the even deeper vicious circle in which an educational system and the

society in which it flourishes are reciprocal. You cannot improve a society without changing itseducation; but you cannot lift the educational system above the level of the society in which itexists. We probably have as good an educational program today in this country as we deserve,according to our cultural attainments and aspirations. If my pessimism encounters objection on the

grounds that the movement which John Dewey led succeeded in changing American education, I

must answer that that change moved with the tide of American life and expressed its own dominant

values and interests. The reform in which I am interested must work against the tide, challenging

the worst, and also the most obdurate, features of our national ethos -- our materialism, ourpragmatism, our modernism.

10 When neither the teacher nor the student is a liberal artist trained in art of giving or receiving communicationcritically, teaching must degenerate into indoctrination in that vicious sense in which the student is a sponge passively

absorbing docrines which, however true or excellent they may be in themelves, cannot be more than prejudices or

opinions as they are received.


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But pessimism must not lead to despair, for much is at stake that makes it imperative to keep

working for reform so long as a chance remains. There are many signs and portents that the modern

world is headed for a great social upheaval and a drastic cultural eclipse. We are viewing a racebetween two revolutions -- a violent one by fire and sword and a peaceful one by education and

reason -- to end the iniquitous capitalistic system and the rotten bourgeois culture of our times .

Even if, in the world at large, violence is needed to win the day, the educational revolution must

follow to preserve and nourish the fruits of victory. In this country, democracy and liberalinstitutions are at stake, for these can be sustained and developed only by a truly liberal education.

Failing to develop critical minds, failing to liberate the mind by discipline, contemporary education

makes the way easy for demagogues of all sorts. Education which does not build on wisdom or

respect reason above all else, leads to the frustration of the individual and the brutal conflict of

social forces. For whenever reason does not rule, the mind must yield to the sheer weight of opinion

propagated by pressure; only might remains and none dares say it is not right.

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The Crisis in Contemporary Education