Social Sanity Through the Social Studies

Raymond O. Hughes

[A presidential address presented to the 16th Annual Conference of the National Council for the Social Studies, Detroit, Michigan, 27 November, 1936. Reprinted from Social Education, Vol. 1 (January 1937), pp. 3-10. At the time of this address, Raymond Hughes was a professor in the Department of Curriculum Studies, University of Pittsburgh]

There are some who are, perhaps rightly, accused of taking themselves too seriously. They think, like Chanticleer, that the sun cannot rise without their help, and, if they fail to point with pride or view with alarm, the rest of the world will not know in what direction to move. I fear, however, that we who fly the flag of the social studies have not been guilty of that particular sin. I wonder whether we have realized the extent to which we may be responsible for the development of sound and dependable habits of thinking among our young people and for helping older ones form judgments and gain some assurance of casting their ballots in the right way.

Recently I heard a speaker quote, as if it were funny, a suggestion that by having more economics taught in our schools we might help to circumvent depressions. I do not believe that teachers of economics could have bestowed upon the great mass of American citizens enough intelligence to prevent all the blunders that have been committed. Yet I do think a more widespread understanding of economic laws would help to prevent the enactment of some silly statute laws and to produce a more serious attitude on the part of those who demand the passage of inane legislation.

The success in obtaining followers, which has been enjoyed by such persons as the Reverend Gerald Smith, Dr. Townsend, and Father Coughlin, as well as numerous other manifestations of our public life, forces us to believe that we have not yet reached the stage where democracy can be trusted to form its opinions without counsel from those who have made an intelligent study of the history and the problems of the human race. "It can't happen here" do we say? I am not so sure. But I am certain that "it" does not need to happen here. In times of stress it is not so easy to keep sane as in times of calm. Social sanity must be maintained, however, if society is to be saved. And where is there a better source from which it can be derived than through the medium of the social studies?

I am going to speak of three aspects of human thought or activity that demand a full measure of social sanity, in understanding, in vision, and in teaching.

Whether, as individuals and as members of society, we are to be leaders or followers, the problems of a democratic society are our problems. In order to lead or to choose leaders worthy of our following we need all the sound learning and discretion we can acquire. In the first place we need a sane, keen, and full understanding of what the past has given us and what the present sets before us. As we read about the deeds of the men and women of the past, do they take into our minds merely the aspect of a story of things that happened? Do we make the contrary mistake of reading into them a justification of the opinions we want to hold? It was said of a certain literary character that he had been doing a good deal of thinking about an event of the time. "No," explained one who knew him better, "he is simply rearranging his prejudices." Why can we not be satisfied to approach open-mindedly the pages of history, content to read in them whatever lessons they may teach? And how important it is to select the most significant items out of the thousands we might include! I have no quarrel with a man who makes the acquisition of perfectly useless information a hobby. Perhaps for him it is not worse than golf. Yet, when history goes into the program of our schools, I do not want "history for history's sake," as I have heard it characterized. I want to know not merely what happened but why it happened. I do not care for a mere list of meaningless names and dates. I want to select out of the great mass of recorded facts those which will tell me and others something about the reasons why people acted as they did in days gone by.

How much misunderstanding has occurred because of perverted interpretation of the past! How much prejudice has been built up by a continued repetition of such false interpretation! For example, because our country more than a century ago was engaged in wars with Great Britain, too many of our children have gathered the impression that Great Britain is our mortal and eternal enemy, instead of being the one nation above all others whose political traditions, speech, and interests are most nearly like our own. How many times we have been told in the past that depressions always come under Democratic administrations, and that good times and the full dinner pail were synonymous with Republican supremacy? With what result! Now when conditions have been reversed, popular distrust has turned in double measure against the party that used to boast about bringing prosperity; but the party now in power is, we notice, just as ready to claim credit because happy days are here again. Just as ridiculous a perversion of history is practiced now by some who would like to have us believe that everything we once believed was wrong. Our constitution was made, we are told, by fifty-five men who wanted to protect some shaky investments. Then some one has the nerve to ask us whether we dare to teach the whole truth about the making of the constitution. "Surely we do," is my answer, "but Charles A. Beard's Economic Interpretation of the Constitution is not the whole truth about it, any more than his Open Door at Home is the complete and final word on our economic program today."

We are told that the Civil War was caused by Northern business men, and that after the war the Union was helpless in the hands of the corrupt Republican party. There is no denying that disreputable things were done in its name, but let us not go too fast. Let me read you a paragraph from a recently published textbook. It begins with the heading, "The New Republican Party," and runs as follows:

It was natural, then, for these interests to seize upon the arguments of slavery and union with which to attract workers, Abolitionists, and sterling characters like Lincoln, to whom the saving of the Union was of primary concern. Thus the newly created Republican party carried on the traditions of Hamilton and the Federalists in their sympathy with industrial and financial interests. It was destined to dominate national politics thereafter.

A little further on in the same text we read:

The Civil War and the Reconstruction period left the Republican party entrenched in power. Enthusiastic patriots, grateful manufacturers who pressed for larger tariff bounties, and capitalists eager to continue mulcting the nation of its domains in their construction of railways and new enterprises were among its staunch supporters. The result was a prostrate Democratic party and a Republican party that controlled national, state, and municipal politics. No party in the history of the United States had ever held such unchallenged sway.

In other words, Lincoln and everybody else opposed to slavery were simply tools in the hands of Northern business men, who wanted to hold the South in the Union so that they could exploit it. Moreover, according to these authors, the Democratic party was down and out after Reconstruction.

Yet here are the facts. There have been sixteen presidential elections from 1876 to the present time. If you take the popular vote in the country in those elections, you will find that eight times the Democrats were in the lead and eight times the Republicans. By what right can anyone call that an "unchallenged sway" of any party? Moreover, by what right will anybody charge against the Republican party the abuses of New York under Tweed and Tammany and the misrule under the Democratic name in several other cities? The Republican machines of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh could teach the politicians of those communities very little. Such statements as I have quoted are not history; they are fanaticism handed to readers not in a position to realize their inaccuracy.

This same willingness to pervert history we see now exhibited in the desire to reflect upon everything this nation did in connection with the World War. Social-studies teachers as well as others have joined in the hue and cry that we went into the war to save the international bankers and to make money for the munitions interests. Anyone who went through that struggle knows that, however disappointed we may later have been at the results achieved, ideals far different from those seemed important to the people and to the government at the time.

May I offer also a protest against the extent certain writers have carried their proclivities for debunking historical characters? Of course George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and all the rest of our national leaders were human beings, and they probably displayed in their lifetime some of the weaknesses as well as the virtues of ordinary people. Yet what if George Washington did write letters to a young woman whom he did not afterward marry? He was neither the first nor the last to do so. What if Lincoln did make some appointments for other reasons than strict merit? He was neither the first nor the last president to do that. It is just as unfortunate for growing boys and girls to get the impression that all people in political life are crooked as it is to believe that holding office puts a halo around a man's head and purity in his heart. Let us strive to give a plain, honest, square deal to those who have been in the public eye, whether in the past or in the present, neither exalting them beyond their desserts nor condemning them unduly.

There are many questions one may ask history to answer. This is an age of change, we are told, and we are expected to get excited over that fact. What are we going to do next? This is the question we are supposed to ask in our perplexity. Yet when was there an age in any history that was not an age of change? Who would want to live in a fixed and static world, with nothing to do but sit on our thumbs and watch the same old things happening in the same old way, world without end? Did circumstances make Abraham Lincoln or did Abraham Lincoln make his circumstances -- or both? Substitute for Abraham Lincoln any other character you wish. If it is true that men have made their own circumstances or at least turned them in the way they wished them to go, there is encouragement for those who face the obstacles and dangers of today. If man is a mere plaything in the hands of events he cannot control, what is the use of anyone's attempting to be or do anything? Do leaders make events or do events bring forth leaders? Did George Washington make the Revolution or did he become rather the personification of the purpose of a people determined to be free? Did Andrew Jackson show the way for the common man to rise to political power, or did he rather become the embodiment of a force that sooner or later was due to make itself felt in this country? If we must wait for leaders to tell us when we may hope to improve our condition, our case is far worse than if we dare to look hopefully for improvement, expecting that when the time is ripe some one will stand forth to command the march ahead. Is it fated from the beginning of time that certain things shall happen to people or to nations? Or do they have it largely in their power to choose the direction they shall go, and the undertakings they shall accomplish?

The questioning citizen of western democracies in Europe and in this country looks wonderingly eastward to see what has happened in mysterious Russia. Changes that centuries did not bring have been wrought in two decades. Shall we say that Lenin could do what God could not? Or shall we rather accept the interpretation that the church, which should have led the people steadily to higher and better things, so conducted itself as to choke even the channels through which divine power might have acted? Whether we shall seek the improvement of society by a sudden overturn of all that the past has built up or proceed more slowly toward those things which would make life better for all may depend upon the way we understand the past in Russia and in other lands. Are all people at any stage in their development ready for democracy, or must we expect that there will be times in which people may need to accept the domination of dictators, until they become strong enough to choose for themselves the course of the national life?

Out of the wreck and change of the past some things abide that we cannot doubt. In studying the ancient Egyptians or Greeks have you talked about "those guys" as if they were some strange prehistoric animals? Man's fundamental wants today are much the same as those of men not only in ancient Egypt and Babylon but before those nations came into being. Men have always wanted food, clothing, and shelter. In fact, outside of these three things there is hardly anything that we could be sure everybody wants even now. Cooperation has been important to progress and to the satisfaction of our simplest needs. Even the cave man discovered the benefits of working with others, when he wanted to kill a wild goat or an ox to get something to eat or a new suit of clothes. As time moves on, cooperation takes thousands of different forms and seems steadily more necessary. Do moral standards abide? Some like to think they are "progressive" or "liberal" if they enjoy ridiculing what seem to others to be honor, decency, self-restraint, or religion; but history seems to indicate that, however morals and religion may seem to change, they remain vital in making life worth while.

Sanity in Vision

Hegel said that "history teaches this -- that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history." "Never? Well, hardly ever," we might be obliged to agree. Over and over again has the lesson been taught that harsh vengeance inflicted by victors on vanquished is bad business in the long run. The North had not learned that, however, when it had to deal with the prostrate South after the Civil War. The Allies refused to believe it after the armistice was signed, and now they have Hitler and no reparations. What the victors of November 3 do with their single triumph will show whether they are statesmen or merely conquerors.

Suppose, though, that we have attained some measure of intelligent understanding of the progress of the past and the problems of the present. How may we maintain the sanity of vision that will enable us to look ahead with sense and seriousness? Are ideals worth while? Shall we choose the easy way of putting up with what we have, because we have never known better, or shall we plan for a happier and fuller life, because we have faith to believe it is possible of attainment? Then, too, if we have decided not to be content with what we have known, how shall we proceed toward the goal that we set for ourselves? What achievements seem to us soundest and most substantial, those that came as the result of patient, slow growth or those that were conceived and accomplished in haste? We did get rid of Negro slavery, but we made no proper preparation for the life of the black man when he was set free. Just a few years ago some of us thought we had put an end to John Barleycorn, but we did not realize how many friends he had or appreciate the fact that, if they were not educated to look upon him as better dead than alive, it was hopeless for us to expect him to stay under ground very long. We made the Blue Eagle our national bird a few years ago, only to find that he was a rather "ornery" specimen after all. Not even Hugh Johnson could keep him alive and in good health.

Moreover, what shall we say of those ideals set up for future days that are based on the assumption that men are happiest when they have nothing to do, and that thrift and personal enterprise are no longer of any importance? Rugged individualism, indeed, was not an unmixed blessing. We do require a social interpretation of our economic life that it has not received in the past. On the other hand, to expect a Utopia, in which all the cost of security and government is to rest upon the then non-existent rich, is another "iridescent dream." A sane vision for the future may look toward a time when there shall be free opportunity for every one to make the most of the talents he has. But we in the social studies have no business to encourage the notion that it is the government's duty to find a soft job for everybody, and that, if we do not like what is offered, we shall still be fed, clothed, and amused at the expense of the whole community.

As this was being written, there lay before me a circular letter that bore along its left margin the names of over fifty persons of some importance, several of whom have been teachers or writers in the field of social science. What did this circular ask me to do? To vote for Norman Thomas or at least send a check to help pay the bills of his campaign. I am not going to quarrel with those whose hearts or minds or feelings have induced them to cry toward the old parties, "A plague on both your houses." I do not question, however, that vision of the future which takes it for granted that everything will be lovely, when not only supervision and restraint but also the actual operation of all our fundamental industries has been thrown into the merry-go-round of politics.

The readiness with which some politicians, high and low, have shifted sides in the last three years seems to me fairly good proof that we need something deeper and more profound than the substitution of another party for the two that have ruled this country for well toward a century. First we must firmly establish the principle that government is conducted to serve all the people and not the winning faction. Then and then only, as I see it, will it be safe to talk about turning over to the hands of the government the administration of all the vital industries of a nation's life. I would not want you to think that I have no care for the under dog, or the forgotten man, but I do believe we need to realize that laws which might make a man a mere recipient of a dole are a poor substitute for the spirit that will encourage him to want to do an honest day's work for a reasonable return. Moreover, if he can, by enterprise and fair dealing, lay by enough so that when he is old he will not be a charge on the state, let us not hate him for doing so.

One of the most discouraging things we hear is the report of wars and rumors of wars across the water. Shall we give up hoping for world peace on that account? Not so, I insist, if we stop to think that in twenty years we have talked more about the possibility of peace than in twenty centuries before, and if we appreciate the fact that war is deadlier and more expensive than it ever has been before. At the same time, the world citizen of sane vision does not expect, by making himself defenseless, to escape the fate that has so often come to those not on their guard against greedy and conscienceless foes. He does not imagine that merely by passing a neutrality law he will keep all peril three thousand miles away. The time might come when neutrality in the face of world-wide menaces would be deadly. Neither are we going to prevent strife by passing resolutions that we will not take part in any war. Our very cowardice may be just the encouragement for which brutal selfishness is waiting. The way of life that we have today, it has well been said, has been bought by blood and may need to be purchased at the same price again. If we do not care to defend our liberty and our democracy at whatever cost, we may find that liberty and democracy will die among us, as they seem just now to have died among some peoples across the water.

In spite of all the doles and the distress of depression times, the human race as a whole is, in many ways, living on a higher plane that it ever did before. Think of the many things that even the richest man could not have in his early boyhood, the telephone, the radio, an anesthetic to ease pain, the airplane, the electric light, and countless others. Think of the many things now done by machinery that once required laborious physical toil. Think of the public libraries and public schools provided with considerable liberality. If with all our mistakes we have done so much, may we not hope to do still better in the future?

Even that vision may be an attainable one, which the poet saw with his mind's eye, when he wrote of the time "when the war drums throbbed no longer and the battle flags were furled in the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world." If we really want to reach such a happy day, every principle of human association tells us that we must abandon our selfishness and our unwillingness to risk something in order to save much. Our former superintendent in Pittsburgh said once very truly that "the world will not be saved by one man saying the Lord's Prayer once." Neither will it be saved unless all the leaders among the nations of the world -- that includes ourselves -- accept their share of responsibility for advancing the cause of world peace and brotherhood.

Teaching for the Future

Now to come to the third aspect of our quest for social sanity. We who are engaged in teaching have a special responsibility in the guiding of our boys and girls into sound and sensible lines of thinking and into purposeful determination to act for the achievement of better things. What shall we do about it? Charles F. Lewis of Pittsburgh in a recent address set forth attitudes that he believed the young people of today should be helped to establish within themselves. His words I will quote in spirit though not in exact language. Through the social studies and the practice of good citizenship in school and community life he finds the surest hope for their attainment.

First, he says, the young person should grasp the idea that the world owes him nothing and that he owes the world everything. In meeting this obligation he can make no down payment but must make partial payments as he goes along all through life. Albert Einstein expressed a similar thought in an address commemorating the tercentenary of higher education in America: "A successful man is he who receives a great deal from his fellow men, usually incomparably more than corresponds to his service to them. The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive." Today how often the young person is told just the opposite and led to believe that society owes him not only a living but a "more abundant life," whatever that means, whether he loafs or works! In the second place, the young person who has the right attitude will accept the responsibility not only to be registered and to vote but also to understand the issues of campaigns and the probabilities that candidates for office will or will not keep their promises. Third, the young citizen will abide by the will of the majority. He need not accept the will of the majority at any particular time as final, if he thinks it is the result of an unwise choice. It is within his right to work for the change of an unsound policy, but he will not refuse to submit to the choice of his fellow citizens, when it has been made honestly, even though mistakenly. Fourth, the young citizen will desire to hear both sides of a question and will seek to weigh without prejudice the arguments that may be offered to support or to refute a particular proposition. Fifth, he will display that intellectual modesty that characterizes one who realizes that he knows little but wants to learn much more.

If our young people are to acquire these attitudes, there are several skills they must develop by constant practice. They must learn how to read and interpret the newspapers and the magazines and to listen to the radio and to public speech without being carried away by a pleasing flow of words, a charm of personal manner, or a previously implanted prejudice. They need the ability to understand the background of what they see and hear, for, if they have only the present to help in making choices, they are much more likely to be misled. The competent young citizen must know how to obtain information independently. He must not expect always to have even the kindest and most trustworthy teachers and counselors to help him. He must be able to work "on his own." Furthermore, he should be able to think through a problem rather than to form a superficial opinion on the basis of only partial knowledge. Bertrand Russell declared that "mankind fears nothing so much as thought - not even death." We must somehow remove from the youth this fear of thought and make thought a habit. Moreover, the youth should have practice in expressing his thoughts so that he may converse intelligently and write effectively about the questions of the day. He should be eager to take whatever part he can in making the life of his own community, as well as of larger groups, as sound and as well administered as possible.

Now, who is to help him to do this if not we of the social studies? A dumb democracy is the teacher's opportunity, it has been said. But how? Shall we tell our pupils what they must think or how they must act? No. It is far better that we content ourselves with helping them get the information they need to make their own choices and with giving them practice in discussing all sides of disputed questions. What if the entire membership of a class does not reach just the same conclusion! Their elders have not always done so. Perhaps we can by patient example and careful instruction induce young people to differ courteously and to use arguments that bear upon the question, instead of indulging in the calling of names and the setting-up of straw men to knock down.

May I stress right here our opportunity in the field of the social studies to emphasize the importance of the cultivation of the virtue of tolerance? In a free democracy there is room for all shades of difference of opinion. The mere fact that some one thinks we could possibly improve some of our ways of doing things here does not justify us in assuming that he is in the pay of Moscow or is any other kind of Communist. Neither does the fact that some one else dares to criticize some feature of the New Deal justify any one in calling him a Tory or an economic royalist. There may even be some thoroughly honest and well-meaning persons enrolled in the Liberty League.

Sane instruction in the social studies will not be a matter of compulsion but of interest. Oh yes, we may have to compel some persons to learn some facts that at the time they would rather not be bothered with. We may even have to require them to spend time in a social-studies classroom, when they would rather be playing football; but something is wrong if a teacher cannot uncover, in almost any aspect of the social studies, something real and vital. The truest test of successful teaching is found in the interest that pupils show in a particular field of study, after they no longer get marks for exhibiting that interest. A teacher who can inspire a pupil to feel that his relations with his fellow men, whether they are in the field of business or politics, or governed by physical environment, are of real significance to himself and to others, has accomplished something that can never be measured in grades or in money but is far more important than either.

Some of our pupils, we may hope, will become scholars in history, political science, sociology, geography, or some other field; but, quoting Albert Einstein again, "the school should always have as its aim that a young man leave it as a harmonious personality, not as a specialist." Our prime concern should be with those who are interested in the social studies because all the human race is concerned in them.

Shall we who are teachers try to impress upon our pupils the duty of building a new social order, as we have been challenged to do? Some tell us that one of the finest achievements of the new order in Russia is in convincing young men and women that they have a vital part in making the new kind of state. Should it not be just as much a source of pride to the boy or girl of Great Britain or the United States of America to have a part in building a real democracy? For myself, I do not believe that we teachers of the social studies, individually or collectively, have a clear enough vision of everyone's needs to map out a plan and say to our young people, "This is the society you are to make." Rather, let us lay before them the best thoughts we can get from the experience of the past. Let us give them opportunities for considering and judging the proposals for building society that may be advanced by any one. Then we can, I think, safely trust the outcome of the day, not so far ahead, when the young people whom we guide and counsel have to make decisions that will affect the government and life of a nation and, perhaps, of all mankind.

Three things, it has been well said, it is the duty of the teacher to furnish to those who come under his care. Important as are and always will be the three R's, these three I's are still more significant: information, illumination, and inspiration. The knowledge on which intelligent thinking must be based constitutes the information. The examples, the precepts, the experiments, and experiences that cast light upon the problems of today furnish the illumination we need. From the inner resources of the teacher himself must come the inspiration to practice the precepts and ideals that we have taken as guides and the determination to overcome obstacles in order to achieve even the impossible.