A Cityless and Countryless World
An Outline of Practical Co-Operative Individualism
Henry Olerich
[A condensed and edited version of the book
originally published by Gilmore & Olerich, Holstein, Iowa, 1893 /
CHAPTER 22 - Education, the Different Branches]
Language. We learn good language, because we hear it continually
spoken by our companions, who, in a system like ours, are all well
educated and good linguists. We learn to speak by speaking. In a large
family like ours, language is very good, and improves rapidly, because
there are always sure to be some good linguists who are unconsciously
and spontaneously teaching language and grammar to all the rest. Under
such conditions you can easily see that we hear scarcely any bad
language. We speak fluently and grammatically without particularly
studying technical grammar and rhetoric, which, of course, are nothing
but the language used by the best speakers and writers of the age in
which they live. That is the way we study and learn language, grammar
and rhetoric; with a higher development they grow continually more
simple. The conditions under our system brings about these favor able
and natural opportunities.
Here, again, we have a vast advantage over you and your system. So
many of you are compelled, by want and the fear of want, to work so
hard and so long daily, that parents and children are obliged to
expend nearly all their vitality to secure the material necessaries of
life. Your families are small and many of them are living all alone in
the country. The language of parents, under such conditions, must
necessarily be very poor and their vocabulary very limited. Children
can learn very little good language from such parents. They hear much
more bad grammar at home than they get good grammar from the book and
school-house, in which it is indeed generally poor enough, too. It is
not an easy matter for one to lay aside, in later years, the barnyard
expressions which he has learned in his childhood and youth. A person
that never hears any thing but good language, can not use poor
language, for language must be learned.
Those few of your wealthier classes, who hear better language and
grammar at home, and who have plenty of time to devote for its
acquisition, come in contact with so much bad language that they pick
up about as much bad as good language. In this manner there is an
immense amount of time and labor wasted here in the study of technical
grammar and rhetoric, which would be unnecessary under a properly
organized social condition.
[An important] incentive for writing is our large daily newspaper,
issued by every community. At a very early age children are encouraged
to write articles for the paper. All of us, young and old (except
infants), are contributors to this paper; and all subjects of human
inquiry are discussed. We enjoy complete freedom of speech and freedom
of the press. We allow no censor over them. The children have a
certain department of the paper allotted to them; and the older people
are much interested in the children s contributions, discussions and
explanations. There is a wide, friendly, open field for emulation in
these newspaper columns. These newspaper contributions are a great
incentive for children, as well as adults, to learn to write well, to
express their thoughts concisely, elegantly, forcibly and clearly. The
editor makes such slight corrections as he finds in the children s
manuscripts, which are returned to the children, so that they can
compare the printed column with the original manuscript. In this easy,
practical way, our children learn writing, orthography, language,
grammar, rhetoric, style and invention.
Our next incentive to induce children to write is brought about by
our free and convenient system of motor travel. This travel creates a
large and wide acquaintance among children as well as among older
persons. This extensive acquaintance naturally brings about a great
deal of correspondence.
Mathematics. In the first place, let us not overlook the fact that
our financial, social and industrial organizations have vastly
simplified our mathematics. In weights and measures .we have adopted
something like your metric system. In commercial transactions we have
no profit and loss; no stocks and bonds; no premiums and discounts; no
commission and broker age; no stock investments; no insurance, taxes
and revenues; no interest, partial payments, true discount, bank
discount, exchange, equation of payments; no annual or compound
interest; no annuities; no partnership. This does away with nearly all
the difficult parts of arithmetic on which your children have to spend
years of unproductive and destructive labor.
Our children learn to count as soon as they can talk. Every one with
whom they come in contact is their teacher. Figures and numbers are
taught as soon as the child begins to learn its letters. Children also
teach one another how to read and write figures and numbers, and how
to cipher. During favorable weather the slates in the nurseries and
parks are nearly always in use.
"When they grow up to be a little older, they find delight in
studying mathematics during part of their leisure time. All the higher
mathematics -- algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, and various
other measurements -- are well understood by nearly all our men and
women. You must not forget, that on account of [our] intellectual
advancement [we] can learn mathematics with much less labor than they
could formerly.
We have a mathematical apartment in each family. This department is
in charge of one person, the ablest mathematician, who holds his
position by virtue of his superior ability or mathematical genius. He
is acknowledged teacher by all, simply because he is able to solve
difficult problems better than any other member of the family. This
teacher is in his department or school-room certain hours of the day,
and all who need assistance can go there and get it. We believe,
however, that no one should ask for assistance unless it is absolutely
necessary. Every one, we think, should solve his own problems, if
possible: It makes one original and independent, the most valuable and
important characteristic with which a person can be endowed. It often
happens that not a pupil is seen in the mathematical department for
days at a time. All work their own problems.
Physiology. The study of physiology, we make very simple, pleasant
and practical. We teach the location, structure and function of the
organs of the human body, both of the male and of the female. How a
particle of soil in our garden becomes a human tissue by being first
assimilated into a vegetable, grain or fruit; how we eat and digest
the vegetable, etc.; how the nutritious part of the food is thrown
into the circulation of the blood; and how it is then carried and
built up into an organ where it is needed, as an eye, a nail, a heart,
a bone, or a brain.
We teach that life is the first thing we receive, the most precious
fortune we own, and the last prize we can lose. Life, then, is the
standard by which all our acts should be measured. Every act that
conduces to the fullness of it is relatively right; and every act that
detracts from the fullness of it is relatively wrong. All other things
must be subservient to life and health, because without life and
health we can not enjoy the greatest happiness, the end of all. To
care for our body, then, is the first and most important undertaking.
To have this well done by a highly complex being, we must have a
thorough knowledge of anatomy and physiology, a knowledge of the laws
of life and health and the laws of reproduction. Our aim in
physiological education should be to put all our wishes, all our
wants, all our desires, and all our passions in tune with the laws of
our highest being.
Eating. We teach our children by example what to eat and drink and
how to eat and drink. We our selves put into practice what we wish our
children to do and what we believe to be most healthful in the way of
eating and drinking. That kind of food, then, which sustains life
best, as compared with the efforts required for its production, should
be selected.
We are vegetarians, living exclusively on vegetables, grains and
fruits, with the exception of dairy products and eggs.
There is one other important reason why we are vegetarians In our
opinion, a flesh diet is degenerating, as well as unwholesome. May it
not be possible that a human body, built up on the flesh and blood of
a carnivorous brute, cannot be expected to contain within itself
genuine purity, love and kindness toward others?
In your present stage of intellectual development, the evils
resulting from the use of intoxicating liquor as a beverage are very
apparent. Liquor is an incentive to crime because it stupefies the
better feelings. It fills your prisons with criminals, who have been
urged on to their dark deeds when under its influence. It deprives
countless homes of their joy and brightness. It makes a slave of
millions of women and children, who are ruled by a lion of terror. It
makes slaves of the drinkers themselves. It wrecks constitutions and
furnishes victims for countless premature graves. It squanders wealth,
kills useful industry, suppresses kindness, invades purity and stifles
thought. It causes filth, jealousy, idleness, poverty and pauperism.
The evil effects of its use react on the drinker and reflect on his
companions. By the presence of a drunkard, the street and society are
turned into a saloon and the home is converted into a dungeon. The
drinker's breath even pollutes the very atmosphere his companions are
compelled to breathe.
Your smoking is also a habit that greatly prevents an orderly social
adjustment; for if a smoker, on account of his companions, is
prevented from smoking, the smoker himself becomes a slave to his
desire. If he smokes in the presence of his companions, he very likely
makes slaves of his companions by polluting, with tobacco smoke, the
air which his companions are compelled to breathe. And if the smoker
and non- smoker do not associate, that tends to divide society into
classes, which produces pernicious social effects. All these abnormal
habits are unhealthy, wasteful and dangerous on account of fire, etc,,
filthy, causes offensive breath, and are generally disgusting to
others; for these and other reasons we have long discontinued them. I
am quite certain that our ladies, who are free and independent, would
not tolerate men who indulged in such filthy, offensive habits as the
use of stimulants and narcotics produce.
Excessive labor, to which the vast majority of your people here on
earth are doomed for life, implies an excessive digestion and
assimilation; for the excessive waste of the body, caused by the
excessive physical labor, must be repaired by an excessive quantity of
food. By this the function of all the internal organs becomes
excessive on account of the excessive physical labor. This is one
reason why so many of your people are afflicted with burdensome
ailments; why so many have broken- down constitutions, and why so many
die premature deaths. Nearly all of your people seem to be old when
they are yet young.
[U]nder abundance and freedom the child will show no particular
preference for any one kind of food; and, secondly, it will, like the
inferior animals, invariably eat the most desirable food first. Your
child, when free, would perhaps begin with pie, because pie with you,
as a rule, is not as plentiful as potatoes and bread are. In this
state of freedom it takes plenty of time for chewing and mixing the
food with saliva, because it sees nothing before it which it likes
better and which it wants to get after finishing the pie. Perhaps it
plays half the time with its knife and fork, enjoying freedom and the
pleasure of eating. After it has finished pie, etc., it begins at
potatoes, etc. All this time it eats leisurely, instead of
gluttonously, as before. In this natural order of selecting food we
gain one other important perhaps the most important point, which is,
that the child is always coming to something that it likes some what
less well, which will cause it to stop eating just when it has enough.
[A]ll the social and industrial features are so intimately connected
with and dependent upon one another that a person can not even follow
a healthful course of eating and drinking under a viciously arranged
social and industrial organization. With out an abundant supply of all
kinds of food, we continually hanker for the scarce varieties, and
when we occasionally obtain a supply of them, our appetite has been
perverted by long abstinence, and overeating is invariably the result.
Our economic system produces abundance of varieties of food; you have
a scarcity of many articles. A good social system puts no constraint
on the child nor on the adult as to the manner of eating, so that the
appetite will always be a safe guide. Our day s labor is so short and
our restaurant eating conveniences so perfect that we eat whenever our
system calls for it. Your work between meals is so hard and so long
that you generally become unduly fatigued, which impairs digestion.
Again, we have always plenty of leisure time for eating, while many of
you have almost to run and eat.
CONTENTS
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