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 23 - Education: How to Teach the Different Branches1
(continued)]
[W]e always teach by example, keeping in mind that hygienic lessons
which are good for children are also good for older persons, and what
is not worth doing for adults is not worth doing for our children.
In dressing, like in everything else, we make health and comfort our
guide. Those decorations and ornaments which put the body most
completely in harmony with the phenomena of life and health are
esteemed the highest by us.
No one can, by the appearance of a per son, tell the miner and
engineer from the editor and clerk, nor the washerwoman from the music
teacher. All are wealthy, educated and refined. One kind of labor is
considered as honorable as another, provided it be productive labor,
the only kind we now have. We have neither master nor servant,
therefore, we have no distinction in dress. All have plenty to dress
in the height of fashion.
In a state of high culture and a well-developed esthetic sense, the
mind appreciates variety, accompanied with health, convenience,
comfort and beauty. Some suits and garments are for the fore part of
the day, some for labor, some for leisure, some for the latter part of
the day. Some are almost tights; such as, for some games,
bicycle-riding, etc.; some are very loose and thin during hot weather;
some for the public parlors, some for the halls, some for visiting,
some for travel, some for each occupation; some for the private
apartment, when alone; some for the private, apartment, when one has
company, etc.
We teach that healthful outdoor exercise is absolutely essential for
the highest physical and mental development and for the maintenance of
good health. We think it is one of the most invigorating forms of food
a person can take; and we teach how to take it on the same principle
as we teach other things. The adults practice it in the presence of
the young, and the child naturally takes to it by imitation and
pleasure under our favorable conditions.
[W]e do not govern our children by physical force. All our buildings
and other things are as much constructed and arranged with a view to
suit and accommodate the wants and desires of the child as the wants
and desires of the adult. Our railroads and motor-lines are all
fenced, so that no danger can befall them there. We have no open wells
and cisterns. The doors and gates are nearly all self-closing and
noiseless. Lamps and matches are rarely used. Our principal aim is to
provide a suitable school-house, and then let the child's environment
impress it with useful information.
As our children grow older, they begin to do light work, both in the
house and outdoors, which serves as part of the physical exercise
necessary for full development and vigorous health. This daily work we
generally keep up as long as we live. Not that we are obliged to do so
on account of poverty, but, because by long, delightful practice our
daily labor has become pleasurable exercise. The work is easy, the day
is very short, and the exercise of it, we believe, conduces to the
fullness of life. Work, as we have seen under these conditions,
gradually changes into play. Your people here despise and condemn
labor so, because your working-day is so long, your labor so hard,
your conveniences so few, your pay so small, and your bosses so cruel
and dictatorial. That is, your manual and industrial school-houses are
not well-furnished. You have careless, incompetent directors and
teachers in these branches of instruction.
[O]ur social and industrial system allows us plenty of leisure time
for sports, during the day; we need not steal it from our night s
rest, like you do at your night dances and parties, at which a large
number dance, drink, and not infrequently debauch all night and work
hard all next day. No one could induce us to do that. About eight or
nine o clock in the evening, we all retire to rest in our own private
apartments, and soon after everything is as quiet and silent as death.
We have long ceased to study and commit to memory … trivialities
of history. We endeavor to develop historical principles, which enable
us to unlock the future by the experience of the past. The
philosophical part of history is the valuable portion.
All sentient beings are creatures of circumstances, over which they
have no control. None of us can act beyond the sphere of our highest
endowments. We must either act within this limit or be quiescent. Our
personal and ancestral environment impresses us with intelligence, and
that organized intelligence is the motive force that impels all of us
and all of you to act in accordance as we are connected with the chain
of antecedents to our present being. A longer lapse of time and more
favorable conditions have made us what we are, and, no doubt, the same
conditions, as they come to pass, will bring you where we are now. So
please bear in mind that all the comments I shall make concerning your
affairs and institutions are made from a sincere motive, and not with
a view of casting reflections.
Your system of education is too much confined to a cheerless
building, which you call a school-house. That these public
school-houses are unnatural, cheer less places, may be evidenced by
the fact that scarcely any of your adults and parents ever visit them;
for, if they were natural and agreeable, they certainly would. The
management of your so-called school is too much in the hands of
scheming politicians. You employ, as a rule, cruel, incompetent
teachers. You resort to physical force first, to support the public
school by compulsory taxation ; and, secondly, to procure the pupil s
attendance, both of which are, in our view, injurious, unjust and
despotic. In a good system of education, the school-room is perfectly
free, natural and co-extensive with the sphere of man s activity. In a
successful school every one is teacher and pupil at the same time!
Our children scarcely ever cry. We do not teach them to cry. We give
them the very best of care and attention, but let them know from the
beginning that they can not only not accomplish anything by crying,
but that they, by crying, bring upon them selves the displeasure of
all their companions. We never take a child or infant because it
cries. And if it should begin to cry while in our lap, we would
immediately put it down and not take it again until it puts on a
smiling face. Thus, we teach our infants and children from the
earliest beginning to employ pleasant, agreeable means to accomplish
their purposes, while your infants and children, with your vicious
methods of teaching, accomplish their objects by setting up a cry or
bawl, and sometimes this cry includes the greater part of the day and
night.
[T]he period of infancy is continually lengthened by a rise of
intelligence up to a certain point, and that from this maximum period
it slowly begins to shorten, as the higher parental wisdom and truer
affections make the child constantly more self- reliant by throwing
it, under favorable conditions and at an earlier age, more and more on
its own resources and independence, by which all the child s faculties
are harmoniously unfolded by an earlier independent course of action.
If you would never give any encouragement or attention to a
complaining tattler, there would be no such tattlers and complainers.
It is the encouragement and success with which the complainer meets at
your hands which make him a complainer, and the greater his success
the more frequently he will resort to it.
A child, in order to become the completest person, must, from the
beginning, be left free to adjust its own social affairs. All parental
and governmental interference and paternalism is a hindrance in the
process of attaining the highest social plane.
Our children go when and where they please. They are capable and
experienced because they have been taught in the school of
self-reliance from infancy. We, as adults, have fitted our social
conditions so that our self-reliant child can easily grapple with any
emergency that it might meet. We keep no places below the dignity of a
child s presence. Our children never tell fibs because we offer no
premium on a lie. We never scold nor flog them. They know this, and
do, therefore, never hesitate to say what they did and what they want.
We treat them as children that must grow in wisdom by a wider
experience. They never tattle or complain of their companion s conduct
because we never pay any attention to their complaints. We have no
cry-babies and our children are always models of affection to all,
because they receive the kindest possible treatment and the widest
possible freedom consistent with their physical powers.
Let us see, then, whether we can point out a few defects.
1. As a rule, you demand your children, little and big, formally to
attend your public schools for six hours a day. During these six hours
you demand or force them to be quiet and silent; and as a child for
its full development requires constant activity in all directions,
these demands are an infraction against the laws of youthful life and
health.
2. To create a desire for inquiry should be the chief aim in the
acquisition of an education; and the development of this desire you
greatly frustrate or positively prevent by demanding your children in
your public schools to study just such branches at just such times.
From personal experience you well know that we do not always desire to
do the same thing at the same time. No one can, therefore, prescribe
an agree able and useful course of study for another. You as adults
would, no doubt, fiercely remonstrate against the enforcement of such
an order, yet you impose it on your children with impunity and with an
air of apparent duty.
3. Children who have been kept quiet and silent, like you keep them
in your so-called school-rooms for a disagreeable length of time,
become, when set at liberty, rude, boisterous and noisy. That is the
reason why your school-grounds, when the pupils during recess are at
play, are such loud, rude, disgusting places. The artificially pent-up
vitality is overflowing its banks. Thus by the very method by which
you intend to make your children kind, cultivated and refined, you
actually make them cruel, uncultivated and boisterous. Now let us not
forget that all these defects lie at the very foundation of your
public school system and are entirely invisible to all superficial
observers.
4. When many pupils like you have in your school buildings are, after
recess, demanded to come into the school-room immediately after the
ringing of the bell, or other signal, they, for want of time and
convenience of cleaning their shoes, rush in regardless of dust and
mud. This conduct and habit make children very indifferent and
careless of personal order and cleanliness.
5. Your public school-rooms also cause your children to grow
disorderly and indifferent for want of proper conveniences. Many of
your schools require pupils to use paper for all their written work,
but schools provide no waste baskets or other receptacles for the
waste paper. As a natural consequence the waste paper is generally
dropped on the floor. This tends to create a habit of disorder and
carelessness, just the opposite of what you endeavor to impart.
6. Perhaps as much as three-fourths of all your studying in your
school-room and colleges is largely done for the direct object of
recitation, examination and for obtaining diplomas. The evidence in
support of this proposition is that one seldom meets a pupil in your
public schools who cares enough for the intrinsic worth of knowledge
that he will study when no lessons are assigned. A pupil who has a
desire for knowledge and studies for the pleasure the intrinsic value
of it gives, would study even better when no lessons are assigned, for
then he is free to choose his own branches. Your graduations have also
a very evil effect. They tend to impress on the graduates the idea
that they have finished their education and need, therefore, no
further inquiry. It appears very clear to me that a vast majority of
your graduates would have a much better education in their maturer
years if they had not been affected by the graduation process. Thus
you see that the assignment of lessons, examinations, graduations and
diplomas all tend to blight self- inquiry, the only highway by which
one can reach the highest and noblest attainments.
7. Your recitation and the showing process, which, as a rule, you
recommend so highly, instill into the mind of the pupil the idea and
habit that they can do nothing without the assistance of parent and
teacher. Thus the child is gradually taught to make no personal effort
without the telling and showing processes, and the consequence is,
that it kills nearly all originality and self-reliance in the child.
8. Your compulsory attendance, whether enforced by parents or state,
tends to make fibbers and schemers out of many pupils who desire to be
excused before school lets out, or who desire to be excused by parent
or state. It is natural that after a pupil s mental faculties are
exhausted for the time being, it can not continue to pursue its
studies without great bodily and mental injury. Under these conditions
the child s healthful instinct generally prompts it to cease study
ing, after which it begins its mischievous pranks as you call them. It
is a well known fact that all minds are not endowed with like power of
endurance, yet your public schools, as a rule, make no provision for
such difference of mental endurance. You compel all to attend school
for six hours daily. Thus your compulsion tends to make fibbers and
miscreants; it injures the child s health, prevents the spontaneous
development of its faculties and sets it against learning.
9. Probably about one-fourth of the pupils attending school are what
you call bad boys and bad girls. They have little or no desire to
attend school and to study the assigned lessons and branches at such a
time and for such a length of time. They greatly annoy those who do
have a taste for study, and their compulsory attendance constantly
causes an increased repugnance for the school-room and for all the
work connected with it. They become thoroughly disgusted with all
learning. Thus, instead of creating a pleasurable desire for learning,
you do not even let it sprout by giving them a little freedom and
opportunity.
10. We have seen that not all pupils have a like mental endurance.
Some are mentally exhausted be fore others. The mental endurance of
the same pupil also differs from day to day. Again, some delight in
study one day and dislike it the next. But your school week consists
of five days and your school day consists of six hours, no matter what
the other conditions are. The pupil who is through studying must
remain just as long as the one who is not. Thus you are largely
obliged to enforce attendance and order on those pupils who are not in
a mood for mental work at that time. This condition of things
necessarily causes a constant friction between teachers and pupils. It
makes a cruel, crabbed, despotic teacher and a ruthless, stubborn
pupil. I believe this to be one of the reasons why so many of your
professional teachers are so overbearing, cruel and despotic, caring
so little for the rights, freedom and welfare of others. My profession
has called me to many of your teachers associations, and I am sorry to
say that, as a rule, I have invariably found these assemblies composed
of very narrow-minded men and women. As a rule, they have very little
idea of freedom, equity, and the psychological principles upon which
all successful instruction must be based. They generally hoot at any
truth that does not lie within their narrow path of a little
impractical book-learning. But this is all natural and inevitable when
we understand the circumstances which produce your public
school-teacher. To begin with, the teacher must generally get his
position by more or less scheming, and when he has secured it he
becomes a kind of lord and master over his pupils. If he is a
principal or superintendent, his assistant teachers are generally more
or less at his mercy. The assistants know this and often flatter him
in order to stand well in his estimation. The less learned patrons
also look upon him as a distinguished personage. This subordination of
his companions, the absolute authority he exercises over his pupils,
his real or supposed learning, and other advantages make a kind of
baron out of him, and generally cover him more or less with cheap
vanity and ostentation. It also makes him very in tolerant, so that an
assembly of principals and superintendents who pretend to lead the
intellectual world, nearly always lack breadth and depth of learning.
They often know more Greek and Latin than they know of human nature
and the phenomena of the universe. Their narrow views seldom reach the
depth of man s psychical nature. They are nearly always dealing with
immediate superficial results and scarcely ever think about the real,
the fundamental, and the remote. They try to get rid of an effect
without touching the cause.
11. As the ability and aptitude of every pupil differs somewhat from
that of every other pupil, your classification must necessarily always
be more or less imperfect. A pupil that fits best in one class and
grade this week may fit best in another class next week.
12. It is a well-known fact that a person, whether young or old,
loses interest in a book by reading or studying it over and over. The
interest is keenest when we do not know what is to follow. Yet in your
public schools, you largely compel your pupils to go through the same
books again and again until they are completely disgusted with them!
This is more machinelike than humanlike, and tends to kill interest in
original and individual inquiry.
13. The management of your public schools is largely under the
control of politicians; and often unscrupulous, incompetent
politicians, who know very little about the psychical needs of man,
and who, not infrequently, care less for the interest and progress of
the school than they do for their re-election. We also all know that
man, in his rude beginnings and for ages after, is always blinded by
zeal, enthusiasm and patriotism. They have strewn the road of progress
with human skeletons; they have dyed the streams red with blood; they
have erected countless temples of fanaticisms; they have invented
countless instruments of torture; they have filled the land with
slaves and paupers; they have soiled the robe of Liberty with
multitudinous spots of intolerance ; they have filled the mind with
cruelty, bigotry and superstition, and they have fostered monopoly and
stifled equity.
14. The financial support of your public school rests on compulsory
taxation, and is, therefore, ultimately backed by an army. It
positively prohibits direct competition by taxing all private schools
out of existence. For example: A Catholic or a Protestant, who desires
to send his child to a private or parochial school, must pay double
taxes. He is first forced by the state to pay taxes in proportion to
the value of his property for the financial support of the public
school, and then, if he sends his children to a private or parochial
school, he must pay tuition in proportion to the number of children
sent. Thus you see that your state, on many points, is as intolerant
now as it was in the dark ages. It permits no private competition ; it
recognizes no individuality on these important points.
15. We have seen that the state allows no private competition in
school affairs. It employs its own teachers. All of us also know, if
we have ever given it a thought, that the church and state are quite
separated in theory, but not so much so in practice. The teachers of
your public school, who desire to retain their position, must sharply
and closely follow the course of study adopted directly by the state,
and indirectly by the church; and any teacher who deviates from that
course, or who attempts to improve on it, from knowledge gained by his
longer personal experience, is very liable to lose his position and be
branded a heretic and a rebel. Thus you see that thousands of your
best and most thoughtful public school teachers are prevented from
teaching their best thoughts and their noblest sentiments. Under the
head How the transition from the old to the new order of things was
accomplished, I shall tell you more about this last great evil.
Every one of these fifteen defects tend to make mere grown-up babies
of your young ladies and gentlemen. But let us not flatter ourselves
that these fifteen defects are all, for there are countless others
even too numerous to suggest, a few of which will suffice to
illustrate my meaning. You have too much book- learning as compared
with your practical teaching. Your school-work is nearly always too
difficult for young children of their mental capacity; it stunts the
youthful mind. Your crowded school-rooms, in which your so-called bad
boys and bad girls are often playing tricks, and in which some are
talking and reciting, are no fit places for study. Under these
conditions, the mind can not concentrate its powers on the subject to
be studied, etc., etc.
CONTENTS
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