THE WESTERN AMERICAN
Education for Politics
By Dr. Edward O. Sisson, Professor of Philosophy at Reed College.
A DEMOCRACY, education is in
I N politics
and in politics to stay; in a
democracy everything of final moment,
at least so far as this world is con
cerned, is in politics, and in politics to
stay: indeed that is almost exactly what
democracy is. This does not mean that
we must keep on electing state super
intendents of instruction on a ballot
split up into party columns: it does
mean that education is everybody’s busi
ness, and everybody’s most important
business; that education is the su
preme concern of the city, the town and
the country, of the county, the state and
the nation, and that state and nation
must take definite and full responsibility
for it.
What caused the recent world war is
still the main problem for any mind that
wants to think below the crude surface
of human affairs. Germany undoubtedly
applied the torch, but who loaded the
magzine with explosives to wreck a
world and create havoc for ten genera
tions to repair? For four hundred years
Prussians, under the lead of the Hohen-
zollems, thought the Prussia that was
to be: then Prussia, still under the same
sinister guidance, thought the Germany
that was to be: then they began to
think the Germanized world that was to
be. At every point the image was thrust
into reality by energy, intelligence, tire
less action, unwavering persistence:
nothing was too huge to be resolved and
done; nothing was too small to be at
tended to; no one was too high or too
lowly to be conscripted, from Hohen-
zollern to baby in the cradle.
Europe furnished all the necessary en
vironment conditions. Religio-political
rivalries and hatred put on the Thirty
Years War to give fighting Prussia her
first chances and to sink deep into the
soul of middle Europe the agonies that
train for greatness; Austria’s weakness
and England’s and France’s greed set
the stage for a Frederick the Great; Na
poleon burned into Germany’s heart the
horror of being the victim in war and
the resolve henceforth to be invincible
and the aggressor; and finally the stif
ling competition of modern trade raised
the pressure to the explosive point; then
the war.
And all of this time, what of schools
and teachers and education? Go back
fifty years before the American Revo
lution, and you find in all Europe, per
haps in all the world, one king and only
one, busied with schools, school children,
teachers—old Frederick William of Prus
sia; he had two hobbies: his army, with
its giant Potsdam guards, six and seven
foot men, kidnapped from everywhere;
and the Prussian state schools, two hun
dred years before their time. Old
crabbed, crotchetty Frederick William
carved his initials on the army and the
school, and like letters cut in the hnric
of a tree, the Hohenzollern brand grew
unobliterated into the hugeness of great
er Prussia and the prussianized German
Empire. American educators in the nine
teenth and twentieth century, visiting the
German schools, dimly perceived but lit
tle understood the shadow of the old
monarch still covering the wonderful edu
cational machine, like the shadow of the
fabled Upas tree. “Listen to me, so that
you can tell me back what I am telling
you,” shouted a German teacher to his
cringing boys; and old Frederick Will
iam if he could have waked and heard
would have pinned a medal on that
teacher.
German schools did not educate: they
trained. Education engenders freedom:
it cultivates the power and habit of
thinking on all questions and thinking
to the end; it fosters the ambition to
plan and execute one’s own career and
participate freely in the common life of
man. Only a democracy dare educate:
and even democracies are yet far short
of the courage of their convictions.
An astounding yet almost unnoticed
educational fact: the Prussian minster
of education in 1841 banned the kinder
garten from the kingdom! This is the
very devil’s hoof of autocracy betraying
itself in the most unexpected place: why
ban the kindergarten? Was it not a
German institution with an incurably
German name, which almost defies
translation? Did it not coniine its ef
forts to babies under school age? Was
it not the dream of a harmless, inno
cent pious enthusiast? What was its
crime, that the mighty engine of the
Prussian government was turned against
it, that the royal “cultusminister” should
abolish it from its native soil? Yet the
minister was absolutely correct, for the
kindergarten in all its childlke inno
cence contained an antidote for Hohen-
zollernism; His Excellency probably
would have called it poison. That ele
ment was freedom: the kindergarten, by
its very name, was a place for children
to grow according to their spiritual na
ture; the only school Prussia could tol
erate was one in which children were
trained on the Prussian model, which
was vastly different from the spirit of
the kindergarten, or the Sermon on the
Mount either.
In brief, Prussia was educating, or at
least schooling, for politics. And Amer
ica must educate for politics: but, in
God’s name, how differently! The su
preme question is How? To this great
momentous question, big with fate, we
can not guess nor fake an answer; the
answer must be thought out and worked
out; and for this task the best brains
of America are none too good. How shall
American schools educate Americans
for American politics? Surely not as
Prussia trained Germans for Prussian
politics! But how? This is the ulti-
November, 19221
mate key to our whole system and opera-1
tion. If we fail in this, then success ini
the rest will be of less than no avail,
for it will render our ultimate downfall I
only the more tragic—as in the down
fall of Germany.
First, we must sense the fact that
this question is paramount, and that its I
answer will be decisive for all the rest. I
The Prussian minister in 1841 was ab
solutely correct and efficient in abolish
ing the kindergarten, just as the Prus
sian school master in 1904 was right ini
shouting to his boys “Listen to me, sol
that you can tell me back what I ami
telling you.” For the kindergarten was!
contrived to produce exactly what the
Prussian system did not want and could I
not tolerate; and the German teacher I
was the tool of the German state for pro-1
ducing minds that would say back what-1
evr the government told them. With
out this teacher, omnipresent for three!
centuries, August, 1914, could not have!
been what it was, for the Prussian au
tocracy and the Prussian army could not
have been what they were. So without!
a vastly different school system and!
teacher, America could not be what she!
is, and still less can she attain to what I
she is to be: for great though our past!
may be, who can doubt that our future!
is to be greater, more beautiful, morel
human, more truly American. The Dec
laration of Independence announced to I
the world the most abmitious and ideal
istic political plan ever drawn: we have I
only begun to build the actual structured
the task of the American school is to I
breed up the human elements which!
shall enter into the creation of the true
American.
A beginning has been made in the I
schools as well as in the government:
In 1870, when England was first putting!
her hand to public elementary schools!
the scientist Huxley proposed “an edu
cational ladder, with its foot in the gut
ter and its top in the university, up
which any boy might climb as far as I
his capacity and his ambition should I
lead him.” The public school system of I
the United States was the first appr oxi
mation the world ever saw of this!
dream of Huxley’s. That school system,!
reaching from primary grades to state!
universities, is the most democratic go
ing concern in the world today—this ini
spite of whatever faults and weaknesses!
it may suffer from, It is significant that I
when the homeland of the kindergarten I
banned it, America took it up; and we
must have eagerly carried its gracious I
influence upward in our schools, so that I
the primary grades of our schools to
day have outstripped the rest of the
system in their spiritual efficiency.
Education is the discovery and foster
ing of the truest character of the grow-1
ing individual. So the educator of al
nation has to divine and foster the deep-1
est essence and nature of the people. I
What is America? This is the supreme I
question for every sincere and earnest!
teacher. Without some true and ade
quate realization of this great idea, no