ISI Books sent me a volume, The Superfluous Men: Conservative Critics of American Culture 1900-1945, for free. I love it when they do that. This book is the best one yet; it is full of fascinating stuff. It includes essays from George Santayana, Henry Louis Mencken, Irving Babbitt, and many more. One in particular caught my eye - because of my current research project, I suppose. It is entitled "American Education," by Albert Jay Nock. I quote it here, along with my own observations.

On its moral and social side, our educational system is indeed a noble experiment - none more so. In all the history of noble experiments I know of none to match it. . . . But unfortunately Nature recks little of the nobleness prompting any human enterprise.

This wording is very apropros. Horace Mann and the other founders of the common schools called universal, free public education an "experiment." American education of the last 150 years is unlike anything that ever came before. It was a noble attempt to remove original sin. As such, however, it was already doomed to failure when it met the realities of human life.

The whole trouble is that the American system from beginning to end is gauged to the run-of-mine American rather than to the picked American. . . . The root-idea, or ideal, of our system is the very fine one that educational opportunity should be open to all. The practical approach to this ideal, however, was not planned intelligently, but, on the contrary, very stupidly; it was planned on the official assumption that everybody is educable . . . our system says, let them all come, and we will scratch up some sort of brummagem opportunity for each of them. What they do not learn at school, the college will teach them; the university will go through some motions for them on what the college failed to get into their heads.

This is true. Instead of giving all smart kids, even poor ones, the ability to be educated, the American system insists that everyone must be educated somehow. Since there are lots more stupid than smart people, the standard sits at a level the average person can achieve. There is no push to excellence.

[An] immediate effect [of vocationalism] is the loss, in practice, of any functional distinction between formative knowledge and instrumental knowledge. Formerly a student gave up, in round numbers, the first twenty years of his life to formative knowledge; his pursuits during this time were directed exclusively toward the being and becoming. This was the stated business of the school and college, and they kept him so busy at it that he hardly knew there was such a thing as instrumental knowledge in the world. He got his introduction to that later, at the university or technical school, where first he began to concern himself with the doing and getting.

Indeed. Youth nowadays hardly have a moment's reflection to consider who they are. I think this is the fundamental reason why most homeschoolers, even if they didn't realize it, originally pulled their children from the public schools. They sensed that their children were being harmed as people. This gets wrapped up in the whole central idea of American "democracy," because many people consider public education an essential element of democracy. Officials think that education is needed to unify a pluralistic society. Then the question is if people are taught to love their country or to be dependent on it. Those are two different emotions. One inspires firy devotion and action, the other apathy. But to truly love a country, a person must know that his country loves him. He must know who he is himself, and he must feel that he is respected and enjoyed in his country the way he is. He must have room to move and act. In short, he has to discover himself before he can really be patriotic. That is, I think, why homeschoolers are so politically active compared to the general public.

I could go on. There's lots more. But I need to save it for another post.  ¶ 8:18 AM