Education in America 5. G. C. Roche, III

EDUCATION IN AMERICA GEORGE CHARLES ROCHE III 5. Disciplineor Disaster7 MODERN MAN'S collapse of values and intel1ectual decline must be attributed at least in part to his undisciplined nature. In no other age have men seemed so unwilling to exercise or accept any restraint upon individual appetite. We no longer seem to know how to dis cipline our young, perhaps because we no longer know how to dis cipline ourselves. If we could un cover the philosophic underpin nings of this nondiscipline, much of what is happening today in our educational structure would perDr. Roche is Director of Seminars for the Foundation for Economic Education. He has taught history and philosophy in college and maintains a special interest in American edu cation. haps become more understandable - and less acceptable. Schools, of course, are not solely to blame for the collapse of values and discipline in our society. Yet, at a time when individuals cry out for spiritual meaning and direc tion in their lives, all too many of our schools seem to play down the role of discipline, pinning their hopes upon more elaborate physi cal facilities, more of the "self expression" and "recreation" that already reflect the undisciplined values of our age.

If we fail to sow the seeds of values and of discipline among our young, we should not be surprised at the harvest. As Albert Jay Nock 101 102 THE FREEMAN February phrased it in The Theory of Edu cation in the United States: Nature takes her own time, some times a long time, about exacting her penalty - but exact it in the end she always does, and to the last penny. It would appear, then, that a society which takes no account of the educable person, makes no place for him, does nothing with him, is taking a considerable risk; so considerable that in the whole course of human experience, as far as our records go, no society ever yet has taken it with out coming to great disaster. To educate the young in proper values and proper self-discipline is not unduly complicated. Chil dren have no stronger urge than to be "grown up," and are quick to imitate the adult behavior they see around them. The inculcation of proper values and proper self discipline requires that we act as we wish our children to act. If we would discipline our children, we begin by disciplining ourselves.

But, here is the problem: How can we expect the exercise of self discipline by parents who are themselves products of a permis sive educational system? The sound idea that a child's interests should be taken into account in planning an educational program has been twisted to mean that a child should be given whatever he wants. Parents first abandon to the schools the responsibility for teaching values and discipline; the schools in turn reply that disci pline and value-education can best be left to the children themselves. Small wonder that children rebel when thus abandoned by their elders. Much of the revolt against authority came, in the wake of World War 1. The 1920's saw the crystallization of an attitude which totally rejected any stand ard outside the self. Freudian psy chologists insisted that restraint of any natural desi:re is bad. The "new era" theorists taught us that art was the unplanned result of a head-on collision between the artist's personality and the me dium of his work. The profes sional educationists made the cycle complete in telling us that our young should do only what they wish to do. Such evidences of anti discipline, in psychology, in art, and above all, in education, are now so commonplace that we take them for granted. All of this has gone hand in hand with the sub jugation of intellect to emotion, impulse, and instinct.

Freedom Becomes License A certain balance of freedom and order is essential, not only in education but in all human en dea vor. The importance of free dom in the educational process has already been discussed at length.

1969 DISCIPLINE OR DISASTER? 103 But the peculiar conception of "freedom from" rather than "free dom for" carries with it a rejec tion of all the values and inner disciplines which are necessary to give freedom any real meaning. Today "freedom" has a quality tending suspiciously toward what an earlier generation would have called "license." "Do what you want when you want to do it," modern society tells its young, and then is surprised when the young do just that! One of the-ultimate contrasts that presents itself in a subject of this kind is that between habit as conceived by Aristotle and nature as conceived by Rousseau. "The first great grievance of the critical humanist against Rousseau is that he set out to be the individualist and at the same time attacked analy sis, which is indispensable if one is to be a sound individualist. The second great grievance of the humanist is that Rousseau sought to discredit habit which is necessary if right anal ysis is to be made effective. "The only habit the child should be allowed to form," says Rousseau, "is that of forming no habit." How else is the child to follow his bent or genius and so arrive at full self-expression? The point I am bringing up is of the ut most gravity, for Rousseau is by com mon consent the father of modern ed ucation. To eliminate from education the idea of a progressive adjustment to a human law, quite apart from temperament, may be to imperil civiliza tion itself. For civilization (another word that is sadly in need of Socratic defining) may be found to consist above all in an orderly transmission of right habits; and the chief agency for securing such a transmission must always be education, by which I mean far more of course than mere school ing. 1 Babbitt was right, of course; learning is rapidly declining in most of our schools, through a steady erosion of standards, in tellect, and discipline. The late President Eliot of Harvard epito mized the tendency of our time when he insisted, "A well-instruct ed youth of eighteen can select for himself a better course of study than any college faculty, or any wise man who does not know his ancestors and his previous life, can possibly select for him ....

Every youth of eighteen is an in finitely complex organization, the duplicate of which neither does nor ever will exist." The liber tarian, of course, centers his case upon the individual, upon a per sonality whose very uniqueness necessitates freedom of choice; but the libertarians must also help to provide a proper value struc ture within which that choice takes place, else the choice itself becomes meaningless. It is such a 1 Irving Babbitt, Rousseau and Ro manticis1n, p. 292.

104 THE FREEMAN February meaningless choice to which Presi dent Eliot and most modern edu cationists have condemned our young people. In Irving Babbitt's phrase, "The wisdom of all the ages is to be· as naught compared with the inclination of a sopho more." Underlying this willingness to allow the young person to pick and choose without discipline or direc tion is the tacit assumption that no body of knowledge exists as a proper explanation of the human condition. The great point becomes riot to teach knowledge, but to teach students. If no standards ex ist, how can they be passed on to the young? Simply, it may be called the phi losophy of "doing what comes natur ally." At the intellectual level, for example, it is held that there is some magic value in the uninhibited and uninformed opinion if freely expressed. And so discussion groups are held in the grade schools and the high schools on such subjects as "What do you think about the atom bomb?" or "teen-age morality" or "banning Lady Chatterley's Lover"

or "implementing freedom among un derprivileged nations" or what not. The poor little dears have scarcely a fact to use as ballast. But no matter. The cult of sensibility believes that continuing, free, uninhibited discus sion will ultimately release the inher ent goodness of natural instincts and impulses. The fad for "brainstorming" has passed, but not the philoso phy behind it. 2 Today it seems to be assumed that any opinion whatsoever is justified so long as it is held with sufficient sincerity -and emotional fervor. One shares with Irving Babbitt the feeling that "perhaps the best examples of sincerity in this sense are to be found in in sane asylums." In part, this endless capacity for "dialogl,le" and "the open mind" stems from the same philo sophic roots producing our decline of standards and decline of intel lect. Unless the individual finally uses that open-mindedness as a preparation for the final act of judgment and selection, that is, uses his free inquiry and fact gathering as a means of finally reaching a conclusion, then open mindedness becomes only the drafty, valueless cavern through which blow the cold winds of de cline and death.

A society unwilling to disci pline its thinking and its young is a society doomed to extinction. A Disciplined Elfort Required for the Education of Leaders Good or bad leaders will always be with us, and no amount of Rousseau's "General Will" or ~ Calvin D. Linton, "Higher Education: The Solution - or Part of the Problem ?" Christianity Today, Feb. 16, 1968.

1969 DISCIPLINE OR DISASTER? 105 democratic faith in numerical ma jorities can change that fact. We will be no better than the quality of the leaders within our society, and the quality of leadership in a democracy will be no higher than the level of popular understanding permits. Unfortunately, a low level of understanding is foredoomed in a society lacking a disciplined edu cational structure. We seem unwilling to accept the discipline of genuine language study. Many future voters cannot tell the meaning of such words as grammar, logic, or rhetoric, much less use or appreciate the skills involved. The study of history has fared little better. Through mod ern "social studies," the sobering truth of history has been carefully concealed from our young. Man's achievements and his failures, the painful reality of the fate await ing the self-indulgent society and the self-indulgent individual, have been carefully buried in reams of uninformed nonsense centering on "group dynamics" or misinformed propaganda slanting the student toward collectivism as a means of solving all our "social problems."

All too many of the subj ects taught to America's young people reflect this headlong flight from any meaningful discipline of the mind. A society which thus edu cates its leaders may expect rough sledding ahead. "Progressive Education" at Work The lack of discipline noted in our educational institutions stems from both external and internal weaknesses. Many modern educa tors cannot control or properly di rect their students, nor can they display the internal discipline of mind and heart to control their own intellectual and spiritual be havior. Small wonder that those teachers who are themselves un disciplined prove such poor ex amples to the young. Genuine creative capacity in volves more than the natural tal ent of a child. A properly disci plined atmosphere must surround the child to allow his creative ca pacities to come to light. Children cannot be creative in a vacuum, but a vacuum is exactly what we provide when our. teachers are drawn from a philosophic system denying standards and discipline.

One of the last century's great commentators on education, Mat thew Arnold, once remarked: It is ... sufficiently clear that the teacher to whom you give only a drudge's training, will do only a drudge's work, and will do it in a drudge's spirit: that in order to en sure good instruction even within narrow limits in a school, you must provide it with a master far superior to his scholars. 3 3 G. H. Bantock, Freedom and Author ity in Education, p. 98.

106 THE FREEMAN February It should go without saying that a vast number of America's teach ers are anything but drudges; many of them show great self discipline and high standards, which they constantly reflect in the educational experience they are attempting to impart to our young people. Even so, we find far too many teachers of the other sort, lacking discipline and lack ing standards. Moreover, even our best teachers are severely handi capped by an educational struc ture whose underlying philosophy minimizes proper discipline. Many proponents of progressive educa tion insist that learning be set aside in favor of the unreflective and spontaneous desires and atti tudes of the child. The child is to be encouraged to follow his own desires in what he studies. Intel lectualeffort is to be displaced by spontaneous "activity." Competi tion and a disciplined system of grading are to be shunned, since they imply superiority and in feriority. The child is assumed to be able to meet his own educa tional needs without external pres sures. In a word, we are to achieve education without discipline.

A Line of Least Resistance True education, of course, im plies discipline. The discipline of competition, the discipline of standards, the discipline of responsible adults who have deter mined what is of real and endur ing purpose, the discipline of con centration, these are among the essentials of true education. Any thing less soon leads to what Irv ing Babbitt described as a typical result of the "new approach" to learning: Having provided such a rich and costly banquet of electives to satisfy the "infinite variety" of youths of eighteen, President Eliot must be somewhat disappointed to see how nearly all these youths insist on flocking into a few large courses; and especially disappointed that many of them should take advantage of the elective system not to work strenu ously along the line of their special interests, but rather to lounge through their college course along the line of least resistance. 4 The new motto in education all too often seems to be "jack of all ideas, master of none" apparently implying that, if our young people dabble in enough subjects, never mind whether they ever master any particular subject, "educa tion" will somehow have taken place. Genuine enlargement of the mind presupposes sufficiently dis ciplined study to achieve a grasp of a subject. This must be coupled with the equally necessary disci pline of viewing all subjects as por4 Irving Babbitt, Literature and the American College, p. 35.

1969 DISCIPLINE OR DISASTER? 107 tions of a single reality expressive of human existence. An educa tional philosophy which never al lows the student to master any particular subject and which de nies the existence of universally applicable general principles is a system calculated to retard the mental growth of its pupils. We have become so concerned about providing "real life situations" in the classroom, so concerned about providing a cultural potpourri based on technological develop ments in radio, the movies, and television, that the young people educated in our system are no longer in touch with reality, very uncertain as to just who and why they are. Undermining the Teacher When no inviolable standards remain, it is natural that the teacher will no longer think of himself as being in authority. All discipline must go, since the teach er has no concepts to impart and is to function only as a leader, synchronizing the amorphous col lecti ve development of his par ticipants. Thus, external discipline joins internal discipline in the discard. In such a system, one of the keys for genuine education is lost. The relationship between the master and the pupil, between the one who has achieved discipline and the one who has yet to achieve it, ceases to exist. Also lost is much of the traditional authority and prestige of the teacher.

The child-centered school may be attractive to the child, and no doubt is useful as a place in which the little ones may release their inhibitions and hence behave better at home. But educators cannot permit the students to dictate the course of study unless they are prepared to confess that they are nothing but chaperons, su pervising an aimless, trial-and-error process which is chiefly valuable be cause it keeps young people from do ing something worse. The free elective system as Mr. Eliot introduced it at Harvard and as Progressive Educa tion adapted it to lower age levels amounted to a denial that there was content to education. Since there was no content to education, we might as well let students follow their own bent. They would at least be inter ested and pleased and would be as well educated as if they had pursued a prescribed course of study. This overlooks the fact that the aim of education is to connect man with man, to connect the present with the past, and to advance the thinking of the race. If this is the aim of education, it cannot be left to the sporadic, spon taneous interests of children or even of undergraduates. 5 Social Effects 01 the "New Education"

Most civilized men have appre ciated the fact that they must de:> Robert M. Hutchins, The Higher Learning in America, Pp. 70-71.

108 THE FREEMAN February cide certain things for their chil dren, at least until the children attain sufficient capacity to decide for themselves. True freedom is the freedom of self-discipline, a freedom to choose within accept able standards and values. Take away the values and standards, take away the discipline, and meaningful freedom is taken away as well. In the education of our future leaders, we might well remember that men without moral disci pline, men who deny any allegiance to standards higher than them selves, are likely to become leaders or to follow leaders who stand for nothing but brute force. As mod ern educationists struggle to "free" man from the old "limit ing" standards, they justify their stance with constant reference to the democratic way of life. Any attempt to impose standards is thus labeled "undemocratic." It is worth remembering that democ racy is a political concept and that all applications of that concept to other aspects of human life, edu cation included, are the tacit ad mission that the architects of the new order intend that all values will ultimately be political values.

In all of the endless talk about "growth" that fills our discussion of education, we steadfastly refuse to answer the one central question, growth for what pur pose? "Growth for what purpose?" Weare told at various times that the goals include "self-expression," "life adjustment," "adaptation to daily living." The school seems to have become a center in which the individual is told that he will be subjected to no disciplinary stand ards, that he can be "himself." How does the student realize himself? By adj usting to his peers and to the society around him. He must learn to "get along." He fulfills himself in his capacity to work with others . . . in and of himself he is nothing. If he has strivings or attitudes not in con formity with the world around him, he must "adjust." He, not society, is in the wrong. The in dividual, stripped of the standards of self-discipline which would al low him to be his unique self, is thus educated in the new value of conf ormi ty.

How can this conformity be de scribed except as a mass of stand ardized mediocrity? How can such a society hope to generate the leadership necessary for its con tinued existence? The choice, fi nally, is between discipline and disaster. ~ The next article of this series will discuss "The Perpetual Adolescent."