CRISIS IN EDUCATION
497
by the events in the southern states in connection with the Negro
problem. The administration in Washington intervened there, recog–
nizing correctly that the situation was not only intolerable but un–
constitutional. But what form did the intervention take? In order to
create a radical change-that is, a wholly new order of things-it
began with the children in the schools. All those participating in this
procedure were swayed consciously or unconsciously by the old Rous–
seauian conception that a new world could be founded by erecting it
like a miniature model in the world of children, that is, in the school,
and hoping that it would then go on developing naturally and auto–
matically like the children themselves. The plan of course did not work
because the administration had neither the intention nor the means
of taking the children away from their parents or of terrorizing or
indoctrinating anybody. Since it has failed in its attempt to persuade
the adults, it has confronted the children, without of course realizing
what it was doing, with a problem that the adults are incapable of
solving.
Now in respect to education itself the illusion arising from the
pathos of the new has had considerably more serious consequences
in
our own century. It has first of all made it possible for that com–
plex of modern educational theories, which originated in Middle
Europe and consists of an astounding hodgepodge of sense and non–
sense, to accomplish, under the banner of progressive education, a
most radical revolution in the whole system of education. What in
Europe has remained an experiment, tested out here and there in
single schools and isolated educational institutions and then gradually
extending its influence in certain quarters, in America about twenty–
five years ago completely overthrew, as though from one day to the
next, all traditions and all the established methods of teaching and
learning.
1
I shall not go into details. The significant fact is that for
the sake of certain theories, good or bad, all the rules of sound hu–
man reason were thrust aside. Such a procedure is always of great
and pernicious significance, especially in a country that relies so ex–
tensively on common sense in its political life. Whenever in political
questions sound human reason fails or gives up the attempt to supply
answers we are faced by a crisis; for this kind of reason is really that
I.
Here and in the following, I leave out of account all private schools and
especially the Catholic parochial schools.
