THE
SPIRIT OF MODERN
/ EDUCATION
By
B. F. ALLEN, A. M.
President of Lincoln Institute, State Normal, Industrial,
Agricultural and Mechanical College,
Jefferson City, Mo.
m
Delivered before the Boston Literary Society, the Bethel Literary Society,
Washington, D. C., the Missouri State Teachers' Association,
the Kansas City Monthly Teachers' Institute, and the
Alumni Association of Atlanta University.
The Spirit of Modern Education.
By
B. F. ALLEN
What we call progress in an individual, consists in
his passing through a series of ideals, each, in turn,
influencing his thought and guiding and directing his
actions. What we call progress in a nation, consists
in its substituting the higher and broader ideals for
the lower and narrower. Sparta, through education,
strove for courage; Athens trained for beauty; Rome
sought power to rule the world; Monasticism aimed at
piety, and the Renaissance at classical culture. We,
who live in the present, should know its problems,
know its responsibilities and contribute to its progress.
Had we been born in Europe, our problems would have
been those of the European, but since we have been
born in America, our problems must be American and
our methods of solving those problems must be Ameri¬
can also.
In other ages and climes the many toiled that the
few might be idle; the many were ignorant that the
few might be intelligent; the many were poor that the
few might be rich; the many were slaves that the few
might be free. The very foundation of our government
is liberty, granting equal rights to all and special
privileges to none. The aim, both immediate and
ultimate, of an ideal system of education in a country
like this is manhood and citizenship. It points out
that the power to will strongly and wisely, to love truly
and greatly, to appreciate and to estimate honestly
and fairly, is the greatest benefit which can be conferred
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by education. Those who can acquire this power, will
go away from the schools with the thought that educa¬
tion is not designed to make them seem greater to the
world, but is given them in order that the world and
all life and eternity may seem greater and richer and
more beautiful to them.
The spirit of modern education is progressive. It
recognizes the fact that the environments of the present
differ from the environments of the past, when the
conditions of life were not so broad and when the ideal
and the real were more sharply differentiated. It
realizes that we are living in an age which is experienc¬
ing the greatest awakening the world has ever known.
No other age has witnessed such rapid mental, moral
and commercial changes, and never before has mankind
advanced so rapidly in all the domains of human
thought and action. Competition has grown fiercer.
Personal rivalries and comparisons are closer. Many
of the old methods of carrying on business or con¬
ducting professional practices are now outmoded and
inefficient. Concerted effort has taken the place of
individual action. Skilled leadership and forethought
have become more and more in demand. Many a
man who might have risen to eminence in the last
generation is now condemned to obscurity. It takes
more wealth to make a man wealthy; it takes more
ability to make him able; it takes more learning to
make him learned, and it takes more culture to make
him cultured.
"We may fairly call this an age of synthesis,"
says President Hadley of Yale—"an age of putting
together what previous centuries have tended to keep
apart." It is an age of adjustment, an age in which
old things are passing away and all things are becoming
new with almost panoramic swiftness. Civilization
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has quickened its steps. "Hustle" is the slogan of the
hour. Everywhere is manifest this widening and con¬
solidating activity which will not be satisfied with
seeing things detached, but seeks to unite them and
make them a part of some large and harmonious whole.
We see this combination in the life of our body politic
as well as in the life of the individual..
We are in a transition period when new philosophy,
new political sciences, new views of education, new
industries, new ideals of civilization are rapidly ap¬
pearing. The education of today is a preparation for
the responsibilities of today, which must be under¬
taken with full training, equipment and courage.
Ethics exists for practice, culture for use and brains
for industry. Never did the world call with a voice
more commanding or more exultant than now it calls
for men and women of self-mastery. The age of the
dawdler, the dreamer, the man of leisure and the mere
scholar has passed. The new education aims to be less
scholastic and more humanitarian; aims less at culture
and more at utility. It is less individualistic and more
social. It means self-effort, self-support, and demands
a tithe of energy, time and thought expended in the
interests of one's fellows.
There is a passage in "Alice in Wonderland" which
well illustrates the spirit which dominates America
today. As you remember, when Alice found herself
in the domain of the Queen of the White Country, she
took a spirited run, then suddenly stopped and said,
"Why, here I am!" "Where did you expect to be?"
asked the queen. "In my country," said Alice, "when
one runs and runs and runs, he gets somewhere."
"Oh," said the queen, "in my country you have to
run and run and run to stay where you are."
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The spirit of modern education aims to prepare
boys and girls, not only for the things that are, but
also for the things that are to be. It is intensely
practical. Recognizing the necessity for semivo-
cational and vocational instruction, it has introduced
manual training, first, in the high schools and later
in the grammar schools; so that today every school
system in the country, from the rural school at the
fork of the road to the more pretentious in the towns
and villages, is placing greater emphasis upon material
with which to work with the hands. It emphasizes
the fact that economic efficiency is as important as
intellectual efficiency. It declares that every man who
is worth his salt is a worker of some sort. It was the
theory of the old education that the higher learning
was incompatible with manual labor. It is the teach¬
ing of the new education that manual labor is incom¬
patible with ignorance. The spirit of modern educa¬
tion aims to spiritualize labor and to dignify the
humbler walks of life. Virgil sang of arms and men,
but the song of modern education is of men and tools.
It recognizes no inequality of sex. Heaven and
earth must embrace to give birth to the Delian Twins—
why question whether the intellect of the man, Phoebus,
or the woman, Phoebe, be the superior? It provides
the highest training for woman. It invites her to
take up the work for which she is best fitted, whether
it be in the home, in the schoolroom, in politics, or in
any one of the trades and professions. In the west,
women are admitted to the state universities on equal
terms with the men, and some of the oldest and most
exclusive of the colleges of the east and of Europe are
opening their doors to them. The argument for the
separation of the sexes was that they differ in intel¬
lectual capacity and moral power. To this, modern
5
education answers, "That is the reason why they
should be educated together—that they may under^
stand one another better and be better prepared for
the realities of life, where the attrition of man with
man in society, in politics and in business will call
into use all the strength of body and mind that school
life is able to give."
The spirit of modern education lays stress upon
the necessity of training specialists, so that our men
and women will be fitted for the various pursuits of
life, whether in the office or in the store, in the work¬
shop or in the home; but it does not lose sight of the
fact that a knowledge of literature is necessary to a
knowledge of life. Literature is, indeed, but a re¬
flection of life, but it affords man such a view of his
own history as he can come by nowhere else. It is a
magic mirror in which man can see himself as he was
yesterday and thereby be made to realize why he is
what he is today, and why he should be what he must
be tomorrow. History, when rightly read, is a human¬
izing agent, and literature is, in truth, but crystallized
history—the epitome of man's experience. Modern
education believes with Chauncey Depew that one
should be "so broadly cultured, and, at the same time,
so practically informed, that when he comes out and
enters the law, which will narrow him; the pulpit of
his sect, which may make him to some extent a bigot;
upon the journalistic career, which will develop the
partisan; upon the medical or scientific course, which
will absorb his attention and enthusiasm from other
pursuits; the healthful and never-ceasing influence of
the broad and general realization of his liberal educa¬
tion, will prevent him from ever becoming completely
narrow, or bigoted, or partisan, or blind." "Though
we admire the skill, we pity the limitations of the man
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of one idea," says one writer. "Beware of the man of
one book," says Montaigne, "he may be a hard man
to encounter, but his interests and sympathy will be
as narrow." Napoleon appointed Laplace minister
of finance, and though a great mathematician, Laplace
failed. He carried the spirit of infinitesimal calculus
into every affair of state and could see things from no
other point of view. The spirit of modern education
discourages, not learning, but pedantry. It attaches
importance, not to the outward show of education,
but to the efficiency of what has been learned. "Once
a dunce, void of learning but full of books," says
Thomas Fuller, "flouted a library-less scholar with
these words—'Salve, doctor sine libris;' but the next
day the scholar coming into the jeerer's study crowded
with books,—'Salvete, libri, saith he, sine doctor.' "
Modern education teaches that books are to be used
as tools are to be used, for the purpose of accomplishing
something worth while. It does not believe that to
divorce the head from the hands is beneficial to either.
The spirit of modern education is altruistic;
thoughtful of the rights and feelings of others. "Freely
ye have received, freely give," is its motto. It teaches
that service is the noblest thing in life. Under the
old system, a boy could go to college and come out a
loafer, an idler, a mean and selfish dreamer. Under
the new, he comes out saying with Thomas Guthrie:
"I live for those who love me,
For those who know me true,
For the heavens that bend above me
And the good that I might do.
For the wrongs that need resistance,
For the cause that lacks assistance.
For the future in the distance
And the good that I can do "
Prof. Henry Van Dyke of Princeton summed it
up beautifully and with the best of good sense when
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he told a Harvard graduating class that there is a
loftier ambition than that of standing high in the
world—it is to stoop down and lift mankind a little
higher. There is a nobler character than that which
is merely incorruptible—it is that character which acts
as an antidote and preventive of corruption. Freely
to speak the words which bear witness to righteousness,
truth and purity; patiently to do the deeds which
strengthen virtue and kindle hope in your fellow men;
generously to lend a hand to those who are trying to
help mankind—this is the spirit of modern education.
Modern educators believe it is the right of every
child to receive an education according to his capacity.
The aim is not so much to find out how capable a child
may be as to find out whether or not he is capable at
all. The deaf, the blind and the feeble-minded are
provided for, and special efforts are made to point out
the way, to lead, to guide and direct them; to instill
into their minds a love of work, a desire for independ¬
ence and a spirit for real life which will enable them to
secure a wealth of happiness through self-support.
The delinquents and incorrigibles are not forgotten.
They are taught to obey and to respect authority. In
some states every child is compelled by law to attend
school until sixteen years of age. Truant schools and
parental schools are established in some places, and
every effort is made to prevent truancy and crime in
children by furnishing free baths, pleasant surround¬
ings and good wholesome lunches at small cost. For
example, in Philadelphia, children attending several of
the public schools are able to buy nourishing soups,
chicken pie, creamed chicken on toast, chicken salad,
beef croquettes and many other items at a cost of but
five cents per item. For those who wish something
lighter and for the pupils in the kindergarten, crackers
8
and milk or bread and milk are provided at a cost of
one cent per item. Careful observance of the effect
of this food upon children, used only to the heavy
greasy foods popular in the Italian quarter, has led
the educators of that city to come to the conclusion
that the matter of diet is a very important one in
bringing a child into a proper condition of body and
mind for school work.
The accepted classification of child life is: Under
seven years of age, infancy; from seven to fourteen,
childhood; from fourteen to twenty-one years, youth.
Modern education does not hold a child responsible
for his acts the first seven years of his life; it believes
that during this period the child must be directed.
And in this, modern education agrees perfectly with
the Roman Catholic Church. The same attention
given during the period of infancy must be continued
during the period of childhood. Dr. G. Stanley Hall,
in his valuable work on "Adolescence," says that
reason, true morality, religion, sympathy, love and
aesthetic enjoyment are slightly developed during this
period. Children are especially apt to become rest¬
less from the thirteenth to the fifteenth year—that is,
between the ages of twelve and fourteen, and to want
to become independent. "At this period," says Dr.
Hall, "youth attempts to carry out every impulse,
loves nothing more than abandon, and hates nothing
so much as restraint. "Great care must be taken
of children at this age that they may not be alien¬
ated from their teachers and come to regard their
studies as unqualified burdens. Robert Burton, in his
"Anatomie of Melancholy," ascribed as one of the
chief causes of melancholia the disposition of tutors
and teachers to misunderstand the restless spirit of
adolescence. Frank Wedekind, in his powerful drama,
9
"Fruehlings Erwachen" (Spring's Awakening), draws
a vivid picture of one boy driven to suicide by the un¬
reasonable and excessive demands made upon his
youthful mentality by the severe German examina¬
tions, thus drawing particular attention to the ques¬
tion of youthful self-destruction—a question which
has agitated Germany for some years back, as, indeed,
it well might, since the mortality tables of Germany
show a frightfully high percentage of suicides by those
in their adolescent years.
Modern education takes all these conditions into
consideration and every effort is made to prepare
students to meet the demands of manhood and citizen¬
ship. Peabody, Slater, Daniel Hand, Stanford, Car¬
negie, John D. Rockefeller and Miss Jeanns were thor¬
oughly imbued with this spirit of charity, of help¬
fulness, toward others. They did not ask with Cain,
"Am I my brother's keeper?" but felt that their duty
to God could never be fully discharged so long as they
neglected their duty to man. They realized that there
is no other way to restrain vice and crime; to make
men peaceable and good citizens; to lead them into
correct habits of private life; to prepare them for this
new and exceptional age, and for the proud distinction
of being an American citizen, than to give them an
education which is broad and liberal in its scope. They
have given liberally of their means to help those who
are deserving but who are not financially able to cul¬
tivate their talents. Going to college, then, is no
longer a luxury which only the rich and well-to-do can
enjoy. Every department of education, from the
kindergarten to the university, is imbued with this
spirit of helpfulness. When men and women are
too busy to go to the school, the school comes to
10
them, through correspondence and university extension
courses.
The spirit of modern education is liberal. It
knows no race, creed, color or previous condition of
servitude. Where a man was born, who his parents
were, or from what college he holds a degree, are minor
considerations. The important question is: What can
he do? It was this spirit which made possible the
success of such men as Abraham Lincoln and Fred¬
erick Douglas. When we think of Von Moltke,
we think of Sedan and Metz and his triumphal
march into Paris. When we think of Wellington,
we think of Waterloo. The spirit of modern edu¬
cation says, "Whosoever will, may come and drink
of the water of life freely." To Negro manhood it says,
"Put more oak and less straw into your fiber; put more
iron in your blood; more wisdom in your head; more
honesty in your heart; more stamina in your conscience
and more courage in your soul, if you would help your
race to its proper place among the races of men." No
better proof of the existence of this liberal spirit is
needed than the fact that the best schools of the coun¬
try will receive Negroes as students and that the best
white men, both North and South, are unwilling to
close the door of hope against them. The sainted Dr.
J. L. M. Curry of Georgia, who was in his day one of
the greatest thinkers of the white South, voiced this
sentiment when he said, "Unless the white people, the
superior, the cultivated race, lift up the lower, both
will inevitably be dragged down. Eight hundred years
ago our ancestors were pirates, careless of law either of
God or man, and yet by culture and education and
discipline and free institutions and liberty of worship,
they have been made the people they are today. God's
throne is justice and right and truth; unseat Him from
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that throne and he becomes a demon; and so will sink
our Southern civilization into infamy if we are guilty
of cruelest injustice to an unfortunate race."
You who are imbued with the spirit of modern
education owe it to your race to set it the right example
in the proper modes of living, such as good homes and
home surroundings, better personal health and better
and more profitable plans of amusement and recrea¬
tion. You should help it to develop better personal
characteristics and habits, such as thrift, prudence,
sound judgment, energy, love of home and purity of
life. Whichever way we turn, we must be prepared
to win our way. On every hand there is something to
be done, and the world is looking for the man who can
do it. Make up your mind to be that man. If you
can do it well—especially if you can do it better than
the other fellow—your success is assured.
The spirit of modern education emphasizes the
teaching of good morals and general deportment in
our schools. One of the most important resolutions
passed at a recent session of the N. E. A. was one
petitioning the school authorities throughout the
country to include in their plans for our schools
some provision for the teaching of good morals and
gentle manners. Modern education believes that
moral discipline is as necessary as mental discipline;
that it is through moral discipline that character is
formed. Moral discipline trains a man to rise above
his impulses, to be self-contained, well-balanced. It
teaches him to try before the tribunal of his reason the
conflicting claims of pleasure and duty. It encourages
him to dismiss his fears by calmly facing them, and
shows him that his safety and his self-respect depend
upon straightforward truthfulness and sincerity, and
that his real danger lies in disloyalty to himself. Man
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is the only animal capable of a moral struggle or a
moral victory. He is master or slave, according to his
degree of self-control.
Modern education dignifies the work of teaching
and raises it to the level of the professions. Teaching
school is no longer a stepping-stone to something
higher or the last refuge of the failures in other pro¬
fessions. The time is coming—indeed, is almost here
—when it will no longer be said of a prominent man,
"he began life as a humble school-teacher." While
the spirit of modern education encourages the erection
of excellent buildings with the best facilities for ad¬
vancing the work of teaching, it believes that the
teaching itself is the important matter—that the
quality of the teaching is the pivotal point. It de¬
mands teachers who possess accurate scholarship,
pedagogical insight and rare skill in handling classes.
In Carlyle's phrase, it believes that the teacher should
be "a live coal rather than a dead cinder," and that
his instruction should aim at what Macauley calls
"intellectual emancipation." Under the spirit of
modern education the school as an institution is
changing. Its scope is being enlarged, its functions
multiplied, its opportunities and responsibilities for
the training of the mind, body and heart, greatly in¬
creased. It will no longer be a simple affair. As a
result of these changes, teachers will have to invest
more time, more money and more energy in their
preparation. This, of course, means larger salaries
for improved work, and the spirit of the times is in
favor of larger salaries.
The salvation of the Negro in this country must
be wrought through the spirit of modern education
which trains North, South, East and West to be pro¬
gressive, to be liberal, and to be altruistic. When this
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spirit shall have reached its true fruition there will
be no distinction of race, creed or color, but "man
to man the world o'er shall brothers be for a' that."
While our progress as a race has been made
with a rush of energy as marvelous as it was unex¬
pected, we have a host of things yet to do. We
cannot trust to luck. No section of the country
is longing for us; no one is waiting for us anywhere.
With all our boasted improvements, the lives of
many of our people are still dark, confused and bitter.
Some of them are groaning with want, partly because
of their own idleness or incapacity, no doubt, but
partly also because of environments which they cannot
escape. Some of them are slaves to passion and are
in bondage to vice; a condition partly due, perhaps,
to their own false choice, but partly also to lack of
good counsel and human sympathy. The Macedonian
cry is to you. Will you help them?
No man can rise above his ideal. Pygmalion was
a youth of ancient Greece who thought none of the
Greek maidens good enough or beautiful enough to
be his wife. None of them approached his ideal. His
life was loveless, joyless, and he lost faith in human¬
kind and in the very gods. In his lonely home he
began to chisel from marble the statue of a woman.
As he continued to work, his ideal developed; "as the
marble wasted, the image grew." The more he worked,
the more he loved the image he was creating from the
heart of the marble. When it was completed, it was
Pygmalion's ideal of a beautiful woman. He loved it;
he adored it; but it was a cold piece of stone. He
prayed to the goddess of beauty to give life to the
statue he loved so dearly, that he might realize his
own ideal and truly possess his own creation. The
goddess granted his prayer and the beautiful statue of
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Galatea sprang into life and his dream of beauty stood
before him in flesh and blood.
So let it be with your own ideal of culture and
beauty; be not content with graven images or ab¬
stract conceptions of what you desire. Work and
pray, like Pygmalion, and the day will come when
you must realize your ideal in life as you have seen it
in your dreams. The Negro men and women who are
to take the lead in race uplift, must find their way or
make it. If they cannot find their ideal in the Amer¬
ican white man, they must create it for themselves
out of their own race and out of the lifeless material
found in nature and in books.
There is, unfortunately, always a tendency upon
the part of an oppressed people to imitate the vices
rather than the virtues, of their oppressors. When
the Jews came out of Egypt, they brought with them
from the country of their conquerors, the Egyptians'
love of fleshpots; but they left behind them the Egyp¬
tian culture and the Egyptian civilization. The Ameri¬
can Indian did not become enthusiastic over the white
man's agriculture; but he took to the white man's
whiskey readily enough. This imitation of vices is folly,
but it is natural. A vice is more easily assumed than a
virtue, and it carries with it a sort of specious resem¬
blance to all others who are addicted to it. It is far
easier to match Poe's dissipation than to match his
genius; to ape the lechery of Caesar than to rival his
military achievement. Little boys who cannot appear
so large, so strong or so clever as men, often seek to
give an impression of manliness by repeating the pro¬
fane language which they hear upon the lips of adults.
This imitation of vices is natural, I say—natural, but
childish. It is the outward sign of an undeveloped men¬
tality. If you would resemble the white man, resemble
15
him in his virtues, not in his vices. Imitate, not his
extravagance, but his energy. Man always falls a
little short of his ambition. If you would equal the
white man, you must aim to excel him.
We must have a spirit of unrest, but not of simple
discontent. I do not urge you to be content, but both
to desire and deserve. The failures of the world are
those who have failed to find their life's work ready to
hand and who have lacked the initiative to seek out
abroad. Every man, every race, is sometime given
an opportunity to make the most of the gifts of God—
to make the best use of natural endowments. Some
men, like Marcus Aurelius, are born with all they
need to help them in this work; others, like Aesop,
must snatch from Fate what she will not give of her
own accord. You are born under a certain handicap
because of the color of your skin; but this very handicap
is your certificate of service. You are born with a
mission nobler than that of Frederick the Great, who
transformed a little German state into a great king¬
dom, for it is your mission to raise an entire race to
honor and dignity. To me this seems to be the noblest
mission that a man could have, for to me the most
sublime sight in the world is to see a young Negro
fighting his way up from the pit of ignorance to the
sunlit heights of knowledge; fighting in the teeth of
what seems to be Fate; fighting against poverty,
heredity, environment; fighting Destiny itself and
beating it down inch by inch.