Reports of the United States Department of Labor.

WEEDEN.-Economic and Social History of New England. [Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1891.]

ELY.-Labor Movement in America. [Crowell & Co., 1886.]

TAUSSIG.-Tariff History of the United States. [Putnams, 1892.] WINES. Punishment and Reformation. [Crowell & Co., 1895.] VON HALLE.-Trusts or Industrial Combinations in the United States. [Macmillan, 1895.]

STIMSON.-Hand-book to the Labor Law of the United States. [Scribners, 1896.]

INGLE. Southern Side-lights. [Crowell & Co., 1896.]

STICKNEY.-The Railroad Problem. [D. D. Merrill, St. Paul,

1891.]

SMITH.-Emigration and Immigration. [Scribners, 1890.]

GILMAN.-Profit Sharing Between Employer and Employee. [Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1889.]

JUGLAR.-- Brief History of Panics. [Putnams, 1893.]

THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS AND CIVIC EDUCATION.

By C. A. McMURRY, PH.D.,
The University of Chicago.

THOROUGHLY educated people often seem as partisan and one-sided as the ignorant and illiterate. The tolerant, fair-minded, judicial spirit is a difficult acquirement even in an educated man. In fact a good part of education is directly opposed to it. Most of us, so far as we are educated, are trained to one-sided views, and, what is worse, to prejudiced feelings and attitudes of mind. In church, in politics, in historical views, in theories of education itself, in social problems, we have met everywhere partisan, often violently prejudiced, teachers. There is very little security against this sort of partisanship in society so long as the machinery of education moves in these deeply cut grooves. Education itself contributes its powerful, often unconscious, influence, to strengthen prejudiced attitudes of mind and habits of thinking. The higher institutions of learning, as well as the common schools, by cultivating the debating, contentious, partisan spirit, produce a result the opposite to that most needful in the discussion of public and social problems. Education, therefore, in the ordinary sense of the word, is but little protection against partisanship. It depends entirely upon what kind of education it is, whether it contributes to fair-mindedness or to violent prejudice.

This difficulty seems to point clearly to the following query: How can a race of teachers be gradually educated into the spirit of a tolerant, fair-minded discussion of controverted questions? No sudden or marked change is likely to take place in the direction of tolerance because it is a question of improving the inner spirit and temper of teachers, a question of self-control and reasonableness. Growth in selfmastery and in judicial tolerance is growth in the innermost spirit of charity and good sense, and we must not expect too rapid a progress in this highest form of education either in ourselves or in others. Unconsciously we are all too deeply rooted in partial and biased views and habits to be easily capable of frank and many-sided tolerance.

But the place to begin is with ourselves and with the body of teachers whose attitude of prejudice or tolerance is repeated, on the average, in the growing generation of children.

It does not seem so very difficult to set up such a standard and ideal of fair-mindedness as will appeal to the good sense of teachers. Nor is it difficult to point out numerous opportunities for exercising the spirit of candor and of suspended judgment, both in school management and in instruction. The historical materials and topics worked over in the school grades are even better for purposes of cultivating fair-minded. study than those controverted, and as yet unsettled, questions of present society and government treated in the political and social science of colleges and universities. Very many of the important history topics usually handled in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades of the grammar school, were two-sided questions, furnishing the best opportunity for a thoughtful, unprejudiced weighing of evidence. For example: the attitude of the Puritans toward the Quakers and other sects; the conflict between the French and English for the possession of North America; the Pequod War and the French wars against the Iroquois; the rights of royal governors and of the colonies; the question of taxation of the colonies by Parliament; in adopting the Federal Constitution, the conflict between state rights and federal sovereignty; the acquisition of Louisiana and Texas; the implied powers of the Constitution; the treason of Arnold; the execution of Major Andre; the important acts of leading men in important crises, as Jay's treaty with England; in fact all treaties and compromises at home and abroad, all wars, all conflicts of political parties involve difficult questions requiring impartial weighing of evidence. No just appreciation of these problems and their importance can be had except by a candid survey of the facts and arguments on both sides.

The common historical materials worked over now in the schools furnish, therefore, the precise occasion needed for the exercise of fairmindedness in study.

It is in this class of historical and social problems, where exact mathematical tests and reasonings are impossible, that candor and a thoughtful weighing of reasons and even of probabilities can be cultivated. In mathematics there is no demand for candor, but absolute dogmatism is permissible. In history all important questions are problematic. They involve not only questions of right and wrong, but of expediency and necessity, of public sentiment, of prevailing opinions

and prejudices. The suspended judgment is necessary in the treatment of historical controversies. Prudence, caution, open-mindedness to all sides of a question are indispensable to fair and honest study. The questions of history are good materials upon which to develop a judicial spirit because they are so interesting and so objective. We are not warped by our own interests and prejudices, and it is easier to be fair and comprehensive.

Below the high school the materials for civic training and culture for developing a patriotic American spirit are found also in reading and literature. A few out of the many selections already used in some schools for this purpose are here noted. Burke on Conciliation with America, Longfellow's Courtship of Miles Standish, Building of the Ship, and Paul Revere's Ride, Hawthorne's Stories of New England and Grandfather's Chair, Whittier's Voices of Freedom, Barbara Frietchie, National Hymn, Webster's two speeches at Bunker Hill, at Plymouth, on Washington and on Adams and Jefferson, Emerson's American Scholar, The Fortune of the Republic, The Emancipation Proclamation, Bryant's Song of Marion's Men, Our Country's Call, O Mother of a Mighty Race, Washington's Letters and Farewell Address, Holmes' Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill, Ballad of the Boston Tea Party, Robinson of Leyden, Lexington, Lincoln's Inaugurals and Gettysburg Speech, Lowell's Under the Old Elm, Concord Ode, and Essay on Democracy, Autobiography of Franklin, Mrs. Hemans' Landing of the Pilgrims, America and other patriotic songs, The Declaration of Independence, Scudder's Essays on Literature in Schools. The best of our American poets and statesmen have given in the forms of literature a dignified and commanding expression to the best ideals of our civilization. We are waking up to the fact that hand in hand with the astonishing growth of our material resources in the last hundred years has gone a growth in culture-ideals, social, political, and religious, which is of supreme educative value for the present and the future. Our poets and true statesmen have made articulate the best experience and thought of our national life. They have winged this thought with poetry and eloquence, stirring the hearts of mature men and women and touching the sensitive life of millions of schoolchildren.

An unpleasant attendant of this genuine spirit of patriotism and true Americanism is a sentimental bombast or braggadocio which has been fully exploited in this country for many years. It is a too common counterfeit for true patriotism, exalting everything American and placing

other countries in contempt. It is the exact opposite of the spirit of candor and liberality which should be willing to face and acknowledge the evils in our own society and approve and adopt the merits found in the societies of other countries. The spirit of indiscriminate praise and boastfulness in regard to all things American is not the spirit to cultivate in our American schools with our future citizens. Our best American literature does indeed reflect the self-respect of a great and free nation, proud of its past and exuberant in future hopes, but it is a pride based only in small part in our material riches and physical strength. Physical strength and resources are valuable in a nation, as they are in a man but we do not admire a giant for boasting of his bulk and muscle.

One cause of this boastful spirit is the manner in which we have selected and used selections from our patriotic literature. The brief outbursts of eloquence in Webster and our short patriotic ballads when separated from their setting in longer masterpieces of literature and in life have given a wrong impression of boastfulness. When we use Webster's speeches as wholes a body of thought will be put behind these utterances, giving them full meaning. To get at the true enlightened spirit of patriotism we need to consult Emerson, Webster, Lowell, Everett, Bryant, and Sumner in their complete poems, essays, and speeches.

Another cause of the narrow and perverted American spirit is the manner in which our history has been taught. In our treatment of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Civil War a false pride has caused us to magnify our own virtues and successes and to minimize the worth of our enemies. It may be said that very little effort has been made in our histories to treat any of these conflicts in an impartial way, thoughtfully presenting the causes and conflicts on both sides. There is a tacit assumption in nearly all cases that we were in the right and our enemies in the wrong, certainly a very primitive and barbaric mode of getting lessons out of history.

Still another cause of partisan spirit in our education has been steadily cultivated in our debating societies, contests, and various forms of literary contention. The philosopher, John Locke, was strongly of the opinion that debate, controversy, and the love of contention were not favorable to the discovery of truth, and no matter how much we may admire skill and power in debate, we must always remember that the partisan and the advocate must be laid aside in the search for truth.