Getting Educated
3x4 THE COMMONWEAL January26, 1927 ings in the press to names and addresses of principals GETTING EDUCATED and witnesses, concise statements of charges and coun- ter-charges, arguments on points...
...THE quenchless optimism of Mr...
...THE LANGUAGE OF MEN T HE latest news is an eloquent if ominous com-mentary upon the situation in Mexico...
...It could be only one thing: a force to which many Americans would gladly turn because they felt sure it could tell them what ought to be thought...
...Suppose the "regenerating intervention" of some years back had never taken place, and that there existed no agreement under which arms were to be furnished Mr...
...they want an inversion without a change...
...Wells that in appealing to anything written more than a few weeks ago, the critic and carper may find himself barred bysome statute of limitations...
...But they learn some sort of an intellectual schedule in the same way in which they gather the essentials of Emily Post, and during the rest of their lives conduct is governed accordingly...
...Food for thought...
...There is always the danger with Mr...
...Well, suppose the policy of aloofness from Mexico were really a fact of United States political practice...
...Wells promises (by way, one presumes, of municipal glanding and grafting centres) the prospect of an indefinite extension of their undisciplined ener- gies...
...They are out to be January 26, 1927 THE COMMONWEAL 315 told what ought to be thought...
...People talk of elections, of readjustments, as if the polls and the courts were not on fire...
...It is not at all the same thing as the fact that more students are now attending colleges conducted under religious auspices...
...Well, one answer is supplied in The Meaning of a Liberal Education, a book by Everett Dean Martin which is noticed elsewhere in this issue...
...As things now are, however, there is no use trying to undo what has happened...
...and we are told that more than a dozen col- leges and universities have enrollments in excess of ten thousand...
...Does it not mean a great common advance of the mind--the passing of ignorance, prejudice, and inefficiency...
...Meanwhile, the case for the Catholic defenders, outlined time and time again by men of varied creeds and positions of importance, re- mains unanswered and even unmarred...
...The callous seizure of the spokesman for the hierarchy, Bishop Diaz--a seizure caused by government resentment of a reply given to American inquirers and followed by banishment to a country whose laws did not permit him to remain--seems to have convinced Catholics in Mexico that the laws of resistance have been rendered wholly just...
...Does anyone really imagine that we, who virtually protect the existing r6gime in Mexico, can see that country leap into chaos without so much as disturbing our comfort...
...In other words, it is "wise to adjust ourselves" to what is now a constantly intensifying suppression of regard for human rights and reason...
...The scandalous publicity given to the charges made by Mrs...
...They [the workers] do not want a change...
...It strikes us that Mexico would probably be governed were it not for these few facts--by persons much better qualified than those who now so thoroughly identify themselves with an his-torical tradition which "goes back" to Henry VIII...
...Ideas, views of life, points of view expressed inside the academic boundaries do have an effect far more lasting than any accumulation of facts...
...But, it seems to us, this pessimismuthe natural fruit of daily contact with immature minds and the rigmarole of standardization--leaves out of consideration a most important circumstance...
...The public school imparts a certain elementary instruction--in eight or ten years about as much as a normally intelligent youth could master in two years if he set his mind to it...
...Bland innocence has varied with extravagant Quix-otism in the debates of Congress...
...If not, it makes strange commentary upon the rosy prophecies of today...
...After returning to a theme that is, if one remembers, also a prepossession with his William Clissold--namely, the prolongation of human life and vitality--Mr...
...They do not want to know how to think, they never will want to know how to think...
...to a policy that abrogates freedom of conscience...
...But there are signs that the London newspaper proprietor may be agreeably disappointed--"agreeably," since Lord Burnham conducts one of the cleanest newspapers pub- lished in English--and that the reproach which rests on many American newspapers will be removed...
...As such, no Catholic mind exists as yet in the United States...
...There is nothing in the masses as masses but an un- realizable explosive force...
...For ultimately, who in the United States would really want to disagree with Henry VIII and Luther ? Who would be appalled at any excesses, at any repudiation of democratic privileges, so long as the "inspiration" was right...
...Or think of a group of religious directors conscious of a million followers bent not merely upon conforming with the elementary spiritual routine, but upon deepening and developing the life of the soul I Precisely such a tremendous array of men and women is what the American endeavor of intellectual drill has been able to bring into being...
...We do not accomplish any more because our definition of educa- tion is so primitive, so much a matter of utilities and conventions, that it does not include more...
...Charlie" Chaplin in her recent suit, has aroused the better class of newspapers throughout the country...
...or to convince an American public which still elects persons like Senator Heflin and reads certain New York newspapers...
...Making horseplay out of deep Catholic feeling, at a moment tense with great political difficulties, was simply his way of displaying gross mental temper and niggardly ill will...
...Perhaps the dark picture drawn of the man of the people in Mr...
...If it were possible to compute the num- ber of those taking courses in the short-story by mail, or going to lectures at any one of a number of insti- tutes established for the purpose of lecturing, the grand total of those bent upon improving their minds woul~ probably reach a million...
...Calles exclusively...
...This task needs to be reckoned with right now...
...and to years of bar- barous persecution...
...They have grown up in a coarse and ugly way of living...
...No living novelist has written better novels than Mr...
...But somehow, in estimating him as a social prophet, a misgiving falls across our admiration...
...A great variety--we came near saying almost any--hard-worked instructors or teach- ers are ready to tell you that about the only thing school life succeeds in doing for the modern American community is to enable it to read the news about "Charlie" Chaplin and "Peaches" Browning, or to get the point of those very subtle jokes that make musical comedy an excellent box-office proposition...
...Wells...
...Wells's last novel is already superseded...
...3x4 THE COMMONWEAL January26, 1927 ings in the press to names and addresses of principals GETTING EDUCATED and witnesses, concise statements of charges and coun- ter-charges, arguments on points of law, the summing- up by the judge, and any observations he may make in giving judgment...
...It is a case which, ultimately, is older than Magna Charta, and avers simply that every government must respect the consciences of its citizens...
...It is the man of the people, it is "homo sapiens" in all his anonymity, who is to become " a more com- pletely developed, longer-living, vital animal...
...How many of them actually find the end of the rainbow is another matter...
...The modern attempt to educate everyone really educates hardly anyone," says our author...
...T HE education boom still continues...
...This answer is worth quoting because so many people agree with it...
...But something more dangerous and disquieting than Quixotism, something that comes perilously near linking hands with the un- American intolerance latent everywhere under the sur- face of our institutional life, came to the fore when Senator J. Thomas Heflin suddenly flung the religious issue upon the floor of Congress...
...When tMs bill was under discussion in Parliament, Lord Burnham, owner of the Daily Telegraph, made the assertion that while sensational reports of notorious divorce eases would be banned by it in Great Britain, every detail of the unsavory cases would appear in American newspapers...
...It has been estimated by the Boston Transcript that 750,000 American youths and lassies are trying to collect credits...
...For injustice, the attempt to enslave, the assumption of spiritual autocracy, have again accomplished what they have always accomplished in the past--the resolve of men of good will to find peace in death...
...To him, the plea of all the hierarchy for peace and prayer was a document without meaning and moment...
...But the Catholic case, and indeed the whole Mex- ican problem, is not understood in the United States...
...He ignored absolutely the circumstance that Catholics here have steadily refused to invoke the aid of their government, in spite of the fact that they have long since foreseen the outcome of the Wilsonian agreements with Carranza...
...We have got to decide as to Mexico whether we shall suppress that nationalism temporarily and by force, or whether we shall recog- nize that in its main inspiration and its chief purposes, all petty disputes aside, it is an irresistible develop- ment to which it is wise for us to adjust ourselves...
...He caught at the only spark which could have warmed his smoke--the strong and honest resentment of Calles autocracy ex- pressed by a Knights of Columbus convention last summer...
...It is these things which, in the depths of their souls, the i,ooo,ooo hopeful Americans are after...
...If the meaning of Bishop Orozco's action is anything, it is that Calles will have to drink what there is left of his reign in gulps of blood...
...The in- spiration is nationalist...
...An army of I,OOO,OOO men out drilling for a year, and then making room for another million the next year, would mean a militaristic power almost beyond the reach of imaginative perception...
...One fancies that if the Senator from Alabama had the courage of his convictions, he would assert pre-cisely what a New York paper, important by reason of its circulation, had to say recently about the Mexican problem: "The program of the Calles government as to the position of the Roman Catholic Church, is identical in its inspiration with the long historic process which in Europe goes back to Henry VIII, to Luther, and includes the wars of Italian liberation...
...Those most competent to judge the state of mind now prevail- ing in that terror-ridden republic, agree that if the report of a revolution headed by Archbishop Orozco y Jimenez of Guadalajara is correct, it is the result of a brave man's ultimate resolve not to be hounded into exile or scourged into silence, but to die in defense of the Faith...
...Yet it is this "explosive force," these coarse and ugly-living proletarians, to whom Mr...
...The great task is to fortify the spirit of Mexico--its still exist- ing respect for justice and its religious faith--when- ever opportunity otters a field of action...
...NOW The World of William Clissold was written more than a year ago...
...Wells makes it clear that this benefit is not to remain, as heretofore, the privilege of a small class...
...A rather good instance of this protean quality, is the first instalment of hetero- geneous mass of prophecy, entitled The Way the World Is Going, published not long ago by the New York Times...
...But perhaps more wonderful is his habit of making up and changing his mind on first and last things as he goes along...
...H. G. Wells is only equaled by the fertility and resource with which, to borrow a phrase once used of the historian Michelet, he goes on, from year to year, "improvising certain- ties...
...It is, therefore, not so unim- portant as many people seem to imagine that there be a Catholic mind, alert and inquisitive, to take its share in the task of American education...
...The task of giving instruction to the youth of an entire com-munity is so great that thoroughness is almost impos- sible...
Vol. 5 • January 1927 • No. 12
