LIFTING THE LID ON EDUCATION
Clugston, W. G.
Lifting The Lid On Education Porter Sargent Exposes The Failure Of Schools, Teachers BETWEEN TWO WARS (The Failure of Education, 1920-1940), by Porter Sargent. Published by the author, 11 Beacon...
...Sargent's appraisal of individuals in Between Two Wars, but few will be able to refute the proof he offers to show7 that more wars, miseries, and world-wide tragedies will have to be endured unless we lose no time in getting at the job of making our educational system really and truly educative...
...Reviewed by W. G. Clugston THE most encouraging, hope-sustaining manifestation in the present state of world eon-fusions is the increasing evidence that leaders in all walks of life—yes, even among the pedagogues themselves, and down among the masses of the people—are coming to see (and freely admit) that if our so-called civilization becomes a failure, and all social structures go on falling apart, the bulk of the blame will have to be chalked up against our educational system...
...United Nations leaders, please take note...
...We have presented to our children a system supposedly per-,fect...
...Published by the author, 11 Beacon St., Boston...
...When our educational system and its processes are investigated as the anthropologist investigates the cultures of other peoples, we shall see that we have no system, only an accumulation of anachronisms, of vested interests, of medieval leftovers...
...Readers may find much to disagree with in Mr...
...We shall discover that^ its processes are without biological orientation, that our educators have been engaged in hopeless, destructive fumbling in the dark jungle of what we call our intellectual life towards ends that are non-existent, towards goals that are mere will-o'-the wisps...
...In his 29 editions of The Handbook of Private Schools, Mr...
...He shows how absurd it is to expect democracy to survive or function any better, or for civilization to approach any nearer to the goals of human aspirations, if we fail to rededicate our agencies of enlightenment to the dissemination of all the knowledge and all the information that is available, to all the people who have the mental capacity to make use of the truth and facts about life...
...Sargent has never failed to romp on educators and the educational system, goring sacred oxes in lengthy prefaces with a vim, vigor, and vivacity that only a George Bernard Shaw might improve upon...
...Few will have the temerity to try to prove that he is wrong when he makes such statements as those appearing on page 182 of his tome : "In our education we have ignored existing evils...
...For the last 29 years no individual in the United States has pounded away more eloquently, or more industriously, at the job of awakening the public to these truths than Porter Sargent, of Boston, who has come to be recognized as one of the outstanding leaders in the field of education, and who has been called by Quincy Howe "one of the few justifications of what is left of New England culture...
...More and more, among leaders except politicians who pose as statesmen, and vested interest spokesmen who can think of nothing but perpetuating the special privileges that their little groups have acquired, there is a growing recognition of the fact that democracy is headed for failure, and all humanity for more suffering and agonies than have been endured since 1939, unless all our agencies of enlightenment can be rescued from the selfish, predatory interests that have seized control of them, and can really be dedicated to informing and enlightening the masses of the people...
...Along with the schools, the press and the radio (and some of the most powerful church groups of all denominations) must be set free from the enforced servitude they are now compelled to render to the entrenched, special privilege interests whose power to exploit society depends solely upon their ability to keep the masses of the people in such a state of ignorance and befuddlement that little or no progress can be made in attaining either social or economic justice...
...Space does not permit further quotes, but I would like to recommend Between Two Wars as "must" reading for every one who wants to do his or her part in helping bring humanity out of the mental, moral, economic confusions into which the world is being plunged...
...BUT it is in the 608 pages of Between Two Wars that this clear-thinking, hard-hitting old Bostonian really takes our educational system and our educators apart...
...And he has carried on in many other volumes, such as What Makes Lives, The Future of Education, and Getting Us into War...
...UTOPIAN yearnings expressed in high-sounding charters creating world organizations of United Nations will mean nothing but-disillusion-ment and despair in the end unless this'general awakening to the failures of our educational system brings a new ideology into our school system and creates a universal demand that all other agencies of information and enlightenment be rescued from the hands of those who use them for selfish, predatory purposes and utilized to serve more effectively the general welfare...
...For years we have seen the finest flower of our youth, graduates of our schools, universities, and law courses, those who might have shown private initiative, seduced and prostituted to the purposes of greed in the service of great corporations and financial institutions...
...Robots and hypocrites resulted...
...Our educators and citizens have lacked the courage to stand up against the opposition of those who would profit from suppression of essential facts...
...Or again when he says on pages 576 and 577: "While our schools and universities are dependent upon politically controlled legislators, or plutocratic donors through the great foundations and financial institutions, they must first meet the needs of those who feed them, rather than those who come to be fed...
Vol. 9 • July 1945 • No. 30
