Prohibited Certainties
PROHIBITED CERTAINTIES A PROMINENT minister told his audience last ¦* *• Sunday that modern folk "know how to do, but not how to suffer; how to secure, but not how to stand and wait." It was an...
...And if so, why not teach it...
...Has there ever been a nation, a society or a civilization which has not been under the domination of a particular class...
...We have, it is true, a growing volume of expression which sounds like acceptance...
...The extent to which the virtue of resignation has been discounted by even Christian people is, of course, largely due to the seeming triumphs of human skill over evils which formerly had to be endured...
...Counts, this declaration seems not a little curious...
...Much evidence to support this opinion is unearthed by Dr...
...We do not wish to discount either the act of determination or the humane advances of science...
...Although the system of beliefs evolved through the centuries by the Christian Church is apparently passing into dissolution," he says, "the American people still very generally believe in the existence of a supernatural order which underlies the order of nature and which possesses greater reality than the world of sense...
...it is hard to visualize one set of facts having "greater reality" than another...
...Keep the two things separate and then see...
...Taking this truth as our point of departure, we may well wonder if the most essential criticism of American education does lie in the fact that while it fosters initiative and competing energy, it cultivates not at all the hinterland of resignation...
...Nevertheless it is obvious that modern contemporary reliance upon both has something in common with the habits of the illustrious ostrich, given to believe that security follows immersion in sand...
...Once again our trouble is diagnosed not as defective insight into reality, not as failure to grasp or live by truth, but as unwillingness to experiment...
...With due respect to Dr...
...George S. Counts, comes round to the matter in a different way...
...Nor is the emphasis placed entirely upon economic organization or shibboleths...
...To him therefore, it seems to seem that a "conception of life suited to the new civilization" is primarily dependent upon something very different from the "existing social order...
...We have the civilization, in several important respects distinct from its forerunners and equipped with devices and problems which humanity could not ignore if it so desired...
...In other words: is not the human ideal simply resignation, in the noblest sense, to the divine will...
...The phrase can only mean "insight into reality"—not necessarily a fund of detailed information about this and that but a grasp of the fundamental principles of being sufficient to enable the individual and society to be and act in consonance with their welfare...
...Have not all these dominations come to an end as soon as revolt against them was justified and expedient...
...Counts...
...It was an excellent point...
...We confess to being persuaded of this relative inadequacy...
...Counts, however, the trouble appears to lie primarily in the fact that social enterprise and education have been "under the domination of a particular class—and a class which is peculiarly interested in maintaining the existing social order...
...Has reality ever been affected in the slightest degree by human resentment of human tyranny...
...But has any revolt ever produced a new religion or "conception of life" worth the paper it was written on...
...If the vigor of this grip is impaired by "new environments," it will hardly last through the coming year by which time civilization will have altered its spots again...
...Of misfortune—especially the ultimate accident of deaththere is a plenty, to be surmounted only by those spiritual forces which enable the society and the individual not simply to endure stoically but to transform pain into value and bliss...
...But skipping all this, one comes to the point—which is that it is the business of education to advocate the establishment of a new social order, a new religion and several other things beside...
...it is not evident that the dissolution is any nearer than it was two thousand years ago...
...and though he tries to view it all with detachment, he is sometimes visibly disturbed and alarmed...
...Of course it may be true that the "conception of life" by which America has sworn is really inadequate...
...But to advertise for a "conception of life" in keeping with the new environment is first to manifest unawareness of what the thing is, and then to inaugurate a search the favorable outcome of which cannot be predicted...
...Unawareness...
...America in particular is so firmly committed to the belief that volition can win out over all limitations that a brand of religion which simply wills that no malady exists has come to be remarkably popular...
...At any rate one could only watch the adventure with bated breath, wondering if the new mistress of civilization's household would preserve her temper and comeliness...
...The inference is clear...
...Poets and writers of fiction inform us, more or less beautifully, that it will be pleasant to have known that our bodies will add to the vivid dimensions of the zinnia, or that some boisterous robin will memorialize our laughter at dawn...
...It is difficult for the historian to picture the Church "evolving" a system...
...But since even zinnias are affected by drought and robins by machine shops, the argument for joy is precarious...
...In the end he soothes his nerves by taking refuge in the familiar pronouncement: "American education today, like American society at large, is in need of a conception of life suited to the new civilization...
...Of course there is no bond between Christian truth and the existing social practice, excepting in so far as Christianity is able to feel that the justice and charity it preaches are really being exemplified...
...It is quite as if a married man should acquire a new house, outfitted with tinted bath tubs and other spectacular novelties, and then announce: "I'm looking for a wife suited to my present residence...
...His book, The American Road to Culture (New York: John Day), announces as part of its thesis that "Americans regard education as the means by which inequalities among individuals are to be erased and by which every desirable end is to be achieved...
...And has not that resentment perennially appealed to the verity of this justice which only a divine mandate could have written across the horizon of the race...
...For Dr...
...One wonders just how the wisdom and the adequacy of the coming dispensation are to be guaranteed...
...However all this may be, a recent critic of the educational system, Dr...
Vol. 12 • August 1930 • No. 15
