The Novel and the Common School

Novel and the Common School,
by Charles Dudley Warner

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Title: The Novel and the Common School
Author: Charles Dudley Warner
Release Date: December 6, 2004 [EBook #3123]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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NOVEL AND THE COMMON SCHOOL ***

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THE NOVEL AND THE COMMON SCHOOL
By Charles Dudley Warner
There has been a great improvement in the physical condition of the

people of the United States within two generations. This is more
noticeable in the West than in the East, but it is marked everywhere;
and the foreign traveler who once detected a race deterioration, which
he attributed to a dry and stimulating atmosphere and to a feverish
anxiety, which was evident in all classes, for a rapid change of
condition, finds very little now to sustain his theory. Although the
restless energy continues, the mixed race in America has certainly
changed physically for the better. Speaking generally, the contours of
face and form are more rounded. The change is most marked in regions
once noted for leanness, angularity, and sallowness of complexion, but
throughout the country the types of physical manhood are more
numerous; and if women of rare and exceptional beauty are not more
numerous, no doubt the average of comeliness and beauty has been
raised. Thus far, the increase of beauty due to better development has
not been at the expense of delicacy of complexion and of line, as it has
been in some European countries. Physical well-being is almost
entirely a matter of nutrition. Something is due in our case to the
accumulation of money, to the decrease in an increasing number of our
population of the daily anxiety about food and clothes, to more leisure;
but abundant and better-prepared food is the direct agency in our
physical change. Good food is not only more abundant and more
widely distributed than it was two generations ago, but it is to be had in
immeasurably greater variety. No other people existing, or that ever did
exist, could command such a variety of edible products for daily
consumption as the mass of the American people habitually use today.
In consequence they have the opportunity of being better nourished
than any other people ever were. If they are not better nourished, it is
because their food is badly prepared. Whenever we find, either in New
England or in the South, a community ill-favored, dyspeptic, lean, and
faded in complexion, we may be perfectly sure that its cooking is bad,
and that it is too ignorant of the laws of health to procure that variety of
food which is so easily obtainable. People who still diet on sodden pie
and the products of the frying-pan of the pioneer, and then, in order to
promote digestion, attempt to imitate the patient cow by masticating
some elastic and fragrant gum, are doing very little to bring in that
universal physical health or beauty which is the natural heritage of our
opportunity.

Now, what is the relation of our intellectual development to this
physical improvement? It will be said that the general intelligence is
raised, that the habit of reading is much more widespread, and that the
increase of books, periodicals, and newspapers shows a greater mental
activity than existed formerly. It will also be said that the opportunity
for education was never before so nearly universal. If it is not yet true
everywhere that all children must go to school, it is true that all may go
to school free of cost. Without doubt, also, great advance has been
made in American scholarship, in specialized learning and
investigation; that is to say, the proportion of scholars of the first rank
in literature and in science is much larger to the population than a
generation ago.
But what is the relation of our general intellectual life to popular
education? Or, in other words, what effect is popular education having
upon the general intellectual habit and taste? There are two ways of
testing this. One is by observing whether the mass of minds is better
trained and disciplined than formerly, less liable to delusions, better
able to detect fallacies, more logical, and less likely to be led away by
novelties in speculation, or by theories that are unsupported by historic
evidence or that are contradicted by a knowledge of human nature. If
we were tempted to pursue this test, we should be forced to note