The Reconstructed School | Page 5

creep or
shuffle along as if bowed down with the weight of years, lacking the
graces of buoyancy and abounding youth. They are bent, gnarled,
shriveled, faded, weak, and wizened. Their faces reveal the absence of
the looks that betoken hope, courage, aspiration, and high purpose.
Their lineaments and their gait show forth a ghastly forlornness that

excites pity and despair. They seem the veriest derelicts, tossed to and
fro by the currents of life without hope of redemption.
Their whole bearing indicates that they are languid, morbid,
misanthropic, and nerveless. They seem ill-nourished as well as
mentally and spiritually starved. They seem the victims of inherited or
acquired weaknesses that stamp them as belonging among the
physically unfit. If the farmer should discover among his animals as
large a percentage of unfitness and imperfection, he would reach the
conclusion at once that something was radically wrong and would
immediately set on foot well-thought-out plans to rectify the situation.
But, seeing that these derelicts are human beings and not farm stock,
we bestow upon them a sneer, or possibly a pittance by way of alms,
and pass on our complacent ways. Looking upon the imperfect
passersby, the observer is reminded of the tens of thousands of children
who are defective in mind and body and are hidden away from public
gaze, a charge upon the resources of the state.
Such a setting forth of the less agreeable side of present conditions
would seem out of place, if not actually impertinent, were we inclined
to ignore the fact that diagnosis must precede treatment. The surgeon
knows full well that there will be pain, but he is comforted by the
reflection that restoration to health will succeed the pain. We need to
look squarely at the facts as they are in order to determine what must be
done to avert a repetition in the future. We have seen the sins of the
fathers visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation and
still retained our complacency. We preach temperance to the young
men of our day, but fail to set forth the fact that right living on their
part will make for the well-being of their grandchildren. We exhibit our
thoroughbred live stock at our fairs and plume ourselves upon our
ability to produce stock of such quality. In the case of live stock we
know that the present is the product of the past, but seem less ready to
acknowledge the same fact as touching human animals. We may know
that our ancestors planted thorns and yet we seem surprised that we
cannot gather a harvest of grapes, and we would fain gather figs from a
planting of thistles. But this may not be. We harvest according to the
planting of our ancestors, and, with equal certainty, if we eat sour

grapes the teeth of our descendants will surely be put on edge.
If we are to reconstruct our educational processes we must make a
critical survey of the entire situation that we may be fully advised of
the magnitude of the problem to which we are to address ourselves. We
may not blink the facts but must face them squarely; otherwise we shall
not get on. We may take unction to ourselves for our philanthropic zeal
in caring for our unfortunates in penal and eleemosynary institutions,
but that will not suffice. We must frankly consider by what means the
number of these unfortunates may be reduced. If we fail to do this we
convict ourselves of cowardice or impotence. We pile up our millions
in buildings for the insane, the feeble-minded, the vicious, the epileptic,
and plume ourselves upon our munificence. But if all these
unfortunates could be redeemed from their thralldom, and these
countless millions turned back into the channels of trade, civilization
would take on a new meaning. Here is one of the problems that calls
aloud to education for a solution and will not be denied.
One of the avowed purposes of education is to lift society to a higher
plane of thinking and acting, and it is always and altogether pertinent to
make an inventory to discover if this laudable purpose is being
accomplished. Such an inventory can be made only by an analyst; the
work cannot be delegated either to a pessimist or to an optimist. In his
efforts to determine whether society is advancing or receding, the
analyst often makes disquieting discoveries.
It must be admitted by the most devoted and patriotic American that
our civilization includes many elements that can truly be denominated
frivolous, superficial, artificial, and inconsequential. As a people, we
seek to be entertained, but fail to make a nice distinction between
entertainment and amusement. War, it is true, has caused us to think
more soberly and feel more deeply; but