Agnes Repplier on Popular Education

Through all of Miss Repplier’s latest essays in The Atlantic runs a note of appeal for the sterner virtues, which she thinks are in danger of dying out under modern conditions. So persistently is this note, admirable in itself, sounded, that we wonder if it doesn’t hark back a bit to Sparta, and the casting away of the unfit. When it comes to the question of an education broad enough to fit the needs of every child, we may all pause and take a deep breath. We may not approve of a school of moving pictures, advocated by Judge Lindsey, and yet we may not wish to go to the other extreme of severe discipline advocated by Miss Repplier. If only all children were of exactly the same type, so that the same kind of schooling would suffice for all their needs! Or even if they could come from the same kind of homes with more or less similar ideals!

Let us hear what she and Mr. Lindsey have to say about Tony—(Tony is a boy who does not like school as it is at present organized). “Mr. Edison is coming to the rescue of Tony,” says Judge Lindsey. “He will take him away from me and put him in a school that is not a school at all but just one big game.... There will be something moving, something doing at that school all the time. When I tell him about it Tony shouts ‘Hooray for Mr. Edison!’ right in front of the battery, just as he used to say ‘To hell wid de cop!’” On the other hand:—“The old time teacher,” says Miss Repplier, “sought to spur the pupil to keen and combative effort, rather than beguile him into knowledge with cunning games and lantern slides.... The old time parent set a high value on self discipline and self control.”

But can she believe for one moment that Tony’s parents ever dreamed of “setting a high value on self discipline and self control?” Or that Tony’s sister was taught to “read aloud with correctness and expression, to write notes with propriety and grace, and to play backgammon and whist?” ...

Figurez-vous! And so, if we can reach little Tony’s darkened vision by the simple method of moving pictures, keep him off the streets until he learns at least not to become a hardened criminal—are we not that much to the good? Tony will never, never be ambassador to the court of St. James (or if he is going to be, he’ll be it in spite of movies!) but he may be a fairly honest, happy fruit vendor some day, instead of No. 207 in a cell. Useless to cite the dull boys in school, who absolutely refused pedagogic training and later blazed their way—luminaries—through the world, when once they had found the work that interested them. To interest, stimulate, and arouse is the prelude to work; and precious few kiddies, except those who don’t really need it, do enough work that they dislike to strengthen their little characters. But even if they do, are those who will not to have nothing?

Of course, education is a thing that can’t be disposed of in a few well meaning phrases. Miss Repplier may be right, too, in what she says of the education of Montaigne. You remember he learned to talk Latin under a tutor, at an early age, in much the same way that our modern young ones learn French and German.

“All the boy gained by the most elaborate system ever devised for the saving of labor,” she says, “was that he over-skipped the lower forms in school. What he lost was the habit of mastering his prescript lessons, which he seems to have disliked heartily.” But how does any one know that that was all he gained? I should hardly select Montaigne as my model, if I were trying to point out the ill effects of any particular type of education. Besides, whatever its effect may have been on him, I should hate to lose the mental picture of the little lad Latinizing with the “simple folk of Perigord.” Charming little lad, and wonderful old father, doing his best to elevate and help his boy. No, decidedly; whatever Miss Repplier may do to dispose of Tony and his ilk, I am glad she had nothing whatever to do with the education of Montaigne!

The Little Review

Since it appears to be my duty to read all the critical journals and dissect their contents for these columns, I can’t in good faith neglect The Little Review. I have just devoured the first issue. What can I say about the superb “announcement”? I agree ardently with it. It needed to be said; the magazine needed to be born. There’s no quarrel between art and life except where one or the other is kept back of the door. Anyone with a keen appreciation of art can’t help appreciating life too, and Mrs. Jones who runs away from her husband can’t fairly stand for “life.” Besides, why should anybody object to a thing because it’s transitorial? Everything is transitorial. It must either grow or perish.

Mr. Wing’s criticism of Mr. Faust is admirable—direct, unpretentious, sound. But you must let me register a slight objection to Dr. Foster’s Nietzsche article. It seems to me there’s just too much enthusiasm to be borne by what he actually says. When I came to the end of that third paragraph on page fifteen I sneaked back to Galsworthy’s letter and found an answering twinkle in its eye. I felt like going up to Dr. Foster with a grin, putting my hand on his shoulder and saying, “My dear man, a candidate for major prophet doesn’t need political speeches. It is really not half so important that we unregenerate should give three cheers for him as that we should live his truth. Won’t you forget a little of this sound and fury and tell us as simply as you can just what it is that you want us to do?”

I went from his article with the impression that here was a man who was very enthusiastic about Mr. Nietzsche. I’m sure that’s not the impression Dr. Foster intended to make. But I have a feeling that pure enthusiasm wasting itself in little geysers is intrinsically ridiculous. Enthusiasm should grow trees and put magic in violets—and that can’t be done with undue quickness, or in any but the most simple way. Nobody cares about the sap except for what it does. And, anyhow, it always makes me savage to be orated at, or told that my soul will be damned if I don’t admit the particular authority of Mr. Jehovah or Mr. Nietzsche or Mr. anybody else.

That’s all by the way, however, and the impression of the magazine as a whole is clear, true, swift. Its impact can’t be forgotten. You haven’t attained your ideal—which is right; but you’ve done so well you’ll have to scratch to keep up the speed,—which is right, too.

M. H. P.