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Education as a public business

It is one of the complaints of the schoolmaster that the public does not defer to his professional opinion as completely as it does to that of practitioners in other professions. At first sight it might seem as though this indicated a defect either in the public or in the profession; and yet a wider view of the situation would suggest that such a conclusion is not a necessary one. The relations of education to the public are different from those of any other professional work. Education is a public business with us, in a sense that the protection and restoration of personal health or legal rights are not. To an extent characteristic of no other institution, save that of the state itself, the school has power to modify the social order. And under our political system, it is the right of each individual to have a voice in the making of social policies as, indeed, he has a vote in the determination of political affairs. If this be true, education is primarily a public business, and only secondarily a specialized vocation. The layman, then, will always have his right to some utterance on the operation of the public schools.

Education as expert service

I have said “some utterance,” but not “all”; for school-mastering has its own special mysteries, its own knowledge and skill into which the untrained layman cannot penetrate. We are just beginning to recognize that the school and the government have a common problem in this respect. Education and politics are two functions fundamentally controlled by public opinion. Yet the conspicuous lack of efficiency and economy in the school and in the state has quickened our recognition of a larger need for expert service. But just where shall public opinion justly express itself, and what shall properly be left to expert judgment?

The relations of expert opinion and public opinion

In so far as broad policies and ultimate ends affecting the welfare of all are to be determined, the public may well claim its right to settle issues by the vote or voice of majorities. But the selection and prosecution of the detailed ways and means by which the public will is to be executed efficiently must remain largely a matter of specialized and expert service. To the superior knowledge and technique required here, the public may well defer.

In the conduct of the schools, it is well for the citizens to determine the ends proper to them, and it is their privilege to judge of the efficacy of results. Upon questions that concern all the manifold details by which children are to be converted into desirable types of men and women, the expert schoolmaster should be authoritative, at least to a degree commensurate with his superior knowledge of this very complex problem. The administration of the schools, the making of the course of study, the selection of texts, the prescription of methods of teaching, these are matters with which the people, or their representatives upon boards of education, cannot deal save with danger of becoming mere meddlers.

The discussion of moral education an illustration of mistaken views of laymen

Nowhere is the validity of this distinction between education as a public business and education as an expert professional service brought out more clearly than in an analysis of the public discussion of the moral work of the school. How frequently of late have those unacquainted with the special nature of the school proclaimed the moral ends of education and at the same time demanded direct ethical instruction as the particular method by which they were to be realized! This, too, in spite of the fact that those who know best the powers and limitations of instruction as an instrument have repeatedly pointed out the futility of assuming that knowledge of right constitutes a guarantee of right doing. How common it is for those who assert that education is for social efficiency to assume that the school should return to the barren discipline of the traditional formal subjects, reading, writing, and the rest! This, too, regardless of the fact that it has taken a century of educational evolution to make the course of study varied and rich enough to call for those impulses and activities of social life which need training in the child. And how many who speak glowingly of the large services of the public schools to a democracy of free and self-reliant men affect a cynical and even vehement opposition to the “self-government of schools”! These would not have the children learn to govern themselves and one another, but would have the masters rule them, ignoring the fact that this common practice in childhood may be a foundation for that evil condition in adult society where the citizens are arbitrarily ruled by political bosses.

One need not cite further cases of the incompetence of the lay public to deal with technical questions of school methods. Instances are plentiful to show that well-meaning people, competent enough to judge of the aims and results of school work, make a mistake in insisting upon the prerogative of directing the technical aspects of education with a dogmatism that would not characterize their statements regarding any other special field of knowledge or action.

A fundamental understanding of moral principles in education

Nothing can be more useful than for the public and the teaching profession to understand their respective functions. The teacher needs to understand public opinion and the social order, as much as the public needs to comprehend the nature of expert educational service. It will take time to draw the boundary lines that will be conducive to respect, restraint, and efficiency in those concerned; but a beginning can be made upon fundamental matters, and nothing so touches the foundations of our educational thought as a discussion of the moral principles in education.

It is our pleasure to present a treatment of them by a thinker whose vital influence upon the reform of school methods is greater than that of any of his contemporaries. In his discussion of the social and psychological factors in moral education, there is much that will suggest what social opinion should determine, and much that will indicate what must be left to the trained teacher and school official.