Protective Coloring in the Educational World

I

NATURALISTS have long noted the way in which various animals merge themselves into the landscape of which they form a part. It takes sharp eyes to distinguish the living thing from its environment. There are butterflies that look like the leaves on which they alight, caterpillars that resemble the bark of the tree they infest. The polar bear is a part of the snow-fields. Even the stripes of the zebra, which make him conspicuous in the circus, are said to be inconspicuous when seen against the arid landscape of South Africa.

All these concealments are useful in the struggle for existence. They form part of the grand strategy of nature. The creature unable to stand in the open against its enemies seeks to escape their prying eyes. It tries to look like something else.

These natural hypocrisies throw light on human conduct. When we call a man a hypocrite we usually assume that he is trying to imitate a higher order of being than that to which he has attained. In this we perhaps do too much credit to his spiritual ambition.

The hypocrisies in nature are not of this kind. The creature does not imitate its betters but its inferiors. The vegetable imitates the mineral; the animal imitates the vegetable. It does not parade its peculiar talents, but modestly slips back in the scale of being. It likes to hide in the already existing.

The naturalists distinguish between protective coloring of animals — that which they call cryptic coloring — and mimicry. The cryptic coloring aims purely at concealment. In mimicry the hunted creature finds safety in its resemblance to some other creature which is either feared or disliked or despised. Thus a worm that is really good to eat escapes the predatory bird by looking like a worm that is not good to eat. It willingly sacrifices its reputation for gastronomic excellence in order to prolong its existence.

Harmless, good-natured reptiles wriggle along in peace because they superficially resemble venomous snakes with whom interiorly they have nothing in common. Any one who has made the acquaintance of a garden toad knows that he is not nearly so ugly as he looks. After thousands of years of precarious living, these wise amphybians have learned to divest themselves of the fatal gift of beauty. Doubtless the less unprepossessing attracted the attention of envious rivals and were slain, while those whom none could envy survived.

One who takes a sympathetic view of the evolutionary process will make allowance for the many worthy creatures who conceal their virtues for prudential reasons. They are like a richly freighted ship trying to avoid capture. It receives a coat of paint to match the fog, puts out its lights, and makes a run to avoid the enemies’ cruisers.

An appreciation of the ways of the hunted would save the ambitious educator from many disappointments. He is engaged in the imparting of knowledge, the holding up of ideals, the development of the higher faculties. Being human, he longs to see the results of his labors. What becomes of the embryo scholars and philosophers and social reformers when they begin to shift for themselves?

Ah, there comes the bitter disappointment. These objects of tremulous care, the moment they are released from tutelage, seem to lose their painfully acquired superiority. Instead of proudly carrying their educational advantages as an oriflamme of progress, they carefully conceal them, and take the color of their present world.

The enthusiastic kindergartner one day visits the primary school to see how her little graduates are following the ideals she has imparted with such loving care. Little George Augustus was the paragon of the kindergarten. With wide-open eyes and eager ears he received the sweet parables of Nature, and with nimble fingers practiced what he had been taught. None in the kindergarten so docile as he. To him education would be no task. With his heart so early attuned to its harmonies he would joyfully play upon it as on an instrument of ten strings.

But alas! in the public school little George Augustus does not stand out as one of the elect infants. The multiplication table has for him no spiritual meaning, and against its literal meaning he hardens his heart. His realistic mind does not in the least mistake work for play. He perceives instantly and resentfully where one begins and the other leaves off. His attitude is that of his fellow conspirators. He will learn his lesson if he has to, but he will not encourage teacher by performing any work of supererogation.

Has the kindergarten failed? Not ultimately. The effects will doubtless reappear; but they are now in hiding. George Augustus is wise in his generation. Through several weeks of hard experience in his new environment he has learned to appear as one of the unkindergartened. His newly acquired manners are the protective coloring which enables him to go about unmolested.

A distinguished physiologist has shown by a number of experiments that terror and hate produce the same physiological reactions. In the one case the instinct is to get away from the foe; in the other it is to get at him. In either case there is a demand made on the adrenal glands, which, as a war measure, pour adrenaline into the blood. In the case of little George Augustus, the sudden increase of adrenaline which makes him appear so truculent is produced, not by hate of sound learning, but by a well-founded fear. He is panicstricken over the possibility of being called ‘Teacher’s Pet.’

I have in mind a boy who was early taught to love to go to Sunday School and hear the Sabbath bell. At the age of ten he suddenly informed his parents, with the air of a hardened offender, that he intended to cut Sunday School regularly once a month. On inquiry it appeared that the superintendent had arranged an honor list on which were to be inscribed the names of those whose attendance for a month had been faultless.

‘Dickey says he got caught that way once.’ There was something not to be endured in the thought of standing before his companions as a horrible example of the degrading virtue of punctuality.

The youth who passes from an excellent preparatory school into the university has the same experience. He has an uneasy feeling that he has been over-educated. The whole of the freshman year is sometimes spent in the successful attempt to conceal the too careful training he has received. Only when he is convinced by the college office that his attainments do not make him conspicuous, does he feel that he may safely continue his education.

The educator who would keep a cheerful courage up must be something of a detective. He must be able to penetrate the disguises which his pupils put on to conceal from him the result of his labors among them. He must remember that these youthful pilgrims are traveling through an unfriendly world. To some of them, the intellectual life is an uncanny thing of which they have heard in the classroom, but of which they are suspicious. It appears to them as the field of psychical research does to the partially convinced. When the conditions are right the phenomena appear. But when they go on the street and talk with the uninitiated, they mention these matters with a tone of indifference. They do not like to appear too credulous.

Moreover, these young people are conscious that their stay in the seats of learning is but temporary. They are aware that the subjects in which the university seeks to interest them are not mentioned in the good society which they aspire to enter. Were they to acquire any unusual ideas, they fear that on their return to their native Philistia they might be interned as alien enemies.

Education depends not only on the consent of those who are being educated but on the consent of those who are paying the bills. The proud father is willing to pay roundly for an education which will make his son like himself. It is hard to make him appreciate an education which aims to produce a salutary unlikeness.

The only institutions which can openly avow their real ambitions for betterment are those which are endowed and supported for the benefit of confessedly backward races. Carlisle Institute for the Indians does not profess to make its students like their fathers. It boldly admits to the paternal relatives that it sees room for improvement. The student is not to go back to take up the accustomed life in the wigwam. He is to tear down the wigwam and make a civilized home.

But this would not be so easy if the school had to depend for its support on the Indian tribes from which the pupils come. Some self-made savage of the old school would declare that he would have no flummery fit only for mollycoddles. In the interest of efficiency he would endow a chair of practical scalping.

The Indian School is like a system of waterworks fed from a remote and elevated reservoir. All one has to do is to turn the water on and let it flow through the pipes. But the institution of higher education for the more favored classes has no such advantage. It is like the hydraulic ram placed in the bed of the running stream. Most of the water that runs through it escapes downhill, but in doing so sends a very slender stream far above its natural level.

It is the function of the institution of higher learning to educate the public that supports it up to the point of appreciating its real purpose. But while it is being educated up to this point, will the public support it? That is a matter that causes anxious thought.

Athens supported a numerous body of sophists who taught what the Athenians wanted to know. Socrates had a different educational ideal. He endeavored to teach the Athenians that they did n’t know a good many things they thought they knew. This method was not so readily appreciated.

II

Have you ever heard a successful business man who is also a real philanthropist address his fellow business man in regard to his pet projects? Does he confess himself as of the tribe of Abou Ben Adhem? Not at all. He gloats over the fact that, whatever else he may be, he is not a philanthropist. He has but one thought in his hard head, and that is, Business is Business. He refers admiringly to brass tacks, and declares that whatsoever is not brass tacks is vanity. He is a confirmed money-getter, and despises anything that does n’t pay.

After having thus allayed suspicion, he unfolds his plans. He has shrewdly outwitted his employees and doubled their salaries, by which means he expects to treble their efficiency. He intends to invest this unearned increment in various schemes for public health and recreation. By investments of this kind he will make the community so prosperous and optimistic that they just can’t help buying his goods. Yes, sir, it pays in dollars and cents to enlarge one’s business in this way.

All this is protective coloring. In his heart the public-spirited hypocrite knows that he would do these things whether they paid or not.

The phenomena of protective coloring are seen not only in the way in which the educational world takes on the color of the business or social world that surrounds it; they are seen in the way in which any new interest hides behind some interest or discipline that has already been established. The new idea seldom appears in its true colors. It adopts some prudential disguise. Its motto seems to be Safety First.

One thing which prevents the full realization of the ideal of liberal culture is the difficulty of keeping one branch of study from interfering with another. Nowhere is it more true that one good custom will corrupt the world. With all the bewildering variety of courses the student is often taught only one way of using his mind. Usually there is one method or discipline that exercises an autocratic power. Everything must take color from that.

There was a time when Theology was the recognized Queen of the Sciences. Education was in the hands of the clergy. Woe unto the teacher of youth who did not theologize — or seem to do so.

The physical sciences had to walk warily and conceal their identity from the prying eyes of the ecclesiastical police. In the gardens of learning, brute facts were not admitted unless held in leash by some sound doctrine. Science pure and simple did not come out in the open and display its miscellaneous assortment of undogmatic actualities. A man could hardly be a professor of such things. But by professing to be something else, he might dispense useful knowledge of selected physical facts.

Paley’s Natural Theology contained a considerable amount of information about anatomy and physiology. Its initial reference to the watch might furnish a text for one interested in mechanics. Priestley, as a preacher and theologian, — though heterodox, — made valuable discoveries in chemistry. It was to his credit that he discovered oxygen, an element not easily discoverable in meeting-houses.

But the contributions to science were incidental. The approach was furtive. By indirections they found direction out. We are reminded of the text in the Book of Judges: ‘In the days of Shamgar the son of Anoth, the highways were deserted and the people walked in byways.’ The timid folk who walked in these scientific byways made no display of intellectual wealth. All that they hoped for was to escape notice.

They were fortunate if they could make their favorite studies look like something else. In the days of Hugh Miller, geology disguised itself as a useful commentary on the first chapters of Genesis. It was a branch of hermeneutics, the science of the interpretation of texts. If the testimony of the rocks confirmed the texts — so much the better for the rocks.

Tennyson preserves the memory of the situation: —

The scientific man had not only to suffer many things from dogmatic theologians, but he was also in bondage to literary taskmasters.

When the educational world was ruled by those whose interests were primarily literary and classical, he had a hard time of it. For literary values and scientific values do not coincide. Literature is concerned with certain proprieties and congruities and dramatic unities. A story need not be literally true, but it must be well told. An idea, to be received in good society, must be clothed and in its right mind.

In the Dame School of Literature, facts are not received simply as facts. They must mind their manners. They must wipe their feet on the mat, and learn how to come into the room. If they do not come in properly, the Dame sends them out to try it again.

There was something pathetic in the way in which the scientifically minded tried to conform to these requirements of polite learning. In the darkest recesses of old bookstores you will find shelves full of semi-scientific, semi-sentimental volumes published in the early nineteenth century. They are intended to insinuate knowledge of the physical world under all sorts of literary disguises. The theory is that the reader will not mind fact if it is presented as if it were not a fact.

Here is a novel of Alonzo and Melissa by a long-forgotten Connecticut writer, who in the preface ventures a timid hope that the story may serve to increase our knowledge of nature while at the same time pointing a useful moral to the young.

Alonzo and Melissa are making love as they sit on the shores of Long Island Sound. As Alonzo is proposing to Melissa, they are aware that they should pay attention to natural phenomena. So they endeavor to cultivate observation and improve their minds in this fashion.

Melissa. See that ship. How she plows through the white foam, while the breeze flutters the sails, varying the beams of the sun.

Alonzo. Yes, it is almost down.

Melissa. What is almost down?

Alonzo. The sun. Was not you speaking of the sun, madam?

Melissa. Your mind is absent, Alonzo. I was speaking of yonder ship.

Alonzo. I beg pardon, madam. Oh, yes, the ship. See how it bounds with rapid motion over the waves.

In some such absent-minded fashion did the Melissas and Alonzos study what was called natural philosophy. It allowed plenty of time in which to think of something else.

It is interesting to remember that Charles Darwin was the grandson of Dr. Erasmus Darwin, who was also a man of scientific attainments. But when, in 1789, Dr. Darwin sought to express his ideas on botany, he did it in such a way as not to alarm the Melissas and Alonzos. He sought to introduce botany into the most select circles of the world of polite learning in an elaborate poem called ‘The Loves of the Plants.’ He sought to insinuate the Linnæan system through the romantic adventures of gnomes and sylphs and nereids and other well-known classical characters. More detailed botanical information was given in the notes.

Miss Anna Seward, known as the Swan of Litchfield, and a very great literary lady of her day, says of Dr. Darwin’s poem, —

‘ The genuine charm of his muse must endure as long as the English language shall exist. Should that perish, translation would preserve the Botanic Garden as one of its gems. . . . Can anything be finer than the description of the signs of the zodiac? Or that passage describing the calcining of the phlogistic ores which is termed the marriage of Ether with the mine. The passage is most poetic though purely chemical.’

Miss Seward followed with unabated admiration the wooing of the various flowers, under which pleasant disguise the most abstruse botanical information was conveyed. ‘The pictures of the various flowers arise in the page in botanic discrimination and all the hues of poetry.’ In the description of the love-making of the flax, Miss Seward says, ‘We are presented with the exactest description, not only of the growth of flax, but the weaving of linen. Sir Richard Arkwright’s apparatus at Matlock is described.’ Other machinery is described.

‘We have in sweet versification the whole process of this admirable invention. It is an encouragement to science that this bard throws over them all the splendid robe of descriptive poetry.’ In treating the transformation of the vine into a bacchanalian female, Dr. Darwin introduces the subject of temperance. Says Miss Seward, ‘The many disorders of the liver caused by ebriety are nobly allegorized.’

Not only the more romantic flowers, but vegetable growths of lowlier order are allegorized nobly. Miss Seward is enraptured by a delightful passage concerning truffles. ‘The Truffle, a well-known fungus, now meets our attention as a fine lady. She is married to a gnome in a grand subterranean palace, soothed by the music of æolian strings, which make love to the tender echoes in the circumjacent caves, while cupids hover around and shake celestial day from their bright lamps.’

In such disguises did the grandfather of Charles Darwin introduce natural science to the polite world of his generation.

III

All this belongs to the past. The physical sciences have won their place in the sun. Having won their independence, they now aspire to imperial rule. The scientific method is everywhere being rigidly enforced.

Our sympathies with the under-dog lead us to inquire into the state of the older forms of culture which are now passing under a foreign yoke.

Literature, philosophy, ethics, and the fine arts existed in prescientific days, and flourished mightily. Each had a discipline and method of its own. Each gathered about itself a band of votaries who loved it for its own sake, and were satisfied with its own rewards.

Time was when the philosopher walked in a grove with a group of eager youths who shared his curiosity about the universe. He liked to talk with them about the whence and the whither and the why of everything. They were frankly speculative. They asked questions which they were well aware admitted of no definite and final answer. They disputed with one another for the sheer joy of intellectual conflict. The disputations sharpened their wits, but they ‘got no results.’ In fact they were not seeking any results that an efficiency expert could recognize. The free use of their minds was joy enough.

Now it is evident that a modern university is too serious a place for much of this sort of thing. Life is too short, and business is business, and time is money. Youth must be up and doing, and not lose its opportunities by meditating overmuch on the ultimate reason of things.

Still, it seems to me that in the most efficient university there ought to be room for at least one philosopher, and he should not be compelled to teach philosophy by the ‘scientific method.’ He should be allowed to practice the philosophic method, which is really an excellent one for its own purpose.

As it is, he, poor man, is in the condition of the Israelites by the rivers of Babylon, when ’they that carried us away captive required of us a song. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?’

There is something a little pathetic in seeing a real philosopher trying to teach a company of busy undergraduates, who have never learned to meditate. ‘ May we not say of the philosopher,’ asks Plato, ‘ that he is a lover, not of a part of wisdom, but of the whole?’

The philosopher, finding himself in an intellectual community where the interests are highly specialized, becomes a little uneasy and self-conscious. In order to be in the fashion he must appear to be a specialist also. And so he frequently disguises his real aim by a critical apparatus which imposes on the undiscerning. It is all the more refreshing when we come across a philosopher who is interested in the incomprehensible universe, and who does n’t care who knows it.

The case of history is complicated by the fact that the historian is greatly indebted to the scientific method, in the arrangement of his materials and in the testing of his sources. There is a sense in which history may be said to be a science. But there is another sense in which it is not and cannot be a science.

Mr. Trevelyan has pointed out the distinctive difference. The man of science is interested in that which can be reduced to a law. He is not interested in an isolated fact, but in facts that are repeated.

Narrative history, on the other hand, deals with facts which are not repeated, at least not in the same order and with the same results. The born historian is interested in things that happened once but will never happen again. He begins his tale with ‘Once upon a time.’ At another time something else will happen, to another set of people; but that is another story.

Yet when he is about to tell his tale of what happened once, a sudden fear falls upon him lest he be not sufficiently scientific. He must not tell what came to pass, and how the people felt to whom strange things happened. He must expound the general law. So all things that are personal, local, exceptional, dramatic are hustled out of the way. The historic facts are put in uniform and all their individuality is drilled out of them. One age is made to look very much like another. Human history is treated as a part of natural history. We have a number of huge experiments which come out just as every one who understands natural law knows they would come out. Now all this may have an educational value of its own, but it is not the peculiar value of history.

The plight of the teacher of literature is somewhat different. He is not so much afraid of his colleagues in the faculty, as of the undue popularity of his courses among the less industrious undergraduates.

There is a secret which is the source of personal joy but at the same time full of danger to the uninitiated. It must be carefully guarded. The reading of good books, especially if they are written in one’s native language, is not hard work. It is in reality a pleasant pastime. The masterpieces of literature are not difficult reading to any one who approaches them in the right spirit. They are often thrilling, they are sometimes amusing, and they are usually written in such a style that their meaning is easily grasped. First-rate books are written in a more understandable style than third-rate books. All this the teacher of literature well knows, and his secret desire is to lead appreciative youth in the paths of pleasantness which he has discovered.

But alas, if the secret were known his classrooms would be invaded by a host of young Philistines in search of easy courses. ‘Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon! ’

The pleasant paths must needs be obstructed by barbed-wire entanglements borrowed from the scientific machine shops. Instead of an invitation to read together the few books that are a joy forever, the ‘required reading’ leads over many a long and rocky road, chosen because it furnishes a good endurance test. It is hoped that the idle fellows will fall by the wayside, and the grapes of Canaan be reserved for those who have crossed the forbidding desert.

Sometimes the teacher of literature wonders whether it is worth while to keep up the stern pretense. Why not let the cat out of the bag? Reading is a recreation, rather than an enforced discipline. Why should not leisure be left for such recreation even in the strenuous days of youth? The habit will be a great solace in later life.

We are beginning to see that the ideal of a liberal education is too large to be put into four years of a college course. It is the growth of a lifetime spent in contact with the actual world. But it is not too much to ask that in a university the student should be brought in contact with different types of the intellectual life, and that each type should be kept distinct. He should learn that the human mind is a marvelous instrument and that it may be used in more than one way.

Variety in courses of study is less important than variety and individuality of mental action. How does a man of science use his mind? How does an artist feel? What makes a man a jurist, a man of business, a politician, a teacher? How does ethical passion manifest itself? What is the historical sense?

These are not questions to be answered on examination papers. But it is a reasonable hope that a young man in the formative period of his life may learn the answers through personal contacts.