Plsistratus and Corset Stays
‘MODERN’ educators of a certain stripe condemn cultural education, insisting that it is unrelated to life. To test this notion I wish to propose two totally unrelated statements.
Pisistratus was the first tyrant of Athens.
Corset stays are made of whalebone.
Pisistratus is dead, and whalebone has departed from the vestigial little things that are now called corsets, but thirty years ago the first statement would have been looked upon as cultural, while the second would have been considered utilitarian. Children would have been urged to learn this second fact, because they might become corset makers. Corset making, said the educators, will contribute to the support of a family, while Greek history is only for nearsighted scholars.
When I was a boy, culture was looked upon with such disfavor that I was sent to a technical high school, where I bungled through much sawing, hammering, moulding, forging, and welding. Greek and Latin were denied me. In spite of this, I have not used my hands to earn my living. True, I can drive a nail — almost as well as my wife, who studied Greek and Latin, and who never saw the inside of a shop. To me, at least, those things that were considered utilitarian have been cultural, for I have never used them.
Sweeping is cultural to the person who never sweeps. Physical education becomes physical culture to all but coaches, prize fighters, and ball players. The rich man’s daughter will not have to bake cherry pies, so why teach her to cook? To her, Pisistratus is likely to be more utilitarian than cooking, for she will meet many people who have been exposed to ancient history. Personally, I have used tyrants more often than hammers, and with them my aim has always been more certain. rom tyrants I have learned that it is to my interest to vote, lest tyrants be elected to high office. Corsets have gone the way of bustles and hoop skirts, but tyrants we have with us always.
One need go no further than the unabridged dictionary to discover that the meaning of utilitarianism is ethical rather than economic. Some philosophers of this school went so far as to define the term as ‘universal hedonism.’ On the other hand, ‘culture’ has the more practical significance, for it comes from a word that means ‘to till.’ If my study of ancient history improves me to the point where I am more interesting to others, broadening my own interests meanwhile, my study is utilitarian, for I have added to the world’s sum total of happiness. ‘Who wishes to study a dead language or read a dead history?’ asks the hard-headed modern educator. ‘Who wishes to make a whisk-broom holder?’ I reply. So I vote for the Latin and history, though in my time I have made some very bad whisk-broom holders.
Belittling the cultural is a favorite pastime of modern school administrators. Is there a bit of defensive coloring in this attitude? Most of our school superintendents are graduates in ‘education.’ They know all about ‘method,’ but they lack the cultural background which is necessary to apply it. Not long ago I heard a professor of education state that he does not write his textbooks. He gets his outlines from the papers of his graduate students. Next, he writes his book in the sort of English with which he is familiar. Then he hires a graduate student to rewrite it into the sort of language which will pass muster with the publisher. This man’s specialty is books on how to study. If his medicine is effective, and if he would take some of it, he might learn to write his books himself. Surely there is utilitarian joy in being able to master one’s own language, and certainly the saving of the fee for rewriting is an object which should fit the most sordid connotations of the word ‘utilitarian.’
‘But,’ say our educators, ‘we must prepare pupils for economic life.’ Can they? Charles M. Schwab cannot predict the future of steel. Is it reasonable to ask the poor pedagogue to foretell the economic future that is tied up with steel and a million other items? Assuming that the guidance expert can know all vocations, — which he cannot, — can he adequately know individuals? Hume’s mother thought her son weak-minded; Kant’s sister thought Immanuel insane; Handel was punished for practising on the piano.
Some educators recognize no limit in their destruction of the cultural. If we destroy Pisistratus, can we save Nero? If George III is discarded, shall we bother with Boss Tweed? A logical conclusion of the matter is that what happened yesterday cannot concern us to-day; if our political rivals stole the election from us last year, we may forget it, for it is past. Consequently we will eliminate the watchers from the polls, and permit our rivals to steal from us again. If we are rational, however, we learn our lessons from the past, and probably the further we can dig into the past, the more comprehensive will be the lesson,
‘Modern’ schools substitute strange things for the despised cultural subjects. Time of children is taken up with joke clubs, with checker clubs, with travel clubs that do not even travel to the city parks, and with rod and rifle clubs that neither fish nor hunt. We organize student groups so that pupils may learn to vote, but we have to bribe them to use the ballot. This is not surprising. These young people are not interested. They are oblivious of the dangers of electing tyrants to student offices. They have never met Pisistratus. In a few years, alas, they will not consider the glamorous tyrants of ancient times worth knowing, and they will be unable to distinguish between benevolent tyrants like Pisistratus and malevolent fellows like Heliogabalus. If there is no other reason for the preservation of the cultural, there is a wealth of great literature which can be but meagrely appreciated without some acquaintance with the despised Latin and history; there are many cultured, or ‘tilled,’ people who highly prize the person who has ‘smote the sounding furrows’ with the adventuring Ulysses,
True, some of the most ardent partisans of the cultural have been its worst enemies. We cannot slow up the world while students cram the dates of all the papal bulls, or try
Nevertheless, the learning of anything is better than the learning of nothing, and self-mastery cannot come without effort. Which shall we stress? The building of airships that will not fly, and flowerpot stands that will not stand, or the magic realm that takes us back over the path our ancestors trod, rejoicing in every forward step that brought them nearer to the goal which they had hoped to win for us?
Which will produce the greater joy — the greater utility: Shall I read Lamb, or tinker with my car? My wife, who drives the car, will consider Lamb the more utilitarian.
JOHN GIRDLER