The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-04-19
FALSE EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS.

deal of fiashy trash and shallow fallacy, now
and then utters random truth; as, for In
stance, when it recently said:
We Americans are in the habit of flsttering our
selves a great deal too much Because we clrcu-
late vast number of copies of some very poor
novel, we call ourselves a " reading people" 80
we are but we have arrived only at that stage
when we read the second best things. Take, for
instance, our periodicals. There are three IA
vorite monthly magazines, which cater Tor three
different grades OF customers aud have all met
with good deal of success in their way. These
are the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Magazine and
Petersohis Magazine. OF course we naturally as
sumo that their success is due to a rivalry among
their editors TO make them good as possible.
On the contrary, when we get behind the scenes,
we find that the success of each IS due IN part TO
its being systematically kept down. Even the
best of them must guard against beng TOO good'
We may safely take for granted that it does
not cost the editors and contributors of these
periodicals painful degree of self-repression
to keep their work down to the level of the
literary culture to which it is addressed.
They are, for the most part, entirely worthy
of their public. Under the same nurture
they became writing people, and their read
ers reading people. To expect this nurture
to lift the one class to the table land of liter
airy excellence, and to leave the other class
among the murky and misty flats of literary
barbarism, would be preposterously illogical
1t would be to look for opposite effects to
flow from a common cause; to predict hetero-
geneous progeny to issue from homogeneous
parentage. The same antecedent and con-
comitant facts which account for the readers
who are satisfied with the "second best
| things" must also account Tor the writers
who produce these "second best things"
Fed by the sap of the same tree, they cannot
be, on the one hand, harsh, acrid berries,
and, on the other hand, "apples of gold in
pictures of silver"
The Independents criticism upon Ameri-
cans as reading people" will, with slight
variation, apply to them not less justly as an
educated people. ave Americans are in the
habit of fattering ourselves too much. Be-
cause we are educated over a vast surface
SO we vary the remark of the Independent
''with a thin layer of school book knowledge
we call ourselves an educated people. So we
are; but we have arrived only at that stage
when the constituents of our education do not
rise, on an average, above second best
Third or fourth best, if we may be pardoned
| the doubtful grammar of such an
expression would more truly indicate
the standard of that widely diffused instruc-
ton in the United States which has been SO
often glorifyingly cited as proof of the most
highly educated people in the world. In fact,
however, this wide diffusion has been pur-
chased at the sacrifice of depth and solidity.
1t has been as though education were guam
titative force, and governed, accordingly, by
the law of the persistence and correlation of
forces; SO that the more it should be diluted
and spread in one direction, the less compact
and weighty it would be found to become in
another direction. This may not always be
the necessary price of universal education. Let
us trust that universally in this respect will
not be incompatible with much higher de-
gree of intellectual culture than it now indi-
Gates.
And meanwhile, every American who is
| solicitous of true educational progress,
ought to adjust his aims and his efforts in
that behalf according to a very different
standard from that which has heretofore been
hackneyed in the cant of certain class of
demagogues, and but too readily accepted
even by thoughtful and cultivated people.
Reading, writing and ciphering are very use
full rudiments, to be sure. But at most they
are so many ground sills of attainment in
knowledge and accomplishment in art or in
literature. They are tools merely. A child may
possess them; but child can never do a
mans work with them. The possessor must
be ambitious of something beyond their pos
session, or they will be as barren in his
hands as the chisel of the sculptor or the
glasses of an astronomer in the hands OF
born idiot. 1t is conceivable that an infant
school may be more advanced in elementary
book learning than a community of adults,
comprising skillful and industrial agricultur-
lists, artisans, traders, men of much travel
and observation, men of varied experience,
who have thought much and suffered much,
men who have deeply studied the book OF
human nature, having got its saddest and its
noblest passages by heart. Who will say
that the members of this infant school are
raised, by its elementary book learning, to an
educational level with this community Of
adults, taught in their respective schools,
and accomplished, strong and wise in then
various spheres? Assuredly something
higher than the infant school standard Of
universal education is wanted to make truly
educated people.
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