The Pleasantville press. (Pleasantville, N.J.) 1912-1929, 1915-07-17
STRANGLE EDUCATION
WITH SCHOLARSHIP.
BY A. E. Winship, Editor of Journal
of Education. Boston, Mass.

ny "a LIZ AhohAP3 1NhSOA
of Education, Boston, Mass.
Standards are as essential as laws,
and as vital as books. of pedigree.
The significant feature of stand
ardization is knowing what is signifi-
cant in Standardization. There is no
education that is not standardized;
but Observation-Disclosures leads to col
lapse as surely as does entertaining
for a college crew; and false stan
d~ardization leads to disgrace and
crime as definitely and in much the
same way as buncoing weak, rich wo-
men into paying tens of thousands of
dollars for de luxe books merely
worth dollars on the promise that
they can resell them at a fabulous
advance.
The danger, and it is a great dan
ger, is that men who are standard
izing, with millions behind them, are
trying to strangle education with
scholarship. These men have never
seen that scholarship is no more edu-
cation than a manikin is a man.
Education is a thing of life and
scholarship is lifeless. Scholarship
deals only with what has been; edu-
cation deals wholly with what is and
is to be. Scholarship faces our grand
fathers; education faces our grand
children.
These modern standardizers are
afraid of education because it is alive.
1t may be uncomfortable. They do
not like life because there are all
sorts of dangers in anything alive.
For instance, a manikin never has
blood poison, fever, pneumonia or
any other ailment. 1t can be kept in
a closet without danger of petrifac-
ton. 1t is a beautiful thing to look
at, illustrates delightfully."-, lasts for
ever.
Scholarship is standardized to
death because it deals with the dead.
Standardizers have opposed every
Standardizers tried to prevent any
ones believing that the earth rota-
ted.
They crucifed Jesus, imprisoned
Paul, and they drove Sammelweis to
insanity in Vienna less than sixty
years ago because he reduced the
death rate in childbirth from IL in
100 to 8 in 100 by insisting that the
physician should wash his hands be-
fore he attended the patient. Stand
ardized physicians insisted that this
was a reflection upon the Standard
cation.
They positively refused to DO so
simple a thing as that because it was
new. Sammelweis and his school re-
duced the death rate so low that
they prosecuted him to insanity.
There was nothing in their scholar
ship that suggested clean hands.
They fought Pasteur like fiends in
carnate because he was conquering
hydrophobia, and they fercely assail-
ed Lister because his theory of treat
ment was not of their standards.
But all the standardizers of the
past were harmless as compared with
those of today, because they merely
had the gravitation of human nature
and inherited prejudice to overcome,
while today limitless millions are put
in the hands of men for use in
strangling every new idea that brea-
thes in an educational institution.
A professor who prefers education
to scholarship realizes that the aims
house threatens him while a luxurious
old age might await him. An in
stitution that prefers live education
to dead scholarship sees its doom.
The standardization of today is a
wolf in sleeps clothing. 1t is using
every art and device of bribery to de-
ceive the public. Under the p~retense
that they are protecting the public
from youthful Inconsistency the advo-
Gates of Standardization are infusing
germs of senility.
To standardize in the right direc-
ton, standardize nothing backward,
but standardize everything forward
and upward.