Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1918-08-05
EDUCATION AFTER THE WAR
Will the Future Ask Why Men Couldn't
Control the Forces They Created?

likely to appear well forward among the
institutions that will be brought up for
new and relentless scrutiny. Accepted
theories of popular training will be ques-
toned, not in relation to their practical
aspects and methods of operation, but
upon far higher ground. There is
sure to be an effort to uncover and define
ultimate goals and ideals. We shall ask
at last What education is for. The war
has been so costly and SO great that the
future will look back upon it with
merciless curiosity for origins, details,
contributing causes.
1t is easy to believe that the final
analysis may be astonishing. 1t may
even be said, in some future day, that
deficient education caused the war. 1t
may be contended that a really educated
world would not have brought down upon
itself disaster so cruel as the present
one. And the decision may be, in all
truth, that western civilization drifted
almost to its end because it insisted on
miStdking training for education 1Ctth-
out an understanding of the difference
that erists bettpeen the one and the
other.
The war, even in such phases as are
ponderable at this moment, seems def
nitely to provide the answer that has
always been wanting between the two
opposing theories of education in
America-between the lonely proponents
of "classicism" on the one hand and the
nf
upon the other, with their tendency to
subimate the utilitarian idea and look
down upon education founded on classi-
cal literature and idealism as something
worn out and done for and untitled to a
practical age.
Science is practical. And science has
made the present war unthinkably cruel,
terrible beyond all imagination. This
knowledge involves no shadow of criti-
cism of science. Science makes no pre-
tensions to morals. 1t is apart from
morals 1t is searching and restless,
above the world.
There seems proof enough now that
the world does not know how to use the
things it receives from this source. And
the question that sooner or later must
rise above all others that have come out
of the war is whether mankind can get
along with science alone, whether any
practical formula is quite adequate to
make existence tolerable. The war is
intensely practical. 1t was instituted at
the beginning for practical purposes, en-
gineered by practical men. Science
merely fulfilled it's function. 1t in
vented and revealed. But Observe the
uses that haze been made of its reuela-
tions and ats intentions!
The truth seems to be that mans
spirit has not kept pace with his in
genuity. He is clever but he is not wise.
Man has created many things, philoso-
phies, machines, influences, which he is
unable to control. His machines are
marrelous-yet they destroy him.
The war has shown how exquisitely
the mind of man has been refined-how
keen its edge has become. But it has
shown, too, how deficient the larger part
of mankind has been in the spirit, where
all the larger motives inevitably begin.
There is the suggestion of stupendous
drama in the spectacle of mans soul out
and moving through unspeakable agony
in a conflict with the things mans mind
created. Because nobility Was aoilled
upon men, because the kingdom of
heaven is still somehow Wtthin them,
they must battle and die to overcome the
| things then Wrought.
This is the plight of a world which
believed it was educated. 1t remained
for America and our own armies abroad
to lift the aims of this war to a plane
and an aspect that can be reconciled at
last with a true ideal Of education. 1t
was the spirit of America that first went
to war. We made the issues finally
clear. The war for the rest of the world
was monstrous dilemma without END or
answer. SO it must altcuys be to men
1Uho are merely practical.
1t seems the more strange, therefore,
that the answer to all mans question
ing, the explanation of his matchless
difficulty, was written thousands of years
ago in the literature which the teachers
of this livelier, faster age profess to dis
dain. The noblest of the Greek dramas
was written to show that in war the win.
ner, too, must lose. All great literatures
like all great religions, attempt to prove
that pride and possessions, material
things, conquests and victories are not
in themselves adequate to provide peace
or happiness. In every ancient civiliza
ton this truth was proved.
1t is the spirit of America that is win
ming this war-and yet the existence Of
the spirit as an active force has beer
denied. And so it is the spirit alone
that can be educated. A mind can onl!
be trained. 1t is deeper and soundel
education in elemental truth that will b.