The mirror., 1923-11-15

The meal is ended, she is bored and tired.
Endeavors to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if unde-
sired.". :.
And again in these lines:
."She turns and looks a moment in
the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one alf-formed thought
to pass:
"Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's
over"
When lovely women stoops to folly and
PAGES about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic
hand
And puts a record on the gramophone."
And now in conclusion / should like to
quote few words of Nathanial PETER on
our system of education. am profoundly
struck by paragraphs two and seven of
this article. Here it is; and may it afford
you as it has me: some salubrious food for
thought.
"Where has there ever been universal
education, or even education for the ma
jority, or for more than an infnitesimal
minority?
I do not mean literacy, writes Nathaniel
PETER in the Century Magazine. 1 am
not confusing the two. There is no more
fatuous and common fallacy in our think
ing that illiteracy and ignorance are syn
onymous and that man who cannot read
and write necessarily cannot have more
of wisdom, surer perception of the re-
lation of fundamentals, and keener dis
elimination between truth and error than
one who can read and write.
No man could know peasant Russia or
peasant Italy or China or Japan or India
and suffer that delusion. Given human
situation, should as soon trust a group
of illiterate Chinese rustics to find a de-
cent and intelligent solution as group
of Colorado. high school graduate business
men. Or Harvard alumni, for that matter.
I mean education, then, not literacy.
This that passes in America for educa-
ton is is only literacy. There is no educa-
ton yet. Neither science nor philosophy
of education has been worked out. One
finds reading, writing, ciphering, the me-
chanical stufhng of vast mass of facts
unrelated to one another, and rigid
body of dogma forever indurating the
mind against new ideas or new outlook.
Judged not by the complexiy of its pro-
cesses and the number of units it handles,
but by the quality of its product, it is as
the laboring of mountains. 1t has borne
better bond statesmen, advertising writer's
and organizers.
I am only saying that there is no ed
ucation and there are no educated men
excepting always the minority that there
is everywhere. am only saying that lit
eracy is not worth the price. To pro-
duce generation educated in the manner
of the Americans or the English of the
present generation is small return for so
heavy social outlay.
And whatever may be the truth for our
own people, who have no choice but to
go ahead and make literacy a foundation
for education, certainly should say that
for China and similar countries to adopt
an educational program such as ours and
produce a generation such as ours would
be monstrous calamity.
Better, far better, the Chinese or Hindu
or Turk peasant who now holds news
paper wrong side up. Far better than to
take the same peasant and at tremendous
social cost teach him to read Bernard
Shaw, Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, Ana
tole France, the Apostle Paul and Aristotle,
and absolutely misunderstood them: or, if
you like, to read the yellow journal and
the success magazine and propaganda and
also misunderstood them, though in an op-
Posite direction.
Think of the children of the 100000
600 in China and 300,000,000 in India
doomed generation on generation through