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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 41. The Negro School - 2. Education in American Thought and Life
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886 An American Dilemma
level direct much of their attention to preserving and developing the
‘^educability” of the students. The very perfection of text books and too
much teaching is likely to make the student more passive in his attainment
of knowledge. Too little is generally asked of the students^ too much—in
teaching—is required of the teachers.* This is, perhaps, one of the reasons
why the final educational results do not measure up to the great amount of
funds and time which go into schooling in America. In this respect the
Negro schools do not differ from white schools. In fact, they can, even less
well than white schools, afford to disregard the more formal requirements
and go in for experimentation.
In this connection should be noted the relative absence in America of a
civic adult education movement upheld by the concerted efforts of the
people themselves. We have related this to the relative political passivity
of the American citizens between elections.*^ The government of American
municipalities does not decentralize power and responsibility to a great
number of boards and councils, and does not offer, therefore, much oppor-
tunity for participation to the ordinary citizen. This decreases the functional
importance of civic adult education, as docs also the relative absence of
organized mass movements. If this is true of the white Americans, it is, of
course, much more true of the Negroes, particularly in the South where
they are largely disfranchised. Lack of participation in the wider community
must depress interest in continued self-education, except when it is voca-
tional or professional and motivated by narrow considerations of individual
economic advancement.
America is, however, prominent in the type of passive mass education
through such agencies as the radio, press, popular magazines and movies.
The rise of the Negro population, not only to literacy but to a real capa-
bility of consuming the spoken and printed word, and the increasing efficacy
of those agencies, must have a strong influence in raising the culture level
of Negroes. Through these media, they are made more American.
* This is definitely true also of the ordinary college and, to an extent, also of the
graduate school. There are too many arranged courses, too much “spoon feeding.” The
heavy lecturing—which the observer relates to the legislators’ and the entire society’s
lack of respect for the learned profession and their demand to get labor for their money,
as well as to the tradition of preaching kept in institutions which were almost all denomina-
tional seminaries in the beginning—is perhaps even more dangerous for the teachers than
for the students as nothing is so indoctrinating as to listen to one’s own voice. It keeps
the professors from scientific workj and it keeps the students from finding their own way
to the sources of knowledge. The “self-made man” is generally an American ideal, but in
the schools it is less well realized than in other spheres of culture. The “spoon feeding” in
higher institutions is the more important since they set the patterns, to a considerable extent,
for the lower schools.
‘’See Chapter 33.
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