Chapter 12 - Page 2

boxing, fencing; schools for nurses and cooks; summer schools; winter schools.

And yet the American is not profoundly educated. He has too much within his reach. I have been distinctly surprised at crude specimens I have met who were graduates of great universities. The well-educated Englishman, German, and American are different things. The American is far behind in the best sense, which I am inclined to think is due to the teachers. Any one can get through a normal school and become a teacher who can pass the examination, and I have seen some singular instances. If all the teachers were obliged to pass examinations in culture, refinement, and the art of conveying knowledge, there would be a falling of pedagogic heads. The free and over education of the poor places them at once above their parents. They are free, and the daughter of a ditch laborer, whose wife is a floor scrubber, upon being educated is ashamed of her parents, learns to play the piano, apes the rich, and is at least unhappy.

The result is, there remains no peasant class. The effect of education on the country boy is to make him despise the farm and go to the city, to become a clerk and ape the fashions of the wealthy at six or eight dollars a week. He has been educated up to the standard of his "boss" and to be his equal. The overeducation of the poor is a heartless thing. The women vie with the men, and as a result women graduates, taking positions at half the price that men demand, crowd them out of the fields of skilled labor, whereas the man, not crowded out, should, normally, marry the girl. In power, strength, and progress the American nation stands first in the world, and all this may be due to splendid educational facilities. But this is not everything. There result strife, unhappiness, envy, and a craze for riches. I do not think the Americans as a race are as happy as the Chinese. Religious denominations try to have their own schools, so that children shall not be captured by other denominations. Thus the Roman Catholics have parochial schools, under priests and sisters, and colleges of various grades. They oppose the use of the Bible in the public school, and in some States their influence has helped to suppress its use. The Quakers, with a following of only eighty thousand, have colleges and schools. The Methodists have universities, as have the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and others. All denominations have institutions of learning. These schools are in the hands of clergymen, and are often endowed or supported by wealthy members of the denomination.

A remarkable feature of American life is the college of correspondence. A man or firm advertises to teach by correspondence at so much a month. Many branches are taught, and if the student is in earnest a certain amount of information can thus be accumulated. Among the people I have met I have observed a lack of what I term full, broad education, producing a well-rounded mind,