George Nathan - The Collected Works of H. L. Mencken

The cause for all this lies, no doubt, in the fact that school teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of mental workers. Imitativeness being the dominant impulse in youth, their pupils acquire some measure of their stupidity, and the result is that the influence of the whole teaching tribe is against everything included in genuine education and culture.

That this is true is evident on the surface and a moment's analysis furnishes a multitude of additional proofs. For one thing, a teacher, before he may begin work, must sacrifice whatever independence may survive within him upon the altar of authority. He becomes a cog in the school wheel and must teach only the things countenanced and approved by the powers above him, whether those powers be visible in the minister of education, as in Germany; in the traditions of the school, as in England, or in the private convictions of the millionaire who provides the cash, as in the United States. As Nietzsche points out, the schoolman's thirst for the truth is always conditioned by his yearning for food and drink and a comfortable bed. His archetype is the university philosopher, who accepts the state's pay 1and so surrenders that liberty to inquire freely which alone makes philosophy worth while.

"No state," says Nietzsche, "would ever dare to patronize such men as Plato and Schopenhauer. And why? Simply because the state is always afraid of them. They tell the truth.... Consequently, the man who submits to be a philosopher in the pay of the state must also submit to being looked upon by the state as one who has waived his claim to pursue the truth into all its fastnesses. So long as he holds his place, he must acknowledge something still higher than the truth—and that is the state....

"The sole criticism of a philosophy which is possible and the only one which proves anything—namely, an attempt to live according to it—is never put forward in the universities. There the only thing one hears of is a wordy criticism of words. And so the youthful mind, without much experience in life, is confronted by fifty verbal systems and fifty criticisms of them, thrown together and hopelessly jumbled. What demoralization! What a mockery of education! It is openly acknowledged, in fact, that the object of education is not the acquirement of learning, but the successful meeting of examinations. No wonder then, that the examined student says to himself 'Thank God, I am not a philosopher, but a Christian and a citizen!...'

"Therefore, I regard it as necessary to progress that we withdraw from philosophy all governmental and academic recognition and support.... Let philosophers spring up naturally, deny them every prospect of appointment, tickle them no longer with salaries—yea, persecute them! Then you will see marvels! They will then flee afar and seek a roof anywhere. Here a parsonage will open its doors; there a schoolhouse. One will appear upon the staff of a newspaper, another will write manuals for young ladies' schools. The most rational of them will put his hand to the plough and the vainest will seek favor at court. Thus we shall get rid of bad philosophers." 2

The argument here is plain enough. The professional teacher must keep to his rut. The moment he combats the existing order of things he loses his place. Therefore he is wary, and his chief effort is to transmit the words of authority to his pupils unchanged. Whether he be a philosopher, properly so-called, or something else matters not. In a medical school wherein Chauveau's theory of immunity was still maintained it would be hazardous for a professor of pathology to teach the theory of Ehrlich. In a Methodist college in Indiana it would be foolhardy to dally with the doctrine of apostolic succession. Everywhere the teacher must fashion his teachings according to the creed and regulations of his school and he must even submit to authority in such matters as text books and pedagogic methods. Again, his very work itself makes him an unconscious partisan of authority, as against free inquiry. During the majority of his waking hours he is in close association with his pupils, who are admittedly his inferiors, and so he rapidly acquires the familiar, self-satisfied professorial attitude of mind. Other forces tend to push him in the same direction and the net result is that all his mental processes are based upon ideas of authority. He believes and teaches a thing, not because he is convinced by free reasoning that it is true, but because it is laid down as an axiom in some book or was laid down at some past time, by himself.

In all this, of course, I am speaking of the teacher properly so-called—of the teacher, that is, whose sole aim and function is teaching. The university professor whose main purpose in life is original research and whose pupils are confined to graduate students engaged in much the same work, is scarcely a professional teacher, in the customary meaning of the word. The man I have been discussing is he who spends all or the greater part of his time in actual instruction. Whether his work be done in a primary school, a secondary school or in the undergraduate department of a college or university does not matter In all that relates to it, he is essentially and almost invariably a mere perpetuator of doctrines. In some cases, naturally enough, these doctrines are truths, but in a great many other cases they are errors. An examination of the physiology, history and "English" books used in the public schools of America will convince anyone that the latter proposition is amply true.

Nietzsche's familiarity with these facts is demonstrated by numerous passages in his writings. "Never," he says, "is either real proficiency or genuine ability the result of toilsome years at school." The study of the classics, he says, can never lead to more than a superficial acquaintance with them, because the very modes of thought of the ancients, in many cases, are unintelligible to men of today. But the student who has acquired what is looked upon in our colleges as a mastery of the humanities is acutely conscious of his knowledge, and so the things that he cannot understand are ascribed by him to the dulness, ignorance or imbecility of the ancient authors. As a result he harbors a sort of sub-conscious contempt for the learning they represent and concludes that learning cannot make real men happy, but is only fit for the futile enthusiasm of "honest, poor and foolish old book-worms."

Nietzsche's own notion of an ideal curriculum is substantially that of Spencer. He holds that before anything is put forward as a thing worth teaching it should be tested by two questions: Is it a fact? and, Is the presentation of it likely to make the pupil measurably more capable of discovering other facts? In consequences, he holds the old so-called "liberal" education in abomination, and argues in favor of a system of instruction based upon the inculcation of facts of imminent value and designed to instill into the pupil orderly and logical habits of mind and a clear and accurate view of the universe. The educated man, as he understands the term, is one who is above the mass, both in his thirst for knowledge and in his capacity for differentiating between truth and its reverse. It is obvious that a man who has studied biology and physics, with their insistent dwelling upon demonstrable facts, has proceeded further in this direction than the man who has studied Greek mythology and metaphysics, with their constant trend toward unsupported and gratuitous assumption and their essential foundation upon undebatable authority.

Nietzsche points out, in his early essay upon the study of history, that humanity is much too prone to consider itself historically. That is to say, there is too much tendency to consider man as he has seemed rather than man as he has been—to dwell upon creeds and manifestoes rather than upon individual and racial motives, characters and instincts. 3The result is that history piles up misleading and useless records and draws erroneous conclusions from them. As a science in itself, it bears but three useful aspects—the monumental, the antiquarian and the critical. Its true monuments are not the constitutions and creeds of the past—for these, as we have seen, are always artificial and unnatural—but the great men of the past—those fearless free spirits who achieved immortality by their courage and success in pitting their own instincts against the morality of the majority. Such men, he says, are the only human beings whose existence is of interest to posterity. "They live together as timeless contemporaries:" they are the landmarks along the weary road the human race has traversed. In its antiquarian aspect, history affords us proof that the world is progressing, and so gives the men of the present a definite purpose and justifiable enthusiasm. In its critical aspect, history enables us to avoid the delusions of the past, and indicates to us the broad lines of evolution. Unless we have in mind some definite program of advancement, he says, all learning is useless. History, which merely accumulates records, without "an ideal of humanistic culture" always in mind, is mere pedantry and scholasticism.