In a tale given to American educators by George H. Reavis the wild creatures once had a school in the woods. All the animals had to take all the subjects. Swimming, running, jumping, climbing, and flying made up the required curriculum. (The author is indebted to Dr. Reavis for permission to use this story here with certain additions.)

This was a school of no nonsense. It was a good, liberal educational institution. It gave broad general training — and instruction — and education too.

Some animals, of course, were better students than others. The squirrel, for example, got straight A's from the first in running, jumping, and climbing. He got a good passing grade, moreover, in swimming. It looked as though he would make Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year, but he had trouble with flying. Not that he was unable to fly. He could fly. He climbed to the top of tree after tree and sailed through the air to neighboring trees with ease. As he modestly observed, he was a flying squirrel by race. The teacher of flying pointed out, however, that the squirrel was always losing altitude in his gliding and insisted that he should take off in the approved fashion from the ground. Indeed, the teacher decided that the taking-off-from-the-ground unit had to be mastered first, as was logical, and so he drilled the squirrel day after day on the take-off.

The flying teachers practice in this case was in strict accord with the educational philosophy of the school. The teachers recognized that students would necessarily display great variations in their abilities. In the Woods Normal School, as a matter of fact, the teachers had learned a great deal about individual differences and the consequent tremendous ranges in human capacities. They set themselves doggedly, therefore, to the task of reducing these differences as best they might, that sane likenesses, safe unities, and noble conformities might prevail in the woods.

The squirrel tried hard. He tried so hard he got severe Charley horses in both hind legs, and thus crippled he became incapable even of running, Jumping, or climbing. He left school a failure, and died soon thereafter of starvation, being unable to gather and store nuts. He was cheerful to the last and was much beloved by his teachers and fellow pupils. He had the highest regard for his alma mater, regretting only the peculiar incapacity which had kept him from passing the course in flying.

The snake was a promising student also. Being a combination tree-and-water snake, he was excellent in both climbing and swimming. He was also a superior runner and passed the tests in that subject with ease. But he began to show antisocial tendencies in arguments with the instructor in jumping. When he had been given the basic instruction in that subject and it came time for him to make his first jump, he coiled up and threw himself almost his full length. This was not jump-ing, said the teacher. It was merely striking — a snake skill — and not at all the general-education jumping which all cultivated creatures had to know.

"What kind of jumping is of any use to a snake," demanded the student, "except this kind?" Then he coiled up and struck again, or jumped, as he called it, with the beginning of a bitter sneer on his face.

The teacher of jumping remonstrated with him, tried to get him to jump properly, and used the very best methods taught in the more advanced demonstration schools, but the snake became more and more uncooperative. The school counselors and the principal were called in and decided to attempt to vary the snake's education by teaching him flying, but to their distress he flatly refused even to attend the preliminary classes in that subject. He did not say he was unable to fly — he merely scoffed at the notion of flying for a snake and said that he had no intention of ever bothering with the subject. The more the teachers argued with him the more he coiled and struck and sneered, and the more he sneered and coiled and struck the more bitter and introverted he became. He left school and made his living briefly as a highwayman, murdering other animals along the woods paths, until he struck at a wildcat one evening and was clawed to death for his lack of judgment. He died detested by all and mourned by none.

The eagle was a truly brilliant student. His flying was superb, his running and jumping were of the best, and he even passed the swimming test, although the teacher tried to keep him from using his wings too much. By employing his talons and beak, moreover, he could climb after a fashion and no doubt he would have been able to pass that course, too, except that he always flew to the top of the problem tree or cliff when the teacher's back was turned and sat there lazily in the sun, preening his feathers and staring arrogantly down at his fellow students climbing up the hard way. The teachers reasoned with him to no avail. He would not study climbing seriously. At first he turned aside the faculty's importunities with relatively mild wisecracks and innuendoes, but as the teachers put more pressure upon him he reacted with more and more feeling. He became very aggressive, stating harshly and boldly that he knew more about climbing than did the professor of that subject. He became very successful when he left school and he attained high position in the woods society. He was dogmatic and dictatorial, respected by all and feared by many. He became a great supporter of general education. He wanted the curriculum of his alma mater to remain just as it was, except that he believed climbing had no general cultural value and should be replaced by some more liberal subject, like dive-bombing, which in his view, gave the student a certain general polish superior even to that given by the study of flying.

The gopher parents thought that the school was very good in most matters and that all the subjects gave excellent results if properly taught, but they wanted their children to learn digging in addition to the general education. The teachers regarded digging as a manual skill, not elevated enough for general culture. Besides, they did not know how to dig and they resisted learning such a subject.

So the gophers withdrew their children from this institution and hired a practical prairie dog to set up a private school in which an extensive course was given in digging. The prairie dog schoolmaster also taught courses in running, jumping, swimming, and climbing. He did not teach flying. He said it was an outmoded subject. Digging, a more practical subject, took its place in the curriculum. So the ducks and geese and wild turkeys and prairie chickens all scoffed at the prairie dog's school. They set up schools of their own, very much like the other schools except that the ducks and geese emphasized diving and the wild turkeys and prairie chickens gave advanced courses in evasive air tactics.

At this juncture, Old Man Coyote, who had been studying the development of education in the woods, shrewdly observed, "All these pedagogical characters are going at this business wrong end to. They look at what animals and birds — a lot of animals and birds — do and need to do. Then they put those needs and those doings into formal schooling and try to make the little pups and cubs and fledglings fit the schooling. It's haywire, wacky, and will never really work right."

Tom Gunn's Mule, a sour-visaged individual, ready to criticize all theories, heard Old Man Coyote's remark and demanded harshly, "If you're so smart, how would you do it?"

"Why, I would turn the whole thing around," explained Old Man Coyote modestly.

"Turn it around?" scoffed Tom Gunn's Mule. "What d'ye mean, turn it around?"

"These school people start with things that birds and animals do — or even more often what they did some time ago," explained Old Man Coyote. "Then the teachers hammer these doings — or as much of them as they can handle and as they think high-toned enough — into schooling, courses, curriculums, and subjects. Then they hammer the pups into the schooling. It's a rough and dopey process, and the teachers have had to invent good explanations to defend it. Discipline, culture, systematic training — things like that — are what the teachers use for this purpose. I don't know what they mean and I think the teachers don't know what they mean, but I do know they make a lot of cubs and pups and fledglings mean and rough and dopey when they could and should make them good and slick and smart."

"Sure, sure," snorted Tom Gunn's Mule, "but you still haven't told me how you would do it."

"Turn it around," said Old Man Coyote. "Start with the pups. See what the pups do. Then see what the school can do for the pups. Then see what the pups and the school together can do for all the creatures in the woods. Simple — forwards instead of backwards — right end to instead of wrong end to."

Old Man Coyote turned triumphantly and started to trot away.

"Hey!" shouted Tom Gunn's Mule. "Wait! These teachers have schools now. They have to run those schools. They are practical people. Just how, specifically and precisely, would you tell them to change their schools so as to get their education right end to, as you call it?"

Old Man Coyote patted a yawn with the back of his forepaw. "I lay down general principles," he said. "These schoolteachers have got to figure out some of the minor details themselves."

This is the end of the story, but I am a school-teacher myself, and so I have been trying to figure out a few of the details upon which Old Man Coyote touched.

I may be accused of having manufactured Old Man Coyote out of whole cloth. His real birth, or at least the origin of his main ideas, occurred long ago under more scholarly auspices than I can provide.

It has been almost a quarter century since Truman Lee Kelley presented evidence to show how nurture operates upon children to reduce certain of their most socially useful idiosyncrasies. He observed parenthetically in this connection that school men appeared to resent oddity in their pupils, that too often they were pedagogical plains-men, lovers of the dead level and organizers of mediocrity, and that under an egalitarian banner they flouted democratic equality by plying a Procrustean trade of forcing the weak and stunting the strong. Hugging their precious averages and norms, said Kelley, they spent their professional lives in a process of weary shoveling to fill valleys and steady erosion to remove mountains of human capacity. He asked that the policies and practices which produced this kind of education should be rigorously examined and drastically modified. (T. L. Kelley, The Influence of Nurture upon Native Differences, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1926).

This lecture is in the nature of a report, therefore, to Old Man Coyote, to Truman Lee Kelley, and to others holding their views. It is a report on the class of questions raised by these critics. It is a report on a matter which I regard as being of sufficiently great moment to warrant its consideration in this lecture, for I believe that the central question of this class is one which a democratic society may ignore only at its deadly peril.

The question is double-barrelled:

1. How much uniformity does this society need for safety?

2. How much deviation does this society require for progress?

The insight with which the line of safety is drawn and the skill with which the conditions of progress are embodied in an educational program determine in large measure whether a particular society will be a great society or a mean society, whether it will be strong or weak, whether it will be enduring or evanescent, whether it will be a creator and bearer of high meanings or a purveyor of the insignificance of ignorance and brutality.

The first steps in determining an educational program, whether for an entire national group, for a particular profession, or for a small number of students in a classroom, are the steps that are most commonly slighted. They are often assumed to have been taken when in fact they have been by-passed.

What are these first steps? Let us look at an example. Because the defenders of educational plainsmanship are often especially worried over a lack of the uniformities which they consider necessary for national security, let us take our first example from the area of military education.

We examine the present state of international affairs, let us say, and decide that the safety of our people and of our peopled possible allies requires us to have the best-educated professional soldiers we can get. We decide further that among these professional soldiers we are going to need annually one thousand newly commissioned second lieutenants of infantry. We want to educate them or to have them educated so that they will contribute most effectively to the safety of our country and the peace of the world.

The simplest and most satisfying way to educate these officers is to find some over-all magic touchstones, formulas, shibboleths, or charms which reveal the traits needed by all leaders of infantry and then to give them a schooling to broaden and intensify those traits. Thus, in an aristocratic society, where all noblemen are leaders and only noblemen are leaders, we can give every young man of noble rank a military commission and we can then seek to enhance noble traits by appropriate noble practices; for example, dueling to develop his courage and honor, gambling to develop his courage and honor, horse racing to develop his courage and honor, woman chasing to develop his courage and honor, fox hunting to develop his courage and honor, and of course, war itself to test his courage and honor.

For purposes of later identification, let us call this approach the noble-traits system of education.

Now the trouble with this simple system is that it works only when opposed to an equally simple system. Suppose that courage-and-honor officers with approximately equal forces are opposed to courage-honor-and-discipline officers, or that the latter are opposed to courage-honor-discipline-and-concentration-of-force officers. In such circumstances the simpler system is liable to go down in defeat. A noble-traits system of education tends to become more complex whenever it meets the test of fire, and conversely it tends to become less complex when protected from strain and conflict.

In the noble-traits system of education, the aim is to turn out one thousand accurate copies of a model second lieutenant. Courage, honor, discipline, loyalty, devotion to duty, and any other magic traits we regard as standard matters. We want every second lieutenant to possess each of these traits completely. We want one thousand faithful reproductions of the perfect second lieutenant of infantry. We want all these copies to think and act alike. We want them to be inter-changeable parts of a machine. Any differences they may display after we educate them are merely indications of our failure to produce accurate copies of the model second lieutenant.

This system often looks good. The only trouble with it is that we find that we lose battles and even wars with such second lieutenants. So we reject the noble-traits method of selecting and training these men. We reject it because it fails to give us safety. Of course, we may continue to feel that we must talk to the prospective second lieutenants about courage and honor and discipline and principles of war, but actually we believe that an infantry officers effectiveness is composed of many specific skills rather than noble traits. We note that he must be able to walk, run, jump, climb, crawl, and creep with a technical efficiency beyond that of a non-infantryman. He must know how to shoot pistols, rifles, machine guns, mortars, rocket launchers, and infantry cannon. He must have skill in patrolling and reconnaissance. He must know how to teach his men these skills. He must be able to organize and lead his men in attack and defense situations of various kinds. As he grows older and advances to the higher grades, furthermore, he must know how to meet larger and larger responsibilities. He must know how to adapt his skills to new situations, all of them very specific. He may have to write a speech on universal military training for his commanding officer to read at the annual convention of the National Association of Woolgatherers, for example. He should be able, without undue stumbling, to read aloud such a speech which has been written for him by one of his staff officers. He may have to administer a conquered village, province, nation, or continent.

Then we hunt for learning activities to produce these skills. For some activities, the search is easy. Obviously, to teach the young officer to shoot a pistol, the best thing to do is to have him shoot a pistol. Of course, we can first lecture to him about the pistol, have him memorize the names of all the parts of the weapon, teach him to take it apart and put it together again, show him how to load it, aim it, and squeeze the trigger without firing it. But after a while we take him out to the pistol range, have him load the weapon with ball cartridges, and then actually have him shoot real bullets into the target or into the ground near the target.

Let us call this approach the specific-skills system of education. It comes into full flower when the real bullets hit the real target. This is the moment of triumph for the specific-skills system.

Now we apply the specific-skills system assiduously to the prospective one thousand second lieutenants of infantry in an attempt to make them all alike in their skills. We are again trying to produce one thousand copies of an approved model. Of course we may specialize some of these young men, but even the specialization is standardized. We may take one hundred of them, for example, and give them special training to make them leaders of heavy-weapons platoons. We want them to be faithful copies of an ideal heavy-weapons-platoon leader with respect to the use of heavy weapons, and in all other respects we want them to be faithful copies of the model second lieutenant of infantry, regardless of specialization in a particular class of weapons.

We Americans often put these young officers into battle after we have so trained them on a thorough plainsman's level and are lucky enough to have stout old human nature — tough, resilient, and resistant of uniformity — come to our rescue. Many times in our history it has been this triumph of native difference over a dead level of training which has enabled us to win our battles. Individual idiosyncrasy, brilliant nonconformity, and daring disregard of the tenets of military plainsmanship have consistently dragged victory from defeat which had been prepared by faithful copying of standard models.

"Whenever I met one of them generals who fit by note," said Nathan Bedford Forrest accurately and without false modesty, "I always whipped him before he could pitch the tune." If Forrest could have been sent to West Point in his youth and trained into being a more faithful copy of Braxton Bragg or Samuel D. Sturgis, if General George Washington had been commissioned in the British Regulars at an early age and made much more like Lord Howe or Charles Lee, if Chief Joseph of the Nez Perces and Crazy Horse of the Oglala Sioux could only have had the advantages of a military education to model them after Captain Fetterman and Colonel Custer, the history of the United States' wars would be considerably less marked by peaks.

It is an ironic testimonial to the power of the educational plainsman's philosophy that in the very field of human endeavor where cultivated idiosyncrasy pays off most spectacularly and in clearest-cut physical terms, the doctrine of the approved doctrine, the uniformity of the uniform practice, and the massing of mediocrity should have held such undisputed sway. Here if anywhere it might perhaps seem that educators would revolt against the practices of pedagogical plainsmanship and become educational mountaineers. Here was where mountaineering would give results which nations commonly assess at high value. But the strength of the conformity-enforcing agencies was too great. The shadow of Frederick of Prussia with his stiffly aligned peasants-in-arms moving in unison was too much even for men who saw demonstrated almost every year the battle superiority in American woods of non-alignment and non-unison. No matter; the principle of the pedagogical plainsman still triumphed. It was never more brilliantly expressed in action than on that memorable day on the Monongahela when Major General Sir Edward Braddock lined up his exhausted men as they staggered from the woods and gave them a stiff dose of manual-of-arms and close-order drill in preparation for the coming attack of the French and Indian skirmishers. Almost two centuries later, his spiritual and professional descendants still keep his memory green by an improved manual-of-arms and an improved close-order drill which are just as effective today as their predecessors were in the middle of the eighteenth century.

We still educate second lieutenants by a combination of the concepts of noble-traits and uniform specific-skills. How else can we train them? Is not war a demander of standardized routines, of interchangeable parts? We dress soldiers alike; why should we not educate them alike?

There are Old Man Coyotes even at West Point and Fort Benning nowadays, however. They say that there is another way, a better way, an opposite way of educating second lieutenants. They say that in many ways war has been getting less and less uniform in its demands upon men since the days of Frederick the Great. They say that war calls for unique abilities here and differently unique abilities there and that, of all the situations which men face, war as much as any requires highly developed strong points of ability on the part of those who engage in it.

Let us begin, therefore, say the military Old Man Coyotes, with men instead of noble traits and specific skills. Let us start with individual boys who have intellectual, social, and physical idiosyncrasies which we study carefully, looking for the possible foundations upon which to build mountain peaks of traits and capacities.

If we find a boy with a sure grasp of the meanings of terrain and a strong interest in maps, let us give him terrain studies and maps, geographical and tactical exercises, aerial photographs, and area defense problems; not to give him noble traits of any kind, not to give him the skills of a model soldier, but to develop that particular boy's personal capacities so that in all the ways he is going to be unique he will be uniquely great in his understanding and use of geographical factors in war.

If a prospective second lieutenant has strong interests and abilities in mathematics and in guns, let us give him the automatic weapons, the grenade launchers, the infantry cannon; not to make him a standardized leader of a heavy-weapons platoon but to make him a unique officer in whose total pattern of skills those relating to heavy weapons are outstanding.

If another boy has high linguistic interests and abilities, if he is trying to learn Russian by himself, let us give him Russian, and Turkish and Mongolian and Tibetan too. Let us give him area studies in the history, government, geography, and culture of the Russian, Turkish, Mongolian, and Tibetan peoples. Let us do all this with no notion of meeting a standard of noble linguistic traits or of specific linguistic abilities but rather with the object of making this boy such an officer as no other army in the world can duplicate. Thus we shall not be afraid of building his ability peaks too high. In the possible demands which the future may make upon our Army, we may well find that this officers strongly developed idiosyncrasy is worth more to us than a division of ordinary trained soldiers.

Would you then not have a standard education for infantry officers? Would there be no minimum essentials for second lieutenants? Gad, Sir! I can see the veins turn purple in the colonel's neck. I can hear his fist hammer on the desk.

But not all colonels would so respond—not nearly so many as you might think; not even so many colonels, perhaps, as presidents and chancellors, deans and professors, superintendents and principals, teachers and headmasters, regents and trustees, parents and clergymen, legislators and those men-in-the-street who sometimes retire to their homes and write letters to the editor.

All of us tend to echo these doubting cries. All of us are prisoners of our schooling — a schooling based on some combination of the concepts of the uniform and level noble-traits or specific-skills. The first article in our pedagogical faith is the credo of minimum standards. That credo lies flatly athwart the law and the gospel of Old Man Coyote's theory of education.

Old Man Coyote insists that the boy whose mathematical, linguistic, geographical, or other peaks of ability are built to great heights will have his valleys of ability in other areas pulled up towards his peaks until the sum of his achievements will be far above the minimum essentials ever set by plodding plainsmen. Old Man Coyote insists further that the learner must go above his present peaks and valleys as a free, daring, and enterprising individual and never as one herded under the lash of a minimum standard.

This is a hard doctrine for us to accept. It is hard for us because we have confused our minimum standards with our objectives.

Our objective, in the case of military education, for example, is to keep the peace as long as possible and, when wars break out, to stop them as quickly and as efficiently as we can. The minimum essential is a lazy plainsman's device for short-cutting the objective. The sturdy mountaineer looks keenly across the land at the goal as he ascends every peak.

The observed facts of human development support Old Man Coyote's doctrine. Few if any men ever became great historians or great citizens by studying the outlines of history required in the freshman year. Few if any men ever became great infantry leaders by concentrating on the dead level of infantry fundamentals. Few if any great jurists, painters, industrialists, or musicians ever attained their heights of uniqueness by drill on the minimum essentials.

"But, Gad, Sir!" repeats my hypothetical colonel or professor or Tom Gunn's Mule, "We are not educating great generals, unusual soldiers, geniuses — we are just aiming modestly and in a common-sense way to train ordinary, dead-level, good infantry officers — interchangeable-standard-uniform. You'd have them at least speak English, wouldn't you? You'd have them know how to load and fire an M-1, wouldn't you?"

"Ah!" says Old Man Coyote, "I would have no ordinary, dead-level officers — they would all be great officers in terms of their abilities — because that's a better way to win wars — and certainly some of them might not speak English or know how to load and fire an M-1 rifle. Some of them might speak only Spanish, for instance, in the San Martin Corps of the United States Foreign Legion, and some of them might command only mortar platoons."

"A likely situation," snorts Tom Gunn's Mule.

"It would be a lot more likely in the American Army," softly observes Old Man Coyote, "if the present brass had been educated forwards instead of backwards."

I have used these second lieutenants as examples in part because the objective of their education is relatively easy to see. Let us now consider examples of a kind of education which perhaps does not have such easily seen objectives.

Suppose it is teachers rather than infantry officers whom we are educating. Suppose we need one thousand new teachers in Massachusetts or Maryland next fall. Shall we seek in the teachers' colleges of these states to turn out a thousand more or less faithful copies of a model teacher? Shall we give marks of A to those most nearly approaching the approved pattern and marks of C or D to those furthest away from the pattern but still not so far away as to deserve being failed? Do we really want them all to act, look, talk, teach, and think alike? Are the deviations from the model which they display merely the measures of our inefficiency in teaching them, in bringing them up to the straight-A standards of near perfection?

"Ah! No, no!" we say hastily. "We who educate teachers have studied individual differences. Most of us who are old enough to affect the policies of teacher-training institutions studied individual differences in Volume III of Edward L. Thorndike's Educational Psychology, first published in 1914. We have known about individual differences for a long, long time. We try to develop the individual differences, the idiosyncrasies, of these teachers. We want to develop their idiosyncrasies in groups. We want blocs of idiosyncrasy. We need fifty different kinds of teachers next year, English and Social Studies teachers for small high schools, boy's physical education teachers who can also take a section in biology, mathematics and physics teachers, girl's counselors who can teach French, vocational agriculture teachers, home economics teachers, and so on. Certainly we want idiosyncrasies — in standard groups, that is."

The Old Man Coyotes murmur that we want developed useful idiosyncrasies. Useful for what? Useful for our objectives?

Are those objectives standard, minimum-essential objectives? They should not be. They should be as varied as the children whose learning these teachers are to aid.

We want one thousand uniquely educated teachers. We want teachers whose idiosyncrasies have been nurtured for unique learnings in schools.

Here is a prospective teacher whose interests and abilities in the nature and processes of child growth and development are exceptional. We shall not try to hold him back in this idiosyncrasy in order to flatten his ability peaks. We shall work with him to build up those peaks.

Shall we then ignore this prospective teachers valleys of ability in written communication, in science, or in mathematics? Not at all, but we shall try to haul them up only by tying them to his rising peaks of ability. If we build his peak of understanding and skill in child growth and development high enough, his lower abilities in speaking, writing, computing, and biology can be brought far above the modest levels set by a plainsman's minimum essentials.

Suppose it is a citizen of the United States that we are educating in the secondary school, for example. Is not this situation fundamentally differ ent from one in which we are trying to produce Army officers or schoolteachers? Can we not make a better case here for the plainsman's education? Do not all citizens have to vote intelligently; read newspapers and listen to radio commentators critically; write letters to friends; make a living by applications of science, mathematics, economics, and manual skills; be an amiable member of a family; and perhaps even create and enjoy beauty in line, form, color, tone, melody, and rhythm?

Do we not have in these activities of the good citizen the bases of the general standards which education must meet? Are not these the doings we must use to construct schooling through which all good citizens must pass? Is not this, the secondary school, the real yoke of general education to which all proper citizens must learn to bow? Must not all educated men and women pass under that yoke in true subjugation of spirit and intellect to make a society strong?

Sub jugum mittere was merely symbolic of military surrender to Julius Caesar, but to his big-jawed successor two thousand years later it became a complete statement of a completely general education in "Believe, obey, fight" Probably it reached its highest expression and fullest significance for the present historical period in the disciplined chant above the hobnailed boots hitting the cobblestones in unison for the "Reich of a Thousand Years."

Leader, we belong to thee;

Thy comrades we will ever be. Our flag is waving in the van; We march to the future man by man;

We march for Hitler through night and dread With the flag of youth, for freedom and bread, That flag will lead us to the fray;

That flag is the flag of a brand-new day, We'll follow that flag to our last, last breath, That flag is more than Death, Yes, Death!

These references to the educational plainsman-ship of the teachers in the regimes of Mussolini and Hitler are not made in any attempt to belittle the plainsman's doctrines by coupling them with unpopular causes and characters. They are made simply because they exhibit the outcomes of educational plainsmanship in logical completeness. If the teachers in the Soviet schools should succeed as completely in educating their pupils to the civic standard of being like Stalin, if the teachers of Georgia should work as effectively to give the minimum essentials of a Talmadge concept of white superiority, if the teachers of New Jersey should teach as completely a level of patriotism set by J. Parnell Thomas, or if the teachers of Maryland, Minnesota, or Missouri should labor as successfully to put all the children of all the people on a conforming, obedient, uniform level even though it be dictated by a Caesar of the purest motives—and what true Caesar ever has any other kind? — then they would furnish as good examples of real pedagogical plainsmanship as ever did Baldur von Shirach's cheering, marching ranks of Hitler jugend.

If, instead of the Hitler Youth Song or the Communist Manifesto, the minimum essentials were Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, the Declaration of Independence, or the Ten Commandments, would the fundamentals be changed? Do we have in such materials truly sacred subjects which are good in themselves and which must be part of the general learning of all our people? Should Hamlet and Paradise Lost be studied by every English-speaking person, Don Quixote by every inheritor of the Western European culture, and The Republic by every citizen of a democracy? Do all children everywhere need to learn that seven times nine are sixty-three?

Questions like these provide the real test of adherence to a theory of education as the cultivation of idiosyncrasy. The educational mountaineer replies to them by saying that no subject is pedagogically sacred, no matter what its patriotic, religious, or utilitarian status may be; that only the individual personality is an end in itself, and that education must therefore be a process of developing individuals by means of schooling rather than a process of bringing learners up to a standard of schooling.

The plainsman does not often say just the opposite of this, but he has to act thus or betray his plainsmanship. He is forced into a series of acts which constitute much of the business of many modern systems of education.

There is first and always the business of curriculum construction. In general education, it is a process not only of determining what is a sacred subject but also of assessing degrees of sacredness and indicating where in a child's life the subjects should be learned. Thus the Gettysburg Address is obviously sacred and must be memorized by all sixth graders. What is the verdict on Washington's Farewell Address? It is not quite so sacred perhaps and does not need to be memorized. Let it be studied by all ninth graders carefully and respectfully. What of Franklin's Auto-biography? Of Hamilton's and Madison's essays? Of Grant's Memoirs? Of Franklin D. Roosevelt's speeches?

If Cervantes is to be studied by everyone in high school, where are Goethe, Dante, and Racine to be met? If the multiplication tables to twelve times twelve are needed by everybody fourteen years of age, twelve times thirteen, fifteen times nineteen, and many other combinations as far as twenty times twenty must be good general education for many if not all persons who are eighteen years of age.

This is the first mark of the pedagogical plains-man, therefore; that he is continually constructing curricula, sorting subjects, fussing over facts, determining the significance of dates, tampering with time allotments, and computing percentages of sacredness.

He can be seen most clearly when he is working on very simple materials.

"Ah, 1492," he mutters, "there's a must for Americans; and 1776 — no doubt about that one — it goes in the all-1OO per cent compartment; so do 1812, 1861, 1898, 1917, and 1941. Those are easy, but some of these others are difficult; 1789, 1848, 1912, and 1933, for example; 1789 can't be quite so sacred — it is French and hence foreign — put it in high school European history where it is not required; and 1933 is college stuff and not really a foundation of Americanism — it is New Dealish besides."

The most popular exemplification of the pedagogical plainsman's curriculum theory is found in the radio quiz program; its most high-toned manifestation is in current lists of great books. It was never more dramatically displayed in action on this continent than when the Ghost Dance craze swept over the Western country in the eighties of the last century. Here was a sacred schooling for a defeated, starving people. The Indians must dance, the ghostly teachers said, and Wakan Tanka would then wipe out the white men and bring back the buffalo. There was just one subject — the sacred dance. It made its graduates immune to white man's weapons. It was the greatest single educational short cut ever offered to Americans but its vogue ended abruptly on December 24, 1889, as a battery of four Hotchkiss guns poured explosive shells into a huddled group of Indian men, women, and children.

The quiz-program masters are just playing at education for a sheltered people's escapism, and thus they have need for only play counters in their game. The great-books professors have a closed game, very serious, and, since they pay all bets in great-books chips, they can operate happily so long as they stay inside the charmed circle. The unfortunate Sioux ghost-dancers at Wounded Knee Creek were forced to count their scores with their lives; their subject was not sacred enough for Hotchkiss guns.

A corollary activity for the pedagogical plains-man is the drawing of curricular distinctions. He traces the boundaries between general education and special education, between liberal studies and vocational training, between pure science and applied science, between the arts and the humanities, between philosophy and religion, between psychology and sociology, between history and anthropology, and so on and on into the academic night.

The more boundaries he surveys, the more new ones he discovers. He finds subjects within subjects, heaps classifications upon dichotomies, and uncovers new fields for education in never-ending labor.

In the plainsman's practice, the duty of the individual learner is clear. He must acquire, adjust, and conform. He must acquire subjects, knowledge, skills, in proper blocs and sequences and at the proper time. He must adjust to the teacher, to the class, and to the community in terms of his knowledge and skills. He must conform in those adjustments to the dictates of society, vocation, government, religion, and other ruling systems of behavior and thought.

The acquire-adjust-conform combination has seldom been so well exemplified as in the pre-1945 Japanese system of education and culture which began with bowing to the Emperors portrait and ended with thought police. It is a matter for sober reflection that a very similar education could be initiated with flag idolatry and developed, through avoidance of disloyal acts, to a complete rejection of any ideas which might be held by subversive groups.

I say could be, since it is hard for us Americans to conceive of a situation in which our thoughts would be policed. Unconsciously we rely upon a type of mountaineering in our education to protect us in the free exercise of idiosyncrasy in thought, at least. We should ask ourselves, however, whether the official thought-control process is not already at work when a committee of the Congress through the newspapers accuses a government scientist of disloyalty, and then refuses for months to give him a hearing. How much freedom of thought, under such conditions, remains to government workers or to young men and women aspiring to be employed by the government?

Not long ago almost any student of American education would have said that thought policing by applying the doctrine of guilt through thought association would be impossible in the United States of America. Today he could not be so sure. The year 1949 marked the issuance of a document by the headquarters of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Japan in which American citizens were solemnly told that the history of a Soviet spy ring in Japan prior to World War II shows us that we cannot trust the loyalty of our closest friends or even relatives, and that persons who have sympathized with Communist causes, even though not themselves Communists, must be prevented from occupying security positions.

Upon this basis, of course, the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces would be called by any Dixiecrat a very poor national security risk. He should not be given access even to restricted and much less to confidential or secret materials. He has proposed a civil-rights program for Negroes which the Communist Party supports. Every public-school man in the United States who believes in free and compulsory education is a poor security risk. Every Communist government in the world preaches the same doctrine. The president of the University of Maryland has been assailed by a local news sheet on the chief grounds that he is trying to give higher education to young men and women whose parents cannot afford to pay private college tuition fees. According to the guilt-by-association theory, the paper has an open-and-shut case against the president. Every Communist in Maryland agrees with him. So do many of the clergymen of the Roman Catholic Church, and the president might well be accused, therefore, of subservience to a foreign power, the Holy See.

These are not merely straws in the wind — they are more like haystacks in the cyclone. The loud-mouthed declaimer of the correct thought, the patrioteer who screams most passionately of loyalty while stealing from the tax payers, the defender of the United States who often never bore arms for the United States but is quick to protect his country by accusing a dead man of treason with no grounds for the accusation except a love for headlines — these are signs of a culture passing in some parts under the tutelage of pedagogical plainsmen.

The defense against this drift towards pedagogical plainsmanship cannot be bought by arms, by law, or even by exhortation. It can be purchased only at the price of a mountaineering education of democratic power and scope.

The creed of the educational mountaineer provides that force to do democracy's work. It contains two main articles of faith. The first is that of equality of opportunity; the second is that of equality of efficiency.

To give equality of opportunity, the mountaineering educator starts with a maximum of understanding for every child. That means that every child will be studied as precisely and extensively as present techniques allow. The crippled, six-year-old colored girl of modest intellectual ability will get just as much understanding as research and practice can provide. The physically perfect six-year-old white boy of highest intellectual capacity will also get just as much understanding as research and practice can provide.

Why not give more understanding to the child with the higher ability?

It cannot be done. There is no more understanding available than the educational mountaineer gives to every one of his learners.

To give equality of efficiency, the educational mountaineer develops the crippled six-year-old's personality, let us say, by teaching her tap-dancing. She can move her right foot only by dragging it on the floor, but she can lift her left foot off the floor and move the toe and heel. She learns to tap-dance with her left foot.

"Tap-dancing a first-grade subject?" screams the plainsman. "If it's good for one child, it's good for all of them. Democracy demands that they all learn the multiplication tables. If democracy demands tap-dancing at all, it demands it for all."

The mountaineer says, "I am not teaching tap-dancing. I am teaching a shy child to be more confident. I am taking a tiny peak of ability and trying to make it a tower of idiosyncrasy by which one who may be some day a great woman in her own right can get her first secure moorings."

The educational mountaineer develops the six-year-old of high intellectual capacity by encouraging him to study osmosis.

"Osmosis in the first grade?" cries the plains-man. "Osmosis is a high-school subject. That's where we teach it for everybody in good democratic fashion."

But the mountaineer says again, "I am not teaching osmosis. I am teaching one who is a great genius to be in truth the great genius that he is."

Here I pause to point out the inescapable fact that the mountaineer must know how to teach tap-dancing and osmosis if he is going to use them as means of developing personalities and characters. In a reasonably long lifetime of observation of educational plainsmen and educational mountaineers in many kinds of schools and in many parts of the globe, I have seen no slightest evidence that those teachers who believe that education starts, proceeds, and ends with a developing individual have as a group any less erudition and command of subject matter than have those teachers who believe that education starts with a required curriculum and ends with mastery of a minimum essential. I have indeed seen evidence to indicate that a truly profound command of a field of knowledge inclines men toward the pedagogical peaks. How else can we account for the prevalence of mountaineers in the great graduate schools?

Whether the mountaineer is in the graduate school or in the first grade, whether he is educating citizens in the high school or officers in the Army, his answers to the double-barrelled question raised earlier in this lecture are clear, concise, and unequivocal.

How much uniformity does this society need for safety?

It needs only that uniformity which the achievements of its greatest goals require. It demands security of life and health for its people. It demands wide opportunities for its people in work and play, in song and prayer. It must provide each individual with maximum aids to the development of his powers to contribute in every way possible to the great goals of his people.

Are there necessary restrictions on the individual's development? Of course there are. Should there be guidance, direction, in the building of his abilities? Of course there should be. The child with an idiosyncrasy of aggression cannot be permitted to develop it into an idiosyncrasy for brutality, mayhem, or murder. He must instead be helped to develop it into an idiosyncrasy for fighting disease through the practice of medicine, battling hunger by farming, breaking down isolation by blasting highways through mountains, or doing some other aggressive job commensurate with his pattern of abilities.

How much deviation does this society require for progress?

It requires just as much deviation, just as many uniquely developed peaks of ability, just as much idiosyncrasy as the attainment of its goals will allow and need. All societies are wasteful of the capacities of their people. That society which comes closest to developing every socially useful idiosyncrasy in every one of its members will make the greatest progress toward its goals.

The key decision on both the matter of minimum safety and the matter of maximum progress is this decision concerning the amount of caution needed to protect the society's goals and the amount of daring required to advance the society toward those goals. Who makes that decision? In a democracy, the people make it. In this democracy, I have heart and faith that our people will not make the decision very wrong. This is because I believe they are a great people and a strong people, not just in population or in number of tons of steel they can produce annually, but in those measures of meaning which God Himself uses to gauge the tides of history. I think they will make educational room for themselves in the future according to their size and strength.