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CHAPTER
VIII PROPAGANDA FOR EDUCATION
EDUCATION is not securing its proper share
of public interest. The public school system, materially and financially,
is being adequately supported. There is marked eagerness for a college
education, and a vague aspiration for culture, expressed in innumerable
courses and lectures. The public is not cognizant of the real value of
education, and does not realize that education as a social force is not
receiving the kind of attention it has the right to expect in a democracy.
It is felt, for example, that education is entitled to more space in the
newspapers; that well informed discussion of education hardly exists; that
unless such an issue as the Gary School system is created, or outside of
an occasional discussion, such as that aroused over Harvard's decision to
establish a school of business, education does not attract the active
interest of the public. There are a number of reasons for this condition.
First of all, there is the fact that the educator has been trained to
stimulate to thought the individual students in his classroom, but has not
been trained as an educator at large of the public. In a democracy an
educator should, in addition to his academic duties, bear a definite and
wholesome relation to the general public. This public does not come within
the immediate scope of his academic duties. But in a sense he depends upon
it for his living, for the moral support, and the general cultural tone
upon which his work must be based. In the field of education, we find what
we have found in politics and other fields-that the evolution of the
practitioner of the profession has not kept pace with the social evolution
around him, and is out of gear with the instruments for the dissemination
of ideas in which modern society has developed. If this be true, then the
training of the educators in this respect should begin in the normal
schools, with the addition to their curricula of whatever is necessary to
broaden their viewpoint. The public cannot understand unless the teacher
understands the relationship between the general public and the academic
idea.
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The normal school
should provide for the training of the educator to make him realize that
his is a two fold job: education as a teacher and education as a
propagandist. A second reason for the present remoteness of education from
the thoughts and interests of the public is to be found in the mental
attitude of the pedagogue --whether primary school teacher or college
professor-- toward the world outside the school. This is a difficult
psychological problem. The teacher finds himself in a world in which the
emphasis is put on those objective goals and those objective attainments
which are prized by our American society. He himself is but moderately or
poorly paid. Judging himself by the standards in common acceptance, he
cannot but feel a sense of inferiority because he finds himself
continually being compared, in the minds of his own pupils, with the
successful business man and the successful leader in the outside world.
Thus the educator becomes repressed and suppressed in our civilization. As
things stand, this condition cannot be changed from the outside unless the
general public alters its standards of achievement, which it is not likely
to do soon. Yet it can be changed by the teaching profession itself, if it
becomes conscious not only of its individualistic relation to the pupil,
but also of its social relation to the general public. The teaching
profession, as such, has the right to carry on a very definite propaganda
with a view to enlightening the public and asserting its intimate relation
to the society which it serves. In addition to conducting a propaganda on
behalf of its individual members, education must also raise the general
appreciation of the teaching profession. Unless the profession can raise
itself by its own bootstraps, it will fast lose the power of recruiting
outstanding talent for itself. Propaganda cannot change all that is at
present unsatisfactory in the educational situation. There are factors,
such as low pay and the lack of adequate provision for superannuated
teachers, which definitely affect the status of the profession. It is
possible, by means of an intelligent appeal predicated upon the actual
present composition of the public mind, to modify the general attitude
toward the teaching profession. Such a changed attitude will begin by
expressing itself in an insistence on the idea of more adequate salaries
for the profession. There are various ways in which academic organizations
in America handle their financial problems. One type of college or
university depends, for its monetary support, upon grants from the state
legislatures. Another depends upon private endowment. There are other
types of educational institutions, such as the sectarian, but the two
chief types include by far the greater number of our institutions of
higher learning.
66The
state university is supported by grants from the people of the state,
voted by the state legislature. In theory, the degree of support which the
university receives is dependent upon the degree of acceptance accorded it
by the voters. The state university prospers according to the extent to
which it can sell itself to the people of the state. The state university
is therefore in an unfortunate position unless its president happens to be
a man of outstanding merit as a propagandist and a dramatizer of
educational issues. Yet if this is the case-if the university shapes its
whole policy toward gaining the support of the state legislature-its
educational function may suffer. It may be tempted to base its whole
appeal to the public on its public service, real or supposed, and permit
the education of its individual students to take care of itself. It may
attempt to educate the people of the state at the expense of its own
pupils. This may generate a number of evils, to the extent of making the
university a political instrument, a mere tool of the political group in
power. If the president dominates both the public and the professional
politician, this may lead to a situation in which the personality of the
president outweighs the true function of the institution.
The endowed college or university
has a problem quite as perplexing. The endowed college is dependent upon
the support, usually, of key men in industry whose social and economic
objectives are concrete and limited, and therefore often at variance with
the pursuit of abstract knowledge. The successful business man criticizes
the great universities for being too academic, but seldom for being too
practical. One might imagine that the key men who support our universities
would like them to specialize in schools of applied science, of practical
salesmanship or of industrial efficiency. And it may well be, in many
instances, that the demands which the potential endowers of our
universities make upon these institutions are flatly in contradiction to
the interests of scholarship and general culture.
We have, therefore, the anomalous
situation of the college seeking to carry on a propaganda in favor of
scholarship among people who are quite out of sympathy with the aims to
which they are asked to subscribe their money. Men who, by the commonly
accepted standards, are failures or very moderate successes in our
American world (the pedagogues) seek to convince the outstanding successes
(the business men) that they should give their money to ideals which they
do not pursue. Men who, through a sense of inferiority, despise money,
seek to win the good will of men who love money.
It seems possible that the future
status of the endowed college will depend upon a balancing of these
forces, both the academic and the endowed elements obtaining in effect due
consideration. The college must win public support. If the potential donor
is apathetic, enthusiastic public approval must be obtained to convince
him. If he seeks unduly to influence the educational policy of the
institution, public opinion must support the college in the continuance of
its proper functions. If either factor dominates unduly, we are likely to
find a demagoguery or a snobbishness aiming to please one group or the
other. There is still another potential solution of the problem. It is
possible that through an educational propaganda aiming to develop greater
social consciousness on the part of the people of the country, there may
be awakened in the minds of men of affairs, as a class, social
consciousness which will produce more minds 0f the type of Julius
Rosenwald, v. Everitt Macy, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the late Willard
Straight. Many colleges have already developed intelligent propaganda in
order to bring them into active and continuous relation with the general
public. A definite technique has been developed in their relation to the
community in the form of college news bureaus. These bureaus have formed
an intercollegiate association whose members meet once a year to discuss
their problems. These problems include the education of the alumnus and
his effect upon the general public and upon specific groups, the education
of the future student to the choice of the particular college, the
maintenance of an ”esprit
de corps”
so that the athletic prowess of the college will not be
placed first, the development of some familiarity with the research work
done in the college in order to attract the attention of those who may be
able to lend aid, the development of an understanding of the aims and the
work of the institution in order to attract special endowments for
specified purposes. Some seventy-five of these bureaus are now affiliated
with the American Association of College News Bureaus, including those of
Yale, Wellesley, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Western Reserve, Tufts and
California. A bi-monthly news letter is published, bringing to members the
news of their profession. The Association endeavors to uphold the ethical
standards of the profession and aims to work in harmony with the press.
68The
National Education Association and other societies are carrying on a
definite propaganda to promote the larger purposes of educational
endeavor. One of the aims of such propaganda is of course
improvement in the prestige and material position of the teachers
themselves. An occasional McAndrew case calls the attention of the public
to the fact that in some schools the teacher is far from enjoying full
academic freedom, while in certain communities the choice of teachers is
based upon political or sectarian considerations rather than upon real
ability. If such issues were made, by means of propaganda, to become a
matter of public concern on a truly national scale, there would doubtless
be a general tendency to improvement.
The concrete problems of colleges
are more varied and puzzling than one might suppose. The pharmaceutical
college of a university is concerned because the drug store is no longer
merely a drug store, but primarily a soda fountain, a lunch counter, a
book-shop, a retailer of all sorts of general merchandise from society
stationery to spare radio parts. The college realizes the economic utility
of the lunch counter feature to the practicing druggist, yet it feels that
the ancient and honorable art of compounding specifics is being degraded.
Cornell University discovers that
endowments are rare. Why? Because the people think that the University is
a state institution and therefore publicly supported.
Many of our leading universities
rightly feel that the results of their scholarly researches should not
only be presented to libraries and learned publications, but should also,
where practicable and useful, be given to the public in the dramatic form
which the public can understand. Harvard is but one example.
"Not long ago," says Charles A.
Merrill in
Personality, "a certain
Harvard professor vaulted into the newspaper headlines. There were several
days when one could hardly pick up a paper in any of the larger cities
without finding his name bracketed with his achievement.
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"The professor, who
was back from a trip to Yucatan in the interests of science, had solved
the mystery of the Venus calendar of the ancient Mayas. He had discovered
the key to the puzzle of how
the
Mayas kept tab on
the flight of time. Checking the Mayan record of celestial events against
the known astronomical facts, he had found a perfect correlation between
the time count of these Central American Indians and the true positions of
the planet Venus in the sixth century B.C. A civilization which flourished
in the Western Hemisphere twenty-five centuries ago was demonstrated to
have attained heights hitherto unappreciated by the modern world.
"How the professor's
discovery happened to be chronicled in the popular press is, also, in
retrospect, is a matter of interest. ...If left to his own devices, he
might never have appeared in print, except perhaps in some technical
publication, and his remarks there would have been no more intelligible to
the average man or woman than if they had been inscribed in Mayan
hieroglyphics.
"Popularization of this message
from antiquity was due to the initiative of a young man named James W. D.
Seymour. ...
"It may surprise and shock some
people," Mr. Merrill adds, "to be told that the oldest and most dignified
seats of learning in America now hire press agents, just as railroad
companies, fraternal organizations, moving picture producers and political
parties retain them. It is nevertheless a fact. ...
”...there is hardly a college or
university in the country which does not, with the approval of the
governing body and the faculty, maintain a publicity office, with a
director and a staff of assistants, for the purpose of establishing
friendly relations with the newspapers, and through the newspapers, with
the public. ...
"This enterprise breaks sharply
with tradition. In the older seats of learning it is a recent innovation.
It violates the fundamental article
in the creed of the old academic societies. Cloistered seclusion used to
be considered the first essential of scholarship. The college was anxious
to preserve its aloofness from the world. ...
"The colleges used to resent
outside interest in their affairs. They might, somewhat reluctantly and
contemptuously, admit reporters to their Commencement Day exercises, but
no further would they go. ...
"To-day, if a newspaper reporter
wants to interview a Harvard professor, he has merely to telephone the
Secretary for Information to the University. Officially, Harvard still
shies away from the title 'Director of Publicity.' Informally, however,
the secretary with the long title is the publicity man. He is an important
official to-day at Harvard."
It may be a new idea that the president of a university
will concern himself with the kind of mental picture his institution
produces on the public mind. Yet it is part of the president's work to see
that his university takes its proper place in the community and therefore
also in the community mind, and produces the results desired, both in a
cultural and in a financial sense.
70 If
his institution does not produce the mental picture which it should, one
of two things may be wrong: Either the media of
communication with
the public may be wrong or unbalanced; or his institution may be at fault.
The public is getting an oblique impression of the university, in which
case the impression should be modified; or it may be that the public is
getting a correct impression, in which case, very possibly, the work of
the university itself should be modified. For both possibilities lie
within the province of the public relations counsel.
Columbia University recently
instituted a Casa
ltaliana, which was
solemnly inaugurated in the presence of representatives of the Italian
government, to emphasize its high standing in Latin studies and the
Romance languages. Years ago Harvard founded the Germanic Museum, which
was ceremoniously opened by Prince Henry of Prussia.
Many colleges maintain extension
courses which bring their work to the knowledge of a broad public. It is
of course proper that such courses should be made known to the general
public. But, to take another example, if they have been badly planned,
from the point of view of public relations, if they are unduly scholastic
and detached, their effect may be the opposite of favorable. In such a
case, it is not the work of the public relations counsel to urge that the
courses be made better known, but to urge that they first be modified to
conform to the impression which the college wishes to create, where that
is compatible with the university's scholastic ideals.
Again, it may be the general
opinion that the work of a certain institution is 80 per cent postgraduate
research, an opinion which may tend to alienate public interest. This
opinion may be true or it may be false. If it is false, it should be
corrected by high-spotting undergraduate activities.
If, on the other hand, it is true
that 80 per cent of the work is postgraduate research, the most should be
made of that fact. It should be the concern of the president to make known
the discoveries which are of possible public interest. A university
expedition into Biblical lands may be uninteresting as a purely scholastic
undertaking, but if it contributes light on some Biblical assertion it
will immediately arouse the interest of large masses of the population.
The zoological department may be hunting for some strange bacillus which
has no known relation to any human disease, but the fact that it is
chasing bacilli is in itself capable of dramatic presentation to the
public.
Many universities now gladly lend members of their
faculties to assist in investigations of public interest. Thus Cornell
lent Professor Wilcox to aid the government in the preparation of the
national census. Professor Irving Fisher of Yale has been called in to
advise on currency matters. In the ethical sense, propaganda bears the
same relation to education as to business or politics. It may be abused.
It may be used to over advertise an institution and to create in the
public mind artificial values. There can be no absolute guarantee against
its misuse.
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History of Banking Fraud:
The Coming Battle
By M. W. WALBERT
The Coming Battle
documents from Congressional records, newspaper reports and writings by
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© 2007, Allen Aslan Heart / White Eagle Soaring of the Little Shell Pembina Band,
a
Treaty
Tribe of the Ojibwe Nation
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