George Wharton James on education 19th century USA

It may be possible that some who read these words will deem me an incontinent and general railer against our civilization. Such a conclusion would be an egregious error. I rail against nothing in it but that which I deem bad,—bad in its effect upon the bodies, minds, or souls of its citizens. I do not rail against the wireless telegraph, the ocean cables, the railway, the telephone, the phonograph, the pianoforte, the automobile, the ice machine, refrigerating machine, gas light, gas for heating and cooking, the electric light and heater, electric railways, newspapers, magazines, books, and the thousand and one things for which this age and civilization of ours is noted. But I do rail against the abuse and perversion of these things. I do rail against the system that permits gamblers to swindle the common people by watering the stock of wireless telegraphy, 30 cable, railway, or other companies. I enjoy some phonographs amazingly, but I rail against my neighbor’s running his phonograph all night. I think coal-oil a good thing, but I rail against the civilization that allows a few men to so control this God-given natural product that they can amass in a few short years fortunes that so far transcend the fortunes of the kings of ancient times that they make the wealth of Crœsus look like “thirty cents.” I believe thoroughly in education; but I rail earnestly, sincerely, and constantly against that so-called education (with which nearly all our present systems are more or less allied) of valuing the embalmed knowledge of books more than the personal, practical, experimental knowledge of the things themselves. 31 I enjoy books, and would have a library as large as that of the British Museum if I could afford it; but I rail persistently against the civilization that leads its members to accept things they find in books more than the things they think out for themselves. Joaquin Miller seemed to say a rude and foolish thing when he answered Elbert Hubbard’s question, “Where are your books?” with a curt, “To hell with books. When I want a book I write one;” and yet he really expressed a deep and profound thought. He wanted to show his absolute contempt for the idea that we read books in order to help thought. The fact is, the reading too much in books, and of too many books, is a definite hindrance to thought—a positive preventive of thought. I do not believe in predigested food for either body, mind, or soul; hence I am opposed to those features of our civilization that give us food that needs only to be swallowed (not masticated and enjoyed) to supply nutriment; that give us thought all ready prepared for us that we must accept or be regarded as uneducated; those crumbs of social customs that a frivolous four hundred condescend to allow to fall from their tables to us, and that we must observe or be ostracized as “boors” and “vulgar”; and those features of our theological system that give us predigested spiritual food that we must accept and follow or be damned. I am willing to go and feed with the Scotch and the horses (vide Johnson’s foolish remark about oatmeal), and be regarded as uneducated and be ostracized both as a boor and a vulgarian, and even be damned in words, which, thank God, is quite as far as He allows any one human being to “damn” another. For I am opposed to these things one and all.  

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I am not a pessimist about our civilization: I am an optimist. Yet I often find my optimism strongly tinged with pessimistic color. And how can it be otherwise?
Can any thinking man have much respect—any, in fact—for that phase of his civilization which permits the building of colossal fortunes by the monopolization of the sale of necessities, when the poor who are compelled to buy these necessities are growing poorer and poorer each year?

Can I respect any civilization that for the 125 years of its existence has refused to pass laws for the preservation of the purity of the food of its poor? The rich can buy what and where they choose, but for the whole period of our existence we have been so bound, hand and foot, by the money-makers who have vitiated our food supply that they might add a few more millions to their dirty hoard of ungodly dollars that we have closed our eyes to the physical and spiritual demoralization that has come to the poor by the poisoned concoctions handed out to them—under protection of United States laws—as foods.
Can I respect an educational institution that educates the minds of its children at the expense of their bodies? That has so little common sense and good judgment as to be putting its children through fierce competitive examinations when they should be strengthening their bodies at the critical age of adolescence?

Can I bow down before the civilization whose 33 highest educational establishments—Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, New York, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, followed by hosts of others of lesser institutions—every year send out from five to thirty per cent of their students broken down in health? What is the good of all the book-learning that all the ages have amassed unless one has physical health to enjoy it? Only this last year a Harvard graduate came to me who had taken high degree in the study of law and was adjudged eminently prepared to begin to practice his profession. But his health was gone. He was a nervous and physical wreck. His physicians commanded complete rest for a year, and suggested that five years would be none too long for him to spend in recuperation. When this young man asked me to give him my candid expressions upon the matter, I asked him if he thought imbeciles could have made a worse mess of his “education” than had the present system, which had cultivated his intellect, but so disregarded the needs of his body that his intellect was powerless to act 

Let the wails of agony of the uncounted dead who have been hurried to their graves by this idolatrous worship of a senseless, godless, heartless Moloch called “education” answer for me when people ask me to respect this feature of our higher civilization, and to these wails let there be added those of awakened parents who have seen, when too late, into what acts akin to murder their blind worship of this idol had led them. Add to these the cries of pain from ten thousand beds of affliction occupied by those still living, but whose bodies have “broken down” as the result of “over-study.” 

Then add to the vast pyramid of woe the heartaches of hopes banished, of ambitions thwarted, of 34 desires and aims completely lost, and one can well understand why I am not a worshiper at this shrine. If I were to choose—as every parent must for his young children who are not yet capable of thought—between a happy, because physically healthy, life, though uneducated by the schools, and an educated and unhappy, because unhealthy, life for children, I would say: Give me ignorance (of books and schools) and health, rather than education (of books and 35 schools) and a broken down, nervous, irritable body. But it is by no means necessary to have uneducated children, even though they should never see a school. While I now write (I am enjoying a few days on the “rim” of the Grand Canyon) I am meeting daily a remarkable family. The man is far above the average in scholastic and book education. He is a distinguished physician, known not only within the bounds of his own large state, but throughout the whole United States and Europe; his methods are largely approved by men at the head of the profession, and his lucrative and enormous practice demonstrates the success of his system, with the complete approval of the most conservative of his rigidly conservative profession. He was until quite recently a professor in one of the largest universities of the United States, and was therefore competent from inside knowledge to pass judgment upon the methods of the highest educational establishments. He has money enough to place his two daughters wherever he chooses, and to spend most of his time near them. Yet he has deliberately (and I think most wisely) kept them out of school, and made the strength and vigor of their bodies his first consideration. Both ride horseback (astride, of course) with the poise and confidence of skilled vaqueros; both can undertake long journeys, horseback or afoot, that would exhaust most young men students; and now at 15 and 17 years of age they are models of physical health and beauty, and at the same time the elder sister is better educated in the practical, sane, useful, living affairs of men and women than any girl of her age I have ever met. I take this object-lesson, therefore, as another demonstration of the truth of my position, and again I refuse to bow down 36 before the great fetich of our modern civilization—“scholastic education.”.