Schoolroom Patriotism

Another State Bill Makes New York Look Conspicuously Silly The Boston Transcript publishes under the title " Silly Cooperationists " an editorial attack upon a certain " Commission of Intellectual Cooperation" apparently functioning abroad, which proposes to eliminate from school histories the praise of " narrow national activities" and substitute a history dealing objectively with international affairs. This view, says the Transcript, " assumes that education is the same thing as propaganda, which it is not." Whereupon the Transcript proceeds to show that it is. " The child is educated," if you please, " by arousing pride and joy in his heart. . To interweave heroic deeds, battles long ago and proudly remembered feats and sacrifices with rocks and rills, boundless plains and happy valleys is the surest means of vitalizing the instruction of the school. It is not necessary to inculcate hatreds, but it is desirable to arouse pride. There's not a culture worth the name that is not founded on patriotic deeds."

Passing the scientific question of the vitalizing effect of battles long ago interwoven with rocks and rills, it remains sufficiently apparent that the editor of the Transcript believes in education by the incitement of patriotic pride. It is useless to deny an intention to " inculcate hatreds " when the purpose of education is made the inspiration of pride by reference to wars and enmities. And it is worse than useless to call the resulting attitude of mind "culture." The bare fact is that such a theory of education makes the school an agency of chauvinism, ignorance and prejudice. The Germans proved that point up to the hilt.

This general attitude of mind finds its complete expression in the Higgins " Patriotic Textbook" Bill in the Legislature of the State of New York, which provides for the censoring of textbooks in history by the elimination of statements uncomplimentary to the Fathers. That bill is generally supposed to have the backing of Messrs. Hylan and Hirschfield, and its purposes and probable effects are too clear to require demonstration.

Internationalism may as the Transcript suggests, be silly. Patriotic pride may be one of the goods of life. But to require the schools to teach a Deutschland Uber Alles jingoism in order to inculcate joy in the childish heart is a silly and dangerous thing.