Visual Education (Jan-Nov 1920)

36 Visual Education reading, -writing, spelling, geography, arithmetic and physiology. I can even teach history and some branches of science." Here is a vast field pointed out by a man whose wizard eye was never deluded by phantoms. Why not invest our millions, overrun the whole domain of grammar school, revolutionize education, build the gigantic pedagogic industry that Edison — the peerless, practical Edison— saw with unerring vision ? Why not ? Perhaps Edison never made any such claims, but merely allowed an advertiser to use his name. It is conceivable that, even if he did so speak, he was for once in his life mistaken. Possibly his conception of a movie education was realizable by him, but not by any other human being. With these and similar speculations we need not spend time. This article is written to call attention to an entirely different sort of comment, to a fact, a fact a million times as large as any dictum of the world's premier inventor. I refer to the eternal truth that effective education is always some kind of process that is hard for the pupil. Only once in human history, and in only one country, has this truth ever been obscured — that is, during the last forty years in the United States. For the first and last time in history a powerful nation has developed without being forced — as humanity has always been forced elsewhere— to be careful. Not even in education have we been obliged to follow that hard course of accuracy that all mankind has in all other ages been compelled to follow. Haste and inattention to details have almost been virtues. This prime cause, combined with more recent causes of another kind, have misled the unwary, blinding them to the fact that our latter-day, joy-riding, hopeful, visionary projects of easy ways to knowledge are in flat opposition to the universal truth about the road to learning: it must be hard. Greeks and Chinamen and Gauls and Pilgrim Fathers and Western Eeserve pioneers — all have known this eternal fact. Milton said that "the path is laborious at the first ascent," and Dooley says that it must be "hard." The easy way to sound learning is a recent dream, credited by only a few, certain to be dissipated as soon as our country begins to adapt itself to the harsh realities that now loom directly before us as population thickens and the struggle for existence demands real education. I am not speaking as a schoolmaster voicing his narrow convictions. I speak as one who feebly rehearses the deep oaths of hate that business men vent against our easy education. I write as one who reports what trade journals have to say of "the lame ducks from high school" that have been crippled by an easy education. I testify as one who hears all the air vocal with the rage of the great common people against the delusion and folly of "joy first and efficiency afterwards." If democracy is to survive, it must have a hard education. Most of us confess a faith that democracy is going to survive. That is the fact of 1925 that confronts promoters of Visual Education. If they can side-step or tunnel under it, they may earn money for a time; they will go to ruin before long. Ten years ago there might have been a golden era of "see the pretty pictures and grow wise," but five years hence the fact will be "work hard or be scrapped." Can cameras be of use in developing the type of education that democracy now requires?