THE NEW PEDAGOGY

H. L. Mencken, in his chosen role of fiery iconoclast, sears the opening pages of the latest Mercury with an attack on the American public school. The reason for his diatribe, needless to say, is the depression. The public schools, it appears, are spending now about $100 per child each year, where in 1880 they spent $5. Obviously, such an increase as this offers a loophole to one in search of reductions, if only it can be shown to be unjustified. This task Mr. Mencken assumes, asking the natural question: "Has the increase in intelligence among the products of the schools been at all comparable to the increase in the cost of education?"

This first question be answers, as the majority would, in the negative, claiming that the high-school graduate of today is, if anything, more stereotyped and dull than his predecessor. If this is true, or even partly true, the search for the leak must be elsewhere. Mr. Mencken finds this cause of waste in the growth of special classes for the backward and in the large number of various sorts of experts which infest every modern school. Actually, there is another and even worse cause for growing expenditures: this is the movement towards a large number of courses in every conceivable subject. This innovation has had two evil effects: it has raised the cost of an education, and it has led the present generations too far from the benefits of a classical training.

Mr. Mencken's arguments are a bit high-strange; they savor of viciousness. But it is evident that he has struck a blow in the right place, though he may have struck too hard. From a purely intellectual point of view, the schools need revision. And from the standpoint of financial expediency, they are more than wasteful. For this hard-spent money, the citizens are given, as Mr. Mencken says, the sight of a myrind palatial buildings, "out of each vomited the standard product of the New Pedagogy... an endless procession of adolescents who have been taught everything save that which is true, and outfitted with every trick save those which are socially useful."