Chapter VII: Freedom and Initiative in the Schools

The _Liberty_ is likely to survive longer than anything else that
I have written, because it is a kind of philosophic textbook of
a single truth, which the changes progressively taking place in
modern society tend to bring out into ever stronger relief: the
importance, to man and society, of a large variety in types of
character, and of giving full freedom to human nature to expand
itself in innumerable and conflicting directions.—JOHN STUART
MILL, _Autobiography_.

The state which refrains from fighting revolutionary doctrines by force except in times of clear and present danger is not helpless, for besides abolishing some causes of discontent, it can employ education to establish among its citizens faith in progress through law. If, however, the advocates of revolution by violence should share in the control of education, the state would seem to be surrendering its last stronghold. Such a possibility is indicated to many by the presence of radicals among public school teachers. The situation is complicated by factors which lie outside the province of this book, like the claim of teachers to participate in deciding the dismissal of one of their number. Questions of the fitness of some particular teacher to teach, instead of being settled purely on their merits, have become storm-centers of conflict for employees, trade unions, and the press. On one side, some teachers who are dismissed for good reasons are believed by their friends to be ousted for political or economic views. On the other side, the authorities assert that any one who holds certain views is _ipso facto_ unfit to teach. For example, Dr. John L. Tildsley, while Associate Superintendent of Schools in New York, declared,[559] “that men or women who are _Marxian Socialists_, who believe in the Communist Manifesto, have no right to be in the school system because such teachers believe in the overturn by force of those elements on which our civilization is based.” The student of freedom of speech is concerned with the comparative redness of these proscribed views, and with the question whether a teacher is to be dismissed for merely believing in them or only if he expresses them to his classes. The following reflections grow out of the New York controversy, but merely endeavor to suggest some controlling principles. Since the problem does not involve the legal questions which have received attention in previous chapters, it may be helpful, at the cost of some repetition, to restate in non-technical language the main conclusions of this book.

[559] The Public and the Schools, May 17, 1919, Public Education Assn., N. Y.

When I heard Dr. Tildsley say he believed in freedom of speech I felt glad that we stood in the same position. But when he went on and said no one who favored Marxian Socialism should teach in the schools, it seemed to me a little like a character in James Russell Lowell, a gentleman of the _Biglow Papers_, who said: “I du believe in Freedom’s cause, Ez fur away as Payris is.” Or something like the Irishman who inquired of his friend, “What is this Socialism that I hear so much about?” Mike said, “Why, Pat, don’t you know what that is? If you had a million dollars, you would give me half, wouldn’t you?” “Sure, I would!” “Well, that’s Socialism.” Pat said, “That is a grand thing! Tell me some more about it.” “Well,” replied Mike, “If you had ten dollars, you would give me half, wouldn’t you?” “I would not! I’ve got ten dollars!”

We all believe in freedom of speech, but the question is, do we believe in it when it is disagreeable to us? After all, if freedom of speech means anything, it means a willingness to stand and let people say things with which we disagree, and which do weary us considerably. A good deal of the public discussion on the matter turns on the use of the word “rights.” Those who want to speak freely insist on the right of freedom of speech; and, on the other hand, those who wish to restrict speakers talk of the right of the government to carry on war and the right of the government to maintain order, and there we have a deadlock. Each side says it is in the right, and that does not bring us anywhere at all. I think we will do well to get away from this word “right” entirely, and look at it from another point of view, not from the legal point of view, but simply from the point of view of the individual human being who wants to speak and the great group of human beings which constitute the society in which he speaks. That is, we have his individual interests and the interests of society at large.

First, we have the individual interest in freedom of speech. “Good,” as Emerson says, “does not mean good to eat and good to wear.” It means to live our own lives as fully as we can and to bear witness to the truth for which we came into the world. I did intend at this point to quote from _Jean-Christophe_, by Romain Rolland, but this is one of the proscribed books for recommending which to his pupils a teacher was dismissed from the New York high schools, and so I will refrain. But instead, I will take a book which was written three thousand years ago, which is fairly safe—the _Apology of Socrates_:

If in acquitting me you should say: “We will not put faith this
time, O Socrates, in your accusers, but will let you go, on the
condition, however, that you no longer spend your time in this
search nor in the pursuit of wisdom, and that if you are caught
doing either again you shall die”—if, I say, you were to release
me on these conditions, I should say to you: “Athenians, I love
and cherish you, but shall obey the God rather than you; and as
long as I draw breath and have the strength, I shall never cease
to follow philosophy and to exhort and persuade any one of you
whom I happen to meet. For this, be assured, the God commands;
and I believe that there has never been a greater good in the
state than this my service to the God; for I do nothing but
go about persuading you, both young and old, not to let your
first thought be for your body or your possessions, nor to care
for anything so earnestly as for your soul.” And, Athenians, I
should go on to say: “Either hearken to my accusers or not, and
either acquit me or not; but understand that I shall never act
differently, even if I have to die for it many times.”

That is the individual interest in free speech. Over against that we have to set the social interests—the interest in the safeguarding of the government and the nation from foreign attack, the interest in order, without which all our individual interests would be lost, the interest in moral and decent living, and the interest in the training of the young, which is the main thing that we have to consider here. As between that individual interest and those social interests, it seems easy to conclude that the individual interest should always give way; that, as is often said, freedom of speech means liberty, not license; that we must not advocate anything that is wrong, anything which interferes with the social interests in order, and so on. But we have to remember that not only do we have the social interest in order, and in the education of the young, and in morals, but that freedom of speech is itself a social interest; that one of the purposes for which society exists just as much as for the maintenance of order is the discovery and the spread of truth.

Another member of the Lowell family, now President of Harvard, said in his report to the Corporation on the subject of freedom of speech, which every Harvard professor can regard as a Magna Charta:

Education has proved, and probably no one would now deny, that
knowledge can advance, or at least can advance most rapidly,
only by means of an unfettered search for truth on the part of
those who devote their lives to seeking it in their respective
fields, and by complete freedom in imparting to their pupils the
truth that they have found. This has become an axiom in higher
education, in spite of the fact that a searcher may discover
error instead of truth, and be misled, and mislead others,
thereby. We believe that if enough light is let in, the real
relations of things will soon be seen, and they can be seen in no
other way.

We cannot be sure that any statement is either wholly true or wholly false. We cannot separate the truth at once. We have to leave the separation on the whole to time. Any subject may have some bad features, but we must let the wheat grow with the tares until the time comes when the crop is ripe, and we can decide between them. If what is said does dangerously and directly interfere with those other social interests in order and in education of the young, then speech must be restrained. But until that time comes—and we ought to be sure that it has come—we should be very careful how we interfere. Because it is by the contest of argument that the truth is found. Argument on one side and argument on the other is the best way that we have on earth to bring about truth. Once force is thrown into the scale, once the pressure of government is used on one side or the other, it becomes simply a matter of chance on which side it is used, and then the natural ability to decide the matter by argument is altogether gone. I say it is just a matter of chance. For instance, force here is to be thrown against Marxian Socialism, a doctrine with which I do not at all agree; but, in North Dakota it is to be thrown on the side of something that comes pretty near Marxian Socialism. Under a populist régime in Kansas the State issued textbooks that had to be used in the schools, which devoted more time to the “crime of ’73,” by which free silver was abolished, than to the Civil War. It just depends on what government you have. The administration in Washington is now publishing textbooks for use in the schools.[560] When we have a Republican administration we may have a different kind of textbook. Therein lies the difficulty with Dr. Tildsley’s argument that teachers must teach and think according to the decision of a majority in Congress. It is true that a majority decision is the best way of determining how the government shall act, but it is not the best way of deciding what is right. We have to act on the decision of the majority, but the minority are not thereby precluded from doubting the wisdom of the decision, and it may eventually be that they will again become the majority and will put an end to that particular measure.

[560] “A Case of Federal Propaganda in our Public Schools,” Natl. Industrial Conference Board, Feb., 1919.

If the majority of Congress declares war, the minority must realize that we are at war, but they are not necessarily bound to believe that the war is right, and why should they not endeavor to stop it by argument when they believe that it has gone far enough? Once again, we have got to balance the interests in this matter—the public interest in the discovery of truth against the public interest in the education of the young and protection against invasion. And it is very necessary that the balancing should be done by people who realize the importance of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech ought to weigh very heavily in the scale.

It is all very well to say that religious views should be free; that scientific investigation should be free; but that political opinion cannot be free, because that is dangerous; that Marxian Socialism is so dangerous that it cannot be free. Three centuries ago, people felt just as strongly about religious views and about scientific investigation as they do now about political investigation. They felt just as sure that any view which was not in accord with the orthodox religion would unsettle the very foundations of morality, and that consequently no one should teach in the schools who was not an orthodox Christian. And they felt just as sure about scientific investigation; that if a man said the earth went around the sun, he should not be trusted anywhere. If they felt so strongly about it then, and were wrong, how can we be sure that we are right if we feel the same way about political investigation? On that we must have just as much freedom of investigation as in the old days was necessary for scientific discoveries. It is easy enough to think that everything that is different from ourselves must necessarily be dangerous. It is easy to believe that political ideas which are different from our own must necessarily advocate the use of force. We say, how could Socialism come into existence except by violence, because it is so objectionable. I do not believe in it, and hope it will not come into existence. But I do not see why it may not be adopted by popular suffrage, the same as other ideas. We ought not to assume it can only win by violence, simply because it differs from our views. In the old days they used to get rid of objectionable persons on the ground that they would overthrow society. They got rid of Socrates by saying he was a corrupter of the youth. They got rid of Jesus by saying he planned to upset the Roman state, and they said it is more expedient that one man should die than that the people should perish. It is more expedient, now, that one man should be put in prison or lose his job—it is just the same argument we use—than that the people should perish. But let us be sure that the people, after all, are going to perish.

In war time, the problem is perhaps peculiar. Everybody is very much occupied. We haven’t time to think things over, and people will say, “We don’t care what sort of war it is. My country, right or wrong. Let us go ahead.” It is something like the colored man who went with his son to rob a hen coop, and sent his son inside. The boy turned and stuck his head out of the door and said, “Father, am dis right?” And the father said, “Dat am a great moral question. We will argue it out at home dis evening. You get busy and hand out dem chickens.”

I think this war was right, but the people who opposed it, who were wrong this time, may be right next time, as they were right in the Mexican War. They may be right next time, and we ought to be careful how we require every person who teaches in the schools to support every war that is going on. But now we have peace. We cannot postpone the discussion of problems until the “war” is over. We shall have to meet them as they arise. Dr. Tildsley spoke of our being under the spell of words. There is one word we are all under the spell of at the present time, and that is, Americanism. What does it mean? We are afraid of something. We were afraid of Germany, but we got over that. What is it we are scared about now? We are scared of Russia. Why? Is it because Russia has a different political system from ours? She had a different political system under the Czar, and we were perfectly willing to discuss his system. Is it because the people have a tremendous control there? We have been perfectly willing to discuss the initiative and the referendum for years. Is it because they have a restrictive franchise there? We have a restrictive franchise in certain states where half the adult population is not allowed to vote. In Rhode Island, where I used to live, the men who are most scared of Bolshevism are the men who are most ready to keep the property franchise under which people who have less than $134 cannot vote for many important offices. What we are really scared of is not something political; it is economic. We are afraid of a system which takes property from the people who have inherited it or who have earned it, and that is an economic question. It is not Americanism against something else. It is simply a choice of two economic systems, and we have got to have that controversy discussed if we are going to decide it rightly.

If Americanism means anything, it means free speech, right from the start. The Pilgrims came to Massachusetts to get it, and Roger Williams left Massachusetts, not only because he had his own religious views but because he attacked property rights in land not purchased from the Indians. Thomas Jefferson is usually considered a good American, but he said things about the desirability of rebellion that would make us all shudder. Alexander Hamilton argued for free speech here in New York, and James Russell Lowell called the Mexican War murder. The abolitionists, men whom we all honor to-day, believed in Americanism—freedom to criticise the government of their day and the institutions of property of their day, which included a tremendous form of property—the property in negro slaves. I believe in private property myself, but because I believe in it I want to know why it ought to be supported.

And now, for the problem as it affects teachers. There are two views of teaching. One regards teaching as a sort of handing out canned goods to the pupils, so much canned goods, so much knowledge. Well, if it is a canned goods business, we may need a Pure Food Law to make sure the children get the right brand of “corn.” But this is not the real theory. That was held by President Gilman of Johns Hopkins, when he took Professor Gildersleeve into a bare room and said, “Now, radiate.” We have got to have the kind of teachers that radiate. For that we not only need contented teachers, but we must have teachers who think for themselves.

In a pamphlet issued in the New York school controversy, the “Reply of the Superintendents,” is a statement that teachers should be obedient, and to support it a quotation about the sort of obedience that is necessary in the army and navy. Of course, teachers to some extent have to obey, but the kind of obedience we ought to get from them is far from the kind they get in the army and navy. In an autocracy, they might get along without teachers of independence. But this country has to be run by the people in it, and they are the people who are taught in the schools; and if the teachers cannot think for themselves, the pupils cannot think for themselves. They cannot discuss merely the questions of the past. They must discuss the critical problems of the present time if they are to solve them.

In England there is a leisure class to carry on the government. We cannot depend on that. Now, to what branch of citizens should we turn more for help in these matters than the teachers? And there is no class of people who are more injured by repression than teachers. If you say to any other man that he must not express his ideas on political questions, he can at least devote himself to his job, but if you confine the teacher in his thinking, what do you leave him? That is his job, to think.

People say that the teacher is employed by the government, and ought to agree with the government which pays him. The courts are just as much a part of the government as the schools—more so, for we have private schools, but we do not have private courts. Do we say that every one in the court must agree with the government? Do we say that the judges must always decide in favor of the government? Not at all! They often decide against it. We retain lawyers to defend criminals whom the government accuses. It is even suggested we should have one lawyer to do so all the time. Progressive manufacturing corporations employ men just to criticise the products of the corporation and see how they can be better made. The teacher may be serving the state even while he criticises it.

Of course, we have special considerations in the schools. We have this social interest in favor of the education of children. We cannot let everything be said in the schools that we might let be said outside. A teacher might be allowed to stand on his head at home, but not in school. In the same way there is much he ought not to do there in the way of free speech. If he taught that all boys and girls at sixteen were of a proper age to marry, he certainly ought to lose his position. He must adapt his discussion to the maturity of the pupils before him. And we certainly can require concentration on his subject; we can require judgment; we ought to demand of a teacher that he should be a master of his subject and a man of sound common sense.

But, on the other hand, you cannot control the mind of an expert. You cannot stand over Galileo and say “Use your telescope, but do not find that the earth goes around the sun.” You cannot stand over Pasteur and say, “Investigate spontaneous generation, but do not discover that spontaneous generation exists.” You cannot stand over a man that deals with economics and say, “Find out that economics exists according to this or that system”; or, if he deals with history, say to him, “Find out that the men who are in power in Russia are a gang of thugs.” If he finds it out, all right; but you cannot force him to do so, and you cannot force him to teach lies. Outside of the classroom he should be even more free. There he is a citizen, and as the New York Constitution says, every citizen may safely speak, write, and publish his sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right; and no law shall be passed to restrain or abridge the liberty of speech or of the press.

Be sure that the right is abused. Be sure that freedom of speech weighs much in the scale. I think if every board which had to pass on the removal of a teacher would first read Milton’s _Areopagitica_ and Mill on _Liberty_, that some of the decisions would be very different; because they would see that, after all, freedom of speech is just as important as the maintenance of order.

Why are we so worried? Why are we so scared? Have we no confidence in the arguments that can be used against these radical ideas? Parents argue on the other side, and we have with us the army and the police, and everybody who has a savings bank account or a life insurance policy. After all, the dangers of rebellion are not very great, unless our case is very weak, and I do not think it is.

Finally, repression will produce just the kind of spirit in the teachers that we want to get rid of—that is, the revolutionary spirit. The French experience in this matter has been very instructive.[561] There the government threw its force against religion. Teachers were dismissed because they went to church. Teachers were dismissed for attacking the Prefect of their department. The state held a general inquisition into the opinions of all the teachers, a cabinet minister saying, “The government will not surrender the right to know the attitude of its servants toward the republic.” And they even had a law that government officials, including teachers, should wear a cheerful countenance on national holidays. What was the result? The teachers of France, although by birth, by training, by disposition affiliated with the middle class rather than the working class, have formed a revolutionary trade-union and affiliated themselves with the syndicalist organizations of France.

[561] H. J. Laski, _Authority in the Modern State_, c. V.

It is all very well to say that we ought to be loyal to the state. What do we mean by the state? After all, it comes right straight down to the government that we deal with, and the government comes down to the men that we deal with, which means the educational authorities, and those who have power to put us in prison, and if those men do not stand for the best things we stand for,—for the development of mind and spirit and the search for truth, we begin to wonder whether, after all, that government ought to endure, and whether we do not want a government which will stand for the things that we believe in. So it becomes important that the men who constitute the government, who, after all, are really the state, should stand for these things. We cannot love the state as a mystical unity, when that unity as we actually face it prevents us from living a true human life. So that, in order to make people loyal to the state, you must make the state a sort of thing that they want to be loyal to.

We have got to take risks. Of course, it is not perfectly safe to allow teachers to be free. There ought to be this balancing of youth against truth. But there are plenty of risks that we take in life. We let our children go on the street although they may be run over by automobiles and trolley cars. We do not keep them home until they are twenty-one years of age. In the same way, we might like to leave them until a little later before we discuss some of these economic problems, but then they are out at work, and it is too late. We have got to take them when we can get them. And even if an occasional teacher does speak very radically, that does not mean that high school students will believe all he says. If we go back to the time when we were sixteen, we remember the keenness with which we discussed those problems. We did not take everything the teacher said for granted, and the more he said, the more we were likely to oppose him.

We cannot lead sterilized lives. Think of the chances America took by allowing people with very little education to vote, and yet that is a risk we are ready to run. Democracy is not a water-tight compartment. It is a great adventure, and in order to prepare people for that adventure we have to teach them to think for themselves on the problems they will have to face when they grow up. It is not simply teaching them the ideals of the day,—we must train them to make the ideals of to-morrow.