The following is an excerpt from a recent lecture by Albert J. Nock at the University of Virginia, on the subject of education in America:
Exponents of the new order have had their way unhindered, and have been able to command an almost inconceivable amount of money and enthusiasm in support of their plans and policies.
Yet after three decades of this, our system gives no better satisfaction, apparently, than it did before. At no time during this period has it given satisfaction; hence the period has been one of incessant tinkering, the like of which probably has never been seen anywhere in the world. Method after method, device after device, readjustment after readjustment, have been tried, scrapped, revived and modified, and then tried again.
One might say that the field of our pedagogy during these three decades has been the drillground of empiricism; large areas of it, indeed, seem to have been, and still seem to be, the hunting-ground of quackery. One cannot too much wonder at the high hopefulness attending this unconscionable revel of experimentation.
Yes, yes, we kept saying, let us but just install this one new method in the secondary schools, or this one new set of curricular changes in the undergraduate college, or this one grand new scheme for broadening the scope of university instruction, and in a year or so it will prove itself to be the very thing we have all along been needing; and this, that or the other batch of pedagogical problems will be laid to eternal rest.
Such, I think, is a fair summary of our thirty years’ experience.
Oh, wait — did I say recent? He made these remarks in 1931, almost a century ago.
Change ‘three decades’ to twelve decades, and ‘thirty years’ to one hundred twenty years, and his observations are still right on the mark.
But don’t worry — you can be sure that the teachers unions and superintendents and school boards and legislators and bureaucrats and education researchers will get things right this time.
After all, with more than a century of ‘experience’, how could they fail?
