Teaching the Truth

What Shall Children Be Told About War? Education has always consisted of an alloy of education and propaganda; and there is no evidence that more scientific methods have produced a purer product. At a recent conference of Congregationalists in Massachusettes, a resolution was proposed looking to the education of children in the sinfulness " of attempting to settle international disputes by means of war." There was apparently a good deal of discussion as to the proper form of words and the convention refused to resolve that children should be brought up " to the idea of the futility and wrong of war." It seems that there is a distinction between the wrong of attempting to settle international dispute by means of war and the wrong of war itself. But however that may be, the fact remains that the convention labored to phrase a resolution which would lead to the teaching of a certain view of war.

At the same time a Baptist clergyman was complaining to a fundamentalist conference of that Church that the German religious philosophy " which led to the world war" was being taught in many American schools and colleges. His intention was, of course, to oppose, so far as he might, the teaching of such doctrine.

In both cases it might very well be urged that the sanctity of the purpose sanctified the means. But purposes and objects are only relatively noble. There are intelligent people who believe in war as a spiritual Katharsis and who have held to that belief in spite of the years 1914 to 1918. And there are intelligent people who believe in communism and atheism and easy divorce and a num-ber of other creeds and panaceas which the Congregational and Baptist Churches would hardly countenance. If the teaching of one faith is justifiable, the teaching of any faith is justifiable and the question is simply one of majorities and minorities.

The purpose of education should be truth and not theories of truth. And truth in education means the observations of experience. If the schools would teach human experience of war without fear of the result and without favor to popular heroes there would be no need to use the schools for propaganda. The case would prove itself. But when they are asked to teach, not the truth about war, but the theoretical wrongfulness of a certain use of war, they are diverted from their purpose and debased, and all to no purpose. A brass band and bronze buttons outweigh volumes of that kind of exhortation.

The debating team of Columbia sailed for England to engage with teams from English and Scotch universities. The trip reciprocates a similar visit to America by the Oxford debating team last Fall.

At Princeton the preparation and sale of syllabi and reviews of courses has been prohibited by the Faculty.

Plans to open a Labor College in New York City in the Fall have been formulated. The Southern Illiteracy Conference representing 14 southern states proposes to " eradicate illiteracy in the South by 1930."

The University of California is graduating 2,379 students this month.