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Education and Democracy: Reflections on the American Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2011

A. W. Coats
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Type
Review Article
Information
Bulletin of the British Association for American Studies , Volume 5 , December 1962 , pp. 64 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © British Association for American Studies 1962

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References

REFERENCES

1. Conant, op.cit., p.58, where he refers to the “means test” of family income prior to the assessment of a British university student's grant. Obviously this procedure discriminates against the wealthy taxpayer, although it is designed to serve egalitarian ends.Google Scholar
2.Noble, D., The Paradox of Progressive Thought (Minneapolis, 1958) Chap. IX Chap. LX.Google Scholar
3. The quotations in the three preceding paragraphs are from Vanderbilt, op.cit., pp. 128, 104–5, 211, 213, 215.Google Scholar
4. These re-arranged passages, from Krug, op.cit., pp.53 & 55, form part of Eliot's address, “Shortening and Enriching the Grammar School Course,” delivered to the National Educational Association in 1892.Google Scholar
5. Krug., op.cit., p. 152. This passage, from the Educational Review, 1905, forms part of Eliot's reply to Hall's attack on the influential report of the Committee of Ten to the National Council of Education, issued in 1893. Eliot was chairman of the Committee.Google Scholar
6. For a valuable recent survey of this topic see Cremin, Lawrence A., The Transformation of the School, Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957. (New York, 1961). The fact that Dewey succeeded Eliot as Honorary President of the Progressive Educational Association is more than merely symbolic. Ibid., pp. 241, 249.Google Scholar
7.Nielson, W.A. (ed.), Charles W. Eliot, The Man and His Beliefs (New York, 1926) Vol. 1, p. 33; Krug, op.cit., pp. 37, 117, 161: Henry James, Charles W. Eliot, President of Harvard University 1869–1909 (New York, 1930) Vol. 11, pp. 16, 20; and Charles W. Eliot, “Resemblances and Differences Among American Universities,” Science, N.S. Vol. XXII (1905) p. 775.Google Scholar
8. According to Eliot, the scholar's “motives, hopes and aims … are different from those of ordinary humanity … he is almost completely indifferent to money, except as it secures a simple livelihood and opportunity for his work. He is wholly indifferent to notoriety; he even shrinks from and abhors it, and his idea of fame is different from that of other men. He would indeed like to have his name favourably known, not to millions of people, but to five or six students of the Latin dative case. He much dislikes to see his name in the newspaper; but he hopes that a hundred years hence some student of his speciality may read his name with gratitude in an ancient volume of the proceedings of some learned academy … He eagerly desires what he calls the results of investigation; but these results would seem to the populace to have no possible interest..…. The market-place and the forum are to him deserts, and for the common pursuits of men he would say impatiently that he had no time.” Nielson, op.cit., Vol. 1, pp. 80–1. This was written in 1898, by which time Eliot's appreciation of scholarship had grown significantly.Google Scholar
9. The quotations in the last two paragraphs are taken from Berman, op.cit., pp. 171, 159, 142.Google Scholar