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Randolph Bourne: The Education of a Critic–An Interpretation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Jinx Roosevelt
Jinx Roosevelt*
Affiliation:
Teachers College, Columbia University
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Extract

The Short Career of Randolph Bourne (1886–1918) has been useful in various ways to students of American intellectual history. For cultural observers such as Van Wyck Brooks and Christopher Lasch, Bourne's life and work are symbolic of the youthful questioning that characterized the intellectual mood of the 1890's–1920's. Bourne's writing touched on nearly all of the issues of his time—cultural nationalism, progressive education, socialism, feminism—with an adolescent vigor which made him, both then and now, an appropriate spokesman for his generation. Bourne has also served those with more specific interests: for the historian of education, Bourne's articles in The Gary Schools provide vivid testimony to the exciting innovations inspired by John Dewey's pedagogy; while for the historian of philosophy, Bourne's disillusionment with Dewey's “pragmatic” stance during World War I offers an episode in the history of a philosophical debate which began with Plato and Aristotle (or earlier). Finally, for those who value the role of the critic in America, and who believe that the health of any society requires a periodic questioning of its accepted values, Randolph Bourne is an important figure.

Type
Article II
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , Fall 1977 , pp. 257 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © 1977 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. Bourne, Randolph, The History of a Literary Radical and Other Essays, edited and with an introduction by Brooks, Van Wyck (New York, 1920) and Lasch, Christoper, The New Radicalism in America, 1889–1963 (New York, 1965), pp. 69–103.Google Scholar

2. Cremin, Lawrence A., The Transformation of the School (New York, 1961), pp. 155ff.Google Scholar

3. White, Morton, Social Thought in America: The Revolt Against Formalism (New York, 1952).Google Scholar

4. Harris, Mark, Randolph Bourne: A Study in Immiscibility (Ann Arbor, 1957), p. 97.Google Scholar

5. “Education is the deliberate, systematic and sustained effort to transmit, evoke, or acquire knowledge, attitudes, skills, values, and sensibilities, as well as the outcomes of that effort.” Cremin, Lawrence A. Google Scholar

6. Schlissel, Lillian, ed., The World of Randolph Bourne (New York, 1965), p. 229.Google Scholar

7. Filler, Louis, Randolph Bourne (Washington, D.C., 1943), p. 12.Google Scholar

8. Lasch, , New Radialism, p. 76.Google Scholar

9. Paul, Sherman, Randolph Bourne (Minneapolis, 1966), p. 7.Google Scholar

10. Letter fragment from Special Manuscripts Collection, Bourne papers and correspondence, Butler Library, Columbia University.Google Scholar

11. Schlissel, , ed., “The History of a Literary Radical,” p. 229.Google Scholar

12. Letter to Sargeant, Elizabeth Shepley, June 9, 1915, New York.Google Scholar

13. To Gregory, Alyse, Jan. 21, 1916.Google Scholar

14. May 20, 1914, quoted in Lasch, , p. 79.Google Scholar

15. Schlissel, , ed., p. 230.Google Scholar

16. Schlissel, , ed., “In a Schoolroom,” pp. 61–62.Google Scholar

17. Ibid., p. 62.Google Scholar

18. Filler, , pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

19. Harris, , p. 23. Quotations from Bourne's Master's Thesis, “A Study of the Suburbanizing of a Town.” Google Scholar

20. Bourne, Randolph, Youth and Life (Boston, 1913), p. 343.Google Scholar

21. Bourne, Randolph, Untimely Papers (New York, 1919), p. 6.Google Scholar

22. Resek, Carl, ed., War and the Intellectuals: Essays by Randolph S. Bourne, 1915–1919 (New York, 1964), p. ix.Google Scholar

23. Resek, , ed., “What is Exploitation?” p. 136.Google Scholar

24. Bourne, , Youth and Life, p. 340.Google Scholar

25. Schlissel, , ed., “History of a Literary Radical,” p. 233.Google Scholar

26. Ibid., pp. 236–237.Google Scholar

27. Ibid., p. 236.Google Scholar

28. Resek, , ed., p. x.Google Scholar

29. Quoted from “One of Our Conquerors,” in Harris, , pp. 56–57.Google Scholar

30. Dana, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to Bourne, Randolph, March 21, 1914.Google Scholar

31. Bourne, , Youth and Life, p. 252.Google Scholar

32. To Prudence Winterrowd, March 2, 1913.Google Scholar

33. July 14, 1915.Google Scholar

34. Judging from his ebullient notes and correspondence of that year (1913–1914), Bourne's European travels made a deep impression on him, and they would merit a close treatment in any full-scale biography of Bourne. However, since Bourne's stance in Europe was as a spectator rather than as a critic, the experience lies outside of the central theme of this essay. Like other American intellectuals in Europe before and since, Bourne viewed institutions there (including the Catholic Church and German state planning) relatively uncritically. (An exception was Bourne's disillusionment with the Fabians and his scathing mockery of British society [see Schlissel, , p. xxii, and Harris, , Chap. IV]. Apparently the English were close enough to his own Anglo-Saxon background to provoke his ire.) Google Scholar

35. Schlissel, , ed., p. xxviii.Google Scholar

36. Quoted in Schlissel, , ed. p. xxx.Google Scholar

37. Ibid., p. xxxi.Google Scholar

38. Resek, , ed., p. xii.Google Scholar

39. Harris, , p. 200.Google Scholar

40. Schlissel, , ed., “War and the Intellectuals,” pp. 155–156.Google Scholar

41. Schlissel, , ed., “Twilight of Idols,” pp. 190–200.Google Scholar

42. Ibid., p. xxxviii.Google Scholar

43. Harris, , p. 193.Google Scholar

44. Unpublished fragment from Bourne Collection.Google Scholar

45. Harris, , p. 132.Google Scholar

46. See p. 11 above.Google Scholar

47. Bourne, Sara, to Cornell, Esther, 13 January, 1918.Google Scholar

48. Bourne collection, untitled fragment.Google Scholar

49. Ibid. Google Scholar

50. Diary of 1903, Bourne collection.Google Scholar

51. Published in Schlissel, ed., p. 308.Google Scholar

52. To Prudence Winterrowd, Feb. 5, 1914.Google Scholar

53. Ibid., April 10, 1913.Google Scholar

54. Schlissel, , ed., p. 241. Italics mine.Google Scholar

55. Dewey, John, Art as Experience (New York, 1934), p. 59.Google Scholar