THE DEJECTED ANALYST

"The school system is an labor-factory", says Dr. Kallen in the current "New Republic". After much erudite writing on the origins of schools, he concludes that the present school system, colleges included, exists solely ot perpetuate the status quo in economics and religion, and to make docile workers out of the children of workers.

Dr. Kallen states as his belief: "If education has established habits of such a sort that no claim to authority can be acknowledge before it has made itself good, and none can be rejected until it (i.e. the claim) has failed to make good, the function of education in a democratic community has been served; freedom has been safeguarded." Immediately afterwards he questions whether this rather cumbersomely expressed ideal will ever be realized. He fears that the complex organization imposed on the American educational system kills the spirit of independent inquiry. This picture is indeed repulsive; unfortunately it is to a great extent true. The constant reactions against the present system of education, as expressed for example by the Gary school movement, indicates a widespread opinion that it does stifle student initiative.

The causes are not necessarily to be found in a deep-laid capitalist plot. Rather, they arise out of the present course of study and the insufficiency of funds to carry out its complexities. Labor insists on many technical course, middle-class people want cultural courses. Between the two, harassed school officials have been forced to take refuge in a highly organized system of education in order to handle an increased demand for varied studies in the face of a constant supply on money.

A study of origins, however, will not cure the evil; it must be met by stricter classification of schools into technical and cultural, and by increased financial support. The abject resignation of Dr. Kallen and others will accomplish nothing.