From
http://www.spintechmag.com/0005/wm0500.htm
}}>Begin>}}
Spintech: May 12, 2000
Nock On Education
by Wendy McElroy
The self-proclaimed 'philosophical anarchist' Albert Jay Nock thought he was so
superfluous to the society around him that his autobiography is entitled
Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943). He felt utterly out of step with the
Twentieth Century. Born in the early 1870s, he witnessed the severe societal
changes resulting from world wars, revolutions in ideology and the spinning-out
of political measures that had often been passed decades before. He watched
with particular concern as American schools abandoned classical education in
favor of the less disciplined liberal arts approach favored by John Dewey and
his followers. Nock charted what he saw as the disastrous consequences to
American society of democratizing education. In doing so, he opposed one of the
most popular trends of the early Twentieth century: mass education.
Michael Wreszin, author of "The Superfluous Anarchist: Albert Jay Nock," called
popular education "the watchword of the progressive era" because no other field
of reform promised such grand possibilities..." (27). The public school system
was viewed as an invaluable means to reconstruct society through molding the
generations to come. In his watershed book Democracy and Education (1916), John
Dewey wrote that popular education should be used as a conscious tool to remove
social evil and promote social good. Slowly, the classical curriculums aimed at
rigorous education -- e.g. a familiarity with Latin, a stress on history --
were replaced by programs that created 'good citizens.'
In the optimistic years prior to World War I, Nock enthusiastically embraced
the 'new education.' Upon seeing its application, however, he became one of
Dewey's earliest and staunchest critics. His later admirers attempted to revive
clas- sical education -- for example, Mortimer Adler, Stringfellow Barr and
Robert Maynard Hutchins, who translated their love of a classical curriculum
into the Great Books program. But it was not until the '50s, when the
superiority of Russian scientific knowledge and training became a national
concern, that Americans seriously questioned whether public schools adequately
educated their children.
Nock's critiques of American educational experiment ring fresh today they
offered fundamental objections to the underlying theories of popular education,
e.g. he rejected educational egalitarianism. He saw no reason to believe that
equal rights and treatment under the law implied that every one had equal
intellectual capacities any more than it implied everyone would grow to the
same height.
Yet he was careful to praise the intentions of parents who sent their children
to public school. In his book Free Speech and Plain Language, Nock wrote: "The
representative American, whatever his faults, has been notably characterized by
the wish that his children might do better by themselves than he could do by
himself.... [I]n its essence and intention our system [of education] may be
fairly called no less than an organization of this desire; and as such it can
not be too much admired or too highly praised" (p.171). Nevertheless, public
schools were doomed to fail because "from beginning to end" they were "gauged
to the run-of-mind American rather than to the picked American." They were
designed to accommodate the lowest intellectual denominator, rather than the
highest.
For his views on education, some commentators have called Nock an elitist. Be
that as it may, the probing questions he asked about American education and its
impact on the American character deserve to be explored and answered.
Nock: the Man
Albert Jay Nock was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania to a respectable but poor
family, which relocated a few years afterward to Brooklyn, New York. He learned
to read without formal assistance by staring at a news clipping posted on his
wall until, at the age of three, he could spell out words. The first book to
catch his fancy was "Webster's Dictionary," which he read for the sheer joy of
learning language. His father was an Episcopal clergyman and thus no stranger
to providing instruction, but he exercised only unobtrusive guidance over his
son's self-education, which included mastery of Greek and Latin.
Eventually, Nock went to a private preparatory school in order to pass the
entrance examinations for college. Of the private school, Nock stated that the
students were never told not to put "beans up out noses, or subjected to any
sniveling talk about being on our honour, or keeping up the credit of the dear
old school, or any such odious balderdash. Nevertheless, we somehow managed to
behave decently..." (Crunden 8). In short, students were left alone to learn at
their own pace, being given only the instruction they requested or clearly
required.
At college -- St. Stephen's, now Bard College -- the same spirit of academic
independence reigned. Nock wrote, "We were made to understand that the burden
of education was on us and no one else, least of all our instructors; they were
not there to help us carry it or to praise our efforts, but to see that we
shouldered it in proper style and got on with it" (Crunden 9). Being given the
opportunity to pursue knowledge and, then, being left alone to do so remained
Nock's ideal. Robert M. Crunden's biography, The Mind and Art of Albert Jay
Nock, contains the following anecdote:
Nock's friend, Edward Epstean, told him, "You've done a great deal for all
those young people [young people who worked at The Freeman]."
"I don't know that I've ever done anything for them except leave them alone,"
Nock said.
"Yes, I understand," answered Epstean. "But if someone else had been letting
them alone, it would have been a very different story." (16)
After some graduate work at Berkeley Divinity School in Connecticut (1895),
Nock did not complete his degree, deciding to be ordained as a minister of the
Episcopal Church instead (1897). After 12 years, he withdrew from preaching to
join the staff of the American Magazine, where he stayed until 1914.
During this period, he developed a specific social philosophy. He became a
single-taxer -- a follower of the libertarian reformer Henry George -- because
he believed that, as long as natural resources were monopolized, labor and
capital would be at war with each other. By abolishing all taxes save a single
one on land, the extremes of unearned wealth could be avoided. As a pacifist,
he opposed the American entry into both world wars. As a radical individualist,
he spoke out against collectivism and the policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Nock was deeply influenced by Franz Oppenheimer's masterpiece The State --
published in German in 1908, with an English translation in 1915. Oppenheimer
argued that people achieved their goals, including the goal of basic survival,
in one of two manners: by the economic means (work), or by the political means
(theft). Nock immediately adopted this distinction and used it as a touchstone
in his social analysis.
Although Nock was often called a liberal, he rejected the label, preferring to
call himself a 'radical.' To him, a liberal used the political means to improve
and expand the State as a social institution. He proposed to eliminate the
State from society. His unswerving suspicion of the State -- the political
means -- would be key to his approach to public education.
In 1920, Nock founded the individualist periodical The Freeman along with
Francis Neilson, a British classical liberal. By the time The Freeman closed in
1924, Nock had gained wide respect as an editor. While teaching briefly at Bard
College, Nock delivered what are known as the Page-Barbour lectures at the
University of Virginia. There, he roundly defended classical education against
the theories of Dewey. The lectures were pub- lished in book form as The Theory
of Education in the United States (1932). Then, in 1936, Nock wrote a series of
essays for the American Mercury which became collectively titled as "The State
of the Union." This series won him renown as a writer.
Nock used his reputation as an editor and writer to continue speaking out for
classical education.
Nock's Laws of Social Order
Before discussing the specifics of Nock's theories on education, it is useful
to examine the more fundamental principles, or laws, with which he approached
any social issue. Nock believed three laws defined social life: Epstean's law;
Gresham's law; and, the law of diminishing return. He wanted to reorganize
society so that it respected these 'natural laws.'
In his book Free Speech and Plain Language, Nock explained, "With regard
to...all...aspects of our equalitarian social theory, my only aim is the humble
one of suggesting that we bear in mind the disregard that nature has for
unintelligent good intentions, and the vixenish severity with which she treats
them" (318-319). Elsewhere, in Snoring as a Fine Art, he argued against the
Marxist social formula, 'From each according to his abilities, to each
according to his needs.' Nock said that it never seemed to occur to Marx to ask
whether anything within human nature operated along that principle. In his
theories, Nock did not intend to make the same mistake as Marx.
Nock's first law of social/human order was named after his friend Edward E.
Epstean from whom he first heard the principle stated. As rephrased in "Free
Speech and Plain Language"," the law is, "Man tends to satisfy his needs and
desires with the least possible exertion. Not, it must be understood, that he
always does so satisfy them, for other considerations -- principle, convention,
fear, superstition or what not -- may supervene; but he always tends to satisfy
them with the least possible exertion, and, in the absence of a stronger
motive, will always do so." Nock applied this law to the political means. He
believed that as long as the State could "confer an economic advantage at the
mere touch of a button," people would maneuver to "get at the button, because
law-made property is acquired with less exertion than labour-made property"
(319).
Nock's second law of social order was adapted from Gresham's law on the nature
of currency. Simply stated: bad money drives out good. The worst form of
currency in circulation will set the value for the others, causing them to
disappear. Nock explained, "In Germany, for example, shortly after the war, the
flood of paper money sent all metallic money out of circulation in a hurry,
because it was worth more as old metal than as currency" (306-307).
Nock extended Gresham's law to cover culture. He asked the reader to imagine a
concert being played for an audience of 300 randomly chosen people. He argued
that the program would not include the best music produced through the
centuries, but the most popular music of the moment. So, too, with education:
bad education would drive out good. Mass-education did nothing more than reduce
the quality of education to what Nock called "the dreadful average."
Nock's third principle of social order was based on Newton's law of diminishing
returns. He wrote, "The law of diminishing returns is fundamental to industry.
It formulates the fact, which strikes one as curiously unnatural that, when a
business has reached a certain point of development, returns begin to decrease,
and they keep on decreasing as further development proceeds."(305-306) Consider
the everyday experience of vacationing at a location that has not yet been
'discovered' by floods of tourists. When tourists begin to flock to the
location, the return to everyone abruptly decreases. Both the many and the few
no longer receive real benefit. In accommodating popular demands, the vacation
site (and all other experiences in life) fall prey to the law of diminishing
returns.
The third law contradicted one of the great myths of American education. It
was: "if a few qualified persons get this [educational] benefit, anybody,
qualified or unqualified, may get it." But the "margin of diminishing returns"
mandates that "the larger the proportion of unqualified persons" who attempt to
receive the benefit, the swifter the benefits to all will vanish (311). In
short, education was a victim of Newton's law: the more unqualified students,
the lower the standards.
Nock's Theory of Education v. Training
In his book The Theory of Education in the United States, Nock claimed that
American public schools were "based upon the assumption, popularly regarded as
implicit in the doctrine of equality, that everybody is educable. This has been
taken without question from the start..." (44). Nock questioned it. He did not
believe that equal rights and equal treatment under the law held any
implication for equal intellectual ability.
Nock made a crucial distinction between being 'educable' and being 'trainable.'
An educated person was one who had profited from absorbing 'formative'
knowledge. As a result, he had developed "the power of disinterested
reflection." That is, he could reason toward truth, unencumbered by emotional
reactions or prejudice. Rather than aiming at a vocational goal, education
aimed at the joy of ideas and produced men to whom learning was pleasure. A
knowledge of Greek and Latin was particularly important because it allowed us
to view the record of inquiring human minds for over 2500 years.
Nock explained that education produced 'intelligenz' [sic] -- "the power
invariably, in Plato's phrase, to see things as they are, to survey them and
one's own relations to them with objective disinterestedness, and to apply
one's consciousness to them simply and directly, letting it take its own way
over them uncharted by prepossession, unchannelled by prejudice, and above all
uncontrolled by routine and formula" (On Doing the Right Thing And Other
Essays, 9). The educated man was capable of independent thought. Unfortunately,
Nock believed few people were educable.
By contrast, most people could be trained. The trainable person profited from
instrumental knowledge. In his essay "The Nature of Education," Nock explained,
"When you want chemists, mechanics, engineers, bond-salesmen, lawyers, bankers
and so on, you train them; training, in short, is for a vocational purpose.
Education contemplates another kind of product..." (The Book of Journeyman,
45). Nock's did not mean to denigrate those who should be trained, rather than
educated. He wrote, "Education, property applied to suitable material, produces
something in a way of an Emerson; while training, properly applied to suitable
material, produces something in the way of an Edison" (Memoirs, 270). Thus, to
Nock, science was a matter of training and many of the world's most eminent men
were not educated, but trained. He wrote, "Training is excellent, and it can
not be too well done, and opportunity for it can not be too cheap and
abundant... (Free Speech and Plain Language, 211).
The main problem with the American educational system was that, in attempting
to educate everyone equally, it encountered Gresham's law and ended up
educating no one adequately. Instead, it provided only training, even to those
who were educable. Under the current system, he believed that "the study of
history, like other formative studies, does not even rise to the dignity of
being a waste of time. What with the political, economic and theological
capital that has to be made of it...it is a positive detriment to mind and
spirit" (The Book of Journeyman, 47). Indeed, "Following the strange American
dogma that all persons are educable, and following the equally fantastic
popular esti- mate place upon mere numbers, our whole educational system has
watered down its requirements to something precious near the moron standard.
The American curriculum in 'the liberal arts' is a combination of bargain-
counter, grab-bag and Christmas-tree" (19).
The solution? The two categories of people should attend separate learning
centers. As a blueprint, Nock praised Thomas Jefferson's scheme for public
education. In his book Free Speech and Plain Language Nock wrote, "when Mr.
Jefferson was revising the Virginia Statutes in 1797, he drew up a
comprehensive plan for public education. Each ward should have a primary school
for the R's, open to all. Each year the best pupil in each school should be
sent to the grade-school, of which there were to be twenty, conveniently
situated in various parts of the state. They should be kept there one year or
two years, according to results shown, and then all dismissed but one, who
should be continued six years... At the end of six years, the best ten out of
the twenty were to be sent to college, and the rest turned adrift."
Such sentiments leave Nock vulnerable to charges of elitism, especially when
considered in conjunction with his theory of "the Remnant" -- the select few of
mankind upon whom falls the burden of maintaining and progressing civilization.
But his questions and insights cannot be dismissed lightly. For example, he
believed that training, rather than education, served a political purpose.
Sensitive to the difference between 'an individual' and 'a citizen of a State,'
Nock believed that public schools were more interested in turning out good
citizens than good individuals. For one thing, educated people were likely to
question the political system. He wrote, "Education... leads a person on to ask
a great deal more from life... and it begets dissatisfaction with the rewards
that life holds out. Training tends to satisfy him with very moderate and
simple returns. A good income, a home and family, the usual run of comforts and
conveniences, diversions addressed only to the competitive or sporting spirit
or else to raw sensation -- training not only makes directly for getting these,
but also for an inert and comfortable contentment with them. Well, these are
all that our present society has to offer, so it is undeniably the best thing
all round to keep people satisfied with them, which training does, and not to
inject a subversive influence, like education, into this easy complacency.
Politicians understand this..." When you educate a man, you send him "out to
shift for himself with a champagne appetite amidst a gin-guzzling society"
(216).
The State preferred to train citizens rather than to educate individuals who
might dissent.
Conclusion
In the introduction to the book Snoring As A Fine Art, Suzanne La Follette paid
tribute to her friend and colleague in terms that would have surely delighted
him. She spoke of his unique talent to recognize and encourage ability in
anyone he met. And she cautioned that his benevolence to those of ability was
not "a conscious service to society or his country or even to the beneficiary.
It was, I suppose, the teacher's instinct in him; the instinct to serve truth.
But he never tried to impose his truth on his pupil. Rather, he was concerned
to put the pupil in the way to find truth for himself -- as if he had revised
the Biblical saying, 'Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you
free," to read, "Yet shall be free in order that yet may know the truth" (ix).
Nock's alleged elitism may have been nothing more than his ability to recognize
intellectual merit and the ensuing respect he paid to it. In a society that
recognizes and applauds widely different abilities in fields such as athletics
and music, it is odd to encounter an enduring resistance to the idea of widely
different abilities to simply learn.
Works Cited
Crunden, Robert M. The Mind and Art of Albert Jay Nock. Chicago: Henry Regnery
Company, 1964.
Nock, Albert Jay. The Book of Journeyman. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries
Press, 1969.
----. Free Speech and Plain Language. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries
Press, 1968.
----. Memoirs of a Superfluous Man. N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, 1943.
----. On Doing the Right Thing And Other Essays. 1956.
----. Snoring as A Fine Art and Twelve Other Essays. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for
Libraries Press, 1971.
----. The Theory of Education in the United States. Washington: Regenery.
Wreszin, Michael. The Superfluous Anarchist: Albert Jay Nock. Providence: Brown
University Press, 1972.
--------
Wendy McElroy is a contributing editor to many publications, as well as the
author of several books, including XXX: A Woman's Right To Pornography and
Sexual Correctness. This article originally appeared in Ideas on Liberty.
Copyright 2000 Wendy McElroy.
RETURN
{{<End<{{
A<>E<>R
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960)
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said
it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your
own reason and your common sense." --Buddha
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that
prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas through any media and regardless
of frontiers." Universal Declaration of Human Rights
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will
teach you to keep your mouth shut." Ernest Hemingway
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths,
misdirections
and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and
minor
effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said,
CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html
<A HREF="http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
