Part 5

¶The higher education such as is provided by the University of Pennsylvania and kindred bodies, not only confers great benefits to those able to take advantage of it, but entails upon them corresponding duties.

¶The men who founded this nation had to deal with theories of government and the fundamental principles of free institutions. We are now concerned with a different set of questions for the Republic has been firmly established, its principles fully tested and approved. To merely political issues have succeeded those of grave social and economic importance, the solution of which demands the best efforts of the best men. We have a right to expect that a wise and leading part in the effort to attain this solution will be taken by those who have been exceptionally blessed in the matter of obtaining an education.

¶That college graduate is but a poor creature who does not feel when he has left college that he has received something for which he owes a return. What he thus owes he can as a rule only pay by the way he bears himself throughout life. It is but occasionally that a college graduate can do much outright for his alma mater; he can best repay her by living a life that will reflect credit upon her, by so carrying himself as a citizen that men shall see that the years spent in training him have not been wasted.

¶The educated man is entitled to no special privilege, save the inestimable privilege of trying to show that his education enables him to take the lead in striving to guide his fellows aright in the difficult task which is set to us of the twentieth century. The problems before us to-day are very complex, and are widely different from those which the men of Washington’s generation had to face; but we can overcome them surely if we approach them in the spirit which Washington and Washington’s great supporters brought to bear upon the problems of their day—the spirit of sanity and of courage, the spirit which combines hard common-sense with the loftiest idealism.

A Square Deal and The School Teacher

The development of the high school, especially during the last half century, has been literally phenomenal. Nothing like our present system of education was known in earlier times. No such system of popular education for the people by the representatives of the people existed.

¶It is, of course, a mere truism to say that the stability and future welfare of our institutions of government depend upon the grade of citizenship turned out from our public schools. And no body of public servants, no body of individuals associated in private life, are better worth the admiration and respect of all who value citizenship at its true worth, than the body composed of the teachers in the public schools throughout the length and breadth of this Union. They have to deal with citizenship in the raw and turn it out something like a finished product. I think that all of us who also endeavor to deal with that citizenship in the raw in our own homes appreciate the burden of the responsibility.

¶The training given in the public schools must, of course, be not merely a training in intellect, but a training in what counts for infinitely more than intellect—a training in character. And the chief factors in that training must be the personal equation of the teachers; the influence exerted, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously, by the man or woman who stands in so peculiar a relation to the boys and girls under his or her care—a relation closer, more intimate, and more vital in its after-effects than any other relation save that of parent and child. Wherever a burden of that kind is laid, those who carry it necessarily carry a great responsibility. There can be no greater. Scant should be our patience with any man or woman doing a bit of work vitally worth doing, who does not approach it in the spirit of sincere love for the work, and of desire to do it well for the sake of the work’s sake.

¶Doubtless most of you remember the old distinction drawn between the two kinds of work, the work done for the sake of the fee and the work done for the sake of the work itself. The man or woman in public or private life who ever works only for the sake of the reward that comes outside of the work, will in the long run do poor work. The man or woman who does work worth doing is the man or woman who lives, who breathes that work; with whom it is ever present in his or her soul; whose ambition it is to do it well and to feel rewarded by the thought of having done it well. That man, that woman, puts the whole country under an obligation. As a body all those connected with the education of our people are entitled to the heartiest praise from all lovers of their country, because as a body they are devoting heart and soul to the welfare of those under them.

¶It is a poor type of school nowadays that has not a good playground attached. It is not so long since, in my own city at least, this was held as revolutionary doctrine, especially in the crowded quarters where playgrounds were most needed. People said they didn’t need playgrounds. It was a newfangled idea. They expected to make good citizens of the boys and girls who, when they were not in school, were put upon the streets in the crowded quarters of New York to play at the kind of games alone that they could play at in the streets. We have passed that stage. I think we realize what a good healthy playground means to children. I think we understand not only the effects for good upon their bodies, but for good upon their minds. We need healthy bodies. We need to have schools physically developed.

¶Sometimes you can develop character by the direct inculcation of moral precept; a good deal more often you cannot. You develop it less by precept than by your practice. Let it come as an incident of the association with you; as an incident to the general tone of the whole body, the tone which in the aggregate we all create. Is not that the experience of all of you, in dealing with these children in the schools, in dealing with them in the family, in dealing with them in bodies anywhere? They are quick to take the tone of those to whom they look up, and if they do not look up to you, then you can preach virtue all you wish, but the effect will be small.

¶I should hold myself a poor citizen if I did not welcome the chance to wish you Godspeed in your work for yourselves and to wish you Godspeed in your work as representatives of that great public body of public school teachers, upon the success of whose efforts to train aright the children of to-day depends the safety of our institutions of to-morrow.

¶It is not too much to say that the most characteristic work of the Republic is that done by the educators, by the teachers, for whatever our shortcomings as a Nation may be—and we have certain shortcomings—we have at least firmly grasped the fact that we cannot do our part in the difficult and all-important work of self-government, that we cannot rule and govern ourselves unless we approach the task with developed minds, and with what counts for more even—with trained characters. You teachers make the whole world your debtors.

¶Of your profession this can be said with more truth than of any other profession barring only that of the minister of the Gospel himself. If you—you teachers—did not do your work well this Republic would not endure beyond the span of the generation.

¶Moreover as an incident to your avowed work, you render some well-nigh unbelievable services to the country. For instance, you render to the Republic the prime, the vital service of amalgamating into one homogeneous body the children alike of those who are born here and of those who come here from so many different lands abroad. You furnish a common training and common ideals for the children of the mixed peoples who are here being fused into one nationality.

¶It is in no small degree due to you and to your efforts that we of this great American Republic form one people instead of a group of jarring peoples. The pupils, no matter where they or their parents were born, who are being educated in our public schools will be sure to become imbued with that mutual sympathy, that mutual respect and understanding, which is absolutely indispensable for the working out of the problems we as a people have before us.

¶And one service you render which I regard as wholly indispensable. In our country, where altogether too much prominence is given to the mere possession of wealth, we are under heavy obligations to such a body as this which substitutes for the ideal of accumulating money the infinitely loftier, non-materialistic ideal of devotion to work worth doing simply for that work’s sake.

¶I do not in the least underestimate the need of having material prosperity as the basis of our civilization, but I most earnestly insist that if our civilization does not build a lofty super structure on this basis, we can never rank among the really great peoples.

A Square Deal and The Nobility of Parenthood

In our modern industrial civilization there are many and grave dangers to counterbalance the splendors and the triumphs. It is not a good thing to see cities grow at disproportionate speed relatively to the country; for the small land owners, the men who own their little home, and, therefore, to a very large extent, the men who till farms, the men of the soil, have hitherto made the foundation of lasting National life in every State; and, if the foundation becomes either too weak or too narrow, the superstructure, no matter how attractive, is in imminent danger of falling.

¶¶But far more important than the question of the occupation of our citizens is the question of how their family life is conducted. No matter what that occupation may be, so long as there is a real home and so long as those who make up that home do their duty to one another, to their neighbors, and to the State, it is of minor consequence whether the man’s trade is plied in the country or the city, whether it calls for the work of the hands or for the work of the head.

¶But the Nation is in a bad way if there is no real home, if the family is not of the right kind, if the man is not a good husband and father, if he is brutal or cowardly or selfish; if the woman has lost her sense of duty, if she is sunk in vapid self-indulgence or has let her nature be twisted so that she prefers a sterile pseudo-intellectuality to that great and beautiful development of character which comes only to those whose lives know the fulness of duty done, of effort made, and self-sacrifice undergone.

¶In the last analysis the welfare of the State depends absolutely on whether or not the average family, the average man and woman, and their children, represent the kind of citizenship for the foundation of a great Nation, and if we fail to appreciate this we fail to appreciate the root morality upon which all healthy civilization is based.

¶No piled-up wealth, no splendor of material growth, no brilliance of artistic development, will permanently avail any people unless its home life is healthy, unless the average man possesses honesty, courage, common-sense, and decency; unless he works hard and is willing at need to fight hard, and unless the average woman is a good wife, a good mother, able and willing to perform the first and greatest duty of womanhood, able and willing to bear and to bring up as they should be brought up, healthy children, sound in body, mind and character, and numerous enough so that the race shall increase and not decrease.

¶¶There are certain old truths which will be true as long as this world endures, and which no amount of progress can alter. One of these is the truth that the primary duty of the husband is to be the home-maker, the breadwinner for his wife and children, and that the primary duty of the woman is to be the helpmeet, the housewife, the mother.

¶The woman should have ample educational advantages; but save in exceptional cases the man must be, and the woman need not be, and generally ought not to be, trained for a life long career as the family breadwinner; and, therefore, after a certain point the training of the two must normally be different because the duties of the two are normally different.

¶This does not mean inequality of function, but it does mean that normally there must be dissimilarity of function. On the whole, I think the duty of the woman the more important, the more difficult, and the more honorable of the two; on the whole I respect the woman who does her duty even more than I respect the man who does his.

¶¶No ordinary work done by a man is either as hard or as responsible as the work of a woman who is bringing up a family of small children; for upon her time and strength demands are made not only every hour of the day but often every hour of the night. She may have to get up night after night to take care of a sick child, and yet must by day continue to do all her household duties as well; and if the family means are scant she must usually enjoy even her rare holidays taking her whole brood of children with her. The birth-pangs make all men the debtors of all women.