The Dangers of Nonconformism

ions rather than with reality. One of the many realities of the problem of American education is surely the immense compulsion for universal schooling. Most states have some kind of law compelling attendance in school of every young person up to a certain age regardless of his willingness to learn. I do not say that such laws offer a blanket excuse to educators for their positions, but these laws, the result of great community pressures in the past, are almost always neglected by extremist critics of the schools who insist on an across-the-board raising of standards. Nor have I seen critics of the schools consider the broader pressures in American life that tend to make American education the very special thing that it is. Consider Life magazine's much-publicized first issue in a series on the "Crisis in Education." It blasts the casual diffuseness of American schools by contrast with the concentrated seriousness of Russian ones. The day of a Russian boy and the day of an American boy of the same age are compared, both in school and after. As one might expect, the American boy is inept at mathematics, which he takes as a joke; he tosses off his homework; he is adept only at rockand-roll and swimming. In short, the American boy is typical of many American young people, who, among other things, are interested in finding out about the making of a movie, or looking at scantily dressed young actresses changing costumes, or reading about horse racing and the latest trend in cars, or going to church to see their minister perform tricks of magic, or looking at the new fashions in clothes and carpets or reading the latest Life, which, in addition to criticizing American education, devoted that same issue to covering all of these edifying and instructive aspects of the broad American scene for its readers. Life magazine itself is certainly one of the main forces in making American life what it is; yet the editors, I am sure, would never think of blaming themselves for emphasizing values possibly inimical to seriousness in education. (Perhaps I ought to mention that I do not belong to the nonconformist faction which criticizes Life; all in all, if anyone cares, I think the magazine is all right.) It was not so long ago that a position taken by a Luce publication would have been instinctively opposed by large numbers of nonconformists; but Life in recent years has so well caught the