Lewis, however, is not to be the subject of this web log post.
The author I want to discuss here is John Gould Fletcher. He was one of the Tennessee Agrarians, a group of writers, poets, and historians with ties to Vanderbilt University in the 1920s and 30s. In 1930, the group published a book of essays called I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition.
One of the essays in the book was by Fletcher, and his essay focused on education. I don't want to discuss the whole essay, but here is an excerpt.
"For our knowledge of history teaches us this much: that the object of public education in the American Colonies and the later states...was to produce good men. The system may have been imperfect in detail, but its aim was correct. Today the object of American education is to turn out graduates - whether good, bad, or indifferent we neither know nor care. Formerly, quantity had to give place to quality; today it is the reverse. Formerly we followed Goethe's maxim, to the effect that everything that frees man's soul, but does not give him command over himself, is evil. Today we are out to withdraw the command of men over themselves, and to free, for no purpose, their souls."
While this was written in the 1920s, I still think it a cutting critique of modern education.
