Socialism as it is : $b a survey of the world-wide revolutionary movementWalling, William English
History
Socialism as it is : $b a survey of the world-wide revolutionary movement
Walling, William English
Socialism
education--such as Dr. Eliot and so many other reformers now directly or
indirectly encourage--usually under the cloak of industrial education.
The most anti-social aspects of capitalism, whether in its individualist
or its collectivist form, are the grossly unequal educational and
occupational privileges it gives the young. An examination of the better
positions now being obtained by men and women not yet past middle age
will show, let us say, that ten times as many prizes are going to
persons who were given good educational opportunities as to those who
were not. But as the children of those who can afford such opportunities
are not a tenth as numerous as the children of the rest of the people,
this would mean that the latter have only a _hundredth part_ of the
former's opportunities. Under this supposition, one tenth of the
population secures ten elevenths of the positions for which a higher
education is required. As a matter of fact, the existing inequality of
opportunity is undoubtedly very much greater than this, and the unequal
distribution of opportunities is visibly and rapidly becoming still less
equal. In 1910, of nineteen million pupils of public and private schools
in this country, only one million were securing a secondary, and less
than a third of a million a higher, education. Here are some figures
gathered by the Russell Sage Foundation in its recent survey of public
school management. The report covers 386 of the larger cities of the
Union. Out of every 100 children who enter the schools, 45 drop out
before the sixth year; that is, before they have learned to read
English. Only 25 of the remainder graduate and enter the high schools,
and of these but 6 complete the course.
The expense of a superior education, including upkeep during the
increasing number of years required, is rising many times more rapidly
than the income of the average man. At the same time, both the wealth
and the numbers of the well-to-do are increasing in greater proportion
than those of the rest of the people. While the better places get
farther and farther out of the reach of the children of the masses,
owing to the overcrowding of the professions by children of the
well-to-do, the competition becomes ever keener, and the poor boy or
girl who must struggle not only against this excessive competition, but
also against his economic handicap, confronts an almost superhuman task.
It is obvious that this tendency cannot be reversed, no matter how
rapidly the people's income is increased, unless it rises _more rapidly_
than that of the well-to-do. And this, Socialists believe, has never
happened except when the masses obtained political power and made full
use of it _against_ the class in control of industry and government.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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