Introduction
Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of last century's great American poets, and in the final analysis will probably be rated as one of the greatest poets of all time. Among his greatest lines are: "For what avail the plow or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?"
Emerson did not, of course, have any monopoly on the subject of freedom; it is possible that more poetry and stirring words in general have been dedicated to this theme than to any other. Still, no matter how much in favor of freedom we proclaim ourselves to be, it is necessary for us to stop and examine exactly what we mean by "freedom" from time to time-because the word is not only one of the most used but also one of the most abused in the English language.
We have heard and read a great deal lately about "free" schools-meaning not schools which charge no tuition, but schools which allow the pupils as much freedom as possible to do as they please, learn what they choose, and even to come and go not at any set hours but whenever they feel like it. There have been many eloquent arguments in favor of such systems, but the responses of many people who have encountered them and even worked within them have often been puzzled and even disturbed.
Take, for instance, the reaction of Sylvia Ash-ton-Warner, who is certainly no stranger to teaching-she has even taught Maori children in New Zealand. But her first experience at teaching in a modern American "free" school caused her unexpected difficulties. She tells about them in poignant detail in her new book, Spearpoint-Teacher in America, which should give every reader food for thought about where freedom leaves off and outright anarchy begins. As just one example, Miss Ashton-Warner says:
"I like children's voices, high, wild or low, solo or in unison, but the beat and the boom of stereo and the hitting of the suffering piano in the foyer ... what is this thing, freedom, supplied to the children in over-spilling glassfuls, in tankards, in brimming kegs? Must glorious freedom mean all this? Is this, indeed, freedom? If it is, what good is it? How long is the equipment going to last which they need for learning; the piano, the guitar, the Cuisenaire rods? And, as equipment, how long will it last? Astonishingly the Americans don't notice the noise; you can tell by their faces. They can talk and think along with it. Think and talk better along with it ... with all the dire discords. Maybe they've made a mistake in summoning me, inviting an alien to them. Alien. There's the word. I should reel from it but I don't. I don't dislike being an alien. An artist must be an alien in life. Art must walk alone, a pariah of the human family."
Miss Ashiton-Warner probably should not feel as alien as she does. She is offering us both expert testimony and a kind of poetic evocation distinctly her own-but many of us have had similar feelings. We all want our children to be happy, but we also want them to acquire an education that will allow them to cope with the increasingly complex world around them. The question is whether or not, under the circumstances, complete freedom can be treated as an absolute ideal.
To quote once more: "Swift, over tumbling evolution calls for as swift and over tumbling a manner of education; a flexible, mobile accompaniment that can twist and probe, swing and somersault to keep abreast of our children themselves. A vocabulary made of elastic, of sensitive rubber, changing form as variously as water. The sciences keep their vocabularies abreast of themselves, so why not education?
"The only form of education I know which automatically renews with a people is the oldest. Only the oldest man can teach the newest. When the working material is supplied by our children, it changes with our children. Our education drawn from the native imagery, whatever it happens to be, fits him as well as the organs of his body; the first grunting man the teacher. Sever the new man from the old and you cut continuity, and in losing continuity we lose a dimension indispensable to wholeness. Only organic education can halt man from becoming inorganic...."