Page:Olive Malmberg Johnson - Woman and the Socialist Movement (1908).djvu/27

 Rh knowledge of sciences such as chemistry, mathematics, drawing, languages, etc. In every previous social stage, education has been a special privilege enjoyed only by a favored and exclusive class. This class was strong by its power of knowledge and enjoyed high privileges. But with the development of the chemical, technical and clerical branches of industry, capitalism demanded that knowledge and brain as well as brawn and muscle should be mere commodities. An article in such demand could not remain a special privilege of a favored élite. Therefore, it has come about that the institutions of education and learning have grown apace. Therefore, too, no doubt, it is that the instinct of capitalist "philanthropists" leads them to establish libraries and universities and trades schools with such "tainted money" as can be well spared from the field of exploitation and riotous society life. Schooling has been cheapened so that it is within reach of almost anyone. Moreover, it has been extended to both sexes alike. Girls can acquire education equally with the boys, and as a natural consequence women can enter old and new branches of such work in equal competition with men.

But not only was education cheapened as concerns its acquirements. It was actually reduced in quality. It has become thin and watery, so to speak. It is true indeed that a ten-year-old child to-day knows, almost by intuition, many common rules of science that were disputed or even wholly unknown to the greatest philosophers and students of ancient times. But for all that a college student to-day is not necessarily either a philosopher or scientist. Philosophers and scientists, developed or in embryo, are as scarce to the pro rata of population to-day as ever before in the world's history. Common education to-day is routine knowledge of specific technical branches. It is a stuffing process rather than an assimilating process. It produces specialists, quick at performing routine work but who possess little knowledge outside of it. It has reduced education to a mere commodity. It has created an educated proletariat that upon the labor