Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Nation
21
"
In Tennessee
By H. L. MENCKEN
LWAYS, inthisgreat
republic,controversies depart
swiftly fromtheiroriginaltermsand
plungeinto
irrelevancies andfalse pretenses.Thecase
of prohibition
issalient.
Who recalls theoptimistic
daysbefore
the
Eighteenth Amendment, and the loftyprognostications of
the dry mullahs, clerical and lay? Prohibition, we were told,
would empty the jails, reduce the tax rate, abolish poverty,
and put an end t o political corruption. Today even the Prohibitionists kno,w better, and so they
begin t o grow discreetly silent upon
thematter.Instead,they
come forward
with
a n entirely new Holy
Cause. What began a s acampaign
f o r Babbitt's
a
Utopia
becomes
transformedinto
mystical
a
campaign for Law Enforcement. Prohibition is a grotesque failure, but the
A transcendental
fightmust goon.
motive takes the place of a practical
motive. One categoricalimperative
goes out and another comes in.
So, now, in Tennessee, where a
rural pedagogue stands arraignedbefore
his
peers for violating the
school law. At bottom, a quite simple business.
The
hinds
of the
State,
desiring
to
prepare
their
young forlifethere,set
up public
schools. To manthose schools they
H. L.
employ pedagogues. To guidethose
pedagogues they lay down rules prescribing what is t o be
taughtandwhatisnotto
be taught. Why not, indeed?
the same custom
How could it be otherwise?Precisely
prevails everywhere else in the world, wherever there are
schools a t all. Behindevery
school everheard
of there
is a definite concept of its purpose-of
the sort of equipment itisto
giveto
its pupils. It cannot conceivably
teach everything; it must confine itself by sheer necessity to teaching what
will be of the greatest utility, culturalor practical,' tothe youthactually
in hand. Well,
t o the son of a Tenwhat could be of greaterutility
nessee mountaineer than an education making him a good
Tennesseean,content
withhisfather,
at peace withhis
neighbors, dutifultothe
local religion, and docile under
the local mores?
That is all the Tennessee anti-evolutiton law seeks to
accomplish. It differs from other regulations of the same
s o r t only totheextentthat
Tennesseediffers fromthe
rest of the world. The State, t o a degree that should be
Its
gratifying,has escaped the nationalstandardization.
peopleshow a character that is immensely different from
the character of, say, New Yorkers or Californians.They
retain, amongother things,the anthropomorphicreligion
of an elder day. They do notprofess it; they actually
believe in it. The Old Testament, t o them, is not a mere
sacerdfotalwhizz-bang, t o be read for its pornography ; it is
an authoritative history, and the transactions
recorded in
it are as true as the story of Barbara Frietchie, or that
The Nation
22
.L
Theliars of theStateDepartmentwerefair
game, and
anystickis
good enough
,beata
dog with.Evena
pedagogue, seized firmly by the legs,makes an effective
shillelagh. ( I have used, in my time, yet worse : a congressman, a psychiatrist, a birth controller to maul an
archbishop.) Unluckily, some of the pedagogues mistook
the purpose of the operation. They came out of it full of
a delusion that they were apostles of liberty, of the search
for knowledge, of enlightenment.Theyhavebeenworrying and exasperating their employers ever since.
I believe it must beplain that they are wrong,and
that their employers, by anecessaryinference,
are right.
A pedagogue, properly so called-and a high-school teacher
surelynot a
in a country town is properly so called-is
searcher for knowledge. His, job in the wodld is simply to
pass on what has been chosen and approved by his superiors.
In the whole history of the world no such pedagogue
has
ever actuallyincreased the sum of human knowledge. His
training unfits him for it; moreover, he would not be a
pedagogue if he had either the taste or the capacity f o r it.
He is aworkingman,notathinker.
When he speaks, his
employers speak. Whathesayshasbehind
i t all the