Reading Cremin, and Tocqueville, in Romania

In the United States, Tocqueville concluded, the aim of education was politics; in Europe, its principal object was to fit men for private life.

Lawrence A. Cremin
American Education, 1980

Among the things I have with me in Romania are the three volumes of Lawrence Cremin’s American Education, a magisterial and prize-winning study of the ideas and individuals that drove the development of schooling, broadly conceived, in the United States. Though I’d read the first, The Colonial Experience 1607-1783 (1970), quite carefully, the two others, I’d only sampled. My intention was to absorb them in anticipation of a post-Peace Corps project.
Given various other demands on my time, I didn’t get to Cremin until I’d been here for 18 months or so. By then, I’d observed enough of Romanian education to begin thinking about differences not just between the two systems, but between the purposes they are intended to serve. A long spring vacation train ride provided a chance to begin the second volume, The National Experience 1783-1876 (1980), and I completed it upon my return. While the first volume considers the intellectual roots of the American paideia – Cremin’s word – the second considers how, in the first century of our existence, a whole panoply of educational organizations solidified a national identity, despite the regional variations that led to the Civil War.
While reading his concluding chapter, “Characteristics,” I found myself making marginal notes about which aspects of Cremin’s panoply of educators are prevalent in Romania and which are not. The notes became less a way of analyzing educational institutions here than an engagement with the extraordinary strength of these institutions in the U.S. and how essential they have been to developing and maintaining our democracy. By Cremin’s definition, it’s not only schools that educate but churches and newspapers and museums and county agricultural societies and professional associations – the vast array of organizations and institutions we Americans have established in order to improve ourselves and our communities.
While here, I have had some opportunities to give talks about education in the two countries and had arrived at a dichotomy to differentiate between the two systems: Romanian schools aim at social stability and American schools at productivity. Cremin’s discussion enabled me to expand on that idea, and it did so by beginning the chapter on characteristics with what a young European – Alexis de Tocqueville – had observed in the early years of our republic. The United States had geographic isolation and reliance on the rule of law inherited from Great Britain, but most importantly it had customs and habits of mind that supported the maintenance of democracy.
What were these customs, Cremin asked? Again relying on Tocquville’s observations, he cited the combination of formal instruction, informal nurture, and individual self-reflection. While all exist in Romania, variations in how they are expressed, and their prevalence, most differentiate our traditions from theirs.
My first talk comparing schools here and at home began with a description of 10 ideas that have influenced the development of American education. Afterwards, a Romanian friend in the audience commented that to her knowledge there is no similar analysis of the ideas that have governed the development of education here. I’d noted that as well (there may be such a thing, but it’s not widely available in English). Though the history of education plays a small role in U.S. teacher preparation, most well-schooled Americans have heard of Thomas Jefferson’s insistence that a nation cannot be both ignorant and free, of Noah Webster’s effort to establish an American language, and of Horace Mann’s campaign for the common school – all American children would learn together in one school, based on locality not on family social position.
While Romanian teachers are well educated in their subject matter – perhaps more so than many U.S. teachers – none that I know have thought much about the ideas that governed the development of the schools they teach in. Thus, my proposition that American schools aim at a different goal than do Romanian ones – the dichotomy between stability and productivity noted above – offered a response to a question they have not posed.
Though Romanian schools do quite well with limited resources, Cremin’s gloss on Tocqueville’s observations has helped me understand the outstanding strengths of our system. And I have found a gratifying similarity between the dichotomy that Cremin attributed to Tocqueville – what I term productivity is a variation on the latter’s “political” life; and stability a variation on schools fitting students for “private life.”
In my experience, schools here do a good job preparing bright and dedicated students for higher education, but they don’t instill in them a sense of responsibility for society at large. Student government is negligible, community service is limited, and there’s a dismaying sense of negativity toward government. Students feel a strong commitment to their families and to their fellows, but they have little or no investment in the future of their country. Their chief concern is about their well-being as individuals, about their private lives.
American students, by contrast, learn to be productive citizens by engaging in political life, broadly conceived. Tocqueville noted this, and Cremin reiterated it. Our wide range of schools emphasize practical rather than theoretical knowledge, something students here wish they had more of. U.S. students learn the value of civic participation by participating in the betterment of their communities through programs sponsored by schools and other educational organizations. Their parents set an example through similar participation.
Several organizations in Romania are encouraging more civic participation – complementing formal instruction with less-formal kinds of educational nurture. Kiwanis, Rotary, and Lions clubs, for example, are active in my part of Romania, and a scouting movement is underway. Many of my Romanian colleagues are questioning why their resource-rich country is unable to provide enough jobs to support its population; the growth of American-founded business and service organizations suggest that many see them as an answer. They may not have heard of Tocqueville, but they see the value of civic, if not necessarily political, participation.
One of my Romanian friends, when I suggested she apply for a fellowship trip to the U.S., noted that she wants to visit “if only to see the sort of country that nurtured you.” Reading Cremin, and Tocqueville, 4,000 miles from home, have helped me understand what constituted that nurture. And I intend to continue considering aspects of that nurturing in subsequent blogs.