Turning now to habits of chicanery, it would be a question for long and close debate, as to whether a highly gifted leader can ever live and do his work among the mass of men without developing a technique of benign chicanery. Many of the great political leaders have been past masters of benign chicanery, often exploiting the people for the good of the social order. Perhaps the arts of benign chicanery are absolutely necessary to a child of highest intelligence, compelled to find his spiritual way through mass education. Certain it is that these children learn all sorts of devious ways to self-preservation. For instance, two of our pupils of Public School 500 came to us followed by notes from teachers, saying they were hard-of-hearing. Both of them have very keen ears, but they had learned not to hear the insupportable drill on things they had known for years, and in self-defense they listened so little that their teachers thought them deaf. At Public School 500 their hearing is good--almost too good!
Guidance in regard to this matter of chicanery is absolutely necessary. Here we have one of the most delicate of all aspects of training of a leader. By teaching these children that they should at all times act with complete candor and straightforwardness, in all sorts of company, shall we be educating them for self-destruction? We could spend hours in discussing this. We cannot do much more here than mention it.
I am unwilling to close these remarks without touching upon some matters of general policy, which go beyond selection and training. What of those children, gifted for leadership, who through accidents of fate are without means for the development of their gifts? At our school we are compelled to witness daily the sight of children of fine quality, who do not have enough to eat or wear, to say nothing of having about them beauty or comfort. It is thought by those who have given no precise attention to the matter that "bright children will take care of themselves." This is the routine answer given by foundations established to promote human welfare, when requests are made for grants to study and meet the need of such children. The concern of American philanthropy in the present state of public knowledge is for the chronic dependent, forever incapable of development. This criticism may be justly extended to include not only the leaders of philanthropy today, but political, educational, and other kinds of leaders, who would give all to the burdens of society and nothing to the burden-bearers. To such tendencies of those in power today some halt should be called. For a people to deny its natural aristocracy is a social error in the broader sense.