THE BUILDER September, 1929

Shall we Broaden Our Program of Masonic Education to Reach a Rank
and File of the Craft?

By HERBERT HUNGERFORD

WE know what the "wise boys" among our brethren will say to this
proposition. Not long ago I had a talk with one of them, a newly
elected young Master, about this matter. Quote he 

"You are all wet, old man, and wasting your time trying to interest
the average Mason in anything about education. It simply can't be-
done, because nine men out of ten join a lodge for the fun and
fellowship they expect to get out of it. They may be dumb, but they
know what they want and what they don 't want, also. They simply
will not stand for anything labeled educational. Even studying
their part in the ritual is too much of a tax upon the minds of
many candidates. Try to put more educational features in your lodge
programs and you will drive most of your members to the movies or
other places of amusement. Give them lots of lively and light
entertainments and plenty of good feeds and you'll get them out;
but try to get the average Mason interested in anything educational
and you'll see what will happen to the attendance at your lodge
meetings. As everybody knows, when there is a good feed at Third
Degrees, the attendance will be doubled or trebled over ordinary
meetings."

This sounds fairly plausible. Apparently it represents a common
viewpoint, judging from the lack of anything of an educational
nature in most lodges. The indifference which most of our brethren
display towards every effort to encourage the discussion of any
educational question - such as the one we are now discussing, for
example - tends to confirm the view that education is a dead issue
in Freemasonry.

Do Our Present Programs Hold Over Members?

It may seem presumptions, therefore, for anyone to challenge this
viewpoint or question the correctness of this opinion. Yet this is
exactly what I venture to do, and I am basing my criticism of this
commonly accepted notion upon the plain question: Are our grand
balls and banquets, our smokers and beef-steak dinners, our
official pow-wows and our routine ceremonials really attracting the
interests and maintaining the attendance of the majority of our
membership?

All available statistics indicate a distinctly negative answer to
this question. In fact, the most optimistic data show that not more
than twenty percent of the Freemasons throughout our country are
regular attendants at lodge meetings or take any active part in
Masonic affairs. If this condition upholds the viewpoint that
almost exclusive emphasis should be placed upon the social and
entertaining features of Freemasonry in which most lodges have
indulged in recent years, I must be vastly mistaken. I am aware, of
course, that other reasons may be assigned to account for the
proportionately small attendance at lodge meetings, as for
instance, the claim that many men simply take the Blue Lodge
Degrees in order to make their way into some of the various
auxiliary orders. But, it appears to me quite logical to place the
burden of proof upon those who claim that our present-day programs
are exactly suited to the temperament of our times.

WHY MEN BECOME MASONS.

Every candidate coming into Masonry avows that his principle
purpose in seeking admission into a lodge is to learn self-control
and self-improvement. Surely this is the plain and clearly stated
meaning of the candidate's answer to one of the first questions
asked during his initiation.

Possibly one explanation of the distressing fact that over eighty
per cent of those initiated into our lodges so soon discontinue
regular attendance or active participation in lodge affairs, may be
the failure of their lodge to provide anything in its program that
the average man might regard as an aid to self-control or a means
of self-improvement.

The monotonous routine of our degree mills, the dry-as-dust
dullness of our big back-patting official affairs, and the
standardized socials of the average lodge program evidently are not
sufficient to satisfy the cultural aspirations of some of the
eighty percent of our membership who drop out of Masonic activity
about as soon as they "get their degrees. "


No pretense is made that the cultural aspirations of most of us are
very lofty. Yet, I believe, that we do possess some desire to
subdue our baser passions and improve ourselves as much as possible
without taking too much time or trouble about it. Few of us are
dominated by any all consuming desire for self-culture. We are
seeking the pleasant paths and broad roads to knowledge. Most of us
are unwilling to make any serious sacrifice to acquire information
or improvement. We prefer, as far as possible, to take our
educational lessons in small doses, carefully sugar coated.

After admitting this, you have not eliminated the fact that the
average man is an aspiring being. In various ways, feeble though
they may be, he is always trying to improve. Among those who seek
admission into Freemasonry, I am convinced, this universal desire
for self improvement is above the average.

Personally, I cherish no illusions that elaborate or studious
educational programs are likely to become popular in our lodges.
Frankly, I confess that it would be difficult for me to become
keenly interested in highly intellectual activities or in the
Culture that is always spelled with a capital C.

On the other hand, although my own observation and experience in
the field of Masonic Education has been limited, it has been
sufficient to convince me that the vast majority of our members are
chiefly interested in the educational aims, which originally were
the dominant features of all activities of our ancient brethren. I
contend that modern Masonry has made the mistake of swinging too
far away from the ancient educational ideals in catering too much
to the pleasure-seeking tendencies of the present day.

There seems to be plenty of evidence of a fairly general feeling
among the Craft that everything is not altogether satisfactory in
our programs now-a-days. But modern Masonic activities are so
diversified and so complex that it would be impossible, it seems to
me, to devise a limited or particular plan for Masonic Education
that will meet the needs and requirements of so many and varied
types of lodges. To confine a program for Masonic Education to
Study Clubs or Lecture Courses means restricting our educational
activities to a proportionately small percentage of our membership.

The response or reaction to my own efforts on behalf of Masonic
Education has thoroughly sold me on the necessity of attempting
broader and more diversified programs than we have been generally
advocating heretofore. In brief, my personal answer to the question
we have propounded is unqualifiedly in the affirmative.

SHOULD MASONIC EDUCATION BE DEMOCRATIC ?

I am very little disturbed over the fear expressed by some of our
brethren that to further broaden our program of educational
activities would mean spreading out our efforts so thinly that the
results would be hardly deserving of the term educational.
Possibly, I may be too deeply concerned about reaching the rank and
file and interesting them in at least a few elementary educational
activities. Likewise, it may be that my personal temperament is at
fault in the matter of the slight interest that I take in Masonic
Research or Education as an intellectual pastime to be indulged in
chiefly by the Cultured Minority who classify themselves as the
Intelligensia of the Craft. If my attitude toward Masonry is
thoroughly Democratic, it seems to me that the institution itself
contains ample authority for such an attitude. If the main
principles we profess as Masons are not thoroughly in accord with
Democratic ideals, then I have misconstrued the meaning of our
ritual.

The only way to give a definite understanding of exactly what I
have in mind in proposing that we broaden our program of Masonic
Education, is for me to outline a number of the principle
activities which I would classify as educational and which, I
believe, might be attempted, in some measure at least by every type
of Masonic lodge.

I do not mean to suggest, of course, that any lodge should attempt
the entire program proposed, but that each lodge should select and
carry out some of the suggested activities, adapting them to the
particular requirements of the lodge.

AN EDUCATIONAL COMMITTEE IN EVERY LODGE.

First and foremost, I would advocate the appointment of an
educational committee in every lodge. It seems to me entirely
reasonable that along with the social, entertainment, financial and
other standing committees of every duly organized and well
regulated lodge, there certainly should be an educational committee
whose particular duties would consist in doing everything possible
and practical in the furtherance of the cause of Masonic Education
among the members of the lodge.

In fact, I think the first step toward the definite introduction of
Masonic Education into any lodge, invariably, should be the
appointment by the Master of a Committee on Masonic Education.

The second important effort that I believe all those interested in
the cause of Masonic Education should put forth is to urge and
encourage Masonic speakers everywhere to devote more attention to
this cause. It seems to me that many of the topics discussed by
Masonic speakers are trivial as compared to the question of the
whys and wherefores of Masonic Education.

Please bear in mind that I am not advocating any dry-as-dust
discussions or-lectures of the purely academic side of education.
Rather, I am urging that Masonic Education should always be
considered from the practical standpoint of showing how the great
teachings of our ancient Fraternity should be adapted and applied
to the solution of the modern problems, with which all men and
Masons are necessarily concerned. Let it be said, too, that the
first effort of every Masonic speaker should be devoted to the
verification of his facts. Too many speakers are careless in this
regard and consequently depart unconsciously from the truth.

A third effort that should be encouraged in every possible way is
to interest more of our members in reading books on Masonic
subjects. We should do everything possible to provide easy,
inexpensive ways for distributing and circulating literature among
our brethren. It seems to me that it might be a good thing to adopt
and uphold the slogan-" A Library in every Lodge."

Societies committed to the cause of Masonic Education, such as the
National Masonic Research Society? it seems to me, should provide
suggestions and material-for broad gauge educational programs to
meet the varied requirements of every type of lodge and to appeal
to the interests of all classes in the Craft. Instead of devoting
our attention mainly to the interests of Masonic scholars, I
believe, we should also spare no pains or efforts to discover and
devise the ways and means of appealing to the educational interests
of all Freemasons from the highest to the lowest in aspirations and
attainments.

READING COURSES AND KEYBOOKS.

Another activity that should be undertaken, in my opinion, is the
publication of what might be termed keybooks or primers on various
Masonic topics, the idea of each keybook being to open up the doors
to a wider interest in and knowledge of the subject treated upon.
These brief booklets, outlining the elementary principles of
various Masonic subjects, should be published inexpensively and
sold at low prices to all Masons who may be induced to purchase and
read them. Personally, I am not greatly in favor of publishing
booklets for free distribution because it is my impression that
most folks regard anything that costs them nothing as being worth
exactly what it costs.

As a means of encouraging more widespread reading of Masonic books,
periodicals, and keybooks, I believe, a variety of reading courses
could be outlined covering all phases of Masonic Education. These
reading courses should not be elaborate or expensive but simply
suggestive plans whereby an ordinary Mason could derive the most
benefit from reading a few books on any Masonic subject in which he
might become interested.

I believe that there are thousands of our members who have the
ability as well as the desire to speak on behalf of the cause of
Masonic Education but do not know exactly how to go about preparing
a brief and interesting talk on this topic. I would recommend,
therefore, that topical outlines and material for short addresses
on various subjects connected with Masonic Eduction, should be
provided at a nominal cost for all speakers requesting such
assistance.

A NATIONAL MASONIC LECTURE SERVICE

In addition to providing material for such brief addresses, a major
effort on behalf of Masonic Education should be to encourage the
planning and conducting of Lecture courses covering all phases of
this subject. There ought to be, in my opinion, not only a way of
rendering assistance to those who desire to conduct a lecture
course to local-talent speakers, that is the members of the lodges
of a particular community, but there also should be some sort of a
clearing house or national lecture bureau in which the outstanding
student and lecturers on Masonic Education could be brought into
touch with interested audiences. In other words, this national
Masonic lecture bureau should, of course, work both ways; that is,
it should supply the requests of those who are conducting Masonic
Educational lecture courses and wish to obtain the services of
speakers of outstanding talent outside of their own community.
Likewise, the bureau in due course of time should be able to
develop a wider field or forum for Masonic speakers of unusual
talent.

That any program for Masonic Education, either narrow or broad,
should provide plans and programs for round table discussion
groups, almost goes without saying. These topics for discussion
should cover the widest possible range and should, of course,
appeal chiefly to the interests of ordinary Masons.

In addition to these introductory, elementary, or kindergarten
courses of study, there should be study outlines, lesson questions,
and text books for all grades of Masonic Study Clubs.

It will be noted that little attempt has been made in the foregoing
to elaborate the various suggestions as to the channels of interest
or the methods of Masonic study that have been recommended. Neither
is it professed that these suggestions are complete or
comprehensive. Doubtless, many other avenues for Masonic Education
will be opened up and many other methods will be devised, providing
the general policy of a broad gauge program should meet with
approval among our readers. Our attempt has been to suggest a
fairly wide variety of Masonic activities which, we feel, should be
justly classed as educational, with the aim of enabling our readers
to compare the respective advantages of this broader program with
the present policy of confining the scope of Masonic educational
work to a lore limited, yet more definitely instructive class of
activities.

I have endeavored to present my views which, of course, are
entirely in favor of the broader program. But I do not profess the
authority to speak for the Craft at large or for any others
excepting a scattering number of brethren throughout the country
who have written to me expressing their approval of other articles
in which I have advocated a somewhat similar policy. Consequently,
we are anxious to have every Mason interested in this question
present his views and offer criticism of this proposition
regardless of whether his views are in accord with or opposed to
the program that has been outlined. Likewise, we are particularly
anxious for further suggestions on any phase of this program or any
ideas for its improvement from those who may, in general, favor its
adoption.

Our sole interest is that we may discover or devise a program of
Masonic Education that will really meet the needs of present day
problems in our Craft. Personally, the writer's experience has
compelled him to conclude that our means and methods and program of
Masonic Education in the past have been too narrow and inadequate
to meet the requirements of modern Masonry. Yet we do not feel
sufficient confidence in our own proposals to give clear assurance
that our plans and program will fully solve the problem. In fact,
the one point on which we feel the greatest degree of certainty is
the idea that the only way to work out a program that will
completely solve the educational problems of modern Masonry is to
find some way to stimulate suggestions and draw upon the
experiences of interested members and well informed brethren from
all parts of the Masonic domain. In other words, the only program
that will surely solve our present day problems will be the one
that is developed from the consensus of opinion of Masons
everywhere who are interested in the cause of Masonic Education.
