Читать книгу Our Schools in War Time—and After - Arthur D. Dean - Страница 4

Table of Contents

The summer of 1917 found America realizing that the war which it had entered was not going to be won by the mobilization of an army and a navy, however strong and efficient they might be. In the proclamation of Woodrow Wilson the whole nation was called upon to mobilize with a clear, succinct purpose of organizing those forces of industry, of education, of woman power, which are back of every successful struggle of a nation in peace or in war. The ready acceptance of the slogan "Win the War in the Air," with the public clamor for aviation, was but an indication of the general awakening of the public to the truth that the war must be won by the use of forces as yet undeveloped, or undirected towards national ends.

The mobilization which teaches the saving of our national resources, which directs the thoughtful distribution and wise use of our products, which cultivates the patriotic spirit of service in the boy and girl power of the nation, properly belongs to the field of education, not only in war but in peace. To the schools of America, therefore, the war has come as an opportunity for developing a closer relation between education and life, between life and service.

Our gradual entrance into the war and our distance from the conflict have given us the chance of pausing and surveying the situation before acting,—advantages which were unfortunately denied England and France. At the beginning of the war England apparently almost wrecked her schools, and is slowly repairing the mistakes of hurried action in suspending the attendance laws. France is saving her schools that the nation may go on after the war. It remains for America to use the war to make better schools.

The mobilization of our schools is not concerned with the introduction of military drill, whether voluntary or compulsory. It is an experiment in working out the relation of education to war. We are, all of us, empirics in this experiment; there is no body of tradition and theory to help us. The ancient world offers us no parallels; the modern German system throws no light on it. America, equally with the nations of the older world, is a pioneer in the field. This is a novel experience for us who have been originators only of free education in the past or of administrative systems, not of types of new education. Largely what we have to guide us is some experience of France and England in what to avoid. This negative counsel is valuable in restricting our experiments, but is scarcely constructive in its nature. One of its most valuable lessons, however, is to show us that we must not take our schools into the war, as England did, but bring the war into the schools.

The fact that the problem is a novel one and that it is experimental does not make it futile. All education is experimental in adapting the individual to his changing environment.

During recent years our schools have had to consider the outside forces of the changing world. It was in 1881 that the first manual-training high school opened its doors under the hostile gaze of incredulity and disapproval. Since then our educational system has been bombarded with essays on the relation of education to life, on practical aspects of education, on vocational guidance, on trade schools, etc. We have only to look at the vastly differentiated courses of our colleges (some of which have lost all trace of the humanities), at the variegated courses in our high schools, at our remodeled elementary courses, to realize that in thirty years the whole attitude of the people towards our schools has undergone a vast change. These changes were regarded as revolutionary at first. But it is no more revolutionary to introduce the war into our schools than it was to introduce the laboratory study of sciences, or agricultural studies, or courses in millinery and home-making,—that is, if we understand the meaning of war into the schools.

It is not to be denied that the educational emphasis is different. The student who takes an agricultural course, and thus prepares himself to be a modern efficient farmer, is only indirectly doing work of service to the State. His aim is individual improvement, an advance which results in general benefit to the State; whereas a girl who does Red Cross work in school, or a boy who works in a war garden, benefits the individual through the larger service of collective responsibility in serving the nation directly.

We are not unmindful of the fact that war is a temporary condition, and we must not crowd out the fundamental studies to meet the needs of a temporary environment, however urgent the need may be. In carrying the war into our schools we must emphasize those permanent elements which are as necessary in war as in peace; we must use the war as an opportunity to develop service to the State,—service which may be vitalizing and ennobling, full of purposeful appreciation of collective responsibility.

In our study of the introduction of the war into our schools we may properly shut out discussions of elements which have no educational value. Many of the proposals for the war uses of our schools have been of a haphazard nature, called out by a well-meant desire to meet the emergency. Much of the legislation concerning itself with the employment of school children or of those under compulsory school age has been, and may yet be, harmful. The suggestion of using the schools as recruiting stations has lost value with the operation of the selective draft. Ill-considered proposals to turn over the vocational and manual-training departments to the government for the purpose of making munitions have shown a lack of knowledge of their meager equipment for an industry highly specialized with standard jigs and fixtures. A department store, a clothing factory, a library, or an office building would be about as fit for such a purpose as a school building. The same may be said of the use of our schools as hospitals. Our schools must be retained as educative plants,—training munition workers, if we will, but not making munitions; providing the government with skilled artisans and scientists, but by no means converting their function of education into that of industrial production.

The war work of our schools is more easily planned in those which have technical and vocational departments than in those which contain only the desk and office equipment. Distinctions must be made, too, between schools in agricultural and industrial centers. The experiments made in New York with "farm cadets" show that the country boy has certain advantages over the city boy in all forms of rural and garden employment. We must not expect the same kind of work from the high-school boys and girls in New York City that we may exact from country children of the same age.

The city boy may be needed in emergency office and factory work. Instead of contributing service as a farm cadet, he may become a "coöperator," giving part-time service to industry and to commerce and part time to school, as many of our city boys are now doing.

In dealing with the institution of higher grade we find as many distinctions in service. In the college of the cultural type—the college of individualism—it is the individual who serves the State, how nobly may be seen in the English universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In the public schools and socialized institutions with vocational work, however, it is the institution which serves. This service of the institution may be classified under two heads. In the case of the elementary schools to some extent, and of the high schools to a greater extent, our war work should be brought into them. In the technical, vocational, and trade schools the institution should reach out towards the war. In the first instance the function of the elementary and secondary school should be to adhere to the purposes for which they were created. The function of the higher technical, vocational, and trade schools should be to prepare the skilled students to take the places of those who are called to military service; to give scientific training, indispensable in war; to assist, through courses for the blind and crippled, in the reëducation of those disabled in war service,—that is, our technical schools may be schools of special preparation and industrial readjustment.

We shall observe, in working out the problem, that we have offered to us by the war an opportunity to make our schools better by bringing education closer to life, not only materially but spiritually. If we have failed to train our youth in coöperation and service to the State in the past, the war gives us a new motive. For to impart skill in use of hand or brain without teaching collective responsibility is to fail in our national duty. To our schools we must look as the agencies which are to carry on the great work of education in service, a noble and purposeful objective for which to work, directing the growth of our children into an efficient and devoted citizenship.

Someone will urge: "The war will soon be over and we shall hardly get started in war service before there will be no need for such service."

Of course those who believe, or at least seem to practice the belief, that the schools are to lag far behind every economic, industrial, and social movement and are to be mere looking-glasses for the workaday world,—such people would not be expected to bring the war into the schools until some historian had written a text setting forth the dates, drawing the battle lines, naming the commanding generals, and picturing the final boundaries determined by some Hague conference. It is such professional obstructionists who make no provision for the millions of our foreign born to learn the English language and American customs through the establishment of up-to-date methods in teaching the adult illiterate. It is such laissez-faire persons who allow children to slide out of school unprepared physically, mentally, or vocationally for the life ahead. It is such who insist upon the disciplinary-value idea of subject-worth in the face of modern psychological thought. It is such conservatives who say that agriculture can be taught only on the farm; that it is the business of the factory to teach the trades; that girls may learn to cook from their mothers; that elementary courses in woodworking and freehand drawing constitute vocational training; that algebra, Latin, ancient history, and trigonometry are essential features of the curriculum for training capable stenographers. It is these people who say that "the public schools of America are bulwarks of the nation," and consistently erect bulwarks against every agency which actually reflects the social and economic needs of the day.

But those who believe that the school should study the past and live in the present and strive for a better future will find that the war brings out for the schools not only the lessons of a day, but the needs and opportunities of a decade.

It has been stated that movements or men unresponsive to the present world crisis and failing to meet present needs and opportunities do not deserve to exist. Whether the statement be exactly true or not, it is evident that the up-to-the-minute man or the live school or the progressive industrial establishment or the efficient department of government is responding to the national need in exact proportion to the response made to the needs and opportunities existing before war was declared.

It is this responding power which is testing our men and women, our institutions of government, our industries, and our schools. Nothing makes this clearer than the daily news. We read that since the Railroads War Board has been established, the railroads have increased their operating efficiency 26 per cent, with the result that they are now handling twice the freight and have 75 per cent fewer idle cars; that aëroplane motors are soon to be built as rapidly as a certain well-known automobile can be; that standardized destroyers and merchant ships are to be turned out by the scores; that dyes equal to those formerly imported have been evolved; that prominent men of means have contributed their services to men in authority in Washington; that well-known social workers are on their way to France and Belgium.

All these things and countless others show us how a military necessity has brought out the best that is within us. And the best of it all is that there is nothing which we are doing in the way of making standardized products or in extending the services of useful men that cannot be permanently useful after the war is over. Our military necessity is teaching us new and permanently effective standards of making things. Meanwhile, are the schools of America to fail by not rendering service to a nation in time of need, by not establishing permanently effective standards in the making of useful boys and girls,—"boys and girls," as Roosevelt puts it, "who realize that they are a part of Uncle Sam's team"?

The schools and colleges that were alive before the war began are breathing the breath of life more deeply now. Those which were asleep are waking up and not only learning to serve, but through this service learning to live. A little school in Vermont in a report on what it has in the way of war equipment states that it has only ten benches, but adds that these have been used by sixty boys who take manual training. A school system which can be as efficient as that in time of peace may naturally be expected to state, as it does in response to a recent inquiry: "Our instructor has been on the job all summer, helping especially where the boys and girls are working on the farms or have gardens. He has also organized canning and drying clubs and is giving instruction to different groups of boys."

The university which has extension courses in time of peace naturally has war extension courses. The prominent business man of Massachusetts who for years interested himself in state Y.M.C.A. work would naturally be expected to enlist, as he has, for Y.M.C.A. work in France. Now if the college or institution or individual serves in time of need because of a habit of serving, might it not be equally true that a somnolent individual or school, if once stirred to service, might through such service learn always to serve?

At this time the government of the United States is going to learn how to become efficient. The state colleges of agriculture are testing their former efficiency,—the test being the power to serve. Schools may now learn what it means to be efficient by the service which they may now render. Not an activity is proposed nor a principle of educational practice given in the chapters which follow but should be brought into our schools in times of peace.

We are going to sew now for the Red Cross because it is war time. Later we shall sew for institutions in our community. Now we are going to develop part-time schools because industry needs boys. Later we shall have coöperative courses because boys at work need further schooling. Now we are placing city boys on farms because the farmers need labor. Later we shall place farms on the minds of boys because youth needs contact with nature. Now we have current-events discussions about loans, submarines, aëroplanes, and I. W. W.'s because the government needs support. Later we shall teach the meaning of the same things because thoughtfully trained people are needed by the government. Now we are to teach patriotism and thrift because the nation needs them. Later we shall teach them because they are essential in themselves.

Now we have extension courses in economical cooking for adult women as a war measure. Later we shall have it as a home measure. Now we are bringing adult women into the schools to receive instruction with their children. Later we shall do the same thing because it is the only sensible procedure under any and all conditions. Now we think in terms of reëducation of disabled soldiers because of the immediate need of helping these honored men. Later we shall turn what we have learned to do for these men into better provisions for making self-supporting our crippled and blinded children who are now in dependent institutions being made still more dependent by the very nature of the poor apology for vocational training which is given them. Now we have clearly before us the need for industrial education because the government is crying for workers. Later we shall see the need for industrial education because those who are to work in the industries need it. Now we hold a child-labor law before youth tempted by industry. Later we shall endeavor to hold before youth better opportunities for vocational, physical, and mental training in our schools as an inducement to stay in them.

What are the schools and colleges going to do about it all? Certainly they will not intentionally injure the cause of education by starting ill-developed ideas of war service. But the desire to avoid the bad should not by any means imply inaction. This is the psychological moment for all of us to justify our very existence as individuals or as parts of an institution or a movement. One could only pity a school man who recently said: "Really, I am envious of some of my colleagues. They have something to do at this time, while the subject which I am teaching can make no contribution."

There has never been a time in our school life when taxpayers, boards of apportionment, women's clubs, state granges, boards of trade, could be made more interested in having the schools broaden out along lines of continuation-school and part-time work, differentiated courses in our high schools, physical-training courses, evening courses for adult illiterates, thrift measures and school savings, teaching of current events, more practical science work, teaching of agriculture, unit courses in household arts, and a score of other things which the school men of America say they want and which they are always saying "the public will not stand for."

Shall we let the golden opportunity for enrichment pass until after the war, when cities will most certainly preach and practice poverty?

Now is the time to evaluate our school subjects, to bring in the new if they are worth while, to scrap the old if they do not stand the test of national needs. If a community will not "stand for" cooking when the H. C. L. rises like a specter before our doors, it will never vote for household arts after the war. If a city school favorably located near the open country will not now extend its educational program to include community gardening when prices of farm products are excessive, it will hardly broaden out when the crisis of our material needs is over. If a state will not line up with the Federal Board of Vocational Education for national aid for its vocational schools when its industries are crying for trained youth, it will never move forward in time of a normal demand. If we do not reorganize our schools to bring in the best while we may, we shall in all probability be required in the near future to discard some things which we have, without having any opportunity to develop the new things which we have stated in our conventions and teachers' institutes that we earnestly desire. World conditions challenge our schools. What is their program?