INDUSTRY AND EDUCATIONAL READJUSTMENT
The chief effort of all educational reforms is to bring about a
readjustment of existing scholastic institutions and methods so that
they shall respond to changes in general social and intellectual
conditions. The school, like other human institutions, acquires
inertia and tends to go on doing things that have once got started,
irrespective of present demands. There are many topics and methods
in existing education which date back to social conditions which are
passing away. They are perpetuated because of tradition and custom.
Especially is it true of our institutions of learning that their
controlling ideals and ideas were fixed when industrial methods
differed radically from those of the present. They grew up when the
place of industry in life was much less important than it is now when
practically all political and social affairs are bound up with economic
questions. They were formed when there was no positive connection
between science and the operations of production and distribution
of goods; while at the present, manufacturing, railways, electric
transportation, and all the agencies of daily life, represent just so
much applied science. Economic changes have brought about a closer
interdependence among men and strengthened the ideal of mutual service.
These political, intellectual, and moral changes make questions
connected with industrial education the most important problem of
present-day public education in America.
The fact that the Greek word from which our word “school” is derived
meant _leisure_ suggests the nature of the change which has taken
place. It is true at _all_ times that education means relief from the
pressure of having to make a living. The young have to be supported
more or less by others while they are being instructed. They must
be saved from the impact of the struggle for material existence.
Opposition to child labor goes hand in hand with the effort to extend
the facilities of public schools to all the wards of the nation. There
must be free time for schooling, and pupils must not come to their
studies physically worn out. Moreover, the use of imagination, thought
and emotion in education demands minds which are free from harassing
questions of self-support. There must be an atmosphere of leisure if
there is to be a truly liberal or free education.
Such things are as true now as when schools were named after the idea
of leisure. But there was once assumed a permanent division between a
leisure class and a laboring class. Education, beyond at least the mere
rudiments, was intended only for the former. Its subject-matter and its
methods were designed for those who were sufficiently well off so that
they did not have to work for a living. The stigma attached to working
with the hands was especially strong. In aristocratic and feudal
countries such work was done by slaves or serfs, and the sense of
social inferiority attached to these classes naturally led to contempt
for the pursuits in which they were engaged. Training for them was a
servile sort of education, while _liberal_ education was an education
for a free man, and a free man was a member of the upper classes, one
who did not have to engage in labor for his own support or that of
others. The antagonism to industry which was generated extended itself
to all activities requiring use of the hands. A “gentleman” would not
use his hands or train them to skill, save for sport or war. To employ
the hands was to do useful work for others, while to render personal
service to others was a badge of a dependent social and political
status.
Strange as it may seem, the very notions of knowledge and of mind were
influenced by this aristocratic order of society. The less the body in
general, and the hands and the senses in particular, were employed,
the higher the grade of intellectual activity. True thought resulting
in true knowledge was to be carried on wholly within the mind without
the body taking any part at all. Hence studies which could be carried
on with a minimum of physical action were alone the studies belonging
to a liberal education. First in order came such things as philosophy,
theology, mathematics, logic, etc., which were purely mental. Next
in rank came literature and language, with grammar, rhetoric, etc.
The pursuit of even what we call the fine arts was relegated to a
lower grade, because success in painting, sculpture, architecture,
etc., required technical and manual training. Music alone was exempt
from condemnation, partly because vocal music did not require the
training of the hands, and partly because music was used for devotional
purposes. Otherwise education should train men to appreciate art, not
to produce it.
These ideas and ideals persisted in educational theory and practice
long after the political and industrial conditions which generated
them had begun to give way. Practically all the conceptions associated
with culture and cultural education were created when the immense
superiority of a leisure class over all working classes was a matter
of course. Refinement, polish, esthetic taste, knowledge of classic
literatures, acquaintance with foreign languages and with branches of
sciences which could be studied by purely “mental” means, and which
were not put to practical uses, were the marks of culture, just as
they were the marks of leisure time and superior wealth. The learned
professions--divinity, law, and, to a less extent, medicine--were
admitted upon suffrance to the sphere of higher education, for the
manual element in the service rendered to others was not so great as
in industrial pursuits. But professional education was looked upon
with disparagement in contrast with a liberal education just because
its aim was rendering service to others. And for a long time medicine
in particular occupied a mediocre and dubious position just because it
required personal attention to the bodily needs of others.
Opposition to the introduction into higher education of the natural
sciences was due not only to the conservative dread of change on
the part of established institutions, but also to the fact that
these sciences emphasized the use of the senses (which are physical
organs), of physical apparatus, and of manual skill required in its
manipulation. Even the representatives of mathematical science joined
those of literary studies in assuming that the natural sciences must
be less cultural than sciences like geometry, algebra, and calculus,
which could be pursued in a more purely mental way. Even when the
progress of social changes forced more and more useful studies into the
curriculum, the idea of a graded rank in the cultural value of studies
persisted. Occupations like banking and commerce involved less manual
activity and less direct personal service to others than housekeeping,
manufacturing, and farming, consequently the studies which prepared for
them were at least more “genteel” than studies having to do with the
latter. Even at the present time many people associate mental activity
with physical acquiescence.
The first breach in this order of ideas occurred in elementary
education. Along with the spread of democratic ideas which took place
in the eighteenth century, there developed the idea that education was
a need and right of the masses as well as a privilege of the upper
classes. In reading Rousseau and Pestalozzi, an American student, who
is used to the democratic idea of universal education, is not likely
to notice that their conception of the educational development of all
as a social necessity is even more revolutionary than the particular
methods which they urged. But such was the case. Even so enlightened a
liberal as John Locke wrote his educational essay with reference to the
education of a gentleman, and assumed that the training of the laboring
classes should be of a radically different kind. The idea that all the
powers of all members of society are capable of development and that
society owed it to itself and to its constituent members to see that
the latter received this development, was the first great intellectual
token of the democratic revolution which was occurring. It is
noteworthy that Rousseau was Swiss by birth, that democratic political
ideas were rife in France when he wrote, and that Pestalozzi was not
only Swiss by birth but did his work in that republican country.
While the development of public elementary schools for the masses
inevitably puts emphasis upon the usefulness of studies as a reason
for education, the growth of the public curriculum and methods
was profoundly affected by the surviving ideals of leisure class
education. Elementary education, just because it was an education for
the masses, was regarded as a kind of necessary political and economic
concession rather than as a serious educative enterprise. A strict line
was drawn between it, with its useful studies, and the higher education
of the few conducted for genuinely cultural purposes. Reading, writing,
arithmetic, the three R’s, were to be taught because of their utility.
They were needed to make individuals capable of self-support, of
“getting on” better, and so capable of rendering better economic
service under changed commercial conditions. It was assumed that
the greater number of pupils would leave school as soon as they had
mastered the practical use of these tools.
No better evidence could be found that primary education is still
regarded with respect to the larger number of pupils, as a practical
social necessity, not as an intrinsic educative measure, than the
fact that the greater number of pupils leave school about the fifth
grade--that is, when they have acquired rudimentary skill in reading,
writing and figuring. The opposition of influential members of the
community to the introduction of any studies, save perhaps geography
and history, beyond the three R’s, the tendency to regard other things
as “frills and fads,” is evidence of the way in which purely elementary
schooling is regarded. A fuller and wider culture in literature,
science and the arts may be allowed in the case of those better off,
but the masses are not to be educatively developed so much as trained
in the use of tools needed to make them effective workers. Elementary
instruction to a larger extent than we usually admit, is a substitute,
under the changed circumstances of production and distribution of
goods, for the older apprenticeship system. The latter was never
treated as educational in a fundamental sense; the former is only
partially conducted as a thoroughly educational enterprise.
In part the older ideals of a predominantly literary and “intellectual”
education invaded and captured the new elementary schools. For the
smaller number of pupils who might go on to a higher and cultural
education, the three R’s were the tools of learning, the only really
indispensable tools of acquiring knowledge. They are all of them
concerned with language, that is, with _symbols_ of facts and ideas,
a fact which throws a flood of light upon the prevailing ideas of
learning and knowledge. Knowledge consists of the ready-made material
which others have found out, and mastery of language is the means of
access to this fund. To learn is to appropriate something from this
ready-made store, not to find out something for one’s self. Educational
reformers may go on attacking pouring-in methods of teaching and
passive reception methods of learning; but as long as these ideas of
the nature of knowledge are current, they make little headway. The
separation of the activity of the mind from the activity of the senses
in direct observation and from the activity of the hand in construction
and manipulation, makes the material of studies academic and remote,
and compels the passive acquisition of information imparted by textbook
and teacher.
In the United States there was for a long time a natural division of
labor between the book-learning of the schools and the more direct and
vital learning of out-of-school life. It is impossible to exaggerate
the amount of mental and moral training secured by our forefathers
in the course of the ordinary pursuits of life. They were engaged in
subduing a new country. Industry was at a premium, and instead of
being of a routine nature, pioneer conditions required initiative,
ingenuity, and pluck. For the most part men were working for
themselves; or, if for others, with a prospect of soon becoming masters
of their own affairs. While the citizens of old-world monarchies had
no responsibility for the conduct of government, our forefathers were
engaged in the experiment of conducting their own government. They had
the incentive of a participation in the conduct of civic and public
affairs which came directly home to them. Production had not yet been
concentrated in factories in congested centers, but was distributed
through villages. Markets were local rather than remote. Manufacturing
was still literally _hand-making_, with the use of local water-power;
it was not carried on by big machines to which the employed “hands”
were mechanical adjuncts. The occupations of daily life engaged the
imagination and enforced knowledge of natural materials and processes.
Children as they grew up either engaged in or were in intimate contact
with spinning, weaving, bleaching, dyeing, and the making of clothes;
with lumbering, and leather, saw-mills, and carpentry; with working
of metals and making of candles. They not only saw the grain planted
and reaped, but were familiar with the village grist-mill and the
preparation of flour and of foodstuffs for cattle. These things were
close to them, the processes were all open to inspection. They knew
where things came from and how they were made or where they went to,
and they knew these things by personal observation. They had the
discipline that came from sharing in useful activities.
While there was too much taxing toil, there was also stimulus to
imagination and training of independent judgment along with the
personal knowledge of materials and processes. Under such conditions,
the schools could hardly have done better than devote themselves to
books, and to teaching a command of the use of books, especially since,
in most communities, books, while a rarity and a luxury, were the sole
means of access to the great world beyond the village surroundings.
But conditions changed and school materials and methods did not change
to keep pace. Population shifted to urban centers. Production became
a mass affair, carried on in big factories, instead of a household
affair. Growth of steam and electric transportation brought about
production for distant markets, even for a world market. Industry was
no longer a local or neighborhood concern. Manufacturing was split up
into a very great variety of separate processes through the economies
incident upon extreme division of labor. Even the working-men in a
particular line of industry rarely have any chance to become acquainted
with the entire course of production, while outsiders see practically
nothing but either the raw material on one hand or the finished product
on the other. Machines depend in their action upon complicated facts
and principles of nature which are not recognized by the worker unless
he has had special intellectual training. The machine worker, unlike
the older hand worker, is following blindly the intelligence of others
instead of his own knowledge of materials, tools, and processes. With
the passing of pioneer conditions passed also the days when almost
every individual looked forward to being at some time in control of a
business of his own. Great masses of men have no other expectation than
to be permanently hired for pay to work for others. Inequalities of
wealth have multiplied, so that demand for the labor of children has
become a pressing menace to the serious education of great numbers. On
the other hand, children in wealthy families have lost the moral and
practical discipline that once came from sharing in the round of home
duties. For a large number there is little alternative, especially in
larger cities, between irksome child labor and demoralizing child
idleness. Inquiries conducted by competent authorities show that in the
great centers of population opportunities for play are so inadequate
that free time is not even spent in wholesome recreations by a majority
of children.
These statements do not begin, of course, to cover the contrasts
between present social conditions and those to which our earlier school
facilities were adapted. They suggest, however, some of the obvious
changes with which education must reckon if it is to maintain a vital
connection with contemporary social life, so as to give the kind of
instruction needed to make efficient and self-respecting members of
the community. The sketch would be even more incomplete, however, if
it failed to note that along with these changes there has been an
immense cheapening of printed material and an immense increase in the
facilities for its distribution. Libraries abound, books are many
and cheap, magazines and newspapers are everywhere. Consequently the
schools do not any longer bear the peculiar relation to books and book
knowledge which they once did. While out of school conditions have
lost many of the educative features they once possessed, they have
gained immensely in the provision they make for reading matter and for
stimulating interest in reading. It is no longer necessary or desirable
that the schools should devote themselves so exclusively to this phase
of instruction. But it is more necessary than it used to be that the
schools shall develop such interest in the pupils as will induce them
to read material that is intellectually worth while.
While merely learning the use of language symbols and of acquiring
habits of reading is less important than it used to be, the question
of the use to which the power and habits shall be put is much more
important. To learn to use reading matter means that schools shall
arouse in pupils problems and interests that lead students both in
school and after they leave school to seek that subject-matter of
history, science, biography, and literature which is inherently
valuable, and not to waste themselves upon the trash which is so
abundantly provided. It is absolutely impossible to secure this result
when schools devote themselves to the formal sides of language instead
of to developing deep and vital interest in subject-matter. Educational
theorists and school authorities who attempt to remedy the deplorable
reading habits with which many youth leave school by means of a greater
amount of direct attention to language studies and literatures,
are engaged in a futile task. Enlargement of intellectual horizon,
and awakening to the multitude of interesting problems presented by
contemporary conditions, are the surest guarantees for good use of time
with books and magazines. When books are made an end in themselves,
only a small and highly specialized class will devote themselves to
really serviceable books. When there is a lively sense of the interest
of social affairs, all who possess the sense will turn as naturally to
the books which foster that interest as to the other things of which
they feel a need.
These are some of the reasons for saying that the general problem
of readjustment of education to meet present conditions is most
acute at the angle of industry. The various details may be summed
up in three general moral principles. First, never before was it as
important as it is now that each individual should be capable of
self-respecting, self-supporting, _intelligent_ work--that each should
make a living for himself and those dependent upon his efforts, and
should make it with an intelligent recognition of what he is doing
and an intelligent interest in doing his work well. Secondly, never
before did the work of one individual affect the welfare of others
on such a wide scale as at present. Modern conditions of production
and exchange of commodities have made the whole world one to a degree
never approximated before. A war to-day may close banks and paralyze
trade in places thousands of miles away from the scene of action. This
is only a coarse and sensational manifestation of an interdependence
which is quietly and persistently operating in the activity of every
farmer, manufacturer, laborer, and merchant, in every part of the
civilized globe. Consequently there is a demand which never existed
before that all the items of school instruction shall be seen and
appreciated in their bearing upon the network of social activities
which bind people together. When men lived in small groups which had
little to do with each other, the harm done by an education which
pursued exclusively intellectual and theoretic aims was comparatively
slight. Knowledge might be isolated because men were isolated. But
to-day the accumulation of information, just as information, apart
from its social bearings, is worse than futile. Acquisition of modes
of skill apart from realization of the social uses to which they may
be put is fairly criminal. In the third place, industrial methods and
processes depend to-day upon knowledge of facts and laws of natural
and social science in a much greater degree than ever before. Our
railways and steamboats, traction cars, telegraphs, and telephones,
factories and farms, even our ordinary household appliances, depend for
their existence upon intricate mathematical, physical, chemical, and
biological insight. They depend for their best ultimate use upon an
understanding of the facts and relationships of social life. Unless the
mass of workers are to be blind cogs and pinions in the apparatus they
employ, they must have some understanding of the physical and social
facts behind and ahead of the material and appliances with which they
are dealing.
Thus put, the problem may seem to be so vast and complicated as to be
impossible of solution. But we must remember that we are dealing with
a problem of readjustment, not of original creation. It will take a
long time to complete the readjustment which will be brought about
gradually. The main thing now is to get started, and to start in the
right direction. Hence the great importance of the various experimental
steps which have already been taken. And we must also remember that the
essential thing to be brought about through the change is not amassing
more information, but the formation of certain attitudes and interests,
ways of looking at things and dealing with them. If accomplishment
of the educational readjustment meant that pupils must become aware
of the whole scope of scientific and social material involved in the
occupations of daily life, the problem would be absolutely impossible
of solution. But in reality accomplishing the reform means _less_
attention than under present conditions to mere bulk of knowledge.
What is wanted is that pupils shall form the habit of connecting the
limited information they acquire with the activities of life, and
gain ability to connect a limited sphere of human activity with the
scientific principles upon which its successful conduct depends. The
attitudes and interests thus formed will then take care of themselves.
If we take arithmetic or geography themselves as subjects isolated
from social activities and uses, then the aim of instruction must be
to cover the whole ground. Any failure to do so will mark a defect
in learning. But not so if what we, as educators, are concerned with
is that pupils shall realize the connection of what they learn about
number, or about the earth’s surface, with vital social activities.
The question ceases to be a matter simply of quantity and becomes
one of motive and purpose. The problem is not the impossible one of
acquainting the pupil with all the social uses to which knowledge of
number is put, but of teaching him in such a way that each step which
he takes in advance in his knowledge of number shall be connected with
some situation of human need and activity, so that he shall see the
bearing and application of what is learnt. Any child who enters upon
the study of number already has experiences which involve number. Let
his instruction in arithmetic link itself to these everyday social
activities in which he already shares, and, as far as it goes, the
problem of socializing instruction is solved.
The industrial phase of the situation comes in, of course, in the fact
that these social experiences have their industrial aspect. This does
not mean that his number work shall be crassly utilitarian, or that all
the problems shall be in terms of money and pecuniary gain or loss. On
the contrary, it means that the pecuniary side shall be relegated to
its proportionate place, and emphasis put upon the place occupied by
knowledge of weight, form, size, measure, numerical quantity, as well
as money, in the carrying on of the activities of life. The purpose
of the readjustment of education to existing social conditions is
not to substitute the acquiring of money or of bread and butter for
the acquiring of information as an educational aim. It is to supply
men and women who as they go forth, from school shall be intelligent
in the pursuit of the activities in which they engage. That a part
of that intelligence will, however, have to do with the place which
bread and butter actually occupy in the lives of people to-day, is a
necessity. Those who fail to recognize this fact are still imbued,
consciously or unconsciously, with the intellectual prejudices of an
aristocratic state. But the primary and fundamental problem is not to
prepare individuals to work at particular callings, but to be vitally
and sincerely interested in the calling upon which they must enter
if they are not to be social parasites, and to be informed as to the
social and scientific bearings of that calling. The aim is not to
prepare bread-winners. But since men and women are normally engaged in
bread-winning vocations, they need to be intelligent in the conduct of
households, the care of children, the management of farms and shops,
and in the political conduct of a democracy where industry is the prime
factor.
The problem of educational readjustment thus has to steer between the
extremes of an inherited bookish education and a narrow, so-called
practical, education. It is comparatively easy to clamor for a
retention of traditional materials and methods on the ground that
they alone are liberal and cultural. It is comparatively easy to urge
the addition of narrow vocational training for those who, so it is
assumed, are to be the drawers of water and the hewers of wood in the
existing economic régime, leaving intact the present bookish type of
education for those fortunate enough not to have to engage in manual
labor in the home, shop, or farm. But since the real question is one
of reorganization of all education to meet the changed conditions
of life--scientific, social, political--accompanying the revolution
in industry, the experiments which have been made with this wider
end in view are especially deserving of sympathetic recognition and
intelligent examination.