DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION
The schools that have been described were selected not because of any
conviction that they represent all of the best work that is being
done in this country, but simply because they illustrate the general
trend of education at the present time, and because they seem fairly
representative of different types of schools. Of necessity a great
deal of material that would undoubtedly prove just as suggestive
as what has been given, has been omitted. No attempt has been made
to touch upon the important movement for the vitalization of rural
education: a movement that is just as far reaching in its scope and
wholesome in its aims as anything that is being done, since it purposes
to overcome the disadvantages of isolation that have handicapped the
country schoolteacher, and to make use of the natural environment of
the child to give him a vocational education, in the same way that the
city schools use their artificial environment. And except as their
work illustrates a larger educational principle, very little attention
has been given to the work of individual teachers or schools in their
attempt to teach the conventional curriculum in the most efficient way.
While devices and ingenious methods for getting results from pupils
often seem most suggestive and even inspiring to the teacher, they do
not fit into the plan of this book when they have to do simply with the
better use of the usual material of the traditional education.
We have been concerned with the more fundamental changes in education,
with the awakening of the schools to a realization of the fact that
their work ought to prepare children for the life they are to lead in
the world. The pupils who will pass this life in intellectual pursuits,
and who get the necessary training for the practical side of their
lives from their home environment, are such a small factor numerically
that the schools are not acting wisely to shape all the work for
them. The schools we have been discussing are all working away from a
curriculum adapted to a small and specialized class towards one which
shall be truly representive of the needs and conditions of a democratic
society.
While these schools are all alike in that they reflect the new spirit
in education, they differ greatly in the methods that have been
developed to bring about the desired results; their surroundings
and the class of pupils dealt with are varied enough to suggest the
influence that local conditions must exercise over methods even
when the aim is identical. To the educator for whom the problems of
democracy are at all real, the vital necessity appears to be that of
making the connection between the child and his environment as complete
and intelligent as possible, both for the welfare of the child and
for the sake of the community. The way this is to be accomplished
will, of course, vary according to the conditions of the community
and to a certain extent according to the temperament and beliefs of
the educator. But great as the differences are between the different
schools, between such a plan as that worked out by Mr. Meriam in
Columbia, Missouri, and the curriculum of the Chicago public schools,
an analysis of the ideas back of the apparent extreme divergence of
views, reveals certain resemblances that seem more fundamental than
the differences. The resemblances are more fundamental because they
illustrate the direction that educational reform is taking, and because
many of them are the direct result of the changes that modern science
and psychology have brought about in our way of looking at the world.
Curiously enough most of these points of similarity are found in the
views advocated by Rousseau, though it is only very recently that they
have begun to enjoy anything more than a theoretical respect. The first
point of similarity is the importance that is accorded to the physical
welfare of the pupils. The necessity of insuring the health of all
young people as the foundation on which to build other qualities and
abilities, and the hopelessness of trying to build where the body is
weak, ill-nourished, or uncontrolled, is now so well recognized that it
has become a commonplace and needs only a passing mention here. Health
is as important from the social point of view as from the individual,
so that attention to it is doubly necessary to a successful community.
While all schools realize the importance of healthy pupils, the
possibilities of using the activities of the child that are employed
in giving him a strong healthy body, for general educational purposes,
are not so well understood. As yet it is the pioneer in education who
realizes the extent to which young children learn through the use of
their bodies, and the impossibility of insuring general intelligence
through a system which does not use the body to teach the mind and the
mind to teach the body. This is simply a restatement of Rousseau’s
proposition that the education of the young child rests largely on
whether he is allowed to “develop naturally” or not. It has already
been pointed out to what an extent Mrs. Johnson depends on the physical
growth of her pupils as a tool for developing their intellectual
ability, as well as the important part that muscular skill plays in the
educational system of Madame Montessori. This seems not only reasonable
but necessary when we think of the mere amount of movement, handling,
and feeling of things that a baby must indulge in to understand the
most familiar objects in its environment, and remember that the child
and the adult learn with the same mental machinery as the very small
child. There is no difference in the way the organism works after it is
able to talk and walk; the difference lies in the greater complexity
of activities which is made possible by the preliminary exercises.
Modern psychology has pointed out the fact that the native instincts
of a human being are his tools for learning. Instincts all express
themselves through the body; therefore education which stifles bodily
activities, stifles instincts, and so prevents the natural method of
learning. To the extent of making an educational application of this
fact, all the schools described are using the physical activities
of their pupils, and so the means of their physical development, as
instruments for training powers of judgment and right thinking. That is
to say the pupils are learning by doing. Aside from the psychological
reasons for teaching by this method, it is the logical consequence of a
realization of the importance of the physical welfare of the child, and
necessarily brings changes in the material of the schoolroom.
What are the pupils to do in order to learn? Mere activity, if not
directed toward some end, may result in developing muscular strength,
but it can have very little effect on the mental development of the
pupils. These schools have all answered the question in the same
general way, though the definite problems on which they work differ.
The children must have activities which have some educative content,
that is, which reproduce the conditions of real life. This is true
whether they are studying about things that happened hundreds of years
ago or whether they are doing problems in arithmetic or learning to
plane a board. The historical facts which are presented must be true,
and whether the pupils are writing a play based on them or are building
a viking boat, the details of the work as well as the main idea must
conform to the known facts. When a pupil learns by doing he is reliving
both mentally and physically some experience which has proved important
to the human race; he goes through the same mental processes as those
who originally did these things. Because he has done them he knows the
value of the result, that is, the fact. A statement, even of facts,
does not reveal the value of the fact, or the sense of its truth--of
the fact that it is a fact. Where children are fed only on book
knowledge, one “fact” is as good as another; they have no standards of
judgment or belief. Take the child studying weights and measures; he
reads in his text-book that eight quarts make a peck, but when he does
examples he is apt, as every schoolteacher knows, to substitute four
for eight. Evidently the statement as he read it in the book did not
stand for anything that goes on outside the book, so it is a matter of
accident what figure lodges in his brain, or whether any does. But the
grocer’s boy who has measured out pecks with a quart measure _knows_.
He has made pecks; he would laugh at anybody who suggested that four
quarts made a peck. What is the difference in these two cases? The
schoolboy has a result without the activity of which it is the result.
To the grocer’s boy the statement has value and truth, for it is the
obvious result of an experience--it is a _fact_.
Thus we see that it is a mistake to suppose that practical activities
have only or even mainly a utilitarian value in the schoolroom. They
are necessary if the pupil is to understand the facts which the teacher
wishes him to learn; if his knowledge is to be real, not verbal; if his
education is to furnish standards of judgment and comparison. With the
adult it is undoubtedly true that most of the activities of practical
life have become simply means of satisfying more or less imperative
wants. He has performed them so often that their meaning as types of
human knowledge has disappeared. But with the school child this is not
true. Take a child in the school kitchen; he is not merely preparing
that day’s midday meal because he must eat; he is learning a multitude
of new things. In following the directions of the _recipe_ he is
learning accuracy, and the success or failure of the dish serves as an
excellent measure of the pupil’s success. In measuring quantities he
is learning arithmetic and tables of measures; in mixing materials,
he is finding out how substances act when they are manipulated; in
baking or boiling he is discovering some of the elementary facts of
physics and chemistry. Repetition of these acts by adults, after the
muscular and intellectual mastery of the adjustments they call for
has been established, gives the casual thinker the impression that
pupils also are doing no more than wasting their time on insignificant
things. The grocer’s boy knows what a peck is because he has used
it to measure things with, but since his stock of knowledge is not
increased as he goes on measuring out peck after peck, the point is
soon reached where intellectual discovery ends and mere performance
of a task takes its place. This is the point where the school can see
that the pupil’s intellectual growth continues; while the activity of
the mere worker who is doing the thing for its immediate practical use
becomes mechanical. The school says the pupil has had enough of this
particular experience; he knows how to do this thing when he needs to
and he has understood the principles or facts which it illustrates; it
is time he moved on to other experiences which will teach him other
values and facts. When the pupil has learned how to follow a recipe,
how to handle foodstuffs and use the stove he does not go on repeating
the same elementary steps; he begins to extend his work to take in the
larger aspects of cooking. The educative value of the cooking lessons
continues because he is now studying questions of food values, menus,
the cost of food, and the chemistry of food stuffs, and cooking. The
kitchen becomes a laboratory for the study of a fundamental factor in
human life.
[Illustration: Training the hand, eye, and brain by doing useful work.
(Gary, Ind.)]
The moral advantages of an active form of education reënforce its
intellectual benefits. We have seen how this method of teaching
necessitates greater freedom for the pupil, and that this freedom is
a positive factor in the intellectual and moral development of the
pupils. In the same way the substitution of practical activities for
the usual isolated text-book study achieves positive moral results
which are marked to any teacher who has used both methods. Where the
accumulation of facts presented in books is the standard, memory must
be relied upon as the principal tool for acquiring knowledge. The pupil
must be stimulated to remember facts; it makes comparatively little
difference whether he has to remember them in the exact words of the
book, or in his own words, for in either case the problem is to see
that he does store up information. The inevitable result is that
the child is rewarded when his memory is successful, and punished by
failure and low marks when it is not successful. The emphasis shifts
from the importance of the work that is done to the pupil’s degree of
external success in doing it. Since no one’s performance is perfect,
the failures become the obvious and emphasized thing. The pupil has
to fight constantly against the discouragement of never reaching
the standard he is told he is expected to reach. His mistakes are
constantly corrected and pointed out. Such successes as he achieves
are not especially inspiring because he does no more than reproduce
the lesson as it already exists in the book. The virtues that the
good scholar will cultivate are the colorless, negative virtues of
obedience, docility, and submission. By putting himself in an attitude
of complete passivity he is more nearly able to give back just what he
heard from the teacher or read in the book.
Rewards and high marks are at best artificial aims to strive for; they
accustom children to expect to get something besides the value of the
product for work they do. The extent to which schools are compelled to
rely upon these motives shows how dependent they are upon motives which
are foreign to truly moral activity. But in the schools where the
children are getting their knowledge by doing things, it is presented
to them through all their senses and carried over into acts; it needs
no feat of memory to retain what they find out; the muscles, sight,
hearing, touch, and their own reasoning processes all combine to make
the result part of the working equipment of the child. Success gives
a glow of positive achievement; artificial inducements to work are no
longer necessary, and the child learns to work from love of the work
itself, not for a reward or because he is afraid of a punishment.
Activity calls for the positive virtues--energy, initiative, and
originality--qualities that are worth more to the world than even the
most perfect faithfulness in carrying out orders. The pupil sees the
value of his work and so sees his own progress, which spurs him on
to further results. In consequence his mistakes do not assume undue
importance or discourage him. He can actively use them as helps in
doing better next time. Since the children are no longer working for
rewards, the temptation to cheat is reduced to the minimum. There is
no motive for doing dishonest acts, since the result shows whether the
child has done the work, the only end recognized. The moral value of
working for the sake of what is being done is certainly higher than
that of working for rewards; and while it is possible that a really bad
character will not be reformed by being placed in a situation where
there is nothing to be gained excepting through an independent and
energetic habit of work, the weak character will be strengthened and
the strong one will not form any of those small bad habits that seem so
unimportant at first and that are so serious in their cumulative effect.
Another point that most of the present day reformers have in common,
in distinction from the traditional way of looking at school work, is
the attempt to find work of interest to the pupils. This used to be
looked at as a matter of very little importance; in fact a certain
amount of work that did not interest was supposed to be a very good
thing for the moral character of the pupil. This work was supposed to
have even greater disciplinary qualities than the rest of the work.
Forcing the child to carry through a task which did not appeal to
him was supposed to develop perseverance and strength of character.
There is no doubt that the ability to perform an irksome duty is a
very useful accomplishment, but the usefulness does not lie in the
irksomeness of the task. Things are not useful or necessary because
they are unpleasant or tiresome, but in spite of these characteristics.
The habit of giving work to pupils solely for the sake of its
“disciplinary” value would seem to indicate a blindness to moral values
rather than an excess of moral zeal, for after all the habit is little
more than holding up a thing’s defects as its virtues.
But if lack of interest is not to be admitted as a motive in selection
of class work, it is fair enough to object that interest can not serve
as a criterion, either. If we take interest in its narrowest sense,
as meaning something which amuses and appeals to the child because of
its power of entertainment, the objection has truth. The critic of
the new spirit in education is apt to assume that this narrow sense
is what is meant when he hears that the pupils ought to be interested
in what they are doing. Then logically enough he goes on to point out
that such a system lacks moral fiber, that it caters to the whims of
children, and is in reality an example of the general softening of the
social fiber, of every one’s desire for the easy way. But the work is
not made easy for the pupils; nor yet is there any attempt to give
the traditional curriculum a sugar coating. The change is of a more
fundamental character and is based on sound psychological theory. The
work given to the children has changed; the attempt is not to make all
the child’s tasks interesting to him, but to select work on the basis
of the natural appeal it makes to the child. Interest ought to be the
basis for selection because children are interested in the things they
need to learn.
Every one is familiar with the way a baby will spend a long time making
over and over again the same motions or feeling of some object, and of
the intense interest children two and three years old take in building
a tower of blocks, or filling a pail with sand. They do it not once but
scores of times, and always with the same deep absorption, for it is
real work to them. Their growing, unformed muscles have not yet learned
to act automatically; every motion that is aimed at something must
be repeated under the conscious direction of the child’s mind until
he can make it without being aware of effort towards an adjustment.
Since the little child must adjust the things about him, his interests
and his needs are identical; if they were not he could not live. As
a child grows older his control over his immediate needs so rapidly
becomes automatic, that we are apt to forget that he still learns as
the baby does. The necessary thing is still, as it will be all his
life, the power of adjustment. Good adjustment means a successful
human being, so that instinctively we are more interested in learning
these adjustments than in anything else. Now the child is interested
in adjusting himself through physical activity to the things he comes
up against, because he must master his physical environment to live.
The things that are of interest to him are the things that he needs
to work on. It is then the part of wisdom in selecting the work for
any group of children, to take it from that group of things in the
child’s environment which is arousing their curiosity and interest at
that time. Obviously as the child grows older and his control of his
body and physical environment increases he will reach out to the more
complicated and theoretical aspects of the life he sees about him.
But in just this same way the work in the classroom reaches out to
include facts and events which do not belong in any obvious way to
the child’s immediate environment. Thus the range of the material is
not in any way limited by making interest a standard for selection.
Work that appeals to pupils as worth while, that holds out the promise
of resulting in something to their own interests, involves just as
much persistence and concentration as the work which is given by the
sternest advocate of disciplinary drill. The latter requires the pupil
to strive for ends which he can not see, so that he has to be kept at
the task by means of offering artificial ends, marks, and promotions,
and by isolating him in an atmosphere where his mind and senses are not
being constantly besieged by the call of life which appeals so strongly
to him. But the pupil presented with a problem, the solution of which
will give him an immediate sense of accomplishment and satisfied
curiosity, will bend all his powers to the work; the end itself will
furnish the stimulus necessary to carry him through the drudgery.
The conventional type of education which trains children to docility
and obedience, to the careful performance of imposed tasks because they
are imposed, regardless of where they lead, is suited to an autocratic
society. These are the traits needed in a state where there is one head
to plan and care for the lives and institutions of the people. But in
a democracy they interfere with the successful conduct of society and
government. Our famous, brief definition of a democracy, as “government
of the people, for the people and by the people,” gives perhaps the
best clew to what is involved in a democratic society. Responsibility
for the conduct of society and government rests on every member of
society. Therefore, every one must receive a training that will enable
him to meet this responsibility, giving him just ideas of the condition
and needs of the people collectively, and developing those qualities
which will insure his doing a fair share of the work of government.
If we train our children to take orders, to do things simply because
they are told to, and fail to give them confidence to act and think for
themselves, we are putting an almost insurmountable obstacle in the way
of overcoming the present defects of our system and of establishing the
truth of democratic ideals. Our State is founded on freedom, but when
we train the State of to-morrow, we allow it just as little freedom
as possible. Children in school must be allowed freedom so that they
will know what its use means when they become the controlling body,
and they must be allowed to develop active qualities of initiative,
independence, and resourcefulness, before the abuses and failures of
democracy will disappear.
The spread of the realization of this connection between democracy and
education is perhaps the most interesting and significant phase of
present educational tendencies. It accounts for the growing interest
in popular education, and constitutes a strong reënforcement to the
arguments of science and psychology for the changes which have been
outlined. There is no doubt that the text-book method of education is
well suited to that small group of children who by environment are
placed above the necessity of engaging in practical life and who are
at the same time interested in abstract ideas. But even for this type
of person the system leaves great gaps in his grasp of knowledge; it
gives no place to the part that action plays in the development of
intelligence, and it trains along the lines of the natural inclinations
of the student and does not develop the practical qualities which are
usually weak in the abstract person. For the great majority whose
interests are not abstract, and who have to pass their lives in some
practical occupation, usually in actually working with their hands,
a method of education is necessary which bridges the gap between
the purely intellectual and theoretical sides of life and their own
occupations. With the spread of the ideas of democracy, and the
accompanying awakening to social problems, people are beginning to
realize that every one, regardless of the class to which he happens to
belong, has a right to demand an education which shall meet his own
needs, and that for its own sake the State must supply this demand.
Until recently school education has met the needs of only one class
of people, those who are interested in knowledge for its own sake,
teachers, scholars, and research workers. The idea that training is
necessary for the man who works with his hands is still so new that the
schools are only just beginning to admit that control of the material
things of life is knowledge at all. Until very recently schools have
neglected the class of people who are numerically the largest and
upon whom the whole world depends for its supply of necessities. One
reason for this is the fact that democracy is a comparatively new
thing in itself; and until its advent, the right of the majority, the
very people who work with their hands, to supply any of their larger
spiritual needs was never admitted. Their function, almost their reason
for existence, was to take care of the material wants of the ruling
classes.
Two great changes have occurred in the last century and a half which
have altered men’s habits of living and of thinking. We have just seen
how one of these, the growth of democratic ideals, demands a change
in education. The other, the change that has come about through
scientific discoveries, must also be reflected in the classroom. To
piece together all one’s historical information into a rough picture of
society before the discovery of the steam engine and of electricity,
will hardly serve to delineate sufficiently the changes in the very
fundamentals of society that these and similar discoveries have
brought about. The one possibly most significant from the point of
view of education is the incredible increase in the number of facts
that must be part of the mental furniture of any one who meets even
the ordinary situations of life successfully. They are so many that
any attempt to teach them all from text-books in school hours would
be simply ridiculous. But the schools instead of facing this frankly
and then changing their curriculum so that they could teach pupils how
to learn from the world itself, have gone on bravely teaching as many
facts as possible. The changes made have been in the way of inventing
schemes that would increase the consumption of facts. But the change
that is demanded by science is a more radical one; and as far as it
has been worked out at present it follows the general lines that have
been suggested in this book. This includes, as the curricula of these
different schools have shown, not alone teaching of the scientific
laws that have brought about the changes in society since their
discovery, but the substitution of real work which itself teaches the
facts of life for the study and memorization of facts after they have
been classified in books.
If schools are to recognize the needs of all classes of pupils, and
give pupils a training that will insure their becoming successful and
valuable citizens, they must give work that will not only make the
pupils strong physically and morally and give them the right attitude
towards the state and their neighbors, but that will as well give them
enough control over their material environment to enable them to be
economically independent. Preparation for the professions has always
been taken care of; it is, as we have seen, the future of the worker in
industry which has been neglected. The complications of modern industry
due to scientific discoveries make it necessary for the worker who
aspires to real success to have a good foundation of general education
on which to build his technical skill, and the complications of human
nature make it equally necessary that the beginner shall find his way
into work that is suited to his tastes and abilities. A discussion of
general educational principles is concerned only with industrial or
vocational education which supplies these two needs. The questions of
specific trade and professional training fall wholly outside the scope
of this book. However, certain facts connected with the movement to
push industrial training in its narrower sense have a direct bearing on
the larger question. For there is great danger just at present that, as
the work spreads, the really educative type of work that is being done
in Gary and Chicago may be overlooked in favor of trade training.
The attention of influential citizens is more easily focused on
the need of skilled workers than on that of a general educational
readjustment. The former is brought home to them by their own
experience, perhaps by their self-interest. They are readily impressed
with the extent to which Germany has made technical trade training a
national asset in pushing the commercial rivalries of that empire.
Nothing seems so direct and practical as to establish a system of
continuation schools to improve workers between the ages of fourteen
and eighteen who have left school at the earliest age, and to set up
separate schools which shall prepare directly for various lines of shop
work, leaving the existing schools practically unchanged to prepare
pupils for higher schools and for the walks of life where there is
less manual work.
Continuation schools are valuable and important, but only as
palliatives and makeshifts; they deal with conditions which ought not
to exist. Children should not leave school at fourteen, but should
stay in school until they are sixteen or eighteen, and be helped to an
intelligent use of their energies and to the proper choice of work.
It is a commonplace among teachers and workers who come in contact
with any number of pupils who leave school at fourteen to go to work,
that the reason is not so much financial pressure as it is lack of
conviction that school is doing them any good. Of course there are
cases where the child enjoys school but is forced to leave at the first
opportunity in order to earn money. But even in these rare instances it
would usually be wiser to continue the family arrangements that were
in vogue up to the child’s fourteenth birthday, even if they include
charity. The wages of the child of fourteen and fifteen are so low
that they make a material difference only to the family who is already
living on an inadequate scale.
The hopelessness of the situation is increased by the fact that these
children increase their earning capacity much more slowly and reach as
their maximum a much lower level than the child who is kept in school,
so that in the long run the loss both to the child and his family more
than offsets the precarious temporary gain. But the commonest reason
advanced by pupils for leaving school is that they did not like it, and
were anxious to get some real work to do. Not that they were prepared
to go to work, or had finished any course of training, but simply that
school seemed so futile and satisfied so few of their interests that
they seized the first opportunity to make a change to something that
seemed more real, something where there was a visible result.
What is needed then is a reorganization of the ordinary school work to
meet the needs of this class of pupils, so that they will wish to stay
in school for the value of what they are learning. The present system
is bungling and short-sighted; continuation schools patch up some of
its defects; they do not overcome them, nor do they enable the pupils
to achieve a belated intellectual growth, where the maladjustment of
the elementary school has served to check it. The ideal is not to
use the schools as tools of existing industrial systems, but to use
industry for the reorganization of the schools.
There is danger that the concentrated interests of business men and
their influential activity in public matters will segregate training
for industry to the damage of both democracy and education. Educators
must insist upon the primacy of educational values, not in their own
behalf, but because these represent the more fundamental interests of
society, especially of a society organized on a democratic basis. The
place of industry in education is not to hurry the preparation of the
individual pupil for his individual trade. It should be used (as in the
Gary, Indianapolis, and other schools) to give practical value to the
theoretical knowledge that every pupil should have, and to give him an
understanding of the conditions and institutions of his environment.
When this is done the pupil will have the necessary knowledge and
intelligence to make the right choice of work and to direct his own
efforts towards getting the necessary technical skill. His choice will
not be limited by the fact that he already knows how to do one thing
and only one; it will be dictated only by his own ability and natural
aptitude.
The trade and continuation schools take their pupils before they are
old enough or have knowledge enough of their own power to be able to
make a wise choice, and then they drill them in one narrow groove, both
in their theoretical work and in their manual skill, so that the pupil
finds himself marked for one occupation only. If it proves not to be
the right one for him it is still the only one he is trained for. Such
a system does not give an opportunity for the best development of the
individual’s abilities, and it tends to keep people fixed in classes.
The very industries that seem to benefit most by receiving skilled
workers for the first steps of the trade will lose by it in the more
difficult processes, for the workers will not have the background
of general knowledge and wider experience that the graduate of a
technical high school or vocational school should have acquired. But
the introduction of the material of occupations into the schools for
the sake of the control of the environment brought by their use will
do much to give us the proportion of independent, intelligent citizens
that are needed in a democracy.
It is fatal for a democracy to permit the formation of fixed classes.
Differences of wealth, the existence of large masses of unskilled
laborers, contempt for work with the hands, inability to secure the
training which enables one to forge ahead in life, all operate to
produce classes, and to widen the gulf between them. Statesmen and
legislation can do something to combat these evil forces. Wise
philanthropy can do something. But the only fundamental agency for good
is the public school system. Every American is proud of what has been
accomplished in the past in fostering among very diverse elements of
population a spirit of unity and of brotherhood so that the sense of
common interests and aims has prevailed over the strong forces working
to divide our people into classes. The increasing complexity of our
life, with the great accumulation of wealth at one social extreme and
the condition of almost dire necessity at the other makes the task of
democracy constantly more difficult. The days are rapidly passing when
the simple provision of a system in which all individuals mingle is
enough to meet the need. The subject-matter and the methods of teaching
must be positively and aggressively adapted to the end.
There must not be one system for the children of parents who have more
leisure and another for the children of those who are wage-earners. The
physical separation forced by such a scheme, while unfavorable to the
development of a proper mutual sympathy, is the least of its evils.
Worse is the fact that the over bookish education for some and the over
“practical” education for others brings about a division of mental and
moral habits, ideals and outlook.
The academic education turns out future citizens with no sympathy
for work done with the hands, and with absolutely no training for
understanding the most serious of present day social and political
difficulties. The trade training will turn future workers who may
have greater immediate skill than they would have had without their
training, but who have no enlargement of mind, no insight into the
scientific and social significance of the work they do, no education
which assists them in finding their way on or in making their own
adjustments. A division of the public school system into one part which
pursues traditional methods, with incidental improvements, and another
which deals with those who are to go into manual labor means a plan of
social predestination totally foreign to the spirit of a democracy.
The democracy which proclaims equality of opportunity as its ideal
requires an education in which learning and social application, ideas
and practice, work and recognition of the meaning of what is done,
are united from the beginning and for all. Schools such as we have
discussed in this book--and they are rapidly coming into being in
large numbers all over the country--are showing how the ideal of equal
opportunity for all is to be transmuted into reality.
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not
changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected.
Illustrations have been repositioned between nearby paragraphs. In some
cases, they now appear on different pages than the ones in the List of
Illustration.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.
Page 152: “one to ten meters” probably is a misprint for “centimeters”.
Page 154: “in other words” was printed as “others”.
Page 288: “truly representive” was printed that way.