THE SCHOOL AND THE COMMUNITY
=An analogy.=--If we may win a concept of the analogy between the
vitalized school and a filtration-plant, we shall, perhaps, gain a
clearer notion of the purpose of the school and come upon a juster
estimate of its processes. The purpose of the filtration-plant is to
purify, clarify, and render more conducive to life the stream that
passes through, and the function of the school may be stated in the same
terms. The stream that enters the plant is murky and deeply impregnated
with impurities; the same stream when it issues from the plant is clear,
free from impurities, and, therefore, better in respect to nutritive
qualities. The stream of life that flows into the school is composed of
many heterogeneous elements; the stream that issues from the school is
far more homogeneous, clearer, more nearly free from impurities, and,
therefore, more conducive to the life and health of the community. The
stream of life that flows into the school is composed of elements from
all countries, languages, and conditions. In this are Greeks and
barbarians, Jews and Gentiles, saints and sinners, the washed and the
unwashed, the ignorant, the high, the low, the depraved, the weak, and
the strong.
=Life-giving properties.=--The stream that issues from the school is the
very antithesis of all this. Instead of all these heterogeneous
elements, the stream when it comes from the school is composed wholly of
Americans. A hundred flags may be seen in the stream that enters the
school, but the stream that flows out from the school bears only the
American flag. The school has often been called the melting-pot, in
which the many nationalities are fused; but it is far more than that.
True, somehow and somewhere in the school process these elements have
been made to coalesce, but that is not the only change that is wrought.
The volume of life that issues from the school is the same as that which
enters, barring the leakage, but the resultant stream is far more potent
in life-giving properties because of its passage through the school.
=Changes wrought.=--When we see the stream entering the filtration-plant
polluted with impurities and then coming forth clear and wholesome, we
know that something happened to that stream in transit. Similarly, when
we see the stream of life entering the school as a mere aggregation of
more or less discordant elements and then coming forth in a virtually
unified homogeny, we know that something has happened to that stream in
its progress through the school. To determine just what happens in
either case is a task for experts and a task, moreover, that is well
worth while. In either case we may well inquire whether the things that
happen are the very best things that could possibly be made to happen;
and, if not, what improvements are possible and desirable.
=Another misconception.=--The analogy between the plant and the school
will not hold if we still retain in the parlance of school procedure the
expression "getting an education." The act of getting implies material
substance. Education is not a substance but a process, and it is
palpably impossible to get a process. So there can be no such thing as
getting an education, in spite of the tenacity of the expression. Even
to state the fact would seem altogether trite, were we not confronted
every day with the fact that teachers and parents are either unable or
unwilling to substitute some right expression for this wrong one.
Education is not the process of getting but, rather, the process of
becoming, and the difference is as wide as the difference between the
true and the false.
Just how long it will require to eradicate this conception from the
school and society no one can well conjecture. Its presence in our
nomenclature reveals, in a marked way, the strength of habit. Many
teachers will give willing assent to the fact and then use the
expression again in their next sentence. Certainly we shall not even
apprehend the true function and procedure of the vitalized school until
we have eliminated this expression. If we admit the validity of the
contention as to this expression, then we may profitably resume the
consideration of our analogy, for, in that case, we shall find in this
analogy no ineptitude.
=The validity of the analogy.=--We cause the stream of water to pass
through the filtration-plant that it may become rectified; we cause the
stream of life to pass through the school that it may become rectified.
When the stream of water becomes rectified, bodily disease is averted;
when the stream of life is rectified, mental and spiritual disease is
averted. The analogy, therefore, holds good whether we consider the
process itself or its effect. We have only to state the case thus to
have opened up for us a wide field for profitable speculation. The
diseases of mind and spirit that invade society are the causes that lie
back of our police courts, our prisons, and, very often, our almshouses.
Hence, if the stream of life could be absolutely rectified, these
undesirable institutions would disappear, and life for the entire
community would be far more agreeable by reason of their absence.
=Function of the school.=--The school, then, is established and
administered to carry on this process of rectification. By means of this
process ignorance becomes intelligence, coarseness becomes culture,
strife becomes peace, impurity becomes purity, disease becomes health,
and darkness becomes light. The child comes into the school not to get
something but to have something done to and for him that he may become
something that he was not before, and, therefore, that he may the better
execute his functions as a member of society. In short, he comes into
the school that he may pass through the process of rectification. In
this process he loses neither his name, his extraction, his identity,
nor his individuality. On the contrary, all these attributes are so
acted upon by the process that they become assets of the community.
=Language.=--In order to lead to a greater degree of clarity it may be
well to be even more specific in explaining this process of
rectification. Language is fundamental in all the operations of society.
It is indispensable to the grocer, the farmer, the lawyer, the
physician, the manufacturer, the housewife, and the legislator. It is
the means by which members of society communicate with one another, and
without communication, in some form, there can be no social intercourse,
and, therefore, no society. People are all interdependent, and language
is the bond of union. They must use the same language, of course, and
the words must be invested with the same meaning in order to be
intelligible.
=Language a social study.=--Just here great care must be exercised or we
shall go astray in depicting the work of the school in dealing with this
subject of language. The child comes into the school with language of a
sort, but it needs rectification in order to render it readily available
for the purposes of society. Herein lies the crux of the whole matter.
If this child were not to become a member of society, it would matter
little what sort of language he uses or whether he uses any language. If
he were to be banished to some island there to dwell alone, language
would be unnecessary. Hence, his study of language in the school is,
primarily, for the well-being of society and not for himself. Language
is so essential to the life processes that, without it, society would be
thrown out of balance. The needs of society are paramount, and hence
language as it concerns the child relates to him chiefly if not wholly
as a member of society.
=Grammar.=--Grammar is nothing else than language reduced to a system of
common terms that have been agreed upon in the interests of society.
People have entered into a linguistic compact, an agreement that certain
words and combinations of words shall be understood to mean certain
things. The tradesman must understand the purchaser or there can be no
exchange. The ticket-agent must understand the prospective traveler or
the latter cannot take the journey and reach his destination. Hence,
grammar, with all that the term implies, is a means of facilitating the
activities of society and pertains to the individual only in his
relation to society.
=Needs of society.=--True, the individual will find life more agreeable
in society if he understands the common language, just as the traveler
is more comfortable in a foreign country if he understands its language.
But we need emphasis upon the statement that we have grammar in the
school because it is one of the needs of society. The individual may not
need chemistry, but society does need it, and the school must somehow
provide it because of this need. Hence we place chemistry in the school
as one of the ingredients of the solvent which we employ in the process
of rectification. Those who are susceptible to the influences of this
ingredient will become inoculated with it and bear it forth into the
uses of society.
=Caution.=--But just here we find the most delicate and difficult task
of the school. Here we encounter some of the fundamental principles of
psychology as explained and emphasized by James, McDougall, and Strayer.
Here we must begin our quest for the native tendencies that condition
successful teaching. We must discover what pupils are susceptible to
chemistry before we can proceed with the work of inoculation. This has
been the scene and source of many tragedies. We have been wont to ask
whether chemistry will be good for the boy instead of making an effort
to discover whether the boy will be good for chemistry--whether his
native tendencies render him susceptible to chemistry.
=Some mistakes.=--Our procedure has often come but little short of an
inquisition. We have followed our own predilections and prejudices
instead of being docile at the feet of Nature and asking her what to do.
We have applied opprobrious epithets and resorted to ostracism. We have
been freely dispensing suspensions and expulsions in a vain effort to
prove that the school is both omniscient and omnipotent. We have tried
to transform a poet into a mechanic, a blacksmith into an artist, and an
astronomer into a ditcher. And our complacency in the presence of the
misfits of the school is the saddest tragedy of all. We have taken
counsel with tradition rather than with the nature of the pupil, the
while rejoicing in our own infallibility.
=Native dispositions.=--Society needs only a limited number of chemists
and only such as have the native tendencies that will make chemistry
most effective in the activities of society. But we have been proceeding
upon the agreeable assumption that every pupil has such native
tendencies. Such an assumption absolves the school, of course, from the
necessity of discovering what pupils are susceptible to chemistry and of
devising ways and means of making this important discovery. Because we
do not know how to make this discovery we find solace in the assumption
that it cannot or need not be made. We then proceed to apply the
Procrustean bed principle with the very acme of _sang froid_. Here is
work for the efficiency expert. When children are sitting at the table
of life, the home and the school in combination ought to be able to
discover what food they crave and not insist upon their eating olives
when they really crave oatmeal.
=The ideal of the school.=--We shall not have attained to right
conditions until such time as the stream of life that issues from the
school shall combine the agencies, in right proportions and relations,
that will conserve the best interests of society and administer its
activities with the maximum of efficiency. This is the ideal that the
school must hold up before itself as the determining plan in its every
movement. But this ideal presupposes no misfits in society. If there are
such, then it will decline in some degree from the plane of highest
efficiency. If there are some members of society who are straining at
the leash which Nature provided for them and are trying to do work for
which they have neither inclination nor aptitude, they cannot render the
best service, and society suffers in consequence.
=Misfits.=--The books teem with examples of people who are striving to
find themselves by finding their work. But nothing has been said of
society in this same strain. We have only to think of society as
composed of all the people to realize that only by finding its work can
society find itself. And so long as there is even one member of society
who has not found himself, so long must we look upon this one exception
as a discordant note in the general harmony. If one man is working at
the forge who by nature is fitted for a place at the desk, then neither
this man nor society is at its best. And a large measure of the
responsibility for such discord and misfits in society must be laid at
the door of the school because of its inability to discover native
tendencies.
=Common interests.=--There are many interests that all children have in
common when they enter the school in the morning, and these interests
may well become the starting points in the day's work. The conversations
at breakfast tables and the morning paper beget and stimulate many of
these interests and the school does violence to the children, the
community, and itself if it attempts to taboo these interests. Its work
is to rectify and not to suppress. When the children return to their
homes in the evening they should have clearer and larger conceptions of
the things that animated them in the morning. If they come into the
school all aglow with interest in the great snowstorm of the night
before, the teacher does well to hold the lesson in decimals in abeyance
until she has led around to the subject by means of readings or stories
that have to do with snowstorms. The paramount and common interest of
the children in the morning is snow and, therefore, the day should hold
snow in the foreground in their thinking, so that, at the close of the
day, their horizon in the snow-world may be extended, and so that they
may thus be able to make contributions to the home on the subject of
snow.
=Real interests.=--In the morning the pupils had objective snow in which
they rollicked and gamboled in glee. All day long they had subjective
snow in which the teacher with fine technique caused them to revel; and,
in the evening, their concept of snow was so much enlarged that they
experienced a fresh access of delight. And that day was their snow
epiphany. On that day there was no break in the stream of life at the
schoolhouse door. There was no supplanting of the real interests of the
morning with fictitious interests of the school, to be endured with ill
grace until the real interests of the morning could be resumed in the
evening. On the contrary, by some magic that only the vitalized teacher
knows, every exercise of the day seemed to have snow as its center. Snow
seemed to be the major in the reading, in the spelling, in the
geography, and in the history.
On that day they became acquainted with Hannibal and his struggles
through the snow of the Alps. On that day they learned of the avalanche,
its origin, its devastating power, and, of course, its spelling. On that
day they read "Snow Bound" and the snow poems of Longfellow and Lowell.
Thus the stream of life was clarified, rectified, and amplified as it
passed through the school, and, incidentally, the teacher and the school
were glorified in their thoughts.
=Circus day.=--But snow is merely typical. On other days other interests
are paramount. On circus day the children, again, have a common interest
which affords the teacher a supreme opportunity. The day has been
anticipated by the teacher, and the pupils have cause to wonder how and
whence she ever accumulated such a wealth of pictures of animal life.
All day long they are regaled with a subjective menagerie, and when they
attend the circus in the evening they astonish their parents by the
extent and accuracy of their information. They know the animals by name,
their habitat, their habits, their food, and their uses. In short, they
seemed to have compassed a working knowledge of the animal kingdom in a
single day through the skill of the teacher who knows how to make the
school reënforce their life interests.
=The quality of life.=--If we now extend the scope of common interests
that belong in the category with the snow and the animals, we shall
readily see that the analogy of the filtration-plant holds good in the
entire régime of the vitalized school. But we must never lose sight of
the additional fact that the quality of life that issues from the school
is far better because of its passage through the school. The volume may
be less, through unfortunate leakage, but the quality is so much better
that its value to society is enhanced a hundred- or a thousand-fold. The
people who pass through the school have learned a common language, have
been imbued with a common purpose, have learned how to live and work in
hearty accord, have come to revere a common flag, and have become
citizens of a common country.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. What is the general function of the school?
2. What is meant by the school's being the "melting-pot"?
3. What objection is there to the expression "getting an education"?
What would be a better expression to indicate the purpose of attending
school?
4. What diseases that invade society would be checked if in school the
stream of life were rectified?
5. Why is it desirable that pupils shall not lose their individuality in
passing through school?
6. What is the primary purpose of each school study, for instance,
language?
7. What is the true purpose of grammar?
8. What do these functions of the school and of its studies teach us
regarding the adaptation of subjects and methods to the individual?
9. Tell something of the work done in vocational guidance in Boston.
10. Tell something of the methods employed by some corporations in
choosing employees naturally fitted for the work.
11. Tell something of the psychological tests for vocations devised by
Professor Münsterberg. (Psychology and Industrial Efficiency, Hugo
Münsterberg, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1913.)
12. What do you think is the practicable way of helping the pupils in
your school to develop along the lines of their natural endowment?
13. What is the effect on society when a man does work for which he is
not fitted?
14. Show some ways in which the interests of the school as a whole may
be fostered and a natural development of the class as a whole be
secured.
15. There has been a big fire in town. Show how the interest in this
event may be used in the day's work.
16. In what ways is one who has had private instruction likely to be a
poorer citizen than one who has attended school?
17. What conditions might cause some of those who go through school to
be polluted instead of rectified? Whose fault would it be?
18. What questions should we ask ourselves about the things that are
being done in our schools?