SECTION 1. The provisions of Art. XXIII of the education law,_Our Schools in War Time—and After

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OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME--AND AFTER

ARTHUR D. DEAN, SC.D.

Professor of Vocational Education, Teachers College

Columbia University, and Supervising Officer

Bureau of Vocational Training, New York

State Military Training Commission

Ginn And Company

Boston · New York · Chicago · London

Atlanta · Dallas · Columbus · San Francisco

518.6

The Athenæum Press

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FOREWORD

It is not an army that we must shape and train for war; it is a

nation.... The whole nation must be a team in which each man shall play

the part for which he is best fitted.... Each man shall be classified

for service in the place to which it shall best serve the general good

to call him.... The significance of this cannot be overstated. It is a

new thing in our history and a landmark in our progress. It is a new

manner of accepting and vitalizing our duty to give ourselves with

thoughtful devotion to the common purpose of us all.--WOODROW WILSON,

_Proclamation, May 18, 1917_

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. BRINGING THE WAR INTO THE SCHOOLS 1

II. WAR AND COMMUNITY USES OF OUR SCHOOLS 17

III. THE FIELD FOR INDUSTRIAL AND TRADE SCHOOLS 53

IV. OUR COLLEGES AND TECHNICAL INSTITUTES 80

V. THE OPPORTUNITY FOR MANUAL AND HOUSEHOLD

ARTS 115

VI. THE WORK IMPULSES OF YOUTH 135

VII. ORGANIZED BOY POWER VS. MILITARY DRILL 165

VIII. RED CROSS AND OTHER COMMUNITY WORK 192

IX. REËDUCATION OF THE DISABLED 211

X. FARM CADETS 234

XI. THE ORGANIZATION OF A CADET CAMP 272

XII. A SUMMARIZED PROGRAM OF ACTION 304

INDEX 331

OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME--AND AFTER

CHAPTER I

BRINGING THE WAR INTO THE SCHOOLS

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?

CHAPTER II

WAR AND COMMUNITY USES OF OUR SCHOOLS

An evaluating test for each of our school subjects has at last been

found. _The test is the capacity of the subject to respond to a

national need or a national ideal._ In many instances of the countries

concerned in this great war the schools as a whole have amply justified

their existence, and many of the subjects taught have stood through

this world emergency the acid test of meeting national needs. The

scientific and efficiency spirit of Germany is reflected in the posters

spread over Berlin: "Send your cherry, peach, and plum seeds to the

schoolhouse with your children," seeds being used for making fat and

oil. The spirit of France has been reflected, as will be seen in the

following pages, in the work of the teachers and the children for the

preservation of that wonderful nationalism of France. The schools of

England are reshaping themselves--in fact, are being remade--as a

result of the shortcomings set forth by the war.

The schools of America are to go forward. Patriotism now has a new

meaning. The principal from his school platform has opportunity for

announcements and talks other than those dealing with routine matters.

The cooking teacher has opportunity to develop new recipes adapted to

present needs. The teacher of history may redraw almost every day the

map of Europe. The teacher of manual training may substitute problems

in concrete for those requiring high-priced wood materials. The school

buildings near soldiers' camps may, like the Washington (D. C.)

buildings, be opened for educational purposes for soldiers, that they

may take up general or special educational work. Teachers of English

may have their pupils study President Wilson's messages of state as

models of English composition and expressions of American democracy.

The opportunity is before the schools and the children. There are

in our school system three elements which may be of use in war: the

building itself with its equipment, the school population of boy and

girl power, and the teaching force.

In England, during the first year of the war, all three were called

into requisition. Within a few months over 1000 school buildings

were in temporary military use, and even on August 1, 1916, 180

elementary- and 20 secondary-school buildings were still occupied for

war work,--for hospitals, billeting of troops, housing of munition

workers, etc.,--the number of children displaced being 129,855. In

many cases the use was expected to be temporary, but many buildings

have been retained permanently. The children whose schooling was thus

interrupted, when too young for employment, generally drifted aimlessly

into juvenile delinquency, while those older, although below the

established employment age, went to farms and munition factories. That

is, the taking away of the school building was concomitant with the

suspension of restrictions on age of employment and hours of labor.

The children of the prosperous class were likewise affected by the

departure of over 50 per cent of the teachers for military service.

These many interruptions in the carrying on of educational work were

the result of the short-war fallacy; they were emergency measures

adopted to meet a condition which it was generally supposed would last

but a few months. When, however, it was realized by statesmen and the

public that the interference with education and the suspension of

laws regulating employment were resulting in irreparable injury to

health and morals of an employed child population under 13 years of

age of 150,000, and an idle younger population variously estimated at

from 200,000 to 300,000, corrective measures were adopted. American

schools must learn from English experience what to avoid. There are

many legitimate uses of schools which England is now employing; and the

warnings of interested English educators should keep our legislatures

and municipalities from breaking down the compulsory-education laws or

converting our schools into industrial plants. Our aim, as previously

stated, should be to bring the war to the school curriculum for

educational purposes, not to take the schools into the war, losing

sight of their definite function.

In France, at the outbreak of the war, many of the school buildings

were requisitioned, and 30,000 teachers were called to the colors.

The hardship to the young resulting from this patriotic sacrifice was

met as far as possible by the generosity of private citizens who gave

rooms or buildings for classes, and by professional men, too old for

service, who volunteered to carry on the work of teaching. France was

swift to realize that education must be carried on at all costs. In

districts near the fighting line schools were of necessity transformed

into hospitals, often with a staff of women teachers temporarily acting

as nurses and attendants; but it has been the policy of the department

of public instruction to regard this service as temporary, and the

teachers as conscripted for education.

The trying circumstances under which the schools have been carried

on, serving nobly during the term after hours and during vacations,

make their achievements a record of honor. In the country districts

where all the local officials were mobilized, the teacher became the

sole agent of government, making out passports, requisitions, relief

lists, etc., procuring food, operating a public kitchen, acting as

postmaster, doing guard duty, and rendering numberless other services

to the community. One of the first tasks of the primary schools was to

undertake entire care of children left without adequate protection.

In country districts the teachers were, in default of newspapers, the

dispensers of official information, explaining government loans and

giving talks on the progress of the war. Thus the entire village was

brought into the schoolhouse, which became the real center of the

community.

In the United States and Canada the schools may well copy some of the

measures initiated in Europe. That we are 3000 miles from the actual

battleground ought, for the present, to keep us from considering

any lowering of educational bars or from converting our buildings

into purposes other than educational. Europe advises us that such

transformation is of an emergency nature and only to be made under

stress of an invasion.

It is the purpose of this chapter to consider some general uses of

our buildings, our equipment (including the teaching force), and the

activities of our pupils, which have been made in the past two or three

years, excluding and reserving for the most part for later discussion

the introduction of war work in manual-training, domestic-arts, and

domestic-science courses, and the part-time agricultural labor.

An important use of our schools, and one which should be made more

general throughout the country, is that of a distributing center for

government pamphlets, information cards, etc. In New York City the

various welfare committees appointed by Mayor Mitchel designated the

public schools as mediums through which to circulate papers on "safety

first," fire prevention, uses of various food products, etc., and

thus reach the families of the vast foreign population through their

children. The city's pledges of national loyalty to be signed by adults

were circulated by the pupils shortly after the declaration of war.

Wider publicity can be given to federal regulations, tax measures,

employment modifications, etc., by the distribution of notices to

pupils of upper grades, following the explanation by the teacher. While

our people as a whole read, though hastily, the newspapers morning

and evening, and may find in them all governmental measures, it is

nevertheless true that we shall be assured of a wider distribution

of information by using the pupil as the carrier of it to the home.

In England the schools, as well as the Boy Scouts organization, have

served as national distributing agencies for war-office notices,

Parliamentary information, and agricultural propaganda.

A portion of a letter from Sir Robert Blair, chairman of the Education

Committee of the London County Council, to Superintendent Maxwell of

New York City, in May, 1917, calls attention to the service of the

schools in this connection.

War has come upon us so unexpectedly that our people not only

did not understand the true position but on the whole knew very

little about the causes which had led to the outbreak. The public

press, bookstalls, and the public libraries were considerably

augmented by books and pamphlets on the subject, and it was a

natural prompting that gave rise to the issue to the schools of a

considerable number of documents, memoranda, and pamphlets. These

circulars and pamphlets were mostly all issued within the first

year of the war. The first phase of the pamphlets is historical,

while the second became economical. The economical phase in its

first stages was concentrated on war savings for the purpose of war

loans and in anticipation, by the provision of "nest eggs," of the

dislocation that might occur at the end of the war. In its later

stages--within the last six months--the economical phase has been

directed chiefly to economy in food, owing to the menace of the

submarine campaign.

A further use of the school population in hours outside the daily

session is that of giving help in taking a census. In England school

teachers and pupils did most of the work of compiling the National

been done in the United States, such as the taking of the agricultural

census in fifty-six counties (no census was taken for the counties of

Hamilton, Kings, Queens, Richmond, and New York) in the state of New

York in April, 1917. Under the joint auspices of the State Food Supply

Commission and the State Education Department a survey was ordered of

the agricultural resources of the state and of the requirements for

increased production, the details of which were worked out at Ithaca

at the State College of Agriculture. Through the appointed county

enumerators, instructions were transmitted to the various school

districts.

The actual work of this census was begun in most counties on April 23,

the records being practically all obtained by April 25, the teachers

and pupils in each district, assisted when necessary by other persons,

procuring the original facts from farmers and making the summaries

for their school districts. From these records the state was within

ten days furnished with the complete amount of seed and live stock

wanted by farmers and for sale by farmers; with the statements of

the transportation difficulties; with the itemized needs of labor,

fertilizer, and spray materials; and with the complete enumeration of

the state,--people, land, and live stock.

Such work by pupils might well become an established yearly activity.

The practice of gathering and tabulating information has an obvious

arithmetical value; and the interest developed in investigating the

resources of the community has an educational significance which should

keep us from limiting it to emergency periods.

The comparative table on page 26 (one of thirteen developed out of the

census) not only illustrates facts which the children obtained, but

also shows the magnitude of the work they undertook.

One of the best community uses of the school is as a center for

instruction in conserving food products. With the absolute shortage

of the world's food supply, Americans must anticipate this shortage

in coming seasons and revert to the preserving methods of their

grandparents,--measures fallen into disuse in crowded cities because

of lack of storage room and the ease with which the fresh products have

been obtained, whatever the season.

ACRES OF CROPS IN 56 COUNTIES IN NEW YORK WITH COMPARISONS FOR THE SAME

COUNTIES IN 1909

======================+=============+===========+==============

| | |ACRES EXPECTED

CROP | ACRES (U.S. |ACRES GROWN|TO BE GROWN IN

|CENSUS, 1909)| IN 1916 | 1917

----------------------+-------------+-----------+--------------

Corn for grain | 511,339 | 336,543 | 495,469

Corn for silo | 259,082 | 362,413 | 422,867

Oats | 1,302,041 | 1,102,004 | 1,250,346

Barley | 79,955 | 92,422 | 111,634

Buckwheat | 286,128 | 257,911 | 300,090

Winter wheat | 289,126 | 344,278 | 387,813

Spring wheat | 289,126 | 12,373 | 32,425

Rye | 130,449 | 114,691 | 120,239

Field beans | 115,695 | 194,053 | 275,790

Alfalfa | 35,343 | 160,985 | 181,912

Other hay | 4,737,326 | 4,073,333 | 3,963,678

Cabbage | 33,770 | 38,898 | 68,890

Potatoes | 390,552 | 305,649 | 382,840

Canning-factory crops}| | 44,098 | 60,155

Other vegetables and }| 131,686 | |

garden }| | 58,340 | 71,833

Miscellaneous crops | 21,843 | 35,056 | 40,895

Apples | 281,061 | | 346,633

Cherries | 4,211 | | 12,414

Peaches | 15,340 | | 50,149

Pears | 13,378 | | 36,802

Plums | 5,742 | | 8,569

Vineyards | 52,999 | | 52,350

Small fruit | 22,388 | | 28,171

----------------------+-------------+-----------+--------------

Total | 8,719,454 | | 8,701,964

======================+=============+===========+==============

Even villages which have no gas supply may follow the example of cities

and towns in using the school kitchen, already installed as part of a

domestic-science equipment or newly supplied by popular subscription,

as a community canning center. Certainly schools are as well adapted

for the purpose as department stores and Young Women's Christian

Associations, which have been leaders in the movement.

The teaching of methods of preserving is primarily the function of a

school, and every suitable school building should be employed for it.

The old-fashioned preserving meant time, drudgery, expense, quantities

of sugar, and doubtful results. A demonstration of the newer methods

and the opportunity for community canning should be given by the school

to the neighborhood. Community canning induces a far more effective

conservation of food than is possible for the individual kitchen. Few

households can afford to buy and store the vast kettles, the perfected

drying and dehydrating ovens, which can be included in the equipment

of a school teaching the scientific preserving of food and vegetables.

As this is done almost wholly in the summer, it would not interfere

with the term's work of the pupils and, in fact, offers the high-school

girls an excellent opportunity to assist in civic service of a most

practical nature. In the summer of 1917 Seattle maintained 20 centers

for home-economics teaching for adult women, the government bulletin

"How to Select Food" being used as a textbook.

There have been wholesome experiments in community canning in Lakewood,

and in Bernards Township, New Jersey. In the latter in each school was

an experienced teacher to supervise the work of preserving performed

by high-school girls of the neighborhood, the fruits and vegetables

being sold by the townspeople to the school or brought by them to be

conserved by coöperative canning for their own use in the future. This

service of the girls was on an equality with that of the boys who

belonged to the agricultural army. In Kansas City the surplus garden

products canned by schoolgirls were used for the school lunches.

England's schools now have "open days" on which parents may be admitted

to receive the instruction given to the children in the economical

cooking of the food which the food controller's instructions show

is likely to be available for general consumption; also (quoting

from a letter from Sir Robert Blair of the London County Council,

May 30, 1917) the responsible mistresses of the evening schools and

the domestic-economy staff employed in these schools are organizing

traveling kitchens in 29 boroughs within the county. These traveling

kitchens form practically a demonstration set of apparatus by which

the simplest forms of cookery can be shown to 100 or 200 people. The

demonstrations are well attended, and the people in small villages

thus have the opportunity of those in larger settlements to learn

from experts methods of making palatable the food products less well

understood.

It may be urged that community canning has its place outside cities

of the first class. New York City certainly cannot be held to be the

center of an agricultural district, and yet valuable experiments in

food conservation are being made there. One is concerned primarily

with the prevention of waste. Of the thousands of pounds of perishable

vegetables and fruit which are brought each day to the produce piers,

much is prohibited from being sold to retailers because of injuries

received in transportation. When more than 20 per cent has been

injured, it has not paid wholesalers to salvage the uninjured portion.

As a result, a ruinous quantity of produce has gone to waste, often

being dumped in the harbor for want of better disposal. The loss as

estimated by the board of health has been 225,000 pounds a week.

To save this food by making quick use of it, in July, 1917, Mayor

Mitchel's Committee of Women on National Defense opened a conservation

kitchen in a disused school building in the Williamsburg Bridge

section. Here the uncertain quantity of vegetables salvaged from the

produce piers was brought to the school, picked over, and sterilized,

partly by paid labor, partly by the volunteer labor of members of the

Women's University Club and other organizations, or city women who were

willing to contribute their labor in the cause of food saving. This

work was aided by the State Food Supply Commission and New York's board

of health, one of whose inspectors passed judgment on the food used in

the canning and drying experiments. The salvaged food was brought from

the piers to the kitchens by Boy Scouts, ubiquitously useful in any

public undertaking. If it had not been that the kitchen was opened in

vacation, the school population would have had its share of work to do.

To this kitchen any woman might go to be taught processes or actually

to can produce.

While it was not possible to use all the produce brought in, even by

keeping the kitchen as full of workers as space would allow and cooking

as much as 480 gallons of food at a time, the work in this old school

building is illustrative of what can be done in community centers

to eliminate waste, and is a vital example of the efficient use of a

school building in vacation. The cost in this case was met by special

contributions of organizations and individuals. But in smaller places

this work might be maintained by the town itself on a less elaborate

scale. Such work should not be limited to the war period. It is a

practical and efficient plan for all time.

The continued war will undoubtedly increase not only the price but the

scarcity of cotton and woolen goods. Where it has hitherto not paid to

make over clothing repeatedly because of the cheapness and ease with

which new garments and children's wear have been procured, it is now

important to understand thrifty saving of all kinds of fabrics and

apparel.

Home-economics women of Berkeley, California, aided in collecting and

making over old clothing. In Portland, Oregon, a cleaner and dyer took

as his bit of service the cleaning and disinfecting of all the clothing

which was remade by the school children.

In England's county schools there have been held exhibitions of thrift,

to show children when and how economies can be practiced. Some of the

examples shown under the heading of "Utilization of Waste Material"

were as follows: old linen collars and cuffs made into baggage labels,

window cleaners made from pieces of old gloves, house slippers made

from old felt hats, mops made of bits of rags fastened to a nail. Ways

were shown of making use of scraps of wool left over from knitting,

the wasting of an inch of wool being regarded as treasonable in the

country's shortage; methods of refooting stockings were also displayed,

as well as many uses for pieces of worn table and bed linen and old

carpets.

In times of normal plenty such exhibitions would not attract attention,

but no greater evidence of the reduced state of a nation at war can

be had than the seriousness with which these exhibitions of household

thrift have been viewed by the population. A clipping from a newspaper

of rural England requests that children go into the pastures and pick

from the bushes the bits of wool which the sheep have rubbed off.

For several years, at least, there will be high prices and scarcity

of materials. Our children must be taught the necessity of preventing

waste of fabrics as well as of food. Millions of dollars worth of

cotton and wool have been destroyed in military and munition use.

But it is not only because war conditions have made material scarce

and high that thrift in their use must be insisted upon in every

household; we must remember that billions of dollars will be required

to pay for this war and each household will be required to make its

contribution. Expenditures in every direction must be curbed and the

wise disposition of every dollar must be made. A year or so ago the

Bankers Association of America launched a campaign for thrift teaching.

We were then told that, as individuals, we must save for the future.

The present high cost of living shows that we are obliged to save in

the present in order to live in the present, but the future will tell

us to save in order that we, as a nation, may pay for the war.

[Illustration: Old-fashioned methods of preserving must again prevail.

There is educational value in community conservation. Montclair (New

Jersey) boys made community evaporators, having a capacity of from five

to eight bushels of fruit a day, at a cost of only $10.]

[Illustration: A mowing machine is a problem in high-school mechanics,

and these farm cadets of New York State see, perhaps for the first

time, a use for it.]

[Illustration: A day's outing for a purpose. Albany and Troy (New York)

orphan-asylum boys on their way to "do their bit" in the currant fields.]

[Illustration: A lesson in service geography. Boys from Albany and

Troy (New York) picking currants, near Hudson (New York), which were

preserved in Yonkers Trades School for shipment to France.]

Many community services may be rendered during the war by the principal

of a school. He may, as has been done, organize patriotic meetings,

enlisting the aid of the churches and arousing the interest of chambers

of commerce, civic clubs, and women's clubs in the Red Cross, the

Liberty Loan, and school war gardens. His assembly exercises may

be made vital through talks to the pupils on opportunities for war

service; through platform recognition of boys and girls rendering

special farm, garden, Red Cross, and food-conservation help; by placing

on a conspicuous bulletin a roll of honor of graduates and students

engaged in such work; by keeping the school in touch with graduates

who are enlisted in the army and navy by reading their letters to the

school and sending school packets to them. He may advise economy in

the use of foods and clothing, the elimination of expenditures in soda

water, ice cream, and gum, and the sacrifice of pleasure for national

ends. He may urge the use of savings in the purchase of government

bonds and war-savings certificates. Where the school has been raising

money for pictures or a phonograph, he may suggest that the funds

raised be used for the purchase of one or more government bonds, to be

held by the school as an asset until the close of the war, when the

bond may be sold and the money used for its original purpose of buying

the phonograph or pictures. In the case of some private secondary

schools, and large public schools like the Washington Irving and DeWitt

Clinton high schools, New York, the pupils and teachers have subscribed

money and given entertainments for the purchase of an ambulance, the

gift of the school to the American Expeditionary Force. In one New York

City school, through the efforts of a student organization, Liberty

Loan bonds to the amount of $479,800 were sold.

The principal in country districts should make himself fully informed

of the details of the federal farm-loan plan, the sources of available

seed supply, the posters and bulletins of nation and state regarding

the mobilization of schools and colleges, and, of course, he should be

especially active in encouraging the home-garden projects.

A correspondent in the London _Times_, June 14, 1917, writing of that

indispensable teaching of thrift in household affairs, of making the

present generation of young girls intelligently self-sufficient in

domestic and industrial life, cries, "This brings us to the crux of

the whole situation: Who shall teach the teachers?" The government and

state bulletins on food production and conservation, the literature

sent out by state councils of defense and public safety on improved

methods of preserving, the pronouncements by banking houses on thrift

measures and means of attaining them, the Boy Scouts, Y.M.C.A. and

Y.W.C.A. leaflets on war gardens and food economies are, in America,

beginning to answer this question.

Assuredly the war places an additional burden on the teachers and

gives them a new opportunity for educating the pupils. A teacher does

not have to belong to the department of domestic arts and science to

organize Red Cross circles nor to instruct girls in food conservation.

A ten-minute talk each morning by teacher or pupils, before the opening

of school, with discussion on such topics as "Why a man with a hundred

dollars to invest should buy a Liberty Bond," "New occupations open

to women because of the war," "The reason for the scarcity of certain

products," "Home substitutes for various manufactured necessities," and

many others suggested by new conditions should be very helpful.

An unusually significant experiment known as the "War Savings"

movement has been made in English schools. On May 5, 1916, the Board

of Education issued a circular asking for the assistance of local

education authorities in making known through public elementary schools

the facilities afforded by the issue of War Savings certificates.

Then, with the coöperation of these authorities and teachers, special

lessons were given on the subject, and copies of a leaflet explaining

the purpose of the War Savings Association were widely distributed

to the parents through their children. As a result a large number of

War Savings associations were formed in direct connection with the

schools. The success of the movement is evident from the records given

in the report of the Board of Education for 1915-1916. In one populous

midland county the great majority of the schools have established

associations; in another, a northern county, some 70 per cent of the

schools have taken part and record nearly 10,000 subscribers. In one

midland town a school of about 1400 children purchased certificates to

the value of £585 in three months. But it is not only in large schools

that the pupils have contributed generously; a remote little school

in a northern county, with only 10 children on its register, has 10

subscribers to its credit and has saved £35, buying 43 certificates.

In view of the fact that successive issues of bonds must be made by the

United States and other governments of the world, this method of making

subscription to the war loan popular is worthy of attention. The public

schools have, as never before, the opportunity of showing the practical

value of investing, in peace as well as in war time, in government

and other bonds. Pupils should realize the difference between money

invested in a way to be beneficial not only to the investor but to his

state and country, and money invested in ordinary channels.

New York State teachers had an opportunity similar to those of England.

The Regents of the University of the state of New York gave formal

approval of a plan by which teachers throughout the public schools of

the state could aid the Liberty Loan committee of the Federal Reserve

Bank in giving instruction and information about the second Liberty

Loan. A special committee was appointed by the Board of Regents to

act in a supervisory capacity to keep the State Education Department

in touch with the large financial interests conducting the loan. The

secretary to Commissioner Finley, as the representative of the Regents

and the State Education Department, was assigned for temporary services

in the office of the Loan committee.

The program in brief was to have the teachers act as agents for

subscriptions for the Liberty Loan. They distributed blanks to pupils

in the school, who in turn took them to their parents. They were

encouraged to subscribe themselves. They did not handle any money or

checks, but turned the subscription blanks over to the local bank,

which was, of course, in direct touch with the Loan committee in New

York City.

A primer of instruction for teachers was prepared in the simplest

possible terms. As published by the Publicity Bureau of the United

States Treasury Department it was called "A Source Book of the Second

Liberty Loan." This primer explained in detail the nature of the bonds,

their security, and the terms and prices; it described the nature of

bond markets in general, the sources from which interest is paid, the

previous records of United States bonds, and all other matter which was

of value in elementary financial instruction. It was all set forth in a

way which was very helpful not only in assisting in the sale of bonds

but in the larger sense of furthering instruction in bonds, interest,

discounts, etc., in connection with work in arithmetic. And in what

better way could arithmetical instruction be furthered?

It is highly probable that this plan of informing the public relative

to government issues of bonds and certificates, initiated in New York,

will extend to all parts of the country in connection with the next

Loan campaign.

How the responsibility of the teacher has been met in France is in part

suggestive. The teachers have collected large funds to finance the

enterprise of caring for thousands of families of Belgian and French

refugees. They also collected from the civilian population several

millions of francs, the teachers taxing themselves according to a

fixed schedule. They have been especially successful in bringing to

light for investment stores of hidden gold in the homes of provincial

savers. Surprising results have been attained through their persistent,

methodical propaganda. In one large provincial town, after a talk to

the older pupils by the mistress of the school, in four days an amount

equal to 7200 francs was brought in. In the same school the following

composition was given out to the pupils as part of an admission

examination in penmanship.

THE GOLD OF FRANCE[1]

France has need of its gold to defend its invaded territory. It is a

sacred duty for every French man and woman, rich or poor, to send to

the coffers of the State the hundreds of louis from their strong boxes,

the few louis hidden in the linen chest at home, even the single louis

in the children's toy bank. To keep in one's own possession, selfishly,

the money which could serve our dear France is a crime against

patriotism. So, little girls, do not hesitate to break open your banks,

even if they have only a half louis inside, and gladly take in exchange

the note which the Bank of France will give you. More than that, in

your vacation in the country, set yourselves to get grandmother to

empty her stocking,--she is sometimes rather stingy with her money. But

you know well enough how to coax those who love you when you want a

toy, or ornament, or bonbons. Use your influence with your grandparents

now, so that they will bring into the public treasury the gold of

France. In this way you will have contributed to the coming victory

that we are all hoping for, you will have helped our brave soldiers to

clear away the German whose presence defiles our land. Go, then, all of

you! Hunt out all the money that is lying idle. It is for France!

[1] Edouard Petit, De l'école à la guerre, p. 175. Paris, 1916.

Thus the schools have worked to bring to light the hoarded gold of

thrifty peasants for investment in the national loan.

Tangible as this service of the teachers has been to France, of

greater importance has been their work of making clear to the villages

the cause of France. In November, 1914, the Department of Public

Instruction sent out an appeal to the professional and volunteer

teachers in the secondary schools, saying that the schools must adapt

their program to the duties and needs created by the hostilities.

The teachers will do their best to make the schools serve in

the national defense. In the evenings the old men, the youths, and

the women will gather together, and the teachers will tell them the

news, explain things that happen, speak to them of patriotism, and

read to them from our writers whose pages are inspired with the

glorious deeds of our history past and present.

It is reported that in the girls' schools in France war has changed

the whole aspect of education. History, geography, lectures on

literature, subjects for literary composition or moral instruction,--in

fact everything,--is treated from the point of view of country and

of patriotic duty. In music practically nothing is sung but the

"Marseillaise," the "Chant du Depart," and the national songs of the

Allies. Reading is confined often to official military orders and

reports, while drawings are usually of war material or characters.

It is no less the duty of our teachers to make clear to their pupils

the "cause" of America. Soon after the opening of the European war a

United States senator traveled through the belligerent countries. His

articles on Europe at war commented caustically on the ignorance of

the English working people of the cause of the war, and of the purpose

for which the Allies were fighting. An article on America at war could

truthfully contain like criticism of a considerable portion of our

population.

Shortly after the United States entered the war a teacher in one

of our largest city high schools, where a large proportion of the

pupils are of either foreign birth or foreign parentage, asked 200

pupils of from 14 to 18 years to write a brief statement of what they

considered to be the cause of America's entrance into the war. While

these answers covered an incredible range of inaccuracy, not one

showed an understanding of the events which led to the declaration of

April, 1917. "Congress has declared war so that the rich folks can

get richer," "We are at war because this is a rich man's country,"

predominated as replies. When asked what a citizen owed his country

in return for political and religious freedom, students replied in as

vague and cynical a way as to the first question.

To combat this ignorance of national motives the teacher distributed

copies of President Wilson's address of April 2, with the ostensible

purpose of analyzing it as an exercise in argument and exposition,--a

study which finally resulted in enabling these students to make

intelligent, if occasionally unsympathetic, answers to questions

regarding the nation's action and policy.

Now to residents of favored parts of the country where the population

is English speaking and largely American born, inheriting American

ideals and traditions, the ignorance of these high-school pupils seems

exceptional, but educators know from experiments made in colleges

and secondary institutions that the majority of students are not

intelligent on modern events of national significance, any more than is

the average worker. Nearly all high schools have in their curriculum

the study of current events, whether in history or oral English

courses. It is the duty of the teacher to use the study in such a

manner as to obtain a patriotic reaction to the topics presented and

discussed, and in this manner to make clear why we are fighting and

what we are fighting for.

Out of this war we must obtain a new spirit of patriotism. Now is the

time to strike. Events depicted in the daily press show how great is

the need. In this connection the Council of Defense of Connecticut, in

an effective campaign working through the schools, states in a recent

publication:

The war is bound to have a deep influence on American life

and thought, and we should be watchful to direct this into right

channels. The country is shot through and through with the

one-sided philosophy that the State is an institution to be leaned

upon and filched from, but not to be served. The schools should

train the children in the fundamental contract between citizen and

State. The idea of mutuality should be developed. The State owes

duties to the citizen, but the citizen owes reciprocal duties to

the State.

In September, 1914, as soon after the declaration of war as military

and agricultural conditions would permit the schools to open, the

French Minister of Public Instruction sent an official circular to all

of the schools. He stated that the first lesson in every school should

be devoted to France: to its present danger and its heroic resistance;

to the ideals of humanity and justice for which she fought; to the

memory of the valor of her soldiers; to the justice of her cause. He

desired to make certain at the earliest possible moment that every

school child in France take his part spiritually and intellectually in

the epic conflict which France was waging for right and justice.

His decree outlining the first lesson for every child of France

expresses so clearly the French attitude and feeling that the following

free rendering of the circular letter is well worth reading.

The _lycées_, colleges, and public schools are about to open

everywhere except where the superior need of improvised hospitals

in school buildings caring for our glorious wounded renders this

impossible.

I decree that on the opening day in every city and in every

class the first words of the teacher to the pupils shall be

designed to bring the hearts of the pupils into accord with the

sacred struggle in which our armies are engaged.

Throughout the entire country at the same hour the sons of

France shall pay respect to the spirit of their nation and shall

pay tribute to the heroism of those who are pouring out their blood

for liberty, justice, and human right.

The words of the teachers on this occasion should be simple and

to the point. They should be adapted to the age of their hearers,

some of whom are children, some youths. Each of our schools has

sent its quota of combatants to the firing line,--professors,

teachers, or pupils; the words of the teacher to the class should

call forth the noble remembrance of the dead, in order to exalt

their example and engrave it forever in the memory of the children.

Moreover, in its broad lines, calmly, clearly, they should tell

the causes of the war,--the aggression without excuse,--and how

before the civilized world, France, eternal champion of progress

and right, has been compelled to prepare herself, with her valiant

allies, to repel the assault of the modern barbarians.

The furious conflict which we are carrying insistently to

victory adds each day to the glory of our soldiers a thousand deeds

of heroism from which the teacher may take the best part of this

lesson. He should prefer these supreme models of action to the vain

repetition of phrases, in order to make a fit impression on the

minds of the children.

A vivid recollection of this first school hour ought to remain

imprinted forever in the spirit of the pupil, who is the citizen of

to-morrow. The teacher who has known how to make this impression

will remain worthy of the confidence of the republic.

America too will have its lesson sheets, and a most timely one on

"Lessons of the Great War in the Classroom" has been prepared for

teachers of history by the National Board for Historical Service

(Washington, D.C.) with the distinct purpose of suggesting certain

aspects of history, ancient and modern, which have gained a new

interest in the light of the great war. The following excerpts are

extremely suggestive of special opportunities and obligations for

teachers in school service:

There is the duty of keeping, for teacher and for pupil, the

habit of at least trying to see things as they really were and

are.... Every great war is fought not merely by armies and navies,

but by the governments at home which direct the fighting forces....

No one can take an intelligent part in a great conflict for the

safety of democracy under an orderly system of international law

unless he is really interested in and knows something about other

nations than his own.... There is some connection between the

conditions which made the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates one

of the great seats of ancient civilization and those which are

making Mesopotamia to-day one of the chief theaters of the great

war.... This terrible catastrophe, with its wholesale destruction

of the finest products of human civilization, its life and death

struggle between opposing nations and opposing ideals, has seemed

a reason for thinking not less but more of the great mysterious

forces which brought about the rise and decline of the ancient

empire.... Great campaigns are again carried on where Xenophon

marched with his famous Ten Thousand, where Alexander the Great led

his armies to the conquest of the East.... The opportunity must now

be seized to study the whole of Europe and its influence on and

connections with the rest of the world.... Some account should be

given of the way in which the ruling class in Prussia has been able

to use science, modern business methods, and social legislation

in the service of the military state.... War is the business not

only of governments but of the nation as a whole, and there are

few kinds of human activity which do not have some relation to its

success or failure.... We are fighting partly, indeed, to defend

international law on the high seas, but partly also to make _the

world_, not merely America, "safe for democracy."

Teachers are recognized as the instructing force of America. If they

are not, who is? If the country sorely needs clear, definite, authentic

information on the situation of the world and our own position as a

belligerent power, who is to give it if not the teachers? It is they

who must inform and arouse. It is they who ought to participate in a

speaking campaign which should be as deep as the danger, as wide as the

country, and as high as the patriotic spirit of the people. They should

be distributing agents for printed material which analyzes the subject,

and should be able to refer to the best and most available authorities

and to put before pupils and the public the texts of the most important

speeches, diplomatic notes, and other approved material to back up

statements of fact.

Strange as it may seem, it is the children's convictions which take

effect not only when as children they carry word to their parents but

also when they come out of childhood into adult life.

Was the boy in the New York high school right when he said, "It is a

Wall Street war"? Are our enemies justified in charging us with the

same motives of self-interest and the abasement of other nations which

animated themselves? Are we really at war for conquest or seizure,

or for the benefit of commerce, or for defense against aggressions

that have not yet been made? And is it a dollar war for bankers and

ammunition makers?

It is to answer these and other questions that a systematic effort to

inform and arouse the American people should be taken up and carried

into effect by public-school teachers, having in mind that the most

effective and most important work may be done in the classroom in

connection with lessons in civics and history. To wait for textbooks

on the present European war is to wait until it is over. To wait

to put the study of the present war into a course of study in its

chronological sequence is to wait until the next generation of children

come upon the stage. No, now is the time for our schools to include the

teaching of the war and to discuss officially proposed peace plans,

when the street is alive with soldiers, when the newspapers display

huge headlines and the bill-boards are covered with recruiting posters,

when magazines furnish helpful material for teachers, and when the

whole world is charged with feeling.

The National Security League (New York City) has outlined a plan

for public addresses and lectures, and it has printed a little book

entitled "Wake Up, America." The following topics have been selected

from an outline furnished by this league:

Foreign military systems and international relations.

Spirit of the American people as shown in our history of

liberty and democracy.

Causes of the war between the United States and Central Powers.

First two and one-half years of the war in relation to the

principles of the foreign policy of the United States.

Universal military training and service as now provided by

Congress.

Organization and work of the army and navy: selection;

supplying needs.

General military preparations in the country at large:

materials, transportation, and public finance.

Duty of the citizen in relation to obligations of all citizens

as an offset to benefits of citizenship.

Service outside of military and naval; as, for example, the

munition work, transportation, building of ships and machinery,

farming, etc.

Faithfulness of foreign-born citizens.

Need of efficiency and economy in local, municipal, and state

governments.

Description of modern warfare as defining the immediate task

of the American people in regard to organization and action of the

various services; as, for example, men in the trenches, health

protection, Red Cross, etc.

Accessories; for instance, patriotic music and recitations,

flag marches, and parades.

Illustrative material, such as maps and charts illustrating

the problems of recruiting; slides and movies; posters in public

places; exhibitions of foreign posters.

These topics as outlined here are not sufficiently related to the

actual conflict. They are excellent from the formal point of view, but

they fail to get at the center of living interest in the vital present

moment of history. Often when it has been asked of the children in

France: "What are you studying?" "What are they teaching you?" the

answer has been: "The war, madam." "The war, monsieur." And if the

question was taken up with the teacher, the answer has been:

By means of our war map on which is marked the present position

of the French and German troops, the particular spot in the line in

which the parents of our boys and girls are fighting, we teach not

only current history, but in the most vital way geography and many

related subjects.

By means of our use of great contemporary political documents,

by the speeches of Viviani, Deschanel, Ribot, and the other

statesmen, by the famous orders of Joffre, Pétain, and our

military leaders, by the interpretation of the war by our great

philosophers,--we teach in the most vital way the need of the

country, the ideals of France, and much of the history of France.

By reason of the war work instituted in every school as part of the

regular curriculum, we teach commercial geography, economics, and

many branches of science as they are actually related to human life

and experience, and not in the abstract manner in which they are

treated in the textbooks.

Mr. Albert Sarraut, Minister of Public Instruction in France in

1914-1915, said in a public address:

If there remains in the schools of France a single teacher who

has not been profoundly touched by the war and who goes about his

usual occupation of teaching in the same way that he did prior to

August 2, 1914, teaching the same subjects in the same way, doing

only the ordinary, familiar school tasks, whose work has not been

entirely transformed and inspired by the war, we have yet to hear

of him or her, and we do not believe that such exists.

It is inevitable that many of our school subjects will change their

emphasis after the war. To some teachers the awakening will be cruel,

to others a blessing in the form of new opportunity.

CHAPTER III

THE FIELD FOR INDUSTRIAL AND TRADE SCHOOLS

For ten years a group of men in America have been trying to convince

Congress that we should set up a national program of secondary

vocational education. As a precedent we have had a system of

agricultural and mechanic-arts education of collegiate grade in

existence for the last fifty years. But we have had in the past

no system of national aid for promoting and maintaining a type of

vocational education in agriculture, mechanic arts, and home-making,

which would reach a much larger clientele than could possibly be

touched through any land-grant college system. It has been an up-hill

fight to get Congress to see the importance of providing vocational

education for industrial workers. Bill after bill was introduced

providing for national aid. These bills defined vocational education

as including all types of industrial, commercial, agricultural, and

home-making schools, between the upper grammar grades and the college,

whose controlling purpose is to fit for specific profitable employments

and which receive pupils 14 years of age and over.

President Wilson in his second inaugural message called the country's

attention definitely to the fact that a vocational-education bill was

before Congress and that it ought to receive favorable consideration,

not only on the grounds of educational advantages contained in the

bill, but also on the grounds that it fitted in with a national

economic and industrial policy.

Perhaps the measure would have met the fate of its predecessors

if war had not been declared. Friends of the measure feared lest

discussion incident to national preparedness should overshadow the

vocational-education bill, but fortunately Congress saw that vocational

education and national preparedness were linked together, and the bill

passed almost unanimously.

The full significance of the Smith-Hughes Bill, as it will always be

known by those who worked for it, can hardly be appreciated. On the

surface it merely creates a Federal Board of Vocational Education

and provides that federal grants shall be made for the purpose

of coöperating with the states in the promotion of industrial,

agricultural, and home-making teaching. But if we scratch the surface

we shall see that the federal money is not paid to local communities

except after their work has been approved by a state board of control

on the basis of this federal act, and the principles and policies

which were adopted after conference between the Federal Board and

the state boards of control. It furthermore limits federal aid to

definite vocational training and eliminates all aid to any dilettante

or superficial types of practical-arts education which do not meet the

idea of preparing young persons over 14 years of age for useful and

profitable employment in agriculture, in the trades, in industries, or

in home economics. It has been stated in preceding chapters, and will

be emphasized more than once in succeeding chapters, that the schools

which are able to serve most effectively in time of war are the schools

which are serving or may serve in times of peace. It has been and will

again be shown that school methods usable in meeting a war emergency

are the methods not only usable but desirable under normal conditions.

There is absolutely nothing in the following discussion of the field

for war service for industrial and trade-school education which does

not have its direct application in promoting and administering a

national system of vocational education. Definite suggestions are

given for organizing day-industrial, trade, part-time and continuation

schools, evening vocational schools, trade classes, and off-time

courses; for transferring the teaching equipment into the factory; for

transferring the technical-supervision equipment of the factory to the

school; and for making commercial products. It will be seen that the

service of our industrial and trade schools differs from the service

of the industrial and household-arts courses in the regular schools. A

comparison of what is suggested for war service with what is required

by the terms of the federal grant shows that the two are in accord.

For example, the latter requires that all-day industrial schools must

have at least half the time given over to the actual practice of a

vocation on a useful or productive basis; that agricultural schools

shall arrange for directed or supervised practice in agriculture either

on a farm provided by the school or on other farms for at least six

months a year; that part-time schools or classes must be established

if the state and the community expect to receive the full benefits

of the federal grant for the salaries of teachers of the trade,

home-economics, and industrial subjects; and finally, that evening

classes for industrial workers are provided in which the instruction is

required to be supplemental to the daily employment. However, for the

duration of the war, at least, the last requirement needs modification.

War preparedness undoubtedly influenced Congress to pass the

Smith-Hughes Bill. War service of our vocational schools will

undoubtedly influence the vocational-education movement along right

lines more than anything else which could possibly have happened.

Industrial and trade schools stand ready to make their contribution for

war service. Some rather unwisely, and certainly unthinkingly, sent

telegrams to Washington, offering their equipment to the government.

Others said that they would make ammunition. Still others announced

that they would wait for the government to tell them what to do. In the

early stages evidently most of them forgot that their chief, if not

only, business must be, as it has been, that of training recruits for

industry or giving trade extension work to those already in a chosen

vocation.

Of course we are all aware that new tasks of stupendous proportions are

being undertaken by the country as measures for national defense, and

that while a large army is being recruited and trained, a still larger

army is being drawn into industrial production to equip and support

the army and navy directly on the lines of defense. We know that

$600,000,000 has been appropriated for aëroplane construction; that

from 50,000 to 100,000 shipbuilders are needed for our shipbuilding

program; that tool-makers and gauge-makers are needed in large numbers;

that the government military service will require large numbers of

mechanics in its quartermaster's, engineering, signal, aviation, and

navy corps.

In other words, there is convincing evidence that there are bound

to be not only increased demands for labor but also changes in the

relationship of labor demand and supply. There is going to be an

enormous increase in the demand for specialist workers in metal, and

considerable increase in the call for skilled all-round workers in

metal; a material increase in the demand for woodworkers in shipyards;

an increase in demand for workers in manufactured clothing and army

equipment; a great increase in demand for electrical workers in

all lines, including operators, field men, telephone and telegraph

service. We know that there will be a demand for automobile mechanics,

gas-engine operators, plumbers, horseshoers, wheelwrights, steam

engineers, bakers, cement workers, and gas and steam fitters. It is

probable that there will be a diminution in the demand for printers;

for women in dressmaking, millinery, and novelty lines; for laborers

on public works, including streets, sewers, water systems, public

buildings, canals, and bridges.

In short, we know that the war emergency will create an extraordinary

demand for some kinds of labor, attended by a probable diminution of

demand for other kinds, and there will be occasion for much shifting of

labor from one occupation to another. It is obvious, furthermore, that

many readjustments must be made by public and private industrial and

trade schools in these days of war pressure.

To determine what adjustments are most urgent, those in charge of these

schools should go directly to the industries and confer as to what

service is the most desired. It is practically useless to wait for

industrial managers to come to the schools for help. In many cases they

will not appreciate the fact that the schools can be of help. If, in

times of peace, industry has hardly recognized the full possibilities

of public vocational training, it is not likely that it would recognize

it in the stress of increased production. Sir Robert Blair of London

states that unless the educational staff of England had made it its

business to satisfy the manufacturers that it could train semiskilled

workers, the vocational-training shops would have been obliged to close

soon after the war started. He states that in the earliest days of the

work of these training shops, the manufacturers were indisposed to

believe that industry had anything to learn from trade or technical

schools. The manufacturers said that these schools were "academically

right and practically wrong."

What industrial and trade schools can do for manufacturing plants

will, of course, vary in each community. Each manufacturing center

has its own sets of activities. Proper military authorities should be

approached by administrators of industrial schools to determine what

can be contributed toward providing the training which is needed.

Letters to military authorities in Washington will not bear so much

fruit as a personal visit to a local recruiting station, camp, or

cantonment for definite advice as to how schools may best serve. It is

expected, however, that the National Board of Vocational Education will

be helpful with suggestive material.

At the present moment the most effective contact between the school

that may give the training and the place that needs it can be brought

about through coöperation either with cantonment authorities or with

local manufacturing plants. Industrial and technical schools in England

in the early days of the war formed connections with government

arsenals and began the manufacture of gauges for shell-making, mostly

of the inspection type. At first the technical institutes were

very diffident about undertaking the work, the standard of skill

required being so high; but after a few appeals on the ground that it

was a great opportunity for trade education to show its value, the

institutions started the work, so that there are now something like a

dozen such schools working on the manufacture of these instruments.

It is to be understood that the majority of the workers thus employed

were metal workers before they took up this work. Others were

manual-training teachers in the elementary schools. They have turned

out approximately 50,000 inspection gauges, and it is the opinion in

England that the trade institutes never undertook a better work.

In general terms the shortage of help in the industries is going to

be met by training operatives selected from unskilled workers; by

training foremen of those operatives who will be selected from the

skilled help; and by training highly skilled specialists who will

be selected from the workmen already skilled. The training plan

in the New England Westinghouse plant will be interesting in this

connection. In this ammunition plant 80 per cent of the workers are

listed as operators, the majority of whom are trained from carefully

selected unskilled labor. To train these operators skilled machinists

are employed as instructors. One instructor is in charge of a group

averaging about thirteen men. In other words, 7-1/2 per cent of the

force in the operating departments are on the instruction staff and

known as foremen, linemen (set-up men), and instructors. Instruction

is given incidentally in turning out the regular product. No equipment

is set aside primarily for instruction purposes; any equipment in

the plant may be thus used. This method of instruction is called the

group-instructor plan, in which one instructor or foreman has charge

of teaching a group of operators working on an assigned task. While

under instruction the group is employed on regular production. The

instructor is not required to produce, but gives his entire time to

group teaching. In the tool-making department, men of mechanical

ability, not necessarily all-round machinists, but in some instances

from other trades, are trained in making jigs and fixtures. In

these cases the ratio of instructors to workers is less than one to

thirteen, the helper plan being used. The helper plan is that in which

a skilled worker is employed in special work, such as tool-making or

gauge-making, and has under him from one to three helpers. In this case

the man who gives the training does not confine his entire efforts to

instruction, but is required to work at his particular occupation. If

satisfactory results are to be secured, only a very limited number of

helpers can be assigned to one worker.

The industrial schools will prove to be a small factor in training

operatives, in view of the fact that industry itself is able to

train them quickly and satisfactorily. It takes only a few days to

make a Polish farm hand of Connecticut into an ammunition worker in

Bridgeport. Foremen and specialists may be trained through evening and

day part-time courses. Of course it is assumed that these schools will

have equipment requisite for training in the kind of work for which

help is needed. The Springfield (Massachusetts) Vocational School

expects to shift some of its pupils from house to ship carpentry in

view of the new demand for men with a knowledge of shipbuilding,--a

demand which will extend, undoubtedly, over a term of years.

At least, one way for a trade school to be of service and yet not

purchase additional equipment is to lend its skilled instructors to

a local manufacturing plant where an organized plan for training

foremen and specialists exists. This has been done by the Quincy

(Massachusetts) Industrial School, which coöperates in furnishing part

of the instruction given in the Fore River shipbuilding plant. This

company is giving instruction to a selected group of workers under pay

for a full industrial day of ten hours. A night shift of training for

eleven hours is also given to another group of men. Instructors are

training an assigned group of operators on regular production and under

usual employment conditions. Some part-time instruction in technical

subjects, and in some cases on special operations, is also given to

certain groups of selected workers while under employment in the plant.

This plan has a significance worthy of attention after the war.

General Manager Smith of this company, at a conference of state

administrators of vocational schools held the middle of July in New

York City, made an interesting statement as to the need of trained help

in the shipyards. A summary of his remarks follows:[2]

For shipbuilding purposes men trained in the building trades

offer little advantage over intelligent untrained men, as the

character of work in the shipbuilding industry is so different from

that in the building trades.

However, industrial and trade schools can give preliminary and

thorough instruction to ship-fitters and loftsmen. The course for

the latter should include ship-drafting. More limited instruction

can be given in other ironworkers' trades and in the shipwright

trades.

Trained instructors are needed. Instructors may be employed in

the plant and, if so, should have full power to instruct and should

not be employed on production, as the best results in instruction

can only be obtained by having the instructor concentrate his mind

on his work.

Shipbuilding in the United States has been one of our smaller

industries. If the present crisis is to be adequately met, the

industry will be one of our most important ones.

Of the large amount of money to be spent in shipbuilding,

practically one half will be expended on labor in the shipyard; the

remainder is for material purchased from outside parties, but which

at the works of such subcontractors is again largely labor. Of the

labor expended in the shipyard about one third is for ironworkers,

and it is in this trade that the greatest shortage occurs, as there

is only a small percentage of men for the ironworkers' trade now to

be found in this country.

In the past very little instruction in the specialized

shipbuilding trades has been given in the United States, and the

number of men who have served apprenticeship in these trades is

small, a great supply of skilled men in these trades coming from

Great Britain. There is an imperative need for a supply of men in

the ironworkers' trade.

Some instruction must always be given in the shipbuilding

plant, but it is possible to give a great deal in the industrial

schools, and, as the wages are good, men should be readily

attracted to the shipbuilding trades.

While ironworkers' trades consisting of loftsmen, ship-fitters,

riveters, chippers, calkers, reamers, bolters, packers, and some

others are peculiar to shipbuilding as well as the shipwright's

trade, the trades of plumber, pipe fitter, coppersmith, etc. are

very materially different in the shipbuilding trades from what they

are in the building trades.

[2] Taken from bulletin of the National Society for the Promotion of

Industrial Education, for August, 1917, "War Demands for Industrial

Training."

On the other hand, it is possible to send instructors from the

factories to the school. In several instances in England the

manufacturers supplied the schools with instructors and all the

necessary material in order to teach women and boys the identical

operations which they would be called upon to carry out in the factory.

In this way a number of schools combining manufacturing with training

were able to supply local factories with boys and women trained in the

special operations involved. This plan is also significant and has an

important bearing upon the administration of public vocational training.

The question whether industrial schools should make ammunition or

equipment pertaining to war service will come up. Having substantial

amounts of available equipment, they will doubtless at times be

tempted to use their organized day and evening classes for purposes of

emergency productive work. In machine-shop schools, for example, the

teachers being skilled machinists and the pupils capable of turning out

a substantial amount of productive work, inducements to subordinate

educational ends to those of an economic nature may be expected. It

is therefore suggested that industrial-school authorities resolutely

resist all attempts to subordinate their rightful purpose of giving

industrial education. It is clear that a certain amount of production

is necessary for purposes of education, but it is important that this

should never be made a primary purpose in any industrial school. A

letter from Director W. C. Smith of the Troy (New York) Central School

illustrates the productive work of one school which retains educational

value.

A Troy corporation is engaged on a large contract with the

government for uniforms. Its shops are taxed to the limit, and it

has found it necessary to utilize every available shop in town for

making various machines used in cutting cloth for this contract. It

has entered into an arrangement whereby our complete machine-shop

equipment is turned over to its use under the supervision of our

own instructor. Our graduate boys are employed in the shop and are

now at work perfecting twelve machines for use in different parts

of the country on this contract.

The public vocational schools must face, sooner or later, the question

of shop production on a commercial basis. They exist, primarily, to

train producers and not to make products. Are the two inconsistent?

Perhaps the war service of these schools will bring this debatable

issue to a head.

Obviously the industries engaged in the making of automobiles,

aëroplanes, machinery, and ammunition have for some time past absorbed

the available supply of skilled help. With the emergency of war

preparation upon us, we must find ways of pressing thousands of workers

into lines of work with which they are almost altogether unfamiliar.

Except with boys who are fourteen to sixteen years old, it will be of

little avail to think of giving all-round trade training. The labor

supply which we now need must be trained immediately and intensively.

From what has already been stated it is clear that workers may be

trained in three ways: first, in day industrial or technical schools;

second, in industrial plants such as have been mentioned in the case

of the Westinghouse Company; third, through part-time employment in

industry, with part-time attendance in industrial or technical schools.

The industrial-school authorities should send into the factories

capable instructors who have had trade experience, in order to learn

the needs for trained help and to analyze the trade processes for which

men need to be trained. In this way the school may determine whether it

can best meet the situation by training the youth in its day schools

to go to work in industrial plants upon leaving school--although this

is not a very immediate way of meeting the emergency--or whether it

would be better to move the classes, so to speak, over to the plant

and have the instructors teach a group of unskilled workers on the

group-instruction plan. Perhaps the school could perform its best

service by giving trade extension courses to those already engaged in

productive work. Anyhow, these alternatives must be fully considered.

These instructors or trained experts, when visiting typical yards or

plants in a specific industry to learn of the needs for trained help,

must be able to reanalyze the trade processes in terms of training as

distinct from terms of production, and out of this analysis to draw

up suitable schemes for giving such training. The question of whether

this training should be given entirely in the school or entirely in the

plant or partly in the plant and partly in the school should be left to

experts, who know best the possibilities of each of these schemes.

This is no time for industrial schools to stand on their dignity and

claim that they can do all that is necessary in their day schools

without coöperation with those who employ. It is readily granted

that, generally speaking, directors of industrial schools know their

job quite well when it comes to giving trade-preparatory training

to youth before it enters industry; but at a time when the country

needs thousands of workmen we are quite sure that the better plan for

training operators and semiskilled workers is directly in the plant

itself. In a time of great emergency this intensive, immediate training

must be given in large part by the industries themselves within their

own plants. They have the equipment, they have the men who need the

training; all they lack is the proper instructing force, as they cannot

take men away from production for instruction purposes. It follows

that the instructors of our schools must give their instruction in the

plants or must have the unskilled operatives and helpers come to the

school for part-time work.

The present all-day industrial schools, even in normal times, need this

direct contact with industry to save themselves from shop methods which

savor of manual-training schools.

It is assumed that the regular all-day industrial and trade schools

will continue. Of course they are now largely attended by comparatively

young students, and it is quite likely that the enrollment will

diminish, as there is an unusual demand for boys in every branch of

industry and commerce. It will be increasingly difficult to hold such

boys in school in the face of financial returns rather extraordinary

when one considers their youth.

In the interests of conservation of youth and the training of a

suitable supply of skilled workers for the future, there should be

no diminution of effort to develop and extend day-school work, even

though the young people thus trained will be too young to contribute

definitely to the present emergency, unless, of course, it should last

more than a year or two. Nevertheless, the enrollments are likely to be

less. A partial compensation for this situation is that groups of more

mature workers coming from the industry itself on a part-time basis can

be accommodated for special instruction, or groups of young men who are

now elevator boys, messenger boys, clerks in stores, office boys, can

be induced, perhaps, to come to the all-day school, and through short,

intensive courses be put into the way of earning, in some factory

making war supplies, a sum equal to from two to three times what they

are now earning. No attempt should be made to hold such youths in the

school beyond the period necessary to give them immediate and intensive

training.

After the war it will be an open question whether intensive courses

should not be more generally adopted in our day industrial schools.

Obviously the largest immediate service that can be rendered by

industrial and trade schools will be through the readjustment and

extension of evening and other off-time courses. As usual, the

especially important function will be the training of men already in

the trades for more skilled tasks or for directive work. Ways must

be found for extending the evening-school facilities. One way is to

operate the evening courses throughout the entire year. Most of our

industrial schools operate only from October to April, but in this time

of pressure they should be open continuously. The other way would be to

carry on trade extension work not only in the evening but also early

in the morning or late in the afternoon. These are technically known

as off-time courses and came into existence originally in some cities

which made provision for training workers from plants operating night

shifts.

Fundamentally, even in times of peace, there is no sound reason for

ever completely closing a day industrial school. It might run during

the summer as well as the winter; in the late afternoon and early

morning as well as in the evening. In the middle of June, 1917,

President Wilson addressed a letter to Secretary Redfield making the

suggestion that the vocational-training schools of the country should

be open during the summer, when it would be possible to train a large

number of young men under military age, either to fill the places in

our industries left by men who enlist or are withdrawn for military

service, or to carry on special occupations called for by the war,

such as inspectors of material and apparatus. In this connection,

where the President speaks of "inspectors of material," it may be said

that one of the prominent industrial-education experts of the East has

been asked to train a group of men selected for special government

inspection work. These men will then be responsible for organizing a

force of assistant inspectors in the plant to which they are assigned,

and of supervising the work of the assistant inspector under their

personal direction.

The course of inspectorship training is made up of two units:

one dealing with the business and accounting side of inspection and

the other with the technical instruction which is given through

participation in the actual work of inspection at the arsenal,

observation of the manufacturing processes, and direct group

instruction.

The first unit is given at Washington and usually requires

from four or five days to a week for its completion. The second

unit is given at the Rock Island arsenal and covers eleven days

as a minimum. Only the most experienced men, however, complete

it in this length of time. The men enter the school at irregular

intervals in groups of four or five at a time. The number in

training at any one time varies from thirty-five to fifty.

The men are moved from department to department on a fixed

schedule. When a man completes his training he is assigned to a

plant in accordance with his qualifications as indicated by his

previous experience and his record at the school. Further plans

for training the inspector after he has been assigned to the field

have been proposed but have not yet been put into effect. Many of

the candidates for this training are instructors in vocational

training.[3]

The opportunity for promotion of skilled workers was never so great as

at present, and the opportunity for schools to train them will never

be greater than at present. The schools may well organize intensive

short courses in practical training, as well as other courses designed

to advance qualified workers to positions of directive work in the

factories.

While the part-time plan offers excellent opportunities for advancing

selected workers in order that they may acquire certain technical

knowledge, it is doubtful whether much of this work during this

emergency period can be done in the public or private industrial and

trade schools. We all know that certain industrial concerns have

established part-time schools in their plants. These classes in the

works are especially adapted, in the present emergency, for training

selected workers to become specialists and foremen. If the school is

near the plant, so that industrial workers can attend for part-time

day instruction for a period of six or eight hours a week without loss

of time or without interfering with production, it may be possible to

develop some part-time courses in the schools, but, generally speaking,

it would be better for the instructors in these schools to go directly

to the plants themselves and give this part-time instruction there. In

another chapter mention will be made of a feasible part-time system

and the necessity for some such system, but it refers only to boys and

girls between fourteen and sixteen years old who belong primarily in

school and not primarily at work. It is assumed that the group of which

we have been thinking is the older group of workmen who wish to become

foremen.

[3] "Vocational Education and Government Service," News-letter issued

by National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education, October,

1917.

[Illustration: War needs open new fields for schools. After the war,

stereotyped courses in trade schools and technical institutes will have

lost their hold. Dunwoody Institute (Minneapolis, Minnesota) is one of

the few schools having a training course for bakers.]

[Illustration: An example of an effective adaptation to a national

need. Dunwoody Institute meeting a shortage of army bakers.]

[Illustration]

[Illustration: Educational efficiency as measured by its response to

a national need. Dunwoody Institute is one of the several institutes

teaching radiography and power testing to navy men.]

Sir Robert Blair, in his report already referred to, speaks of the

manner in which technical and trade schools in and about London train

semiskilled workers for munition work.

At first we gathered together all the metal-working apparatus

of our elementary schools and placed it in two of our technical

institutes. Shafting was put up, power was installed and the

lathes started, and they have been running ever since July, 1915,

for twelve hours a day in three periods of four hours each. At

first the period of training was for one period a day for six

days a week for six weeks, or a total of 144 hours, but later,

to meet the demands, the manufacturers took upon themselves the

training of more highly skilled turners, of machine erectors,

of milling-machine hands, and so on. We began to train women

for tracing in drawing offices and subsequently for mechanical

drawing. We trained lead-burners for employment in factories making

explosives. We trained gauge-makers for employment in tool rooms

of our shell factories (many of these men have been drawn from the

jewelry and silversmithing trades). The more skill we gave the

training, the longer it took to train these people, and so the

number produced weekly has diminished, but in two years we have

trained, certified, and placed 6000 workers.

And again he speaks of other training apart from furnishing additional

munition workers.

One institution has done a great deal of work in training in

cold shoeing over 1000 men belonging to the Royal Field Artillery,

Royal Engineers, and the Army Service Corps. The same institution

has also been used for the reception, inspection, and dispatch

of many of the horse-shoes required by the army. At another

institution over 3500 students have been trained for Red Cross

duties, and a great work has been done in recruiting men for the

skilled sections of the Royal Flying Corps. Besides we have trained

men for tinsmithing, copper work, and wireless telegraphy. A third

institution took on the general direction of the preparation of

synthetic drugs in the chemical departments of the technical

institutes, and the medical organization of the army was largely

indebted to these chemical departments for the production of the

much-needed drugs.

Assuming that administrators of industrial education are interested in

the welfare of factory workers,--something often apart from instilling

technical skill and knowledge,--it will be necessary for them to

provide courses for men and especially for women workers, giving

instruction in the laws of health with which every employee in factory

life should be familiar. In England the memoranda of the British Health

of Munition Workers Committee have demonstrated conclusively the

great necessity of this teaching of hygiene: that the causes of ill

health of workers in munitions factories were not alone the result of

fatigue from long hours, but quite as much the result of insufficient

or ill-prepared food, inadequate sleep and ill-ventilated sleeping

quarters, and failure to appreciate the consequences of disregarding

safety devices.

It may not be amiss in this chapter to say a word about our government

naval schools, for some may not be aware that the government has for

a number of years been maintaining a very efficient system of trade

education. The purpose of the naval trade schools is to train young men

for various trades or occupations required on shipboard. In going over

the list it is likely that administrators of industrial education will

see an opportunity to connect the work of their schools with the work

of the naval schools. In addition to the practical instruction given

at the training stations where these schools are located, a course of

academic instruction is conducted throughout the naval service. This

instruction does not stop at the training station, but continues on

shipboard, and every encouragement is given for advancement. Electrical

schools are located at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and at Mare Island,

California. The course of instruction comprises machine-shop work,

reciprocating steam engines, steam-turbine engines, internal-combustion

engines, magnetism and electricity, dynamos, motors, motor generators,

alternating-current batteries, etc. Members of the radio class are

trained in the duties of a radio operator and are given constant

practice in the use of the mechanism employed in recovering and sending

messages.

The artificer school is located at the Norfolk Navy Yard, and is

composed of classes for shipwrights, ship-fitters, blacksmiths, and

painters.

The machinist and coppersmith schools are located at Charleston,

South Carolina, and are open only to reënlisted men who have certain

experience.

The aëronautics school is located at Pensacola, Florida, and is divided

into two courses: mechanics of aëronautics, and flying.

Gasoline-engine instruction is given at Charlestown Navy Yard in

connection with the machinist's school, preference being given to

reënlisted men.

Commissary schools for ships' cooks, bakers, and stewards are located

at San Francisco and Newport.

Musicians' schools are maintained at Norfolk, at Great Lake, Illinois,

and at San Francisco.

Seaman-gunner schools are located at the Washington Navy Yard and at

the torpedo station at Newport.

All of these schools give short, intensive courses ranging from three

to eighteen months in length. The students are paid wages, and all

expenses are met the same as with other enlisted men.

Seven free marine-engineering schools and thirty free navigation

schools are being started on the Atlantic, Gulf, Pacific, and Great

Lakes coasts to train men already having some experience for better

places at advanced pay as engineers and deck officers in the new

merchant fleet. The graduates are being placed as fast as they are

graduated. The need for their services is expected to last for many

years after peace is restored.

For several years our industrial continuation schools have had as their

motto "Earn and Learn." But the naval technical schools have shown a

way whereby young men may both serve and learn.

CHAPTER IV

OUR COLLEGES AND TECHNICAL INSTITUTES

It is to be hoped that if we can realize, as England did not, that

education, to quote Arnold Bennett, "is the very last thing that

we ought to economize in," we shall spare ourselves some of the

unnecessary calamities of war. England, France, Italy, and the Central

Powers have thrown into battle a very large percentage of their

educated and trained men, including most of the young professors

and instructors in their universities and colleges, gymnasiums, and

_lycées_. Their colleges and universities are almost empty. The young

men who would under normal conditions be receiving the education

and training necessary to prepare them for leadership in the future

development of these countries are fighting and dying in the trenches.

In view of the fact that all of these countries must needs go through a

long period of reconstruction, industrial and otherwise, it is a pity

that the sacrifice of its best youth had needlessly to be made. As a

matter of fact, we see now that no university, college, or technical

school that can possibly avoid it should permit its faculty or student

body to be scattered or its energies dissipated. All concerned should

redouble their energies and concentrate them upon those things which

will be of the most service in the progress of the war and will prepare

the students for the most effective service when the war is over.

President Wilson, three months after the severing of relations with

Germany, in response to a request for an opinion on the continuance of

a college or a technical-school education during the war, wrote this

letter:

The question which you have brought to my attention is of the

very greatest moment. It would, as you suggest, seriously impair

American prospects of success in this war if the supply of highly

trained men were unnecessarily diminished. There will be need for

a larger number of persons expert in the various fields of applied

science than ever before. Such persons will be needed both during

the war and after its close.

I have therefore no hesitation in urging colleges and technical

schools to endeavor to maintain their courses as far as possible

on the usual basis. There will be many young men from these

institutions who will serve in the armed forces of the country.

Those who fall below the age of selective conscription and who do

not enlist may feel that by pursuing their courses with earnestness

and diligence they also are preparing themselves for valuable

service to the nation.

I would particularly urge upon the young people who are

leaving our high schools that as many of them as can do so avail

themselves this year of the opportunities offered by the colleges

and technical schools, to the end that the country may not lack an

adequate supply of trained men and women.

It must be said that while students were restless and anxious to

perform a service, the college authorities themselves adopted a very

hopeless and helpless attitude toward the war in so far as it reacted

on the internal economy of these institutions. Commencement exercises

were abbreviated and shorn of their customary festivities. College

presidents and executive committees of alumni associations began to

"talk poor" and to wax lugubrious over the small senior class of 1918.

These men even wanted to drop athletics, which, to the facetious layman

outside, constitutes the main reason for a college's existence. The

general action of the colleges in this matter of abandoning so many

athletic and other activities drew from President Wilson a letter

deprecating such action and advising that the colleges maintain

all their usual sports if they did not detract in any way from the

military purpose of the nation. In an address at Princeton University,

Major General Wood deplored hasty action of students in enlisting for

service in the army and navy, urging them to complete their school

work for the year, and that they mark time pending the carrying out of

provisions of the selective-draft law.

It is clear, on one hand, that many college authorities, especially

those of the older type, passed through a state of academic

institutional hysteria, while, on the other hand, their student bodies

translated the emotions of the moment into a deep conviction by

enlisting.

At the same time the spirit of mobilization was present in many a

university, college, and technical school. In the cultural college it

was the individual who enlisted, as the institution was not of the

type whose work directly and definitely counted for important war

service. In the universities where courses are given in agriculture, in

medicine, in technology, and in practical arts, the institution itself

enlisted, in that it offered war-emergency courses.

It is perhaps interesting at this point to see how response came from

these two types of institutions. In the first instance it came from

individuals in the college, which was no more than could be expected of

classical colleges, which have for years laid emphasis on the benefits

of individualistic training. In the second instance the vocational

colleges, as they are sometimes disparagingly called, responded from

the viewpoint of collectivism; that is, the college as a whole,

because of its service departments, was able to offer to the state and

to the nation a course of training of immediate military value to the

country.

But thoughtful people can never again speak disparagingly of any

university or technical school. While the movies have been filled

with the citizens of our democracy, and the cafés crowded with people

to whom war was something apart from existence, and the white-light

gayety of the streets has been apparently undimmed, the youth of our

colleges--the best youth in the world--have enlisted in Plattsburgs,

joined the Naval Reserves, taken up signal-corps work, entered the

research laboratory, followed their instructors into the medical corps,

joined a school of aëronautics, or donned overalls in the shipyards.

Doctor Finley, Commissioner of Education of the state of New York,

in an address delivered before the Illinois chapter of the Phi Beta

Kappa, speaks of his visit to Oxford just before the war and of a visit

to Cambridge, England, a few weeks after it had begun. At Oxford he

found the calm of the cloister, with its memorials of poets, scholars,

statesmen, princes, and soldiers, where there were ancient academic

conventions that paid no heed to the passing customs of the world

outside. Only six weeks later at Cambridge--a Cambridge which had a

month or six weeks before been as Oxford--the town was filled with men

in khaki. In this charming address Doctor Finley speaks of a portrait

of Samuel Butler which he saw at Cambridge,--a portrait of the man who

described in his book "Erewhon" a land where criminals were treated

as sick, and the sick as criminals; where there were "Colleges of

Unreason," colleges in which students were promoted for excellence in

vagueness and were plucked for insufficient trust in printed matter,

colleges where the principal courses were those in hypothetics,

colleges in which mediocrity was fostered, colleges whose graduates

almost invariably suffered from atrophy of individual opinions. And

Doctor Finley says that as he stood before this portrait, in a hall

almost deserted, he thought of those students of courses which Butler

had called "hypothetical" and "atrophying," who had gone forth to prove

the valor of their cloistered and unpractical learning.

The university which apparently had paid no heed to the passing customs

of the world outside had now mobilized herself; and this has been true

of the colleges and technical schools of our own country,--truly a

mobilization of the spirit of sudden forgetting of self-concerns for a

selfless service.

The college of individualism, as has already been suggested, mobilized

through its individuals, while the college of service mobilized itself.

In the spring of 1917 I happened to be in a Western university. The

campus was practically deserted. Instructors in foreign languages had

joined the government interpreters' service; some of the professors of

science had gone to government research laboratories, while a chosen

few were off in some secret place working under government direction in

scientific research concerning submarine warfare. The older students

had enlisted, and the younger ones were marching in squads on the

athletic field. Truly a mobilization, but largely individualistic.

I came East to another college where more than 2000 students were

devoting their time to a series of special short courses dealing

with the various problems of an educational, social, and practical

nature which the war had thrust upon the country. In this way the

institution--Teachers College, Columbia University--had mobilized

itself. Special arrangements had been made by the college authorities

whereby all but a very few students could participate in these

emergency courses without seriously deranging their regular courses.

In general, the aim of these emergency courses was not merely to meet

those conditions which exist at or near the battle line but to help

in the solution of the hundred and one urgent problems which must be

solved by that great majority of teachers and social workers whose

service will of necessity be given in home communities. Accordingly,

courses on social relief were offered, and among others the following

topics were considered: "Administration of relief in time of war and

emergency," "Care of orphaned and neglected children." Under the

organization of rural communities were discussed "Conserving the

food supply," "The health problem of the rural community," and "The

organization of school pupils for agricultural service." The matter

of social service in military camps was thoroughly gone into and

reports and lectures were given by men who had actually worked with the

soldiers themselves. The Boy Scout and Camp Fire Girl movements were

also discussed in special courses, and the practical questions of the

amateur gardener were carefully considered.

In the School of Practical Arts special attention was given to the

making of children's garments, the sewing of Red Cross material, and

the renovating of millinery and clothing. In addition to lectures on

thrift in food the department of cookery gave a course on emergency

cookery for men, which was especially designed for army cooks and Boy

Scout leaders. There was also a series of lectures and demonstrations

by a government expert on the preservation of food, including canning

and drying. Other courses considered the essentials of diet planning

and of how to buy in large quantities for camps and hospitals. The

departments of chemistry and biology gave special instruction in the

analysis of water and of milk, and in the technique of diagnostic

bacteriology. The fine-arts department made some rather unique

contributions, including a study of protective coloring with reference

to _camouflage_ for military purposes, the designing of posters, and

topographical sketching. There was a course on tin-can work for home

and camp, in which, from discarded tomato cans and powder boxes,

were produced all sorts of useful things--coffee pots, camp stoves,

hot-water bottles, lanterns, and candlesticks. A special course in

photography for hospital and field work was offered. In the modeling

class the manipulation of plaster of Paris was demonstrated for nurses

and Red Cross students, to be used in connection with occupational work

for convalescent soldiers. An extremely interesting series of projects

in plastic material was worked up, particularly some clay models of

trenches and dugouts.

Another course which attracted some hundred and fifty students was the

emergency instruction given by the physics department in automobile

mechanics. The object of the instruction was to equip the average

student with a stock of general information that would enable him

to operate a car, to make minor repairs, and to diagnose trouble

intelligently. Some of the matters discussed were the four-cycle

engine, carburetion, transmission and differential, and the storage

battery. For experiment and demonstration purposes the laboratory was

supplied, among other apparatus, with a detachable boat motor and two

automobiles. The latter were thoroughly dissected and then reassembled

from spark plug to tires, and in every possible way the mechanism was

examined and experimented with.

The departments of nursing and health and of physical education offered

some ten courses in all, including home nursing and emergencies,

surgical dressings, care of children, public-health problems, first

aid, medical gymnastics, and invalid occupations.

The department of music offered three courses designed especially to

prepare students to lead music appropriate to patriotic meetings and to

present selections at hospitals and camps.

Two courses were offered by the department of speech: one planned for

those intending to do emergency speaking and lecturing, and the other

arranged to meet the demand for entertainment for little children, the

sick, and soldiers during the war.

In addition to these technical courses there was a series of lectures

on economic problems contributed by various Columbia experts, and

another series of special lectures by such speakers as Mr. Joseph

McCabe, the noted English author, and Mr. Frederick C. Wolcott,

director of the Polish War Relief Commission. Finally, there was a

wonderful and never-to-be-forgotten address by Ignace Paderewski, in

which he reviewed the long and troubled story of his native land and

in impassioned words pleaded for the restoration of Poland's ancient

liberties.

It may be said without exaggeration that in all some millions of people

throughout the United States will, directly and indirectly, profit by

this emergency instruction at Teachers College, for the students who

attended are for the most part experienced teachers, who, in their

turn, will organize and instruct their home communities in similar

preparedness courses.

At the same time another university, unique in its way,--the

University of the State of New York,--was holding, through its Board of

Regents, a meeting to determine academic standards of the schools and

colleges of the state in a war crisis. This university was modeled upon

the University of France, the constituent units of which have proved

themselves wonderful instruments in the waging of war. The universities

represented have organized themselves into a civil army, preventing the

wastes of duplication, misdirected endeavor, and isolation so common

everywhere.

In the building where the Board of Regents met, two conferences were

being held, one representing the schools and colleges of the state,

the other representing the agricultural and industrial interests. In

one place men were discussing how the academic status of professional

schools and colleges might be maintained, and in another room men

and women were participating in a discussion of public markets, food

conservation, services of agricultural teachers, the taking of an

agricultural census, the releasing of boys from school, the organizing

of canning clubs, and all those affairs of the state and its schools

which might contribute to the nation's welfare. These two meetings

offered a picture of two lines of work which must always go together in

time of war.

As Commissioner Claxton has said:

Students should be made to understand that it is their duty

to give to their country and to the world the best and fullest

possible measure of service, for both country and world will need

more than they will get of that high type of service which only men

and women of the best education and training can give. Patriotism

and desire to serve humanity may require of these young men and

women the exercise of that very high type of self-restraint which

will keep them to their tasks of preparation until the time comes

when they can render service which cannot be rendered by others.

On the other hand, these same colleges and schools must contribute

out of themselves that important vocational service so necessary in

time of war, and the gathering at this meeting of agricultural and

household-arts teachers, of farm-bureau men and county agents, of

representatives from granges and women's clubs, of bankers, and of

publicists was after all typical of the other half of the university or

school contribution.

At this meeting of the Regents the following resolutions were adopted

on the recommendation of the administrators of schools and colleges

who were in conference with the Regents. These resolutions are given

in full because they express significantly the point of view of the 36

colleges and 964 secondary schools in New York State.

1. Realizing that one of the most urgent needs of the country

in the present crisis will be the training of officers for

military service, and that it is the peculiar duty of colleges and

universities to contribute in supplying this need, we recommend

that the several colleges and universities in the state establish

one or more units of the Reserve Officers Training Corps, as

provided in general order No. 49, including courses leading at the

same time to a commission and to a college degree.

2. In order that the extraordinary burdens and sacrifices of

war may be shared in just proportion by all the nation, and that

the calamitous experiences of the past under the voluntary system

may be avoided, it is our judgment that in the raising of the

necessary military forces the principle of universal obligation to

service be applied by a process of selective conscription.

3. That members in good standing of the graduating classes of

the professional schools of the state who shall have been accepted

for military service by the government be granted their degrees

without special examination.

4. That members in good standing of the graduating classes in

the undergraduate departments of the colleges and universities of

the state who would normally be graduated in June, 1917, and who

shall be accepted for military service by the government should be

granted their degrees without special examination.

5. That members of the graduating classes in the high schools

of the state who would normally be graduated in June, 1917, and

who have been accepted for military service shall be granted their

diplomas, and that the colleges of the state be requested to honor

these diplomas for purposes of admission.

6. That college students in good standing pursuing medical

preparatory courses who enlist or are called into military service

before the completion of the college year be granted certificates

of completion of their year without examination.

7. That absence from college or high school by reason of

enlistment in military service shall not prejudice the award or the

retention of university scholarships.

8. That while the immediate service which women may perform

in connection with the war will be in medicine or nursing and

other work for general public welfare, and that while the greatest

service for which they may eventually be called will be the

supplying of positions vacated by the enlisted men, we recommend

to the United States government the appointment by the Council for

National Defense of a commission which shall outline an appropriate

policy for women students in our colleges, with respect both to

their college studies and to their enlistment for national service.

9. That this board approve the plans of the National Research

Council and proffer our hearty coöperation.

10. That students in colleges and universities of the state who

are liable for military training under the military-training law

be exempt from the training prescribed by the Military Training

Commission if they pursue courses in military training under

approved instruction at their respective institutions.

Further, that as there are numerous resources in both the

elementary and the secondary schools of the state which can be

used to advantage at this time,--among the most important of which

resources are the use of high-school pupils for the farms and for

necessary clerical and other work that can be done by pupils who

remain in school, the use of teachers for summer work, the services

possible through industrial and household-arts departments, and the

enlistment of upper-grade children for home gardens,--the board

adopts the following resolutions:

1. That the State Agricultural Department in conjunction with

the State Education Department formulate a plan for enlisting

and placing high-school boys upon the farms, for directing and

supervising the work of such boys, for determining qualifications

as to age and fitness, for determining compensation and school

credit, and for the adjustment of any other problems connected with

the safeguarding of these boys who enlist for farm service.

2. That the State Education Department secure through the

necessary sources a statement of the needs that might be met

through the industrial and household-arts departments and other

resources of the schools herein stated, and transmit such a

statement to the schools of the state, to the end that these

resources may be used intelligently and through regularly

constituted channels.

3. That the State Education Department consider the

practicability of securing some provision by which during the

summer vacation and at other times of the year boys 12 years of

age or over may be employed if a certificate of proper working

conditions can be furnished.

It is impracticable to outline even briefly all that the various

colleges and institutes have contributed to war service. The

Massachusetts Institute of Technology is hardly mentioned in what

follows, and yet it is conducting a score of activities of immediate

emergency value. Drexel Institute has contributed not only courses but

also its president, Doctor Godfrey, who is serving as a member of the

National Council of Defense in special charge of war needs as met by

education and science.

To name all the institutions which are serving in one way or another is

to call the roll of nearly every college and technical institution in

the country. To give here a brief account of what a few are doing will

show the range of the activities and the nature of the service.

Early in May Columbia University inaugurated a series of emergency

courses of a military, naval, and general nature arranged for the

purpose of training students who desire to serve the national

government in time of war. They were classified as intensive courses

and were opened without restriction to all those who desired to be

trained in any of the various subjects offered. These courses included

military map making, field-service regulations, general telegraphy,

radio telegraphy, camp sanitation, map reading and map interpretation,

practical navigation, and electrical devices of the navy.

Harvard University has many achievements to her credit, for example:

advanced training for selected officers under the leadership of six

French officers; a cadet school for ensigns; a naval school for

wireless operators; a course in orthopedic surgery; the furnishing of

the medical personnel for four base hospital units; and war service by

departments of dentistry, medicine, psychology, and foreign languages.

Iowa State College gave a six weeks' course in special military

and military-engineering work. Regular two-year noncollegiate

courses were offered electrical workers and stationary engineers,

mechanical draftsmen and mechanics, structural draftsmen and building

superintendents, surveyors and road makers.

At Cornell University all professors and instructors in the

marine-engineering department and all the senior students of marine

engineering were in either private or public shipyards on or before

graduation day.

The University of Wisconsin, anticipating that a large number of

persons who had been trained in the administration of stores would soon

be needed in the civil section of the Quartermaster's Department, in

the Ordnance Bureau of the War Department, and in the Quartermaster's

Officers' Reserve Corps, decided to aid in training for these services

by offering special courses in the classification and handling of

stores for those departments.

This university also planned a summer session with courses in wireless

telegraphy, first aid to the injured, Boy Scout movement in theory and

practice, and gave a course of war lectures especially designed for

teachers, and a course for Red Cross volunteers who wished to take

part in civilian relief work. This last course was in coöperation with

the Red Cross organization, which, as explained in another chapter,

will have much to do with relieving families deprived of their natural

heads. The men and women in this course studied the basis of family

life, psychological and economic principles underlying bodily health,

the resources of the state to preserve the family group, and methods of

social service and friendly visiting.

Aviation schools for training candidates for the aviation corps were

established at the University of California, Cornell University,

Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Illinois, Massachusetts

Institute of Technology, Ohio State University, Princeton, and the

University of Texas. The first navy aëronautic school has also been

established recently at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The College of the City of New York offered an emergency war course

in bookkeeping and office practice to help fit men and women to fill

the positions made necessary by the increased work of the national

government, and to train people to take the places of those who

responded to the call to arms. It also offered its regular winter

courses during the summer in order to speed up the graduation of young

men already enrolled in the college who might be drafted.

This college also placed in every armory and military headquarters in

Greater New York a teacher of conversational French. This work was very

popular and highly successful.

The University of Kentucky offered to women and civilians two special

courses in its College of Electrical Engineering: a course in

automobile engineering especially designed to teach women how to drive

and take care of motor ambulances, and a course in wireless telegraphy.

The Pennsylvania State College offered a six weeks' course in

storekeeping under the direction of the Quartermaster's Department.

In Massachusetts, through the extension department of the State Board

of Education, lessons were given in conversational French in the

armories and encampments. In one armory as many as five instructors

were engaged in this service. The vocabulary of the soldier being

quite unlike the French dictionary, the military terms and expressions

actually used were emphasized. Necessary French slang and words used

commonly for distances, rations, arms and equipment, money, measures,

and military orders were dwelt upon. Spoken French for doctors and

nurses who are going to the front has been given in coöperation with

the Metropolitan Chapter of the American Red Cross.

A six months' course in wireless telegraphy for women was offered at

Hunter College, New York City, the course of training being in three

divisions: laboratory work, technical work, and the use of code. This

course was given with the expectation not that women wireless operators

will be placed on ships of war or on transports, but rather that

they will be placed in land stations and on coastwise steamers, thus

releasing men for more active service. It is understood that on the

mechanical side the work is harder for the women, but that on the code

work they are much quicker than men.

The field for service of a college is not necessarily limited to

extending the usefulness of its vocational departments to meet the

war-emergency demands. As has already been noted, the department of

French may give courses in conversational French in armories and in

cantonments. Sir Robert Blair writes:

We had this plan in England, and as volunteering grew to very

considerable dimensions towards the close of 1914 and there were

tens of thousands of soldiers grouped within the near neighborhood

of London, an arrangement was made with the war-office authorities

for the teaching of French.

Courses in mathematics applicable to war needs may be given. The

college may send tutors to cantonments to give instruction to

undergraduates who have not completed their college work and who would

like to receive a college diploma. Colleges can coöperate with the

Y.M.C.A., to which has been given the privilege of looking after the

recreational features in cantonments. American college boys and others

will not be satisfied with formal military training. They will want

health talks, entertaining and educational lectures, and instruction as

to many things helpful in civil as well as in military life.

There is a large opportunity, in a field as yet hardly touched, for

departments of psychology in universities to help in selecting men for

different branches of war service and to give vocational guidance to

men who leave the service unfitted by war work to reënter their former

occupations and perhaps untrained to enter a new service. A staff

of psychologists is now at work in each of our cantonments applying

intelligence ratings.

There are two distinct uses for the ratings which are given the men

as a result of the psychological examinations. One of these uses is

military and consists in furnishing a commanding officer with the

rating of each man in his command, by which he may, if he chooses, be

guided in selecting men for promotion, or for special duties requiring

more than average intelligence and mental quickness. The other use is

medical and is the thing specifically sought--to find men who are so

markedly below the average in intelligence as to demand consideration

for discharge or for assignment to simple manual work under careful

supervision.

The general method of the test is as follows: The men of each company

are divided into 4 groups of 75 to 80 each. Each group is first given

a simple literacy test which takes about five minutes and shows only

which of the men can read and write. The illiterates are withdrawn at

this point to be given examinations for manual skill. All those who can

read are then given the "group-intelligence examination."

Those who do not get good ratings are now re-examined in a group to

discover whether they are merely slow or are of low-grade intelligence.

If any fail to make a satisfactory showing, they are grouped with the

illiterates who were separated from the rest of the group after the

preliminary examination.

All these--illiterates, and literates who have not done well in the

group examination--are given tests for manual skill and ingenuity.

These tests are such as putting together dissembled mechanisms, etc.

After further individual examination those who receive the poorest

rating are likely to be considered for discharge or as suited only for

manual work under supervision.

Those who display special mental or manual ability are brought to the

notice of their company commanders as men who may be given assignments

for superior intelligence or skill.

The aims of the entire psychological examination are to measure native

intelligence and ability, not schooling; to disclose what a man can

do with his head and hands, not what he has learned from books; and

to help the medical officers quickly to discover and sift out the

extremely incompetent, and thus prevent the inefficiency and injustice

resulting from putting men in places which they are not qualified to

fill.

Of course there is a tremendous opportunity for the college to help

people understand the causes of war. This has already been referred to

in the chapter on "War and Community Uses of our Schools."

Colleges having teacher-training departments will have the opportunity

of giving short courses to men and women who will take the places of

those who have gone to war. There is also a field for great service

in discovering ways and means of improving our public-school systems

through lessons drawn from the war.

Every college and university has a large library, and this should

be examined with a view to discovering its possible contribution to

national defense in war time. Aside from their functions of supplying

fresh news and judgments of current events, libraries surely have a

vital part in that work of organized research which is behind Germany's

scientific and industrial efficiency. Successful research rests as much

upon adequate and well-organized book resources as upon laboratories

and trained men. The plain and immediate duty of a college situated

near a cantonment, or having a portion of its student body enlisted in

a camp, would seem to be to build up a military library adequate as a

center of military information for those who are studying new methods

and instruments of attack and defense. Such a library would be a

technical library assisting the large number of specialized schools and

fields of training for officers and men in every branch of the service

and even in different duties in the same branch. Medical libraries

of colleges should be available, with new and important material on

military hygiene, medicine, sanitation, and surgery, and this material

should be given the widest publicity with reference to its usefulness

for the military, medical, and hospital corps.

The college library might well lend to a cantonment a member of its

library staff for the development of not only a technical library but

also a general reading library for those soldiers who desire only

general reading.

The geological department of a college can help in deciding on

foundation conditions for army-work constructions, on the location

of camp sites with reference to topography, drainage, and water

supply, and on the location of trenches with reference to dryness,

underdrainage, and rock deposits. Such a department can participate

in the study of earth vibrations in connection with heavy artillery

discharges for the accurate determination of the distances of enemy

batteries. It can also help the government in giving more exact

training to young men in the interpretation of geological and

topographical maps.

It is obvious that the technical college and the technical institute

may render the greatest government service through its faculty and

student body. Armour Institute of Chicago has a large number of its

graduates and older students in concerns which are producing munition

supplies and war-ships. Many have entered the signal service, and a

large class in marine engineering has been specifically organized to

prepare men for service with the government.

Wentworth Institute in Boston, under the direction of Principal Arthur

L. Williston, has been giving instruction in various branches of

military engineering to the First Regiment of Engineers of the Fifth

District, U. S. A. This regiment was originally an infantry regiment,

but the men voluntarily elected to train themselves to become an

engineering regiment. The commissioned officers and non-commissioned

officers and all the enlisted men gave three nights a week to the work

for several months. In addition some sixty of the men in the regiment

voluntarily resigned from business positions in order to devote eight

to ten hours a day, six days in the week, to the work. This institute

instilled what Mr. Williston calls "mechanical gumption" into the

enlisted men through short unit courses in mapping and surveying,

topographical sketching, and map reading; gasoline-engine operation,

repairing, and maintenance; portable steam-power plant construction

and operation; electrical-power plant operation; field telephony;

electric-line construction and maintenance; timber construction,

including pontoons, timber trusses, timber suspension-bridge

construction, machine-gun shelters, dugouts, and dugout tunneling

and framing; strength of materials; concrete construction, including

culverts, bridge abutments, gun-carriage and engine foundations;

acetylene welding and demolition work; thermite welding and emergency

repair; machinery erection and alignment; forging, hardening, and

tempering; hydraulics and drainage, especially trench drainage; and

rigging. The time was too short to give any elaborate theoretical

training. The instruction was given through brief and intensive courses

in a very practical way. In many instances it showed men who had

practical experience and ability how to adapt their particular kind

of skill to the special needs of the given service. Many of these men

already had skill, but they needed to have it adapted to military ends.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: Technical colleges and institutes believe that education

is the very last thing in which they ought to economize. Illustrations

of class work in national-emergency courses for the army and navy given

by Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York.]

[Illustration:

BOYS AMERICA'S

INDUSTRIES

NEED YOU

PREPARE AT

BUFFALO VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS]

[Illustration: A poster which accomplished its purpose. War time, even

more than normal times, requires an educational appeal to the work

impulses of youth.]

Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York, has been conducting 8 evening

classes in machine-shop practice, 6 classes in machine-drafting

design, 1 evening class in elementary ship drafting, and day courses

for a large body of enlisted men from the navy electrical school

and from the signal reserve corps. Those who come from the signal

reserve corps are being trained for active service in telegraphy,

the institute furnishing the technical instruction in elementary

and applied electricity, and army officers furnishing the military

and field-service instruction. A mess for the men of this corps is

conducted at the school of household science connected with the

institute, and here details of men are trained for this work through

a course in army cooking. The men from the electrical school are

quartered at the navy yard, and spend five and one-half hours a day at

the institute taking courses in machine-shop operation, steam-engine

practice, elementary electricity, armature- and field-coil repair work

on electrical machines, elementary chemistry, and batteries. It is

interesting to note that Pratt Institute made a special effort to hold

intact its student body of the regular courses, on the theory that the

thoroughly trained mechanic or technician in service is many times more

valuable to the nation than a private in the ranks. As a result of this

effort, very few of the students of the day school dropped from the

regular courses.

The William Hood Dunwoody Institute of Minneapolis began immediately

on the severance of relations with Germany to serve as a recruiting

station for the United States Engineers' Enlisted Reserve Corps,

the United States Signal Enlisted Reserve Corps, the United States

Quartermaster's Enlisted Reserve Corps, the United States Civil

Service Commission, and the United States Navy.

It also outlined a scheme for taking a census of mechanics and

technicians for the state of Minnesota, which is now being carried out,

and on the basis of which recruiting will go forward for every branch

of the government service.

It made arrangements for bringing to Minneapolis, on the first of

August, 425 recruits from the Great Lakes Naval Training Station at

Chicago, and distributed them among the following classes in training

at the institute: general electricians, radio electricians, carpenter's

mates, machine-shop operators, gas-engine operators, blacksmiths,

coppersmiths, cooks, and bakers.

The institute is training more than 200 novices in day and evening

classes in telegraphy. Of these about 60 per cent are girls and

women, this course being offered in response to a direct request from

railroad and telegraph lines in the vicinity of Minneapolis. It is also

giving some instruction in operating-foremanship work for a prominent

local steel and machinery company, as this company has renewed the

manufacture of munitions and needs operation foremen. The institute was

called upon to select the most promising men and to train them in one

process of which they are later to have charge in the shop. Director

Charles A. Prosser in making a report to the secretary of the National

Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education said:

We have 154 people taking radio work in day and evening

classes. This group is made up of a number of different types.

First, there are the amateurs with licenses who have enlisted in

our first radio company of the United States Signal Service and

have gone into that class to improve their speed. Second, there

are other young men who have gone in to learn the work so as to be

recruited into another radio company of the United States Signal

Corps or into the naval service, and there are, in the third place,

young men who have gone in with the idea of offering their services

to the Marconi Company, either for land work or for duty on board

the merchant ships which are being built.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 mechanics and technicians

have been sent into different branches of the government service

by Dunwoody Institute. This number is made up in part of our own

students from our school--particularly from the evening classes,

although some of our day boys have gone--and in part of mechanics

and technicians throughout Minnesota who have gone into the service

through Dunwoody Institute, where we conduct a recruiting station

and where we are recruiting into the service every Wednesday,

applications being taken in the interim.

We have sent into the service 1 motor-truck company; 2 others

are in process of organization. We are sending out 1 radio company,

which is ready to go, and are about to organize another. We are

also organizing 1 wire company, 1 baking company, and 1 company of

cooks. In addition we have sent men to the Brooklyn Navy Yard and

are sending men to the Puget Sound Navy Yard. We have also put men

in touch with the Civil Service Commission and sent them into the

service in this way.

The response of these and other colleges and technical institutes

justifies as nothing else could their past claims that they train not

only for the spirit of service but for the life of service.

The effect of the war on the college curriculum cannot be hastily

measured. Institutions of collegiate grade are slow to make radical

changes in the requirements for the bachelor's degree. Some have

already shortened the college course to three years. Others have

decided as a war measure that students ought to be through college by

the time they reach conscription age. Some are offering opportunity

for all-the-year-round work. Others are allowing war service to count

toward a college degree. The English universities are already thinking

of strengthening their courses in science and laboratory research, of

giving more attention to modern languages, and of developing vocational

courses.

Certainly in America there will be an immediate and greater demand

for so-called "practical" subjects. It may be that one of the effects

of the war will be the sharpening of the differentiation and an

increase of competition between the idealistic and the practical groups

of studies. This will be unfortunate. There should be no sharpening

of differences of opinion. They had much better be dulled. There

is no real necessity for antagonism between the cultural and the

vocational subjects. People only _think_ there is a need for constant

justification of the one against the other. Such thinking has become a

habit of mind.

The French have a way of saying that the cultural subjects are merely

the moral conditions, the ethical history, and a judgment as to the

ethical value of the world complex of vocational and economic life; for

this reason any conflict between cultural and vocational subjects is

impossible, and the more vocational education is developed, the more

will the cultural aspects be needed and the more highly developed will

they become. The French point out that what we term cultural subjects

developed in two civilizations which were very highly practical,

vocational, and militaristic; namely, Greece and Rome. They speak

of the humanities as being essentially the abiding lessons of those

civilizations which in vocational and military efficiency stood much

higher above their fellows than Germany stands in those respects above

contemporary civilization to-day.

Vocational subjects are direct-service subjects always. By their very

nature they respond immediately to an emergency. The cultural subjects

are more indirect in their effect. They could not be otherwise. I

often wish we could get into the habit of speaking of liberal subjects

in the sense in which this term was used in the older days of our

colleges, when the term "liberal" implied that the subjects classed

under this head were liberalizing; that is, they liberated, or set

free, the minds, spirits, and bodies of men and women from prejudice,

selfishness, tradition, passion, cruelty, and so on. I have never seen

how one could _elect_ culture, for it is always a by-product coming out

of thinking and living. To study the language of an ancient people and

to learn nothing of their government or ideals is useless. To study

this government and these ideals of an older civilization and to see no

lessons for the world of to-day is almost valueless. To study the past

in terms of problems of human society is liberalizing.

New meanings of the realities of war are before us. New concepts of

two great ideals of government confront us. New methods of making

war more horrible strike our eyes with every news issue. New schemes

for patching up human life that it may go forth again to battle or

return to industrial warfares of peace are heralded every week.

New societies for the relief of human suffering due to the war are

chartered constantly. New alignments of political groups committed to

reform are in the making. New groupings of nations not formerly allied

stand before our eyes. New methods of combining activities of great

corporate interests for government needs are published daily. New trade

possibilities now latent are prophesied as being inevitable. New ideals

and new ideas gathered in the trenches are appearing over battle lines

for new governmental practices. New advances in the field of government

control of prices startle us continually.

Out of it all there looms up a new science of chemistry, improved

methods of transportation in the air, a still greater standardization

of making industrial products, a new conception of government control

of trade and industry, a system of government insurance for individuals

and corporations, new concepts of legislative authority and action,

and a score of other things all heading up into a new sense of

nationalism,--and who knows but even a sense of internationalism!

Is it credible that education alone will remain unaffected by these

world changes?

CHAPTER V

THE OPPORTUNITY FOR MANUAL AND HOUSEHOLD ARTS

A new spirit of teaching practical arts is upon us. The aims,

materials, and methods of instruction in manual training, cooking,

sewing, agriculture, and commercial branches are changing. They have

been influenced by the vocational-education movement, and because of it

practical arts in general education must justify themselves or else be

put into the scrap heap.

The development and organization of differentiated courses in

industrial, agricultural, and household and commercial arts adapted

to junior and senior high schools--more particularly in connection

with the education of children from 12 to 16 years of age--offers a

new field of service to teachers of these subjects who, up to now,

have been following methods unsuited either to the needs of vocational

training or to the needs of general education. Already the set of wood

and iron models taken from the Russian system of the early seventies

has disappeared, and the sampler book in sewing has passed away. The

era of the coat hanger and sleeve board in manual training and of the

set of doll's clothes and models of undergarments is doomed, and the

cooking outline which starts out with making cocoa in September and in

the thirteenth lesson takes up the making of an angel cake will soon

meet the fate of flowerpot holders, doll's aprons, and book agriculture.

But there is a great field for the practical arts in general

education,--a field which no scheme of vocational training can possibly

occupy. Each has its place. Vocational training is fitting young

persons for profitable employment in chosen vocations. Practical arts

in general education consists of varied lines of activity taken from

the fields of agriculture, commerce, industry, and the household and

taught in the school for the purpose of developing capacity to deal

with concrete things and of arousing social and industrial interests in

the workaday world.

In the early years of the child's life practical-arts work has a strong

motor and social value. In the middle years, say from 12 to 16, it has

a social and vocational-guidance value. The chapter entitled "The Field

for Industrial and Trade Schools" gives a number of suggestions as to

the work which boys and, to some extent, girls may offer as their

service contribution in time of war. However there are fewer than 100

industrial and trade schools in the country. The majority of our youth

are taking some practical-arts work as a part of general education in

either the elementary or the secondary school, and surely these young

people will want to do something in this emergency. And certainly the

teachers of sewing, manual training, cooking, and agriculture will

desire to do their part, not only because they can be of service at

this time but also for the reason that through war-service work they

will be able to improve upon the practical-arts work and make it

conform to the new spirit. The whole spirit of the new methods is based

upon getting away from individual models created out of the mind of a

teacher and imposed upon an unsuspecting student body which follows

a "course in models" in about the same way that it takes a course in

arithmetic.

The present scheme of teaching practical arts is based upon the project

plan and not upon the model or exercise plan. It no longer depends upon

the teacher's course of study founded on tool exercises or logical

sequence of processes. It now comes out of a need which is as clear to

the student as it should be to the teacher. The progressive teacher

of manual training starts out with such a project, for example, as a

garage. This involves making a sketch, working up a bill of materials,

finding out the cost of lumber, cement, and so on. It involves work in

concrete, laying the floor timbers, putting up the sides, laying out

the roof, setting in the window and door frames, putting on the tarred

paper or shingles or galvanized iron, and painting and staining.

The progressive teacher of domestic arts no longer thinks of catering

merely to the personal decorative sense of young girls. She no longer

has the girls spend the entire year making graduation dresses, or

dish towels, caps, and aprons. She thinks in terms of quantity and in

terms of social service which the domestic-arts work may render. She

discovers that a hospital needs towels, aprons, caps, and bed linen, or

that the orphan asylum near the school is sorely in need of children's

garments, and then she tells of this need to the girls in her charge

and the latter take up the problem in the same way that the boys take

up the problem of building a garage. Each girl works in conjunction

with others for a common purpose which all recognize as being worth

while.

Progressive teachers of cooking are realizing that the idea of 20

cooking units in a schoolroom, where little batches of 20 model

biscuits are made and where at the close of the lesson each girl has

one of these small eatables, is far behind the practice of those

manual-training teachers who are making drawing tables, benches, and

looms, or laying concrete walks, building outdoor gymnasium apparatus,

and so on. Some of the teachers have insisted on having a flat or

tenement or entire house near the school, where girls taking domestic

science can go to learn to make real beds that are really slept upon,

to clean bathroom bowls that are really used, to cook meals that are

really eaten by people who pay for what they eat, to shake real rugs

that become really dirty, and to shop at stores where they come in

contact with actual commercial conditions and at the end of a week

discover that it really costs money to run a real home. A few teachers,

and in time there will be many, desire to go still further. They

believe that home-making cannot be taught without having some babies

around, and so they have established day nurseries in connection with

the home-making classes.

It is because of these things which have been mentioned in some

detail that I was glad, as director of the Division of Agricultural

and Industrial Education of the New York State Education Department,

to send out a circular letter early in April, 1917, to our

manual-training and household-arts teachers, in which I stated that

every teacher of manual training, sewing, or cooking should be thinking

in terms of mobilization service, and that any teacher of manual

training who was conducting his course of models, instead of thinking

and working in terms of food production or industrial war service,

was absolutely out of touch with the needs of the day. I advised him

to turn his shop work over to home and community gardens, to increase

the time allowance given to manual work, and help fill the cellar

and pantry. I advised him to give his Saturdays and afternoons after

school and even his vacation period to supervising garden work in the

community. I said, furthermore, that any teacher of sewing who was not

thinking in terms of Red Cross, and of mending, darning, and repairing,

was as far away from the service idea as she possibly could be. I told

her that with the increase in price of materials and with the scarcity

of dress goods there would be necessary repairing and making over which

would give her an opportunity to do some real things. I even told her

that she might drop some of her sewing and help the cooking teacher

in organizing classes in preserving. I told the teachers of cooking

that if they were running through their outlines with no reference

to the food shortage of next winter and the year after, they showed a

lack of comprehension of the meaning of their jobs. I stated that the

early summer and fall suggested lessons in preserving, while the winter

season conveyed the idea of conserving. I asked whether they were

planning to stop their work in June, before the canning season really

began, and leave everything idle until school should open, when the

canning season would be nearly over. I wondered what provision had been

made in the community for using the summer service which they either

had offered or, I hoped, were about to offer.

A few weeks later word came from England of how the manual-training

teachers had been urged by those in authority to do garden work. A

portion of these directions follows:

Surely wood and metal work have not the monopoly of the

educative value in manual operations. The harvesting of an orchard

of fruit or a field of potatoes by a class of school children,

accompanied by an enthusiastic teacher imbued with the right ideal

of his work, can be made to serve other purposes than merely that

of simple mechanical utility. A discussion started at first hand

between child and teacher on such matters as variety and quality

of produce, the destructive fruit pests and diseases encountered,

the crating, packing, and distribution of produce, the weighing

and measuring actually performed, the calculating of the value

of produce and of labor, and a knowledge that the coöperative

effort is in response to a call of England's need, would provide

open-air lessons in nature study, geography, arithmetic, and civics

quite as educative as any obtained in the elaborately equipped

manual-training centers.

This is true, especially the phrase "a knowledge that the coöperative

effort is in response to a call of England's need," which embraces the

socializing value of the manual-arts principles,--a value which we

often talk about and as often fail to attain.

Teachers of cooking, in this food crisis now upon us and the greater

one which may come, ought to suspend temporarily some of their work in

teaching children and turn their attention to teaching adults. To be

sure the girl of to-day will be the mother of to-morrow, but the mother

of the immediate to-morrow is also the mother of to-day, and the food

crisis will be over, it is to be hoped, by the time the girls in our

present cooking classes have grown into motherhood. These courses to

adults should be intensive and in short units. The printing schools

should print leaflets giving practical and helpful recipes to be

distributed to the adults. If the women will not come to the school,

then the schools should go to the women. By this it is meant that

classes can be organized in churches, vacant stores, and settlements.

In this connection it may be of interest to quote from the Leicester

(England) education committee:

Arrangements have been made in connection with the local

food campaign whereby the ordinary schemes of work at the

domestic-science centers have been temporarily suspended and

special short courses in cookery instruction provided instead.

These courses have been designed primarily as a means of

instructing as many women and older girls as possible in the

method of preparing and cooking suitable substitutes for bread

and potatoes. In addition to the rooms equipped for cookery

instruction, those normally devoted to the teaching of laundering

and housewifery are being used for this special work. The course

is arranged to cover 4 lessons given on consecutive half days to

each group of attendants, and at the conclusion of each course the

women and girls attend one evening for a review lesson including a

practical demonstration to which outsiders are invited. Leaflets

have been prepared and sent to the schools for distribution. The

children themselves write out the scale of rations as applied to

individual families and take their copies home, thus becoming the

active agents in the food campaign.

In Albany, New York, the regular work in cooking was discontinued early

in June for the school year of 1917, and a special course of 10 lessons

in food conservation was given at 4 domestic-science centers. The

course consisted of 1 lesson in the preservation of eggs, 3 lessons on

canning, 1 on making soap, 1 on butter substitutes, 2 on jellies and

marmalades, and 1 on the drying of a number of agricultural products.

Not only may the domestic-science teacher go to adults by the

way of churches or settlements, but she may go directly,--in the

rural districts, at least,--with demonstration kitchens mounted

on automobiles. In Lindsay County, England, for example, a

domestic-science lecturer arranged an experimental course of lectures

and demonstrations on economical cookery, and equipped with necessary

utensils a traveling kitchen at a cost of $100. She covered each of

the larger villages in the area selected, spending one day in each

place, the morning being given over to traveling. In the afternoon,

exhibitions of wheat-flour substitutes were arranged and demonstrations

given that were based upon left-overs from her preceding evening's

lesson. She also gave short talks on beekeeping, horticulture, fruit

bottling, and so on. In the evening she gave a cooking demonstration.

The "van" used by the women of Long Island, New York State, consisted

of a train of cars behind a steam locomotive, from which demonstrations

were given in fruit and vegetable preserving. The County of Nottingham,

England, gave similar demonstrations and in addition gave lectures to

mothers on the necessity of taking unusual precautions with reference

to the health of babies at this period. It was customary in much of the

work in England to have an agriculturist go with the teacher and give

talks on spraying, elimination of pests, and conservation of garden

products.

One of the greatest services that the domestic-science teacher can

render, whether she labors in rural or in urban fields, is the

organization of canning clubs. The canning club enlists the services

of women, girls, and even boys. It can be made as much of a social

institution as corn husking and barn raising were formerly. But the

teacher must, in most instances, move out of her domestic-science

kitchen with its little gas stoves and quart sauce-pans. In the country

district the equipment will be the stove in the village church,

with a wash boiler, galvanized vat, washtub, or other vessel with a

well-fitting top, which can easily be transformed into a home canner

by making a false bottom with lifting handles. In a village or small

city it may be necessary to beg, borrow, or buy the necessary cooking

utensils, and to obtain free use of a vacant store, asking the local

gas company to install, free of charge, some gas ranges. The boys will

prepare the fruit; the women and girls will can it or dry it, as the

case may be. To dispose of the product is a simple matter. It may be

sold and the proceeds divided. It may be taken to the homes and the

expense of producing shared.

In the city the domestic-science teacher serving as a leader of the

canning club must watch closely the market and buy when the price is

right, particularly when there is a surplus that may otherwise be

wasted. It will be a new experience for many domestic-science teachers.

It is a rather different proposition from canning a few baskets of

strawberries, cherries, or currants in a classroom.

Naturally other containers than glass jars or tumblers will have to be

used. In fact, the canning club after one season of experimentation is

likely to resemble, with its larger and more efficient equipment, a

miniature canning factory.

In Berkeley, California, the children of the entire city had a Jar Day,

when they went out and collected every discarded and undesired jar.

These were cleaned and sold and the money was turned into a "service

fund." Many jars, also, were filled with surplus vegetable products to

be used for the poor in the winter.

Of course the old drying methods of grandmother's days must be

rejuvenated. Mr. Fred P. Reagle, supervisor of manual training in

Montclair, discovered one of the old-fashioned evaporators and had

a large number made up by the boys in his school and passed out to

neighboring communities. Here is an old home industry which may be

revived in the home or the community.

Mr. Reagle, in describing his evaporator, writes:

I was obliged to build something which could be used anywhere

regardless of the availability of steam heat, electric fans, or

coal. Furthermore, it was necessary to construct from common stock

material and to use some stock stove. I hit upon the idea of using

a common laundry stove which could burn either wood or coal. I

made 20 frames, covered with galvanized wire, to hold the fruit.

The control of the air circulation was obtained by means of an

adjustable sliding door beneath the stove. The heated air passes

around and over the stove and through the fresh food products,

taking out the moisture and going out through the adjustable

ventilator at the top. The evaporator has a capacity of from 5 to 8

bushels of fruit and vegetables a day.

Another activity for domestic-science teachers of more experience will

be in the training of cooks for the army, or, as the director of the

School of Practical Arts (Teachers College) believes, "in the training

of people to train cooks."

The following quotation from a letter written by Sir Robert Blair of

London to Superintendent Maxwell of New York City shows what was done

in London:

In the summer recess, 1915, 264 of our domestic-science

teachers volunteered part of their holidays in order to help in the

work of training 2500 soldiers to cook and to meet the ordinary

requirements in this line of the private in the field. The War

Office drew men from different units from all over England and

brought them to London in two great groups and paid 1/9 a day for

the up-keep of the men. The soldiers were billeted in the school

buildings and the preparation of their food formed the basis of the

cookery instruction. Each group was taken for a period of ten days.

The War Office was most appreciative of the work done by these

domestic-economy instructresses. The War Office did not ask us to

repeat this the following summer, although it was repeated to some

extent in other parts of England. The War Office, however, did ask

us to lend them 30 carefully selected teachers of cooking for the

purpose of visiting army canteens and giving advice both on cooking

and (what I believe is more important) on quantities used.

Still another service can be rendered by the cooking teachers,

especially in our large cities and in our industrial villages. This

service consists in giving meals to children who are in want. Of course

at the present moment we see little need for this work, but the pinch

of poverty has come upon England, France, and Germany, and our own

land may not always be one of plenty. When the need arises, teachers

should be prepared to furnish lunches to the children and possibly even

breakfasts, to say nothing about suppers. The dislocation of many

ordinary trades and lines of business, the taking from the home of the

family's means of support, the increased cost of food and provisions,

and the prevalence of sickness due to neglect may necessitate the

feeding of children in school. In London the list of children to whom

meals were given daily increased rapidly from something like 32,000

in July, 1914, up to 75,000 about the middle of September, 1914.

Fortunately, however, as trade and industry became better adjusted

there was a steady decline in the number of children that were fed,

so that in May, 1917, there were only about 12,000--the children then

on the list being mainly the children of widows who were forced to go

out to work. The number of meals provided per week in the schools of

England in July, 1915, was 200,000. In a year this number had dropped

to 120,000.

[Illustration: MENACING WAR-CLOUDS

OVERSHADOW OUR LAND

INCREASE THE FOOD SUPPLY

AND KEEP OUR MEN IN EUROPE]

[Illustration: "AN ARMY MARCHES

ON ITS STOMACHE"

WILL YOU DO YOUR BIT?]

Good posters have a great influence on civic life at any

time. Now they are invaluable. War-service posters designed by Manual

Training High School boys of Brooklyn, New York.

[Illustration: Girls at work; mothers watching. Why should not

both work in a community kitchen equipped with evaporators, large

containers, proper stoves, and utensils for doing a real piece of work?]

The drawing departments might well have their students design posters.

Those designed by American illustrators for the first Liberty Loan

were surprisingly ineffective. Only one stood out--that with the

reproduction of the Statue of Liberty with the accompanying symbol and

direct wording. Our enlistment posters have been crude, lacking in

psychological appeal as well as in design. It is questionable whether

recruiting is aided by a picture showing a naval officer lounging

under a palm tree while in the distance a marine is seen standing

amid bursting shells on a battleship. There has been and will be an

opportunity for students to design posters for Red Cross work; for

enlistment as farm cadets; for enrollment in a home-service unit for

girls, in community canning clubs, in Boy Scout work, in school, home,

and community gardening; for patriotic meetings and a score of other

occasions. Good posters have an almost incalculable influence on civic

life at any time. Within the last year there have been held in many

cities various competitions in poster work of pupils with such subjects

as "Red Cross," "Thrift," "Safety First," "Fire Prevention," "Pure

Milk," and "Liberty Loan."

There is plenty of work for the manual-training teacher. Mention has

already been made of garden work, not so much in school gardens,

however, as in community gardens, for, like the canning-club work,

here is a splendid opportunity to bring adults and children together.

In a number of small cities in the country where tillable land could

be obtained, the manual-training teachers directed a community-garden

project. The boys built the tool house; the Boy Scouts took turns in

acting as watchmen; plots were laid out on a family or individual

basis; seed was purchased in bulk and distributed at cost; experts,

hired by the day, plowed and harrowed the ground; stakes marking the

plots were made in the school; and the manual-training instructors, or,

as they were termed, the garden directors, spent their summer vacation

in a useful service.

The manual-training teacher may help the Red Cross chapter in

packing supplies into the boxes which his boys have made. He can

be planning the hospital furniture which he may be called upon to

make, as in France, where the boys built furniture for improvised

hospitals and installed electric lights. He can be thinking how he

shall, if required, make hospital-bed racks, cots, tables, and simple

reclining chairs. Perhaps he may have to supervise, as have the

manual-training teachers in England, the making of hand-grenade bags,

chaff bags, dummy cartridges for the training of troops, or sand bags.

In a single secondary school in Bradford, England, more than 1200

articles--including splints, crutches, bed-boards and rests, screens,

rollers, trays, etc.--have been made in the manual-training department

in one year. Perhaps in the early spring latrines can be designed and

built for the farm cadets, as was done in the Newton (Massachusetts)

school, or shacks for troops, as was done at Plattsburg, New York, by

the boys from the Stuyvesant High School, New York City. The teacher

may have his part to play in giving vocational training to maimed

soldiers (see chapter on "Reëducation of the Disabled"), as all of the

instructors in manual-training schools of the Dominion of Canada are

now doing.

A manual-training teacher in Nashville, Tennessee, Mr. John M. Foster,

has his boys make jigsaw puzzles, checkerboards, and bandage winders

for the use of our soldiers in France. During the summer of 1917 he

organized a boys' auxiliary of the Red Cross, and the group made

packing cases according to official specifications. The organization

included a shop foreman, a timekeeper, and a stock man. Lumber and

other materials were contributed by local dealers.

Perhaps the manual-training instructor will coöperate with the teacher

of domestic science, as male strength is needed, in providing comforts

for the soldiers, such as socks and mufflers made on knitting machines,

and in helping with the packing and crating. In this connection there

is another quotation on the work of London children:

At the end of the first year of the war we began to organize

efforts to provide clothing and other necessities for Belgian

and Serbian children. In a few months the schools were able to

furnish 10,000 complete kits made to the pattern and color and size

supplied by the two embassies. It is reported that the making of

these kits was one of the best exercises in planning, cutting, and

sewing which the schools ever undertook, and probably nothing has

done more to foster the school _esprit de corps_ in the history of

municipal schools since their origin, in 1870.

In France a number of schools, when the buildings were turned into

hospitals, equipped either the entire hospital or a considerable number

of beds at their own expense and by their own work. Hospital service

was largely organized by these schools. One school would be responsible

for the linen, another for mending, another for table service, another

for cooking, and another for sending and receiving packages. A workroom

established by the school girls in one of these hospitals had sent to

the front in a year and a half 25,330 packages. One little village

school of only 30 pupils in a short period collected 2542 eggs for the

wounded soldiers and made socks and mufflers in addition. In another

small district each of the schools specialized in some kind of work,

one making up parcels for war prisoners, another knitting sailors'

gloves, another making clothing for refugees, and still another

providing candles for troops in trenches.

A small country school in the Midlands of England, in addition to

weekly contributions of vegetables to the local hospital for wounded

soldiers, has made 26 bed cradles and a dozen crutches, while the

youngest boys have made splints.

A report from a northeast-coast district of England mentions

manual-training centers where bed tables, toilet tables, bed rests, and

clinical-chart carriers are made for the local hospital. Even the girls

have made splints and bed tables. Of course hundreds of sand bags have

been made in the schools.

The report closes with these significant words: "The effect of all this

work has been most remarkable. Even districts where formerly little

interest was taken by the children seem suddenly to realize the value

of it all." This is what might have been expected, and what we in

America may expect when we make our practical-arts work socializing,

useful, and contributory to some great cause that the children see is

worth while.

CHAPTER VI

THE WORK IMPULSES OF YOUTH

Since August, 1914, there have been presented to us new aspects

of the relation of children to industry. Up to that time the only

consideration for those who had the welfare of children at heart was

the child himself; but with the war, the welfare of the child became

tied up with the problem of the welfare of the country and its demands

for service on the whole population. The endeavor to adjust these two

in nice balance has resulted in experimental legislation or in action

without legislation, both of which have often been of no genuine or

lasting benefit to either interest concerned.

In America, in the first half of 1917, many of our states

appeared to be following the lead of England in abrogating the

compulsory-attendance law, urging the same reason for permitting

children within school age to work in fields and factories. Everyone is

familiar with the facts presented by farmer and industrial employer.

In sections whose activity has been stimulated by the production of

war products, such as Bridgeport, Connecticut, other industries and

mercantile establishments have found it impossible to run as usual

owing to the presence of munition plants, which attract an abnormal

number of workers.

Not only is neighborhood business affected by the presence of war

industries, but the farm shortage is aggravated; for the supply of

intermittent labor, the kind demanded for berry picking, harvesting,

and canning, is not forthcoming when the workers are offered steady

employment in munition and textile plants. In 1917 many small canneries

were threatened with the prospect of closing and letting the adjacent

crops spoil in the fields; hence their call for schoolboys to assist

them in cultivating and harvesting. This resulted in an unprecedented

rush of children between 14 and 16 to obtain employment certificates,

and a clamor from those below 14 to be allowed to leave school and go

to work.

With the nation and the state urging farmers and food producers to make

every exertion to increase the food supply, legislatures must render

assistance in solving the labor-shortage problem. It need hardly be

pointed out that the farmer cannot be expected to plant additional

acres unless he is reasonably sure that it will be possible for him to

have his acres cultivated and harvested.

England as early as September 1, 1914, was feeling the shortage created

by the numbers of men enlisting, and every Local Education Authority

was being besought by farmers and manufacturers to obtain modifications

of the law which, generally speaking, held children in school up to

14 years. An order of the Board of Education to the Local Education

Authority in Northamptonshire, answering such a plea, stated:

While the Board of Education have no power to give any general

directions overriding the ordinary law with regard to school

attendance and the employment of children,...a Local Education

Authority is under no obligation to take proceedings in respect of

nonattendance of a child at school if they are satisfied that there

is a reasonable excuse for nonattendance.

The "reasonable excuse" was found in the overpowering clamor of farmers

and munition makers who were suffering from lack of workers, as in

Staffordshire, where the petition sent to the Education Authority by

the bolt-and-nut manufacturers at Darlaston stated that owing to the

enlistment of men in various branches of his Majesty's forces and

because of the fact that the firms concerned were largely engaged on

work of great urgency for the naval and military services, "it was

desirable, in order to prevent delay in the execution of this work,

that the school-attendance by-laws should be relaxed for the duration

of the war so as to permit of the employment of boys over the age of 13

years."[4]

It cannot be stated too strongly that England has realized too late

the practical impossibility of recovery for school of the children

thus released, and the dangers to the nation of allowing the junior

population to go into industry without supervision. There will be

introduced into our legislatures in 1918 and later many bills which

will parallel English action, and the various states must watch

carefully to see that in their zealous attempts to increase food

or necessary manufactured supplies they do not create and sanction

disastrous conditions for the health and morals of the young.

Now action in regard to our schools may be of several types.

First, there may be passed laws which abrogate the existing

compulsory-attendance law; such legislation would be that permitting

children below compulsory school age to leave school. Second, it is

possible to have the existing laws interpreted so as to excuse absence

from school, as in North Dakota, where the attorney-general in an

open letter to school officers, April, 1917, interprets the section

of the school law exempting children from school attendance in cases

of necessity to apply to children of school age actually engaged in

tilling the soil. A third type of action is that which suspends the

compulsory-attendance law under certain conditions; such a law is the

so-called "Brown Bill," chapter 689 of the Laws of 1917, New York

legislature, to which reference will be made later. Action may also be

taken in regard to shortening or lengthening the established school

year, shifting vacations, and changing hours of session. For instance,

the Bureau of Education at Washington has suggested keeping school open

twelve months, and this advice may be taken in some localities; it is

possible, also, that a continuation of the demand for agricultural

labor of students may result in a different allotment of vacations in

the apple- and peach-growing sections, so that students employed in

harvesting may lose a minimum of school attendance.

[4] Quoted from correspondence of the Board of Education to the Local

Education Authority in Northamptonshire.

Events moved very rapidly in the spring of 1917. We were called upon

by national and state governments, by chambers of commerce and boards

of trade, by bankers and railroads, to raise crops. We were told that

America must be the pantry for all Europe and that, do the best that

we might, we should not do overmuch. Obviously, with such authority

back of a movement for increased agricultural production, it did not

take very long for state boards of agriculture and state departments of

education to respond, to say nothing about the propaganda set forth by

settlements, women's clubs, the Y.M.C.A., the Boy Scouts, the National

Security League, the Women's Patriotic Service League, and a score

of other organizations, that put a psychological persuasion into the

situation which was hard for school authorities and school children to

resist.

The following data relative to the action of a number of the states

were compiled by the National Child Labor Committee. In general

the data showed no provision made for supervision, for physical

examination, for wages, or for definition of "passing grade." In some

instances there were even no age limitations.

_California._ During continuance of state of war, state board

of education with approval of governor may reduce school term to

six months when necessary "for the planting or harvesting of crops

or for other agricultural or horticultural purposes."

_Indiana._ Letter from state superintendent of public

instruction to county superintendents, April 10, 1917, saying in

part: "It is my wish and order that you permit such high-school

girls and boys, and also such eighth-grade girls and boys as may

care to engage in Home Projects work looking toward the increase

of our agricultural output, to engage in such work and to receive

therefor full credit on the school records, provided this work

is done to the satisfaction of the county agent and the county

superintendent."

Plan formulated later by principals and state superintendents

for supervising, certifying, and accrediting such work did

something to stop a general exodus, but came too late to do much

good.

_Illinois._ State superintendent wrote to local

superintendents, April 10, advising that all boys eligible for

working certificates be excused from school May 1 and receive a

working certificate upon assurance that they have employment on a

farm or in a garden, credit to be given for work upon guarantee

that summer months have been spent in farming or gardening.

_Kansas._ State board of education advised local school

officials, April 17, that it would "approve granting a full year's

credit to pupils who have passing grade and who find it necessary

to withdraw from school before the end of the school year either to

enlist in the military service or actually to engage directly in

food production."

_Maine._ Boys 16 and over excused from school attendance, June

1 to October 31, for work on farms under supervision of Y.M.C.A.

official. (See chapter on "Farm Cadets.")

_Maryland._ Superintendent of schools, Baltimore County, in

open letter to school officials, May 11, authorizes the employment

on farms of "boys and girls who are old enough to be of real

productive value." On days when not so employed they are required

to attend school. Children over 13 who have attended school one

hundred days during the year may be employed without permits;

those who have not attended one hundred days must have permits.

Children under 13 must have a permit, "which should not be issued

to a child who is too immature to do work for which the permit is

asked." Permits issued for twenty days or less may be renewed upon

application of parent.

Similar plan was discussed by state board of education but not

approved on ground that it might lead to abrogation of the laws on

child-labor and school-attendance.

_Missouri._ State superintendent of public schools wrote to

local officials April 13, suggesting that they "excuse at once from

high school all boys over 14 years of age who will go to farms and

work. Give them full credit for their year's work at the end of the

school year, with the standing they have at present. Have the boy

who gets the credit give evidence satisfactory to you as to his

work on the farm. Include boys who live in the country and boys who

will go to the farm to work. Extend the same privilege to girls

where you deem it advisable."

_New York._ (Referred to later in this chapter.)

_North Dakota._ Attorney-general in open letter to school

officers, April, 1917, interprets section of school law exempting

children from school attendance in cases of necessity to apply to

children of school age actually engaged in tilling the soil.

State superintendent of schools in open letter to school

officials, April, 1917, recommends that schools should not open

earlier than October 1, with a spring vacation of four or five

weeks, and that the school be kept open through June and July

when there is less and cheaper farm work to do. "This would make

available, and with a minimum loss of school time, some 5000 of the

older boys at a time when labor is scarce and wages are high."

_Pennsylvania._ State board of education, April 19, issued

circular letter stating that farm and garden work should be

considered valid excuse for absence from school, and for children

12 and over in good standing such work should be credited in lieu

of school attendance.

_New Jersey._ State board of education sent out a circular

letter to superintendents and principals in which it was stated

that credit towards graduation might be given in place of school

work during the time a pupil was actually engaged in farm work as

a member of the Junior Industrial Army, or while called out in the

service of the state or of the nation as a member of its organized

military forces. (Boys and girls over fourteen years of age are

allowed to enroll in the Industrial Army in the agricultural or

home-garden or the girls' service division.)

Possibly no great harm was done by the action of these state officials

and state boards. Yet the action affords food for thought; and perhaps

the best way to bring about reflection is to pass immediately, without

comment, to a quotation taken from the London _Times_ of July 19,

1917,--a quotation which gives a picture of the end of the road on

which some of us in this country started in the spring of 1917.

The reply, last week, of Herbert A. L. Fisher, Minister of

Education, to a deputation of the Committee on Wage-earning

Children was sympathetic and not merely a common-form shelving of

the issue. The deputation asked for legislation restricting the

labor of school children out of school hours. The extent of the

evil was indicated by the deputation, but it is doubtful if even

the educational public know how widespread and deleterious it is.

On October 5, 1915, we pointed out that nearly half a million

children between the ages of 12 and 14 years were receiving no

education, or no education worth having, and that all of these

were at work which led nowhither at the very age when their moral

and physical development was at stake. Since then the conditions

which we condemned have passed from bad to worse. Many thousands

of children under the age of 12, under the ages of even 10 and 11,

are at work, and willingly at work, since the younger the child,

the more readily it responds to the demand for helpfulness. Mr.

Fisher cannot but realize the evil of this exploitation of young

children by parents and tradesmen. It is an evil affecting not only

the efficiency of school life but our whole economic system. There

never was an economic need for this child labor, and the Board of

Education admitted in their circular to local authorities last week

that there is no economic need in rural districts for such labor

even now. This circular was a letter from the National Service

Department and dealt with the pressure on education authorities

in rural areas to release boys and girls under 12 for service on

the land. The letter definitely states that, in view of the labor

released from the army and the number of women now available, "it

would appear that there should be no necessity for such a serious

interruption as is contemplated of the education of the nation's

children."

This should suffice to determine the policy of the

rural-education authorities. But the position in towns is even more

urgent, and Mr. Fisher and the government might give additional

powers to local authorities to deal with the labor of children in

full-time school attendance. It was certainly a mistake in the

legislation of 1913 to make it possible for the street trading of

such children to receive official recognition. But street trading

is not the chief cause of anxiety. Another is the employment of

little children by shopkeepers and distributing agencies before

school, in the dinner interval, and after school. The local

authorities should be empowered to forbid all employment for wages

of children under 12 and to restrict within very narrow limits the

employment of children at school under 14.

Naturally Mr. Fisher must not overburden or imperil his bill,

or interfere with the labor necessary for the war. He cannot be

expected to change the face of England in a moment. But he can

strike deep without disturbing the organization of society. He can

transform from below by ameliorating the conditions of very young

children. The country is ready now for changes that seemed Utopian

two years ago. By means of nursery schools the nation is dealing at

last with the raw material that is to be the England of to-morrow.

The same principle should be followed in the case of children

between the ages of 6 and 12 years. The physical welfare of these

children is of the first importance. Yet between these ages

thousands, through the carrying of heavy weights and other means of

over-strain, are receiving life-long physical injury. All efforts

for educational reform are being balked by their employment. The

elaborate scheme of the Half-Time Council, which was reported in

our last issue, depends, as indeed practically all of the reform

schemes and Mr. Fisher's own proposals depend, on the physical

efficiency of the children. The deputation asked that provision

should be made for the education of children abnormally employed

during the war.

Out of all the literature which has been put forth on the relationship

of children to industry in war time it would appear that Dr. Claxton,

United States Commissioner of Education, most adequately states the

fundamental principles, in his circular letter to the educational

authorities of the country issued in June, 1917. Portions of his

letter bear directly upon employment of children in time of war. Other

portions are closely related to statements in other chapters. It is

well worth quoting in full:

It is of the utmost importance that there shall be no lowering

in the efficiency of our systems of education. Schools and other

agencies of education must be maintained at whatever necessary

cost and against all hurtful interference with their regular work

except as may be necessary for the national defense, which is, of

course, our immediate task and must be kept constantly in mind and

have right of way everywhere and at all times. From the beginning

of our participation in the war we should avoid the mistakes which

some other countries have made to their hurt and which they are now

trying to correct.

If the war should be long and severe, there will be great

need in its later days for many young men and women of scientific

knowledge, training, and skill; and it may then be much more

difficult than it is now to support our schools, to spare our

children and youth from other service, and to permit them to attend

school. Therefore no school should close its doors now or shorten

its term unnecessarily. All young men and women in college should

remain and use their time to the very best advantage, except

such as may find it necessary to leave for immediate profitable

employment in some productive occupation or for the acceptance

of some position in some branch of the military service, which

position cannot be so well filled by anyone else. All children in

the elementary schools and as nearly as possible all high-school

pupils should remain in school through the entire session.

When the war is over, whether within a few months or after

many years, there will be such demands upon this country for men

and women of scientific knowledge, technical skill, and general

culture as have never before come to any country. The world must

be rebuilt. This country must play a far more important part than

it has in the past in agriculture, manufacturing, and commerce,

and also in the things of cultural life--art, literature, music,

scientific discovery.

Russia and China are awakening to new life and are on the

eve of great industrial development. They will ask of us steel,

engines, and cars for railroads, agricultural implements, and

machinery for industrial plants. They will also ask for men to

install these and to direct much of their development in every

line. England, France, Italy, and the central empires have thrown

into battle a very large per cent of their educated and trained

men, including most of the young professors and instructors in

their universities, colleges, and _gymnasia_, _lycées_, and public

schools. Their colleges and universities are almost empty. The

young men who would under normal conditions be receiving the

education and training necessary to prepare them for leadership in

the future development of these countries are fighting and dying

in the trenches. All these countries must needs go through a long

period of reconstruction, industrially and in many other respects.

Our own trained men and women should be able and ready to render

every possible assistance. It should be remembered that the number

of students in our universities, colleges, normal schools, and

technical schools is very small as compared with the total number

of persons of producing age--little more than one half of 1 per

cent. The majority of these students are young men and women who

are becoming more mature and fit for service. The older of the

60,000,000 men and women of producing age are growing more unfit

and are passing beyond the age of service. It should also be

remembered that the more mature the young men who volunteer for

service in the army, the more valuable their services will be.

Therefore a right conception of patriotism should induce

all students who cannot render some immediate service of great

value to remain in college, concentrate their energies on their

college work, and thus be all the more ready and fit when their

services may be needed either for war or for the important work of

reconstruction and development in our own and other countries when

the war shall have ended.

All schools, of whatever grade, should remain open with their

full quota of officers and teachers. The salaries of teachers

should not be lowered in this time of unusual high cost of living.

When possible, salaries should be increased in proportion to the

services rendered. Since the people will be taxed heavily by the

federal government for the payment of the expenses of the war,

teachers should be willing to continue to do their work, and do it

as well as they can, as a patriotic service, even if their salaries

cannot now be increased. All equipment necessary for the best

use of the time of teachers and students should be provided, as

should all necessary increase of room, but costly building should

not be undertaken now while the prices of building material are

excessively high and while there are urgent and unfilled demands

for labor in industries pertaining directly and immediately to the

national defense. Schools should be continued in full efficiency,

but in most instances costly building may well be postponed.

During school hours and out of school, on mornings, afternoons,

Saturdays, and during vacation all older children and youth should

be encouraged and directed to do as much useful productive work

as they can without interfering with their more important school

duties. This productive work should be so directed as to give it

the highest possible value, both economically and educationally.

For children and youth in schools of all grades there will be need

of more effective moral training, and provision should be made for

this. While the war for the safety of democracy is in progress, and

when it is over, there will be greater need for effective machinery

for the promotion of intelligent discussion of the principles of

democracy and all that pertains to the public welfare of local

communities, counties, states, and the nation. To this end every

schoolhouse should be made a community center and civic forum with

frequent meetings for the discussion of matters of public interest

and for social intercourse.

One phrase in Commissioner Claxton's letter is especially significant.

It is _This productive work should be so directed as to give it the

highest possible value_, _both economically and educationally_. In this

whole question of children and industry in war time, we are brought

face to face with several facts. The first is that industry, both

agricultural and manufacturing, will demand the services of children.

Second, that organizations like state and national child-labor

committees, which have fought for the welfare and development of

American children, will continue to oppose all attempts to break

down the school system through relaxation of the enforcement of

compulsory-education laws, or to break down the labor laws either by

giving young children special permits to work or by exempting certain

establishments from the laws limiting hours of labor. Third, that the

children themselves will desire to work rather than go to school.

The comparatively high wages which will exist during a war emergency

will call them as can no course of study. Fourth, that families whose

earning member or members are off to war, and who feel in addition

the higher cost of living, will look upon their children as being a

possible added source of income. And fifth, that school authorities

will thus stand amidst half a dozen fires. Some will back against the

wall and say: "I don't believe in closing the schools," "Under no

conditions will the child-labor laws in this state be relaxed," "The

war hysteria makes me enforce child-labor laws more vigorously than

ever," "Children have plenty of time to garden after school." Others

will, under pressure, lose their heads, and shut their eyes to the fact

that children are working illegally. Some may seek for a "reasonable

excuse," and they can find plenty of such excuses by referring to the

action in England. Still others will go on peacefully without thought

or action one way or the other. But the rest, and it is to be hoped

that their numbers are legion, will try to discover some means of

making this emergency count in an educational way. Here are some of the

factors which enter into the situation.

In the first place, children like to work, that is, outside of school,

and these work impulses of youth ought to be organized to contribute to

the educative process. It is readily enough granted that they have not

been in the past. In fact, these work impulses have been exploited for

private gain. Now, on account of the war, they are aroused to a high

pitch, and we ought to be able to organize them in connection with the

new work opportunities for higher economic efficiency as well as for

higher social efficiency.

In the second place, it is doubtful whether we can much longer continue

the policy of increasing the regular attendance of youth at school

without giving some consideration to the educative value of labor. The

educative process taken in its largest sense goes on for twenty-four

hours a day. It concerns health, character, mental capacity,

citizenship, and useful work. To most people the educative process

merely centers around the schoolhouse, and such think of education

in terms of schooling. To them, to increase the number of years that

youth is obliged to go to school is to increase the number of years

given over directly to the educative process. But the child goes to

school for about five hours a day for five days in the week for about

thirty-six weeks in the year, and in this time he deals largely with

books; and many find it a reasonable excuse, because they are "going

to school" and "getting an education," to avoid any useful work. Now

some kinds of work are wholesome and educative. Most farm work comes

in the class of useful and profitable employment. When the hours are

not too long and the factories and stores are sanitary and the pay is

reasonable, work in these places may be profitable to youth. Because

this is not always the case is no reason why we should not attempt to

make it so.

It would seem that educators now occupy a strategic position from which

they may exert a tremendous influence in the direction of standardizing

the work of juveniles in terms of the deepest social significance,

and a good start in this direction may be made in meeting the war

emergency. The subject is so large and the previous discussion of it

so limited that we have not very much background on which to work, and

it is not advisable at this time to do more than merely hint at some

possible procedures.

First, why not have the rural schools for children up to 12 years of

age open early in September and close the first of August, and make

provision for stopping the school work of the youngest children during

the winter months in those parts of the country where it is difficult

for them to reach school? Why not organize classes in dandelion

digging, berry picking, currant picking, and even, once in a while,

weeding, by having a series of field and harvesting days under the

direction of the school teacher with the coöperation of the parents?

Why not have able-bodied boys in these rural schools released from book

work in April and remain out of school until the first of November,

and then require them to attend school faithfully for six days a week

during the rest of the year? Why not have the boys between 14 and 16

drop out of school in June and July to pick small fruits and berries

and to work in vegetable gardens? Under certain conditions, in regions

where such service can be used,--which is not often,--they might stay

out in September to pick fruits and gather small crops.

Of course it is to be expected that the answer to all of these

questions will be a most emphatic No. Yet they have not been set up

primarily because the farmer tells us that he needs labor, but rather

because it is felt that boys need labor; that is, useful labor.

Second, why not devise in cities a scheme of part-time education for

youths between 14 and 18 years of age who will be needed in the war

emergency in factories and stores, as well as for youths who need

useful labor as a part of the educative process? If the war falls

heavily upon us in America, we shall find that these children will

go anyway. We shall find that the male teachers who teach them will

be drafted. We may even find--although it is hoped not--that the

school buildings will be taken over for military purposes. But I

am not thinking particularly of war needs. I am thinking of child

needs. England proposes to reintroduce into the school system children

who are now abnormally employed in the war. It further proposes to

develop out of its war experience, on a large scale, the part-time and

continuation-school idea. It is reported that in France a part-time and

continuation-school bill will be introduced in 1918.

Now why not take hold of this whole matter of juvenile employment

in a constructive way? As long as war is upon us we have better

opportunity than ever of passing through the legislature part-time

and continuation-school measures. We have at the same time, out

of all the experience of England, every opportunity to formulate

laws for the employment of juveniles in a way which will not break

down the educative process, but will rather build it up; and above

everything else we ought to enforce strictly all child-labor and

compulsory-education laws which we have on the statute books. We

may modify them, if we will, to meet war emergencies, if it appears

absolutely necessary, but better than that, we may reconstruct them in

the interests of the educative value of labor when combined with proper

rules and regulations relative to the employment of children.

Furthermore, why not find some way of bringing agriculture into the

educative process of the city boy? Would it not be a good idea to

establish country branches for city schools, providing for the older

boys a winter course of study in the science of agriculture, together

with the ordinary academic branches of secondary-school education,

followed in the spring by practice in an agricultural training camp?

Later on in the season they would go out to work individually or in

groups for farmers. (See chapter on "Farm Cadets.") The older of these

boys would make admirable assistant teachers and supervisors for the

younger group of 14-year-old to 15-year-old boys who would be sent to

these camps after schools had closed. We cannot much longer avoid the

question of bringing agriculture to the city boy or, rather, taking the

city boy to agriculture; and the past summer's experience with city

boys working on farms brought forcibly to our attention the advantages

of a closer relationship between city children and country life.

Mention has been made of the modification in 1917 of the

school-attendance law of New York State. Three sections of the act

by which these modifications were made are quoted in full, as they

represent legislative action as well as discretionary powers of the

state educational official.

SECTION 1. The provisions of Art. XXIII of the education law,

relative to the compulsory education of children, may, in the

discretion of the Commissioner of Education, be suspended for the

period between the first day of April and the first day of November

of each year, or any portion thereof, during the time that this act

shall remain in effect, for the purpose of aiding and performing

labor in the cultivation, production, and care of food products

upon farms and gardens within the state. Such suspension shall be

subject to such conditions, restrictions, and limitations as may

be imposed by the Commissioner of Education, and shall be subject

to rules and regulations to be prescribed by him. In case of such

suspension, provision shall be made for the welfare and protection

of the children affected thereby, and during the period of such

suspension and while engaged in such work, they shall be under the

supervision and direction of the school authorities of the city or

district in which they reside....