Arthur D. Dean

“ Is it not well for us to examine our present schools to 327 determine whether they are making a democracy which will be safe for the world? Have we a system of education which actually gives an opportunity for every child to make the most of himself? Have we a liberalized course of study which actually stimulates and develops intellectual and aesthetic interests in music, art, literature, science, travel, and history? Have we evolved a socialized education developing moral habits, civic incentives, possession and use of ethical ideals and standards for a successful group life? ”

“ Military training and service, if they are necessary, are obligations of citizenship, not of education alone.
It is difficult to contemplate with satisfaction or even complacency the social cleavage which is bound to result from a system of military instruction which is applied to high-school pupils and not to other boys. To assign or reserve the privilege, or duty, or obligation, however it is regarded, of preparing to fight for the country to the better-educated class is just as repugnant to democratic ideals as was the practice in days long gone by of leaving it to the nobility. ”

“ Have we even thought of a program of education for leisure which will develop enduring tastes and interests established toward the enrichment of the individual and indirectly of social life? Do we fully understand that to make democracy safe for the world all people should have some leisure or time apart from vocational, civic, and physical necessities of life, that such leisure should be filled with sociability, amusement, recreation, and satisfaction of the aesthetic and physical desires, and that the public schools must in some measure provide for these? ”

“ Later we shall turn what we have learned to do for these men into better provisions for making self-supporting our crippled 14 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Will a democracy proclaiming equality of opportunity as its ideal require an education which unites from the beginning of the child's school life, and for all pupils of the school, learning and social application, ideas and practice, work and recognition of the meaning of what is done? ”

“ 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 154 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? ”

“ 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 114 industrial warfares of peace are heralded every week. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Has our formative process been able to bring about refinements of social behavior beyond the point required for group participation? Have we arrived at the point where we can say that our people have even the common culture which it is expected all members of a democracy shall possess, to say nothing about the development of individual culture, which is a possession of the interested individual and his congenial fellows? How far have we gone in recognizing that "by-education" which comes through a child's self-direction of his natural or spontaneous learning instincts and impulses? ”

“ These efforts of the teachers and the pupils respond to our President's appeal that each of us must do his share in making the world safe for democracy.
At present, to be sure, we center our thoughts on how to make the world safe for democracy. But what of the future? What of the contribution of the schools after the war? Should not the schools then center their aims and methods on making democracy safe for the world? If the people themselves are to be masters, must they not be provided with an education making for mastership? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Furthermore it is necessary for the government, state or national, to take a hand in the distribution and the sale of farm products. It made me sick at heart, on a trip of inspection to 25 camps, to see hundreds of boys at work picking berries under the hot sun in a service supposedly patriotic, and then to see the same berries, which had been sold by the growers at a price not much above that of other years, resold to the consumer at double the price of other years,—and always with the remark: "You know labor is scarce this year, and the farmers cannot get help." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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"? ”

“ Have the schools missed a great opportunity for giving moral, civic, and physical training to youth by failing to absorb the Boy Scout and Camp Fire Girl movements and thus failing to grasp the full educational significance of the methods adopted by those who so well understand adolescent youth? ”

“ The individual-industrial-efficiency idea which we obtained from Germany will have to be interpreted in America not for military purposes, but in terms of personal and vocational service for the nation. Just as the academic militarism of the Old World has been found wanting and has been gradually transformed into the mobilization of all forces behind the lines on an entirely new basis and conception of what may be done by a people in time of 306 war, so we in this country shall learn that we may in times of peace, through efficient and effective living, prepare for defense. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At present the great fear of every boy who goes to war and of every sister and mother of such a boy is that he may go through life maimed and dependent. But we never think of the ever-present danger to these boys of being handicapped physically by merely going to work; and yet there are more persons so disabled through accidents in industrial life in normal times than are disabled by war. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hospitals, charity organizations, orphan asylums, and homes are always with us. The great appeal now, obviously, is Red Cross work. The permanent appeal is always the need of the home and the community.
An activity which has been very general throughout the country, as well as in France and England, has been the voluntary contribution of the work of 195 women's organizations to the Red Cross Society. The making of hospital supplies belongs more peculiarly to women than do many forms of war work, and it is easily incorporated into the sewing courses of our elementary and secondary schools. ”

“ 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.... ”