Educational reformer

“ The reform is easily seen to be a many-sided one. It is educational—our teachers should come to know that the book is only one, and not the chief one, of the many sources of knowledge open to the child; it is physiological—we should all know the eye better than we do, its normal use and its limitations; the reform is architectural—our architects and boards of education should realize that the seating and the lighting of school houses should receive most careful consideration ”

“ The implementation of reform measures in education will have deep implications and consequences for many sectors of our society. We con­template legislative measures to provide the authority and the money to carry out such reforms. We will, therefore, submit to Congress a major educational development program. ”

“ The literature of educational reform is always assuming parents of limitless intelligence, sympathy and means, employing teachers of limitless energy and capacity. And that to an extreme degree is what we haven't got and what we can never hope to have. ”

“ At a moment when the country is agitated with questions of educational reform, I thought it might be useful to draw attention to what I believe to be a fact, namely, that the foundations of all existing education systems are absolutely [Pg vi] false in principle; and that teaching itself, as opposed to natural development and self-culture, is the greatest obstacle to human progress that social evolution has ever had to encounter. ”

“ The common school course has greatly expanded in recent years and there is no probability that it will ever contract. It has expanded in response to proper universal educational demands. For we may fairly believe that most of the studies recently incorporated into the school course are essential elements in the education of every child that is to grow up and take a due share in our society. It is too late to sound the retreat. The educational reformers have battled stoutly for three hundred years for just the course of study that we are now beginning to accept. ”

“ Already educators have recognized the potency of the saying: “The schools were made for the children, not the children for the schools.” Hence it follows that no school system is so sacred, no method of teaching so venerable, no textbook so infallible, no machinery of administration so permanent, that it must not give way before the educational needs of childhood.
Concerning the educational problem of to-day, yesterday cannot speak with authority. Each age has its problems—problems which may be solved by that age, or handed on unsolved to the future. The past is dead. ”

“ Consider our so-called educational "problems": "How may we keep pupils in the high school?" Feed and clothe them. "Shall we teach Latin, Greek, and mathematics to the 'masses'?" If they are worth teaching to anybody, the masses need them most. "Who shall go to college?" Everybody. "When shall culture training give place to technical education for work?" Never.
These questions are not "problems." They are simply "excuses" for spending less time and money on the next generation. Given ten millions of dollars a year, what can we best do with the education of a million children? ”

“ As future citizens, has the motive to improve schools been awakened? Particularly do more men want to teach, despite small pay and slight male companionship? The history of education does not really grip the class until its members want to rise up and do something by educational means to help set the world right.
The limits of this paper exclude the treatment of the subject in the professional training of teachers in normal schools, high schools, and graduate schools, as well as in extension courses for teachers or in their private reading. ”

“ Thus the central problem in education of the twentieth and succeeding centuries is to be The educational problem of the future. a constant reorganization of the curriculum and methods of teaching, and this reconstruction must be such as to harmonize a due regard for the progressive variations of the individual with the welfare of the conservative institutions of society. It must include a continual effort to hand on the intellectual possessions of the race, but also to stimulate all individuals to add some modification or new element to the product. ”

“ There is no such thing in existence as a system of genuine education. A large number of institutions exist, as we have seen, for the purpose of manufacturing and cramming, after an approved plan, the youth of the upper and middle classes, and there is a well-organized system of sham education spread throughout the country under the title of 'public elementary schools.' That is the sum of modern educational effort. ”

“ The educator should conserve education as the chief means of social progress, and education should be directed to producing efficient members of society. The education of the future must aim, in other words, not at producing lawyers, physicians, engineers, but at producing citizens. Education for citizenship means that there must be radical reconstruction in the educational processes of the present. The education of the nineteenth century aimed at developing largely power and capacity in the individual as such. Its implicit, and oftentimes its avowed, aim was individual success. ”

“ Very slowly our educators are becoming conscious of the fact that this type of education is a social menace, and that our educational system needs reformation from bottom to top in order to become again equal to the social task imposed upon it by the more complex social conditions of the twentieth century. Hence the demand for a socialized education, which is proceeding, not only from sociologists and social workers, but from the progressive leaders of education itself. ”

“ But more classrooms and more teachers are not enough. We must seek an educational system which grows in excellence as it grows in size. This means better training for our teachers. It means preparing youth to enjoy their hours of leisure as well as their hours of labor. It means exploring new techniques of teaching, to find new ways to stimulate the love of learning and the capacity for creation.
These are three of the central issues of the Great Society. ”

“ Consolidation of schools, free transportation, longer terms, expert supervision, the removal of educational matters from the blight of political influence, are the things which now make the educational atmosphere fairly electric with reform, and the next few years will show a growth that will please even the most ardent optimist. ”

“ Answering along this line, the protagonists of salvation through education pretty well agree that the thing itself means the widest possible extension of our public school system, with free state universities and technical schools, and the extension of the educational period, with laws so rigid, and enforcement so pervasive and impartial, that no child between the ages of six and sixteen can possibly escape. ”

“ Educational reform, which has succeeded in reorienting the curriculum to the requirements of economic development, placing emphasis on vocational and technological skills in high school and science and engineering in college ”

“ The civilized world, reorganized and reconstituted, rebuilt in all of its economic phases, demands a new teaching which shall relate men and women to the changed conditions of life. This is the new basis for education,—this the new foundation upon which must be erected a superstructure of educational opportunity for succeeding generations. It remains for education to recognize the change and to remodel the institutions of education in such a way that they shall meet the new needs of the new life. ”

“ Nor do our schools and colleges train their pupils to an understanding of their own mental powers and the development of right will, of sound reason, of controlled and regulated action. We flood our children and youth with equipment, with teachers, with opportunity for learning things from the outside; yet our educational training is failing, as a whole, in giving to the youth of this country the one essential thing for right living—a true and high ideal and the strength of will to attain it. ”

“ Most significant among the changes which experience and time have brought to pass has been the development on the educational and social side. Always alive to the importance of general education, but unfortunately so proud of the maintenance of public schools that it was disposed to sneer at any learning not to be acquired at them, the American people—that portion of it which foreigners are so apt to overlook when they attempt to characterize us—is seeking to foster in a variety of ways the opportunities for higher learning, and wider intellectual intelligence. ”

“ Subscribing to the egalitarian notion that every child must have the same education, we have neglected to provide an educational system which will tax the talents and stir the ambitions of our best students and which will thus insure us the kind of leaders we will need in the future. ”

“ This lengthy discussion leads up in the end to practical conclusions. Public education must be reorganised and must work in a new direction. The extant educational system suffers from a threefold inadequacy. ”

“ In the second place, this movement recognizes the maturity of pupils in a variety of ways. It adopts a form of discipline which throws responsibility on them. It departmentalizes the teaching and offers electives, thus securing the advantages of specialization. The movement promises to reorganize our whole school system in such a way as to give us a new kind of national education. America has at the present moment a closer approximation to a continuous educational ladder than any other country, but the ladder needs a little splicing. ”

“ But this very fact is the presage of a more equitable and enlightened social order, for it gives evidence of the dependence of social reorganization upon educational reconstruction. It is accordingly an encouragement to those believing in a better order to undertake the promotion of a vocational education which does not subject youth to the demands and standards of the present system, but which utilizes its scientific and social factors to develop a courageous intelligence, and to make intelligence practical and executive. ”

“ In the reorganization of the Department of Education, I emphasized the necessity of giving more impetus to vocational training. It is my hope that by a proper revision of our educational laws, coupled with adequate funds and adjustment in the curriculum, our millions of students in our public schools alone could be made to produce many of the things that we need today and not wait for the full develop­ment of their potentiality. ”

“ There is first the need of public educational machinery, and by education I mean not simply elementary education, but the equally vital need for great colleges not only to teach and study technical arts and useful sciences, but also to enlarge learning and sustain philosophical and literary work. ”

“ The national schools have accordingly been compelled to give attention to the needs of these new elements in the population, and to direct their attention less exclusively to satisfying the needs of the well-to-do classes of society. Educational systems have in consequence tended more and more to become democratic in character, and to serve in part as instruments for the assimilation of the stranger within the nation's gates and for the perpetuation and improvement of the national life. ”

“ Since the forces that produced this result in higher education sprang up largely outside of our institutions of learning, the movement is not likely to cease till the common school has been changed in the same way. The educational question of the future is not whether historical or natural science or formal studies are to monopolize the school course, but rather how these three indispensable elements of every child's education may be best harmonized and wrought into a unit. ”

“ More education than formerly has also been demanded to enable future citizens to meet intelligently national and personal problems, and with the widening of the suffrage and the spread of democratic ideas there has come a necessary widening of the educational ladder, so that more of the masses of the people may climb. Even in nations having the continental- European two-class school system, larger educational opportunities for the masses have had to be provided. ”

“ Nor can we afford to forget the urgency of rehabilitating our educational institutions and our school system. I have placed this subject in the latter part of my message not because of its lesser importance. I can think of nothing, which is more vital to the nation in terms of our long-range growth and development. The functions of the school system from the primary grades through the universities are many. ”

“ Now we know that reform school is essential, and that particular attention must be given to special curricula, adequate to correct the inculcation of false moral principles. We have realized that the educational program must be devised not by local politicians but by academic authorities of the highest standing the International University.
Having observed that an environment of poverty and hopelessness prevents a psychology of penitence and reform, we have provided for a favorable economic conditioning of the defective. ”

“ It needs to be distinctly emphasized, also, that the permanent establishment of educational institutions of a high order is the great work of this Association among the colored men, and the foundation for all uplifting work beside. The continuous training of our schools—intellectual, industrial, social and moral training, all in one—is needed for the development of higher ideals and nobler types of character, and, we are happy to add, has already resulted in such development in not a few of the pupils. ”