The New Education

I Can There Be a New Basis?

Can there be a new basis for education? Does the foundation upon which education rests really change? Is the educational system of one age necessarily unfitted to provide for the educational needs of the next? These, and a multitude of the similar questions which people interested in educational progress are asking themselves, arise out of the process of transition that is seemingly one of the fundamental propositions of the universe. All things change, and are changing, from the smallest cell to the most highly organized creature, the noblest mountain range, and the vastest sun in the heavens. To-day differs from yesterday as to-morrow must differ from to-day. All things are becoming.

Test this statement with the observed facts of life. Here is a garden, well-planted and watered. The soil is loamy and black. On all its surface there is nothing, save a clod here and there, to relieve the warm, moist regularity. Come to-morrow and the level surface is broken by tiny green shoots which have appeared at intervals, thrusting through the top crust. Next week the black earth is striped with rows of green. Onions, beets, lettuce, and peas are coming up. Go back to the hills which you climbed in boyhood, ascend their chasmed sides and note how even they have changed. Each year some part of them has disappeared into the rapid torrent. Had you been there in April, you might have seen particles of your beloved hills in every water-course, hurrying toward the lowlands and the sea. While you watch them, the clouds change in the sky, the sunset wanes, and the forest covers the bared hills. Nature, fickle mistress of our destinies, spreads a never-ending panorama before our eyes that we may recognize the one great law of her being,-the law of progression.

II Social Change

How well does this principle of change apply to the organization of society! The absolute monarchy of one age yields to the semi-democracy of the next. Yesterday the church itself traded in men's bodies,-holding slaves, and accepting, without question, the proceeds of slavery. To-day machines replace men in a thousand industries. To-morrow slavery is called into question, until in the dim-glowering nineteenth century, men will struggle and die by tens of thousands;-on the one side, those who believe that the man should be the slave; on the other, those who hold that the slavery of the machine is alone necessary and just. Thus is every social institution altered from age to age. Thus is effected that transformation which men have chosen to call progress.

How profoundly does this truth apply to the raw material of education,-the children who enroll in the schools! Under your very eyes they lose their childish ways, feel their steps along the precipice of adolescence, enter the wonderland of imagery and idealism, and pass on into the maturity of life. How vain is our hope that the child may remain a child; how worthless our prayer that adult life shall never lay her heavy burden of cares and responsibilities upon his beloved shoulders. Even while you raise your hands in supplication, the child has passed from your life forever, leaving naught save a man to confront you.

From these mighty scythe strokes which change sweeps across the meadows of time, naught is exempt. The petals fall from the fairest flower; the bluest sky becomes overcast; the greatest feats of history are surpassed; and the social machinery, adequate for the needs of one age, sinks into the insignificance of desuetude in the age which follows. Thus does the inevitable come to pass. Thus does the social institution, wrought through centuries of turmoil and anguish, become useless in the newer civilization which is arising on every hand. The educational system in its inception was well founded, but the changes of time invalidate the original idea. Yesterday the school fulfilled the needs of men. To-day it fails to meet a situation which reshapes itself with each rising and each setting of the sun.

Each epoch must have its institutions. With the work of the past as a background, the present must constantly reshape the institutions which the past has bequeathed to it. These modified institutions, handed on in turn by the present, must again be rebuilt to meet the needs of the future; and so on through each succeeding age.

III Keeping Up with the Times

At times the march of progress is so rapid that even the most advanced grow breathless with attempts to keep abreast of the vanguard. Again, marking time for ages, progressive movements seem wholly dead, and the path to the future is overgrown with tradition, and blocked by oblivion and decay. The rapid advances of the nineteenth century, challenging the quickest to keep pace, forced upon many institutions surroundings wholly foreign to their bent and scope.

Nowhere is this more true than in the case of the educational system, which had its rise in an age of individualized industry and governmental non-interference, and now faces a newly inaugurated socialization of industry and an impromptu system of government control.

The new basis of education lies in the changes which the nineteenth century wrought in industry, transforming village life into city dwelling, and substituting for the skilled mechanic, using a tool, the machine, employing the unskilled worker. The men of the eighteenth century made political institutions, and were content with democracy; the men of the nineteenth century, accepting government as it stood, built up a new industry. The society which we in the twentieth century must erect upon the political and industrial triumphs of our forefathers, can never be successful unless it recognizes the fundamental character of the issues which nineteenth century industry and eighteenth century politics have brought into twentieth century life.

Is it too much to ask that the school stand foremost in this recognition of change, when it is in the school that the ideas of the new generation are moulded, tempered, and burnished? May we not expect that in its lessons to the young our educational system shall speak the language of the twentieth century rather than that of the eighteenth?

IV Education in the Early Home

Before the modern system of industry had its inception, while the old hand trades still held sway, at a time when the household was the center of work and pleasure, when the family made its butter, cheese, oatmeal, ale, clothing, tools, and utensils,-in such an atmosphere of domestic industry, Froebel wrote his famous "Education of Man." Note this description of the way in which a father may educate his son. "The son accompanies his father everywhere, to the field and to the garden, to the shop and to the counting house, to the forest and to the meadow; in the care of domestic animals and in the making of small articles of household furniture; in the splitting, sawing, and piling up of wood; in all the work his father's trade or calling involves."[17] In another passage he calls upon parents, "more particularly fathers (for to their special care and guidance the child ripening into boyhood is confided)," to contemplate "their parental duties in child guidance;"[18] and he prefaces this exhortation with a long list of illustrations, suggesting the methods which may be pursued by the farm laborer, the goose-herd, the gardener, the forester, the blacksmith, and other tradesmen and craftsmen, in the education of their sons. Any such man, Froebel points out, may take his child at the age of two or three and teach him some of the simple rules of his trade. How different is the position of the son of a workman in a modern American city! An American city dweller reading Froebel's discussion would not conceive of it as applying in any sense to him, or to his life.

V City Life and the New Basis for Education

The very thought of city life precludes the possibility of home work. The narrow house, the tenement, the great shop or factory, on the one hand, prevent the mechanic from carrying on his trade near his family; and on the other hand, make it impossible for the father whose work lies far from his home to give his boys the "special care and guidance" about which Froebel writes.

The system of industry which was established in England during the closing decades of the eighteenth century, and which secured a foothold in both Germany and the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century, has revolutionized the basis of our lives. The workshop has been transplanted from the home to the factory; both men and women leave their homes for ten, eleven, or even twelve hours a day to carry on their industrial activities; great centers of population collect about the centers of industry; the farm, the flock of geese, the garden, the forest, and the blacksmith shop disappear; food, clothing, and other necessaries of life-formerly the product of home industry-are produced in great factories; and the city home, stripped of its industrial functions, restricted in scope, robbed of its adults, presents little opportunity for the education of the city child. Standing on the threshold of his meager dwelling, this child of six looks forward to a life which must be based on the instruction provided in a public school system.

The country boy still has his ten-acre lot, where he may run and play. There are flowers and freckles in the spring; kite-flying, fishing, hunting, and trapping in summer and autumn. The general farm is a storehouse of useful information in rudimentary form. From day to day and from year to year the country boy may learn and enjoy.

The city boy is differently situated. His playground is the street, where he plays under the wheels of wagons, automobiles, and trolley cars; or else he plays in a public playground in company with hundreds, or even thousands, of other children. Even then his activities are restricted by city ordinances, monitors, policemen, and other exponents of law and order.

The city home, whether tenement or single house, cannot begin to supply the opportunities for growth and development which were furnished by life in the open. Where else, then, does the responsibility for such growth and development rest than upon the school? On the farm the boy learned his trade, as Froebel suggests, at the hands of his father. The father of the city boy spends his working hours in a mill, or in an office, where boys under fourteen or sixteen are forbidden by law to go. The city home is unavoidably deprived of the chance to provide adequate recreation or adequate vocational training for its children. The burden in both cases shifts to the school.

A hundred years ago practically all industries were carried on in connection with the home. The weaver, the carpenter, the hatter, the cobbler, the miller, lived and worked on the same premises. Then steam was applied to industry; the machine replaced the man; semi-skilled and unskilled labor replaced skilled labor; great numbers of men and women, and even of children, crowded together in factories to spin thread, make bolts and washers, weave ribbon, bake bread, manufacture machinery, or do some one of the many hundreds of things now done in factories. The change from home industry to factory industry is well named the Industrial Revolution. It completely overturned the established and accepted means of making a living.

The industrial upheaval has changed every phase of modern life. Industry itself has replaced apprenticeship by a degree of specialization undreamed of in primitive life. From the superintendent to the office boy, from the boss roller to the yard laborer, from the chief clerk to the stenographer, the work of men and women is monotonous and specialized. The city has grown up as a logical product of an industrial system which centers thousands, or even tens of thousands, of workmen in one place of employment. The city home differs fundamentally from the country home as the city differs from the country.

The changes now going on in farming are no less significant than those which the nineteenth century witnessed in manufacturing. Science has been applied to agriculture. Old methods are brought into question. Intensive study and specialization are widespread. The time has passed when a farmer can afford to neglect the agricultural bulletins or papers. To be successful, he must be a trained specialist in his line, and the school and college are called upon to provide the training.

No individual is responsible for these changes. They have come as the logical product of a long series of discoveries and inventions. New methods, built upon the ideas and methods of the past, have created a new civilization.

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.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] Portions of this chapter originally appeared in The Journal of Education.

[17] "The Education of Man," F. Froebel. Translated by W. N. Halliman, New York; D. Appleton & Co. 1909, p. 103.

[18] Ibid., p. 187.

* * *

I The New School Machinery

The influence which the industrial changes of the past hundred years has had on education is considerable. With the transformation of the home workshop into the factory has come the transition from rural and village life to life in great industrial cities and towns. The introduction of specialized machinery has placed upon education the burden of vocational training. More important still, it has so augmented the size of the educational problem that an intricate system of school machinery has been devised to keep the whole in order.

The rural, or village, school was a one or two-room affair, housing a handful of pupils. Aside from matters of discipline, the administration of the school was scarcely a problem. General superintendents, associate superintendents, compulsory attendance laws, card index systems, and purchasing departments were unknown. The school was a simple, personal business conducted by the teacher in very much the same way that the corner grocer conducted his store-on faith and memory.

The growth of cities and towns necessitated the introduction of elaborate school machinery. In place of a score of pupils, thousands, tens, and even hundreds of thousands were placed under the same general authority. City life made some form of administrative machinery inevitable.

The increasing size of the school system,-and in new, growing cities the school system increases with a rapidity equal to the rate of growth of the population,-leads to increase in class size. A school of twenty pupils is still common in rural districts. In the elementary grades of American city schools, investigators find fifty, sixty, and in some extreme cases, seventy pupils under the charge of one teacher, while the average number, per teacher, is about forty.

Recrimination is idle. The obvious fact remains that the rate of growth in school population is greater than the rate of growth in the school plant. The schools in many cities have not caught up with their educational problem. The result is a multiplication of administrative problems, not the least of which is the question of class size.

II Rousseau Versus a Class of Forty

A toilsome journey it is from the education of an individual child by an individual teacher (Rousseau's Emile) to the education of forty children by one teacher (the normal class in American elementary city schools). Rousseau pictured an ideal; we face a reality-complex, expanding, at times almost menacing.

The difference between Rousseau's ideal and the modern actuality is more serious than it appears superficially. Rousseau's idea permitted the teacher to treat the child as an individuality, studying the traits and peculiarities of the pupil, building up where weakness appeared, and directing freakish notions and ideas into conventional channels. The modern city school with one teacher and forty pupils places before the teacher a constant temptation, which at times reaches the proportions of an overmastering necessity, to treat the group of children as if each child were like all the rest. A teacher who can individualize forty children, understand the peculiarities of each child, and teach in a way that will enable each of the children to benefit fully by her instruction, is indeed a master, perhaps it would be fairer to say a super-master in pedagogy. A class of forty is almost inevitably taught as a group.

There is another feature about the large school system which is even more disastrous to the welfare of the individual child. Rousseau studied the individual to be educated, and then prescribed the course of study. The city teacher, no matter how intimately she may be acquainted with the needs of her children, has little or no say in deciding upon the subjects which she is to teach her class. Such matters are for the most part determined by a group of officials-principals, superintendents, and boards of education,-all of whom are engaged primarily in administrative work, and some of whom have never taught at all, nor entered a psychological laboratory, nor engaged in any other occupation that would give first-hand, practical, or theoretical knowledge of the problems encountered in determining a course of study.

A course of study must be devised, however, even though some of the responsible parties have no first-hand knowledge of the points at issue. The method by which it is devised is of peculiar importance to this discussion. The administrative officials, having in mind an average child, prepare a course of study which will meet that average child's needs. Theoretically, the plan is admirable. It suffers from one practical defect,-there is no such thing as an average child.

III The Fallacious "Average"

Averages are peculiarly tempting to Americans. They supply the same deeply-felt want in statistics that headlines do in newspapers. They tell the story at a glance. In this peculiar case the story is necessarily false.

An average may be taken only of like things. It is possible to average the figures 3, 4, and 8 by adding them together and dividing by 3. The average is 5. Such a process is mathematically correct, because all of the units comprising the 3, 4, and 8 are exactly alike. One of the premises of mathematics is that all units are alike, hence they may be averaged.

Unlike mathematical units, all children are different. They differ in physical, in mental, and in spiritual qualities. Their hair is different in color and in texture. Their feet and hands vary in size. Some children are apt at mathematics, others at drawing, and still others at both subjects. Some children have a strong sense of moral obligation,-an active conscience,-others have little or no moral stamina. No two children in a family are alike, and no two children in a school-room are alike. After an elaborate computation of hereditary possibilities, biologists announce that the chance of any two human creatures being exactly alike is one in five septillions. In simple English, it is quite remote.

IV The Five Ages of Childhood

A very ingenious statement of the case is made by Dr. Bird T. Baldwin. Children, says Dr. Baldwin, have five ages,-

1. A chronological age,

2. A physical age,

3. A mental age,

4. A moral age,

5. A school age.

Two children, born on the same day, have the same age in years. One is bound to grow faster than the other in some physical respect. Therefore the two children have different physical ages, or rates of development. In the same way they have differing mental and moral ages. The school age, a resultant of the first three, is a record of progress in school. Even when children are born on the same day, the chances that they will grow physically, mentally, and morally at exactly the same rate, and will make exactly the same progress in school, are remote indeed. School children are, therefore, inevitably different.

V Age Distribution in One Grade

A very effective illustration of the differences in chronological age, in school age, and in the rate of progress in school is furnished in the 1911 report of the superintendent of schools for Springfield, Mass. There are in this report a series of figures dealing with the ages, and time in school, of fifth-grade pupils in Springfield. The first table shows the number of years in school and the age of all the fifth-grade pupils.

Table 1

Age and Time in School, Fifth Grade, Springfield, December, 1911

Years in Ages

School 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Total

1 .. .. .. .. .. .. 1 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 1

2 .. .. .. 2 1 1 1 2 2 .. .. .. .. .. 9

3 .. .. .. 6 38 25 9 .. 1 1 .. .. .. .. 80

4 .. .. .. .. 162 200 63 12 10 3 .. .. .. .. 450

5 .. .. .. .. 17 178 131 47 14 2 .. .. .. .. 389

6 .. .. .. .. 1 11 120 60 29 3 .. .. .. .. 224

7 .. .. .. .. .. 1 3 46 29 8 1 .. 1 .. 88

8 .. .. .. .. .. .. 1 4 17 4 1 .. .. .. 28

9 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 4 1 .. .. .. 5

10 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 1 .. .. .. .. 1

11 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..

12 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..

13 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..

Total .. .. .. 8 219 416 329 171 102 26 3 .. 1 .. 1,275

Theoretically, children in Springfield enter the school at six, and spend one year in each grade. If all of the children in the Springfield schools had lived up to this theory, there would be 1,275 eleven years of age, and 1,275 in the fifth grade. A glance at the table shows that only 131, or about 10 per cent of the children, are both eleven years of age and five years in the school. Among the 1,275 fifth-grade children, 389, or 31 per cent, have been in school five years, and 329, or 26 per cent, are eleven years of age.

The superintendent follows this general table with other tables giving a more detailed analysis of over and under age pupils, and of rate of progress in school.

Table 2

Age and Progress Groups of Fifth-Grade Pupils in Springfield, December, 1911

Young Normal Over-age Total

No. Per

Cent No. Per

Cent No. Per

Cent No. Per

Cent

Rapid 435 34 74 6 31 2 540 42

Normal 195 16 131 10 63 5 389 31

Slow 13 1 124 10 209 16 346 27

Total --

643 --

51 --

329 --

26 --

303 --

23 --

1,275 --

100

The inferences from Table 2 are very clear. Of the 1,275 fifth-grade pupils, 435, or 34 per cent, are not only under-age for the grade, but they have progressed at more than normal speed. They are the exceptionally capable pupils of the grade. At the other extreme we find 209 children, or 16 per cent of all in the grade, who need special attention because they are both over-age and slow. Feeble-minded children rarely advance beyond the second grade; hence we know that none of these are feeble-minded, but among their number will be found many who will be little profited by the ordinary curriculum; 110 of them are already 12 years old, and 75 are 13 years old. A majority of them will, in all probability, drop out of school as soon as they reach the age of 14, unless prior to that time some new element of interest is introduced that will make a strong appeal; for example, some activity toward a vocation.

A further study of the over-age column shows that 31 pupils, 2 per cent, are over-age, but they have reached their present position in less than usual time; while 63 of them, also over-age, have required the full five years to reach their present grade position. Unless by limiting the required work of these over-age pupils to the essentials, or by some administrative arrangement involving special grouping with relatively small numbers in a class, so that we can in the one case maintain, and in the other case bring about, accelerated progress, there is little likelihood that any large number will remain in school to complete the ninth grade, much less take a high school course; for four years hence their ages will range from 16 to 18 years. The 124 pupils who are of normal age, but slow, are also subjects for special attention, for they have repeated from one to three grades, or have failed to secure from two to six half-yearly promotions, and are in danger of acquiring the fatal habit of failure, if they have not already acquired it.

The superintendent then goes on to emphasize the imperative duty resting on each principal, to examine and to understand the varying capacities of individual children in his school. Without such an understanding real educational progress cannot be made.

This study is most illuminating. Nothing could more effectually show variation in individual children than the difference in one city grade of the most obvious of characteristics-age and progress in school. The infinitely greater variations in the subtle characteristics that distinguish children can be more readily guessed at than measured. Under these circumstances, the attempt to prepare studies for an "average child" is manifestly futile. The course may be organized, but it will hardly meet the needs of large numbers of the individual children who take it.

VI Shall Child or Subject Matter Come First?

The old education presupposed an average child, and then prepared a course of study which would fit his needs. The new education recognizes the absurdity of averaging unlike quantities, and accepts the ultimate truth that each child is an individual, differing in needs, capacity, outlook, energy, and enthusiasm from every other child. An arithmetic average can be struck, but when it is applied to children it is a hypothetical and not a real quantity. There is not, and never will be, an average child; hence, a school system planned to meet the needs of the average child fits the needs of no child at all.

Mathematics may be taught to the average child. So may history and geography. While subject matter comes first in the minds of educators, a course of study designed to meet average conditions is a possibility. The moment, however, that the schools cease to teach subjects and begin to teach boys and girls, such a proceeding is out of the question.

The temptation in a complex school system, where children are grouped by hundreds and thousands, to allow the detail of administration to overtop the functions of education is often irresistible. The teacher with forty pupils learns to look upon her pupils as units. The superintendent and principals, seeking ardently for an overburdened commercial ideal named "efficiency," sacrifice everything else to the perfection of the mechanism. Among the smooth clicking cogs, child individuality has only the barest chance for survival.

VII The Vicious Practices of One "Good" School

There are school systems in which organization has overgrown child welfare, in which pedagogy has usurped the place of teaching. In such systems the teacher teaches the prescribed course of study, whether or no. The officers of administration, aiming at some mechanical ideal, shape the schools to meet the requirements of system.

The proneness of some teachers and school administrators alike to overemphasize mechanics, and to underemphasize the welfare of individual children is well illustrated in a recent statement by Dr. W. E. Chancellor, who, in writing of a first-hand investigation made in a city in the Northeast, describes a condition which he says "I know by fairly authoritative reports does exist in a considerable number of cities and towns-not merely in a school here and there, but generally and characteristically.

"In the city to which I definitely refer," Dr. Chancellor continues, "I found that the intermediate and grammar grade teachers had systematically, deliberately, and successfully sacrificed hundreds of boys and girls upon the altar of examinations to the fetish of good schools. They have been so anxious to have good schools that they have kept an average of 20 per cent of their pupils one grade lower than they belong. In some schools the average runs to above 35 per cent.

"Some teachers and some school superintendents cannot see that the school is simply a machine for developing boys and girls; cannot see that the machine in itself is worthless save as it contributes to human welfare. A school may be so good as actually to damage the souls and bodies of human beings. It damages their souls when the machine operators, seeking 75 per cent in every subject, keep boys and girls in grammar schools until they average sixteen years of age."[19] Dr. Chancellor continues with a stinging arraignment of school officials who sacrifice children to systems.

The article strikes an answering chord in the experiences of many men and women. A friend came recently to our bungalow, and, with a troubled face, spoke of his daughter's ill-health.

"She is not sick," he said, "but just ailing. These first May days have taken her appetite. She needs the country air."

The daughter was a dear little girl of twelve-any one might have envied the father of his treasure-and we offered to keep her with us for a month in the country, and to go over her school work with her every day. The father accepted our proposal on the spot, but two days later he came back to say that he could not make the arrangements.

"It cannot be done," he explained, "because the school will not let her off. I told the principal about my daughter's health and showed him the advantage of a month in the country with her school work carefully supervised. Her school is rather crowded, and as I want her to go on with her class in the autumn, I asked him if he could arrange to keep her place for her. In reply he said,-

"'I cannot do as you wish. Such cases as yours interfere seriously with the working of the school.'"

VIII Boys and Girls-The One Object of Educational Activity

Perhaps our language was not as temperate as it should have been, but we told that father something which we would fain repeat until every educator and every parent in the United States has heard it and written it on the tables of his heart,-

THE ONE OBJECT OF EDUCATION IS TO ASSIST AND PREPARE CHILDREN TO LIVE.

Why have we established a billion-dollar school system in the United States? Is it to pay teachers' salaries, to build new school houses, and to print text-books by the million? Hardly. These things are incidents of school business, but they are no more reason for the school's existence than fertilizer and seed are reasons for making a garden. Gardens are cultivated in order to secure plants and flowers; the school organization of which Americans so often boast exists to educate children.

"Of course," you exclaim, "we knew that before." Did you? Then why was my friend forced to choose between the wreck of his daughter's health and the disarrangement of a bit of school machinery? Why is Dr. Chancellor able to describe a situation existing "generally and characteristically," in which the welfare of children is bartered away for high promotion averages? The truth is that society still tolerates, and often accepts, the belief that the purpose of education is the formation of a school system. We have yet to learn that, to use Herbert Spencer's phrase, the object of education is the preparation of children for complete living.

Education exists for the purpose of preparing and assisting children to live. To do that work effectively, it must devote only so much effort to school administration and to school machinery as will perform for boys and girls that very effective service.

No two children are alike, and no two children have exactly similar needs. There are, however, certain kinds of needs which all children have in common. It is obviously impossible to discuss in the abstract the needs of any individual child. It is just as obviously possible to analyze child needs, and to classify them in workable groups. It is true that all children are different; so are all roses different, yet all have petals and thorns in common. Similarly, there are certain needs which are common to all children who play, who grow, who live among their fellows, and who expect to do something in life. The matter may be stated more concretely thus,-

I. The school exists to assist and prepare children to live.

II. Living involves three kinds of needs, which it is the duty of the school to understand and interpret.

1. Needs which the child has because he is a physical being.

2. Needs which result from the child's surroundings.

3. Needs which arise in connection with the things which the child hopes to do in life.

A further analysis of these groups of needs constitutes the subject matter of the next chapter.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] Sacrificing Children, W. E. Chancellor, Journal of Education, Vol. 77, pp. 564-565 (May 22, 1913).

* * *

I Child Growth-A Primary Factor in Child Life

In the first place children have certain needs because in common with many other living creatures they develop through spontaneous, self-expressive activity. The growth of children is a growth in body, in mind and in soul.

During the first six years of life the bodies of children grow rapidly, and during these years we wisely make no attempt to train their minds. From six to twelve or thirteen body growth is slower, the mind is having its turn at development, and during these years the children start to school.

Then, at twelve or thirteen or fourteen, differing with different races and different individuals, all normal children enter the fairyland of adolescence. Life takes on new meanings, human relationships are closer, great currents of feeling run deep and strong through the child's being, because there is coming into his life one of the most wonderful of human experiences-the dawning of sex consciousness.

This period of sex awakening produces a profound change in the lives of boys, but it works an even greater transformation in the lives of girls. For both sexes it is a time of rapid physical growth and of severe mental and spiritual strain. It is a time when the energies of the body are so entirely devoted to the development of sex functions that great mental stress should above all things be avoided, yet it is at this very time-think of it!-when we send our boys and girls to high school, and force them to spend a great part of their waking hours in severe intellectual efforts.

II Children Need Health First

Had we set out with the deliberate intention of torturing our children we could have devised no better method. If we had applied ourselves to physiology, found out the time when the child needed the most energy for physical growth and the most relief from mental strain, and had then set out to plan a course of study which would wreck his health, we should have built a school system which gave him the comparatively easy work of the elementary grades until he was fourteen, and then, at the most critical period of his life, sent him into a new system of schools to study new, abstract subjects.

What is it that our children must have before they can acquire anything else? Health! We cry the word aloud, emphasizing and exhorting-nothing without health! Yet, despite our protest, at a period of rapid physical growth, at the time of severe spiritual trial, there yawns the high school-grim for boys, ghastly for girls-with its ever-recurring demand: "Work, study; study, work."

Considering the child's physical welfare, the high school is placed at exactly the point (fourteen to eighteen years) where it is best calculated to destroy the delicate balance of sanity, rendering its victims unable to stand the burden and heat of life's later day.

We cannot escape the fact that children have bodies. The first duty of the schools, therefore, is to recognize the existence of these bodies by giving them due attention, particularly at the crucial periods of physical growth. Therefore every school must provide as much physical training as is necessary to insure normal body growth at each particular age.

Then there are certain rules of health-"hygiene," they are called-which should be taught to every child. Since bodies do not stay normal if they are abused every child should have right ideas of body care.

Most important of all, the schools must instruct children in sex hygiene because the growth of sex consciousness is one of the most significant of the changes which occur in the life of a child.

"But must sex hygiene be taught in the school?" you will ask.

Undoubtedly it must. If it were a choice between sex instruction in the home or in the school, there would be no hesitation about delegating it to the home; but since most homes neglect the discussion of sex matters, leaving the children to gain their knowledge of sex from unreliable sources on the streets, the choice lies between the perversion of sex as it is taught on the streets, and the science of sex as it should be taught in the schools.

III Play as a Means to Growth

Children's minds grow as well as their bodies-grow in retention, in grasp, and in power. Memory work (the learning of poems, songs, and formulas) helps to make minds more retentive, while all studies, but particularly number work, increase mental grasp and power.

Besides body growth and mind growth all children have soul growth. They develop human sympathy, and they are interested in esthetic things. To supply these needs the school must give the child literature and art. Simple these lessons must be, particularly in the elementary grades; but there is scarcely a child who will not respond to the noble in literature or the beautiful in art if these things are presented to him in an understandable way.

The bodies, minds, and souls of children grow. They are all sacred. Each child needs a normal body, an active mind, a healthy and a beautiful soul. We dare not develop bodies at the expense of minds and souls, but neither may we educate minds at the expense of souls and bodies-a tendency which has been fearfully prevalent in American education.

The most valuable means of securing this all-important growth is "play," which Froebel said contained the germinal leaves of all later life. Growth comes only through expression. One does not develop muscle by watching the strong man in the circus, but by exercising. The child's chief means of expression is through play, hence play is the child's method of securing growth.

In their earliest infancy children play. Their frolics and antics are really "puppy play," the product of overflowing life and animal spirits. At this "puppy play" stage, when the child plays merely to work off surplus energy, the most essential thing is a place to play, and the school must meet this need by providing playgrounds.

As children grow older they turn to a more advanced type of play. Instead of romping and frolicking individually they play in groups. It is in these group plays that the child gets his first idea of the duty which he owes to his fellows, his first glimmering of a social sense. In the home and in the school he is in a subordinate position, but in the "gang," or "set," he is as good as the next. Group play teaches democracy. More than that, group play has a moral value. Each one must play fair. Those who do not are ruthlessly ostracized, so children learn to abide by the decision of the crowd. While children's plays should be as untrammeled as possible, it is the duty of the school to stimulate group play by suggesting new games, organizing athletic meets, getting up interclass sports, and in other ways supervising and directing games and sports.

In the course of the child's life play takes another form, the form of creative work. Boys build wagons and houses; girls cook, and make dolls. The "puppy play" of their early childhood has evolved into a form of creative activity that sooner or later grips every human creature. We want to plant, to build, to plan, to make. It is the creative power within us yearning for expression, hence the well-planned school will provide simple forms of manual training by means of which both boys and girls will be taught to use their hands so skillfully that they may translate an idea into a concrete product.

Civilization has been described as the art of playing. Big folks are apt to look down on play because most of it is done by children. But listen, big folks: When Anna plays dolls she does it in a frank, serious, whole-souled way that you seldom imitate. There is no activity so vital to the child as play, nor does any man succeed at his work unless he can "play at it" with the fervor and abandon of a child.

IV Some Things Which a Child Must Learn

So much for the needs which a child has because he is a living creature. Suppose we turn now to some other needs-the needs which arise because the child is in a great universe and surrounded by his fellowmen. Wherever a child lives and whatever he does he must always face certain surrounding conditions. First among his surroundings are people. No one except Robinson Crusoe can get away from people, and even Crusoe had his man Friday.

Since we are compelled, whether we like it or not, to live with people, the school must teach language (oral and written), in order that the children may learn to tell others what they think, and may likewise understand the thoughts of others. The better the language the more clearly can they understand each other.

In order that children may have a proper respect for the rights of others the school should teach ethics by means of simple stories about people. Teachers should explain how men live in groups, and how, if group life is to be tolerable, men must respect each other's rights.

Perhaps in the upper elementary grades, and certainly in the high school, there should be some simple work in psychology in order that children may know how people's minds work.

Then besides the people of the present there are the people of the past, and, because the things which they did enable us to live as we do, children should be taught history, particularly the history of their own country, state, and town.

The child comes into contact, in addition to people, with the institutions which people have constructed-the home, the school, the state, the industrial system. Every child who grows to maturity will participate in the activity of these institutions, hence every child should be taught about them. In the last two years of the elementary grades civics can be successfully taught, since even at twelve years children are interested in the things which are happening around them. In the high schools this work can be carried much further in the form of social and industrial problem courses.

The most universal and by far the largest of the child's surroundings consist of the things about him. He lives in a world, a very little world to be sure, but to him it is great; and a knowledge of the world comes through a study of geography. Beginning with the geography of his native town (not with the basin of the Ganges) he can learn successively about the geography of the county, the state, the country, and then of the world.

Surrounding the child on every hand are plants and animals. Nature study gives him an intelligent interest in them. As he grows older general nature study may be subdivided into geology, botany, zoology; and the forces of nature may be examined in astronomy, chemistry, and physics: but most of these subjects are too specialized for the elementary grades, and should appear, if at all, in the high schools.

There is a group of courses which belongs in every school-elementary school as well as high school-namely, the courses which prepare children for life activity. Growth and training in the art of living enable children to fulfill the third function of their being-that of doing. Every man and every woman needs work in order to live, and it is a part of the duty of education to prepare them for that work.

First of all, as modern society has developed, every man and many women need an income-producing trade or occupation; hence it is the duty of the schools to provide trade and professional educations (really the same thing under different names). No child should be permitted to leave the schools until he is proficient in some income-giving work. The character of the teaching must be altered to suit the locality, but the principle is absolute.

Further, since men should not devote their entire lives to the same task, because they require a change of occupation, the school should aim to provide an avocation, or secondary occupation, which may occupy leisure hours. Manual training, agriculture, art work, and civics will supply different people with occupations for spare time.

Finally, since one of the chief duties of society is to insure a healthy and increasingly valuable supply of human beings, no one should leave the schools without a thorough domestic training, including training for parenthood. While this training should be given in a measure to boys, it should be intended primarily for girls, and should include biology, hygiene, chemistry, dietetics, psychology, and nursing. Although the elementary grades can provide only the simplest training along these lines that training should be given to every future housekeeper and mother.

V What Schools Must Provide to Meet Child Needs

If, up to this point, we have rightly described child needs, the school must be so organized as to provide for growth and play, for instructing the child in a knowledge of people, institutions, things and ideas, and for preparing every child to do his work in life.

These subjects must be so apportioned over the grades that each child has the benefit of them. The high school is a continuation of the elementary school. It is in the high school that children should begin to specialize, because specialization before the beginning of adolescence is undesirable; but since, in many localities, almost all of the children leave before reaching the high school, these subjects must be taught in the elementary grades. Certain things every child must know. If he is going to drop school at fourteen, as three-quarters of the American school children do, he must be reached in the first eight school grades. If he goes to high school he may there be given an opportunity to complete and intensify the education which the elementary school has started.

We believe that these fundamental principles of education are sufficiently flexible to fit any community in the United States; they will apply to places of the most divergent school needs.

VI The Educational Work of the Small Town

Let us begin by applying the scheme to a mining village of three thousand inhabitants, a typical industrial community.

In this village more than nine-tenths of the children leave school at or before fourteen years of age, so that whatever school training they get must be secured between the ages of six and fourteen.

The kind of activities that the children will take up in life is fixed by the custom of the town. The great majority of the boys go into the mines or shops, while practically all of the girls help around the home until they marry. A small number work in stores and factories.

The life is rather primitive; the houses are set far apart; the children have an abundance of play space; they are required to do chores in homes where they receive little home training. The town affords an unparalleled opportunity to learn nasty things in a nasty way.

Almost all of the educational work in such a town must be done in the elementary schools. While high school facilities may be afforded they will appeal to a vanishingly small percentage of the children.

The elementary schools in such a village must provide organized games for the younger children and organized sports for the older ones; a sufficient amount of physical training to insure robust bodies; careful instruction in physiology, body hygiene, and sex hygiene; simple manual training for the younger children; thorough preparation in the reading and writing of English; the fundamentals of numbers; geography with particular reference to the geographic conditions in the immediate locality; civics and history-particularly American history; a thorough drill in English and American literature; a minimum amount of instruction in fine art-drawing, painting, modeling; an extensive system of nature study, supplemented by field trips.

This course should be required of boys and girls alike. In addition to these studies the boys in a coal-mining village should receive careful instruction in geology, particularly in the mineralogy of the region in which the mine is located; technical training in mining, drafting, and shop work; and a sufficient training in agriculture to enable them to make good kitchen gardens, since gardening is one of the chief avocations of men in such a community.

Parallel to this special training for boys the schools should provide for girls a thorough course in domestic science, with particular emphasis on economical purchasing, and an education for parenthood, including hygiene, dietetics, psychology, and nursing.

Such a course of study given in a typical mining village would tend to make of the boys educated, trained workmen, and of the girls educated, trained mothers. To be sure this course would not make of the boys railroad presidents or United States senators; but even that is not a drawback because, incredible as it may sound to many old-fashioned ears, the vast majority of these boys will be miners and mechanics. The question is, therefore, Shall they be good miners or bad ones? United States senatorships bother them not a whit.

If there are, as there always will be in such a village, a few exceptional children who desire more advanced work, the teacher can do exactly what he does now-namely, give them special instruction.

Such an educational system as that outlined would require more training in the teachers, and an additional outlay for tools and school-rooms, but it would train the boys and girls of the village to live their lives effectively.

The mine-village educational problem is rendered especially easy of solution because the community is small in size, and because there are only two occupations, mining and homekeeping, into which the children go.

A similar situation may be found in most of the agricultural districts, except that the boys take up farming instead of mining, while the girls are called upon to participate in farm work to the extent of caring for chickens and pigs, and sometimes for milk. In such an agricultural community the same outline for study might apply, except that in training for occupations boys should be taught the facts regarding soil fertility, fruit culture, dairying, market gardening, and other agricultural problems, while girls need instruction which will fit them for domestic life and for parenthood.

In New York State a number of agricultural high schools giving a course such as the one just hinted at, have met with marked success. Most country children do not go to high school, however-although they are doing so in increasing numbers-and hence the necessity for shaping the elementary course along similar lines.

VII The Educational Problems of an Industrial Community

When the mining village and the farming district are replaced by the industrial town and the city, the school problem is greatly complicated by the crowding of many people into a small space and by the great diversity of occupations which the people pursue. The larger the town the worse the crowding and the greater the variety of jobs. Otherwise the problem of education remains largely the same.

The most apparent need of the town child is a place to play, and the plainest duty of the town elementary school is to provide play space. In thinly settled places there is no such need. In towns and cities there is no more imperative duty resting on the school than the furnishing of playgrounds and gymnasiums for children. The practice of building school houses without gymnasiums and without play spaces cannot be too strongly condemned. It is robbing children of the chance to grow into normal human beings.

The other side of the town problem-the question of occupations-has been settled in Germany, and more recently in certain American cities, by the "continuation" school, which unties the Gordian knot by cutting it. Instead of allowing children to stop school at fourteen the "continuation" system requires partial school attendance until they are eighteen.

Under this system, when children reach the end of the elementary schools they may either go on with a high school course for four years, or else they may take a "continuation" course for four years.

For example, if a boy elects to be a carpenter he spends forty hours a week as a carpenter's apprentice. Then for fourteen hours a week he goes to a school where he is taught mechanical drawing, designing, the testing of materials, and any other subjects which bear on carpentering. The time he spends in school is credited on the time sheets of his employer.

So at the end of four years the boy, at eighteen, has been well trained in the practice of carpentering by working at his job, and well schooled in its theory by taking a "continuation" course which bore directly on his work. Thus wage-earning and education are united to produce a well-trained man.

The school problem of the city suburb is very different from that of the mining village, the rural community, the industrial town, or the city. The children have space, good homes, and abundant opportunity to go through high school and even through college. Under these conditions the elementary grades can be directly preparatory for high school work, since six or even seven out of ten children will go to high school.

In the city suburb there need be little specialization in the elementary grades. The high school, with a general course and two or three special courses, can be relied upon for all necessary specific training.

VIII Beginning with Child Needs

In the industrial town, in the city, and in the city suburb the high school is being looked to as the place where specialized training must be given. The trade school can succeed a little, but its effectiveness will always be limited by the narrow technical character of its instruction, which makes the "continuation" school generally preferable. The high school is not a separate institution, but an integral part of the school system. In a high school, therefore, the children should move naturally from the studies of the elementary grades to more advanced studies, but the purpose of both elementary and high schools is the same-the preparation of children for living.

Children have needs which the schools are here to supply. Certain of these needs are common to all children, and to that extent all schools must provide similar training. Other needs, varying with the size and character of the community, call for a like variation in the course of study.

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