The records cited above are exceptionally high. There were hundreds of others almost equally good. “Twenty-one Georgia club members from the seventh congressional district alone grew 2,641 bushels at an average cost of 23 cents per bushel; 19 boys in Gordon County, Georgia, average 90 bushels, 10 of them making 1,058 bushels. The 10 boys who stood highest in Georgia averaged 169.9 bushels and made a net profit of more than $100 each, besides prizes won. In Alabama 100 boys average 97 bushels at an average cost of 27 cents. In Monroe County, Alabama, 25 boys averaged 78 bushels. In Yazoo County, Mississippi, 21 boys averaged 111.6 bushels at an average cost of 19.7 cents. In Lee County, Mississippi, 17 boys averaged 82 bushels at an average cost of 21 cents. Sixty-five boys in Mississippi averaged 109.9 bushels at an average cost of 25 cents. Twenty Mississippi boys averaged 140.6 bushels at an average cost of 23 cents. Ninety-two boys in Louisiana grew 5,791 bushels on 92 acres; 10 of these boys had above 100 bushels each, although the weather conditions were very unfavorable in that State. In North Carolina 100 boys averaged 99 bushels. In the same State 432 boys averaged 63 bushels. In Buncombe County, North Carolina, 10 boys averaged 88 bushels. In Sussex County, Virginia, 16 boys averaged 82 bushels. Fifteen boys in the vicinity of Memphis, Tenn., where the business men contributed about $3,000 to aid the work, averaged 127.4 bushels at an average cost of 28 cents per bushel. Many other records in other States were equally good in view of the fact that a drought prevailed very generally throughout the South in 1911.["][26]
Such returns challenge the attention of the most hidebound. These boys got results that exceeded anything that had ever been heard of in their communities. The old folks who had scoffed; the wise-acres whose advice was not taken; and the “I told you so” farmers who had uttered their predictions, all stood aside, while the boys, pointer in hand, taught their respective communities one of the best lessons they had ever learned.
Parallel with the boys’ corn clubs are the girls’ canning clubs. If the boys could grow corn (in a number of cases the corn contests were won by girls), why might it not be possible to have the girls do something along parallel lines? The idea found expression in the girls’ tomato clubs and similar organizations. During 1910, three hundred and twenty-five girls were enrolled in such clubs in Virginia and South Carolina. Dr. Knapp and his fellow workers decided that one-tenth of an acre would be enough for a good garden. Each girl was urged to plant some other kind of vegetable in addition to her tomatoes, and to can surplus fruit. In 1911, more than three thousand girls, in eight different States, had joined clubs and planted their gardens. By 1912 the number had grown to twenty-three thousand girls in twelve States. Many of the girls put up more than five hundred quart cans of tomatoes from their plots, besides ketchup, pickles, chow-chow, preserves, and other products. Quite a number of girls put up more than a thousand quart cans, and one girl put up fifteen hundred quart cans. Some of the girls, in addition to the prizes, had a net profit of as much as a hundred dollars on their gardens.
The United States Bureau of Plant Industry sets forth the object of the girls’ demonstration work as follows:
“(1) To encourage rural families to provide purer and better food at a lower cost, and utilize the surplus and otherwise waste products of the orchard and garden, and make the poultry yard an effective part of the farm economy.
(2) To stimulate interest and wholesome cooperation among members of the family in the home.
(3) To provide some means by which girls may earn money at home, and, at the same time, get the education and viewpoint necessary for the ideal farm life.
(4) To open the way for practical demonstrations in home economics.
(5) To furnish earnest teachers a plan for aiding their pupils and helping their communities.”[27]
The most astonishing thing about the club activity is the recognition which it has won wherever it has been worked out on an extensive basis. The reason for this general recognition is quite obvious, and its effect is no less stimulating.
Public officials and business men have vied with one another in their efforts to reward the winners of county and State club contests. The same bulletin which records the astonishing figures on corn yields, tells about the things that were done for the 56,840 boys who were members of corn clubs. Fifty-two Georgia boys received diplomas signed by the governor of the State and other officials, for producing more than a hundred bushels per acre each, at an average cost of less than thirty cents per bushel. Business men and citizens generally subscribed liberally money, free railroad transportation, and trips to State capitals. In 1911 the total value of the prizes offered in the South to the boys’ corn clubs approximated fifty thousand dollars. In Oklahoma, one thousand dollars in gold was offered to the one hundred and twenty boys making the best record in that State. The State prize winners were sent to Washington for a week, where they were received at the White House by the President, and at the Capitol by the Speaker of the House of Representatives. They were presented with special cards of admission to the Senate and House of Representatives, and, when visiting Congress, they were presented to their Senators and Congressmen. By special invitation these distinguished visitors appeared before the Committee on Agriculture at the House of Representatives. They also visited the office of the Secretary of Agriculture. They were photographed, and large diplomas bearing the seal of the Department and the signature of the Secretary were awarded to them.
One does not wonder at the widespread recognition accorded these boys, in view of the fact that their efforts have been responsible for an immense increase in the business prosperity of their respective States. Once more have educators demonstrated the possibilities of teaching parents through the education of children.
The educational work which is being done in the uplands of the South has already received widespread recognition. The slogan, “Down with the moonshine still and up with the moonlight school,” typifies the spirit of the upland community.
One might journey far before discovering a more enthusiastic people than the teachers and the scholars of the Southern uplands. The appalling extent of illiteracy among the descendants of Marion’s men finds a parallel in their pathetic desire for some form of education.
The Southern hill whites love the old and fear the new. Traditionally, they belong to a past generation; actually, they are reaching out for the better things which the new generation can offer. The moonlight schools are attended by old people and young alike. The struggling colleges, the industrial and technical schools, with their record of privation and hardship, bear eloquent testimony to the genuine efforts which the upland population is making in these early years of its educational awakening.
Every sincere effort among the hill whites meets with instant response. For the most part, they deprive themselves of the necessaries of life in order that they may send their children to school. Boys skimp and save; girls walk for miles along mountain trails and paths; communities give of the scanty means of their effort for the building and maintenance of schools. Everywhere the spirit of the new education is permeating the Southern upland communities.
One teacher, whose years of effort in the Piedmont have brought her the confidence and co-operation of the community, tells of the success of one of her earliest ventures with a boy of thirteen.
The boy’s father was bad; his mother slovenly and indifferent. The boy himself was bright and active.
When the time came for him to enter the cotton mill, the teacher protested to his family, but without success. Still there was something that she could do for him, still she saw an opportunity of serving him, and she asked him to come to her home with a number of other boys, for a couple of nights a week, when they sat together, reading, or playing games.
The boy had appeared sullen at first, but toward the end of his school term he showed an active interest. It became apparent that he was particularly clever at languages. None of his lessons troubled him, and, with the assistance of the teacher, he learned Italian readily, and during the evenings, when the other boys played games or talked, he worked over his Italian sentences with vital interest.
Just before Christmas, during the first year that this boy had spent in the mill, a friend visited his teacher, became interested in her work, and asked if there was any way in which she could help.
“You may,” said the teacher. “You may buy Andy an outfit.”
The friend went to the city with the order in her pocket,—a hat, a suit, and a complete outfit, new, as a Christmas present for Andy.
On Christmas eve, Andy alone came to the teacher’s house. She had not asked the other boys,—partly because most of them preferred to stay at home, partly because she had no such fine present for them as she had for Andy.
“Never in my life,” the teacher said, “had I seen Andy clean. I made up my mind that for once he should have a clean body as well as clean clothes.”
When Andy came that Christmas eve, the teacher took him into a room where there were towels, soap, a basin, and a new outfit of clothes.
“Andy,” she said, “this is your Christmas present from my friend, and now you are going to give me a Christmas present, too. You are going to wash up and dress up.”
Andy followed directions, and when he emerged from the room in his spick and span outfit, his hat set side-wise on his wet, newly combed hair, he stood up very straight, surveying himself as best he could from head to foot, and exclaimed,—“Gee! I feel just like George Washington.” The bath and the new suit were a realization of his highest ideal.
“Andy and I were always friends after that,” said the teacher, “and since Andy was the moving spirit among the boys in the village, the boys and I got along well together. It was my introduction to the heart of the community, and it came with Andy’s realization of an ideal which he had long cherished.”
Having won Andy over, the teacher prepared to work her way past some of the barriers of prejudice which the community had placed between itself and civilization. The girls offered the readiest opening.
“The homes were wretched,” the teacher said. “The people did not know the simplest health rules. They were strangers to sanitation or cleanliness. Their housekeeping was primitive and their cooking miserable. I had won the boys by getting them together in something that resembled a club. I decided that my best path to the girls, and from them to the community, lay through housekeeping.”
The hypothesis was, at least, worthy of a try-out. The teacher began by keeping her own house in the most approved manner, and asking the girls to come in and help her do it.
“You’ll like to take supper with me this evening,” she would say to a group of girls at recess time. “Speak to your mothers when you go home, and you, Sadie and Annie, will stay over night and sleep in the spare bed.”
They were slow to respond at first. Long habit made them suspicious, but when the first few girls had spent their night with the teacher and had come home with the tales of her wonderful household arrangements, the others were looking eagerly for a chance to duplicate their experiences.
“Am I next?” a little girl asked anxiously one day, after the invitations to a party had been given out. The assurance that she was, made her face shine for the remainder of the afternoon.
“The school girls all came willingly,” the teacher said. “It was after I had them so interested that one of the factory hands came in. It was Saturday night, and she rapped on the door before coming in with a hesitating touch, as if she was afraid. She sat down across from me, smoothing her dress and looking unhappy.”
“You’ll not understand,” said the factory girl, apologetically. “But Mame is in your school—she’s my sister. You had her up last week to spend the night. You’ll remember?”
The teacher nodded.
“She came home, and ever since she’s been telling us about the way you did things. And I’ve been thinking,——”
She stopped and looked at the teacher, half suspiciously, half appealingly.
“I’ve been thinking how nice it would be for me, if I could do them things the same as you. You see,” she spoke rapidly, “I’m gettin’ married soon now, and when Mame came a-telling that way, and our house like it always is, and the baby crying, and nothing done exceptin’ ma a-scoldin’, and I says to myself, I says, if I could do things like that teacher can do ’em mebbe I wouldn’t make mistakes like ma makes ’em.” She paused for breath, looking expectant.
“You would like to come here to see how I do things?” the teacher asked.
The girl nodded eagerly.
“Come Monday after hours, and spend the night with me.”
“After that,” the teacher said, “it was a great deal easier. The next thing I wanted to do was to get the children examined for glasses and throat trouble. There were two second-rate country doctors there who knew little or nothing about modern medicine. The nearest man that I could trust was forty miles away. He was a specialist, too, and high priced. Still, I sat down and wrote him a letter, telling him how we were fixed. He answered by return mail, making a special rate and setting a day. I hoped to take twelve of the children, but I had car fare for only seven. Then came our windfall. I told the railroad what I was trying to do, and they made a special excursion rate and took the children at less than half fare. We were all able to go, and the extra money went for a treat to soda and the movies.”
The children went back home, singing the praises of the trip, the teacher, and the doctor. They went back, too, with expert advice and assistance, and with the good news that others would soon have a turn.
Group by group, the needy children were brought down to the specialist in the city. Some were even operated on, although at the outset the parents would not hear of operations. In the end the children won, however. Their enthusiasm for the teacher and their doctor carried the day.
“It has been slow,” the teacher said, “but at the end of it all, they see better, hear better, eat more wholesome, nourishing food, live better, and understand themselves better. On the whole it has paid.”
The rural schools of the South have no monopoly on progressive educational views. A number of Southern cities have taken up their position in the vanguard of educational progress. Notable among these cities is Columbus, Georgia,—a city of 20,554 people, in which Superintendent Roland B. Daniel has undertaken a vigorous policy of shaping the schools in the interests of the community. There were in 1913, 5,356 children of school age in Columbus. Of this number, 4,089 were in the schools. The school population is rather unevenly divided, racially,—3,348 of the children of school age are white, and 1,198 are colored. About one-quarter of the white population depends for its livelihood upon the mills. Columbus is surrounded by an agricultural district from which come many children in search of high school training. The city of Columbus presents an industrial problem of an unusually complex character, and the manner in which this problem has been handled by the schools is worthy of the highest commendation. Superintendent Daniel has laid down three definite planks in his educational platform for the city of Columbus. In the first place, he aims to provide school accommodations which are fitted to the peculiar needs of each part of the community. In the second place, he aims to shape the school system of Columbus in terms of the local environment of the children. In the third place, he has inaugurated a high school policy, which makes high school training practical as well as theoretical.
Among the mill operatives of Columbus, Superintendent Daniel estimates that there are approximately 800 children of school age. The situation presented by these children was critical in the extreme. There was an absence of compulsory education laws; few of the children attended any school, and when they did enter a school they seldom remained long enough to secure any marked educational advantage. Less than 5 per cent. of the children continued in school after they were old enough to work in the cotton mills.
Pursuant of his intention to make the schools supply the needs of all of the children of Columbus, Superintendent Daniel organized the North Highlands School in the factory district. Of this school he says: “It is not made to conform, either in course of study or hours, to the other schools of similar rank in the system, for the board desires to meet the conditions and convenience of the people for whom the school was established. Classroom work begins in the morning at 8 o’clock and continues until 11 o’clock, with a recess of 10 minutes at 9:30. The afternoon session begins at 1 o’clock, and the school closes for the day at 3:30 o’clock.”
The long intermission in the middle of the day is given in order to allow the children to take hot lunches to parents, brothers, and sisters who are working in the mill. Many of the mills are located at some distance from the school. Some of the children are called upon to walk as much as two miles during the noon hour, in order to carry the lunches. These “dinner toters,” when carrying lunch baskets for persons outside of the family, receive 25 cents per week per basket. In case several baskets are carried, the income thus earned is considerable.
The school thus organized on the basis of local needs is further specialized in a way that will appeal to the needs of the mill operative group. The academic courses are similar to the courses offered in the other schools, except that more emphasis is laid upon the “three R’s.” Superintendent Daniel says that the time is very limited in which these children will attend school, and more attention is given as to what may be regarded as fundamental. “While the prescribed course contemplates seven years, few continue after the fifth or sixth year, so strong is the call of the mills. Not more than 1 per cent finish this school and pursue their studies further.”
The three morning hours and the first hour in the afternoon are devoted to academic studies, while the last hour and a half of the day is given to practical work. The boys are required to take elementary courses in woodwork and gardening, alternating these two branches on alternate days. The girls are given work in basketry, sewing, cooking, poultry raising, and gardening.
The results of the introduction of this applied work are summed up by Superintendent Daniel in this way,—“In all of these lines of work it is now the hope of the school only to better living conditions a little among the people for whom it was especially organized. The transformation is necessarily slow. In the beginning, no doubt, the advocates of this type of school thought that many might be induced to continue in school and do more advanced work, especially along vocational lines. In this respect the school has been a disappointment to some. We are seldom able to induce pupils to finish even the limited course offered in this school.”
The North Highland School, in addition to its work for the children, has begun an organized effort to raise the standards of the local community. Every day the principal and teachers of the school visit some of the homes, giving helpful suggestions, caring for the sick, and in any other possible way contributing to home life. Superintendent Daniel reports the progress in this respect by saying,—“Confidence is now so strong that one of the teachers every Saturday morning collects the physically defective ones in the community and takes them to the free clinic for operations or treatment. At first parents would see their children die rather than permit them to be operated upon, but now they seldom decline to permit them to be taken by a teacher to the free clinic, when in the judgment of the teacher it is necessary.”
The school has made an effort to organize the older people of the community. There are entertainments and school gatherings in which parents and children alike participate. As a further help to those parents who are compelled to work in the mills, the school grounds, which are amply provided with a full play equipment, are open to all of the children at all hours of the day and all days of the week. “It is not infrequent,” says Superintendent Daniel, “that, when the mother goes to work at 6 in the morning, she sends her children to the school to enjoy the privileges of the grounds until the opening of the school at 8 o’clock.”
The work of the negro schools is similarly fitted to the industrial needs of the negro children. Boys and girls alike devote a considerable portion of their time to industrial work. The main purpose of this work for negroes is to prepare them for the line of industrial opportunity open to them. The school reports that it has developed a number of good blacksmiths, carpenters, cooks, seamstresses, and laundresses. Pupils who remain in the schools long enough to complete the course are able to earn, upon leaving school, about twice what they would be able to earn had no such training been provided.
A vigorous attempt has been made to reorganize grade work in the interests of clearness and effectiveness. As Superintendent Daniel puts the matter,—“We undertook to place before the teachers a definite problem, and to put suggestions into tangible form. We stated that all subjects could be taught with the books merely as helps and means to an end, and contend further for the doctrine that a working knowledge of books and subjects is far more desirable than accomplishing the feat of memorizing the printed page.” Many teachers will be astonished by the doctrine which Superintendent Daniel evolves from this statement of educational theory. “The teachers were asked to conduct the work in such a manner that it would not be necessary to recite or take written tests with closed books, but that school books be used as tools with which to work, and that the child should use text-books as adults do books of reference, while the teacher guides and directs in the development of thought.["]
This attempt of Superintendent Daniel to proceed with the grammar school work in a more natural way, and to relate all of it more closely to life, met with some interesting results, as may be gathered from the following test questions which were worked out by teachers in pursuance of the instructions to make text-books incidental and thought primary in the school work.
ARITHMETIC, THIRD B
Roy shops for his mother at Kirven’s. He buys 2 boxes of hair pins at $.05 each, 6 towels at $.10 each, and 5 handkerchiefs for $.25. What was his bill? If he hands the clerk $1.00, how much change will he receive?
THIRD A
If Isabel’s 2 pair of shoes cost $4, how much will shoes for all the girls in the class cost?
GEOGRAPHY THIRD B
Turn to the map on page 65 and find and write the names of seven different shore forms.
ARITHMETIC, FOURTH B
In our room are 46 pupils. The class receives 230 tablets and 138 pencils for the term. How many of each does each child receive?
GEOGRAPHY, FOURTH B
What products may be sent to us from New England? If they were shipped from Portsmouth, N. H., on what bodies of water would they travel?
GEOGRAPHY, FOURTH A
Why does the United States carry on more trade with the British Isles than with Germany? At what seaport would our vessels land in the British Isles? What would they carry and what would they bring back?
GEOGRAPHY, FIFTH A
What highways of trade will be used for shipping oranges from San Francisco to Columbus, Ga., by way of the Panama Canal? How many miles is this, approximately? (Use rule and map on page 65.)
GEOGRAPHY, FIFTH B
What is the chief industry of the people of Columbus, and why? Describe the climate of our city, tell what fruits, vegetables and farm products find a market here. What would a boat coming up the river bring to Columbus? What would it carry back?
Superintendent Daniel’s viewpoint is clear and sane. “It is not sufficient,” he says, “to maintain courses in domestic science and manual training for the grades, and to teach other subjects as if they belonged to another realm.” Consequently he has made every endeavor to bring together the forces of the community and of the school in a sympathetic whole, around which the educational life of the town must center.
The industrial high school is an integral and highly important part of the work in the Columbus schools. Side by side with the academic high school, it affords an opportunity for the children who do not intend to continue their educational work beyond high school grade to get some assistance in the direction of a training for life activity. It was originally intended to duplicate, in a measure, the conditions and hours maintained in the industrial plants of the city. Formerly the school was open for eleven calendar months; at the present time a vacation of six weeks is allowed. The school hours are from 8 o’clock in the morning until 4 o’clock in the afternoon, for five days each week. Pupils who have not maintained the required standard during the week are compelled to attend school on Saturday.
All pupils of the Industrial High School are required to take academic work of high school grade in mathematics, history, English, and science.
The introduction of manual training and domestic science into the grades of all Columbus schools has pointed many children in the direction of the Industrial High School. While it is not the intention of the school authorities to make the work of the Industrial High School final, it is hoped that those children who are enabled to continue with educational work are benefited markedly by this specialized course.
Throughout this deliberate attempt of the Columbus school administration to make the schools fit the needs of the community there is evidence of a scientific spirit which is in the last degree commendable. The community need is first ascertained. The school work is then organized in response to this community need. If, perchance, the first effort meets with little success, additional effort is continued until some measure of success is assured. The school authorities are not afraid to change their opinions or their system. They are not even afraid to fail on a given experiment. The one thing of which they are afraid is failure to provide for the educational needs of the community.
The first great battle in the educational awakening of the South has been won. The people realize the necessity for an intelligently active population.
The second battle is well under way. The people of the South are shaping the schools to meet the peculiar educational needs which the economic and social problems of the South present.
A rallying-cry is ringing through the Southern States,—“The schools for the people; the people for the schools; and a higher standard of education and of life for the community.”
The South is in line for the New Education. School officials are working. Superintendent Daniel writes,—“Everyone connected with the system has been too intent on doing his work well and in establishing and maintaining the ideals of the system to be disturbed by petty difficulties. The teachers,” he adds, “have appeared to feel that it was rather a privilege than a burden to participate in making the Columbus system efficient through the preparation of her children for life.”[29] The public is asking for a correlation of school with life, and the schools are educating the South through the children.
[24] Now State Superintendent. See an article “‘Corn-Club’ Smith,” P. C. Macfarlane, Collier’s Weekly, May 17, 1913, p. 19.
[25] United States Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Plant Industry, Results of Boys’ Demonstration Work in Corn Clubs in 1911, Washington, May, 1912, p. 4.
[26] Op. cit., pp. 5-6.
[27] U. S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Plant Industry, Girls’ Demonstration Work, Washington, January, 1913, pp. 1-2.
[28] For a full statement of the work of the Columbus Schools see “Industrial Education in Columbus,["] Ga., R. B. Daniel, U. S. Bureau of Education, Bulletin 535, Government Printing Office, 1913. Also, The Annual Report of the Columbus Public Schools for the Year Ending August 1, 1913.
[29] Annual report of the Columbus Public Schools, 1913, p. 18.
The educational experiments described in the preceding chapters are replete with the spirit of the New Education. From the virile educational systems of the country a protest is being sounded against traditional formalism. School men have learned that that which is is not necessarily right. Each concept, each method, must run the gauntlet of critical analysis. It is not sufficient to allege in support of an educational principle that the results derived from its application have been satisfactory in the past. Insistently the question is repeated, “What are its effects upon the problems of to-day?”
Educational ancestor worship is no more acceptable to the progressive spirit of the Western World than is ancestor worship in any other form. The past has made its contribution, and has died in making it. For the contribution the present is grateful, but it must steadfastly refuse in its own name, and in the name of the future, to be bound by any decree of the past which will not stand the acid test of present experience.
The old education was beset by traditionalism. Under its dominance, education, defined once and for all, was established as a standard to which men must attain; hence a preceptor, guiding his young charges along the straight path to knowledge, might, with perfect confidence, admonish them, “Lo here, the three R’s is education,” or “Lo there, Greek and higher mathematics is education,” according as his training had been in the three R’s or in Greek. In either case he felt certain of his general ground. Once and for all the educational standard had been set. By that standard new ideas were judged, and either justified or condemned.
Under this predetermined scheme there was a formula for education—a formula as definite as that for making bread or pickling pork. The formula was applied to each child who presented himself to the administration. If the formula worked successfully the child was declared educated in the same way that pork which has been successfully treated by the proper processes is declared to be pickled. If the formula did not work the child was not educated. He sat in school with a dunce-cap upon his head, or else played hookey and spent his hours in fishing, swimming or idling.
Perhaps, in view of the recent contributions of science, it would be more illuminating to say that the old education inoculated the child with a predetermined educational virus. If the virus “took” the child was declared immune to the bacteria of ignorance, illiteracy, stupidity and other prevalent social complaints. If the virus did not take the schoolmaster ostentatiously washed his hands of the recreant.
Only one argument need be urged against this method of attacking the educational problem—it did not work. In the first place, the most brilliant school successes often turned out to be the most arrant life failures, while the school derelicts frequently became life successes of stellar magnitude. To the thinking man the inference was plain; the formula was not an unqualified success. Not only was this true of the children who went through school, but there were crowds of children for whom the school held no attraction whatever. They attended a few sessions, wasted a scant bit of energy in educational effort, and then dropped out, hopeless of obtaining results by further “study.”
The old education read out of the school those children who could not benefit by its teachings. How utterly different the concept which has gripped the minds of progressive, modern educators! Under their guidance education has become what Herbert Spencer called it—a preparation for complete living. No longer a fixed, objective standard, education has been recognized as an enlargement of the life horizon of each individual boy or girl in the community. “Teach us individual needs,” proclaim the educational progressives, “and we will tell you what the character of education must be.”
Thus has education ceased to be an objective standard, created by one age and handed down rigidly immobile to the ages succeeding. Instead it is accepted as a fulfilment—a complement—to child needs. Always education has been regarded as a process of molding life and character. The chief difference between the old and the new education is that the old education made a mold, and then forced the child to fit the mold, while the new education begins by determining the character of child needs, and then fits the mold to the needs. The old education was like the farmer who built a corn-sheller, and then attempted to find ears of corn which would fit into the sheller; the new education is like the farmer who first measured the corn and then built his sheller to fit the corn. The old education selected the class which was able to conform to its requirements; the new education serves all classes.
Under the impetus given to it by modern thinkers, education has become the direction of growth, rather than the application of a formula. The child is a developing creature. It has become the function of education to watch over and guide the development.
Nor do the modern schools consider mental development as the sole object of educational endeavor. Physical growth is an equally essential part of child life. Therefore the direction of physical growth becomes just as vital a part of the educational machinery. Aesthetic and spiritual growth require like emphasis. Each phase of child life receives independent consideration.
The old education through mental impression is giving way before the new education through physical, mental and spiritual expression. Expression is the essence of growth; and since the school is to foster child growth it must place child expression in a place of paramount importance.
Child needs, rather than abstract standards, have thus become the basis of school activity. The old education developed its course of study by surveying the interests of adults, and picking from among them those, apparently the most simple, which were fit for children. The new education applies the laboratory method—studying children and their interests—reports, among its other findings, the quite evident fact that children enter into life as whole-heartedly as adults; that the field of their interest lies, not in the left-over problems of older people, but in their own problems and processes; and that therefore the educator must found his philosophy and his practice on an understanding of the child and child needs.
There is in the world a phenomenon called adult life, with its phases, problems and ideals. There is likewise in the world a phenomenon called child life, with its phases, problems and ideals. A complete understanding of either may not be derived through a study of the other. Child needs exist separate from and different from adult needs. It is the business of the new education to understand them and meet them.
Two appeals are reaching the ears of the modern educator: the first, the appeal of the child; the second, the appeal of the community. The appeal of the child is an appeal for the opportunity of developing all of its faculties. Physically, children grow. The school, recognizing this fact, is making a vigorous effort to break the shell of custom, which has confined its activities to purely intellectual pursuits, and provide a physical training which will lead the school child to perfect normal body growth, as well as normal growth of mind. Even in its intellectual activity the school is recognizing the importance of making the child mind an active machine for thought, rather than a passive storehouse for information. Though less emphasized, the training for sensual growth is becoming of ever increasing importance in the new education. Above all, the aesthetic side of child life is being expanded in an effort to round out a completed adulthood.
The recognition of child needs, which forms so integral a part of the new education, is paralleled by a similar recognition of the needs of the community. The progressive educator is laying aside for a moment the details of his task, and asking himself the pertinent question: “What should the community expect in return for the annual expenditure of a billion dollars on public education?” What are community needs if not the needs for manhood and womanhood? They are well summed up in three words—virility, efficiency, citizenship. Possessed of those attributes a group of individuals rounds itself inevitably into a vigorous, progressive community. They are normal qualities which a people must demand if their social standards are to be maintained. Since they constitute so vital an element in social life, a community lavish in its expenditures for schools may surely expect the school product to be virile, efficient, worthy citizens. The new education, recognizing the justice of this demand, is crying out insistently for social, as well as individual, training in the school.
The new educational institutions have set themselves to meet the needs of the child and of the community. Their success depends upon their ability to understand these needs and to supply them.
The old-fashioned schoolmaster asked: “How can I compel?” His answer was the rod. The modern schoolmaster asks: “How can I direct?” His answer is a laboratory, open-minded, scientific method, and a host of varied courses designed to meet the needs of individual children and of individual communities.
Communities vary as greatly in their characteristics as do children. It is now certain that no formula will provide education for all children. Each new study of community needs makes it more evident that no system will supply education for all communities. It is the business of the educator to study the individual child and the individual community, and then to provide an education that will assist both to grow normally and soundly in all of their parts.
The school is a servant, not a master. In that fact lies its greatness—the greatness of its opportunity and of its responsibility. As an institution its object is service—assistance in growth. Development is the goal of education. Virility, efficiency, citizenship, manhood, womanhood—these are its legitimate products. Its tools and formulas are such as will most effectively serve these ends. When the increase of knowledge leads to new methods and formulas which will prove more effective than the old ones, then the old ones must be laid aside, reverently, perhaps, but none the less firmly, and the new ones adopted. Changes may not be made hastily and without due consideration; but when experiment has shown that the new device is more advantageous in furthering the objects of education than the old and tried formulas, a change is inevitable.
The first and last word on the subject is spoken when this question is asked and answered: “Does education exist for children, or do children exist for education?”
If children exist for education, then it is just that an objective educational standard should be created; it is fair that a hard and fast course of study be mapped out in conformity with that standard; it is right that educational machinery be constructed which automatically turns away from the schools any child who does not conform to the school system as it is. If children exist for education, they should either conform to its requirements, or else, if they will not or cannot conform, they should be mercilessly thrust aside.
If, on the other hand, education exists for children, then the primal consideration must be child needs. If any one child, or any group of children, has needs which are not met by existing educational institutions, then these institutions must be remodeled. If an adequate congenial education is a part of the birthright of every American child, then educational institutions must be reorganized and reshaped until they provide that birthright in the fullest possible measure.
Already the answer has been formulated. 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. Only its voice—its advice and suggestion—serves as a guide or as a warning. Of authority it should have not an atom.
The educational opportunities of to-day are without peer. The educational machinery, ready at hand, is being transformed to meet the newly understood needs of the child and of the community. The spirit of the new education is the spirit of service, the spirit of fair dealing, the spirit of growth for the individual and of advancement for society. Here are individual needs. There are aligned the social obligations and requirements of the age. In so far as it lies within the power of the school, the children who leave its doors shall have their needs supplied, and shall be equipped to play their part as virile, efficient citizens in a greater community. Such is the spirit of the new education.