On the Firing Line in Education Part 2

The physical education of the child and adolescent should be as carefully planned, as scientifically workt out in a positive way, as the intellectual. Why not? Because you know--every intelligent person knows--that the physical is the basis for the mental and the moral. You know--we all know--that a sound, a healthy, a sane life can not be developt in an unsound or a diseased body. Then why are these activities merely on the firing lines and not a part of the regular program?

Because ignorance, and prejudice, and selfishness, and stubbornness, and penuriousness are still keeping many people in the trenches. But they will be dislodged. Just as sure as fate they will be driven from cover.

They are fighting a losing battle. They are standing in the way of an irresistible movement that is sure to engulf them. If there were time I should like to describe just what is being done along this line in some places and give the reflex influence of the same on the community. It has surely meant a new heaven and a new earth to many a child, and glimmerings of the same to many a community. But I pa.s.s to less spectacular matters, continuing to discuss principles rather than ill.u.s.trations.

THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY

Another matter of interest these days is the educational survey that has been taken up by many progressive communities. The plan is, as many of you know, to subject the school system of a city or community to a searching investigation in order to discover, if possible, its weak points, if it has any, to the end of their betterment. Experts are brought in who, without fear or favor, examine the system from all possible points of view--location and arrangement of school buildings including heating, lighting, and general health conditions, adequacy of playground and athletic facilities, the extent to which the schools are satisfying community needs in the way of equipt workmen and the needs of the young people for equipment for suitable work, the cost of the system, attendance, methods of teaching and supervision, course of study, etc. Outside experts are brought in for various reasons: known to have no personal interest in the outcome, their reports are likely to be received with greater respect; and, too, a local committee, thru nearness and very familiarity, would fail to notice features, good as well as bad, that might at once attract the attention of strangers. Many cities, ranging from 2500 to half a million people, have already availed themselves of the survey with, in the main, very gratifying results. Not only have cities used the survey, but other units of educational administration. There have been a few very significant and interesting rural school surveys by counties in several states. A similar study has been made of several State universities, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nevada, for example. I notice that the legislature of Minnesota has just arranged for a survey of theirs. You all recall that such a survey was made of all the inst.i.tutions of higher education of North Dakota only a short time ago. The general feeling is that it was well worth while. Such and even more extensive surveys have already been made in five other states--Oregon, Iowa, Washington, Colorado, and Wyoming. The end sought in each and all of these surveys, whether city schools, higher inst.i.tutions, or state-wide systems, is greater efficiency--larger service to society. A survey of this character is usually followed by a detailed printed report that is generously distributed resulting in greater interest in the schools and a more intelligent appreciation of their work and their needs.

VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE

Much has been said in recent years about vocational education. The schools have been severely criticised for not teaching trades. Many have demanded that that be the dominating motive in all our schools, especially in the high schools. The educational press, for the last decade, has kept the matter in the limelight. Books have been written calling attention to the heavy dropping out of school of pupils even before reaching high school age wholly unfitted to do anything above the most menial and lowest-paid work. They have argued strenuously and sometimes logically for better things. To this program the objection has been raised that children in these early years are not yet ready to choose their work of life; that they do not yet sufficiently know themselves--their own tastes and capacities for such serious choice; it has also been urged that to place before children such attractive objective features would result in swerving many from the normal pathway of their development and check it midway. The result has been what might be called a compromise, and the firing-line activities have been somewhat modified. Not vocational education but vocational guidance is now more nearly the thought. And this has a much larger content, a background, a more scientific basis, and one organically connected with the larger movement of which I have already spoken--the social motive in education supplemented by the individual involving the discovery and development of taste and capacity.

I have already called attention to the high mortality of high school students. The reasons I have given are the lack of sympathy that the teacher has with the adolescent and the lack of meaning found in the work being done. The same facts account for the heavy elimination that takes place in the upper grades of the elementary school. But both are being remedied to some extent. The first thru the child-study movement and the second thru the matter of vocational guidance. And the two are very closely connected as one can see at a glance. Thru the child-study movement the teacher comes to know child nature so well that direct application can be made to the individual child and an intimate knowledge gained of his tastes, capacities, ambitions, and dominant interests. This will enable her to give the subject matter definite meaning in the early years, and, later on, when vocations begin to attract, the guiding may be intelligent and the final choice a suitable one. From the beginning of the adolescent period there should be opportunities furnished by the school or thru its co-operative effort for children to test themselves in various lines--academic lines, vocational lines. They should, in a word, be vocationally tempted in as many different directions as possible so as to come to know themselves so well that the final settling will not be haphazard. In these ways they should be guided into their vocations, definite ones, just as early in life as they can be adequately prepared for them. For example:--if his tastes and capacities fit a certain boy for merely a mechanical pursuit that requires but little academic learning, such as carpentry, plumbing, blacksmithing, brick laying, etc., he should, relatively early in the adolescent period, be thus guided, and not forced to attempt an academic course that can have no possible meaning to him. This would send him out, a productive member of society, happy in his work because suited to him and efficient in it because fitted for doing it well. If, on the other hand, tastes and capacities fit for academic or professional careers, such as medicine, law, teaching, or engineering, the principle would remain the same but the program would differ. The academic work, meaningless to the prospective plumber, or dressmaker, would be full of meaning to the embryo lawyer or teacher, and the period of preparation much prolonged.

Such are the points of view that teachers should hold, and such the opportunities that schools should offer. And it is all being found out on the firing lines. This program is being carried out to some extent in many places in different parts of the country. The time is not very far distant when something of the kind will be demanded in all our towns.

For out in the front ranks the high school is no longer regarded chiefly as a preparatory for college. Out there it is seen to possess a much larger function--a.s.sisting the child--every child--to form its own acquaintance and to begin the planning of its future. In other words, the thought on the firing line is that the high school is an inst.i.tution established by a community for community purposes--to take its young people--all of them--and guide them thru the difficult and transitional period of adolescence, directing, inspiring, shaping, checking, developing for the largest manhood and womanhood possible and providing the community with efficient workmen in various lines.

THE EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST

While there are many other activities, significant and interesting, that might well be considered in such a treatment as this, I shall close with a very brief mention of one more--the place and work of the educational psychologist in our modern system.

One of the most significant of the newer movements in educational procedure is that termed _educational mesurements_, perhaps better called the _mesurement of intelligence_. About a generation ago it began to be observed that many children did not pa.s.s thru the grades with the regularity that was thought normal or desirable. Many were obliged to repeat grades--they did not "pa.s.s," to use the language of the schools.

The more the matter was investigated, the more serious was it seen to be. Investigation has gone on until at last carefully gathered statistics tell us that almost, if not quite, one-half of all the children in the schools fail to progress thru the grades at the expected rate. For some reason, or for some combination of reasons, they are r.e.t.a.r.ded from one to three years. And of the $400,000,000 annually spent to carry on the work of the schools it is estimated that from $40,000,000 to $50,000,000 go every year in attempts to teach these r.e.t.a.r.ded ones what they have already tried but failed to learn. Here was a double loss, a financial one of large proportions and a human one of much more serious import. Why the r.e.t.a.r.dation? And what could be done to check it?

Thoughtful consideration was given to the matter with the following revelation: it was seen that in educational procedure all matters of grading, promotion, even choice of subject matter where there was a choice, were being handled on the basis of results of tests of information--possession of knowledge facts--rather than of ability or intelligence. This might not be so bad if the knowledge sought in these tests were knowledge necessary to have in order to function adequately in the new or advanced environment. But usually no such relationship could be traced. It was but another ill.u.s.tration of no present meaning connected with the work of the school. A remedy was sought, and is being sought, in trying to subst.i.tute for the information test a test of intelligence. It is generally admitted that neither one is an adequate mesure of the other. A child may have a very high grade of intelligence and yet make a very poor showing in the ordinary schoolroom test for knowledge, not that he has been unable to learn such facts but merely that his interests and attention have not been thus focust. On the other hand, it is entirely possible for one of low-grade intelligence to receive a very creditable "mark" in a test for information since it is frequently a test of verbal memory, that "great simulator of intelligence," as Binet calls it.

One of the most interesting of the books bearing upon this new educational movement is _The Measurement of Intelligence_ by Professor Terman of Leland Stanford University. In the thoughts just exprest I have used material found in this book.

So, for a few years now, educational psychologists have been trying to work out a series of tests of intelligence, so that children may be located on the basis of their general intelligence, or ability to accomplish results. The results so far are very promising as tending to eliminate much of the loss mentioned above. And out on our firing lines the educational psychologist is being looked upon as a necessity in any system looking forward to real efficiency. It is thought that thru the saving he could effect in the two directions cited his regular employment would be a matter of economic foresight. A few years ago it was the school physician who was being fought for out in the front ranks. He is now a fixture in every up-to-date school system, and it is the psychologist for whom battle is now being waged. And it is only a question of time when his position will be secure and the line pushed forward for another attack.

I have discust with you briefly some of the interesting points of view of the education of to-day. I have tried to place before you, first, what I think to be its dominant motive--social betterment, made effective thru discovery and development of the individual's tastes and dominant interests. To show how this program is becoming established and worked out, I have touched upon various new lines of activity in sympathy with and contributing to the general movement. Thus I discust briefly the great child-study movement having for its goal knowledge of the individual child as a basis for its educational treatment. Following this I spoke of physical education--its beginning in many places and the great need for extension. Another activity named was the educational survey by means of which a community may have its own educational activity tested by impartial experts that its real efficiency may be known. Then followed brief discussion of the new movement for vocational guidance that is doing so much where being used to make the youth efficient and happy in his chosen and appropriate field of activity. I closed the discussion with a mention of a still newer movement having the same great ends in view--the employment of the educational psychologist. Firing-line activities all of these are, each vigorous and active in the great movement for educational betterment.

II

THE RELATION OF THE STATE UNIVERSITY TO THE HIGH SCHOOLS OF THE STATE

_An Address delivered before the Annual Conference of the North Dakota Superintendents and Princ.i.p.als at the University of North Dakota, May 18, 1916_

This is a topic of great interest to us all--to you in the field and to us here on the campus. The work of the two inst.i.tutions is so closely related, each depends so much upon the other, that partic.i.p.ation in the activities of one bespeaks interest in the other. But before we can discuss at all intelligently the matter of relationship it will be necessary to look at the two separately--objectively, as it were--to note the function of each and its place in the educational system of the State. What is the university? What is the high school? And what is the work of each? are questions that must first be answered.

In the first place, of course, the two are but parts of a still larger whole, neither being an independent, self-sufficing ent.i.ty. The larger whole is the educational system of the State, of which there is one other part equally important with the two named, even the elementary school. And all three parts forming the whole are creations of the State, devised, controlled, and maintained for a very definite purpose--namely, the welfare and happiness of our people.

While it is true that the three parts are correlative, each supplementing the others and the system incomplete without all three, it is also true that they are co-ordinate, no one of the three being, _per se_, in authority over any other, nor any one subordinate to another. Let me put before you, very briefly, that we may all be thinking together, the system in its outlines and then discuss each of its parts, trying to discover its function and its node of work. Then we shall pa.s.s to the matter of relationship.

The system as a whole covers and tries to provide for the entire school life of the individual. The elementary period, or department, includes, in the main, as now organized, the work of the first eight years of the child's school life and ministers to it from the age of six to fourteen years. The secondary, beginning where the elementary closes, carries on the work for four years and is followed by the higher, the colleges and the professional schools--the university.

It may clarify matters somewhat and thus give us a clearer perspective, if, before, entering upon the discussion, I account for the system as we have it to-day.

Our Colonial forefathers in the Old Bay State, back in the 17th century, in providing to meet the situation that prest upon them, unconsciously laid the foundations for an educational system that expanded with their expansion and developed with their development. But before taking the initial steps they did not wait to a.n.a.lyze the entire situation and upon logical or philosophical grounds map it out in its entirety. They had no such thought. They needed ministers of the Gospel and, since a knowledge of Latin was the one sure gateway to that profession, they established a Latin school almost as soon as they had set their own dwelling places in order. This was in 1635, and Harvard College followed the very next year to complete the preparation. It was an afterthought and came eleven years later when they legislated for an elementary school. And even tho we can see, in what they had then produced, the fundamental factors of our present somewhat complicated system, the people who were responsible for its organization were only dimly conscious of the significance of it all. They builded better than they knew. The broad outlines can not be improved. Details, of course, are ever changing as local conditions change, but from the very nature of things, the elementary, the secondary, and the higher schools have remained with us, each for a quite definite purpose and all working together for a common end. Let us look, therefore, for a moment, at each of the three and see for what it stands and what it should attempt to do.

THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

The fundamental purpose of the elementary school in a democracy is well stated in the first legislation on the continent touching elementary education, tho not mentioning the elementary school. It was in the Ma.s.sachusetts colonies in 1642. The General Court pa.s.sed an ordinance of which the following quotation gives the substance:

"This Court, taking into consideration the great neglect of many parents and masters in the training of their children in labor and learning, and other employments which may be profitable to the commonwealth, do hereupon order and decree that in every town the chosen men appointed for managing the prudential affairs of the same shall henceforth stand charged with the care of the redress of this evil ... and for this end they, or the greater number of them, shall have the power to take account, from time to time, of all parents and masters, and of their children, concerning their calling and employment of their children, especially of their ability to read and understand the principles of religion and the capital laws of this country; and they shall have power ... to put forth as apprentices the children of such as they shall find not to be able and fit to employ and to bring them up."

Here was compulsory elementary education, that children might know how to read, might "understand the principles of religion and the capital laws of the State," and also that they might be taught to work. And why?

For their own present and future welfare, and that they might be "profitable to the commonwealth," the doc.u.ment reads.

It was for all the children of all the people. The same thought is with us to-day and, a.n.a.lyzed and stated in our present-day terminology, may be put about as follows:

The elementary school is for all the people and aims to do for all three things: first, exercise a positive directive influence over the child's physical development; second, carry on, in a more systematic, scientific manner the training of the sense organs already begun by the home, thus opening up the life to the beauties of nature, art, and other forms of truth, and so providing for the development of the inner life of each in accordance with inherent leaning and capability; and, third, equip them with the tools of knowledge and give such knowledge facts and develop such points of view as will enable each to become a self-directing, constructive, and contributing member of his democratic community.

Attendance upon the elementary school should, in the interests of all as individuals and of the State as an organization, be compulsory.

THE HIGH SCHOOL

The high school should likewise be for all, tho for a somewhat different purpose. While attendance should not be compulsory, the aim should be to make it universal. For a somewhat different purpose, I said; I should perhaps have said for an added purpose, because I would have the three ends of the elementary school kept constantly in view as fundamental bases. But, a.s.suming that these things have been well done, the chief purpose of the high school should be to discover the child's latent powers, his dominant interests, and then, so far as these are wholesome, help him plan his education in their general direction. I might put it briefly thus: the chief function of the high school should be to help the child to become acquainted with himself and begin the planning of his future. Let us look at it carefully and see if it is not sound.

At the conclusion of the elementary school, at the age of 14, the boys and girls are still children; they are developing, not developed, in either body or mind. They have not yet reached, in the main, the period of rapid acceleration of physical growth, intellectual expansion, or moral development; they are just reaching it; they are now in the early stages of that wonderful period of adolescence when the boy is being transformed into the man and the girl into the woman. They are neither children nor adults, yet manifesting the characteristics of both. They do not know themselves, nor does any one else know them intimately. How can they? They are not yet formed. They are in the process of formation.

What will emerge as a result of the process, we know only in broad outlines--not at all in minute detail. So many factors are at work and there are possible so many combinations of factors that no one can tell; for it is during the period of adolescence that hereditary characteristics show themselves. Up to this time the child is a child of the race; during this period it becomes the offspring of its parents.

And the factors of heredity--father, mother, ancestry--are mingling and clashing and combining with the factors of environment, and what the outcome is going to be, n.o.body knows, in specific cases, in advance.

This is the period when the heart, the lungs, and the brain are being transformed, modified, whipt into shape for the performance of the duties of adulthood. It is a period when, in the intellectual realm, because of what is taking place in the physical, concepts are being clarified, relationships traced, ideas formed, things seen in the right perspective, and real reasoning begun. It is the period when, in the moral field, because of what is being accomplished in the physical and the intellectual, principles are being apprehended that will finally enable the individual to distinguish between right and wrong, to organize on principle rather than upon expediency his relationships with his fellows, and eventually to become a free moral agent, self-controlled and self-directed. It is the period, therefore, when ideals are being formed, habits fixt, character shaped, life plans matured, and professions chosen.

And so, with such an individual and during such a period, what other function of the high school can begin to compare, either in importance or in appropriateness, with the one stated?

It may be objected that I do not include in this function of the high school that which has been during a large portion of its history its foremost work--preparation for college. The seeming omission has not been accidental. I say the _seeming_ omission because, even tho not specifically stated, it is there, for all who should be encouraged to prepare for college. But it has not been made prominent since, in my judgment, it is of minor importance. Note again the function as suggested--to help the child know himself, find out what he wants to do and what he can do best, and then begin getting ready for doing it well.

If the specific form of future activity decided upon in a particular instance should call for the contribution of the college, then of course the plan mentioned would include appropriate preparation.

But from what point of view should the high school be regarded and for whom should it be planned? Should it be for the relatively few who go beyond, or for the great majority who do not? It is a fair question and admits of but one answer. The high schools of the State must, of course, give adequate preparation for entrance into the State university. Some of them must--not necessarily every one. It must be the preparatory school, since both are State inst.i.tutions and the only ones occupying the field. But it should do vastly more than that. Being of the people, by the people, and for the people, it should be so handled as to serve all, not merely a few, of the people. It is perfectly plain, therefore, where the emphasis should be placed.

Please do not misunderstand me; I am not looking upon this from any narrow point of view, I am not thinking merely of getting these children ready for jobs--certainly not all of them. I am not advocating the transforming of our high schools into trade schools--not at all. What I am urging primarily is a different point of view--and so enlarging and modifying our high school activities and equipment that all our children, instead of only a few, may find there a congenial atmosphere and activities suited to their tastes. If their tastes lie in the direction of carpentering, or of plumbing, or of dress-making, well and good; let them be thus developed and prepared to go out into their community somewhat equipt for remunerative toil and for community service. Why not? Are they not as worthy as those who have tastes and ambitions or a more literary character and who, therefore, look forward to the chair of the teacher, the office of the lawyer, or the practise of a physician? And is not the community under as much obligation to the one as to the other? Some fear that such a program would lessen the number preparing for college, that work of this objective character would be so attractive that all would choose it. These fears are groundless. Children are not all built that way. At any rate it would not lessen the number who ought to go to college--who are adapted to that kind of work. It would, of course, greatly increase the number attending high schools--holding those who now, because of lack of interest in the work offered, drop out of school entirely and thus swell the ranks of unskilled and unintelligent labor. And that is greatly worth while. My own feeling is, too, that out of the greatly increased attendance of the high school an even larger number than at present would find their way to the university, and that they would be better equipt in point of view and purpose than are many who enter under present conditions. This suggestion is made not to keep boys and girls out of the university, but to send them there with a purpose.

But there is oftentimes a misapprehension as to these two possible programs for the high schools. Preparation for college and preparation for life are by no means antagonistic. Preparation for college is the only kind of preparation for life for him who goes to college. And for him who, during his high school course, plans to go to college, but who at its close, finds himself unable to do so, for economic or other reasons, it should still be the best possible preparation for life that he could have made, and it will be if, as I am urging, it has all the time been based upon his own nature and seeking his normal development in the direction of his dominant interests. And preparation for life should be the very best kind of preparation for college, for him who later changes his plans and goes to college as well as for him who does not, since the college itself should be regarded as merely completing preparation for life. But a great many, the majority, no doubt, will not go to college, should not go to college, or to put it better, perhaps, need not go to college. The activities of life, psychical as well as manual, for which they are best adapted by native endowment, and in the performance of which they will, therefore, be happiest, and thru which they will, therefore, contribute most to the welfare of society, do not need for their satisfactory performance school preparation beyond the high school period. In other words, a great many boys and girls should not be urged to go to college. They should not if they do not have within them those characteristics of leadership which, developed, will make them leaders. The college graduate who, in later life, is a street car conductor, or a Pullman porter, or what-not, has largely wasted the time and money spent in college. And this is not because these occupations are not honorable, but because they do not call for that kind of preparation. And the kind of an individual who is at home as a street car conductor does not usually profit greatly by the work of the college. I will not put it as David Starr Jordan is said to have done, that "It does not pay to give a fifty-cent boy a five thousand dollar education." It is not a question of dollars and cents--rather one of fitness and of fitting. The so-called "fifty-cent boy" who may have been given the "five thousand dollar education" and because of its inappropriateness degenerated into a ten-cent man, might have been made into a thousand dollar man if he had been given the right kind of education. The boy who has the instincts of a blacksmith, who likes the shaping of iron and the shoeing of horses and the smell of the forge, will be a far happier and more useful member of society as a blacksmith than, made over by the college, as a lawyer without clients, a physician without patients, or a teacher always hunting a new position.

I have discust the high school, as you see, from the point of view of the developmental needs of the children of the community. The outcome would have been practically the same had I looked upon it from the standpoint of the industrial needs of the community. I fully believe that a high school should be to-day just what it was originally planned to be back there in the first half of the nineteenth century--a school higher than the elementary, controlled by the community, in co-operation with the educational leaders of the State, serving the needs of the community, fitting its boys and girls for service in the community and discriminating, if at all, in the favor of the group of boys and girls who are not going to college, since that group is much the larger. Since boys and girls are nearer to us than industrial needs, I have chosen to look at the problem from that angle.

I am well aware that my point of view in this entire matter is not quite in accord with the present-day program. The American high school still has preparation for college as the one dominant object. Its curriculum is planned for that end. It is rated at first, second, or third cla.s.s, depending upon the degree in which it meets college entrance requirements--not upon the degree in which it serves the community needs or develops the community's children.

I realize fully that the change suggested would involve quite a decided rearrangement of the ordinary high school program. With the time at my disposal it will be impossible to discuss the matter in detail, but it should be touched upon briefly to get the matter of relationship clearly before us.