The New Education Part 26

GEOGRAPHY, FIFTH A

What highways of trade will be used for shipping oranges from San Francisco to Columbus, Ga., by way of the Panama Ca.n.a.l? 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 a.s.sistance 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 Sat.u.r.day.

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 a.s.sured. 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.

XI A People Coming to Its Own

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 partic.i.p.ate 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 24: Now State Superintendent. See an article "'Corn-Club' Smith," P. C. Macfarlane, Collier's Weekly, May 17, 1913, p. 19.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 26: Op. cit., pp. 5-6.]

[Footnote 27: U. S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Plant Industry, Girls' Demonstration Work, Washington, January, 1913, pp. 1-2.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 29: Annual report of the Columbus Public Schools, 1913, p. 18.]

CHAPTER XIII

THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION

I The Standard of Education

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 a.n.a.lysis. 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.

II Standardization Was a Failure

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-sh.e.l.ler, and then attempted to find ears of corn which would fit into the sh.e.l.ler; the new education is like the farmer who first measured the corn and then built his sh.e.l.ler to fit the corn. The old education selected the cla.s.s which was able to conform to its requirements; the new education serves all cla.s.ses.

III Education as Growth

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 sh.e.l.l 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 pa.s.sive 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.

IV Child Needs and Community Needs

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 const.i.tute 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.