CHAP.LI borers the school seems out of touch with life and the less farsighted quit it as soon as possible for the paying job. Difficulty of Intro Useful Only of late have the captains of education recognized that if the schools are to hold the three out of five whose lot it will be to earn their living in the sweat of their brows, they must come closer to farm and workshop. The school building of the future will be constituted of workshops rather than classrooms, so that hand and eye will be trained along with the mind. The children of banker as well as of hod-carrier will learn to use tools, and to have joy in work. Yet with what incredible slowness have workshops won their ducing the way in the schools! There has been little objection to the manual arts, yet it has been nearly as easy to move the Pyramids as to make a place for them in the curriculum. A mysterious force ever resists the endeavor to make school-girls deft with foods and fabrics, schoolboys skilful with machines and materials. Arts into the Curriculum Leisure- Many Functional Nevertheless, the Leisure Class is no Longer Sure of Itself. This force is simply the prejudice against manual labor with which most of us are tainted. In every society the propertied class instinctively cherish and propagate the idea that work is contemptible. They are bound to do this lest their social position be ruined by the spread of the rival idea that work is worthy. whereas habitual idleness is contemptible. So from the conspicuous class spread constantly false ideas which make the working many think small of themselves and look up to those who are exempt for work. It was not direct control of the propertied class over education which long kept the school curriculum bookish but the contamination of even the functional people by their toxic notions. The wives of butchers and bakers and farmers feel the lack of gentility in tools and are bleakly inhospitable to the industrial features of the school. Nevertheless, book studies have been ousted from their monopoly and the tide runs strong in favor of dignifying work by making a place for it in the pupil's daily schedule. There is in the United States an element as wealthy and luxurious as the modern world has known; yet no society with such an element has been poisoned less by leisure-class standards than our own. Indeed, strange to say, the boot is on the other foot; for the majority of our wealthy have become so infected with the popular contempt for idleness that they cannot take full advantage of their riches without forfeiting their self-respect. This demo cratic gain should be clinched by making work with the hands a CHAP. LI part of the curriculum of every public school. EDUCATION FOR SOCIAL SERVICE Theory of Harmony and Public that the American society by the middle of the last century was satu- From the rated with the optimistic social philosophy emanating from Adam Necessary Smith and his school, according to which, as a normal thing, men of Private intelligently pursuing their private pecuniary interests promote Interests inadvertently the social welfare. This not only made for laissez-it Follows faire in government, but for individualism in morals. If a man Schools did the right thing by other individuals there would be nothing Train for to worry about. It was overlooked that this leaves without restraint actions which injure, not known persons, but the general public, or the good customs and institutions which are the guy ropes of the social order. Now, this philosophy, falling in only too amiably with the demands of parents and pupils, long caused education to be dominated by the idea of individual success. The school was to train and develop the powers of the youth so that he might run well in the race for the good things of life. It was assumed that if the community contains a large number who are competent to take care of themselves, the social interest will be well cared for. To be sure, some of the studies pursued were very far from developing any kind of serviceable power in the youth, but still there reigned the doctrine that the school exists to fit him to attain his personal life ends. In the eighties of the last century the multiplying of social and political evils and the appearance of dangerous discontents caused thoughtful men to begin to doubt this rosy social philosophy. Politics was full of clever trained men working ably for self, but somehow the major public interests were not well looked after. Business was in the hands of capable men, who were no more tricky than their grandfathers, yet the distribution of wealth grew rapidly worse and class struggle was coming nearer. Gradually it was perceived that there are a number of important social interests which are not parallel with individual interests. and which should be preferred when they clash with such interests. The natural-harmony theory of society therefore falls short and the personal-success ideal of life turns out to be a false beacon. Adjustment to these ideas went on rapidly through the Should Individual Success that Working for Identical moting the Social Self is not with Pro Interest CHAP. LI nineties, and it is safe to say that by 1910 no one continued to hold to the old social philosophy unless he was ignorant, elderly, or very prosperous. The Penetration of Social Ideals into the Professional Schools Following a Profes sion is a Extreme vision for Education The change in the national spirit soon registered itself in the field of education and under the slogan "educate for service" has triumphed in the universities, colleges, and high schools. The striking thing is that there is no marked difference between endowed institutions and tax-supported institutions in their response to this ideal. It is the national spirit, not the source of support, that has counted. Even better proof is the fact that up to fifteen years ago law schools and medical schools maintained by the state had no higher notion of their duty than to train young men to earn fees; while, on the other hand, in the course of the dozen years since the public gained the social point of view, the private law schools and medical schools have been nearly as keen as the universities about teaching professional ethics. Behind the mushroom growth of courses in journalism and courses in commerce lies clearly the social intention. The point is not that the graduates shall know their business better than those who learn it at desk and counter, but that they shall go out with professional standards which the other training often fails to give. For to put a calling under right professional standards is to socialize it without socialism. THE EQUALIZING OF EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES Recognizing the tragic handicap of the unlettered man in a society which more and more takes intelligence for granted, eduin the Pro- cational leaders deplore the great disparity in school opportunities. In American commonwealths, for example, the school "year" varies from four months to ten months. In one state four-fifths of the teachers have only an elementary education, while in certain other states all are at least normal school or high school graduates. In 1916 the average pay of teachers in California was nearly thrice that of Mississippi. In the same year the state at the head of the list spent nine times as much on its average child as the state at the foot of the list. Apparently Scandinavia and the Balkans, Scotland and Chile stand scarcely farther apart in respect to educational opportunities than do certain states in the American Union. Such inequalities may not be trusted to disappear of them where Levelling up of Edu Opportun ity in Or selves. Ignorance is self-perpetuating. Poor schools may be- CHAP. LI come endemic in a region. Nevertheless, the intelligent commu- Every nities must submit to be governed in part by the representatives of There is a the dark-minded districts. No wonder they resort to state compulsion or state financial aid to level up educational opportunities cational within the state and advocate Federal compulsion or Federal financial aid to level up within the nation. Nor is this tendency to nationalize education peculiarly American; it is, in fact, world wide. All progressive peoples are coming to feel that the child's schooling is too much a social concern to be left entirely to the discretion of the parents, or even of the local community. der to Rid the Nation of its Dark Spots CHAP. LII Human Not all-of a-Piece Original to Make Out CHAPTER LII INSTITUTIONS-THE RECREATION CENTER HE evolutionary origin of our race supplies the missing key TH to the conflicts between instinct and reason, between im pulse and purpose, which were puzzling so long as man was supposed to have been turned off at a stroke by the Creator. Thanks to the evidence that our inborn tendencies established themselves as aids to survival under primitive conditions, Mencius' doctrine of the goodness of original human nature as well as Calvin's doctrine of its total depravity no longer present themselves as horns of an unescapable dilemma. Far from being a simple, consistent thing, man's nature appears to be a tangled skein. Besides very old tendencies which he shares with all mammals, and later ones which he inherits with the apes from their common ancestors in the Tertiary era, man has tendencies which have struck root only in the course of the thousands of centuries since he stood erect. Very quickly is this human nature overlaid and hidden by the training that fits us for our civilized and social life. Learned responses, acquired habits, the clipping and pruning to make ourselves acceptable, so mask our original tendencies that they are soon hard to make out. For knowledge of them we must observe children in a state of freedom or adults in their self-revealing moments—that is, when they are off their guard, distraught, dreaming, diverting themselves, projected suddenly into a strange situation, or meeting a crisis, when they act quickly and from the subconscious. Some Instincts Their MORAL ASPECT OF THE INSTINCTS Since our original tendencies - let us say instincts, for shortHave Lost proceed neither from the hand of the Creator nor from a “fall in the Garden of Eden, it is idle to try to make them out as inherChange in ently good or bad. Every one of them, during the process of its acquirement, was an aid to survival and therefore was good. But, Value by Conditions of Living |