and activities to become itself a community. The school comes in contact with almost all the families in a district so that community action is much easier to establish. But even more important than these economies are the far-reaching results which come from the fact that the school settlement is a democratic community, really reflecting the conditions of the community.
In using the school plant for any activities, whether simply for the usual eight classes or to supply the community with all sorts of opportunities, as the Gary schools are doing and as Mr. Valentine’s school is doing, the people of the community feel that they are using for their own ends public facilities which have been paid for by their taxes. They want to see real, tangible results in the way of more prosperous and efficient families and better civic conditions, coming from the increased plant in the district school. Because the schools are public institutions in fact as well as in name, people know whether the schools are really meeting their needs and they are willing to work to see that they do. The school settlement reaps all the advantages of working for definite ends and of having the businesslike cooperation of the community as a body. In spite of the fact that the work of Mr. Valentine’s school has been hampered by lack of funds, and that some of the special things done are suited to one particular local population, the changes which have taken place in the neighborhood in the relation between the school and the parents, and in the spirit of the pupils in their school attitude, show what a public school may mean to its neighborhood when it ceases to be an isolated academic institution.
The Gary schools and Mr. Valentine’s school have effected an entire reorganization in order to meet the particular needs of the children of the community, physically, intellectually, and socially. Both schools are looking towards a larger social ideal; towards a community where the citizens will be prosperous and independent, where there will be no poverty-ridden population unable to produce good citizens. While changes in social conditions must take place before this can happen, these schools believe that such an education as they provide is one of the natural ways and perhaps the surest way of helping along the changes. Teaching people from the time they are children to think clearly and to take care of themselves is one of the best safeguards against exploitation.
A great many schools are doing some of the same sort of work, using the activities of the community as a means of enriching the curriculum, and using the school plant for a neighborhood center. The civic clubs of the Chicago public schools, which have already been described, are aiming at the same thing: the better equipment of pupils for their life in the community with the hope of improving the community itself. The Cottage School at Riverside, Illinois, where pupils all come from well-to-do American families, has found a similar club valuable for the pupils and of real use to the town. The school organized by the pupils into a civic league has made itself responsible for the conditions of the streets in certain portions of the town, and is not only cleaning up but trying to get the rest of the town interested in the problem. Mock elections and “self-governments” based upon political organization are examples of attempts of education to meet the need for training in good citizenship. Using the school plant as a social center is recognition of the need for social change and of the community’s responsibility to help effect it.
The attempt to make this enlarged use of the school plant is not so much in order to train young people so that they can assume the burden of improvement for themselves as to give the neighborhood some immediate opportunities which it lacks for recreation, intercourse and improvement. The school plant is the natural and convenient place for such undertakings. Every community has the right to expect and demand that schools supported at public expense for public ends shall serve community uses as widely as possible. As attempts in socializing education have met with such success and such enthusiasm among the children that their value as educational tools is established, so giving the people of the community a real share in activities centered in school buildings and employing school equipment, is one of the surest ways of giving them a more intelligent public spirit and a greater interest in the right education of the youth of the land.
Chapter IX
Industry And Educational Readjustment
The chief effort of all educational reforms is to bring about a readjustment of existing scholastic institutions and methods so that they shall respond to changes in general social and intellectual conditions. The school, like other human institutions, acquires inertia and tends to go on doing things that have once got started, irrespective of present demands. There are many topics and methods in existing education which date back to social conditions which are passing away. They are perpetuated because of tradition and custom. Especially is it true of our institutions of learning that their controlling ideals and ideas were fixed when industrial methods differed radically from those of the present. They grew up when the place of industry in life was much less important than it is now when practically all political and social affairs are bound up with economic questions. They were formed when there was no positive connection between science and the operations of production and distribution of goods; while at the present, manufacturing, railways, electric transportation, and all the agencies of daily life, represent just so much applied science. Economic changes have brought about a closer interdependence among men and strengthened the ideal of mutual service. These political, intellectual, and moral changes make questions connected with industrial education the most important problem of present-day public education in America.
The fact that the Greek word from which our word “school” is derived meant leisure suggests the nature of the change which has taken place. It is true at all times that education means relief from the pressure of having to make a living. The young have to be supported more or less by others while they are being instructed. They must be saved from the impact of the struggle for material existence. Opposition to child labor goes hand in hand with the effort to extend the facilities of public schools to all the wards of the nation. There must be free time for schooling, and pupils must not come to their studies physically worn out. Moreover, the use of imagination, thought and emotion in education demands minds which are free from harassing questions of self-support. There must be an atmosphere of leisure if there is to be a truly liberal or free education.
Such things are as true now as when schools were named after the idea of leisure. But there was once assumed a permanent division between a leisure class and a laboring class. Education, beyond at least the mere rudiments, was intended only for the former. Its subject-matter and its methods were designed for those who were sufficiently well off so that they did not have to work for a living. The stigma attached to working with the hands was especially strong. In aristocratic and feudal countries such work was done by slaves or serfs, and the sense of social inferiority attached to these classes naturally led to contempt for the pursuits in which they were engaged. Training for them was a servile sort of education, while liberal education was an education for a free man, and a free man was a member of the upper classes, one who did not have to engage in labor for his own support or that of others. The antagonism to industry which was generated extended itself to all activities requiring use of the hands. A “gentleman” would not use his hands or train them to skill, save for sport or war. To employ the hands was to do useful work for others, while to render personal service to others was a badge of a dependent social and political status.
Strange as it may seem, the very notions of knowledge and of mind were influenced by this aristocratic order of society. The less the body in general, and the hands and the senses in particular, were employed, the higher the grade of intellectual activity. True thought resulting in true knowledge was to be carried on wholly within the mind without the body taking any part at all. Hence studies which could be carried on with a minimum of physical action were alone the studies belonging to a liberal education. First in order came such things as philosophy, theology, mathematics, logic, etc., which were purely mental. Next in rank came literature and language, with grammar, rhetoric, etc. The pursuit of even what we call the fine arts was relegated
