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schools, vocational guidance and placement bureaus, and provision for vocational after-care would make more rapid progress in the school systems of the United States. We need, as Professor Johnson says, to socialize education, to bring it into contact with real life.

It is an interesting fact to note that manual training, domestic science, etc., have nearly "all been forced into the school against the protest of the academicminded schoolmaster." Bred in the tradition of Greek culture, our teachers, for the most part, have endeavored to resist the new ideas in education of the farsighted pioneers of pedagogy. But with the passing of the apprenticeship system, vocational training, guidance, placement work and after-care must be assumed by the school. Otherwise we shall become a nation of drifters and inefficients.

THE GOVERNMENT AND THE COMMON SCHOOLS

No sooner had the English colonists landed on the bleak shores of New England than they began planning for the education of their children. To the grim old Puritans we owe the establishment of the first free school system on this continent. The acts of Massachusetts of 1642 and 1647 set forth the right of the State to compel proper provision for education, to determine the kind of an education which should be given, to provide such education by general tax and at public expense, and to afford opportunities for college work. To these fundamental principles modern school legislation has added two important factors-compulsory attendance and the making of free schools mandatory upon the community. But these last measures developed slowly. As late as 1817, the school committee of Boston rejected a petition, signed by 160 inhabitants, asking that primary schools be established at public expense, defending their rejection on the ground that the inauauration of such schools would be too expensive; and, furthermore, "that most parents have some leisure, and that with us few are unequal to the task of teaching the elements of letters.", In his monograph on "The reorganization of the public school system," Dr. Bunker says: "Much of the elementary education which was provided in that day was given in vacant carpenters' shops, in spare rooms in old dwellings, in unoccupied barns, in basement rooms, and in such other places as chance permitted. The scope of the work in these schools before the Revolution was limited merely to writing and the rudiments of reading. Spelling and arithmetic as separate subjects were not required until well into the next century. The support of primary schools, as indeed of the grammar schools of the period, was various and uncertain. By lotteries, by land rentals, by private subscription, by licensing houses of entertainment, by tuition paid in money or in kind, as well as by general tax levied upon all people of a given community, these schools were maintained for brief periods during the year. As changing economic and social conditions operated to dispense the hitherto compact settlements, the school was often rotated from place to place within the community to meet the demands of those who settled at some distance from the center." The first genuine advance was made when these "moving schools" were superseded by permanent schools. When the Northwest Territory was being developed the Congress of the Confederation, in its Ordinance of 1787, enunciated the following: "Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." Subsequently Congress adopted a supplementary act relating to the disposition of public lands that had a decided influence uopn the establishment of the common school and later of the State university. This act decreed that in every State formed out of the public domain the 16th section of each township therein should be set apart for the support of the common schools, and that not more than two

NOTES AND COMMENTS

23

complete townships were "to be given perpetually for the purposes of a seminary of learning [university], to be applied to the intended object by the legislature of the State.' In 1803 the provisions of this act were extended to the States of the Mississippi Territory, and in 1848 Congress enacted that. in States thereafter formed, the 36th section, in addition to the 16th section, should be reserved for the support of the common school. The result is that 67,000,000 acres of land have been granted for common school purposes by the Federal Government. Subsequent legislation for higher education and for agricultural and mechanical education is familiar to all schoolmen. The Constitution confers no administrative powers on the Federal Government regarding education, but notwithstanding that fact Congress has been very liberal to the supreme cause of popular education in the. States. Statesmen have always realized that education was the backbone of citizenship, that true democracy is not based on an illiterate people. To obtain such education the schools must be entirely freed from sectarian control and influences. The men who guided the Ship of State in the past, as well as those at the helm today, were and are not godless men. It is not in the province of the State to teach religion; such instruction belongs to the Church, the Sunday School, and the family. To call our common schools godless is an absurdity. Were they to adopt an anti-religious attitude, one might well term them godless, but such is not the case. The vast mass of teachers are God-fearing men and women, and know their duty to themselves and to their neighbors.

THE MODERN SCHOOL

There have been many critics of the existing scheme of education in vogue in the United States, but none have formulated their ideas in such compact shape and with such critical acumen and comprehensiveness as Dr. Abraham Flexner, Assistant Secretary of the General Education Board, a John D. Rockefeller foundation. He has recently published a brochure, under the title of "A Modern School," which has created a sensation in the educational world almost equal to that of Herbert Spencer's epoch-making pamphlet on the science of education. Dr. Flexner advocates the establishment of a "modern school" in which the courses of study would not be dictated by tradition. He would remove from the curriculum formal grammar, ancient languages, theoretical studies in modern languages, and the bulk of history and of pure mathematics in the way they are now presented.

"Aside from reading, writing, spelling, and figuring," he writes, "the curriculum would be built out of the actual activities in science, industry, aesthetics, and civics." These studies would be forwarded with the use of "the accessible world" as a laboratory to train children "with an eye to the realities of life and existence." For example, the features of this accessible world, which a school in New York City would employ would be the harbor, the Metropolitan Museum, the Public Library, the National History Museum, the Zoological Gardens, the city government, the Weather Bureau, the transportation systems, lectures, concerts, plays, etc. In these studies of real life-scientific, political and artistic-there would be no distinction between the sexes in the modern school scheme.

Dr. Flexner contends that American children as a class fail to gain either knowledge or power through the traditional course of study, and spend a long time in failing. He says:

The period spent in school and college before students begin professional studies is longer in the United States than in any other Western country. An economy of two or three years is urgently necessary. The modern school must therefore not only find what students can really learn-it must feel itself required to solve its problem within a given number of years-the precise number being settled in advance on social, economic, and professional grounds. Its problem

may perhaps be formulated in these terms: how much education of a given type can a boy or girl get before reaching the age of, let us say, twenty, on the theory that at that age general opportunities automatically terminate?

The education which we are criticising is overwhelmingly formal and traditional. If objection is made to this or that study on the ground that it is useless or unsuitable, the answer comes that it "trains the mind" or has been valued for centuries. "Training the mind" in the sense in which the claim is thus made for algebra or ancient languages is an assumption none too well founded; traditional esteem is an insufficient offset to present and future uselessness. A man educated in the modern sense will forego the somewhat doubtful mental discipline received from formal studies; he will be contentedly ignorant of things for learning which no better reason than tradition can be assigned. Instead, his education will be obtained from studies that serve real purposes. Its content, spirit, and aim will be realistic and genuine, not formal or traditional. Thus, the man educated in the modern sense will be trained to know, to care about, and to understand the world he lives in, both the physical world and the social world.

Dr. Flexner would put the burden of proof upon the subject to be studied. If the subject serves a purpose, it is eligible to the curriculum, otherwise not. He further says:

Modern education will include nothing simply because tradition recommends it or becaus: its inutility has not been conclusively established. It proceeds in precisely the opposite wayit includes nothing for which an affirmative case can not now be made out. As has already been intie mated, this method of approach would probably result in greatly reducing the time allowed to mathematics, and in decidedly changing the form of what is still retained. If, for example, only so much arithmetic is taught as people actually have occasion to use, the subject will shrink to modest proportions; and if this reduced amount is taught so as to serve real purposes, the teachers of science, industry, and domestic economy will do much of it incidentally. The same policy may be employed in dealing with algebra and geometry. What is taught, when it is taught, and how it is taught will in that event depend altogether on what is needed, when it is needed, and the form in which it is needed.

Precisely the same line of reasoning would be applied to English, history, and literature. For example: There has been a heated discussion for years on the subject of formal grammar, which has been defended, first, on the ground that it furnishes a valuable mental discipline; second, on the ground that it assists the correct use of language. It is passing strange how many ill-disciplined minds there are among those who have spent years being mentally disciplined now in this subject, now in that. The modern school would not hesitate to take the risk to mental discipline involved in dropping the study of formal grammar. It would, tentatively, at least, also risk the consequences to correct speech involved in the same step. For such evidence as we possess points to the futility of formal grammar as an aid to correct speaking and writing. The study would be introduced later, only if a real need for it were felt-and only in such amounts and at such periods as this need clearly required.

As regards history and literature, a modern school would have the courage of its convictions and not go through the form of teaching children useless historical facts simply because previous generations of children have learned them and forgotten them; and also the courage not to read obsolete and uncongenial classics, because tradition has made this sort of acquaintance a kind of good form. Science would be the dominating factor of a modern school. As regards purely cultural studies, the Doctor says:

It is, of course, obvious that, if the modern school were limited to industrial or commercial activities, with just so much language, mathematics and science as the effective prosecution of those activities requires, the higher potentialities of the child would remain undeveloped. But the modern school proposes nothing of this kind. It undertakes a large and free handling of the phenomenal world, appealing in due course to the observational, the imaginative and the reasoning capacities of the child; and in precisely the same spirit and with equal emphasis, it will utilize art, literature and music. Keeping always within reach of the child's genuine response should indeed make for, not against the development of spiritual interests. Are science and such poetry as children can be brought to love more likely or less likely to stir the soul than formal grammar, algebra, or the literature selections that emanate from the people who supervise the college entrance examinations?

The education of the particular pupils who attend the modern school might prove to be the least of the services rendered by the school. More important would perhaps be its influence in setting up positive as against dogmatic educational standards. We go on teaching this or that subject in this or that way for no better reason than that its ineffectiveness or harmfulness has not

AN OLD MAN'S HOPE

25

been established. Medicines were once generally and are still not infrequently prescribed on exactly the same basis. Modern teaching, like modern medicine, should be controlled by positive indications. The schools should teach Latin and algebra, if at all, just as the intelligent physician prescribes quinine, because it serve a purpose that he knows and can state. Nor will tact and insight and enthusiasm cease to be efficient virtues, simply because curriculum and teaching method are constant objects of scientific scrutiny.

In education, as in other realms, the inquiring spirit will be the productive spirit. There is an important though not very extensive body of educational literature of philosophical and inspirational character; but there is little of scientific quality. The scientific spirit is just beginning to creep into elementary and secondary schools; and progress is slow, because the conditions are unfavorable. The modern school should be a laboratory from which would issue scientific studies of all kinds of educational problems-a laboratory, first of all, which would test and evaluate critically the fundamental propositions on which it is itself based, and the results as they are obtained.

AN OLD MAN'S HOPE

All but a little of dying is done,
Faded is earth, and one by one

The ties that attached me to life have been cut,
The gates slowly closing are now nearly shut,
Halting and weak are the beats of my heart,
Labored the breath that is soon to depart.

Willing I contemplate the end,
Glad to welcome death as friend.

Warmly loved was I when strong;
Kindness, all that doth belong

To age and weakness, now time's spell
Has changed a shelter to mere shell;
Soon, if fate be not less mild,
Tendance as to unloved child

My only claim, harsh duty's goad,-
If I tarry on life's road.

Still do I grieve for my dear ones dead,
But that grief spells hope when rightly read.

Here is the course of reason's road

My mind now travels with lighter load:

My dears would never have wished to stay

In this hard world with love away;
Better in sorrow to yield their breath
Than linger here to see love's death.-
Then like pilot bell there rung:

"Those whom the gods love die young."
Not different men's love can we class-
What were the gods but looking-glass?

Then came the light of the crowning thought
That out of night my soul has brought:

If death holds love as doth appear,

In death we may find the love lost here.

-Harry Caldwell.

TAGORE, FRIEND OF MAN

BY DR. RAYMOND V. PHELAN, 32°, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

seemed to lose their outer barrier of personality; and I was full of gladness,

VERY friend of democratic progress must have a warm feeling for that citizen of the world, full of love, for every person, and every Sir Rabindranath Tagore. Wit- tiniest thing." (See Roy, p. 72.) ness his beautifully sympathetic and spiritualized utterance on the distribution of life, a phrase that I would substitute for distribution of wealth. "I do not know," the great Hindu humanitarian once set forth, "whether the socialists' demand for the distribution of wealth is possible or not. But if it is absolutely impracticable, then God's laws must be exceedingly cruel, and man hopelessly unfortunate. If sorrow is to remain in the world let it stay, but there must be some glimpses of the possibilities by which the higher nature of man may strive and hope for the amelioration of conditions. They state a cruel theory who claim that it is a dream to think of the possibility of distributing the bare necessities of life among mankind." (See B. K. Roy; Rabindranath Tagore, p. 111.)

The same warm sympathy is again exposed in "the illumination of Tagore." "It was morning," he says, “I was watching the sunrise in Free School Street. A veil was suddenly drawn, and everything I saw became luminous. The whole scene was one of perfect music, one marvelous rhythm. The house in the street, the children playing, all seemed part of one luminous whole-inexpressibly glorious. The vision went on for seven or eight days. Everyone, even those who bored me,

All such manifestations the so-called practical may scoff at or at best smile indulgently, but it would, indeed, be well if the hard practicality of Americans, our national coarseness, and our religion, too often for Sunday only, were illuminated by something of the spirit of this great Hindu poet and philosopher. And while it is undoubted that America must become more efficient, still we must be on our guard against mere workshop efficiency. If our ideals permitted of one class that should live and govern and another that should merely work, there would be nothing objectionable in our tendency to forget that human efficiency in a democracy should be of three kinds, working efficiency, living efficiency, and civic efficiency.

Sir Rabindranath's school, started in 1902 at Bolpur, in many respects could not become our model. We should be fearful that in such a school too much of the practical would be sacrificed to Tagore's conviction that "there is a higher and nobler thing in life than practical efficiency." Nevertheless, there is a valuable warning for us in the great Hindu philosopher's boast that whereas the government schools in his country turn out mostly machines, every year Tagore's school is turning out so many men.

CHASTITY

So dear to heaven is saintly Chastity,
That when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liveries angels lackey her,
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt,
And in clear dream and solemn vision
Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear.

-John Milton.

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