Part 41 (1/2)
The percentage of pupils in your community who go to high school after completing the elementary school.
”What the high school does for my community.”
”My reasons for going (or not going) to high school.”
The cost per pupil in the high school in your community as compared with that in the elementary school.
Education must not only be within the reach of every citizen of a democracy, but it must be of a kind that will fit him to play well his part as a member of the community.
EDUCATION FOR PHYSICAL FITNESS
The public schools now give more attention than formerly to the physical education and welfare of the pupils (see Chapter XX, pp.
314, 315). The wide prevalence of physical defects disclosed in the effort to raise an army during the recent war will doubtless cause still greater emphasis to be placed on this aspect of education. Physical fitness is the foundation of good citizens.h.i.+p.
Provision for physical education and welfare has found its way into rural schools more slowly than in city schools, as the following table shows. But our nation can be neither efficient nor fully democratic until the physical well-being of all its citizens is provided for, and the responsibility rests largely with the public school.
HEALTH WORK IN CITY AND RURAL SCHOOLS OF THE UNITED STATES
[Footnote: Adapted from Dr. Thomas D. Wood, in New York TIMES Magazine, April 2, 1916.]
EDUCATION FOR VOCATIONAL FITNESS
It is a part of the business of education to fit every citizen to earn a living, for every efficient citizen must be self-supporting and able to contribute effectively to the productive work of the community. The interdependence of all occupations in modern industry and the necessity for every worker to be a specialist make training essential for every worker who is to attain success for himself and contribute his full share to the community's work.
The war emphasized strongly the nation's dependence upon trained workers in every field of industry.
NATIONAL AID FOR VOCATIONAL EDUCATION
One of the direct results of war needs was the pa.s.sage by Congress, in 1917, of the Smith-Hughes Act, providing for national aid for vocational instruction for persons over 14 years of age who have already entered upon, or are preparing to enter, some trade. The instruction given under the terms of this act must be of less than college grade. Every state in the Union has met the conditions imposed by this law.
The Smith-Hughes Act created a Federal Board for Vocational Education to consist of the Secretaries of the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce and Labor, the United States Commissioner of Education, and three citizens appointed by the President, one to represent labor interests, one commercial and manufacturing interests, and the third agricultural interests. The law appropriates national funds to be given to the state for the establishment of vocational schools and for the training of teachers for these schools; but each state must appropriate an amount equal to that received from the national government. Each state must also have a board for vocational education, through which the national board has its dealings with the state.
BREADTH OF PREPARATION FOR VOCATIONAL LIFE
The duty of the regular elementary and high schools is not to cultivate special vocational skills; not to turn out trained farmers, or mechanics, and so on. But the work of these schools should be such that their graduates will be better farmers, or mechanics, or lawyers, or doctors, or engineers, or teachers, than they would be without it. First of all these schools should produce workers who are physically fit for the work they enter.
They should educate the hand and the eye along with the brain.
They should cultivate habits of working together, give instruction regarding the significance of all work in community and national life, and by every means possible prepare the pupil to make a wise choice of vocation. Moreover, the schools should provide a breadth of education that will ”trans.m.u.te days of dreary work into happier lives.”
MAKING LIFE EDUCATIONAL
Mr. Herbert Quick in his story of ”The Brown Mouse,” which is a plea for better rural schools, says:
Let us cease thinking so much of agricultural education, and devote ourselves to educational agriculture. So will the nation be made strong.
The life we live, even on the farm, is full of science and history, civics and economics, arithmetic and geography, poetry and art. The modern school helps the pupil to find these things in his daily life and, having found them, to apply them to living for his profit and enjoyment. For this reason it works largely through the ”home project,” boys' and girls' clubs, gardening, and many other activities.
A recent writer has said,
What is the true end of American education? Is it life or a living? ... Education finds itself face to face with a bigger thing than life or the getting of a living. It is face to face with a big enough thing to die for in France, a big enough thing to go to school for in America ... Neither life nor the getting of a living, but LIVING TOGETHER, this must be the single PUBLIC end of a common public education hereafter. [Footnote: D. R. Sharp, ”Patrons of Democracy,” in ATLANTIC MONTHLY, November, 1919, p.
650.]