Part 29 (2/2)

But instincts are blind. Their possessor does not foresee the way they point. They come suddenly and catch the subject unprepared to direct their force in what we call intelligent ways. Hence, the extreme necessity of there being present at the side of the child, at the time of his instinctive awakening, some mature and intelligent person who has been through the experiences the former is about to begin, and who will sympathetically point the right way and insist that it be followed.

WORK FOR SOCIAL DEMOCRACY

One can scarcely become deeply interested in the future of his own child without coming intimately into touch with the child welfare problems at large. Even country parents, isolated though they may be, will discover that serious study of the matter of bringing up a family of good children will require that they study the lives of other human young.

Moreover, they will need the use of other children as ”laboratory”

material for training their own. All this will gradually lead the way to a fuller social sympathy in such parents and to the inculcation of more wholesome social ideals in the minds of their offspring.

Finally, the rural parents who are seeking a full and adequate development of the young members of their own family will most probably see their way clear to a.s.sume a helpful leaders.h.i.+p of the young people of the neighborhood as advocated in Chapter X of this volume.

While many agencies for the betterment of rural youth have been discussed,--such as the County Y.M.C.A., the Boy Scout Movement, and the Social and Economic Clubs,--the neighborhood which has at least one of these agencies intensively at work may be considered fortunate. And it may be said that such a neighborhood is well on the way to economic improvement as well as social improvement.

THE OUTLOOK VERY PROMISING

Throughout the United States there is being manifested a general tendency to accept the theory that our human stock is relatively sound.

While there are seemingly large numbers of the criminal, delinquent, and dependent cla.s.ses, they are in reality comparatively few in proportion to the entire population. And when we accept the estimate of the experts that about ninety per cent of the cases included in the cla.s.ses just named are preventable through wise foresight and training, the outlook for a better race of human beings becomes most cheering.

”The proper study of mankind is man,” says the poet. But for many generations we have regarded this statement as mere poetry and not necessarily truth. Our policy up to the recent past has been rather this: The proper study of mankind is everything _except_ man, leaving the all-important problems of child-rearing to the decisions of wise old grand-mothers and debating societies. But a radical change has come, and that within this present generation. Men and women highly trained in the colleges and universities are now applying their scientific methods to the study of man with no less zeal and earnestness than that which has characterized the student of the non-human problems for many generations of time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE. x.x.xII.

FIG. 39.--Sowing the seed, all by herself.

FIG. 40.--Thinning the vegetables.

New York Scenes.]

Through the able conclusions of the painstaking expert the so-called inst.i.tutional life has been especially improved. The industrial (reform) schools are now practicing a system of balanced activities--of study, work, play, and the like--such as the findings of these investigators have warranted. The method of paroling the delinquent child, after he has spent a term of preparation, was proved most helpful through the careful tests of a large number of cases. Recently the parole system has been effectively applied to certain cla.s.ses of penitentiary convicts. A most productive agency for good now in use in many of the prisons and all the industrial schools is that of building up the waste places in the individual life through specific training and instruction. The first question raised in such cases is, What is the particular moral defect of the individual? second, What are the causes?

third, What will reconstruct his character and give permanent relief?

That is, the expert psychologist and the expert sociologist are being called into service with the expert alienist and physician. The purpose is to save and reconstruct the whole man. Compulsory education and trade schooling are now very common in state prisons.

In the care and protection of the insane and the feeble-minded our country can boast of but slow progress. Many of the members of these cla.s.ses are permitted to run at large and even to marry and beget their kind. Now, while our human stock is in its ma.s.s very sound and sane, there are constantly being thrown off from it these mentally defective cla.s.ses. The complete obliteration of all such cla.s.ses to-day would not result in their complete disappearance from the race. Others would be born as variants from normal parentage. But the evil of it all lies in the fact that we are still permitting many of these defectives to multiply, and that in the face of the fact that a normal child has never been reported among the offspring of two feeble-minded parents.

THE MODERN SERVICE TRAINING

Of all the inst.i.tutions contributing to the direct improvement of the race there is perhaps none surpa.s.sing in importance the modern training school for social workers. In New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, St.

Louis, and other large cities such may be found usually affiliated with some university or college. The general purpose is that of training men and women to go into the field of social service and apply the methods and conclusions worked out by the research student. Hitherto, much of the social work has been conducted by persons possessing merely religious zeal and enthusiasm. Their efforts were praiseworthy, but they lacked the training necessary for coping with modern educational and economic problems. The distinctive feature of the new methods is that it is based on scientific and business principles. That is, the social worker is trained in the same methodical way as the prospective lawyer or school teacher, and is also paid reasonably for his services.

The modern social worker not only proceeds with a well-defined plan, but he usually makes or requires a survey of his newly-opened field. The social survey--now becoming more common as a means of beginning a campaign of improvement in the cities--has revealed some most interesting, as well as distressing, situations in the submerged districts. The housing situation, sanitary conditions, wages and incomes of different cla.s.ses, sweat-shop employment, the protection of workmen in shops and factories, child-labor conditions, and so on--these are examples of the problems of the investigator, while his tabulated reports serve to guide the social worker. Now, the duties of the latter are many, but in general they lie in the direction of improvement of the conditions as found. Among the undertakings that often fall to his lot are: establis.h.i.+ng new social centers in congested districts, providing for new parks and playgrounds, locating reading and recreation rooms, organizing self-help and home-improvement clubs among the lower cla.s.ses, conducting cooking and sewing schools, and the like.

Of special interest to the rural dweller is the fact that the modern methods of first making surveys and then applying remedial agencies is now being extended into the country districts, giving many marked results already and promising greater ones for the future.

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