Education and industrial evolution

Preface

The labor problem has always been one of the chief causes of economic thought and research. In recent decades this problem has held a predominant place in the minds of students of economic questions. Economists, when considering this complex problem, have often overlooked one very important factor, — education. John Stuart Mill stands preeminent among economists in recognizing the true value of education in the betterment of the masses and in the solution of the labor problem. The pages of this volume are devoted to a consideration of the educational problems which are vitally and indivisibly connected with the social and industrial betterment of the people of the United States. The author hopes that it may lead to a more general' recognition of the truth that modifications in education are demanded on account of industrial and social evolution, and with this they should keep pace.

Portions of several chapters have already appeared as articles contributed to The Engineering Magazine, The Popular Science Monthly, The Journal of Pedagogy, and Education. For many facts and statistics the author is indebted to official publications of the United States government.

FTC Albion, Michigan.

CHAPTER I Introduction . . 3

Increased pioduction during the nineteenth century made possible modern democracy and universal education. — Modern economic and educational thought have developed along parallel lines. — Early education laid stress upon those elements which were not important to the masses. — Modern education should benefit all classes, — should be democratic. — The relation between education and industry. — The significance of educational "fads." — The true value of classical and purely cultural studies. — The problem of the twentieth century is to make education an engine for social betterment,

PART I The Modern Educational Problem

CHAPTER H

Educational Epochs in the United States . 21

Educational progress is secondary to industrial and social advance, and lags somewhat behind the latter. — First period in the educational history of America. — Second period. — Third period. — Fourth period. — How the new science of education may become truly scientific.

ix

CHAPTER III The Relation between Educational Advance and Industrial Progress 45

Criticism of the "great man" theory of education. — Education is the combined work of many different institutions. — The paradox of modern industrial Hfe. — The school must furnish a clew tdthe intricate industrial labyrinth. — The order fol^ lowed in the enrichment of the curriculum. — The influence of the frontier, — The effect of its disappearance. — The importance of characteristic traits of immigrants. — The modern city is a mereindustrial establishment. — The city and educational programs. — Division of workers into distinct classes. — The growing rigidity of class demarkation. — The effect of consolidation of industry and ^ the "machine process." — The problem of leisure. — The economic limit of subdivision of labor. — The persistence of inherited traits. — Imperialism and education.

CHAPTER IV New Aims^ Ideals and Methods in Education . 73

The conflict between old and new educational ideals. — The demand for uniformity in spite of individual variations. — The coexistence of many types in the moral, physical and intellectual world. — The directive function of the ^|k)ol. — Value of personal experience in the ecracative process. — The lesson tafight by sociology. — The proper sphere of the text-book. — The prejudice against manual labor. — Educational ideals of to-day do not tend to soften this prejudice. — Undue emphasis is laid upon personal success. — Useful work is the true aim of human activities.

X

Chapter V

The problem is complicated by deep-seated prejudices. — Modifications in the industrial functions of the home. — The old ideal of home life is not adapted to the present. — The multiplication of women wage-earners. — Woman is at the parting of the ways. — The economic effect of the entrance of women into industry. — Its effect upon the race.

Chapter VI

Division of educational functions between the home and the school. — The increasing importance of the school. — The home is not always the best place for children. — The parental school teaches certain valuable lessons to educators. — The home will continue to be the most fundamental of American institutions. — The education of women presents a double task. — The importance of woman's position in charge of the home. — The conception of wide differences in the abilities of the two sexes is being removed. — Conclusion.

Chapter VII

The Industrial and Educational Value of Manual Training and Laboratory Work . . .127

The significance of the introduction of manual training and laboratory work into the curriculum. — The distinction between trade, manual-training and technical schools. — Functions of each. — The training of the technical and the shop man. — The manual-training school should relieve the technical school of preparatory work. — The necessity of training for American workmen.— Manual training and labor unions.

xi

Chapter VIII

The Educational and Industrial Significance of THE Arts and Crafts Movement . . . 140

The arts and crafts movement is a part of the democratic movement in education. — The relation between art and industry. — Art in the crafts emphasizes services. — Indications of a revival of skilled hand w^ork. — Arts and crafts societies. — Civic improvement.

Chapter IX

Organized Labor and Educational Progress . . 150 Industrial freedom and equality is a dominant issue of to-day. — The ethics of organized labor. — The significance of the labor movement. — The ideals of organized labor. — Labor unions and child labor. — The significance of the opposition to child-labor legislation. — Progress^ toward race solidarity. — Unions are entering upon a period of constructive work. — Past services of organized labor to the cause of education. — Educational demands of organized labor.

Chapter X

Industrial and Trade Education .... 169 The kindergarten movement. — Manual training. — Domestic science or household economics. — j The trade school. — Self-supporting or half-time schools. — Correspondence instruction. — The negro industrial school.— Apprenticeship in the United States.

CHAPTER XI Technical, Agricultural and Commercial Education 204

Technical education. — Agricultural education. — (a) The agricultural college. — (b) Agriculture in the public schools. — (c) The farmers' institute. — (d) The United States Department of Agriculture. — Schools of forestry. — Commercial education.

CHAPTER Xn

Needed to provide educational opportunities for y

young workers. — Objections to the establishment of continuation schools. — Curriculum. — Need of an object lesson.

CHAPTER XHI

The Treatment of the Truant and the Juvenile

Delinquent 239

A city problem. — A pen picture of the juvenile delinquent. — Conditions which produce the juvenile delinquent.— Children are never wholly bad. — The school should be directive. — Classes of schools for truants and juvenile delinquents. — The Chicago Parental School. — Treatment of juvenile criminals. — The cumulative evils of poverty.

CHAPTER XIV

The school as a social center and a playground. —

The utilization of the summer vacation. — The

school city. — School savings banks. — University

extension and traveling libraries. — Transportation

xiii of children to and from school. — Medical Inspection in the schools. — The school nursery. — Feeding school children. — The school as an employment'*^ agency. — Paying children to go to school. — What is the meaning of these innovations? — Industrial evolution is the only solid basis for educationari radicalism.

CHAPTER XV

The School of the Future 302

Only the broad outlines of the educational program of the future can be discerned. — The fluidity " of future educational requirements. — In the future, students will be freed from rigid routine, — Example and environment, rather than precepts, will be emphasized. — The work of the school of the future will not be repulsive to the child. — The menace of "commercialization." — Organization of the teachers. — The need of well trained teachers. — The financial problem. — "Race suicide" and educational problems.

EDUCATION AND INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION

Chapter I

During the last century the productive powers of man were repeatedly multiplied by means of the utilization of the energy of coal and water through the agency of steam and electricity. President James has illustrated this fact very vividly. "It is not too much to say that the population of the single State of Germany, with an area not exceeding that of Texas, is equal to-day in working force to the combined efforts of the population of the whole world at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The United States has to-day within its borders an effective power in the engines at work, far surpassing the total possible power of the entire population of the world a century ago. In many lines of work one man, with the aid of a small machine, may do as much work as fifty or a hundred men could have done at the beginning of the century ; while in other departments, owing to the development of the application of steam and electricity, one man may do what all the population of the world combined could not have accomplished a hundred years ago." As the direct result of this marvelous and unprecedented increase in the world's productive capabilities, the human race as a whole has been lifted from a condition of constant and strenuous struggle for the bare necessities of life to a higher plane of material comfort. With the increase of material wealth has been ushered in the new spirit of democracy, a spirit which could not come into being until science and invention had cleared the way. The worker is now considered, theoretically at least, to be an end in himself. He is no longer conceived to exist merely for the benefit and profit of others. In an age of machinery and utilized natural power, at the end of a period of extraordinary advancement in material wealth and during an era of peace ; leisure, culture, education, art and work are at last conceived to be the birthright of all, not merely of a favored few. Universal culture and education have heretofore been impossible because of the meager productivity of unaided man.

During the nineteenth century, greater changes in manufacture, commerce and agriculture took place than during the preceding ten centuries. The military basis of civilization was hastily swept away, and replaced by industrial foundations. New classes of people and new economic interests arose, and old ones disappeared or sank in relative importance. Manners, customs and ways of living were transformed. The ends of the earth were drawn into vital contact; the continents were moored side by side. In a word, social and industrial life was revolutionized. The qualities which count for national success and grandeur are no longer purely warlike or artistic; industrial capacity and skill now become absolutely essential. The warrior bows, except under unusual circumstances, to the skilled mental or manual worker ; the engineer with his slide-rule displaces the epauletted soldier. The strongest nation is the one most efhcient from an industrial and commercial point of view. Industrial progress and educational advance began to assume important proportions early in the nineteenth century. In preceding centuries both industry and education were overshadowed by other factors which were characteristic of a more primitive and disjoined state of human society. In early times industry was in a large measure left to slaves and serfs ; and education was confined to a narrow field and to a numerically restricted class of people. The sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, foreshadowed coming events. The history of modern education can be properly studied only from the point of view of industrial evolution. The economist and the educator here join hands ; but unhappily neither has been able to grasp the real situation. Democracy, a wage-earning class and universal education are the social institutions which develop side by side out of the same soil, — one strengthens and protects the others. Early democracy was aristocratic; early education was likewise intended for the elect. The progress of democracy has been to admit one class after another into the charmed circle from which the ancient lowly were sternly excluded ; during the same time education has been broadening its scope and enriching its content. These phenomena are not isolated and unrelated; they are intimately and vitally joined to each other.

Two periods of scientific economic thought may be distinguished in the United States during the nineteenth century. The early period opened approximately with the educational revival of the 2o's; and the second was formally ushered into existence by the organization, in 1885, of the American Economic Association. A new birth of economic thought seems to be approaching; economists are becoming impatient with the old formulae. Theory and practice are drawing closer together; a new school of economists might almost be said to be in the process of formation. The concepts of education and of political economy held during the first half of the last century were narrow, much narrower than those now generally accepted. The earlier political economy, as a rule, considered man to be an animal in whom all other ambitions, aims, desires and loves were subordinated to the desire for wealth getting. The theory was purely a mathematical or mechanical one. Accept the premises and the rest followed as a logical consequence; but the premises were fallacious. The political economy of that period considered the "fictitious" economic man; modern economic thought studies the real man, the man of many and mixed motives. As a necessary result of the expansion in the scope of economic science, the relation between economics and the science of education has become intimate and important. Economics is now a study of man in his endeavor to obtain the necessities, comforts and luxuries of life. Man, not wealth, is placed in the foreground. Economic science is interested in the many complex problems which are connected with the production, distribution and consumption of economic goods — goods which men desire and which require effort to obtain. Production and distribution are onlymeans to an end, which end is the third, consumption of the material and immaterial goods, produced and distributed for the benefit and enjoyment of mankind. Judged from the point of view of the economic science this is, indeed, the ultimate end and aim of all human activity. In so far as education affects, in any manner, production, distribution or consumption, or in so far as it changes or modifies the efficiency, the tastes or the ideals of men, it has an economic and a social significance. The growth of democracy and the increasing participation of the masses in political activity and in the educational heritage of the age are accompanied by the dawn of new economic and educational concepts.

In recent decades the science of education, like economic science, has been passing through important and fundamental modifications. The emphasis has shifted from the leisure class ideal of education for culture and discipline to the industrial, utilitarian and democratic ideal of education as a means of improving civic and industrial efficiency. The older methods and concepts of education originated at a time when the older view of the workingman and of his sphere of life and activity was held. Education, except perhaps the three R's, was not, in earlier periods of our history, intended for the laboring man; it was only for the "cultured" classes. Students of educational problems have only recently begun to recognize that society is no longer on a scholastic, feudal or military basis. Although education in the United States is free and compulsory, its growth has not been accompanied by that change in method and scope which should come with its extension to all classes in a democratic community. A modern democracy of the industrial type demands both an extension of educational privileges, and a departure from the traditional methods of instruction in order to fulfill the conditions necessary to prolonging its existence. The democratic view of education is just begmning to rise above the pedagogical horizon. Free compulsory education is not democratic, if it is of the kind and character which is valuable chiefly to the professional man, or to the man of leisure; nor is it democratic if it merely aims to increase the efficiency and speed of the employees in our great industrial establishments.

Scientific engineering and financial questions have occupied the center of the stage during the last three or four decades ; the endeavor to solve these problems has finally pushed into the foreground an entirely new and unexpected set of allied problems belonging to the field of social science ; and is forcing them upon a reluctant society. Social, economic and educational questions are to be of vital interest and importance in the immediate future. The political need of universal education has been particularly emphasized in the United States; it has often been thought of merely as a training for citizenship and for casting the ballot on election day. To-day, while not minimizing in the least the importance of this function, a far wider concept is beginning to rise above the educational horizon, heralding the dawn of a new pedagogical day. The economic and social functions of education are to be emphasized during this new era. If education performs its duty in this respect, good citizenship is the natural fruitage. If education is to light the path over which the car of progress is to pass, it must not only open its arms to all, but it must provide nourishment which is adapted to the educational requirements of all classes of individuals. In the past all educational innovations have laid stress upon those elements which were least important to the mass of the people. In colonial New England compulsory education was insisted upon on religious grounds in order to benefit a puritanical priesthood or ministerial element.

Great stress was laid upon higher education, — the classics, theology, literature. The motive for elementary education was purely religious. When scientific training was first introduced, special emphasis was laid upon advanced work and research rather than upon the more elementary work, — the dissemination of the results of research among the mass of the people. Technical education and manual training receive better financial support in the college and high school than in the elementary school where the value of these branches to the mass of the people is particularly great. Our university and college professors and high school teachers are better paid and more highly honored than the grade school teacher. Indeed there is a gradation of salary and honor from university professors to the primary teacher; yet, pedagogically and sociologically considered, the latter is of greatest importance. Education began v^ith the abstract and the far away, rather than as common sense and pedagogical science teaches, with the concrete and the near-at-hand. This fact can be explained on the basis of conflict of economic interests. Only within a few generations has the working class reached a position in the community from which they are able to effectively voice their demands. Higher education remains, in many cases, still merely a form of what Veblen calls conspicuous waste. The so-called "finishing school" may be classed under the head of conspicuous waste. The sons of many wealthy men do not go to college because of a thirst for knowledge, but because it will give them social prestige. College life is conceived to be a form of club life. In Belgium, Germany and France, where the social spirit is better developed, where the frontier influence has not been felt for generations, the education of the masses, — useful education as contrasted with ornamental and purely disciplinary education — has advanced further than in the United States.

The educator, like the politician, has in the past clung to the theory that well-defined class demarkation does not exist in America; but recent innovations in education disclose an unconscious modification. It must soon be consciously and unreservedly accepted that there are classes and conflicting interests on this side of the Atlantic; and we must act accordingly. Leaders in education must recognize the existence of great social and economic inequalities, and must strive to reduce to a minimum the differentiations which are undesirable and which lead toward class hatred and class exploitation. History in modern times is a record of the struggle of the workers upward toward equal political, educational and economic privileges. The great movements in history have been consciously or unconsciously dominated by the struggle for a living, for economic betterment. The school, the college, the university and the professional schools should calmly and impartially investigate and teach the facts which social and industrial evolution present. When this is not the case, education may be, and frequently is, perverted from its true mission ; it becomes an engine which builds up and strengthens class animosity and social rigidity. Education should benefit all classes, agricultural, commercial, industrial and professional, and the subdivisions within each of these classes. In the eye of the educator each should be of equal value. The school has hitherto been unduly influenced by the ideals, and has taught the ethics, the morals and principles which the commercial and propertied classes have upheld. It has entirely overlooked the fact that the ethical code of the

II industrial worker and the ethical code of the agriculturist are both of necessity different from this and from each other. In the future, if education is to perform its proper functions, a somewhat different set of ideals must find a place in our scheme of education.

Industry and education in early days went hand m hand. "Under Medievalism the guild and the university were not far apart." Early formal education was, however, directed chiefly toward letters and literature. The present-day separation of industry and education is a result of the carrying down of old conceptions into modern times. When science, industry, commerce and agriculture were first recognized as proper fields for school work, it was natural, perhaps inevitable, that machinery and methods similar to those which had been applied to the teaching of the classics and mathematics should still be used. The segregation of students, rigid class systems, the isolation of the students from the practical things of life, and the cultivation of the scholastic ideals, are, with slight modifications, still adhered to. But a reaction is at hand. The problem is to develop along with the purely cultural and disciplinary vv^ork of education, new functions which will increase the industrial, social and civic efficiency of young men and young women in the present industrial era. Both government and education need ''democratising" in the best sense of the term. Education is now concerned with much more than the teaching of reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, political history.

languages, literature, and the like; it must be an integral and vital part of the experience of every future efficient member of the community.

The recent modifications and additions to the curriculum are indicative of unrest or of dissatisfaction with educational results. Our educational machinery has proved inadequate because it was only adapted to the performance of certain limited tasks. Great modifications are necessary in order to construct a system which will perform the varied and complex educational work which should be done to-day. New and fundamental concepts regarding educational principles are now needed which square with centralized and systematized industry, subdivision of labor, large urban populations, increase in the numbers of the laboring population, the growth of organized labor, dissimilar populations, enlarged governmental activities, and a democratic form of government. When our public-school system was devised only one of these conditions, the latter one, was in existence. Just as our representative form of government has broken down in an unanticipated way, so has our educational system failed to respond fully to the last call of the nineteenth, and the first demands of the twentieth century. In the educational, as in the political world, a bitter struggle is being carried on between those standing for the old and those advocating a newer, less individualistic conception and philosophy; and the latter are daily gaining ground.

Public education has for its goal the welfare of the individual in society, and of society itself. Urban populations and world markets have taken away much of the old, illusory freedom of the individual; he can at present do little for himself. Organized society must now do much which it formerly omitted. Cooperation is the watchword of to-day. Society must concern itself with the economic and social welfare of each and every individual member. Society controls through the state one of the great institutions. — the school — which molds, develops and strengthens its future adult members. The school of to-day is distinctively a social institution. It aims at producing more than the intelligent citizen; it also seeks to produce the efficient worker, the efficient consumer, the morally and physically well-developed man or woman. Improvement of men, environment and institutions are the three prime essentials in the betterment of society; better educational methods and ideals are necessary in order that the work along the three interrelated lines may follow the much searched after path of least resistance. True education in the broadest sense of the term, involving both teaching and research, which is concerned with the improvement of men, the material and social environment, and of the legal, economic, political and religious institutions is then the vital and fundamental problem of modern times. To vitalize education, to keep it abreast with the demands of our social and industrial life is the problem which now confronts us; and much has been accomplished in recent years.

In the case of a primitive people where division of labor was not practised to any important degree, all received practically the same training. Each was his own carpenter, farmer, smith and hunter. The duties of one man were similar in character and importance to those of any other member of the tribe or horde. In the case of modern society this is entirely changed. Differentiation of occupation is the basis upon which the complex structure of modern society is erected. In recent years the feeling that education is not accomplishing its true mission has manifested itself in a variety of forms. There has been a groping in the dark for something which will allow our educational system to supply those forms of training which recent industrial change and progress have caused to be dropped from the life of the average man. This groping in the dark is the result of the emphatic demand by the masses of the people for a "practical" education, — something which will aid them in their struggle for a livelihood. Advocates of the old, purely intellectual education may scoff at this innovation, this so-called debasement of educational ideals, this catering to the "common herd"; but it is demanded by the great mass of citizens whose will is registered at the polls and in the great arena of public opinion. A new class is rising into the saddle. The public schools and the state universities are the most susceptible to public opinion, and in these we find the greatest progress. Private institutions, supported by endowments and private beneficence, are normally the strongholds of conservatism in education and in economic thought ; but, on the other hand, private initiative usually clears the path for pubhc action. Manual training, nature study, kindergartens, night schools, evening lectures, correspondence schools and pla) grounds are some of the direct results of educational agitation and unrest. These measures, while valuable and desirable, do not go to the root of the evil. We must reach the large percentage of American children who leave school at an early age ; we must place practical, industrial and general education within the reach of the boy or the girl who is working, and it must be made to be an advantage to him or her to accept it ; we must modify our conception of the aims, methods, and ideals of education.

Education is a fundamental measure by means of which the mass of the people can be helped; and that education is best which treats of those thmgs which are near to and easily attainable by the masses. Classical and cultural studies are perhaps ideals toward which we may gradually bend our efforts ; but high and lofty ideals as portrayed in art and literature do not appeal to the man who is seeking a job, or to the one who needs to know how to use his hands. Attention must first be paid to those things close to the every-day life of the poorer classes ; we must utilize the threads of experience obtained by them in their daily life. Improvement of the individual is not a universal

i6 panacea for all the ills of our social and industrial life; but until measures are taken to educate the great masses of the people for industrial life, other desirable measures are rendered practically futile. The latter resemble efforts to purify a putrid stream directed at a point far below the source of pollution. The efforts of reformers of all kinds, of labor unions, of charitable enterprises, and of philanthropic individuals are only of comparatively little value while a great mass of inefficient, unskilled, ignorant people contented with a low standard of living exist. Education of the industrial and social type can go to one of the sources of the difficulty, and enable other essential measures to obtain more efficient results.

In the past, nations and races have unceasingly passed through a cycle which led finally to degeneracy, decay and subjection to stronger, more virile, because more primitive, races. In the United States the enormous increase in wealth and the enlargement of the leisure class, especially in the case of the weaker sex, indicate that this nation is reaching a point in her national history which, if she is to follow the cycle traced by older nations, presages national degeneration. The problem of the twentieth century is to make education an engine for social betterment. Hitherto, educational progress has been conditioned by economic and social changes. Have we advanced far enough on the path of civilization to make it, in a measure, a directive agent? — is the question. Only through the study of industrial evolution can we hope to 2 17 discover the lines of development which lie just ahead, and thus be enabled to utilize education in order to hasten social progress. Any modern educational theory which does not rest back upon the basis of social and economic needs and progress is sterile and unscientific. If pedagogy or education is to be permanently ranked among the sciences, it must find data in addition to that furnished by cultural imperatives and psychological investigations.