Learning to earn; a plea and a plan for vocational education

Introduction

We are as a people the Wasters of the World and are the Prodigal Son among the Nations. We save enormously every year but waste far more than we save. It seems to be in our national temperament almost to rejoice in the prodigality with which we expend our resources or in the happy carelessness with which we allow them to go unused.

We do not confine ourselves, however, to wasting material things. We waste life as no others do.

The annual toll of those who are killed 5nd wounded by vehicles in the streets of New York alone would dim the records of many a sanguinary battlefield. Many a war has come, has run its bloody course and has ended without as many victims in killed and wounded as our industries show each year. There are among us excellent people quite disturbed over bloodshed in time of war who have little to say respecting the bloodshed in times of peace. It is true that "safety first" is becoming a familiar motto, but it is also true that the warning falls too often on heedless ears and that the daily sacrifice goes on.

There are ways of wasting however, very sad ways of wasting indeed, which the above do not include. There is a way of killing the best in life while the body goes on living, and we have been sin-

INTRODUCTION

gularly skilful in these injurious processes."^ It is easy to smile at the savage who sets up his grotesque totem pole, believing that thereby he secures the protection of the friendly spirits, but there are national totems as well as tribal and individual ones, and there is a certain danger that we may worship them nearly or quite as blindly as the savage at whom we smile.

When we look with frankness and without bias at the results in terms of life of what we are pleased to call education, the question will naturally arise whether this thing of which we are so proud is not as respects most of those who are subjected to its processes something of a grotesque totem set on a pole for us unintelligently to admire. True it works admirably for the few. That is, for the few reckoned in proportion to the whole. One would not lightly minimize its value for this small proportion of our people nor say aught that would injure the justly high estimation in which the fine work of the instructor in many a useful institution is held. The value of his services to the public is such as to make us ciesire to widen its scope and extend its benign influence. The difliculty is that the fruitful work of the educator reaches at its best far too small a minority among us while it is essential, deeply essential that its influence should be vastly extended.

When it is pointed out that a half million physical lives or more are lost among us each year through preventable disease, we feel a certain sense of shock

INTRODUCTION

and the publicist comes to the aid of preventive medicine to say these things ought not so to be and to join in strong and unselfish attack on the conditions that permit such things to continue.

We are just beginning to realize that by the failure of some phases of our educational systems to meet the living needs of living boys and girls, we are permitting them to enter a sort of death in life which is having most hurtful effects on our country. Our complacency over the value of the common school to our people is being rudely disturbed, for many if not most of our young people emerge from that same common school quite without adjustment to the daily life they must thereafter lead, and almost if not altogether without the training fitting them for the workaday world in which they must live.

There is no cleavage between vocational education and academic education nor aught of hostility. The two are fellows and akin. They stand in a helpful and not in a hurtful relation one to the other. Nay, it is because academic education at its best has produced such noble fruits that the need is more manifest for the other type of training for those who in different spheres find academic education neither practicable nor essential. The life in industry, in trades, In the home, on the farm, needs and does not yet receive the corresponding training in principle and practise that is given to the lawyer, the physician and the engineer. It is not the same education that is needed for all these either in kind or in de-

INTRODUCTION

gree, but it is similar in spirit and in purpose and has for its outlook that the student shall be prepared for the environment which is normal to him.

Therefore, this book is to be commended as a thoughtful study concerning things that are greatly needed among us, and as giving an impetus to thought that can only be helpful. None of us can be satisfied to allow things to remain educationally as they are ; to permit our children to go out into a life which is a blind alley; to reach a mental *'impasse" before maturity is well begun. The path of danger lies that way, and he renders a service to his country who calls a halt and directs our thinking as to how we may avoid the peril. There can be no doubt that when we come to realize the need for greater extensiveness of training for the work of life both for men and women, we shall take the steps^ which shall make that not only possible but certain. To this happy progress this book points the way. Let us hope it will have wide-spread and careful reading.

William C. Redfield.

Washington, D. C.

Contents

I What Are the Purposes of Education? . . 1 New applications of old ideals — Education as adjustment to environment — What adjustment means — Self-preservation — Earning a living — Citizenship — Home training — Commercial activities — Education for the consumer—Education for leisure — Progressive education needed to meet modern means.

II Passing Education Around 21

Democracy's demand for equality of educational opportunity — Adjustment to environment must be universal — Individual and environment are variable — Education to extenH throughout life — Putting knowledge to work — Training people at work — Capacity of all for training — Outline of a universal scheme — Vocational education essential — Influences which have thwarted universal education — Examples to follow — Some critics answered.

Chapter I What Are The Purposes Of Education?

New applications of old ideals — Education as adjustment to environment — What adjustment means — Self-preservation — Earning a living — Citizenship — Home training — Commercial activities — Education for the- consumer — Education for lei^re — Progressive education needed to meet modern needs.

Progress in human affairs makes necessary a constant restatement of principles in terms which are appHcable to new conditions. By such restatement only can certain principles endure in the every-day world. Those principles which can not be made guides for common good under changed conditions are rightly discarded. They may be worshiped as fetishes for a time but practise based upon them can not stand permanently against the demands of the practical mind. Worn-out philosophies must go when they obstruct progress, for progress demands a constant adaptation to the things of to-day and the promise of to-morrow.

No field offers a more striking opportunity for observations of this character than the subject of this chapter — "What are the purposes of education?" Throughout the ages this question has agitated the minds of schoolmen, philosophers and statesmen. At one time it has been answered and acted upon in one way, at another in a different way. One country and one civilization have adopted one ideal, another a wholly different ideal. The Hebrews sought morality and religion through education; the Athenians aimed at ideal culture; the Spartans sought physical power; the Romans, law, oratory and military prowess; the church in the Middle Ages, preparation for a future state; while modern nations have sought a variety of ends combining many of the ancient ideals with modern needs.

One thing stands out in bold relief in the history of education, namely, that thinkers in all ages have believed in the efficacy of education to attain certain ends. It has always meant power expressed according to the prevailing ideal.

Another characteristic feature of educational philosophy, developed throughout the ages, has been its idealism. "To train men to the fullest expression of their powers," according to the ideal of the time was set up as the end of education. In all cases, however, it was the ideal education of the fortunately circumstanced which philosophers talked about and statesmen promoted. Education was for the few who could profit by the particular education offered. The many went untaught and the problem of teaching them was scarcely considered and not at all acted upon.

This philosophy of ideal education has come down to us from the past generations and still persists as the basis of our educational practise and dominates the system in which we attempt to educate "all the children of all the people." In other words an inherited scheme of education designed to give the broadest culture and information to the few who have no time limits to their educational opportunities is applied "willy-nilly" to the great mass of children, half of whom leave the school at fourt^n years of age.

The present demand is that we refashion our educational philosophy in the light of the actual conditions; that we throw off the shackles of an outworn past ; that we restate our educational principles; and address ourselves to the task of determining the end of education in this time and in this country where certain facilities for education are universally provided and attendance at school compelled. We must find modem substitutes for ancient ideals and we must make practical the ideals we set up.

One of the keenest of our present-day educators has declared the ideal of education to be: "What the best and wisest of parents wants for his own child, that must the community want for all its i.

children. Any other ideal for our schools isj unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy/"^

No one would question that the community should offer the opportunity for the fulfillment of this ideal for all its children. This country has offered such opportunity in the system of public schools which afford the chance for the highest development to those who would pursue knowledge to the uttermost. As a working plan, however, the system quite generally fails. It actually works out to the advantage of a small percentage of youth, while to the great majority — fully ninety per cent. — it is little more than a dream.

In recasting our education to meet the demands of a democracy we may well accept the ideal set forth by Dewey and keep open the way from the kindergarten to the university. But we can not be true to that ideal if we worship it and fail to meet the needs of the vast majority of youth who are unable to stay in school even partially to attain the ideal.

With the ideal in mind and the actual conditions understood, our problem is to reassert the established principles of education in terms of universal application. Not merely what we desire for all children but what we can actually accomplish by education for each, should guide us. We must make our educational principles applicable to the education of

Dewey. The School and Society, p. 19.

the great mass as we find them and not merely to the education of selected groups. We must not close our minds to the educational needs and rights of the ninety per cent, who do not profit by the system of ideal education which we have set up.

The best we can do is to keep the door of educational opportunity wide open and encourage and help all to enter, and also strive to educate all of the others who for any reason have not been able to profit by the instruction offered.

A theory of perfection will not do if we expect practical results. We are not a nation exclusively of philosophers and our children are not all phil(^sophers in embryo. Variety is almost as great as numbers. No two persons are alike physically and the fact holds true mentally. What will train one to the highest good will fall on sterile ground with another. No educational system of uniform rigid application will meet the needs of a democracy. Such a system must be as varied as the infinite differences of humanity.

An examination of society and of the system of education at once establishes the conclusion that whatever philosophy we build our educational system upon it should be based upon the idea of giving to each person the kind and content of education by which he can profit. Education ought to be suited to the capabilities of each and to avoid an abstract ideal by which the few only may profit.

In seeking the basis of such a philosophy, the idea of education as an adjustment of the individual to his environment has been evolved. The idea is at once universal in its application, and offers the abstract ideal of giving to each the opportunity for the fullest development of which he is capable.

Education as an adjustment of the individual to his environment, as here understood, means not merely adjustment to the material things around him, but also adjustment to the larger life which he must lead as an individual, a member or parent of a family, a member of society and a citizen of the state. Education should bring each individual into harmonious relations with all the activities which go to make up his ordinary life. As expressed by Herbert Spencer^ the ultimate test is :

"How to live?^ — Not how to live in the mere material sense only, but in the widest sense. The general problem which comprehends every special problem is — the right ruling of conduct in all directions under all circumstances. In what way to treat the body; in what way to treat the mind; in what way to manage our affairs; in what way to bring up a family; in what way to behave as a citizen; in what way to utilize all those sources of happiness which nature supplies — how to use all our facilities to the greatest advantage of ourselves and others — how to live completely? And this being the great thing needful for us to learn, is, by consequence, the

^ What Knowledge Is of Most Worth.

great thing which education has to teach. To prepare us for complete Hving is the function which education has to discharge; and the only rational mode of judging of any educational course is, to judge in what degree it discharges such function."

Coming to the classification of those activities which essentially make up life, Spencer arranges them as follows: ''1. Those activities which directly minister to self-preservation. 2. Those activities which, by securing the necessaries of life, indirectly minister to self-preservation. 3. Those activities which have for their end the rearing and discipline of offspring. 4. Those activities which are involved in the maintenance of proper social and political relations. 5. Those miscellaneous activities which make up the leisure part of life, devoted to the gratification of the tastes and feelings."

In a primitive state of society most of this education could be obtained from institutions other than the school. Self-preservation from the ordinary dangers, being largely instinctive, there was little that outside direction could do in this part of education except to protect the child from precipitate dangers to which he was not accustomed. In such a society self-support was learned from actual experience. The son followed his father's footsteps and learned the simple things of the trade or of the field which were needed for self-support. Production for simple needs required no elaborate schooling.

Likewise in the home the child learned the methods of the household and the care of children.

In such a primitive society, as O'Shea points out,^ "where the individual's adaptations to the world is not, relatively speaking, very complex, and consequently when needs are comparatively few each person can look after himself quite completely. The mode of settling difficulties between man and man does not call for much beyond muscular force and so the individual has no need for learning a vast body of intricate laws governing social relations. There is no stock of knowledge or experience relating to the nature and method of treating human ailments which makes the services of a specialist in medicine necessary. So the individual can get what food he needs, can make his own clothing, can build his own hut, and so on."

The social order in this country is no longer primitive. It grows infinitely complex. Each decade brings with it new problems and new duties. Corresponding responsibilities are placed upon society if the ideal of education is to be realized and the mass of individuals adjusted to their environment. Take for example, the new things required to be taught in the simplest phase of education mentioned above — that for self-preservation. Man in the aggregate is no longer a free agent. He can not live unto himself alone. The majority of men

Education as Adjustment, p. 119„ must work in connection with other men, in masses — in the factories, mills and workshops, on highways, railroads, streets and on the farm. They must work with complicated machinery — they are in fact a part of a great machine. Dangers beset them on all sides. They are subjected to the risk of industrial accidents and to the infections of occupational diseases. The very food that sustains them is no longer simple diet, but the product of many lands and of many processes of manufacture. They must know many more facts of physiology and dietetics than their forefathers knew in order to protect their lives and sustain them in vigor. Knowledge for self-preservation is extensive and the individual can not be left to learn by body-breaking experience, the things which organized instruction can give.

How to protect life in all of the varied and complicated world's work; how to prevent the calamities of occupational accidents and diseases, how to make men keener in self -protection and stronger for the struggle of life, all these throw a great and increasing burden upon the agencies of education. Nor does this consist merely in learning a few facts or being trained in the use of safety devices. It is comprehensive of the whole civic and social life and broadly educational in its content and results. Proper education for self-preservation is at once universal, scientific and practical.

To adjust the individual to his environment in the second great purpose of education, namely, to earn a living, means an entirely different regimen of studies than in the simpler life of the past.

The process of conquering the earth and its potential powers has evolved a new order and continued evolution is bringing changes whose extent we can only dimly foresee. The people of the world earn their livings to-day in hundreds of ways unknown a generation ago. The people of the next generation will add other hundreds of occupations. In these circumstances of growth and change we readily see the task which education must assume if its ends are to be universally obtained and progressively maintained. In former days when the son followed the father to his shop or into the fields and the girl was the mother's apprentice and the young learned the mystery and art of the trade or other vocation from their elders by practise and precept, the need for other educational agencies to fit for earning a living was not apparent. At least it was not a pressing necessity. The system may not have promoted progress as it should, but it gave at least a passable preparation for work.

New economic conditions have changed all of this. Instead of the simple shop where the father or the master carried on his simple trade and taught the mystery and art to his son or to his apprentice, there is the great factory, specialized processes, division of labor, machine production, all resulting in the utter demoralization of the system of education which formerly prepared the young for their life-work. The achievements of the new industrial day are marvelous, but they are marred by the failure of industrialists and the public to see that the right kind of educational advance goes hand in hand with the new industry, supplying the needs of the workers in the new forms of industry with the education which the former apprenticeship system gave in the old and without which, men become slaves to the machines on which they work. Educational agencies absorbed with the fetishes of a worn-out philosophy of education left industry and the workers severely alone, and industry took advantage of its freedom by exploiting the men and women and the boys and girls, by working them for profit with no thought of an obligation to educate them for permanent and increasing efficiency.

Instead of the nice adjustment which should always exist between education and work, so that the vision of the worker will be constantly enlarged and so that men may become broadly efficient and economically independent, we have been left by the neglect of the past in the sad state where a great majority of our people receive no adequate preparation for earning a living either through educational agencies or in industry itself.

No matter what field of human activity we consider, the same facts strike us forcibly — that the altered economic conditions have made necessary a corresponding alteration of education if the end of education as adjustment shall be realized. The farm furnishes typical examples. The farmer of a few years ago needed little education other than that learned by experience as a farm laborer or as a farm helper in the farm family regime. Small production largely for home consumption ; few farm tools and simple equipment; rich soils and plenty of new lands and few problems of transportation or the sale of products, needed little education on the part of the farmer other than that gained from experience, tutelage by parents and common observation. To-day the vocation of farming, if successful, requires big, practical, scientific, broadly-educated business men. In no calliiig is so much and such diversified knowledge required. Preparation for this vocation requires a system of education closely adjusted to the needs of the industry in each community and fitted to the capacities of men. Science especially, including chemistry, biology and physics, plays a large part. So does mathematics with particular reference to the formulas for feed, seed, fertilizer and scores of other commodities where mathematical adjustment of parts is essential. Cost accounting is a neglected but necessary guide to a farmer's work, while to get the part of the product which reasonably belongs to him requires that he have knowledge of the economics of production, transportation and marketing. Education to prepare adequately for earning a living on the farm now and in the still more intense future, must keep the balance nicely adjusted between the actual work and the guiding principles of the knowledge suited to the vocation. Education as adjustment to environment should be largely reconstructed to meet the needs of the farmer.

Likewise in the home is found the same expansion of duties. There are increased difficulties and responsibilities of parenthood; an economic necessity for conservation to meet the high cost of living; and the requirements for human efficiency of better food values; to say nothing of the development of the artistic and the beautiful in home life. Some can get a reasonably good education and training at home, but in these days most people must be trained for the home by agencies outside the home.

In the distributive process — the commercial activities — the same conclusions hold with even greater force. On the side of distribution it must be admitted we are fundamentally weak. The solution of the problem of getting the goods to the consumer with the greatest economy has hardly yet been touched. Business has been done largely by "rule of thumb." It has been imitative and seldom original. Great numbers of business men have been merely soldiers of fortune seeking their chance. By excessive profits in specialties or in special circumstances, many have succeeded. Those who have grasped the commercial problems and have built solidly upon knowledge — in other words those who have been adjusted to their jobs — are few. No better proof could be furnished — if proof were necessary — than the demoralization of American commerce in the months following the outbreak of the European war. Our commercial adventurers found themselves confused and powerless. It remained for the few who really had grasped the fundamentals of business, who had the requisite knowledge and the vision which goes with it, to bring order out of the chaos.

All through the ranks of business runs the fatal weakness of unpreparedness to meet new conditions. The managers have been trained by rule of thumb, the subordinates have been educated in so-called "business colleges" where the machine grinds out finished products in three months to a year. No rational study of business needs or of workers has ever been made and hence the education of business men and their subordinates has failed to meet the needs of the workers in the commercial life of the present or to build up a solid foundation for business.

Not to multiply examples on this head but to show the universal need of an education for more efficient adjustment in all phases of life, mention must be made of the new demands upon the more skilled trades, vocations and professions. The lawyer needs a far wider range of matters than his predecessor if he is to serve humanity or to win and hold clients; a physician has infinitely more to learn; a minister of the gospel can not rely upon dogmatic sermons if he is to lead his fellow men; broader and more practical education to adjust them to their whole job should be had by the engineer, teacher, pharmacist, architect and all the other professional vocations, and a clear grasp of social and industrial facts and conditions must be given to all men, whatever their calling, if men are to be adjusted fully to the environment of the present day and tb be capable of playing their full part in society.

But every person is a consumer without regard to his status in the vocations as a producer. Men must eat, be clothed, and housed and have the privilege of enjoying all that they are capable of in the leisure of life. They have vocations and work at them to earn enough to live. The object of educating to produce more efficiently is clearly to provide more to consume, whether of food, clothing or enjoyments. Since production and consumption are so closely related, education for each serves the purposes of the other. If men are taught to consume food which conserves the strength and saves the pocketbook, a larger sum is left for clothing, shelter and enjoyments. If clothing and shelter are wisely and expertly chosen and appropriated, the economy makes possible opportunities for a fuller life. Wise use is certainly as important as efficient production.

Education as adjustment has here its most universal need and clearest possibilities of application. Absolute or approximate universal education for production may be impossible because of the infinite variations of occupations, but education for consumption is simple, homogeneous and easily organized.

Thus, in the all important activities of life connected with making a living and living, as in that of direct self-preservation, an intenser education to bring the individual into harmony with his environment, and to give him possession of the tools of economic independence, is a present and future necessity for individual and social welfare.

When the individual has been trained efficiently in self-preservation and to earn a living, he has the potential capacity for good citizenship. The efficient man is the efficient citizen. Men need to be in a position to serve themselves before they can serve the state. The citizen to-day has upon him a vast and increasing burden. The complexities of society must be understood somewhat, because he must guide his actions in the midst of these complexities. Moreover, democracy has put the responsibility upon every citizen not only to determine his own course but also to help in determining society's course.

To see that every man in every walk of life is a true civic unit having power as an individual, and insight as a citizen, is one of the foremost duties of our educational system. Not merely the education of the few for leadership in civic affairs, but the enlargement of the civic knowledge of each unit will solve the problems of modern life. Each individual in a democracy is entitled to receive an education which puts him in full command of himself as a worker and a citizen.

Likewise, the education which Spencer advocated to enable the individual to enjoy the leisure time of life must be broadly aimed to touch all persons with its beneficent influence. Not merely that the few may learn to enjoy beauty in a picture, a statue, or a poem, but that all may find wholesome pleasures in their ordinary spheres, is the ideal of education for adjustment.

All phases of life have become more complex and education must lay new foundations and adopt new methods to accomplish its ends. The apprenticeship system has broken down in industry ; home training no longer suffices for the majority who are to be home-makers in this day; workers can no longer successfully engage in agriculture or industry if armed only with crude uneducated experience; the lawyer, doctor, teacher and preacher, in fact all artisans, workers or professional people can not fully realize the ideal unless more broadly educated than by the earlier but now obsolete methods of apprenticeship, office boy, helper or assistant. Outside agencies must engage in placing broad foundations of knowledge under the experience gained in shop or home, farm or profession.