What the war teaches about education, and other papers and addresses

Front matter

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WHAT THE WAR TEACHES ABOUT EDUCATION

Preface

The war has been the proving stage of two colossal experiments in education. The first began some forty years ago in Germany at the time that her autocratic government initiated its plans for the subjugation of the world. That experiment is the most remarkable demonstration of the power of teaching in the history of men. The second was the colossal undertaking in which the United States, profiting by the errors and successes of France and England, trained and equipped a huge citizen army and within a twelvemonth of the induction of its soldiers transported them to France and with them had begun the battles which brought about the destruction of the enemy. That is the most convincing proof of the possibilities of specific intensive instruction which the world has yet seen.

Both experiments magnify purposeful training. In Germany the ritualistic instruction in the so-called liberal arts, which we formerly relied upon to produce citizens of humanity and culture, went on side by side with an intense pounding in of patriotism. It did little to check the momentum which that purposive indoctrination attained. Purposive instruction in the very rudiments of civics, history, and geography had to be evoked in every army camp in the United States to make good the very manifest shortcomings of a schooling that had con-

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tented itself with formal discipline and a more or less ritualistic occupation with school studies. If the war has taught us anything, it has taught us that general education, whether of the formal discipline type or of the merely aimless-keeping-company- with-studies sort, cannot be relied upon. We who teach must sharpen our purposes, for unless our students work purposively they do not work at all.

That, in its several phases, is the theme of the papers and addresses in this book. They were not prepared to be brought together in this way. The reader will find repetitions for which we must ask his indulgence. They are due to the fact that the volume is a collection of papers and addresses rather than a consecutive treatment of a unitary theme.

Our thanks are due to the Educational Review for permission to reproduce the paper on Contemporary Ideals in Education; to the Yale Review for permission to reproduce the paper Why We Get On So Slowly; to School and Society for permission to reproduce the matter in Chapters II, III, VI, VII, VIII, and IX; to Education for permission to reprint the paper on General Discipline; and to a score of friends for most helpful collaboration.

The great war has already taught us much about

education; day by day it will teach us more for

many years to come. It is far too early to finally

assess its lessons. It is not too early to ask what

they may be.

Ernest C. Moore Los Angeles

Table Of Contents

CHAPTER PAGES

I. Contemporary Ideals in Education . . 1-25

II. The Child in Modern Society . . . 27-41