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Title: On the Firing Line in Education

Author: Adoniram Judson Ladd

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  ON THE FIRING LINE
  IN EDUCATION

  BY

  A. J. LADD
  _Professor of Education, State University of North Dakota_



  BOSTON
  RICHARD G. BADGER
  THE GORHAM PRESS

  COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY RICHARD G. BADGER

  All Rights Reserved
  Made in the United States of America

  The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A.




PREFACE


Of the ten studies making up this little volume only one, the last,
aside from the Introduction, was designed primarily for publication.
Each of the others had a definite personal audience in mind while being
prepared. Still, nearly all have later found their way into print, and
some have been reprinted in other periodicals and quoted quite
extensively in still others. Many letters of appreciation, too, from
strangers who have chanced to read this address or that, have come to
the writer. These facts, together with expressions of appreciation upon
delivery and with definite suggestions from many for publication, have
finally led the writer to feel that possibly their gathering together
might be worth while. But in fairness to himself, as well as to others,
also in the interests of accuracy, he is prompted to give an additional
reason for venturing upon the hazardous undertaking of offering "cold
meats" to people not overly hungry. Not words of praise alone, no matter
how warm, would justify such a decision, for one can never take such
expressions at quite their face value--'tis so easy to make pleasant
remarks! So the matter was thrown back to where it belonged all the
time--upon the writer to decide the case on the merits of the various
discussions as dealing with present-day educational problems.

While separate addresses, upon different topics, given at different
times, and with no thought of connection, they all do bear upon one
great matter of universal interest--that of education. The title, "On
the Firing Line in Education," belongs specifically to but the first of
the topics discust. Still, it is appropriate to the entire group since
the various matters handled are fundamental and the positions taken
considerably in advance of common use. But we are clearly moving in the
general direction indicated--'twill not be long now before the main army
has caught up, and then the firing line will be still further advanced.

I have a very definite conviction that, at any financial cost, we should
provide thru the school for the physical as well as for the psychical
and the moral development of the child. This is not to take the place of
the home--merely to supplement the work of the majority of homes. Only
thus can we adequately educate all. I believe, too, that in any
scientific view of the educational process the sense organs are
paramount in importance, and therefore urge their care and training.
That the positions taken in the various addresses upon these and other
matters are sound has been pretty well demonstrated during the last two
years when the demands of war have faced us. This is made clear in the
Introduction that follows.

I am under obligations to the various periodicals in which these studies
have appeared for permission to use them again in this form. I also
appreciate the courtesy of Mr. Badger, the publisher, in allowing me to
use certain simplified forms of spelling, thus departing from the usual
over-conservative practise of publishers. Is not this, too, one of the
firing-line activities?

  A. J. LADD

  Grand Forks, North Dakota,
  March, 1919


CONTENTS

    CHAPTER                                                         PAGE

       INTRODUCTION--HAVE THE SCHOOLS BEEN DISCREDITED
        BY THE REVELATIONS OF THE WAR                                 13

    I. ON THE FIRING LINE IN EDUCATION                                37

        Social Betterment, the Dominant Motive in
        Education                                                     38

        Child Study                                                   43

        Physical Education                                            50

        The Educational Survey                                        51

        Vocational Guidance                                           53

        The Educational Psychologist                                  56

   II. THE RELATION OF THE STATE UNIVERSITY TO THE HIGH
        SCHOOLS OF THE STATE                                          63

        The Elementary School                                         65

        The High School                                               67

        The State University                                          75

  III. THE UNIVERSITY AND THE TEACHER                                 89

        The Kind of Teachers the University Should
        Employ                                                        91

        The University Teacher in his Classroom                       94

        The University's Attitude Toward the Preparation
        of Teachers for the Schools of the State                     105

   IV. THE EYE PROBLEM IN THE SCHOOLS                                115

    V. THE HOME, THE CHURCH, AND THE SCHOOL                          133

        The Home                                                     134

        The Church                                                   141

        The School                                                   150

    VI. NOBLESSE OBLIGE                                              163

   VII. IMPROVEMENTS IN OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS                           185

  VIII. LOCAL WINTER SPORTS                                          203

    IX. THE FUNCTION OF TEACHERS COLLEGE                             217

     X. CREDIT FOR QUALITY IN SECONDARY AND HIGHER
            EDUCATION                                                243

        INDEX                                                        261




INTRODUCTION

HAVE THE SCHOOLS BEEN DISCREDITED BY THE REVELATIONS OF THE WAR?

_From School and Society, April 5, 1919_


Knowing that I was about to publish a book on education in which the
Great War, now happily closed, was not taken as the point of departure,
a friend said to me one day, in substance, "Aren't you taking undue
risks just now in putting out a book on education that isn't based upon
a program of reconstruction? Haven't all our so-called educational
principles been dis-credited? Shall you get any readers if you do not
admit educational failure thus far, and proceed to discuss a change of
front, made imperative by recent revelations?" And the editor of a well
known educational journal, in asking me for an article, recently, said,
among other things, "I should be glad to have an article upon some phase
of reconstruction after the war, educational, social, philosophical, as
you may like. Here is the next great battlefield of the future, and if
the educational forces do not redeem themselves here, it is my opinion
that we shall become a greater laughing stock than we have ever been
before."

To both of these statements I desire to take exception. To be sure, the
war has taught us many lessons bearing upon education; to be sure, it
has revealed shortcomings, limitations, and weaknesses. But it seems to
me that it has also made clear that we have been working along right
lines. Our fundamental educational principles have not been
dis-credited. There is no far-reaching educational failure to admit, nor
is there any serious shortcoming from which the educational forces of
the country have to redeem themselves. "Laughing stock," does the
gentleman say? Oh no! Far from it! Let us not get panicky! Some
weaknesses brought to light? Certainly. But in the analysis, later to be
made, let us see if, for the most part, they do not but demonstrate the
soundness of our educational principles and the far-sightedness of our
educational leaders together with the short-sightedness of the present
critics, in that had suggested recommendations been followed these
weaknesses would not have existed. Let us give here but one
illustration, and that briefly. We all admit that the medical
examinations for the war found too many physical defects, and too many
men thereby incapacitated for efficient military service. But would not
the results have been very different if, during the last generation, the
suggestions and strong recommendations of educators relative to physical
education in our schools been acted upon by the public? Ah! The fault
was not with educational principles; they were sound. The educational
forces of the country knew what was needed, but a parsimonious public
would not follow intelligent leadership. We could say, all along the
line, "I told you so," if we felt so inclined. Instead of being the
"laughing stock" we could--if the matter were not too serious--throw the
laugh upon the other fellow. The purpose of our schools has never been
to produce soldiers at the drop of the hat, and so they have never been
blighted by military training. (May it never come!) Their task has been
to produce men and women of character and purpose and ideals--men and
women of initiative who could become anything called for by an
emergency. And nobly have they succeeded, as evidenced by the successful
prosecution of the war.

In view of all that the United States has done to assist in bringing the
war to its successful close, from the adoption of the selective draft
down thru the management of the training camps, the operation of the
railroads, conservation of food and fuel, to the knitting of a pair of
socks and the sale of a thrift stamp, what shall be said of the success
or failure of our schools? Every man, woman, and child in this gigantic
work, from President Wilson down to the colored bootblack who saved his
nickels to buy a stamp, or to the little girl who voluntarily went
without her sugar, has been a product of the schools. Thru the
instruction, the discipline, and the training given in those schools,
they became the men and women who could rise to the emergency and do the
things needed. And they did.

No college or university or professional school ever taught Mr. Wilson
how to be President of the United States during these troublous days;
nor Mr. McAdoo how to manage the railroads; nor Mr. Pershing all about
war; nor any local worker how to lead the Red Cross work, any more than
the lower schools have taught the boys who went into the trenches how to
use the gas mask and how to go without food; how to shoulder arms and
how to march. But the schools all along the line did help to give them
ideals, did train them in team-play; did instil into them the
principles of democracy and the love of country, so that when the need
came they arose as one man to repel the foe. And the study of
arithmetic, geography, and grammar; of chemistry, physics, and medicine;
of Latin, Greek, and history has, in each case, made its contribution to
the preparation of home workers, soldiers, scientific experts, financial
managers, and statesmen--has helped to make each an individual of
initiative.

Under the guidance of our educational leaders, following principles that
they had workt out, the schools of the country were moving quietly
along, each one of the 750,000 teachers doing faithfully the work at
hand day by day. We had never thought of war as a possibility for us,
and of course preparation for it had not been made, in the slightest
degree, a part of the work of the schools. But when war, with all its
horrors, was finally forced upon us and we needed statesmen and
scientists and military leaders to guide and direct, they were at hand
in the graduates of our colleges and universities--broadly trained men
capable of assimilating, or learning, or in other ways gaining quickly,
the specific form of efficiency needed in the particular activity
assigned. And when we needed soldiers they were at hand in the person of
our boys of the schools, both common and high, from every nook and
corner of the land--boys and men who merely needed direction and
leadership, capable of at once falling into line and quickly taking on
the professional phase of their training. Could we have asked our
schools to do more? The supreme test had come, and it was being met in a
manner gratifying to all. The boys and the girls, the men and the women,
on the farm, in the store, in the home, in the workshop, in the schools
and colleges, have responded "Here am I. Show me what you want me to do,
and I will do it even unto death." It was done, and they did it. The
schools had nobly demonstrated their efficiency.

To be sure, all this was not done without making mistakes. Not all the
products of all the schools were able to rise to the occasion and to be
depended upon in our hour of need. When the great national search-light
was trained upon the product of the schools, seeking leaders of infinite
variety and number, and likewise hosts of followers to do definite and
difficult things, many deficient ones were discovered--some deficient in
mental caliber, some weak in moral fiber, some lacking in physical
stamina. And right here is to be seen the only serious failure of our
schools. Not every boy, not every girl, had been made as efficient as
could have been desired. But, happily, in our great numbers enough were
found to do even the stupendous work at hand, and to do it well. In
spite of moral lapses, not a few, in spite of instances of mental
incompetence, far too many, and in spite of physical handicaps,
distressingly large--in spite of all this, I say, the United States
surprised the world with the quickness with which we pulled ourselves
together, and with the marvelous efficiency with which we mobilized all
our resources. Many losses of course there were--losses of men, losses
of days, losses of dollars. But when all is said and done, the losses
were slight when compared with the accomplishments. Credit to whom
credit is due! But because of these losses unthinking men immediately
began to criticise the schools. They should have been trade schools, or
industrial schools or military schools--any kind of schools that they
were not. And how clearly it was being demonstrated, we were told, that
the time formerly spent on music and drawing, art and literature,
algebra and geometry, history and Latin, had all been wasted! How much
better it would have been if, instead of these "frills," the children
had been given "practical subjects"! (Practical. Save the mark. One is
tempted here to go off on a by-path and discuss the topic, "What is
Practical?") Thus the criticism of the unthinking--of the laymen who
went off at half-cock.

And this criticism was deepened and strengthened and extended and made
more vehement, again by the unthinking, when the fine results of the
Plattsburgh experiment were revealed, in which, thru the processes of
intensive training, men were quickly whipt into shape for new, and
difficult, and responsible undertakings. And the equally good results
that came from the officers' training schools, in which college boys by
a similar program were metamorphosed, almost at over-night, into capable
army officers, had the same effect. How signally had the schools failed!
And these long years spent in school and college, "dawdling over the
frills," had been to no effect, whereas "a few weeks under _intelligent_
educational direction accomplishes marvels."

And the same has further illustration. Ministers of the Gospel selected
for chaplains, physicians and surgeons chosen for medical service,
nurses for the Red Cross, engineers for various forms of engineering,
and many others have all been given this short period of intensive
training and, to their credit and ours be it said, all responded
quickly. But the conclusion drawn by the unthinking has been, all along
the line, that the later efficiency of these men which has gained for us
the plaudits and the gratitude of the world was due to this short period
of intensive training, "under men who were intelligent enough to know
just what was needed and just how to go about to secure it"--men not
hampered by any pedagogical nonsense or grown stale over a long attempt
to discriminate between the "infinity of nothingness and the nothingness
of infinity" (as one might summarize a rather common criticism), rather
than to the former years of patient toil, and discipline, and
accomplishment which had really laid the foundation so well that all
were able thus to respond. The common school, the high school, the
college, and the professional school was dis-credited, one and all, in
favor of a short-cut method analogous to the so-called "Business
College,"--a short-cut method that could result only in disaster if
applied without the appropriate preparation.

How long it does take people to realize that real education is a slow
process! that it takes years and years and years of varied experiences
for the processes of assimilation and development to bring about the
fine fruitage of stable character!

And the Government, too (I suppose we can criticize Washington just a
little now without serious danger of being sent to jail), must have had
the same point of view in regard to the general management of education
since, during the war, it did not entrust its educational war program
into the hands of the National Bureau of Education. It did have the War
Department and the Navy Department and the Treasury Department manage
their respective phases of war activities. Why was not the Department of
Education called on to direct the educational work? Had it been, the S.
A. T. C. fiasco, as well as some other blunders, would doubtless have
been avoided. But the thought (or was it the lack of thought?) must have
been that most anybody outside of the teaching profession would know
better how to get educational results than any one from within. A
similar point of view is generally discernible in the election of boards
of education in towns and cities thruout the country--any one is
satisfactory save those who know definitely what should be going on
inside of the school house.

Perhaps all this was to be expected. I rather think so. But I confess to
surprise when I find such criticism being echoed from within--from men
who should know better, as, for example, the two quoted at the beginning
of this article. The explanation, I suppose, is that, timid in nature,
they have become panicky and lost their bearings. Perhaps they were
suffering from a mild form of brain-storm, and have temporarily slipt
back into the ranks of the unthinking.

Let us analyze the situation and see if we can discover just what the
war did reveal as to the short-*comings of our educational system. Let
us then try to locate the responsibility.

One of the most serious of the educational shortcomings thus revealed is
a high percentage of illiteracy--nearly eight per cent, I understand,
the country over. The seriousness of such a situation can scarcely be
overestimated. It was serious in time of war--the inability of a
soldier to read orders, or to follow written directions, or to make
written reports, especially when one takes into consideration the myriad
forms of war service just recently used, would limit his possibilities
of service and cripple himself and all his companions. But illiteracy is
even more serious in times of peace, for then such individuals are not
immediately under the direction of intelligent officers and thus
prevented from the disastrous results of their own ignorant actions.
Think for a moment of what it means in a democracy and for a democracy
to have one out of every ten (disregarding children) of the possible
directing forces of the government unable to read or write!

But when we add to this statement of mere illiteracy the fact that a
large percentage of these illiterates are of foreign birth or extraction
and have never learned either to speak or understand the language of
their adopted country, the situation is seen to be even more serious in
potentiality, both in peace and war. Our authorities have been too lax,
it seems, in not requiring that all children of foreign extraction,
whether foreign or American born, be educated in the English language.
In communities thickly settled by alien peoples they have too often
allowed the schools to be conducted in the vernaculars of the people--a
German school here, an Austrian school there, and an Italian school over
yonder, and so on. And it goes without saying that in schools in which
children are instructed in alien tongues 'tis not the American spirit
that is inculcated nor American ideals that take root. No one would
challenge the statement that here is a defect in the execution of our
educational program, and one that must be remedied at any cost.

Still another serious weakness as revealed by the merciless hand of war
is that of physical shortcoming. A large number of men were rejected for
service and a still larger number accepted only for limited service
because of physical disability as shown by the medical examinations. I
have not the figures at hand, but 'tis common knowledge that the
situation is considered grave. Eye defects, ear defects, defective
teeth, weak lungs, flat feet, round shoulders, spinal curvature,
unsymmetrical development, and many other defects were discovered in
great numbers. Perhaps nothing but a rigid medical examination by a
military officer would ever have opened our eyes to the real situation.
But this did. The revelations came as a surprise to nearly all except
the educational leaders of the country. They have known, all the time,
what the situation has been and, for a generation, have been trying to
combat it.

Again the question is raised as to whether these defects, or weaknesses,
of American education, in both fields mentioned, as serious as they have
been seen to be for war, are not even a more serious menace when looked
upon from the point of view of peace, and therefore, even tho the war
has been won, of such commanding importance as to demand our immediate
and continued attention.

One might go on and name other shortcomings in the working out of our
educational program that have been more clearly brought to the surface
during the critical days of our warfare. But this article is not
intended to be a catalog. The two mentioned are fundamental and
far-reaching. Illiteracy and physical disability! Weakness along these
lines strikes at the very roots of national life and of individual
well-being. And if, as a nation and as individuals, we are ever going to
enter into our inheritance, these defects must be remedied. But before
trying to discuss remedies, it will be well to locate responsibility.
Are our basic educational principles unsound, or merely our educational
practises unsatisfactory? Are the educational leaders of the country all
wrong in theory? Have their heads been so high among the clouds that
they have not seen the real boy and his homely task? Or have they seen
clearly and mapt out wisely, whereas the public, relatively unthinking
upon technical matters and always slow to act in new fields, has not
been ready to follow? Is it in theory or in practise where the real
shortcoming is to be found? The answer to the question is vital. If in
theory, then is the situation serious indeed for that would mean that
our psychology is wrong--that our whole philosophy of life and of
government has been built upon error. Truly, then, after all these
years, the "educational forces" would need to "redeem" themselves so as
not to be "a greater laughing stock than we have ever been before." But
if the weakness lies merely in our practise, not yet having been able to
attain to our ideals, then, tho serious, it would be but child's play,
comparatively speaking, to put ourselves right. We should need to take
courage, redouble our efforts, and all that, but should not need to
start all over again.

How shall we account for the illiteracy revealed among both alien and
native born? Not by faulty methods of teaching can it be explained, nor
by anything else that teachers have done or have not done. Illiterates
have not attended the schools. It is due either to insufficient
legislation or to non-enforcement of laws, doubtless more the latter
save in the case of adult aliens.

From the very beginning of our colonial life, early in the 17th century,
universal education has been a part of both our educational and our
governmental creeds. A program of compulsory education was early found
necessary, early adopted, and never abandoned. Beginning in
Massachusetts and going south and west, following considerably behind
but then keeping almost even pace with settlement and development after
statehood had come, legislation has decreed that every child born into
the land or coming into it by immigration shall enjoy the advantages of
education, at least to the extent of knowing how to read and write the
English language. Every state in the Union has compulsory attendance
laws upon its statute books. These laws are not as thorogoing as they
should be in many cases but yet, even as they are, if enforced, they
should leave almost no illiteracy among people whose childhood has been
spent in this country. For the least satisfactory laws--those of some of
the Southern states, Georgia, for example, require school attendance for
at least four months of each year between the ages of eight and
fourteen. But illiteracy, even among our own people, has been
revealed--too much of it. The laws have not been enforced. There is the
sore spot. Why have they not been enforced? But of that later.

The education of adult aliens is another matter, and a very different
one. As a problem it is almost new. That is, it has been only in
relatively recent years that it has been recognized as such. True, for
several years some of the states most largely affected, such as
Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and others have been
wrestling with it, but not very much has yet been attempted toward
introducing the compulsory features. And private agencies,
philanthropic, industrial, religious, political, and others have also
done good work. But all that had thus far been done had accomplisht
little more, at the outbreak of the war, than to open our eyes to the
existence of a problem. And in our leisurely way we were going about its
solution. But war came. The European nations were aflame. We had many
Europeans in our midst. Investigations were made. The universal draft
was adopted. The revelations were startling. It was discovered that in
1910 there were in the United States 2,953,011 white persons of foreign
birth, 10 years of age and over, unable to speak the English language.
Of these 56,805 were from ten to fifteen years of age, 330,994 between
fifteen and twenty-one, and 2,565,212 twenty-one and over. Note the
number, _more than two and a half millions, twenty-one years of age and
over--men grown, fathers of families, many of them_--unable to speak the
language of their adopted country! And of these 788,631 were
illiterate--unable to read or write in any language!

Nothing short of legal requirements on a large scale, and rigidly
enforced, absolutely free of cost to the immigrant, can ever remove the
menace. The law-making bodies of the country, both State and Federal,
must act and act quickly or this growing menace will get beyond our
control.

And the long catalog of physical defects--what shall be said of them?
Shall they be charged against the "educational forces" of the country?
Are they a disgrace from which we must "redeem" ourselves so that we
shall not become the "greater laughing stock"? It is perfectly evident
that somebody has blundered because the whole sad list of defects is,
speaking broadly, preventive and, for the most part, also remediable.
But where lies the responsibility--upon the home, the school, or
society? Of course, primarily, upon the home; the child comes from the
home, goes to the home, is a part of the home, is under the immediate
control of the home. But yet, many homes, especially homes of alien
peoples, are not sufficiently intelligent to have entrusted to them
matters of such far-reaching importance. And many others are not
financially able to have proper attention given.

But the school does know. And it, or what it represents, is abundantly
able financially to handle the matter. It knows clearly how the child
with physical defects is hampered in trying to perform its school work;
it knows, too, how seriously the entire work of the school is interfered
with when there are many such in the room; and it also knows the
handicap under which such unfortunate children face life when school
days are over. And the school knows, too, the preventive and remediable
natures of these defects. Possessing all this knowledge, why has it not
acted? To make a long story short, it has acted. To the extent of its
authority and with all the influence and power at its command it has
acted, has been acting for many years, and is still acting. For more
than a generation the educational forces of the country have been
engaged in a nation-wide educational campaign designed to make clear to
the homes of the country and to the voters of the country the growing
seriousness of the situation. On the lecture platform and from the
Gospel pulpit, in the educational press and in the popular magazine,
aye, in the daily newspaper, in private conversation and in public
discussion, in season and out of season, they have labored unceasingly
to acquaint the public with the facts and to urge preventive and
remedial action. To the unselfish work of these leaders of educational
thought and action, supplemented by the generous assistance of the
medical profession, is due the fact of our present-day intelligence in
regard to the matter. Educators have been deeply interested, thoroly
alive, and intelligently at work. How they have agitated the matter of
better ventilation and better lighting of schoolhouses! How they have
pleaded for medical inspection and appropriate medical treatment of
school children! How they have urged the employment of the school nurse!
How they have workt for the playground and the gymnasium and for sane
methods of handling the same!

But they do not form the court of last appeal. They have no authority.
They all stand in about the same anomalous position as does the man
nominally at the head of the educational activities of the country--the
United States Commissioner of Education. They may gather statistics,
make reports, and suggest action. But that is all. Tho possessing full
knowledge of the situation, tho knowing just how to proceed to usher in
a better day, they are not permitted to take any action. Responsible? Of
course they are not responsible. "Redeem" themselves? From what, pray?
"Laughing stock"? How long, oh! how long, will our great army of
teachers, three-fourths of a million strong, be unappreciated,
belittled, and maligned!

Who, then, is responsible? In the last analysis there is but one
answer--the public itself. Since the community at large as well as the
individual afflicted is, in the final outcome, a sufferer in every case
of physical disability, as also in that of illiteracy, it is its duty,
as a mesure of self-protection, at least, to assume direction. Adequate
information is at hand as to desirable methods of procedure.
Demonstrations a-plenty have been given to prove that the program
suggested is feasible, inexpensive, and beneficial. This has been
brought about thru the action of a few small groups who have thus
presented clear and convincing object lessons. But why must we say "a
few"? Why is not such work nation-wide? That is a longer story. It
follows.

The United States of America is a Republic--a representative
democracy--a government in which all the people participate. And the
government of the United States is a Federal government. It is made up
of a group of States, each one exercising supervision and control over
its local matters. And education has thus far been considered a local
matter. And in many ways that soverenty has been still further divided.
We have as a smaller unit of school organization the county, and a
smaller one yet, the township, and, in many states, a still smaller one,
the school district, containing, in many instances, only a few square
miles of territory and, of course, a very limited population. But in
some respects, within certain limits, each of these small units is a law
unto itself, having much to say as to the length of the school term, the
character of the teaching, and many other phases including such as the
one under consideration.

For these reasons it frequently happens that side by side are school
districts, or townships, or counties, with widely differing educational
programs. Here is one with attractive buildings, well ventilated and
well lighted, well equipt in every way, in the hands of competent
teachers, with physician and nurses subject to call. But just over the
imaginary line is another with nothing quite satisfactory. They are just
living up to the strict letter of the State's requirement and that is
all. Not one dollar is being spent that represents the community's
voluntary contribution to the welfare of its child life or to the future
well-being of humanity.

And why? Just because we are a Democracy. Just because our action must
be the united action of many, representing the average intelligence of
the entire governmental unit and not that of its most intelligent
members. For this reason a democracy is always slow to act along new
lines. The majority of the people have to be convinced of the wisdom of
the new mesure. And education is itself always a slow process. People
change their minds slowly. Slowness of action is one of the prices we
have to pay for our democracy. On the other hand, an absolute monarchy
can act quickly, for there may be but one individual to assimilate the
new idea or to be convinced of the wisdom of the proposed change.

These facts are easily made clear by historical references, and,
happily, in the very matter under discussion--educational procedure. In
the eighteenth century Prussia, under the two great Hohenzollern kings,
Frederick William I and his son, Frederick the Great, the two ruling
from 1713 to 1786, made most rapid strides in education. Both were
practically absolute rulers, but they were benevolent and far-sighted,
and the educational reforms that they inaugurated were basic and
far-reaching, such as state-control and support, compulsory attendance,
and the professional education of teachers. Being absolute in authority,
all they needed to do was to promulgate the decrees and order their
execution. The result was that, educationally, Prussia immediately
forged ahead of all the other European countries.

England, on the other hand, was a limited monarchy. Her king could not
have acted thus even if he so desired. Such mesures had to have the
sanction of Parliament, which would have to hark back to an enlightened
public opinion since Parliament was a representative body. And public
opinion, especially in matters of education, is slow of creation. As a
matter of fact, even tho the English people were much in advance of the
Germans in civilization and in all the refinements of life, it was not
till 1833 that England as a government took her first step looking
toward the education of her children thru appropriating money. And the
grant of that Act was only a paltry £20,000 a year to be used by two
religious societies for the erection of school houses. And it was an
entire generation later, even 1870, before they adopted the necessary
principles of compulsory attendance and local taxation. More than a
hundred years behind Prussia, England was, in the management of
educational affairs!

Another illustration of the slow action of democracy is nearer at hand
both in time and space, even in our own country. For one reason or
another, rather, for many reasons, education was at a low-water mark in
the United States the latter part of the eighteenth and the first part
of the nineteenth centuries. Thoughtful men, progressive educators,
prominent statesmen, searching for the cause and for the remedy, found
the one in the poor character of the teaching being done and the other
in the establishment of the State Normal School patterned after those of
Germany. This was first suggested in 1816 in Connecticut and pretty
faithfully kept before the people of New England thereafter. But in
spite of every effort, including a campaign of education and the
establishment of private normal schools for the purposes of
demonstration, it was not till 1838 that the Massachusetts legislature
could be induced to act. And she would not have done so then had it not
been that a very prominent man of Boston, a friend of the cause, Mr.
Edmund Dwight, showed his faith in the movement by making a generous
contribution out of his private funds. Note, too, this action from
another point of view--the amount of Democracy's initial contribution
toward this new great movement in America: Mr. Dwight's gift of $10,000
was evenly matched by that of the wealthy state of Massachusetts! And
the $20,000 was the amount planned for the establishment of _three new
normal schools_ and their maintenance _for three years!_ That amount
to-day would scarcely build a coal shed for each of three new normal
schools!

But I am not advocating monarchical methods even to hasten so good a
cause as educational improvement. I am merely accounting for our
slowness of action in needed reform. For several reasons I should be
decidedly opposed to adopting such a program of centralization even if
we could. In the first place, not every absolute monarch would act as
did Frederick the Great. There are few benevolent despots. In France
during the seventeenth centuries the Louises were just as absolute as
were the Fredericks in Germany. But they were not interested in
education for the people. Again, Germany's system of education, tho
objectively efficient, has been far from satisfactory because not based
on sane moral principles. And that fact, by the way, has finally been
Germany's undoing. Now, we can scarcely conceive of Democracy erecting
an educational structure on an unsatisfactory moral foundation.

And still again, the action of an absolute monarch, in all such matters
as education, tho perhaps temporarily rapid, is not permanent. Remove
the guiding spirit and it slips back. An illustration will assist. Again
Germany furnishes it. The little duchy of Gotha, just south of Prussia,
serves us. During the Thirty Years' War Gotha had suffered greatly. Near
its close, in 1640, Duke Ernest the Pious became its ruler. He had at
heart the good of his people. He believed that education could be a very
important factor in their upbuilding, and at once put into effect a
progressive program. His people were greatly bettered and his duchy
became a fine object lesson for other German States. But Duke Ernest
died. And his educational reforms, not springing from the people
themselves, followed him not long after.

A few years ago President Diaz, Mexico's benevolent despot of nearly
half a century, died. And his people, never having been taught how to
rule themselves nor practised in the art, went to pieces.

Democracy is slow but she is apt to be sure. Her action in educational
matters is often provokingly dilatory, but she holds what she gains and
thus continues to progress. She does not take a step forward until she
is sure of her ground, but then she stands firm. Her actions are the
results of deliberate thought based on adequate data gathered from
actual experiments and not to be shaken. Democracy would not give up
universal education nor take one step backward in the matter of
compulsory attendance to secure it. She would not part with her
elementary normal schools for anything in the world. And when once she
sees her duty clear she will add to her school workers, in every
community, the physician, the nurse, and the playground director. She
will do it and, quickly noting improvements, soon wonder why she had not
done it long before.

Since so much emphasis has been placed on the conservative nature of
Democracy and on its consequent slowness of action, a word should be
added as to its possibilities in emergency. Tho we were slow in entering
the Great War, once our duty was clear we acted with a promptness, a
unanimity, and an efficiency that surprised both friend and foe, giving
heart to the one and consternation to the other. Tho a democracy, we
invested our chief executive with a power and an authority beyond that
possest by any monarch in the world.

So let us not be discouraged. The situation is not as bad as it might
be. Our fundamental principles are sound. We are working along right
lines and accomplishing good results. Our shortcomings, our weaknesses,
our failures, if you wish to call them such, are seen only when our
record is compared with a perfect score. The schools have not yet
attained to 100 per cent efficiency; that is, the country over. Here and
there, under the favorable conditions of an intelligent citizenry
willing to follow expert leadership even to the extent of providing
adequate funds, are schools and departments of schools of approximately
100 per cent efficiency. And these, as Democracy's experiments, assure
us of other advance steps. They are object lessons. Thus Democracy
always advances.

Finally, what shall we say? What shall we do? Not to "redeem" ourselves,
oh, no! not that! but to approximate the 100 per cent efficiency all
along the line? What? Why, knowing that we are headed aright, keep
steadily forward with our eyes on the goal, refusing to be stampeded by
the unthinking critic of whom Democracy always has a plenty. Take
courage! Speed up!




I

ON THE FIRING LINE IN EDUCATION

_President's Address delivered at the Annual Banquet of the Fortnightly
Club, Grand Forks, North Dakota, June 4, 1917_


The plan of the military campaign is worked out in the quiet, away back
in the rear, sometimes at considerable distance from the place of actual
hostilities. It is worked out quietly, usually slowly, and attracts but
little attention. But when worked out and ready to be put into
operation, the plan is taken forward and activities begin. Supplies are
gotten ready, men stationed, guns loaded, the firing line is formed.
Here is where the battle is to be fought, where an attempt is to be made
to carry out the plans formed in the quiet, back there in the rear.
Activity characterizes the scene. Advances are being made, new things
being done. Every effort is put forth to realize the plans.

It is not different in education. In the quiet of the laboratories and
the study, thoughtful men consider conditions, form plans, and develop
theories of educational betterment that have to be tried out, out in the
open. A firing line has to be formed, a place where new things are to be
done different from the regular conventional activities. The humdrum,
prosaic, traditional, everyday work goes on, in the main, all around but
at these points where some advances are being tried, a new and it is
hoped better program tested. All eyes are centered, all minds eager. The
analogy is not inapt.

It is my purpose to discuss briefly some of the things that are
happening on our educational firing lines. I want to bring to your
attention first, however, the plan of the great educational campaign
upon which we have entered, the goal before us at the present time, and
then take up a few of the relatively new and typical positions being
taken by leaders of educational thought, having the realization of that
goal in view. This will present to you some of the things that are
actually being done in a few progressive communities and point out
possibilities for others.


SOCIAL BETTERMENT, THE DOMINANT MOTIVE IN EDUCATION

If I interpret aright the present-day educational thought, the dominant
motive in it all is social in character. That is to say, in all of our
plans for the education of children we keep them in mind as future
members of society, acting with one another and all working together for
the common good and for the betterment of the race. And around this
motive, or back of it, or being used by it as a means, can be grouped
all the significant educational practises of the time.

Formerly the motive was largely psychological. That is, the school
effected its organization, chose its curriculum, worked out its program,
and decided upon its methods in order that it might assist the child in
the development of its instincts and capacities, thus enabling him to
realize his own personality. The great French educator, Rousseau, living
in the eighteenth century, was responsible for this movement and it was
a notable advance beyond the haphazard and aimless practise of the time.
Pestalozzi, the great Swiss educational reformer, Froebel, the German
apostle of childhood, and Herbart, the psychological genius of the
Fatherland, were disciples of Rousseau and worked out from his point of
view, trying to put it into practise in the school-rooms.

And here was the firing line in education for many a long day. True,
none of these later men ignored social relationships as did Rousseau.
True, a strong case could be made out, if one should wish to defend the
thesis, that these distinguished followers of Rousseau, even tho
carrying out his program in the main, were likewise inaugurating the new
sociological movement. But yet it was not sufficiently clear to dominate
even in their own minds. The individual stood out beyond the mass. He
filled the stage. Nor did they clearly pass it on to others. As a matter
of fact, what the immediate followers of these men got from them was the
theory of individualism in its better form.

The best definition of education that can be given from this point of
view is _the development of an inner life_. That is what Rousseau wanted
to bring about and Pestalozzi and Froebel, and our own Colonel Parker of
more recent times, the modern apostle of childhood, had the same vision.
And so to Froebel and these others, likewise, the school was an
institution in which each child should discover his own individuality,
work out his own personality, and develop harmoniously all his powers.
True, in that environment and doing all that, the child is going to
learn the relationships of society, and thus the school might become a
means for social progress as well as the instrument of individual
development. But this was incidental. The development of the inner life
was the goal. Fashioned in the quiet, in the study, away from the haunts
of man, this became the program and the rallying cry, and out on the
firing line it was striven for. On the educational battlefields of both
Europe and America, where redoubts were being stormed and advance
positions taken, this was the one great end in view. It eventuated in
the child study movement of the present generation that is now at its
height and that has done so much to mitigate the severities of the old
time school room practises and likewise greatly aided in putting
education on a scientific basis.

The immediate followers, I say, of the great European quartet of
educators had the above worthy goal in view; but with their followers,
many of them, especially the noisy ones, the modern sophists, it
degenerated into a theory of pure individualism of the most selfish
type. The theory of getting on in the world, every man for himself,
became rampant. The school came to be looked upon as an institution in
which children could learn how to get ahead of the rest of the
community, and education as merely another weapon to use in making
society contribute more to purse and pleasure. And on the firing line,
formed by these noisy agitators, mistaken by many as educational
leaders, these were the things striven for. But this aberration was only
temporary. The real educational leaders, in trying to realize the goal
of Rousseau and Pestalozzi and to do it having to combat this movement
of wildcat educational speculation, gradually came to see a more
important truth even than the one they were seeking. As on many another
firing line, victories by the wayside have clarified our vision and
given us new perspectives, and a goal, not at first recognized, looms
large upon the horizon.

For thru all this struggle we have learned that the first business of
the public school is to teach the child to live in the world in which he
finds himself, to understand his share in it and to perform it because,
after all, unless people learn to adapt themselves to other individuals
and communities, disorder and chaos follow. In it all we have come to
see that education is the best instrument for regenerating society.

Not individual development, then, the selfish view of Rousseau, not even
the harmonious development of all the faculties, the one-sided, somewhat
restricted, or undeveloped, view of Pestalozzi and others of his
followers, surely not individual efficiency for personal gain, the
selfish view of crass materialism, but social efficiency is the
present-day motive in education. And the definition of education takes
on a different color. Not merely the development of inner life but in
conjunction with that or in addition to it, _the development in the
individual of the power of adjustment to an ever changing social
environment_. And likewise the school becomes more than a place in which
the child can discover himself. Aye, it is the instrument that democracy
has fashioned for realizing its broad and humanitarian ideal. Democracy
is ever striving for closer and more harmonious relation between its
members, a greater degree of social justice, and the school is its
efficient means.

These two tendencies, the psychological and the sociological,--only two
since the narrow individualistic was never accepted and is now being
rapidly eliminated--these two are not antagonistic nor mutually
exclusive. The difference is largely in point of view or emphasis. One
may say that they are but the two sides of the same shield but the fact
remains that there _are_ two sides. There is a difference and the change
came as suggested. And the change has modified conditions on the firing
line. Ever since Mr. Spencer asked his suggestive question, "what
knowledge is of most worth," the question of educational values has been
raised and the curriculum has come under close scrutiny. The result has
been a modification. The purely linguistic and literary, that which does
not function directly for preparation in life and society, is slowly
giving way to that which deals with the facts and forces of nature and
of social institutions.

Thus far I have tried to make plain the great educational campaign in
which we are engaged, as seen on the firing line,--to point out the goal
before us, universal education, of course, and social efficiency for
each member of the group. That suggests at once as a definition of
education, the one made famous by Herbert Spencer more than a half
century ago, "_Preparation for complete living._" That was good as a
start in the new direction, but one of the most prominent generals of
our educational forces now commanding at the front, John Dewey of
Columbia University, has suggested a modification which brings it up to
date and gives the key-note of explanation to the tactics now in vogue
out there in the front ranks. He says that instead of being the
preparation for life, education is life itself. Some without trying to
probe deeply into the thought back of the trenchant expression, have
said that this was a mere play upon words. But Dewey is not a man who
plays with words. What he meant by the statement is that the child is
best prepared for life as an adult by living the right kind of life as a
child. That is by living a life that has real meaning to him now, a
normal natural life, putting forth those activities that spring from
within, not merely sitting behind a narrow desk trying to memorize wordy
descriptions of complicated facts thought to be useful to him later on.
And when we go out and see what they are doing on the firing line we
shall see just that being done.


CHILD STUDY

But perhaps I should guard against a possible misapprehension. In
eliminating the materialistic point of view in individualism--narrow
individual development for personal gain--we have not thrown aside the
goal of development suggested by Rousseau and Pestalozzi. Advanced
educational thought has that prominently in mind--the discovery of the
child's latent powers--his possibilities--his tastes--his "bent" and the
development of the same. But while with them that was the goal, the end
in view, and a somewhat selfish one, even tho not crassly materialistic,
it has become, with us, a means to a larger end, namely, social
betterment. The child must be known and developed to enable it to be
able to contribute its largest quota to the welfare of society.

With this general direction of educational activity made plain, and
incidentally the character of the activities along the entire battle
front, let us pass to a consideration of a few specific activities that
will illustrate the general movement. Let us bear in mind that we have
in view, in the first place, the individual child whose tastes and
aptitudes we must discover and, on the basis of discovery, whose fullest
development, consistent with the rights of others, we must seek. And the
reason for this, you know, is that only as this is done and he is
prepared to do that kind of work in the world for which his tastes best
adapt him--only thus can he be made the most efficient member of society
possible. Because, as Plato said, centuries ago, "Society is but the
individual writ large"--a collection of individuals. The foundation of
all things in social life is the individual.

Now, I'll admit, at once, that that is not the program of the rank and
file of the schools. It should be, but it isn't. What the schools are
trying to do, in the main, is to teach the children a lot of facts that
tradition says would be well for them to know when they become adults,
wholly irrespective of the child's present attitude toward these
facts--whether or not they have meaning for him. What the high schools
are trying to do is to teach the relatively few who survive this grade
program, in addition to these elementary tradition-directed facts of
knowledge, a lot more of meaningless matter prescribed by the colleges
and listed under that alluring title, "entrance requirements." And as a
result of these programs the schools are sending altogether too many of
their boys and girls into society unacquainted with themselves, and
ill-fitted for any useful occupation, and therefore out of sympathy with
the serious work of the world. They are misfits in the social and
economic world and are obliged to take their places in the ranks of the
lowest-paid of unskilled labor--and work up if they can.

Now, what is being done on the firing lines to remedy this situation
and to usher in the new day? Well, first, in our normal
schools--institutions established and maintained for the simple purpose
of preparing young people for teaching children--great emphasis is being
placed upon the study of the child. It is felt that only as the teacher
understands the child mind and the laws of its development can she
direct that development aright. (That's a sensible point of view, isn't
it? And yet it is only on the firing line in educational practise that
we find it recognized. Without that factor of equipment, the teacher is
teaching subjects, not boys and girls.) In many normal schools child
study is one of the required subjects--no one may graduate or be
recommended for a teaching position who has not taken it. It should be
required in all--and will be a little later on. No person should be
allowed to occupy the position of teacher of children who has not made
such a study--and proved himself efficient in it. Boards of education
should demand it even if some normal schools do not yet require it for
graduation. It is far and away the most important part of the teacher's
professional equipment.

And then in our schools of education and teachers colleges--institutions
set apart for preparing teachers for our high schools and for
administrative positions--the study of adolescence is receiving
increasing attention. The high school boy and the high school girl are
being made the subjects of close, careful, scientific study. It is
thought that in order to deal effectively with these young people the
high school teacher should understand those marvelous changes--physical,
mental, and moral--thru which they are passing. How else can one know
how to check where checking is needed (and it usually is needed
somewhere along the line); to guide where the pathway is obscure (and
every adolescent is sure to pass thru valleys of darkness during the
high school course); and to inspire where inspiration is lacking (and
with some it is lacking a good deal of the time)--in a word, how else
than thru a knowledge of the situation can one be the "philosopher,
guide, and friend" that the adolescent always needs?

Do you know that about one-fourth of all students who enter the freshman
classes of our high schools, thruout the United States, drop out before
the close of the first semester? Do you know, too, that the elimination
continues right along until that one-fourth is made more than one-half
before graduation day arrives? Now, these boys and girls enter full of
hope and expectation, eager and ambitious for what the high school is
supposed to do for them; they do not plan to drop out before completing
the course--nor do their parents plan to have them do so. Why do they do
it? What has changed their point of view and sent them from the school,
sad and disappointed, and their parents dissatisfied with both school
and child? What is it? Do you want me to tell you? The situation has
been the subject of investigation in many places thruout the country,
and the conclusion reached by thoughtful men and women, unbiased
students of educational practises, is that, while many influences
combine to bring about that unfortunate result, the chief cause of this
high mortality is the unsympathetic attitude of high school teachers
toward the adolescent. But, you may ask, why unsympathetic? Because they
regard them as fickle, unstable, and irrational, and so have but little
patience with them. I'll admit that the adolescent seems all that at
times, but that is only on the surface. The developmental
changes--physical and moral--thru which he is passing often make the
life during this period one of turmoil. From fourteen to eighteen--the
normal high school period--is frequently called the "storm and stress
period" of life. Not having made a study of the situation, high school
teachers, in the main, do not know the fundamental scientific facts, and
therefore can not account for actions, points of view, signs of
waywardness, lack of appreciation, poor lessons, etc., etc., that
sometimes characterize the youth while a student in the high school.
They often lay to an unclean mind what springs from a perfectly normal
development of the sex function; they are sure that moral perversity is
the basis of actions that are more correctly explained by reference to a
moral nature merely in the process of development; they think that pure
laziness alone explains the lack of vigorous work, whereas the boy is
growing so fast that he has no strength for anything else; they scold
him for being awkward and say it is due to carelessness and a slip-shod
mind, because they do not know that the muscles sometimes grow faster
than the bones, making accurate co-ordination a physical impossibility;
in a word, to general, all round cussedness they charge behavior that
should be referred to high blood pressure, aching bones, the knitting
together by fiber growth of the various brain centers, and finally, to
youthful enthusiasm, all of which are perfectly normal signs of
developing youth. They do it because they do not know any better. They
are ignorant of many things that touch, and vitally, the young people
with whom they are working. But how could it be otherwise? They have
never given any reflective thought to the matter. The term "half-baked"
that they often apply to the adolescent in disgust, or in coarse jest,
is, from this point of view, more applicable to themselves.

That, I say,--the unsympathetic attitude of the high school teacher
toward the adolescent--is the chief cause of the high mortality of high
school students. That, coupled with another, that springs from the same
fundamental situation--ignorance of the needs and points of view of the
adolescent--tho not so chargeable to the individual class teacher as to
the school system as a whole, local, state, and national, pretty nearly
cover the ground. The other cause to which I refer is the course of
study and program of activities that are so ill-adapted to the tastes,
and needs, and capacities of adolescent boys and girls--studies and
activities that have no real meaning to them and that fit them for
nothing definite save college entrance where the same old process,
meaningless to many, often goes on for another period.

What is being done on the firing line to better such conditions? A good
deal; quite a good deal. Normal schools and schools of education here
and there, the former more than the latter, are now giving attention to
the matter, requiring in some cases and urging in others, prospective
teachers to become intelligent in regard to the lives they are to
direct. It is being done at our own institution as at others. This year
Dr. Todd has given instruction in child study to nearly one hundred
young men and women who are looking forward to teaching in the grades,
and I have had a group of some thirty-five or forty prospective high
school teachers and superintendents who have been making a careful study
of adolescence. I guarantee that these people will not make the crude
and unfeeling blunders that I have mentioned as too common among high
school teachers, as they run. These are firing-line activities. They
were nearly new a dozen years ago. My introduction of such courses in
our University was smiled at indulgently by some of my colleagues and
sharply criticised, especially the work in adolescence, by others. They
are not yet required of students preparing to teach, but have evidently
demonstrated their value since, tho in no sense snap courses, they have
become very popular.

As illustrative of this work let me refer to a notable recent action of
the legislature of Iowa. It has just passed an Act appropriating to the
State University $25,000 a year for the purpose of financing what is
called a "child-welfare" campaign. The plan is to make an exhaustive
scientific study of the child from both the physiological and
psychological points of view, to the end that it may be better known and
thus more satisfactorily guided in its educational career.

One other thing, in this same connection, is being done on our firing
lines all over the country--something that is hoped will set the people
at large, parents and citizens generally, to thinking sanely on
educational matters and ere long rectify our blunders as to subjects of
study and general school activities and thus result in sending the
children out efficient workmen in suitable fields. I refer to addresses
and discussions such as this and others, to articles in newspapers and
magazines, and the educational press, and to even more extensive and
thoro discussions put out in book form from time to time for the laymen.

The old darkey says, "The world do move." We sometimes think it moves
very slowly, but yet it "do move." Tho we can't see it move, we can, by
looking back, see that it has moved.


PHYSICAL EDUCATION

Another thing for which we are fighting out on the firing lines is an
adequate system of physical education. This would include periodical
medical inspection of every child from the kindergarten up; it would
also include the school nurse and the visiting nurse, and, as well, free
public clinics for ear, eye, nose, throat, and tooth difficulties. It
would also include, for mental and moral as well as physical ends,
well-equipt playground and gymnasium facilities under the direction of
men and women expert and skilful in those fields--and these would be in
operation the entire year.

The physical education of the child and adolescent should be as
carefully planned, as scientifically workt out in a positive way, as the
intellectual. Why not? Because you know--every intelligent person
knows--that the physical is the basis for the mental and the moral. You
know--we all know--that a sound, a healthy, a sane life can not be
developt in an unsound or a diseased body. Then why are these activities
merely on the firing lines and not a part of the regular program?
Because ignorance, and prejudice, and selfishness, and stubbornness, and
penuriousness are still keeping many people in the trenches. But they
will be dislodged. Just as sure as fate they will be driven from cover.
They are fighting a losing battle. They are standing in the way of an
irresistible movement that is sure to engulf them. If there were time I
should like to describe just what is being done along this line in some
places and give the reflex influence of the same on the community. It
has surely meant a new heaven and a new earth to many a child, and
glimmerings of the same to many a community. But I pass to less
spectacular matters, continuing to discuss principles rather than
illustrations.


THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY

Another matter of interest these days is the educational survey that has
been taken up by many progressive communities. The plan is, as many of
you know, to subject the school system of a city or community to a
searching investigation in order to discover, if possible, its weak
points, if it has any, to the end of their betterment. Experts are
brought in who, without fear or favor, examine the system from all
possible points of view--location and arrangement of school buildings
including heating, lighting, and general health conditions, adequacy of
playground and athletic facilities, the extent to which the schools are
satisfying community needs in the way of equipt workmen and the needs of
the young people for equipment for suitable work, the cost of the
system, attendance, methods of teaching and supervision, course of
study, etc. Outside experts are brought in for various reasons: known to
have no personal interest in the outcome, their reports are likely to be
received with greater respect; and, too, a local committee, thru
nearness and very familiarity, would fail to notice features, good as
well as bad, that might at once attract the attention of strangers. Many
cities, ranging from 2500 to half a million people, have already availed
themselves of the survey with, in the main, very gratifying results. Not
only have cities used the survey, but other units of educational
administration. There have been a few very significant and interesting
rural school surveys by counties in several states. A similar study has
been made of several State universities, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nevada, for
example. I notice that the legislature of Minnesota has just arranged
for a survey of theirs. You all recall that such a survey was made of
all the institutions of higher education of North Dakota only a short
time ago. The general feeling is that it was well worth while. Such and
even more extensive surveys have already been made in five other
states--Oregon, Iowa, Washington, Colorado, and Wyoming. The end sought
in each and all of these surveys, whether city schools, higher
institutions, or state-wide systems, is greater efficiency--larger
service to society. A survey of this character is usually followed by a
detailed printed report that is generously distributed resulting in
greater interest in the schools and a more intelligent appreciation of
their work and their needs.


VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE

Much has been said in recent years about vocational education. The
schools have been severely criticised for not teaching trades. Many have
demanded that that be the dominating motive in all our schools,
especially in the high schools. The educational press, for the last
decade, has kept the matter in the limelight. Books have been written
calling attention to the heavy dropping out of school of pupils even
before reaching high school age wholly unfitted to do anything above the
most menial and lowest-paid work. They have argued strenuously and
sometimes logically for better things. To this program the objection has
been raised that children in these early years are not yet ready to
choose their work of life; that they do not yet sufficiently know
themselves--their own tastes and capacities for such serious choice; it
has also been urged that to place before children such attractive
objective features would result in swerving many from the normal pathway
of their development and check it midway. The result has been what might
be called a compromise, and the firing-line activities have been
somewhat modified. Not vocational education but vocational guidance is
now more nearly the thought. And this has a much larger content, a
background, a more scientific basis, and one organically connected with
the larger movement of which I have already spoken--the social motive
in education supplemented by the individual involving the discovery and
development of taste and capacity.

I have already called attention to the high mortality of high school
students. The reasons I have given are the lack of sympathy that the
teacher has with the adolescent and the lack of meaning found in the
work being done. The same facts account for the heavy elimination that
takes place in the upper grades of the elementary school. But both are
being remedied to some extent. The first thru the child-study movement
and the second thru the matter of vocational guidance. And the two are
very closely connected as one can see at a glance. Thru the child-study
movement the teacher comes to know child nature so well that direct
application can be made to the individual child and an intimate
knowledge gained of his tastes, capacities, ambitions, and dominant
interests. This will enable her to give the subject matter definite
meaning in the early years, and, later on, when vocations begin to
attract, the guiding may be intelligent and the final choice a suitable
one. From the beginning of the adolescent period there should be
opportunities furnished by the school or thru its co-operative effort
for children to test themselves in various lines--academic lines,
vocational lines. They should, in a word, be vocationally tempted in as
many different directions as possible so as to come to know themselves
so well that the final settling will not be haphazard. In these ways
they should be guided into their vocations, definite ones, just as early
in life as they can be adequately prepared for them. For example:--if
his tastes and capacities fit a certain boy for merely a mechanical
pursuit that requires but little academic learning, such as carpentry,
plumbing, blacksmithing, brick laying, etc., he should, relatively early
in the adolescent period, be thus guided, and not forced to attempt an
academic course that can have no possible meaning to him. This would
send him out, a productive member of society, happy in his work because
suited to him and efficient in it because fitted for doing it well. If,
on the other hand, tastes and capacities fit for academic or
professional careers, such as medicine, law, teaching, or engineering,
the principle would remain the same but the program would differ. The
academic work, meaningless to the prospective plumber, or dressmaker,
would be full of meaning to the embryo lawyer or teacher, and the period
of preparation much prolonged.

Such are the points of view that teachers should hold, and such the
opportunities that schools should offer. And it is all being found out
on the firing lines. This program is being carried out to some extent in
many places in different parts of the country. The time is not very far
distant when something of the kind will be demanded in all our towns.
For out in the front ranks the high school is no longer regarded chiefly
as a preparatory for college. Out there it is seen to possess a much
larger function--assisting the child--every child--to form its own
acquaintance and to begin the planning of its future. In other words,
the thought on the firing line is that the high school is an institution
established by a community for community purposes--to take its young
people--all of them--and guide them thru the difficult and transitional
period of adolescence, directing, inspiring, shaping, checking,
developing for the largest manhood and womanhood possible and providing
the community with efficient workmen in various lines.


THE EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST

While there are many other activities, significant and interesting, that
might well be considered in such a treatment as this, I shall close with
a very brief mention of one more--the place and work of the educational
psychologist in our modern system.

One of the most significant of the newer movements in educational
procedure is that termed _educational mesurements_, perhaps better
called the _mesurement of intelligence_. About a generation ago it began
to be observed that many children did not pass thru the grades with the
regularity that was thought normal or desirable. Many were obliged to
repeat grades--they did not "pass," to use the language of the schools.
The more the matter was investigated, the more serious was it seen to
be. Investigation has gone on until at last carefully gathered
statistics tell us that almost, if not quite, one-half of all the
children in the schools fail to progress thru the grades at the expected
rate. For some reason, or for some combination of reasons, they are
retarded from one to three years. And of the $400,000,000 annually spent
to carry on the work of the schools it is estimated that from
$40,000,000 to $50,000,000 go every year in attempts to teach these
retarded ones what they have already tried but failed to learn. Here was
a double loss, a financial one of large proportions and a human one of
much more serious import. Why the retardation? And what could be done to
check it?

Thoughtful consideration was given to the matter with the following
revelation: it was seen that in educational procedure all matters of
grading, promotion, even choice of subject matter where there was a
choice, were being handled on the basis of results of tests of
information--possession of knowledge facts--rather than of ability or
intelligence. This might not be so bad if the knowledge sought in these
tests were knowledge necessary to have in order to function adequately
in the new or advanced environment. But usually no such relationship
could be traced. It was but another illustration of no present meaning
connected with the work of the school. A remedy was sought, and is being
sought, in trying to substitute for the information test a test of
intelligence. It is generally admitted that neither one is an adequate
mesure of the other. A child may have a very high grade of intelligence
and yet make a very poor showing in the ordinary schoolroom test for
knowledge, not that he has been unable to learn such facts but merely
that his interests and attention have not been thus focust. On the other
hand, it is entirely possible for one of low-grade intelligence to
receive a very creditable "mark" in a test for information since it is
frequently a test of verbal memory, that "great simulator of
intelligence," as Binet calls it.

One of the most interesting of the books bearing upon this new
educational movement is _The Measurement of Intelligence_ by Professor
Terman of Leland Stanford University. In the thoughts just exprest I
have used material found in this book.

So, for a few years now, educational psychologists have been trying to
work out a series of tests of intelligence, so that children may be
located on the basis of their general intelligence, or ability to
accomplish results. The results so far are very promising as tending to
eliminate much of the loss mentioned above. And out on our firing lines
the educational psychologist is being looked upon as a necessity in any
system looking forward to real efficiency. It is thought that thru the
saving he could effect in the two directions cited his regular
employment would be a matter of economic foresight. A few years ago it
was the school physician who was being fought for out in the front
ranks. He is now a fixture in every up-to-date school system, and it is
the psychologist for whom battle is now being waged. And it is only a
question of time when his position will be secure and the line pushed
forward for another attack.

I have discust with you briefly some of the interesting points of view
of the education of to-day. I have tried to place before you, first,
what I think to be its dominant motive--social betterment, made
effective thru discovery and development of the individual's tastes and
dominant interests. To show how this program is becoming established and
worked out, I have touched upon various new lines of activity in
sympathy with and contributing to the general movement. Thus I discust
briefly the great child-study movement having for its goal knowledge of
the individual child as a basis for its educational treatment. Following
this I spoke of physical education--its beginning in many places and the
great need for extension. Another activity named was the educational
survey by means of which a community may have its own educational
activity tested by impartial experts that its real efficiency may be
known. Then followed brief discussion of the new movement for vocational
guidance that is doing so much where being used to make the youth
efficient and happy in his chosen and appropriate field of activity. I
closed the discussion with a mention of a still newer movement having
the same great ends in view--the employment of the educational
psychologist. Firing-line activities all of these are, each vigorous and
active in the great movement for educational betterment.




II

THE RELATION OF THE STATE UNIVERSITY TO THE HIGH SCHOOLS OF THE STATE

_An Address delivered before the Annual Conference of the North Dakota
Superintendents and Principals at the University of North Dakota, May
18, 1916_


This is a topic of great interest to us all--to you in the field and to
us here on the campus. The work of the two institutions is so closely
related, each depends so much upon the other, that participation in the
activities of one bespeaks interest in the other. But before we can
discuss at all intelligently the matter of relationship it will be
necessary to look at the two separately--objectively, as it were--to
note the function of each and its place in the educational system of the
State. What is the university? What is the high school? And what is the
work of each? are questions that must first be answered.

In the first place, of course, the two are but parts of a still larger
whole, neither being an independent, self-sufficing entity. The larger
whole is the educational system of the State, of which there is one
other part equally important with the two named, even the elementary
school. And all three parts forming the whole are creations of the
State, devised, controlled, and maintained for a very definite
purpose--namely, the welfare and happiness of our people.

While it is true that the three parts are correlative, each
supplementing the others and the system incomplete without all three,
it is also true that they are co-ordinate, no one of the three being,
_per se_, in authority over any other, nor any one subordinate to
another. Let me put before you, very briefly, that we may all be
thinking together, the system in its outlines and then discuss each of
its parts, trying to discover its function and its node of work. Then we
shall pass to the matter of relationship.

The system as a whole covers and tries to provide for the entire school
life of the individual. The elementary period, or department, includes,
in the main, as now organized, the work of the first eight years of the
child's school life and ministers to it from the age of six to fourteen
years. The secondary, beginning where the elementary closes, carries on
the work for four years and is followed by the higher, the colleges and
the professional schools--the university.

It may clarify matters somewhat and thus give us a clearer perspective,
if, before, entering upon the discussion, I account for the system as we
have it to-day.

Our Colonial forefathers in the Old Bay State, back in the 17th century,
in providing to meet the situation that prest upon them, unconsciously
laid the foundations for an educational system that expanded with their
expansion and developed with their development. But before taking the
initial steps they did not wait to analyze the entire situation and upon
logical or philosophical grounds map it out in its entirety. They had no
such thought. They needed ministers of the Gospel and, since a knowledge
of Latin was the one sure gateway to that profession, they established a
Latin school almost as soon as they had set their own dwelling places
in order. This was in 1635, and Harvard College followed the very next
year to complete the preparation. It was an afterthought and came eleven
years later when they legislated for an elementary school. And even tho
we can see, in what they had then produced, the fundamental factors of
our present somewhat complicated system, the people who were responsible
for its organization were only dimly conscious of the significance of it
all. They builded better than they knew. The broad outlines can not be
improved. Details, of course, are ever changing as local conditions
change, but from the very nature of things, the elementary, the
secondary, and the higher schools have remained with us, each for a
quite definite purpose and all working together for a common end. Let us
look, therefore, for a moment, at each of the three and see for what it
stands and what it should attempt to do.


THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

The fundamental purpose of the elementary school in a democracy is well
stated in the first legislation on the continent touching elementary
education, tho not mentioning the elementary school. It was in the
Massachusetts colonies in 1642. The General Court passed an ordinance of
which the following quotation gives the substance:

"This Court, taking into consideration the great neglect of many parents
and masters in the training of their children in labor and learning, and
other employments which may be profitable to the commonwealth, do
hereupon order and decree that in every town the chosen men appointed
for managing the prudential affairs of the same shall henceforth stand
charged with the care of the redress of this evil ... and for this end
they, or the greater number of them, shall have the power to take
account, from time to time, of all parents and masters, and of their
children, concerning their calling and employment of their children,
especially of their ability to read and understand the principles of
religion and the capital laws of this country; and they shall have power
... to put forth as apprentices the children of such as they shall find
not to be able and fit to employ and to bring them up."

Here was compulsory elementary education, that children might know how
to read, might "understand the principles of religion and the capital
laws of the State," and also that they might be taught to work. And why?
For their own present and future welfare, and that they might be
"profitable to the commonwealth," the document reads.

It was for all the children of all the people. The same thought is with
us to-day and, analyzed and stated in our present-day terminology, may
be put about as follows:

The elementary school is for all the people and aims to do for all three
things: first, exercise a positive directive influence over the child's
physical development; second, carry on, in a more systematic, scientific
manner the training of the sense organs already begun by the home, thus
opening up the life to the beauties of nature, art, and other forms of
truth, and so providing for the development of the inner life of each in
accordance with inherent leaning and capability; and, third, equip them
with the tools of knowledge and give such knowledge facts and develop
such points of view as will enable each to become a self-directing,
constructive, and contributing member of his democratic community.

Attendance upon the elementary school should, in the interests of all as
individuals and of the State as an organization, be compulsory.


THE HIGH SCHOOL

The high school should likewise be for all, tho for a somewhat different
purpose. While attendance should not be compulsory, the aim should be to
make it universal. For a somewhat different purpose, I said; I should
perhaps have said for an added purpose, because I would have the three
ends of the elementary school kept constantly in view as fundamental
bases. But, assuming that these things have been well done, the chief
purpose of the high school should be to discover the child's latent
powers, his dominant interests, and then, so far as these are wholesome,
help him plan his education in their general direction. I might put it
briefly thus: the chief function of the high school should be to help
the child to become acquainted with himself and begin the planning of
his future. Let us look at it carefully and see if it is not sound.

At the conclusion of the elementary school, at the age of 14, the boys
and girls are still children; they are developing, not developed, in
either body or mind. They have not yet reached, in the main, the period
of rapid acceleration of physical growth, intellectual expansion, or
moral development; they are just reaching it; they are now in the early
stages of that wonderful period of adolescence when the boy is being
transformed into the man and the girl into the woman. They are neither
children nor adults, yet manifesting the characteristics of both. They
do not know themselves, nor does any one else know them intimately. How
can they? They are not yet formed. They are in the process of formation.
What will emerge as a result of the process, we know only in broad
outlines--not at all in minute detail. So many factors are at work and
there are possible so many combinations of factors that no one can tell;
for it is during the period of adolescence that hereditary
characteristics show themselves. Up to this time the child is a child of
the race; during this period it becomes the offspring of its parents.
And the factors of heredity--father, mother, ancestry--are mingling and
clashing and combining with the factors of environment, and what the
outcome is going to be, nobody knows, in specific cases, in advance.

This is the period when the heart, the lungs, and the brain are being
transformed, modified, whipt into shape for the performance of the
duties of adulthood. It is a period when, in the intellectual realm,
because of what is taking place in the physical, concepts are being
clarified, relationships traced, ideas formed, things seen in the right
perspective, and real reasoning begun. It is the period when, in the
moral field, because of what is being accomplished in the physical and
the intellectual, principles are being apprehended that will finally
enable the individual to distinguish between right and wrong, to
organize on principle rather than upon expediency his relationships with
his fellows, and eventually to become a free moral agent,
self-controlled and self-directed. It is the period, therefore, when
ideals are being formed, habits fixt, character shaped, life plans
matured, and professions chosen.

And so, with such an individual and during such a period, what other
function of the high school can begin to compare, either in importance
or in appropriateness, with the one stated?

It may be objected that I do not include in this function of the high
school that which has been during a large portion of its history its
foremost work--preparation for college. The seeming omission has not
been accidental. I say the _seeming_ omission because, even tho not
specifically stated, it is there, for all who should be encouraged to
prepare for college. But it has not been made prominent since, in my
judgment, it is of minor importance. Note again the function as
suggested--to help the child know himself, find out what he wants to do
and what he can do best, and then begin getting ready for doing it well.
If the specific form of future activity decided upon in a particular
instance should call for the contribution of the college, then of course
the plan mentioned would include appropriate preparation.

But from what point of view should the high school be regarded and for
whom should it be planned? Should it be for the relatively few who go
beyond, or for the great majority who do not? It is a fair question and
admits of but one answer. The high schools of the State must, of course,
give adequate preparation for entrance into the State university. Some
of them must--not necessarily every one. It must be the preparatory
school, since both are State institutions and the only ones occupying
the field. But it should do vastly more than that. Being of the people,
by the people, and for the people, it should be so handled as to serve
all, not merely a few, of the people. It is perfectly plain, therefore,
where the emphasis should be placed.

Please do not misunderstand me; I am not looking upon this from any
narrow point of view, I am not thinking merely of getting these children
ready for jobs--certainly not all of them. I am not advocating the
transforming of our high schools into trade schools--not at all. What I
am urging primarily is a different point of view--and so enlarging and
modifying our high school activities and equipment that all our
children, instead of only a few, may find there a congenial atmosphere
and activities suited to their tastes. If their tastes lie in the
direction of carpentering, or of plumbing, or of dress-making, well and
good; let them be thus developed and prepared to go out into their
community somewhat equipt for remunerative toil and for community
service. Why not? Are they not as worthy as those who have tastes and
ambitions or a more literary character and who, therefore, look forward
to the chair of the teacher, the office of the lawyer, or the practise
of a physician? And is not the community under as much obligation to the
one as to the other? Some fear that such a program would lessen the
number preparing for college, that work of this objective character
would be so attractive that all would choose it. These fears are
groundless. Children are not all built that way. At any rate it would
not lessen the number who ought to go to college--who are adapted to
that kind of work. It would, of course, greatly increase the number
attending high schools--holding those who now, because of lack of
interest in the work offered, drop out of school entirely and thus swell
the ranks of unskilled and unintelligent labor. And that is greatly
worth while. My own feeling is, too, that out of the greatly increased
attendance of the high school an even larger number than at present
would find their way to the university, and that they would be better
equipt in point of view and purpose than are many who enter under
present conditions. This suggestion is made not to keep boys and girls
out of the university, but to send them there with a purpose.

But there is oftentimes a misapprehension as to these two possible
programs for the high schools. Preparation for college and preparation
for life are by no means antagonistic. Preparation for college is the
only kind of preparation for life for him who goes to college. And for
him who, during his high school course, plans to go to college, but who
at its close, finds himself unable to do so, for economic or other
reasons, it should still be the best possible preparation for life that
he could have made, and it will be if, as I am urging, it has all the
time been based upon his own nature and seeking his normal development
in the direction of his dominant interests. And preparation for life
should be the very best kind of preparation for college, for him who
later changes his plans and goes to college as well as for him who does
not, since the college itself should be regarded as merely completing
preparation for life. But a great many, the majority, no doubt, will not
go to college, should not go to college, or to put it better, perhaps,
need not go to college. The activities of life, psychical as well as
manual, for which they are best adapted by native endowment, and in the
performance of which they will, therefore, be happiest, and thru which
they will, therefore, contribute most to the welfare of society, do not
need for their satisfactory performance school preparation beyond the
high school period. In other words, a great many boys and girls should
not be urged to go to college. They should not if they do not have
within them those characteristics of leadership which, developed, will
make them leaders. The college graduate who, in later life, is a street
car conductor, or a Pullman porter, or what-not, has largely wasted the
time and money spent in college. And this is not because these
occupations are not honorable, but because they do not call for that
kind of preparation. And the kind of an individual who is at home as a
street car conductor does not usually profit greatly by the work of the
college. I will not put it as David Starr Jordan is said to have done,
that "It does not pay to give a fifty-cent boy a five thousand dollar
education." It is not a question of dollars and cents--rather one of
fitness and of fitting. The so-called "fifty-cent boy" who may have been
given the "five thousand dollar education" and because of its
inappropriateness degenerated into a ten-cent man, might have been made
into a thousand dollar man if he had been given the right kind of
education. The boy who has the instincts of a blacksmith, who likes the
shaping of iron and the shoeing of horses and the smell of the forge,
will be a far happier and more useful member of society as a blacksmith
than, made over by the college, as a lawyer without clients, a
physician without patients, or a teacher always hunting a new position.

I have discust the high school, as you see, from the point of view of
the developmental needs of the children of the community. The outcome
would have been practically the same had I looked upon it from the
standpoint of the industrial needs of the community. I fully believe
that a high school should be to-day just what it was originally planned
to be back there in the first half of the nineteenth century--a school
higher than the elementary, controlled by the community, in co-operation
with the educational leaders of the State, serving the needs of the
community, fitting its boys and girls for service in the community and
discriminating, if at all, in the favor of the group of boys and girls
who are not going to college, since that group is much the larger. Since
boys and girls are nearer to us than industrial needs, I have chosen to
look at the problem from that angle.

I am well aware that my point of view in this entire matter is not quite
in accord with the present-day program. The American high school still
has preparation for college as the one dominant object. Its curriculum
is planned for that end. It is rated at first, second, or third class,
depending upon the degree in which it meets college entrance
requirements--not upon the degree in which it serves the community needs
or develops the community's children.

I realize fully that the change suggested would involve quite a decided
rearrangement of the ordinary high school program. With the time at my
disposal it will be impossible to discuss the matter in detail, but it
should be touched upon briefly to get the matter of relationship clearly
before us.

The first change would be in the matter of organization: instead of
having the elementary school, as now, covering eight years and closing
with the child at the age of 14, it should cover but six years, sending
the child to the high school at about the age of 12, at which time,
approximately, begin those physical and psychological changes earlier
spoken of, as belonging to adolescence. And that thought has taken root,
as we all know, in the junior high school movement. Six years is long
enough to do well all that the elementary school should be expected to
do. It certainly is as long as children can be held interested in the
kind of work thought necessary for the child, and as long as he can be
happy in the atmosphere of the ordinary elementary school. It is long
enough for the laying of foundations. It is time something else should
be taken up.

Planning to meet the needs of adolescents, we must take the adolescents
as they are--many of them not primarily students of books, but
individuals of ceaseless activity, physical as well as mental, vastly
more interested in the doing of things than in the learning of lessons.
And we must provide a means whereby they can learn to do all sorts of
things that have to be done in the community. The subject matter, the
methods of handling young life, the atmosphere, the activities, and the
ends in view, should be so changed or modified, or supplemented as to be
appropriate to the new and changing personalities to be affected by
them. The details would differ with different communities but the
principle is adaptable to all.


THE STATE UNIVERSITY

With the functions of these two departments thus clearly in mind, let us
look at the next in order--the State university. Fortunately this
discussion need not detain us long since there is a quite well
recognized unanimity of opinion in regard to its work.

While the State university does many things, and some of them well, and
while it can be said to have many ends in view, its one all-inclusive
function is to prepare leaders for society. It must prepare leaders in
law, that justice may be done; leaders in medicine that health may be
preserved; leaders in engineering that the State's resources may be
developed; leaders in education that the youth of the State may be
educated; leaders in research that the boundaries of knowledge may be
pushed out--leaders all along the line that character may be formed,
statesmanship developed, and the welfare of the people secured and
preserved. And the preparation of all these is not, primarily, that
those prepared may achieve fame or amass fortunes, but that society may
be better served.

We are all agreed, in the United States, that elementary education
should be universal. Many are now taking the position that I have
already advanced that secondary education should likewise reach and
serve all. But all stop at that point. No one even suggests a college
education for every boy and girl. And the reason is found in the above
statement of the function of the institution, since not all are suited
to leadership. It takes only the relatively few who stand out clearly in
their high school experiences as possessing the characteristics of
leadership, and these few it develops, equips, locates.

Coming a little closer to our subject--tho I think we have not been very
far from it at any time--let us inquire as to this relationship along
some more specific lines.

It goes without saying that the relationship should be very cordial. The
two institutions are creatures of the State, partners in the important
work of educating the children of the State. Each has its own work to
do, and neither has been given any authority over the other. At the same
time each depends upon the other, neither being able to do its own work
without the other's assistance. They should work hand in hand, each
assisting the other in every possible way to realize its largest
usefulness to the community and the State. In general, the high school
should send its students to the university well equipt to do the lines
of work for which they respectively apply. And the university, knowing
in each case just what that work is to be, and the difficulties it
presents, should be the judge as to the details of that equipment.

On the other hand, the university should not make requirements for
beginning its work that are beyond the capacity of the ordinary high
school student. Nor should it definitely require or legislate against
specific subjects upon which there is no general agreement among
educational leaders. Something is wrong somewhere, in the matter of
educational values, when some colleges absolutely prescribe for entrance
certain subjects for which others will give no credit at all: for
example, at the present time 91 colleges in the United States require at
least one unit of natural science and 8 colleges will not accept a
single unit; again, 13 require 2 units of natural science and 22 will
not accept the two. Until we know a little better than we do at present
what we are doing and why we are doing it, it might be well to move
slowly in legislating for or against specific subjects. The university
should keep in mind the fact that the high school has other duties to
perform--and possibly more important ones--than preparing a few students
for the university.

I am glad to say that in this matter of entrance requirements the two
institutions are gradually coming closer together. The university is
coming to have greater respect for and more confidence in the high
school and its work. Whereas in the earlier days all entrance work was
rigidly prescribed, now, in nearly all of our higher institutions,
several units are open to free choice from a list of accepted subjects.
In a goodly number these units may be chosen from any subjects offered
by an approved high school. And, too, there are five institutions of
good standing that allow the entire 15 units to be thus chosen. Our own,
as you doubtless know, is much more generous in this matter than the
great majority. It gives a margin of 5 units to be thus selected. I
think there are but 9 institutions in the whole country more liberal. As
you know, too, in all our colleges save Engineering we specifically
require but 4 units--3 in English and 1 in mathematics. From the others
free election among groups is allowed. The movement here and elsewhere
seems to be in the direction of requiring the completion of a full
four-year high school course, with increasing flexibility as to specific
subjects. And that seems wise.

It gives me pleasure, at this point, to say that the relationship
between the University of North Dakota and the high schools of the State
has ever been most cordial. I think there has never been a time when the
two, tho differing at times in details, have not co-operated in the most
frank and cordial manner to bring about the best good of both and to
secure the best service to the State. Neither one has been selfish,
trying to secure undue advantage over the other. Where domination of the
university over the high school can be seen--as it most certainly can be
seen--and even tho, as I have said, the work of the high school is what
it ought not to be--mainly a preparation for the university--_this_
University and _these_ high schools are not at fault. It is not a local
situation. It is nation-wide, and even nation-wide as it is, it does not
include, consciously and directly, the State universities. The older
colleges and universities did dominate, but the relation between the
State university and the high school has ever been cordial. They have
always recognized their partnership and have acted in accordance with
it. But yet we have all been caught in the maelstrom, and it would be
difficult for any one institution or any one State to get out of it. So
no immediate or rapid change can be expected. Large bodies move slowly.
The change will come, but it will come gradually thru claiming a little
here and granting a little there.

But before leaving this topic of entrance requirements, I desire to
refer to one of its broad factors and touch, incidentally, upon the
large matter of university attendance in general. In discussing the high
school, and again the university, I have tried to make clear the fact
that not all high school students should be urged or expected to go on
to the university. Remember that the high schools should be made to
serve all the youth of the State but that the university's work is to
take but the choice ones of these, or, better yet, the scholarly output
of the high schools, and equip them for leadership in society, and the
point is clear. It is a new problem but coming to be a very real one.
Going to college is getting to be the fashion--almost a fad in some
places. We all know that a goodly number of students, boys and girls
alike, enter the universities, East and West, every year who have no
characteristics of leadership, who are not fitted for real university
work, either in academic equipment, maturity of judgment, point of view,
or earnestness of purpose. Many of these young people are wholly worthy,
well meaning, and ambitious in a weak way, but they have been misguided.
They have listened to the attractive preaching of the popular but
unintelligent gospel of college attendance for all and, caught by the
glamor--the foot-ball, the track meet, the declamation contest, the
fraternity pin, the Junior prom, etc.--have answered the hail of "All
aboard for the University!" without knowing what university work really
is or what it is for.

The college and the university are also coming to be thought a
convenient place for rich fathers to dump their incorrigible sons and
marriageable daughters for a few years. And in some sections these rich
fathers are increasing in numbers at an alarming rate. The presence of
all such people (they can not be called students) in various classes is
a drag, and the wheels of the institution are clogged. These people
themselves are soon disillusioned but ashamed to quit; the home people
are dissatisfied with results; the university is unjustly blamed for not
developing them into leaders--there is trouble all around. I am not
speaking of our own institution alone; others are experiencing the same
difficulty and are seeking a way out. Michigan University, for example,
is now urging its alumni to discriminate carefully in sending students
to their Alma Mater; it wants only those fitted by nature as well as by
the preparatory school.

As said above, this is coming to be a real problem and difficult of
solution. What shall be the relationship of the university to the high
school touching these various classes of its graduates? Should it
receive them all? If not, where shall the line be drawn? And who shall
draw it? Shall one factor of the entrance requirements be the
recommendation of the high school principal or superintendent? Would it
be well for the high school to have two distinct grades: one for local
graduation and a higher for university entrance? That is done in some
places. The entire matter is worthy of careful thought of both high
school and university.

With the discussion of one more point of contact, the preparation of
teachers for the high schools, I am thru.

If, as stated above, the great function of the State university is to
provide leaders for society, then, in a broad way it is easy to answer
the question as to what it should do for the preparation of teachers for
high schools--it should prepare them. For where else is clear-headed,
unselfish leadership more needed than in the high schools from the
students of which are being selected, thru direction and competition,
the boys and girls who are to pass out to the colleges and then into the
world as leaders? We all know that that is what happens. The man or
woman, untouched by college or university, who yet occupies a
responsible position of leadership is an exception to the rule. And
where else than in a university can preparation for high school teaching
be secured? But of what sort should be this preparation? The answer to
the question in general has long been clear--it should be professional
as well as academic in character. Mere acquaintance with the subject to
be taught is no longer held adequate by people at all intelligent along
educational lines. And during the progress of the movement that has
demonstrated to us the need of professional preparation, there has been
worked out also, along somewhat general lines, the details of this
preparation. We are now, the country over, in approximate agreement that
it should cover the History of Education, Philosophy of Education,
Psychology, including the study of adolescence, and Methods of Teaching.
Institutions differ somewhat in minor matters within these broad fields,
but the development of the movement in the United States has resulted in
approximately the above program--professional preparation for all
teachers in the high school and that along the four lines suggested. But
the movement has gone much farther than suggested by my statement. The
results are found in something more authoritative and more permanent
than tentative agreement among educational leaders, or even among
educational institutions. The law-making bodies of the land have taken a
part, and by legal enactment have required about what I have suggested.
The State of North Dakota, for example, requires professional equipment
of every teacher within its borders--no, not quite, it does not require
it of its teachers in the special schools--the reform school, the
schools for the deaf, blind, and the feeble minded--nor in its
institutions of higher education, including the normal schools and the
University. And in this North Dakota does not differ from other states
of the Union. But it is strange, isn't it? that the state absolutely
requires professional preparation of all its elementary and secondary
teachers and yet does not require it of those whom it engages to equip
them? Some of them have it, of course, and the majority of those who
give the specifically professional courses, but the greater number of
all teachers in the higher institutions are lacking in this respect.
That doesn't mean that all university teachers are poor teachers. Many
of them have learned how to teach in the crude and expensive school of
experience. They have, at last, the professional equipment, but gained
at high cost. Perhaps this lack of professional equipment accounts, in a
mesure, for the admittedly poor character of much of the teaching in our
colleges, normal schools, and universities.

But to come back to the high school and the preparation of high school
teachers. What does North Dakota require, and how does the University
meet the requirement?

All teachers in classified high schools, save special teachers of music
and drawing, are required to hold certificates that presuppose
proficiency in psychology, history of education, principles of
education, school administration, and methods. Special teachers in
music and drawing are required to have covered in professional lines
only psychology and pedagogy. But in cases where the certificate is
granted on the basis of college work instead of on results of an
examination, the law requires that the applicant shall have covered at
least two year-courses, or sixteen semester hours, of professional work,
and it recommends that this be distributed among the four great fields:
history of education, principles of education, methods of teaching, and
school management.

The School of Education has been organized within the University for the
specific purpose of preparing teachers for the high schools of the
State. To graduate from the School of Education and thus receive the
B.A. degree and the Bachelor's Diploma in teaching, which is accredited
by law as a first-grade professional certificate, and also to be
recommended for teaching specific subjects in the high-school, an
applicant is required, first, to have specialized, academically, in the
subject to be taught. The amount of work required for this specializing
varies with the different subjects, but in most cases it is from 20 to
24 semester hours. Recall what is meant by the work of a semester hour
and you will easily see how broad our academic requirement is. It means
that in addition to one's high school work he is required to carry the
subject in practically daily recitation for from 2-1/2 to 3 years in the
University. To some that may seem too much, but we feel that the first
requirement for teaching in the high school should be a thoro grounding
in the subjects to be taught.

The academic matter thus disposed of, let us note the professional. For
this, in its various phases, we require 20 semester hours covering
psychology, history of education, secondary education, philosophy of
education, and methods of teaching academic subjects in which the
student has been specializing and which he expects to teach. The course
in methods includes observation and practise teaching of the same
subjects in the Model High School under expert supervision. Many of our
students voluntarily take more than 20 hours, but that is all that is
required. We have cut down the professional requirement to the minimum
so as to leave ample opportunity within the course for thoro mastery of
the subjects to be taught, and also for general culture and the
development of broad-mindedness, not being willing to send teachers into
the high schools as narrow specialists.

Were there time I should like to go more into detail in regard to these
various requirements and try to show the contribution of each; but I
must pass on to speak of another way by means of which the University
enables students to meet the legal requirements for teaching in the high
schools--thru the College of Arts. A student who graduates from the
College of Arts and who has had, during the progress of this course, 16
hours of Education is, upon application to the State Board of Education
and the payment of a fee of $5, granted a first grade professional
certificate. But this method of preparation is seen to be quite
unsatisfactory when contrasted with the one just outlined. The Arts
student is a relatively free lance, practically wholly so in the choice
and arrangements of his professional work. In the School of Education
the program is for all the professional subjects, save general
psychology, to be taken after the beginning of the junior year and so
immediately prior to the actual work of teaching, and too, when the
student is relatively mature. But with the Arts student, it may all be
taken much earlier, during relative immaturity and making a long period
elapse between it and the work of teaching--quite long enough for the
influence of the professional atmosphere, always valuable in such
matters, to be wholly lost. The question of the professional work of the
School of Education student is carefully planned to meet the ends in
view. Each course has its definite contribution. The Arts student may,
and often does, select courses that are not the most appropriate for
high school teaching: for example, instead of a course in adolescence he
may select one in child study which deals only with the child in the
grades. Instead of a special methods course in the subjects he plans to
teach in high school, he may select a course in methods in elementary
subjects; and he may not take any course in secondary education nor have
any practise teaching in the Model High School. The work may be--quite
often is--ill-arranged and of little value as a professional preparation
for high school teacher.

I have dwelt upon this contrast because the University and its School of
Education has suffered by the laxness of this second mode of
preparation. Some of the people who thus go out are not good
representative products of the institution's professional activity.

Just a closing word as to this phase of the subject. You see what we are
trying to do and how we are trying to do it. From the work of the young
people whom we have sent you from time to time, how successful have we
been? Our work as to time and content of courses and our general
equipment are about the same as found in similar institutions in other
states. We differ somewhat, of course, in personalities and in
individual point of view but, taking everything together, we are doing
the best we know how with the material that you send us as students. How
does our product suit you? What criticism have you to make and what
changes to suggest?




III

THE UNIVERSITY AND THE TEACHER

_An Address delivered at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada,
March 30, 1916, in the Exchange Lectureship existing between the
University of Manitoba and the University of North Dakota. It was
printed in the "American Schoolmaster," December, 1916_


Having accepted the kind invitation of the University of Manitoba to be
one of the exchange lecturers from the University of North Dakota, for
the current year, I made inquiry as to the nature of the different
groups of people whom I should be expected to address. I did this so as
to be able to select appropriate themes for discussion.

For this gathering, therefore, semi-popular in character and made up, as
I was told it would be, of the more thoughtful and intelligent people of
the community, University, and city, I selected as my topic for
discussion, "The University and the Teacher."

To a group of educated men and women who have visions--people who are
characteristically looking beyond the present and trying to plan for the
development of a great democratic state and for the welfare of a free
people, I know of no line of thought more appropriate or suggestive.
This is true because in such a state and with such a people, the state
or provincial university is the recognized leader of thought and action.
And this is true since the one great function of such an institution is
to take the choice youth and maidens from the various sections of the
state and, thru the work of the class room day in and day out, week by
week, year after year, give them knowledge, shape their opinions, mold
their characters, and develop their minds, and then send them back into
society as recognized leaders of the next generation.

The topic is doubly suggestive when we stop to inquire as to what makes
a university or any other institution of learning--what it is that
really gives it its reputation, its character, its influence. What is
it, anyway? Its towering brick walls? Its libraries and its
laboratories? Its athletic prowess? Its beautiful campus? Why, no, of
course not. Not any one of these nor all of them combined, complete and
extended and excellent as they may be, or as useful as they all are,
ever yet made or ever can make a great university. A real university, or
any other institution of learning, is made up of the men and the women
who form its student and its teaching bodies. The character of the
institution, its very life blood, is drawn from them. Their points of
view, their motives, their scholarships, their visions, their
aspirations, make it what it is in every instance.

You recall that ex-President Garfield's description of a university
included only two factors as essential--the teacher and the student. The
external equipment--buildings, libraries, laboratories--what not--is
merely a tool in their hands. Please do not misunderstand me. I am not
inveighing against these things; they are necessary. What I am insisting
upon is that not _things_ but _teachers_ make a university. And so my
topic, "The University and the Teacher," launches us at once into the
midst of a great big thought. So big, indeed, it is, that it goes
without saying that it cannot be adequately handled in the brief space
of a single address. Only certain phases of the large topic can be
touched upon at all, and they treated but briefly.

But, after all, the function of a speaker, certainly upon such an
occasion as this, is not merely to give information. It is not to speak
with finality upon any subject. Is it not, rather, to direct the
thoughts of the listeners along worthy lines? For any good that shall
result from the meeting together of speaker and audience will be the
direct outcome of their thoughts and not of his words. So, after having
thus spoken briefly of the university as a whole--of its place in the
state, its great influence and that of its teaching body--I invite you
to think with me as I touch the subject here and there briefly
discussing these three sub-topics: 1. The Kind of Teachers the
University should Employ; 2. The University Teacher in His Classroom; 3.
The University's Attitude Toward the Preparation of Teachers. Our first
discussion, then, will be of


THE KIND OF TEACHERS THE UNIVERSITY SHOULD EMPLOY

A few moments ago I said that the one great function of a State
University was to provide the State with a competent leadership. That
involves, however, a subsidiary function of such great importance,
especially as we regard the teaching force, that an added word is needed
both to prevent misunderstanding and to make clear the line of
discussion of this sub-topic. The development of a competent leadership
_is_ the all-embracing function of such an institution, but that can not
be done save as the institution is, at the same time, thru some or all
of its teachers, keeping fully abreast, or well in the lead, of the
discovery of new knowledge and of new applications of knowledge in the
various fields of human endeavor. And this is true because men can not
be leaders in any field of action unless they possess the fullest and
latest items of knowledge obtainable in that particular field, and again
because real leadership can not be developed save thru the use, as
educative material, of the fullest and latest.

What kind of teachers should the university employ? Clearly, teachers
who can do these two things: men of open and enquiring minds, men of
imagination, men who are hungry and thirsty for knowledge, men of
research--men of the laboratory and the library. But that is but one
side; we must also have men of vision, men of great breadth of view, men
of broad human sympathies, men who can take this knowledge, old and new,
and with it, as educative material, help to shape opinions, and mold
characters, and fashion destinies, thus transforming crude, unstable,
and immature youth into men and women of virtue, and knowledge, and
courage, and sanity, and poise, into whose trust, therefore, can be
placed the guiding of a great, free, developing people--men of the
classroom, teachers and inspirers of youth.

The question may well be asked if I mean two _groups_ of teachers, a
_research_ group and a _teaching_ group, neither one acting within the
field of the other. Not necessarily and certainly not absolutely. To
quite an extent the two functions should overlap since each supplements
the other. The man of research should also be a teacher in order both to
keep his human sympathies alive and as a spur to still further search.
And every teacher should be, to some extent, a man of research so that
thru his own joy in discovery he will be able to kindle a like fire in
the minds of others, thus keeping the spirit of discovery alive and
active in the land, and also that he may invite his students to drink at
a living stream instead of a stagnant pool. The teacher who is not also
a student, and continually working at it, is usually but a poor teacher.
But while all this is true, it is probably true also that no person is
equally successful in both fields. Some men are primarily teachers--are
in their element in the classroom engaged with the problems of the
student but only indifferently successful in the laboratory, while
others, at home in the laboratory, are somewhat out of place and
ill-at-ease in the classroom. I shall not attempt to say which of the
two functions is the more important or the more useful. Both are needed
and, as said before, both are needed, to some extent, in each. But, in
the main, where characteristics are marked, the shoemaker should be
allowed to stick to his last. It is a very wise procedure that is more
and more being followed at the present time, in American universities,
of recognizing such differences and making provision for research
professorships that include no teaching duties whatever. The percentage
of these should be small, of course.

What kind of a teacher should the university employ, then? The teacher
who is eager to push the boundaries of human knowledge a little beyond
the point yet reached and who also greatly desires to take knowledge as
an instrument and with it develop boys and girls and equip them for
leadership in the great world of action. So far as possible the two
kinds of service should be performed by the same person, but yet that is
immaterial--the material thing being that both kinds be performed.

What kind of teachers should the university employ? Why, teachers who
not only desire to do these two things, but who also know how to do
them. If one is to do research work, he should know how to do it,
economically and efficiently. His preparation should have included a
certain amount of reflection upon the reasons for research and of
training in the manner of conducting the same. Likewise, if he is to be
a teacher, he should be well grounded in the theory and art of teaching.
If he is going to shape opinions, mold character, give points of view,
develop human minds, then it goes without saying that his preparation
should have included a very thoro study of the human mind in its various
relationships, activities, and stages of development. If a teacher is
expected to equip young men and women for the duties of life as leaders
in the great social, economic, and political activities, he must also
possess great stores of knowledge, and likewise know how to impart that
knowledge so that it will become equally the possession of others.


THE UNIVERSITY TEACHER IN HIS CLASSROOM

The second of my three topics, "The University Teacher in His
Classroom," is an even more intimate one than the one just treated. It
is so intimate that perhaps discretion would be the better part of
valor, but since I am at a considerable distance from the people and the
institutions I am discussing, I feel that I can proceed with comparative
safety.

There is abroad at the present time considerable hostile criticism of
our higher education. Our graduates, it is said, are not able "to
connect up"; "it takes them two or three years after they get out to
find themselves"; "they first have to get rid of a lot of theoretical
notions that have been given them before they can learn the practical
things of life." President Foster of Reed College, Oregon, puts it thus:
"It is possible to graduate from almost any college without an idea in
one's head." Professor Wenley, Head of the Department of Philosophy in
Michigan University, had about the same thought when he gave me his
original definition of an American college as "A so-called institution
of higher learning whose chief accomplishment is the inoculation of
innocent youth against education." Or shall we put it in the words of
our friend Mr. Dooley: "Nowadays when a lad g