PART I

THE PROBLEM OF THE INDIVIDUAL

CHILD

CHAPTER I

THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM IN GENERAL

The Public School and Its Critics.-America's greatest pride has always been its public school system. The American public school is the expression of democracy in education. It differs in its democratic organization from the school systems of other countries, pedagogic Germany included, where the public elementary school is only for the " masses," and where other kinds of schools exist for the "classes."

However, for the last few decades the public school, even in this country, has in many instances been deserted by the children of the "classes." For them a number of private and "finishing" schools have sprung up. This development has one cause in the change of social conditions and standards in the commonwealth. Another cause is an increasing distrust in the efficiency of public education.

Of late years a great outcry has been raised against the public schools. The question is asked in many quarters: "What is the final value of our school system?" Criticism is voiced against conditions of immediate con

cern, such as efficiency in administration, efficiency in the methods of teaching, efficiency in giving the individual child a "square deal." But far broader and more serious considerations are causing an ever-louder voice of protest.

Generation after generation of native-born citizens have been laying the foundation for an American people as a distinctive national unit. This new people, however, lacks racial uniformity. In creating a new nation out of the mixed blood from the Old World, America has a gigantic task before it. Race characters of divers kinds must be blended into a new national type which is really international in essence. In this process the main problem consists in preserving and conserving the progressive and constructive elements of each racial and national constituent, and in eliminating the backward and antisocial elements as far as possible. These include physical characteristics, weaknesses and advantages, as carried and developed through the centuries; and mental, emotional, and ethical factors and differences as well.

With the development of industries and commerce, broader national interests and aspirations are being recognized by the individual citizens. Questions of national policy within and without the country, the relations of groups of citizens to one another, and of the nation to other nations, are occupying the minds of thinking men and women.

A national consciousness is awakening.

Thus the question arises: "What are the public schools doing, not only to conserve the nation's young, but to prepare them for efficient citizenship under a democratic government which will permit progressive solidarity of

individual interests and a clear-cut national policy toward the world?" Many, and oftentimes appalling, are the failures in life, despite public school training. Many and undeniable are the evils of our national life. Both the individual and the national failures are being laid at the doors of the schools which are accused of wrong ideals and practices.

Much of this denunciation is exaggerated and unfair. We are apt to overstate our grievances. But we must not blind ourselves to the fact that there is a great need of new educational standards, aims, and ideals. Let us look into the situation more closely.

In considering the efficiency of our whole public educational system it may be well to pause a moment and to think of its fundamental objects. For what is education expected to prepare the nation? What should education do for the welfare and progress of the community? What is it to do for the child as an individual?

Education and National Ideals.-It is not the purpose of this book to dwell more than in passing upon the relation of public school education to national aims. It is well, however, to call attention to the fact that one of the primary functions of education is to supply the moral force of progress.

When we stop to consider that our schools to-day teach even their own country's history so superficially that the pupils scarcely know, much less understand, the beginnings and motives of American political, ethical, and spiritual evolution and their relation to present-day conditions at home, what can we expect of the citizen of the future when he is called upon to deal with world problems? Of what value to him is the costly experience of

his forebears? How can his moral judgment afford to ignore this intellectual background? How many of the pupils of to-day are taught definite ideals for the nation, definite in the sense that each voter will help mould a national policy which shall be the outgrowth of an improved democratic form of government based on historical influences? Without this knowledge of historical forces at home and abroad, past and present, is not the voter of to-day incapable of intelligent decisions, and is not the nation's policy largely the result of experiment, and determined by the genius of a few leading minds?

This is a day of commercial and industrial supremacy, and such an era brings with it tremendous national problems. How does the school help the individual consciousness to understand the mighty tendencies of to-day: the concentration of wealth, the organization of labor, etc.? How does it prepare the future citizen to deal with the perplexing difficulties of correction and relief among the unfortunate; and with that host of political and social issues, such as prohibition, taxation, direct voting, etc.? Every one of these problems is the result of a growth the germ of which dates back to the very foundation of our republic.

The demand that public school education must in the future take the large national issues under consideration, and shape its instruction accordingly, may seem startling, but it is a problem which the older countries have long since tried to solve, each in its own way. From a conglomerate mass of races and peoples which have settled in this continent, there must arise a real nation, not necessarily homogeneous in stock, but harmonious in aim and spirit. National consciousness, national ideals