The Project Gutenberg eBook, Our Schools in War Time—and After, by Arthur Davis Dean

OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME—AND AFTER
ARTHUR D. DEAN, Sc.D.

PROFESSOR OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION, TEACHERS COLLEGE
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, AND SUPERVISING OFFICER
BUREAU OF VOCATIONAL TRAINING, NEW YORK
STATE MILITARY TRAINING COMMISSION

GINN AND COMPANY
BOSTON · NEW YORK · CHICAGO · LONDON ATLANTA · DALLAS · COLUMBUS · SAN FRANCISCO

COPYRIGHT, 1918 BY ARTHUR D. DEAN
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
518.6

The Athenæum Press
GINN AND COMPANY · PROPRIETORS · BOSTON · U.S.A.

FOREWORD

It is not an army that we must shape and train for war; it is a nation.... The whole nation must be a team in which each man shall play the part for which he is best fitted.... Each man shall be classified for service in the place to which it shall best serve the general good to call him.... The significance of this cannot be overstated. It is a new thing in our history and a landmark in our progress. It is a new manner of accepting and vitalizing our duty to give ourselves with thoughtful devotion to the common purpose of us all.—Woodrow Wilson, Proclamation, May 18, 1917

CONTENTS

OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME—AND AFTER

CHAPTER I
BRINGING THE WAR INTO THE SCHOOLS

The summer of 1917 found America realizing that the war which it had entered was not going to be won by the mobilization of an army and a navy, however strong and efficient they might be. In the proclamation of Woodrow Wilson the whole nation was called upon to mobilize with a clear, succinct purpose of organizing those forces of industry, of education, of woman power, which are back of every successful struggle of a nation in peace or in war. The ready acceptance of the slogan "Win the War in the Air," with the public clamor for aviation, was but an indication of the general awakening of the public to the truth that the war must be won by the use of forces as yet undeveloped, or undirected towards national ends.

The mobilization which teaches the saving of our national resources, which directs the thoughtful distribution and wise use of our products, which cultivates the patriotic spirit of service in the boy and girl power of the nation, properly belongs to the field of education, not only in war but in peace. To the schools of America, therefore, the war has come as an opportunity for developing a closer relation between education and life, between life and service.

Our gradual entrance into the war and our distance from the conflict have given us the chance of pausing and surveying the situation before acting,—advantages which were unfortunately denied England and France. At the beginning of the war England apparently almost wrecked her schools, and is slowly repairing the mistakes of hurried action in suspending the attendance laws. France is saving her schools that the nation may go on after the war. It remains for America to use the war to make better schools.

The mobilization of our schools is not concerned with the introduction of military drill, whether voluntary or compulsory. It is an experiment in working out the relation of education to war. We are, all of us, empirics in this experiment; there is no body of tradition and theory to help us. The ancient world offers us no parallels; the modern German system throws no light on it. America, equally with the nations of the older world, is a pioneer in the field. This is a novel experience for us who have been originators only of free education in the past or of administrative systems, not of types of new education. Largely what we have to guide us is some experience of France and England in what to avoid. This negative counsel is valuable in restricting our experiments, but is scarcely constructive in its nature. One of its most valuable lessons, however, is to show us that we must not take our schools into the war, as England did, but bring the war into the schools.

The fact that the problem is a novel one and that it is experimental does not make it futile. All education is experimental in adapting the individual to his changing environment.

During recent years our schools have had to consider the outside forces of the changing world. It was in 1881 that the first manual-training high school opened its doors under the hostile gaze of incredulity and disapproval. Since then our educational system has been bombarded with essays on the relation of education to life, on practical aspects of education, on vocational guidance, on trade schools, etc. We have only to look at the vastly differentiated courses of our colleges (some of which have lost all trace of the humanities), at the variegated courses in our high schools, at our remodeled elementary courses, to realize that in thirty years the whole attitude of the people towards our schools has undergone a vast change. These changes were regarded as revolutionary at first. But it is no more revolutionary to introduce the war into our schools than it was to introduce the laboratory study of sciences, or agricultural studies, or courses in millinery and home-making,—that is, if we understand the meaning of war into the schools.

It is not to be denied that the educational emphasis is different. The student who takes an agricultural course, and thus prepares himself to be a modern efficient farmer, is only indirectly doing work of service to the State. His aim is individual improvement, an advance which results in general benefit to the State; whereas a girl who does Red Cross work in school, or a boy who works in a war garden, benefits the individual through the larger service of collective responsibility in serving the nation directly.

We are not unmindful of the fact that war is a temporary condition, and we must not crowd out the fundamental studies to meet the needs of a temporary environment, however urgent the need may be. In carrying the war into our schools we must emphasize those permanent elements which are as necessary in war as in peace; we must use the war as an opportunity to develop service to the State,—service which may be vitalizing and ennobling, full of purposeful appreciation of collective responsibility.

In our study of the introduction of the war into our schools we may properly shut out discussions of elements which have no educational value. Many of the proposals for the war uses of our schools have been of a haphazard nature, called out by a well-meant desire to meet the emergency. Much of the legislation concerning itself with the employment of school children or of those under compulsory school age has been, and may yet be, harmful. The suggestion of using the schools as recruiting stations has lost value with the operation of the selective draft. Ill-considered proposals to turn over the vocational and manual-training departments to the government for the purpose of making munitions have shown a lack of knowledge of their meager equipment for an industry highly specialized with standard jigs and fixtures. A department store, a clothing factory, a library, or an office building would be about as fit for such a purpose as a school building. The same may be said of the use of our schools as hospitals. Our schools must be retained as educative plants,—training munition workers, if we will, but not making munitions; providing the government with skilled artisans and scientists, but by no means converting their function of education into that of industrial production.

The war work of our schools is more easily planned in those which have technical and vocational departments than in those which contain only the desk and office equipment. Distinctions must be made, too, between schools in agricultural and industrial centers. The experiments made in New York with "farm cadets" show that the country boy has certain advantages over the city boy in all forms of rural and garden employment. We must not expect the same kind of work from the high-school boys and girls in New York City that we may exact from country children of the same age.

The city boy may be needed in emergency office and factory work. Instead of contributing service as a farm cadet, he may become a "coöperator," giving part-time service to industry and to commerce and part time to school, as many of our city boys are now doing.

In dealing with the institution of higher grade we find as many distinctions in service. In the college of the cultural type—the college of individualism—it is the individual who serves the State, how nobly may be seen in the English universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In the public schools and socialized institutions with vocational work, however, it is the institution which serves. This service of the institution may be classified under two heads. In the case of the elementary schools to some extent, and of the high schools to a greater extent, our war work should be brought into them. In the technical, vocational, and trade schools the institution should reach out towards the war. In the first instance the function of the elementary and secondary school should be to adhere to the purposes for which they were created. The function of the higher technical, vocational, and trade schools should be to prepare the skilled students to take the places of those who are called to military service; to give scientific training, indispensable in war; to assist, through courses for the blind and crippled, in the reëducation of those disabled in war service,—that is, our technical schools may be schools of special preparation and industrial readjustment.

We shall observe, in working out the problem, that we have offered to us by the war an opportunity to make our schools better by bringing education closer to life, not only materially but spiritually. If we have failed to train our youth in coöperation and service to the State in the past, the war gives us a new motive. For to impart skill in use of hand or brain without teaching collective responsibility is to fail in our national duty. To our schools we must look as the agencies which are to carry on the great work of education in service, a noble and purposeful objective for which to work, directing the growth of our children into an efficient and devoted citizenship.

Someone will urge: "The war will soon be over and we shall hardly get started in war service before there will be no need for such service."

Of course those who believe, or at least seem to practice the belief, that the schools are to lag far behind every economic, industrial, and social movement and are to be mere looking-glasses for the workaday world,—such people would not be expected to bring the war into the schools until some historian had written a text setting forth the dates, drawing the battle lines, naming the commanding generals, and picturing the final boundaries determined by some Hague conference. It is such professional obstructionists who make no provision for the millions of our foreign born to learn the English language and American customs through the establishment of up-to-date methods in teaching the adult illiterate. It is such laissez-faire persons who allow children to slide out of school unprepared physically, mentally, or vocationally for the life ahead. It is such who insist upon the disciplinary-value idea of subject-worth in the face of modern psychological thought. It is such conservatives who say that agriculture can be taught only on the farm; that it is the business of the factory to teach the trades; that girls may learn to cook from their mothers; that elementary courses in woodworking and freehand drawing constitute vocational training; that algebra, Latin, ancient history, and trigonometry are essential features of the curriculum for training capable stenographers. It is these people who say that "the public schools of America are bulwarks of the nation," and consistently erect bulwarks against every agency which actually reflects the social and economic needs of the day.

But those who believe that the school should study the past and live in the present and strive for a better future will find that the war brings out for the schools not only the lessons of a day, but the needs and opportunities of a decade.

It has been stated that movements or men unresponsive to the present world crisis and failing to meet present needs and opportunities do not deserve to exist. Whether the statement be exactly true or not, it is evident that the up-to-the-minute man or the live school or the progressive industrial establishment or the efficient department of government is responding to the national need in exact proportion to the response made to the needs and opportunities existing before war was declared.

It is this responding power which is testing our men and women, our institutions of government, our industries, and our schools. Nothing makes this clearer than the daily news. We read that since the Railroads War Board has been established, the railroads have increased their operating efficiency 26 per cent, with the result that they are now handling twice the freight and have 75 per cent fewer idle cars; that aëroplane motors are soon to be built as rapidly as a certain well-known automobile can be; that standardized destroyers and merchant ships are to be turned out by the scores; that dyes equal to those formerly imported have been evolved; that prominent men of means have contributed their services to men in authority in Washington; that well-known social workers are on their way to France and Belgium.

All these things and countless others show us how a military necessity has brought out the best that is within us. And the best of it all is that there is nothing which we are doing in the way of making standardized products or in extending the services of useful men that cannot be permanently useful after the war is over. Our military necessity is teaching us new and permanently effective standards of making things. Meanwhile, are the schools of America to fail by not rendering service to a nation in time of need, by not establishing permanently effective standards in the making of useful boys and girls,—"boys and girls," as Roosevelt puts it, "who realize that they are a part of Uncle Sam's team"?

The schools and colleges that were alive before the war began are breathing the breath of life more deeply now. Those which were asleep are waking up and not only learning to serve, but through this service learning to live. A little school in Vermont in a report on what it has in the way of war equipment states that it has only ten benches, but adds that these have been used by sixty boys who take manual training. A school system which can be as efficient as that in time of peace may naturally be expected to state, as it does in response to a recent inquiry: "Our instructor has been on the job all summer, helping especially where the boys and girls are working on the farms or have gardens. He has also organized canning and drying clubs and is giving instruction to different groups of boys."

The university which has extension courses in time of peace naturally has war extension courses. The prominent business man of Massachusetts who for years interested himself in state Y.M.C.A. work would naturally be expected to enlist, as he has, for Y.M.C.A. work in France. Now if the college or institution or individual serves in time of need because of a habit of serving, might it not be equally true that a somnolent individual or school, if once stirred to service, might through such service learn always to serve?

At this time the government of the United States is going to learn how to become efficient. The state colleges of agriculture are testing their former efficiency,—the test being the power to serve. Schools may now learn what it means to be efficient by the service which they may now render. Not an activity is proposed nor a principle of educational practice given in the chapters which follow but should be brought into our schools in times of peace.

We are going to sew now for the Red Cross because it is war time. Later we shall sew for institutions in our community. Now we are going to develop part-time schools because industry needs boys. Later we shall have coöperative courses because boys at work need further schooling. Now we are placing city boys on farms because the farmers need labor. Later we shall place farms on the minds of boys because youth needs contact with nature. Now we have current-events discussions about loans, submarines, aëroplanes, and I. W. W.'s because the government needs support. Later we shall teach the meaning of the same things because thoughtfully trained people are needed by the government. Now we are to teach patriotism and thrift because the nation needs them. Later we shall teach them because they are essential in themselves.

Now we have extension courses in economical cooking for adult women as a war measure. Later we shall have it as a home measure. Now we are bringing adult women into the schools to receive instruction with their children. Later we shall do the same thing because it is the only sensible procedure under any and all conditions. Now we think in terms of reëducation of disabled soldiers because of the immediate need of helping these honored men. Later we shall turn what we have learned to do for these men into better provisions for making self-supporting our crippled and blinded children who are now in dependent institutions being made still more dependent by the very nature of the poor apology for vocational training which is given them. Now we have clearly before us the need for industrial education because the government is crying for workers. Later we shall see the need for industrial education because those who are to work in the industries need it. Now we hold a child-labor law before youth tempted by industry. Later we shall endeavor to hold before youth better opportunities for vocational, physical, and mental training in our schools as an inducement to stay in them.

What are the schools and colleges going to do about it all? Certainly they will not intentionally injure the cause of education by starting ill-developed ideas of war service. But the desire to avoid the bad should not by any means imply inaction. This is the psychological moment for all of us to justify our very existence as individuals or as parts of an institution or a movement. One could only pity a school man who recently said: "Really, I am envious of some of my colleagues. They have something to do at this time, while the subject which I am teaching can make no contribution."

There has never been a time in our school life when taxpayers, boards of apportionment, women's clubs, state granges, boards of trade, could be made more interested in having the schools broaden out along lines of continuation-school and part-time work, differentiated courses in our high schools, physical-training courses, evening courses for adult illiterates, thrift measures and school savings, teaching of current events, more practical science work, teaching of agriculture, unit courses in household arts, and a score of other things which the school men of America say they want and which they are always saying "the public will not stand for."

Shall we let the golden opportunity for enrichment pass until after the war, when cities will most certainly preach and practice poverty?

Now is the time to evaluate our school subjects, to bring in the new if they are worth while, to scrap the old if they do not stand the test of national needs. If a community will not "stand for" cooking when the H. C. L. rises like a specter before our doors, it will never vote for household arts after the war. If a city school favorably located near the open country will not now extend its educational program to include community gardening when prices of farm products are excessive, it will hardly broaden out when the crisis of our material needs is over. If a state will not line up with the Federal Board of Vocational Education for national aid for its vocational schools when its industries are crying for trained youth, it will never move forward in time of a normal demand. If we do not reorganize our schools to bring in the best while we may, we shall in all probability be required in the near future to discard some things which we have, without having any opportunity to develop the new things which we have stated in our conventions and teachers' institutes that we earnestly desire. World conditions challenge our schools. What is their program?

CHAPTER II
WAR AND COMMUNITY USES OF OUR SCHOOLS

An evaluating test for each of our school subjects has at last been found. The test is the capacity of the subject to respond to a national need or a national ideal. In many instances of the countries concerned in this great war the schools as a whole have amply justified their existence, and many of the subjects taught have stood through this world emergency the acid test of meeting national needs. The scientific and efficiency spirit of Germany is reflected in the posters spread over Berlin: "Send your cherry, peach, and plum seeds to the schoolhouse with your children," seeds being used for making fat and oil. The spirit of France has been reflected, as will be seen in the following pages, in the work of the teachers and the children for the preservation of that wonderful nationalism of France. The schools of England are reshaping themselves—in fact, are being remade—as a result of the shortcomings set forth by the war.

The schools of America are to go forward. Patriotism now has a new meaning. The principal from his school platform has opportunity for announcements and talks other than those dealing with routine matters. The cooking teacher has opportunity to develop new recipes adapted to present needs. The teacher of history may redraw almost every day the map of Europe. The teacher of manual training may substitute problems in concrete for those requiring high-priced wood materials. The school buildings near soldiers' camps may, like the Washington (D. C.) buildings, be opened for educational purposes for soldiers, that they may take up general or special educational work. Teachers of English may have their pupils study President Wilson's messages of state as models of English composition and expressions of American democracy.

The opportunity is before the schools and the children. There are in our school system three elements which may be of use in war: the building itself with its equipment, the school population of boy and girl power, and the teaching force.

In England, during the first year of the war, all three were called into requisition. Within a few months over 1000 school buildings were in temporary military use, and even on August 1, 1916, 180 elementary- and 20 secondary-school buildings were still occupied for war work,—for hospitals, billeting of troops, housing of munition workers, etc.,—the number of children displaced being 129,855. In many cases the use was expected to be temporary, but many buildings have been retained permanently. The children whose schooling was thus interrupted, when too young for employment, generally drifted aimlessly into juvenile delinquency, while those older, although below the established employment age, went to farms and munition factories. That is, the taking away of the school building was concomitant with the suspension of restrictions on age of employment and hours of labor. The children of the prosperous class were likewise affected by the departure of over 50 per cent of the teachers for military service.

These many interruptions in the carrying on of educational work were the result of the short-war fallacy; they were emergency measures adopted to meet a condition which it was generally supposed would last but a few months. When, however, it was realized by statesmen and the public that the interference with education and the suspension of laws regulating employment were resulting in irreparable injury to health and morals of an employed child population under 13 years of age of 150,000, and an idle younger population variously estimated at from 200,000 to 300,000, corrective measures were adopted. American schools must learn from English experience what to avoid. There are many legitimate uses of schools which England is now employing; and the warnings of interested English educators should keep our legislatures and municipalities from breaking down the compulsory-education laws or converting our schools into industrial plants. Our aim, as previously stated, should be to bring the war to the school curriculum for educational purposes, not to take the schools into the war, losing sight of their definite function.

In France, at the outbreak of the war, many of the school buildings were requisitioned, and 30,000 teachers were called to the colors. The hardship to the young resulting from this patriotic sacrifice was met as far as possible by the generosity of private citizens who gave rooms or buildings for classes, and by professional men, too old for service, who volunteered to carry on the work of teaching. France was swift to realize that education must be carried on at all costs. In districts near the fighting line schools were of necessity transformed into hospitals, often with a staff of women teachers temporarily acting as nurses and attendants; but it has been the policy of the department of public instruction to regard this service as temporary, and the teachers as conscripted for education.

The trying circumstances under which the schools have been carried on, serving nobly during the term after hours and during vacations, make their achievements a record of honor. In the country districts where all the local officials were mobilized, the teacher became the sole agent of government, making out passports, requisitions, relief lists, etc., procuring food, operating a public kitchen, acting as postmaster, doing guard duty, and rendering numberless other services to the community. One of the first tasks of the primary schools was to undertake entire care of children left without adequate protection. In country districts the teachers were, in default of newspapers, the dispensers of official information, explaining government loans and giving talks on the progress of the war. Thus the entire village was brought into the schoolhouse, which became the real center of the community.

In the United States and Canada the schools may well copy some of the measures initiated in Europe. That we are 3000 miles from the actual battleground ought, for the present, to keep us from considering any lowering of educational bars or from converting our buildings into purposes other than educational. Europe advises us that such transformation is of an emergency nature and only to be made under stress of an invasion.

It is the purpose of this chapter to consider some general uses of our buildings, our equipment (including the teaching force), and the activities of our pupils, which have been made in the past two or three years, excluding and reserving for the most part for later discussion the introduction of war work in manual-training, domestic-arts, and domestic-science courses, and the part-time agricultural labor.

An important use of our schools, and one which should be made more general throughout the country, is that of a distributing center for government pamphlets, information cards, etc. In New York City the various welfare committees appointed by Mayor Mitchel designated the public schools as mediums through which to circulate papers on "safety first," fire prevention, uses of various food products, etc., and thus reach the families of the vast foreign population through their children. The city's pledges of national loyalty to be signed by adults were circulated by the pupils shortly after the declaration of war. Wider publicity can be given to federal regulations, tax measures, employment modifications, etc., by the distribution of notices to pupils of upper grades, following the explanation by the teacher. While our people as a whole read, though hastily, the newspapers morning and evening, and may find in them all governmental measures, it is nevertheless true that we shall be assured of a wider distribution of information by using the pupil as the carrier of it to the home. In England the schools, as well as the Boy Scouts organization, have served as national distributing agencies for war-office notices, Parliamentary information, and agricultural propaganda.

A portion of a letter from Sir Robert Blair, chairman of the Education Committee of the London County Council, to Superintendent Maxwell of New York City, in May, 1917, calls attention to the service of the schools in this connection.

War has come upon us so unexpectedly that our people not only did not understand the true position but on the whole knew very little about the causes which had led to the outbreak. The public press, bookstalls, and the public libraries were considerably augmented by books and pamphlets on the subject, and it was a natural prompting that gave rise to the issue to the schools of a considerable number of documents, memoranda, and pamphlets. These circulars and pamphlets were mostly all issued within the first year of the war. The first phase of the pamphlets is historical, while the second became economical. The economical phase in its first stages was concentrated on war savings for the purpose of war loans and in anticipation, by the provision of "nest eggs," of the dislocation that might occur at the end of the war. In its later stages—within the last six months—the economical phase has been directed chiefly to economy in food, owing to the menace of the submarine campaign.

A further use of the school population in hours outside the daily session is that of giving help in taking a census. In England school teachers and pupils did most of the work of compiling the National Register, a card census of inhabitants. To some extent similar work has been done in the United States, such as the taking of the agricultural census in fifty-six counties (no census was taken for the counties of Hamilton, Kings, Queens, Richmond, and New York) in the state of New York in April, 1917. Under the joint auspices of the State Food Supply Commission and the State Education Department a survey was ordered of the agricultural resources of the state and of the requirements for increased production, the details of which were worked out at Ithaca at the State College of Agriculture. Through the appointed county enumerators, instructions were transmitted to the various school districts.

The actual work of this census was begun in most counties on April 23, the records being practically all obtained by April 25, the teachers and pupils in each district, assisted when necessary by other persons, procuring the original facts from farmers and making the summaries for their school districts. From these records the state was within ten days furnished with the complete amount of seed and live stock wanted by farmers and for sale by farmers; with the statements of the transportation difficulties; with the itemized needs of labor, fertilizer, and spray materials; and with the complete enumeration of the state,—people, land, and live stock.

Such work by pupils might well become an established yearly activity. The practice of gathering and tabulating information has an obvious arithmetical value; and the interest developed in investigating the resources of the community has an educational significance which should keep us from limiting it to emergency periods.

The comparative table on page 26 (one of thirteen developed out of the census) not only illustrates facts which the children obtained, but also shows the magnitude of the work they undertook.

One of the best community uses of the school is as a center for instruction in conserving food products. With the absolute shortage of the world's food supply, Americans must anticipate this shortage in coming seasons and revert to the preserving methods of their grandparents,—measures fallen into disuse in crowded cities because of lack of storage room and the ease with which the fresh products have been obtained, whatever the season.

ACRES OF CROPS IN 56 COUNTIES IN NEW YORK WITH COMPARISONS FOR THE SAME COUNTIES IN 1909

Even villages which have no gas supply may follow the example of cities and towns in using the school kitchen, already installed as part of a domestic-science equipment or newly supplied by popular subscription, as a community canning center. Certainly schools are as well adapted for the purpose as department stores and Young Women's Christian Associations, which have been leaders in the movement.

The teaching of methods of preserving is primarily the function of a school, and every suitable school building should be employed for it. The old-fashioned preserving meant time, drudgery, expense, quantities of sugar, and doubtful results. A demonstration of the newer methods and the opportunity for community canning should be given by the school to the neighborhood. Community canning induces a far more effective conservation of food than is possible for the individual kitchen. Few households can afford to buy and store the vast kettles, the perfected drying and dehydrating ovens, which can be included in the equipment of a school teaching the scientific preserving of food and vegetables. As this is done almost wholly in the summer, it would not interfere with the term's work of the pupils and, in fact, offers the high-school girls an excellent opportunity to assist in civic service of a most practical nature. In the summer of 1917 Seattle maintained 20 centers for home-economics teaching for adult women, the government bulletin "How to Select Food" being used as a textbook.

There have been wholesome experiments in community canning in Lakewood, and in Bernards Township, New Jersey. In the latter in each school was an experienced teacher to supervise the work of preserving performed by high-school girls of the neighborhood, the fruits and vegetables being sold by the townspeople to the school or brought by them to be conserved by coöperative canning for their own use in the future. This service of the girls was on an equality with that of the boys who belonged to the agricultural army. In Kansas City the surplus garden products canned by schoolgirls were used for the school lunches.

England's schools now have "open days" on which parents may be admitted to receive the instruction given to the children in the economical cooking of the food which the food controller's instructions show is likely to be available for general consumption; also (quoting from a letter from Sir Robert Blair of the London County Council, May 30, 1917) the responsible mistresses of the evening schools and the domestic-economy staff employed in these schools are organizing traveling kitchens in 29 boroughs within the county. These traveling kitchens form practically a demonstration set of apparatus by which the simplest forms of cookery can be shown to 100 or 200 people. The demonstrations are well attended, and the people in small villages thus have the opportunity of those in larger settlements to learn from experts methods of making palatable the food products less well understood.

It may be urged that community canning has its place outside cities of the first class. New York City certainly cannot be held to be the center of an agricultural district, and yet valuable experiments in food conservation are being made there. One is concerned primarily with the prevention of waste. Of the thousands of pounds of perishable vegetables and fruit which are brought each day to the produce piers, much is prohibited from being sold to retailers because of injuries received in transportation. When more than 20 per cent has been injured, it has not paid wholesalers to salvage the uninjured portion. As a result, a ruinous quantity of produce has gone to waste, often being dumped in the harbor for want of better disposal. The loss as estimated by the board of health has been 225,000 pounds a week.

To save this food by making quick use of it, in July, 1917, Mayor Mitchel's Committee of Women on National Defense opened a conservation kitchen in a disused school building in the Williamsburg Bridge section. Here the uncertain quantity of vegetables salvaged from the produce piers was brought to the school, picked over, and sterilized, partly by paid labor, partly by the volunteer labor of members of the Women's University Club and other organizations, or city women who were willing to contribute their labor in the cause of food saving. This work was aided by the State Food Supply Commission and New York's board of health, one of whose inspectors passed judgment on the food used in the canning and drying experiments. The salvaged food was brought from the piers to the kitchens by Boy Scouts, ubiquitously useful in any public undertaking. If it had not been that the kitchen was opened in vacation, the school population would have had its share of work to do. To this kitchen any woman might go to be taught processes or actually to can produce.

While it was not possible to use all the produce brought in, even by keeping the kitchen as full of workers as space would allow and cooking as much as 480 gallons of food at a time, the work in this old school building is illustrative of what can be done in community centers to eliminate waste, and is a vital example of the efficient use of a school building in vacation. The cost in this case was met by special contributions of organizations and individuals. But in smaller places this work might be maintained by the town itself on a less elaborate scale. Such work should not be limited to the war period. It is a practical and efficient plan for all time.

The continued war will undoubtedly increase not only the price but the scarcity of cotton and woolen goods. Where it has hitherto not paid to make over clothing repeatedly because of the cheapness and ease with which new garments and children's wear have been procured, it is now important to understand thrifty saving of all kinds of fabrics and apparel.

Home-economics women of Berkeley, California, aided in collecting and making over old clothing. In Portland, Oregon, a cleaner and dyer took as his bit of service the cleaning and disinfecting of all the clothing which was remade by the school children.

In England's county schools there have been held exhibitions of thrift, to show children when and how economies can be practiced. Some of the examples shown under the heading of "Utilization of Waste Material" were as follows: old linen collars and cuffs made into baggage labels, window cleaners made from pieces of old gloves, house slippers made from old felt hats, mops made of bits of rags fastened to a nail. Ways were shown of making use of scraps of wool left over from knitting, the wasting of an inch of wool being regarded as treasonable in the country's shortage; methods of refooting stockings were also displayed, as well as many uses for pieces of worn table and bed linen and old carpets.

In times of normal plenty such exhibitions would not attract attention, but no greater evidence of the reduced state of a nation at war can be had than the seriousness with which these exhibitions of household thrift have been viewed by the population. A clipping from a newspaper of rural England requests that children go into the pastures and pick from the bushes the bits of wool which the sheep have rubbed off.

For several years, at least, there will be high prices and scarcity of materials. Our children must be taught the necessity of preventing waste of fabrics as well as of food. Millions of dollars worth of cotton and wool have been destroyed in military and munition use. But it is not only because war conditions have made material scarce and high that thrift in their use must be insisted upon in every household; we must remember that billions of dollars will be required to pay for this war and each household will be required to make its contribution. Expenditures in every direction must be curbed and the wise disposition of every dollar must be made. A year or so ago the Bankers Association of America launched a campaign for thrift teaching. We were then told that, as individuals, we must save for the future. The present high cost of living shows that we are obliged to save in the present in order to live in the present, but the future will tell us to save in order that we, as a nation, may pay for the war.

Old-fashioned methods of preserving must again prevail. There is educational value in community conservation. Montclair (New Jersey) boys made community evaporators, having a capacity of from five to eight bushels of fruit a day, at a cost of only $10.

A mowing machine is a problem in high-school mechanics, and these farm cadets of New York State see, perhaps for the first time, a use for it.

A day's outing for a purpose. Albany and Troy (New York) orphan-asylum boys on their way to "do their bit" in the currant fields.

A lesson in service geography. Boys from Albany and Troy (New York) picking currants, near Hudson (New York), which were preserved in Yonkers Trades School for shipment to France.

Many community services may be rendered during the war by the principal of a school. He may, as has been done, organize patriotic meetings, enlisting the aid of the churches and arousing the interest of chambers of commerce, civic clubs, and women's clubs in the Red Cross, the Liberty Loan, and school war gardens. His assembly exercises may be made vital through talks to the pupils on opportunities for war service; through platform recognition of boys and girls rendering special farm, garden, Red Cross, and food-conservation help; by placing on a conspicuous bulletin a roll of honor of graduates and students engaged in such work; by keeping the school in touch with graduates who are enlisted in the army and navy by reading their letters to the school and sending school packets to them. He may advise economy in the use of foods and clothing, the elimination of expenditures in soda water, ice cream, and gum, and the sacrifice of pleasure for national ends. He may urge the use of savings in the purchase of government bonds and war-savings certificates. Where the school has been raising money for pictures or a phonograph, he may suggest that the funds raised be used for the purchase of one or more government bonds, to be held by the school as an asset until the close of the war, when the bond may be sold and the money used for its original purpose of buying the phonograph or pictures. In the case of some private secondary schools, and large public schools like the Washington Irving and DeWitt Clinton high schools, New York, the pupils and teachers have subscribed money and given entertainments for the purchase of an ambulance, the gift of the school to the American Expeditionary Force. In one New York City school, through the efforts of a student organization, Liberty Loan bonds to the amount of $479,800 were sold.

The principal in country districts should make himself fully informed of the details of the federal farm-loan plan, the sources of available seed supply, the posters and bulletins of nation and state regarding the mobilization of schools and colleges, and, of course, he should be especially active in encouraging the home-garden projects.

A correspondent in the London Times, June 14, 1917, writing of that indispensable teaching of thrift in household affairs, of making the present generation of young girls intelligently self-sufficient in domestic and industrial life, cries, "This brings us to the crux of the whole situation: Who shall teach the teachers?" The government and state bulletins on food production and conservation, the literature sent out by state councils of defense and public safety on improved methods of preserving, the pronouncements by banking houses on thrift measures and means of attaining them, the Boy Scouts, Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A. leaflets on war gardens and food economies are, in America, beginning to answer this question.

Assuredly the war places an additional burden on the teachers and gives them a new opportunity for educating the pupils. A teacher does not have to belong to the department of domestic arts and science to organize Red Cross circles nor to instruct girls in food conservation. A ten-minute talk each morning by teacher or pupils, before the opening of school, with discussion on such topics as "Why a man with a hundred dollars to invest should buy a Liberty Bond," "New occupations open to women because of the war," "The reason for the scarcity of certain products," "Home substitutes for various manufactured necessities," and many others suggested by new conditions should be very helpful.

An unusually significant experiment known as the "War Savings" movement has been made in English schools. On May 5, 1916, the Board of Education issued a circular asking for the assistance of local education authorities in making known through public elementary schools the facilities afforded by the issue of War Savings certificates. Then, with the coöperation of these authorities and teachers, special lessons were given on the subject, and copies of a leaflet explaining the purpose of the War Savings Association were widely distributed to the parents through their children. As a result a large number of War Savings associations were formed in direct connection with the schools. The success of the movement is evident from the records given in the report of the Board of Education for 1915-1916. In one populous midland county the great majority of the schools have established associations; in another, a northern county, some 70 per cent of the schools have taken part and record nearly 10,000 subscribers. In one midland town a school of about 1400 children purchased certificates to the value of £585 in three months. But it is not only in large schools that the pupils have contributed generously; a remote little school in a northern county, with only 10 children on its register, has 10 subscribers to its credit and has saved £35, buying 43 certificates.

In view of the fact that successive issues of bonds must be made by the United States and other governments of the world, this method of making subscription to the war loan popular is worthy of attention. The public schools have, as never before, the opportunity of showing the practical value of investing, in peace as well as in war time, in government and other bonds. Pupils should realize the difference between money invested in a way to be beneficial not only to the investor but to his state and country, and money invested in ordinary channels.

New York State teachers had an opportunity similar to those of England. The Regents of the University of the state of New York gave formal approval of a plan by which teachers throughout the public schools of the state could aid the Liberty Loan committee of the Federal Reserve Bank in giving instruction and information about the second Liberty Loan. A special committee was appointed by the Board of Regents to act in a supervisory capacity to keep the State Education Department in touch with the large financial interests conducting the loan. The secretary to Commissioner Finley, as the representative of the Regents and the State Education Department, was assigned for temporary services in the office of the Loan committee.

The program in brief was to have the teachers act as agents for subscriptions for the Liberty Loan. They distributed blanks to pupils in the school, who in turn took them to their parents. They were encouraged to subscribe themselves. They did not handle any money or checks, but turned the subscription blanks over to the local bank, which was, of course, in direct touch with the Loan committee in New York City.

A primer of instruction for teachers was prepared in the simplest possible terms. As published by the Publicity Bureau of the United States Treasury Department it was called "A Source Book of the Second Liberty Loan." This primer explained in detail the nature of the bonds, their security, and the terms and prices; it described the nature of bond markets in general, the sources from which interest is paid, the previous records of United States bonds, and all other matter which was of value in elementary financial instruction. It was all set forth in a way which was very helpful not only in assisting in the sale of bonds but in the larger sense of furthering instruction in bonds, interest, discounts, etc., in connection with work in arithmetic. And in what better way could arithmetical instruction be furthered?

It is highly probable that this plan of informing the public relative to government issues of bonds and certificates, initiated in New York, will extend to all parts of the country in connection with the next Loan campaign.

How the responsibility of the teacher has been met in France is in part suggestive. The teachers have collected large funds to finance the enterprise of caring for thousands of families of Belgian and French refugees. They also collected from the civilian population several millions of francs, the teachers taxing themselves according to a fixed schedule. They have been especially successful in bringing to light for investment stores of hidden gold in the homes of provincial savers. Surprising results have been attained through their persistent, methodical propaganda. In one large provincial town, after a talk to the older pupils by the mistress of the school, in four days an amount equal to 7200 francs was brought in. In the same school the following composition was given out to the pupils as part of an admission examination in penmanship.

THE GOLD OF FRANCE[1]

France has need of its gold to defend its invaded territory. It is a sacred duty for every French man and woman, rich or poor, to send to the coffers of the State the hundreds of louis from their strong boxes, the few louis hidden in the linen chest at home, even the single louis in the children's toy bank. To keep in one's own possession, selfishly, the money which could serve our dear France is a crime against patriotism. So, little girls, do not hesitate to break open your banks, even if they have only a half louis inside, and gladly take in exchange the note which the Bank of France will give you. More than that, in your vacation in the country, set yourselves to get grandmother to empty her stocking,—she is sometimes rather stingy with her money. But you know well enough how to coax those who love you when you want a toy, or ornament, or bonbons. Use your influence with your grandparents now, so that they will bring into the public treasury the gold of France. In this way you will have contributed to the coming victory that we are all hoping for, you will have helped our brave soldiers to clear away the German whose presence defiles our land. Go, then, all of you! Hunt out all the money that is lying idle. It is for France!

Thus the schools have worked to bring to light the hoarded gold of thrifty peasants for investment in the national loan.

Tangible as this service of the teachers has been to France, of greater importance has been their work of making clear to the villages the cause of France. In November, 1914, the Department of Public Instruction sent out an appeal to the professional and volunteer teachers in the secondary schools, saying that the schools must adapt their program to the duties and needs created by the hostilities.

The teachers will do their best to make the schools serve in the national defense. In the evenings the old men, the youths, and the women will gather together, and the teachers will tell them the news, explain things that happen, speak to them of patriotism, and read to them from our writers whose pages are inspired with the glorious deeds of our history past and present.

It is reported that in the girls' schools in France war has changed the whole aspect of education. History, geography, lectures on literature, subjects for literary composition or moral instruction,—in fact everything,—is treated from the point of view of country and of patriotic duty. In music practically nothing is sung but the "Marseillaise," the "Chant du Depart," and the national songs of the Allies. Reading is confined often to official military orders and reports, while drawings are usually of war material or characters.

It is no less the duty of our teachers to make clear to their pupils the "cause" of America. Soon after the opening of the European war a United States senator traveled through the belligerent countries. His articles on Europe at war commented caustically on the ignorance of the English working people of the cause of the war, and of the purpose for which the Allies were fighting. An article on America at war could truthfully contain like criticism of a considerable portion of our population.

Shortly after the United States entered the war a teacher in one of our largest city high schools, where a large proportion of the pupils are of either foreign birth or foreign parentage, asked 200 pupils of from 14 to 18 years to write a brief statement of what they considered to be the cause of America's entrance into the war. While these answers covered an incredible range of inaccuracy, not one showed an understanding of the events which led to the declaration of April, 1917. "Congress has declared war so that the rich folks can get richer," "We are at war because this is a rich man's country," predominated as replies. When asked what a citizen owed his country in return for political and religious freedom, students replied in as vague and cynical a way as to the first question.

To combat this ignorance of national motives the teacher distributed copies of President Wilson's address of April 2, with the ostensible purpose of analyzing it as an exercise in argument and exposition,—a study which finally resulted in enabling these students to make intelligent, if occasionally unsympathetic, answers to questions regarding the nation's action and policy.

Now to residents of favored parts of the country where the population is English speaking and largely American born, inheriting American ideals and traditions, the ignorance of these high-school pupils seems exceptional, but educators know from experiments made in colleges and secondary institutions that the majority of students are not intelligent on modern events of national significance, any more than is the average worker. Nearly all high schools have in their curriculum the study of current events, whether in history or oral English courses. It is the duty of the teacher to use the study in such a manner as to obtain a patriotic reaction to the topics presented and discussed, and in this manner to make clear why we are fighting and what we are fighting for.

Out of this war we must obtain a new spirit of patriotism. Now is the time to strike. Events depicted in the daily press show how great is the need. In this connection the Council of Defense of Connecticut, in an effective campaign working through the schools, states in a recent publication:

The war is bound to have a deep influence on American life and thought, and we should be watchful to direct this into right channels. The country is shot through and through with the one-sided philosophy that the State is an institution to be leaned upon and filched from, but not to be served. The schools should train the children in the fundamental contract between citizen and State. The idea of mutuality should be developed. The State owes duties to the citizen, but the citizen owes reciprocal duties to the State.

In September, 1914, as soon after the declaration of war as military and agricultural conditions would permit the schools to open, the French Minister of Public Instruction sent an official circular to all of the schools. He stated that the first lesson in every school should be devoted to France: to its present danger and its heroic resistance; to the ideals of humanity and justice for which she fought; to the memory of the valor of her soldiers; to the justice of her cause. He desired to make certain at the earliest possible moment that every school child in France take his part spiritually and intellectually in the epic conflict which France was waging for right and justice.

His decree outlining the first lesson for every child of France expresses so clearly the French attitude and feeling that the following free rendering of the circular letter is well worth reading.

The lycées, colleges, and public schools are about to open everywhere except where the superior need of improvised hospitals in school buildings caring for our glorious wounded renders this impossible.

I decree that on the opening day in every city and in every class the first words of the teacher to the pupils shall be designed to bring the hearts of the pupils into accord with the sacred struggle in which our armies are engaged.

Throughout the entire country at the same hour the sons of France shall pay respect to the spirit of their nation and shall pay tribute to the heroism of those who are pouring out their blood for liberty, justice, and human right.

The words of the teachers on this occasion should be simple and to the point. They should be adapted to the age of their hearers, some of whom are children, some youths. Each of our schools has sent its quota of combatants to the firing line,—professors, teachers, or pupils; the words of the teacher to the class should call forth the noble remembrance of the dead, in order to exalt their example and engrave it forever in the memory of the children. Moreover, in its broad lines, calmly, clearly, they should tell the causes of the war,—the aggression without excuse,—and how before the civilized world, France, eternal champion of progress and right, has been compelled to prepare herself, with her valiant allies, to repel the assault of the modern barbarians.

The furious conflict which we are carrying insistently to victory adds each day to the glory of our soldiers a thousand deeds of heroism from which the teacher may take the best part of this lesson. He should prefer these supreme models of action to the vain repetition of phrases, in order to make a fit impression on the minds of the children.

A vivid recollection of this first school hour ought to remain imprinted forever in the spirit of the pupil, who is the citizen of to-morrow. The teacher who has known how to make this impression will remain worthy of the confidence of the republic.

America too will have its lesson sheets, and a most timely one on "Lessons of the Great War in the Classroom" has been prepared for teachers of history by the National Board for Historical Service (Washington, D.C.) with the distinct purpose of suggesting certain aspects of history, ancient and modern, which have gained a new interest in the light of the great war. The following excerpts are extremely suggestive of special opportunities and obligations for teachers in school service:

There is the duty of keeping, for teacher and for pupil, the habit of at least trying to see things as they really were and are.... Every great war is fought not merely by armies and navies, but by the governments at home which direct the fighting forces.... No one can take an intelligent part in a great conflict for the safety of democracy under an orderly system of international law unless he is really interested in and knows something about other nations than his own.... There is some connection between the conditions which made the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates one of the great seats of ancient civilization and those which are making Mesopotamia to-day one of the chief theaters of the great war.... This terrible catastrophe, with its wholesale destruction of the finest products of human civilization, its life and death struggle between opposing nations and opposing ideals, has seemed a reason for thinking not less but more of the great mysterious forces which brought about the rise and decline of the ancient empire.... Great campaigns are again carried on where Xenophon marched with his famous Ten Thousand, where Alexander the Great led his armies to the conquest of the East.... The opportunity must now be seized to study the whole of Europe and its influence on and connections with the rest of the world.... Some account should be given of the way in which the ruling class in Prussia has been able to use science, modern business methods, and social legislation in the service of the military state.... War is the business not only of governments but of the nation as a whole, and there are few kinds of human activity which do not have some relation to its success or failure.... We are fighting partly, indeed, to defend international law on the high seas, but partly also to make the world, not merely America, "safe for democracy."

Teachers are recognized as the instructing force of America. If they are not, who is? If the country sorely needs clear, definite, authentic information on the situation of the world and our own position as a belligerent power, who is to give it if not the teachers? It is they who must inform and arouse. It is they who ought to participate in a speaking campaign which should be as deep as the danger, as wide as the country, and as high as the patriotic spirit of the people. They should be distributing agents for printed material which analyzes the subject, and should be able to refer to the best and most available authorities and to put before pupils and the public the texts of the most important speeches, diplomatic notes, and other approved material to back up statements of fact.

Strange as it may seem, it is the children's convictions which take effect not only when as children they carry word to their parents but also when they come out of childhood into adult life.

Was the boy in the New York high school right when he said, "It is a Wall Street war"? Are our enemies justified in charging us with the same motives of self-interest and the abasement of other nations which animated themselves? Are we really at war for conquest or seizure, or for the benefit of commerce, or for defense against aggressions that have not yet been made? And is it a dollar war for bankers and ammunition makers?

It is to answer these and other questions that a systematic effort to inform and arouse the American people should be taken up and carried into effect by public-school teachers, having in mind that the most effective and most important work may be done in the classroom in connection with lessons in civics and history. To wait for textbooks on the present European war is to wait until it is over. To wait to put the study of the present war into a course of study in its chronological sequence is to wait until the next generation of children come upon the stage. No, now is the time for our schools to include the teaching of the war and to discuss officially proposed peace plans, when the street is alive with soldiers, when the newspapers display huge headlines and the bill-boards are covered with recruiting posters, when magazines furnish helpful material for teachers, and when the whole world is charged with feeling.

The National Security League (New York City) has outlined a plan for public addresses and lectures, and it has printed a little book entitled "Wake Up, America." The following topics have been selected from an outline furnished by this league:

Foreign military systems and international relations.

Spirit of the American people as shown in our history of liberty and democracy.

Causes of the war between the United States and Central Powers.

First two and one-half years of the war in relation to the principles of the foreign policy of the United States.

Universal military training and service as now provided by Congress.

Organization and work of the army and navy: selection; supplying needs.

General military preparations in the country at large: materials, transportation, and public finance.

Duty of the citizen in relation to obligations of all citizens as an offset to benefits of citizenship.

Service outside of military and naval; as, for example, the munition work, transportation, building of ships and machinery, farming, etc.

Faithfulness of foreign-born citizens.

Need of efficiency and economy in local, municipal, and state governments.

Description of modern warfare as defining the immediate task of the American people in regard to organization and action of the various services; as, for example, men in the trenches, health protection, Red Cross, etc.

Accessories; for instance, patriotic music and recitations, flag marches, and parades.

Illustrative material, such as maps and charts illustrating the problems of recruiting; slides and movies; posters in public places; exhibitions of foreign posters.

These topics as outlined here are not sufficiently related to the actual conflict. They are excellent from the formal point of view, but they fail to get at the center of living interest in the vital present moment of history. Often when it has been asked of the children in France: "What are you studying?" "What are they teaching you?" the answer has been: "The war, madam." "The war, monsieur." And if the question was taken up with the teacher, the answer has been:

By means of our war map on which is marked the present position of the French and German troops, the particular spot in the line in which the parents of our boys and girls are fighting, we teach not only current history, but in the most vital way geography and many related subjects.

By means of our use of great contemporary political documents, by the speeches of Viviani, Deschanel, Ribot, and the other statesmen, by the famous orders of Joffre, Pétain, and our military leaders, by the interpretation of the war by our great philosophers,—we teach in the most vital way the need of the country, the ideals of France, and much of the history of France. By reason of the war work instituted in every school as part of the regular curriculum, we teach commercial geography, economics, and many branches of science as they are actually related to human life and experience, and not in the abstract manner in which they are treated in the textbooks.

Mr. Albert Sarraut, Minister of Public Instruction in France in 1914-1915, said in a public address:

If there remains in the schools of France a single teacher who has not been profoundly touched by the war and who goes about his usual occupation of teaching in the same way that he did prior to August 2, 1914, teaching the same subjects in the same way, doing only the ordinary, familiar school tasks, whose work has not been entirely transformed and inspired by the war, we have yet to hear of him or her, and we do not believe that such exists.

It is inevitable that many of our school subjects will change their emphasis after the war. To some teachers the awakening will be cruel, to others a blessing in the form of new opportunity.

CHAPTER III
THE FIELD FOR INDUSTRIAL AND TRADE SCHOOLS

For ten years a group of men in America have been trying to convince Congress that we should set up a national program of secondary vocational education. As a precedent we have had a system of agricultural and mechanic-arts education of collegiate grade in existence for the last fifty years. But we have had in the past no system of national aid for promoting and maintaining a type of vocational education in agriculture, mechanic arts, and home-making, which would reach a much larger clientele than could possibly be touched through any land-grant college system. It has been an up-hill fight to get Congress to see the importance of providing vocational education for industrial workers. Bill after bill was introduced providing for national aid. These bills defined vocational education as including all types of industrial, commercial, agricultural, and home-making schools, between the upper grammar grades and the college, whose controlling purpose is to fit for specific profitable employments and which receive pupils 14 years of age and over.

President Wilson in his second inaugural message called the country's attention definitely to the fact that a vocational-education bill was before Congress and that it ought to receive favorable consideration, not only on the grounds of educational advantages contained in the bill, but also on the grounds that it fitted in with a national economic and industrial policy.

Perhaps the measure would have met the fate of its predecessors if war had not been declared. Friends of the measure feared lest discussion incident to national preparedness should overshadow the vocational-education bill, but fortunately Congress saw that vocational education and national preparedness were linked together, and the bill passed almost unanimously.

The full significance of the Smith-Hughes Bill, as it will always be known by those who worked for it, can hardly be appreciated. On the surface it merely creates a Federal Board of Vocational Education and provides that federal grants shall be made for the purpose of coöperating with the states in the promotion of industrial, agricultural, and home-making teaching. But if we scratch the surface we shall see that the federal money is not paid to local communities except after their work has been approved by a state board of control on the basis of this federal act, and the principles and policies which were adopted after conference between the Federal Board and the state boards of control. It furthermore limits federal aid to definite vocational training and eliminates all aid to any dilettante or superficial types of practical-arts education which do not meet the idea of preparing young persons over 14 years of age for useful and profitable employment in agriculture, in the trades, in industries, or in home economics. It has been stated in preceding chapters, and will be emphasized more than once in succeeding chapters, that the schools which are able to serve most effectively in time of war are the schools which are serving or may serve in times of peace. It has been and will again be shown that school methods usable in meeting a war emergency are the methods not only usable but desirable under normal conditions.

There is absolutely nothing in the following discussion of the field for war service for industrial and trade-school education which does not have its direct application in promoting and administering a national system of vocational education. Definite suggestions are given for organizing day-industrial, trade, part-time and continuation schools, evening vocational schools, trade classes, and off-time courses; for transferring the teaching equipment into the factory; for transferring the technical-supervision equipment of the factory to the school; and for making commercial products. It will be seen that the service of our industrial and trade schools differs from the service of the industrial and household-arts courses in the regular schools. A comparison of what is suggested for war service with what is required by the terms of the federal grant shows that the two are in accord. For example, the latter requires that all-day industrial schools must have at least half the time given over to the actual practice of a vocation on a useful or productive basis; that agricultural schools shall arrange for directed or supervised practice in agriculture either on a farm provided by the school or on other farms for at least six months a year; that part-time schools or classes must be established if the state and the community expect to receive the full benefits of the federal grant for the salaries of teachers of the trade, home-economics, and industrial subjects; and finally, that evening classes for industrial workers are provided in which the instruction is required to be supplemental to the daily employment. However, for the duration of the war, at least, the last requirement needs modification.

War preparedness undoubtedly influenced Congress to pass the Smith-Hughes Bill. War service of our vocational schools will undoubtedly influence the vocational-education movement along right lines more than anything else which could possibly have happened.

Industrial and trade schools stand ready to make their contribution for war service. Some rather unwisely, and certainly unthinkingly, sent telegrams to Washington, offering their equipment to the government. Others said that they would make ammunition. Still others announced that they would wait for the government to tell them what to do. In the early stages evidently most of them forgot that their chief, if not only, business must be, as it has been, that of training recruits for industry or giving trade extension work to those already in a chosen vocation.

Of course we are all aware that new tasks of stupendous proportions are being undertaken by the country as measures for national defense, and that while a large army is being recruited and trained, a still larger army is being drawn into industrial production to equip and support the army and navy directly on the lines of defense. We know that $600,000,000 has been appropriated for aëroplane construction; that from 50,000 to 100,000 shipbuilders are needed for our shipbuilding program; that tool-makers and gauge-makers are needed in large numbers; that the government military service will require large numbers of mechanics in its quartermaster's, engineering, signal, aviation, and navy corps.

In other words, there is convincing evidence that there are bound to be not only increased demands for labor but also changes in the relationship of labor demand and supply. There is going to be an enormous increase in the demand for specialist workers in metal, and considerable increase in the call for skilled all-round workers in metal; a material increase in the demand for woodworkers in shipyards; an increase in demand for workers in manufactured clothing and army equipment; a great increase in demand for electrical workers in all lines, including operators, field men, telephone and telegraph service. We know that there will be a demand for automobile mechanics, gas-engine operators, plumbers, horseshoers, wheelwrights, steam engineers, bakers, cement workers, and gas and steam fitters. It is probable that there will be a diminution in the demand for printers; for women in dressmaking, millinery, and novelty lines; for laborers on public works, including streets, sewers, water systems, public buildings, canals, and bridges.

In short, we know that the war emergency will create an extraordinary demand for some kinds of labor, attended by a probable diminution of demand for other kinds, and there will be occasion for much shifting of labor from one occupation to another. It is obvious, furthermore, that many readjustments must be made by public and private industrial and trade schools in these days of war pressure.

To determine what adjustments are most urgent, those in charge of these schools should go directly to the industries and confer as to what service is the most desired. It is practically useless to wait for industrial managers to come to the schools for help. In many cases they will not appreciate the fact that the schools can be of help. If, in times of peace, industry has hardly recognized the full possibilities of public vocational training, it is not likely that it would recognize it in the stress of increased production. Sir Robert Blair of London states that unless the educational staff of England had made it its business to satisfy the manufacturers that it could train semiskilled workers, the vocational-training shops would have been obliged to close soon after the war started. He states that in the earliest days of the work of these training shops, the manufacturers were indisposed to believe that industry had anything to learn from trade or technical schools. The manufacturers said that these schools were "academically right and practically wrong."

What industrial and trade schools can do for manufacturing plants will, of course, vary in each community. Each manufacturing center has its own sets of activities. Proper military authorities should be approached by administrators of industrial schools to determine what can be contributed toward providing the training which is needed. Letters to military authorities in Washington will not bear so much fruit as a personal visit to a local recruiting station, camp, or cantonment for definite advice as to how schools may best serve. It is expected, however, that the National Board of Vocational Education will be helpful with suggestive material.

At the present moment the most effective contact between the school that may give the training and the place that needs it can be brought about through coöperation either with cantonment authorities or with local manufacturing plants. Industrial and technical schools in England in the early days of the war formed connections with government arsenals and began the manufacture of gauges for shell-making, mostly of the inspection type. At first the technical institutes were very diffident about undertaking the work, the standard of skill required being so high; but after a few appeals on the ground that it was a great opportunity for trade education to show its value, the institutions started the work, so that there are now something like a dozen such schools working on the manufacture of these instruments. It is to be understood that the majority of the workers thus employed were metal workers before they took up this work. Others were manual-training teachers in the elementary schools. They have turned out approximately 50,000 inspection gauges, and it is the opinion in England that the trade institutes never undertook a better work.

In general terms the shortage of help in the industries is going to be met by training operatives selected from unskilled workers; by training foremen of those operatives who will be selected from the skilled help; and by training highly skilled specialists who will be selected from the workmen already skilled. The training plan in the New England Westinghouse plant will be interesting in this connection. In this ammunition plant 80 per cent of the workers are listed as operators, the majority of whom are trained from carefully selected unskilled labor. To train these operators skilled machinists are employed as instructors. One instructor is in charge of a group averaging about thirteen men. In other words, 7¹/₂ per cent of the force in the operating departments are on the instruction staff and known as foremen, linemen (set-up men), and instructors. Instruction is given incidentally in turning out the regular product. No equipment is set aside primarily for instruction purposes; any equipment in the plant may be thus used. This method of instruction is called the group-instructor plan, in which one instructor or foreman has charge of teaching a group of operators working on an assigned task. While under instruction the group is employed on regular production. The instructor is not required to produce, but gives his entire time to group teaching. In the tool-making department, men of mechanical ability, not necessarily all-round machinists, but in some instances from other trades, are trained in making jigs and fixtures. In these cases the ratio of instructors to workers is less than one to thirteen, the helper plan being used. The helper plan is that in which a skilled worker is employed in special work, such as tool-making or gauge-making, and has under him from one to three helpers. In this case the man who gives the training does not confine his entire efforts to instruction, but is required to work at his particular occupation. If satisfactory results are to be secured, only a very limited number of helpers can be assigned to one worker.

The industrial schools will prove to be a small factor in training operatives, in view of the fact that industry itself is able to train them quickly and satisfactorily. It takes only a few days to make a Polish farm hand of Connecticut into an ammunition worker in Bridgeport. Foremen and specialists may be trained through evening and day part-time courses. Of course it is assumed that these schools will have equipment requisite for training in the kind of work for which help is needed. The Springfield (Massachusetts) Vocational School expects to shift some of its pupils from house to ship carpentry in view of the new demand for men with a knowledge of shipbuilding,—a demand which will extend, undoubtedly, over a term of years.

At least, one way for a trade school to be of service and yet not purchase additional equipment is to lend its skilled instructors to a local manufacturing plant where an organized plan for training foremen and specialists exists. This has been done by the Quincy (Massachusetts) Industrial School, which coöperates in furnishing part of the instruction given in the Fore River shipbuilding plant. This company is giving instruction to a selected group of workers under pay for a full industrial day of ten hours. A night shift of training for eleven hours is also given to another group of men. Instructors are training an assigned group of operators on regular production and under usual employment conditions. Some part-time instruction in technical subjects, and in some cases on special operations, is also given to certain groups of selected workers while under employment in the plant. This plan has a significance worthy of attention after the war.

General Manager Smith of this company, at a conference of state administrators of vocational schools held the middle of July in New York City, made an interesting statement as to the need of trained help in the shipyards. A summary of his remarks follows:[2]

For shipbuilding purposes men trained in the building trades offer little advantage over intelligent untrained men, as the character of work in the shipbuilding industry is so different from that in the building trades.

However, industrial and trade schools can give preliminary and thorough instruction to ship-fitters and loftsmen. The course for the latter should include ship-drafting. More limited instruction can be given in other ironworkers' trades and in the shipwright trades.

Trained instructors are needed. Instructors may be employed in the plant and, if so, should have full power to instruct and should not be employed on production, as the best results in instruction can only be obtained by having the instructor concentrate his mind on his work.

Shipbuilding in the United States has been one of our smaller industries. If the present crisis is to be adequately met, the industry will be one of our most important ones.

Of the large amount of money to be spent in shipbuilding, practically one half will be expended on labor in the shipyard; the remainder is for material purchased from outside parties, but which at the works of such subcontractors is again largely labor. Of the labor expended in the shipyard about one third is for ironworkers, and it is in this trade that the greatest shortage occurs, as there is only a small percentage of men for the ironworkers' trade now to be found in this country.

In the past very little instruction in the specialized shipbuilding trades has been given in the United States, and the number of men who have served apprenticeship in these trades is small, a great supply of skilled men in these trades coming from Great Britain. There is an imperative need for a supply of men in the ironworkers' trade.

Some instruction must always be given in the shipbuilding plant, but it is possible to give a great deal in the industrial schools, and, as the wages are good, men should be readily attracted to the shipbuilding trades.

While ironworkers' trades consisting of loftsmen, ship-fitters, riveters, chippers, calkers, reamers, bolters, packers, and some others are peculiar to shipbuilding as well as the shipwright's trade, the trades of plumber, pipe fitter, coppersmith, etc. are very materially different in the shipbuilding trades from what they are in the building trades.

On the other hand, it is possible to send instructors from the factories to the school. In several instances in England the manufacturers supplied the schools with instructors and all the necessary material in order to teach women and boys the identical operations which they would be called upon to carry out in the factory. In this way a number of schools combining manufacturing with training were able to supply local factories with boys and women trained in the special operations involved. This plan is also significant and has an important bearing upon the administration of public vocational training.

The question whether industrial schools should make ammunition or equipment pertaining to war service will come up. Having substantial amounts of available equipment, they will doubtless at times be tempted to use their organized day and evening classes for purposes of emergency productive work. In machine-shop schools, for example, the teachers being skilled machinists and the pupils capable of turning out a substantial amount of productive work, inducements to subordinate educational ends to those of an economic nature may be expected. It is therefore suggested that industrial-school authorities resolutely resist all attempts to subordinate their rightful purpose of giving industrial education. It is clear that a certain amount of production is necessary for purposes of education, but it is important that this should never be made a primary purpose in any industrial school. A letter from Director W. C. Smith of the Troy (New York) Central School illustrates the productive work of one school which retains educational value.

A Troy corporation is engaged on a large contract with the government for uniforms. Its shops are taxed to the limit, and it has found it necessary to utilize every available shop in town for making various machines used in cutting cloth for this contract. It has entered into an arrangement whereby our complete machine-shop equipment is turned over to its use under the supervision of our own instructor. Our graduate boys are employed in the shop and are now at work perfecting twelve machines for use in different parts of the country on this contract.

The public vocational schools must face, sooner or later, the question of shop production on a commercial basis. They exist, primarily, to train producers and not to make products. Are the two inconsistent? Perhaps the war service of these schools will bring this debatable issue to a head.

Obviously the industries engaged in the making of automobiles, aëroplanes, machinery, and ammunition have for some time past absorbed the available supply of skilled help. With the emergency of war preparation upon us, we must find ways of pressing thousands of workers into lines of work with which they are almost altogether unfamiliar. Except with boys who are fourteen to sixteen years old, it will be of little avail to think of giving all-round trade training. The labor supply which we now need must be trained immediately and intensively. From what has already been stated it is clear that workers may be trained in three ways: first, in day industrial or technical schools; second, in industrial plants such as have been mentioned in the case of the Westinghouse Company; third, through part-time employment in industry, with part-time attendance in industrial or technical schools.

The industrial-school authorities should send into the factories capable instructors who have had trade experience, in order to learn the needs for trained help and to analyze the trade processes for which men need to be trained. In this way the school may determine whether it can best meet the situation by training the youth in its day schools to go to work in industrial plants upon leaving school—although this is not a very immediate way of meeting the emergency—or whether it would be better to move the classes, so to speak, over to the plant and have the instructors teach a group of unskilled workers on the group-instruction plan. Perhaps the school could perform its best service by giving trade extension courses to those already engaged in productive work. Anyhow, these alternatives must be fully considered.

These instructors or trained experts, when visiting typical yards or plants in a specific industry to learn of the needs for trained help, must be able to reanalyze the trade processes in terms of training as distinct from terms of production, and out of this analysis to draw up suitable schemes for giving such training. The question of whether this training should be given entirely in the school or entirely in the plant or partly in the plant and partly in the school should be left to experts, who know best the possibilities of each of these schemes.

This is no time for industrial schools to stand on their dignity and claim that they can do all that is necessary in their day schools without coöperation with those who employ. It is readily granted that, generally speaking, directors of industrial schools know their job quite well when it comes to giving trade-preparatory training to youth before it enters industry; but at a time when the country needs thousands of workmen we are quite sure that the better plan for training operators and semiskilled workers is directly in the plant itself. In a time of great emergency this intensive, immediate training must be given in large part by the industries themselves within their own plants. They have the equipment, they have the men who need the training; all they lack is the proper instructing force, as they cannot take men away from production for instruction purposes. It follows that the instructors of our schools must give their instruction in the plants or must have the unskilled operatives and helpers come to the school for part-time work.

The present all-day industrial schools, even in normal times, need this direct contact with industry to save themselves from shop methods which savor of manual-training schools.

It is assumed that the regular all-day industrial and trade schools will continue. Of course they are now largely attended by comparatively young students, and it is quite likely that the enrollment will diminish, as there is an unusual demand for boys in every branch of industry and commerce. It will be increasingly difficult to hold such boys in school in the face of financial returns rather extraordinary when one considers their youth.

In the interests of conservation of youth and the training of a suitable supply of skilled workers for the future, there should be no diminution of effort to develop and extend day-school work, even though the young people thus trained will be too young to contribute definitely to the present emergency, unless, of course, it should last more than a year or two. Nevertheless, the enrollments are likely to be less. A partial compensation for this situation is that groups of more mature workers coming from the industry itself on a part-time basis can be accommodated for special instruction, or groups of young men who are now elevator boys, messenger boys, clerks in stores, office boys, can be induced, perhaps, to come to the all-day school, and through short, intensive courses be put into the way of earning, in some factory making war supplies, a sum equal to from two to three times what they are now earning. No attempt should be made to hold such youths in the school beyond the period necessary to give them immediate and intensive training.

After the war it will be an open question whether intensive courses should not be more generally adopted in our day industrial schools.

Obviously the largest immediate service that can be rendered by industrial and trade schools will be through the readjustment and extension of evening and other off-time courses. As usual, the especially important function will be the training of men already in the trades for more skilled tasks or for directive work. Ways must be found for extending the evening-school facilities. One way is to operate the evening courses throughout the entire year. Most of our industrial schools operate only from October to April, but in this time of pressure they should be open continuously. The other way would be to carry on trade extension work not only in the evening but also early in the morning or late in the afternoon. These are technically known as off-time courses and came into existence originally in some cities which made provision for training workers from plants operating night shifts.

Fundamentally, even in times of peace, there is no sound reason for ever completely closing a day industrial school. It might run during the summer as well as the winter; in the late afternoon and early morning as well as in the evening. In the middle of June, 1917, President Wilson addressed a letter to Secretary Redfield making the suggestion that the vocational-training schools of the country should be open during the summer, when it would be possible to train a large number of young men under military age, either to fill the places in our industries left by men who enlist or are withdrawn for military service, or to carry on special occupations called for by the war, such as inspectors of material and apparatus. In this connection, where the President speaks of "inspectors of material," it may be said that one of the prominent industrial-education experts of the East has been asked to train a group of men selected for special government inspection work. These men will then be responsible for organizing a force of assistant inspectors in the plant to which they are assigned, and of supervising the work of the assistant inspector under their personal direction.

The course of inspectorship training is made up of two units: one dealing with the business and accounting side of inspection and the other with the technical instruction which is given through participation in the actual work of inspection at the arsenal, observation of the manufacturing processes, and direct group instruction.

The first unit is given at Washington and usually requires from four or five days to a week for its completion. The second unit is given at the Rock Island arsenal and covers eleven days as a minimum. Only the most experienced men, however, complete it in this length of time. The men enter the school at irregular intervals in groups of four or five at a time. The number in training at any one time varies from thirty-five to fifty.

The men are moved from department to department on a fixed schedule. When a man completes his training he is assigned to a plant in accordance with his qualifications as indicated by his previous experience and his record at the school. Further plans for training the inspector after he has been assigned to the field have been proposed but have not yet been put into effect. Many of the candidates for this training are instructors in vocational training.[3]

The opportunity for promotion of skilled workers was never so great as at present, and the opportunity for schools to train them will never be greater than at present. The schools may well organize intensive short courses in practical training, as well as other courses designed to advance qualified workers to positions of directive work in the factories.

While the part-time plan offers excellent opportunities for advancing selected workers in order that they may acquire certain technical knowledge, it is doubtful whether much of this work during this emergency period can be done in the public or private industrial and trade schools. We all know that certain industrial concerns have established part-time schools in their plants. These classes in the works are especially adapted, in the present emergency, for training selected workers to become specialists and foremen. If the school is near the plant, so that industrial workers can attend for part-time day instruction for a period of six or eight hours a week without loss of time or without interfering with production, it may be possible to develop some part-time courses in the schools, but, generally speaking, it would be better for the instructors in these schools to go directly to the plants themselves and give this part-time instruction there. In another chapter mention will be made of a feasible part-time system and the necessity for some such system, but it refers only to boys and girls between fourteen and sixteen years old who belong primarily in school and not primarily at work. It is assumed that the group of which we have been thinking is the older group of workmen who wish to become foremen.

War needs open new fields for schools. After the war, stereotyped courses in trade schools and technical institutes will have lost their hold. Dunwoody Institute (Minneapolis, Minnesota) is one of the few schools having a training course for bakers.

An example of an effective adaptation to a national need. Dunwoody Institute meeting a shortage of army bakers.

Educational efficiency as measured by its response to a national need. Dunwoody Institute is one of the several institutes teaching radiography and power testing to navy men.

Sir Robert Blair, in his report already referred to, speaks of the manner in which technical and trade schools in and about London train semiskilled workers for munition work.

At first we gathered together all the metal-working apparatus of our elementary schools and placed it in two of our technical institutes. Shafting was put up, power was installed and the lathes started, and they have been running ever since July, 1915, for twelve hours a day in three periods of four hours each. At first the period of training was for one period a day for six days a week for six weeks, or a total of 144 hours, but later, to meet the demands, the manufacturers took upon themselves the training of more highly skilled turners, of machine erectors, of milling-machine hands, and so on. We began to train women for tracing in drawing offices and subsequently for mechanical drawing. We trained lead-burners for employment in factories making explosives. We trained gauge-makers for employment in tool rooms of our shell factories (many of these men have been drawn from the jewelry and silversmithing trades). The more skill we gave the training, the longer it took to train these people, and so the number produced weekly has diminished, but in two years we have trained, certified, and placed 6000 workers.

And again he speaks of other training apart from furnishing additional munition workers.

One institution has done a great deal of work in training in cold shoeing over 1000 men belonging to the Royal Field Artillery, Royal Engineers, and the Army Service Corps. The same institution has also been used for the reception, inspection, and dispatch of many of the horse-shoes required by the army. At another institution over 3500 students have been trained for Red Cross duties, and a great work has been done in recruiting men for the skilled sections of the Royal Flying Corps. Besides we have trained men for tinsmithing, copper work, and wireless telegraphy. A third institution took on the general direction of the preparation of synthetic drugs in the chemical departments of the technical institutes, and the medical organization of the army was largely indebted to these chemical departments for the production of the much-needed drugs.

Assuming that administrators of industrial education are interested in the welfare of factory workers,—something often apart from instilling technical skill and knowledge,—it will be necessary for them to provide courses for men and especially for women workers, giving instruction in the laws of health with which every employee in factory life should be familiar. In England the memoranda of the British Health of Munition Workers Committee have demonstrated conclusively the great necessity of this teaching of hygiene: that the causes of ill health of workers in munitions factories were not alone the result of fatigue from long hours, but quite as much the result of insufficient or ill-prepared food, inadequate sleep and ill-ventilated sleeping quarters, and failure to appreciate the consequences of disregarding safety devices.

It may not be amiss in this chapter to say a word about our government naval schools, for some may not be aware that the government has for a number of years been maintaining a very efficient system of trade education. The purpose of the naval trade schools is to train young men for various trades or occupations required on shipboard. In going over the list it is likely that administrators of industrial education will see an opportunity to connect the work of their schools with the work of the naval schools. In addition to the practical instruction given at the training stations where these schools are located, a course of academic instruction is conducted throughout the naval service. This instruction does not stop at the training station, but continues on shipboard, and every encouragement is given for advancement. Electrical schools are located at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and at Mare Island, California. The course of instruction comprises machine-shop work, reciprocating steam engines, steam-turbine engines, internal-combustion engines, magnetism and electricity, dynamos, motors, motor generators, alternating-current batteries, etc. Members of the radio class are trained in the duties of a radio operator and are given constant practice in the use of the mechanism employed in recovering and sending messages.

The artificer school is located at the Norfolk Navy Yard, and is composed of classes for shipwrights, ship-fitters, blacksmiths, and painters.

The machinist and coppersmith schools are located at Charleston, South Carolina, and are open only to reënlisted men who have certain experience.

The aëronautics school is located at Pensacola, Florida, and is divided into two courses: mechanics of aëronautics, and flying.

Gasoline-engine instruction is given at Charlestown Navy Yard in connection with the machinist's school, preference being given to reënlisted men.

Commissary schools for ships' cooks, bakers, and stewards are located at San Francisco and Newport.

Musicians' schools are maintained at Norfolk, at Great Lake, Illinois, and at San Francisco.

Seaman-gunner schools are located at the Washington Navy Yard and at the torpedo station at Newport.

All of these schools give short, intensive courses ranging from three to eighteen months in length. The students are paid wages, and all expenses are met the same as with other enlisted men.

Seven free marine-engineering schools and thirty free navigation schools are being started on the Atlantic, Gulf, Pacific, and Great Lakes coasts to train men already having some experience for better places at advanced pay as engineers and deck officers in the new merchant fleet. The graduates are being placed as fast as they are graduated. The need for their services is expected to last for many years after peace is restored.

For several years our industrial continuation schools have had as their motto "Earn and Learn." But the naval technical schools have shown a way whereby young men may both serve and learn.

CHAPTER IV
OUR COLLEGES AND TECHNICAL INSTITUTES

It is to be hoped that if we can realize, as England did not, that education, to quote Arnold Bennett, "is the very last thing that we ought to economize in," we shall spare ourselves some of the unnecessary calamities of war. England, France, Italy, and the Central Powers have thrown into battle a very large percentage of their educated and trained men, including most of the young professors and instructors in their universities and colleges, gymnasiums, and lycées. Their colleges and universities are almost empty. The young men who would under normal conditions be receiving the education and training necessary to prepare them for leadership in the future development of these countries are fighting and dying in the trenches.

In view of the fact that all of these countries must needs go through a long period of reconstruction, industrial and otherwise, it is a pity that the sacrifice of its best youth had needlessly to be made. As a matter of fact, we see now that no university, college, or technical school that can possibly avoid it should permit its faculty or student body to be scattered or its energies dissipated. All concerned should redouble their energies and concentrate them upon those things which will be of the most service in the progress of the war and will prepare the students for the most effective service when the war is over.

President Wilson, three months after the severing of relations with Germany, in response to a request for an opinion on the continuance of a college or a technical-school education during the war, wrote this letter:

The question which you have brought to my attention is of the very greatest moment. It would, as you suggest, seriously impair American prospects of success in this war if the supply of highly trained men were unnecessarily diminished. There will be need for a larger number of persons expert in the various fields of applied science than ever before. Such persons will be needed both during the war and after its close.

I have therefore no hesitation in urging colleges and technical schools to endeavor to maintain their courses as far as possible on the usual basis. There will be many young men from these institutions who will serve in the armed forces of the country. Those who fall below the age of selective conscription and who do not enlist may feel that by pursuing their courses with earnestness and diligence they also are preparing themselves for valuable service to the nation.

I would particularly urge upon the young people who are leaving our high schools that as many of them as can do so avail themselves this year of the opportunities offered by the colleges and technical schools, to the end that the country may not lack an adequate supply of trained men and women.

It must be said that while students were restless and anxious to perform a service, the college authorities themselves adopted a very hopeless and helpless attitude toward the war in so far as it reacted on the internal economy of these institutions. Commencement exercises were abbreviated and shorn of their customary festivities. College presidents and executive committees of alumni associations began to "talk poor" and to wax lugubrious over the small senior class of 1918. These men even wanted to drop athletics, which, to the facetious layman outside, constitutes the main reason for a college's existence. The general action of the colleges in this matter of abandoning so many athletic and other activities drew from President Wilson a letter deprecating such action and advising that the colleges maintain all their usual sports if they did not detract in any way from the military purpose of the nation. In an address at Princeton University, Major General Wood deplored hasty action of students in enlisting for service in the army and navy, urging them to complete their school work for the year, and that they mark time pending the carrying out of provisions of the selective-draft law.

It is clear, on one hand, that many college authorities, especially those of the older type, passed through a state of academic institutional hysteria, while, on the other hand, their student bodies translated the emotions of the moment into a deep conviction by enlisting.

At the same time the spirit of mobilization was present in many a university, college, and technical school. In the cultural college it was the individual who enlisted, as the institution was not of the type whose work directly and definitely counted for important war service. In the universities where courses are given in agriculture, in medicine, in technology, and in practical arts, the institution itself enlisted, in that it offered war-emergency courses.

It is perhaps interesting at this point to see how response came from these two types of institutions. In the first instance it came from individuals in the college, which was no more than could be expected of classical colleges, which have for years laid emphasis on the benefits of individualistic training. In the second instance the vocational colleges, as they are sometimes disparagingly called, responded from the viewpoint of collectivism; that is, the college as a whole, because of its service departments, was able to offer to the state and to the nation a course of training of immediate military value to the country.

But thoughtful people can never again speak disparagingly of any university or technical school. While the movies have been filled with the citizens of our democracy, and the cafés crowded with people to whom war was something apart from existence, and the white-light gayety of the streets has been apparently undimmed, the youth of our colleges—the best youth in the world—have enlisted in Plattsburgs, joined the Naval Reserves, taken up signal-corps work, entered the research laboratory, followed their instructors into the medical corps, joined a school of aëronautics, or donned overalls in the shipyards.

Doctor Finley, Commissioner of Education of the state of New York, in an address delivered before the Illinois chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa, speaks of his visit to Oxford just before the war and of a visit to Cambridge, England, a few weeks after it had begun. At Oxford he found the calm of the cloister, with its memorials of poets, scholars, statesmen, princes, and soldiers, where there were ancient academic conventions that paid no heed to the passing customs of the world outside. Only six weeks later at Cambridge—a Cambridge which had a month or six weeks before been as Oxford—the town was filled with men in khaki. In this charming address Doctor Finley speaks of a portrait of Samuel Butler which he saw at Cambridge,—a portrait of the man who described in his book "Erewhon" a land where criminals were treated as sick, and the sick as criminals; where there were "Colleges of Unreason," colleges in which students were promoted for excellence in vagueness and were plucked for insufficient trust in printed matter, colleges where the principal courses were those in hypothetics, colleges in which mediocrity was fostered, colleges whose graduates almost invariably suffered from atrophy of individual opinions. And Doctor Finley says that as he stood before this portrait, in a hall almost deserted, he thought of those students of courses which Butler had called "hypothetical" and "atrophying," who had gone forth to prove the valor of their cloistered and unpractical learning.

The university which apparently had paid no heed to the passing customs of the world outside had now mobilized herself; and this has been true of the colleges and technical schools of our own country,—truly a mobilization of the spirit of sudden forgetting of self-concerns for a selfless service.

The college of individualism, as has already been suggested, mobilized through its individuals, while the college of service mobilized itself. In the spring of 1917 I happened to be in a Western university. The campus was practically deserted. Instructors in foreign languages had joined the government interpreters' service; some of the professors of science had gone to government research laboratories, while a chosen few were off in some secret place working under government direction in scientific research concerning submarine warfare. The older students had enlisted, and the younger ones were marching in squads on the athletic field. Truly a mobilization, but largely individualistic.

I came East to another college where more than 2000 students were devoting their time to a series of special short courses dealing with the various problems of an educational, social, and practical nature which the war had thrust upon the country. In this way the institution—Teachers College, Columbia University—had mobilized itself. Special arrangements had been made by the college authorities whereby all but a very few students could participate in these emergency courses without seriously deranging their regular courses.

In general, the aim of these emergency courses was not merely to meet those conditions which exist at or near the battle line but to help in the solution of the hundred and one urgent problems which must be solved by that great majority of teachers and social workers whose service will of necessity be given in home communities. Accordingly, courses on social relief were offered, and among others the following topics were considered: "Administration of relief in time of war and emergency," "Care of orphaned and neglected children." Under the organization of rural communities were discussed "Conserving the food supply," "The health problem of the rural community," and "The organization of school pupils for agricultural service." The matter of social service in military camps was thoroughly gone into and reports and lectures were given by men who had actually worked with the soldiers themselves. The Boy Scout and Camp Fire Girl movements were also discussed in special courses, and the practical questions of the amateur gardener were carefully considered.

In the School of Practical Arts special attention was given to the making of children's garments, the sewing of Red Cross material, and the renovating of millinery and clothing. In addition to lectures on thrift in food the department of cookery gave a course on emergency cookery for men, which was especially designed for army cooks and Boy Scout leaders. There was also a series of lectures and demonstrations by a government expert on the preservation of food, including canning and drying. Other courses considered the essentials of diet planning and of how to buy in large quantities for camps and hospitals. The departments of chemistry and biology gave special instruction in the analysis of water and of milk, and in the technique of diagnostic bacteriology. The fine-arts department made some rather unique contributions, including a study of protective coloring with reference to camouflage for military purposes, the designing of posters, and topographical sketching. There was a course on tin-can work for home and camp, in which, from discarded tomato cans and powder boxes, were produced all sorts of useful things—coffee pots, camp stoves, hot-water bottles, lanterns, and candlesticks. A special course in photography for hospital and field work was offered. In the modeling class the manipulation of plaster of Paris was demonstrated for nurses and Red Cross students, to be used in connection with occupational work for convalescent soldiers. An extremely interesting series of projects in plastic material was worked up, particularly some clay models of trenches and dugouts.

Another course which attracted some hundred and fifty students was the emergency instruction given by the physics department in automobile mechanics. The object of the instruction was to equip the average student with a stock of general information that would enable him to operate a car, to make minor repairs, and to diagnose trouble intelligently. Some of the matters discussed were the four-cycle engine, carburetion, transmission and differential, and the storage battery. For experiment and demonstration purposes the laboratory was supplied, among other apparatus, with a detachable boat motor and two automobiles. The latter were thoroughly dissected and then reassembled from spark plug to tires, and in every possible way the mechanism was examined and experimented with.

The departments of nursing and health and of physical education offered some ten courses in all, including home nursing and emergencies, surgical dressings, care of children, public-health problems, first aid, medical gymnastics, and invalid occupations.

The department of music offered three courses designed especially to prepare students to lead music appropriate to patriotic meetings and to present selections at hospitals and camps.

Two courses were offered by the department of speech: one planned for those intending to do emergency speaking and lecturing, and the other arranged to meet the demand for entertainment for little children, the sick, and soldiers during the war.

In addition to these technical courses there was a series of lectures on economic problems contributed by various Columbia experts, and another series of special lectures by such speakers as Mr. Joseph McCabe, the noted English author, and Mr. Frederick C. Wolcott, director of the Polish War Relief Commission. Finally, there was a wonderful and never-to-be-forgotten address by Ignace Paderewski, in which he reviewed the long and troubled story of his native land and in impassioned words pleaded for the restoration of Poland's ancient liberties.

It may be said without exaggeration that in all some millions of people throughout the United States will, directly and indirectly, profit by this emergency instruction at Teachers College, for the students who attended are for the most part experienced teachers, who, in their turn, will organize and instruct their home communities in similar preparedness courses.

At the same time another university, unique in its way,—the University of the State of New York,—was holding, through its Board of Regents, a meeting to determine academic standards of the schools and colleges of the state in a war crisis. This university was modeled upon the University of France, the constituent units of which have proved themselves wonderful instruments in the waging of war. The universities represented have organized themselves into a civil army, preventing the wastes of duplication, misdirected endeavor, and isolation so common everywhere.

In the building where the Board of Regents met, two conferences were being held, one representing the schools and colleges of the state, the other representing the agricultural and industrial interests. In one place men were discussing how the academic status of professional schools and colleges might be maintained, and in another room men and women were participating in a discussion of public markets, food conservation, services of agricultural teachers, the taking of an agricultural census, the releasing of boys from school, the organizing of canning clubs, and all those affairs of the state and its schools which might contribute to the nation's welfare. These two meetings offered a picture of two lines of work which must always go together in time of war.

As Commissioner Claxton has said:

Students should be made to understand that it is their duty to give to their country and to the world the best and fullest possible measure of service, for both country and world will need more than they will get of that high type of service which only men and women of the best education and training can give. Patriotism and desire to serve humanity may require of these young men and women the exercise of that very high type of self-restraint which will keep them to their tasks of preparation until the time comes when they can render service which cannot be rendered by others.

On the other hand, these same colleges and schools must contribute out of themselves that important vocational service so necessary in time of war, and the gathering at this meeting of agricultural and household-arts teachers, of farm-bureau men and county agents, of representatives from granges and women's clubs, of bankers, and of publicists was after all typical of the other half of the university or school contribution.

At this meeting of the Regents the following resolutions were adopted on the recommendation of the administrators of schools and colleges who were in conference with the Regents. These resolutions are given in full because they express significantly the point of view of the 36 colleges and 964 secondary schools in New York State.

1. Realizing that one of the most urgent needs of the country in the present crisis will be the training of officers for military service, and that it is the peculiar duty of colleges and universities to contribute in supplying this need, we recommend that the several colleges and universities in the state establish one or more units of the Reserve Officers Training Corps, as provided in general order No. 49, including courses leading at the same time to a commission and to a college degree.

2. In order that the extraordinary burdens and sacrifices of war may be shared in just proportion by all the nation, and that the calamitous experiences of the past under the voluntary system may be avoided, it is our judgment that in the raising of the necessary military forces the principle of universal obligation to service be applied by a process of selective conscription.

3. That members in good standing of the graduating classes of the professional schools of the state who shall have been accepted for military service by the government be granted their degrees without special examination.

4. That members in good standing of the graduating classes in the undergraduate departments of the colleges and universities of the state who would normally be graduated in June, 1917, and who shall be accepted for military service by the government should be granted their degrees without special examination.

5. That members of the graduating classes in the high schools of the state who would normally be graduated in June, 1917, and who have been accepted for military service shall be granted their diplomas, and that the colleges of the state be requested to honor these diplomas for purposes of admission.

6. That college students in good standing pursuing medical preparatory courses who enlist or are called into military service before the completion of the college year be granted certificates of completion of their year without examination.

7. That absence from college or high school by reason of enlistment in military service shall not prejudice the award or the retention of university scholarships.

8. That while the immediate service which women may perform in connection with the war will be in medicine or nursing and other work for general public welfare, and that while the greatest service for which they may eventually be called will be the supplying of positions vacated by the enlisted men, we recommend to the United States government the appointment by the Council for National Defense of a commission which shall outline an appropriate policy for women students in our colleges, with respect both to their college studies and to their enlistment for national service.

9. That this board approve the plans of the National Research Council and proffer our hearty coöperation.

10. That students in colleges and universities of the state who are liable for military training under the military-training law be exempt from the training prescribed by the Military Training Commission if they pursue courses in military training under approved instruction at their respective institutions.

Further, that as there are numerous resources in both the elementary and the secondary schools of the state which can be used to advantage at this time,—among the most important of which resources are the use of high-school pupils for the farms and for necessary clerical and other work that can be done by pupils who remain in school, the use of teachers for summer work, the services possible through industrial and household-arts departments, and the enlistment of upper-grade children for home gardens,—the board adopts the following resolutions:

1. That the State Agricultural Department in conjunction with the State Education Department formulate a plan for enlisting and placing high-school boys upon the farms, for directing and supervising the work of such boys, for determining qualifications as to age and fitness, for determining compensation and school credit, and for the adjustment of any other problems connected with the safeguarding of these boys who enlist for farm service.

2. That the State Education Department secure through the necessary sources a statement of the needs that might be met through the industrial and household-arts departments and other resources of the schools herein stated, and transmit such a statement to the schools of the state, to the end that these resources may be used intelligently and through regularly constituted channels.

3. That the State Education Department consider the practicability of securing some provision by which during the summer vacation and at other times of the year boys 12 years of age or over may be employed if a certificate of proper working conditions can be furnished.

It is impracticable to outline even briefly all that the various colleges and institutes have contributed to war service. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is hardly mentioned in what follows, and yet it is conducting a score of activities of immediate emergency value. Drexel Institute has contributed not only courses but also its president, Doctor Godfrey, who is serving as a member of the National Council of Defense in special charge of war needs as met by education and science.

To name all the institutions which are serving in one way or another is to call the roll of nearly every college and technical institution in the country. To give here a brief account of what a few are doing will show the range of the activities and the nature of the service.

Early in May Columbia University inaugurated a series of emergency courses of a military, naval, and general nature arranged for the purpose of training students who desire to serve the national government in time of war. They were classified as intensive courses and were opened without restriction to all those who desired to be trained in any of the various subjects offered. These courses included military map making, field-service regulations, general telegraphy, radio telegraphy, camp sanitation, map reading and map interpretation, practical navigation, and electrical devices of the navy.

Harvard University has many achievements to her credit, for example: advanced training for selected officers under the leadership of six French officers; a cadet school for ensigns; a naval school for wireless operators; a course in orthopedic surgery; the furnishing of the medical personnel for four base hospital units; and war service by departments of dentistry, medicine, psychology, and foreign languages.

Iowa State College gave a six weeks' course in special military and military-engineering work. Regular two-year noncollegiate courses were offered electrical workers and stationary engineers, mechanical draftsmen and mechanics, structural draftsmen and building superintendents, surveyors and road makers.

At Cornell University all professors and instructors in the marine-engineering department and all the senior students of marine engineering were in either private or public shipyards on or before graduation day.

The University of Wisconsin, anticipating that a large number of persons who had been trained in the administration of stores would soon be needed in the civil section of the Quartermaster's Department, in the Ordnance Bureau of the War Department, and in the Quartermaster's Officers' Reserve Corps, decided to aid in training for these services by offering special courses in the classification and handling of stores for those departments.

This university also planned a summer session with courses in wireless telegraphy, first aid to the injured, Boy Scout movement in theory and practice, and gave a course of war lectures especially designed for teachers, and a course for Red Cross volunteers who wished to take part in civilian relief work. This last course was in coöperation with the Red Cross organization, which, as explained in another chapter, will have much to do with relieving families deprived of their natural heads. The men and women in this course studied the basis of family life, psychological and economic principles underlying bodily health, the resources of the state to preserve the family group, and methods of social service and friendly visiting.

Aviation schools for training candidates for the aviation corps were established at the University of California, Cornell University, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Illinois, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ohio State University, Princeton, and the University of Texas. The first navy aëronautic school has also been established recently at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The College of the City of New York offered an emergency war course in bookkeeping and office practice to help fit men and women to fill the positions made necessary by the increased work of the national government, and to train people to take the places of those who responded to the call to arms. It also offered its regular winter courses during the summer in order to speed up the graduation of young men already enrolled in the college who might be drafted.

This college also placed in every armory and military headquarters in Greater New York a teacher of conversational French. This work was very popular and highly successful.

The University of Kentucky offered to women and civilians two special courses in its College of Electrical Engineering: a course in automobile engineering especially designed to teach women how to drive and take care of motor ambulances, and a course in wireless telegraphy.

The Pennsylvania State College offered a six weeks' course in storekeeping under the direction of the Quartermaster's Department.

In Massachusetts, through the extension department of the State Board of Education, lessons were given in conversational French in the armories and encampments. In one armory as many as five instructors were engaged in this service. The vocabulary of the soldier being quite unlike the French dictionary, the military terms and expressions actually used were emphasized. Necessary French slang and words used commonly for distances, rations, arms and equipment, money, measures, and military orders were dwelt upon. Spoken French for doctors and nurses who are going to the front has been given in coöperation with the Metropolitan Chapter of the American Red Cross.

A six months' course in wireless telegraphy for women was offered at Hunter College, New York City, the course of training being in three divisions: laboratory work, technical work, and the use of code. This course was given with the expectation not that women wireless operators will be placed on ships of war or on transports, but rather that they will be placed in land stations and on coastwise steamers, thus releasing men for more active service. It is understood that on the mechanical side the work is harder for the women, but that on the code work they are much quicker than men.

The field for service of a college is not necessarily limited to extending the usefulness of its vocational departments to meet the war-emergency demands. As has already been noted, the department of French may give courses in conversational French in armories and in cantonments. Sir Robert Blair writes:

We had this plan in England, and as volunteering grew to very considerable dimensions towards the close of 1914 and there were tens of thousands of soldiers grouped within the near neighborhood of London, an arrangement was made with the war-office authorities for the teaching of French.

Courses in mathematics applicable to war needs may be given. The college may send tutors to cantonments to give instruction to undergraduates who have not completed their college work and who would like to receive a college diploma. Colleges can coöperate with the Y.M.C.A., to which has been given the privilege of looking after the recreational features in cantonments. American college boys and others will not be satisfied with formal military training. They will want health talks, entertaining and educational lectures, and instruction as to many things helpful in civil as well as in military life.

There is a large opportunity, in a field as yet hardly touched, for departments of psychology in universities to help in selecting men for different branches of war service and to give vocational guidance to men who leave the service unfitted by war work to reënter their former occupations and perhaps untrained to enter a new service. A staff of psychologists is now at work in each of our cantonments applying intelligence ratings.

There are two distinct uses for the ratings which are given the men as a result of the psychological examinations. One of these uses is military and consists in furnishing a commanding officer with the rating of each man in his command, by which he may, if he chooses, be guided in selecting men for promotion, or for special duties requiring more than average intelligence and mental quickness. The other use is medical and is the thing specifically sought—to find men who are so markedly below the average in intelligence as to demand consideration for discharge or for assignment to simple manual work under careful supervision.

The general method of the test is as follows: The men of each company are divided into 4 groups of 75 to 80 each. Each group is first given a simple literacy test which takes about five minutes and shows only which of the men can read and write. The illiterates are withdrawn at this point to be given examinations for manual skill. All those who can read are then given the "group-intelligence examination."

Those who do not get good ratings are now re-examined in a group to discover whether they are merely slow or are of low-grade intelligence. If any fail to make a satisfactory showing, they are grouped with the illiterates who were separated from the rest of the group after the preliminary examination.

All these—illiterates, and literates who have not done well in the group examination—are given tests for manual skill and ingenuity. These tests are such as putting together dissembled mechanisms, etc. After further individual examination those who receive the poorest rating are likely to be considered for discharge or as suited only for manual work under supervision.

Those who display special mental or manual ability are brought to the notice of their company commanders as men who may be given assignments for superior intelligence or skill.

The aims of the entire psychological examination are to measure native intelligence and ability, not schooling; to disclose what a man can do with his head and hands, not what he has learned from books; and to help the medical officers quickly to discover and sift out the extremely incompetent, and thus prevent the inefficiency and injustice resulting from putting men in places which they are not qualified to fill.

Of course there is a tremendous opportunity for the college to help people understand the causes of war. This has already been referred to in the chapter on "War and Community Uses of our Schools."

Colleges having teacher-training departments will have the opportunity of giving short courses to men and women who will take the places of those who have gone to war. There is also a field for great service in discovering ways and means of improving our public-school systems through lessons drawn from the war.

Every college and university has a large library, and this should be examined with a view to discovering its possible contribution to national defense in war time. Aside from their functions of supplying fresh news and judgments of current events, libraries surely have a vital part in that work of organized research which is behind Germany's scientific and industrial efficiency. Successful research rests as much upon adequate and well-organized book resources as upon laboratories and trained men. The plain and immediate duty of a college situated near a cantonment, or having a portion of its student body enlisted in a camp, would seem to be to build up a military library adequate as a center of military information for those who are studying new methods and instruments of attack and defense. Such a library would be a technical library assisting the large number of specialized schools and fields of training for officers and men in every branch of the service and even in different duties in the same branch. Medical libraries of colleges should be available, with new and important material on military hygiene, medicine, sanitation, and surgery, and this material should be given the widest publicity with reference to its usefulness for the military, medical, and hospital corps.

The college library might well lend to a cantonment a member of its library staff for the development of not only a technical library but also a general reading library for those soldiers who desire only general reading.

The geological department of a college can help in deciding on foundation conditions for army-work constructions, on the location of camp sites with reference to topography, drainage, and water supply, and on the location of trenches with reference to dryness, underdrainage, and rock deposits. Such a department can participate in the study of earth vibrations in connection with heavy artillery discharges for the accurate determination of the distances of enemy batteries. It can also help the government in giving more exact training to young men in the interpretation of geological and topographical maps.

It is obvious that the technical college and the technical institute may render the greatest government service through its faculty and student body. Armour Institute of Chicago has a large number of its graduates and older students in concerns which are producing munition supplies and war-ships. Many have entered the signal service, and a large class in marine engineering has been specifically organized to prepare men for service with the government.

Wentworth Institute in Boston, under the direction of Principal Arthur L. Williston, has been giving instruction in various branches of military engineering to the First Regiment of Engineers of the Fifth District, U. S. A. This regiment was originally an infantry regiment, but the men voluntarily elected to train themselves to become an engineering regiment. The commissioned officers and non-commissioned officers and all the enlisted men gave three nights a week to the work for several months. In addition some sixty of the men in the regiment voluntarily resigned from business positions in order to devote eight to ten hours a day, six days in the week, to the work. This institute instilled what Mr. Williston calls "mechanical gumption" into the enlisted men through short unit courses in mapping and surveying, topographical sketching, and map reading; gasoline-engine operation, repairing, and maintenance; portable steam-power plant construction and operation; electrical-power plant operation; field telephony; electric-line construction and maintenance; timber construction, including pontoons, timber trusses, timber suspension-bridge construction, machine-gun shelters, dugouts, and dugout tunneling and framing; strength of materials; concrete construction, including culverts, bridge abutments, gun-carriage and engine foundations; acetylene welding and demolition work; thermite welding and emergency repair; machinery erection and alignment; forging, hardening, and tempering; hydraulics and drainage, especially trench drainage; and rigging. The time was too short to give any elaborate theoretical training. The instruction was given through brief and intensive courses in a very practical way. In many instances it showed men who had practical experience and ability how to adapt their particular kind of skill to the special needs of the given service. Many of these men already had skill, but they needed to have it adapted to military ends.

Technical colleges and institutes believe that education is the very last thing in which they ought to economize. Illustrations of class work in national-emergency courses for the army and navy given by Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York.

A poster which accomplished its purpose. War time, even more than normal times, requires an educational appeal to the work impulses of youth.

Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York, has been conducting 8 evening classes in machine-shop practice, 6 classes in machine-drafting design, 1 evening class in elementary ship drafting, and day courses for a large body of enlisted men from the navy electrical school and from the signal reserve corps. Those who come from the signal reserve corps are being trained for active service in telegraphy, the institute furnishing the technical instruction in elementary and applied electricity, and army officers furnishing the military and field-service instruction. A mess for the men of this corps is conducted at the school of household science connected with the institute, and here details of men are trained for this work through a course in army cooking. The men from the electrical school are quartered at the navy yard, and spend five and one-half hours a day at the institute taking courses in machine-shop operation, steam-engine practice, elementary electricity, armature- and field-coil repair work on electrical machines, elementary chemistry, and batteries. It is interesting to note that Pratt Institute made a special effort to hold intact its student body of the regular courses, on the theory that the thoroughly trained mechanic or technician in service is many times more valuable to the nation than a private in the ranks. As a result of this effort, very few of the students of the day school dropped from the regular courses.

The William Hood Dunwoody Institute of Minneapolis began immediately on the severance of relations with Germany to serve as a recruiting station for the United States Engineers' Enlisted Reserve Corps, the United States Signal Enlisted Reserve Corps, the United States Quartermaster's Enlisted Reserve Corps, the United States Civil Service Commission, and the United States Navy.

It also outlined a scheme for taking a census of mechanics and technicians for the state of Minnesota, which is now being carried out, and on the basis of which recruiting will go forward for every branch of the government service.

It made arrangements for bringing to Minneapolis, on the first of August, 425 recruits from the Great Lakes Naval Training Station at Chicago, and distributed them among the following classes in training at the institute: general electricians, radio electricians, carpenter's mates, machine-shop operators, gas-engine operators, blacksmiths, coppersmiths, cooks, and bakers.

The institute is training more than 200 novices in day and evening classes in telegraphy. Of these about 60 per cent are girls and women, this course being offered in response to a direct request from railroad and telegraph lines in the vicinity of Minneapolis. It is also giving some instruction in operating-foremanship work for a prominent local steel and machinery company, as this company has renewed the manufacture of munitions and needs operation foremen. The institute was called upon to select the most promising men and to train them in one process of which they are later to have charge in the shop. Director Charles A. Prosser in making a report to the secretary of the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education said:

We have 154 people taking radio work in day and evening classes. This group is made up of a number of different types. First, there are the amateurs with licenses who have enlisted in our first radio company of the United States Signal Service and have gone into that class to improve their speed. Second, there are other young men who have gone in to learn the work so as to be recruited into another radio company of the United States Signal Corps or into the naval service, and there are, in the third place, young men who have gone in with the idea of offering their services to the Marconi Company, either for land work or for duty on board the merchant ships which are being built.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 mechanics and technicians have been sent into different branches of the government service by Dunwoody Institute. This number is made up in part of our own students from our school—particularly from the evening classes, although some of our day boys have gone—and in part of mechanics and technicians throughout Minnesota who have gone into the service through Dunwoody Institute, where we conduct a recruiting station and where we are recruiting into the service every Wednesday, applications being taken in the interim.

We have sent into the service 1 motor-truck company; 2 others are in process of organization. We are sending out 1 radio company, which is ready to go, and are about to organize another. We are also organizing 1 wire company, 1 baking company, and 1 company of cooks. In addition we have sent men to the Brooklyn Navy Yard and are sending men to the Puget Sound Navy Yard. We have also put men in touch with the Civil Service Commission and sent them into the service in this way.

The response of these and other colleges and technical institutes justifies as nothing else could their past claims that they train not only for the spirit of service but for the life of service.

The effect of the war on the college curriculum cannot be hastily measured. Institutions of collegiate grade are slow to make radical changes in the requirements for the bachelor's degree. Some have already shortened the college course to three years. Others have decided as a war measure that students ought to be through college by the time they reach conscription age. Some are offering opportunity for all-the-year-round work. Others are allowing war service to count toward a college degree. The English universities are already thinking of strengthening their courses in science and laboratory research, of giving more attention to modern languages, and of developing vocational courses.

Certainly in America there will be an immediate and greater demand for so-called "practical" subjects. It may be that one of the effects of the war will be the sharpening of the differentiation and an increase of competition between the idealistic and the practical groups of studies. This will be unfortunate. There should be no sharpening of differences of opinion. They had much better be dulled. There is no real necessity for antagonism between the cultural and the vocational subjects. People only think there is a need for constant justification of the one against the other. Such thinking has become a habit of mind.

The French have a way of saying that the cultural subjects are merely the moral conditions, the ethical history, and a judgment as to the ethical value of the world complex of vocational and economic life; for this reason any conflict between cultural and vocational subjects is impossible, and the more vocational education is developed, the more will the cultural aspects be needed and the more highly developed will they become. The French point out that what we term cultural subjects developed in two civilizations which were very highly practical, vocational, and militaristic; namely, Greece and Rome. They speak of the humanities as being essentially the abiding lessons of those civilizations which in vocational and military efficiency stood much higher above their fellows than Germany stands in those respects above contemporary civilization to-day.

Vocational subjects are direct-service subjects always. By their very nature they respond immediately to an emergency. The cultural subjects are more indirect in their effect. They could not be otherwise. I often wish we could get into the habit of speaking of liberal subjects in the sense in which this term was used in the older days of our colleges, when the term "liberal" implied that the subjects classed under this head were liberalizing; that is, they liberated, or set free, the minds, spirits, and bodies of men and women from prejudice, selfishness, tradition, passion, cruelty, and so on. I have never seen how one could elect culture, for it is always a by-product coming out of thinking and living. To study the language of an ancient people and to learn nothing of their government or ideals is useless. To study this government and these ideals of an older civilization and to see no lessons for the world of to-day is almost valueless. To study the past in terms of problems of human society is liberalizing.

New meanings of the realities of war are before us. New concepts of two great ideals of government confront us. New methods of making war more horrible strike our eyes with every news issue. New schemes for patching up human life that it may go forth again to battle or return to industrial warfares of peace are heralded every week. New societies for the relief of human suffering due to the war are chartered constantly. New alignments of political groups committed to reform are in the making. New groupings of nations not formerly allied stand before our eyes. New methods of combining activities of great corporate interests for government needs are published daily. New trade possibilities now latent are prophesied as being inevitable. New ideals and new ideas gathered in the trenches are appearing over battle lines for new governmental practices. New advances in the field of government control of prices startle us continually.

Out of it all there looms up a new science of chemistry, improved methods of transportation in the air, a still greater standardization of making industrial products, a new conception of government control of trade and industry, a system of government insurance for individuals and corporations, new concepts of legislative authority and action, and a score of other things all heading up into a new sense of nationalism,—and who knows but even a sense of internationalism!

Is it credible that education alone will remain unaffected by these world changes?

CHAPTER V
THE OPPORTUNITY FOR MANUAL AND HOUSEHOLD ARTS

A new spirit of teaching practical arts is upon us. The aims, materials, and methods of instruction in manual training, cooking, sewing, agriculture, and commercial branches are changing. They have been influenced by the vocational-education movement, and because of it practical arts in general education must justify themselves or else be put into the scrap heap.

The development and organization of differentiated courses in industrial, agricultural, and household and commercial arts adapted to junior and senior high schools—more particularly in connection with the education of children from 12 to 16 years of age—offers a new field of service to teachers of these subjects who, up to now, have been following methods unsuited either to the needs of vocational training or to the needs of general education. Already the set of wood and iron models taken from the Russian system of the early seventies has disappeared, and the sampler book in sewing has passed away. The era of the coat hanger and sleeve board in manual training and of the set of doll's clothes and models of undergarments is doomed, and the cooking outline which starts out with making cocoa in September and in the thirteenth lesson takes up the making of an angel cake will soon meet the fate of flowerpot holders, doll's aprons, and book agriculture.

But there is a great field for the practical arts in general education,—a field which no scheme of vocational training can possibly occupy. Each has its place. Vocational training is fitting young persons for profitable employment in chosen vocations. Practical arts in general education consists of varied lines of activity taken from the fields of agriculture, commerce, industry, and the household and taught in the school for the purpose of developing capacity to deal with concrete things and of arousing social and industrial interests in the workaday world.

In the early years of the child's life practical-arts work has a strong motor and social value. In the middle years, say from 12 to 16, it has a social and vocational-guidance value. The chapter entitled "The Field for Industrial and Trade Schools" gives a number of suggestions as to the work which boys and, to some extent, girls may offer as their service contribution in time of war. However there are fewer than 100 industrial and trade schools in the country. The majority of our youth are taking some practical-arts work as a part of general education in either the elementary or the secondary school, and surely these young people will want to do something in this emergency. And certainly the teachers of sewing, manual training, cooking, and agriculture will desire to do their part, not only because they can be of service at this time but also for the reason that through war-service work they will be able to improve upon the practical-arts work and make it conform to the new spirit. The whole spirit of the new methods is based upon getting away from individual models created out of the mind of a teacher and imposed upon an unsuspecting student body which follows a "course in models" in about the same way that it takes a course in arithmetic.

The present scheme of teaching practical arts is based upon the project plan and not upon the model or exercise plan. It no longer depends upon the teacher's course of study founded on tool exercises or logical sequence of processes. It now comes out of a need which is as clear to the student as it should be to the teacher. The progressive teacher of manual training starts out with such a project, for example, as a garage. This involves making a sketch, working up a bill of materials, finding out the cost of lumber, cement, and so on. It involves work in concrete, laying the floor timbers, putting up the sides, laying out the roof, setting in the window and door frames, putting on the tarred paper or shingles or galvanized iron, and painting and staining.

The progressive teacher of domestic arts no longer thinks of catering merely to the personal decorative sense of young girls. She no longer has the girls spend the entire year making graduation dresses, or dish towels, caps, and aprons. She thinks in terms of quantity and in terms of social service which the domestic-arts work may render. She discovers that a hospital needs towels, aprons, caps, and bed linen, or that the orphan asylum near the school is sorely in need of children's garments, and then she tells of this need to the girls in her charge and the latter take up the problem in the same way that the boys take up the problem of building a garage. Each girl works in conjunction with others for a common purpose which all recognize as being worth while.

Progressive teachers of cooking are realizing that the idea of 20 cooking units in a schoolroom, where little batches of 20 model biscuits are made and where at the close of the lesson each girl has one of these small eatables, is far behind the practice of those manual-training teachers who are making drawing tables, benches, and looms, or laying concrete walks, building outdoor gymnasium apparatus, and so on. Some of the teachers have insisted on having a flat or tenement or entire house near the school, where girls taking domestic science can go to learn to make real beds that are really slept upon, to clean bathroom bowls that are really used, to cook meals that are really eaten by people who pay for what they eat, to shake real rugs that become really dirty, and to shop at stores where they come in contact with actual commercial conditions and at the end of a week discover that it really costs money to run a real home. A few teachers, and in time there will be many, desire to go still further. They believe that home-making cannot be taught without having some babies around, and so they have established day nurseries in connection with the home-making classes.

It is because of these things which have been mentioned in some detail that I was glad, as director of the Division of Agricultural and Industrial Education of the New York State Education Department, to send out a circular letter early in April, 1917, to our manual-training and household-arts teachers, in which I stated that every teacher of manual training, sewing, or cooking should be thinking in terms of mobilization service, and that any teacher of manual training who was conducting his course of models, instead of thinking and working in terms of food production or industrial war service, was absolutely out of touch with the needs of the day. I advised him to turn his shop work over to home and community gardens, to increase the time allowance given to manual work, and help fill the cellar and pantry. I advised him to give his Saturdays and afternoons after school and even his vacation period to supervising garden work in the community. I said, furthermore, that any teacher of sewing who was not thinking in terms of Red Cross, and of mending, darning, and repairing, was as far away from the service idea as she possibly could be. I told her that with the increase in price of materials and with the scarcity of dress goods there would be necessary repairing and making over which would give her an opportunity to do some real things. I even told her that she might drop some of her sewing and help the cooking teacher in organizing classes in preserving. I told the teachers of cooking that if they were running through their outlines with no reference to the food shortage of next winter and the year after, they showed a lack of comprehension of the meaning of their jobs. I stated that the early summer and fall suggested lessons in preserving, while the winter season conveyed the idea of conserving. I asked whether they were planning to stop their work in June, before the canning season really began, and leave everything idle until school should open, when the canning season would be nearly over. I wondered what provision had been made in the community for using the summer service which they either had offered or, I hoped, were about to offer.

A few weeks later word came from England of how the manual-training teachers had been urged by those in authority to do garden work. A portion of these directions follows:

Surely wood and metal work have not the monopoly of the educative value in manual operations. The harvesting of an orchard of fruit or a field of potatoes by a class of school children, accompanied by an enthusiastic teacher imbued with the right ideal of his work, can be made to serve other purposes than merely that of simple mechanical utility. A discussion started at first hand between child and teacher on such matters as variety and quality of produce, the destructive fruit pests and diseases encountered, the crating, packing, and distribution of produce, the weighing and measuring actually performed, the calculating of the value of produce and of labor, and a knowledge that the coöperative effort is in response to a call of England's need, would provide open-air lessons in nature study, geography, arithmetic, and civics quite as educative as any obtained in the elaborately equipped manual-training centers.

This is true, especially the phrase "a knowledge that the coöperative effort is in response to a call of England's need," which embraces the socializing value of the manual-arts principles,—a value which we often talk about and as often fail to attain.

Teachers of cooking, in this food crisis now upon us and the greater one which may come, ought to suspend temporarily some of their work in teaching children and turn their attention to teaching adults. To be sure the girl of to-day will be the mother of to-morrow, but the mother of the immediate to-morrow is also the mother of to-day, and the food crisis will be over, it is to be hoped, by the time the girls in our present cooking classes have grown into motherhood. These courses to adults should be intensive and in short units. The printing schools should print leaflets giving practical and helpful recipes to be distributed to the adults. If the women will not come to the school, then the schools should go to the women. By this it is meant that classes can be organized in churches, vacant stores, and settlements. In this connection it may be of interest to quote from the Leicester (England) education committee:

Arrangements have been made in connection with the local food campaign whereby the ordinary schemes of work at the domestic-science centers have been temporarily suspended and special short courses in cookery instruction provided instead. These courses have been designed primarily as a means of instructing as many women and older girls as possible in the method of preparing and cooking suitable substitutes for bread and potatoes. In addition to the rooms equipped for cookery instruction, those normally devoted to the teaching of laundering and housewifery are being used for this special work. The course is arranged to cover 4 lessons given on consecutive half days to each group of attendants, and at the conclusion of each course the women and girls attend one evening for a review lesson including a practical demonstration to which outsiders are invited. Leaflets have been prepared and sent to the schools for distribution. The children themselves write out the scale of rations as applied to individual families and take their copies home, thus becoming the active agents in the food campaign.

In Albany, New York, the regular work in cooking was discontinued early in June for the school year of 1917, and a special course of 10 lessons in food conservation was given at 4 domestic-science centers. The course consisted of 1 lesson in the preservation of eggs, 3 lessons on canning, 1 on making soap, 1 on butter substitutes, 2 on jellies and marmalades, and 1 on the drying of a number of agricultural products.

Not only may the domestic-science teacher go to adults by the way of churches or settlements, but she may go directly,—in the rural districts, at least,—with demonstration kitchens mounted on automobiles. In Lindsay County, England, for example, a domestic-science lecturer arranged an experimental course of lectures and demonstrations on economical cookery, and equipped with necessary utensils a traveling kitchen at a cost of $100. She covered each of the larger villages in the area selected, spending one day in each place, the morning being given over to traveling. In the afternoon, exhibitions of wheat-flour substitutes were arranged and demonstrations given that were based upon left-overs from her preceding evening's lesson. She also gave short talks on beekeeping, horticulture, fruit bottling, and so on. In the evening she gave a cooking demonstration.

The "van" used by the women of Long Island, New York State, consisted of a train of cars behind a steam locomotive, from which demonstrations were given in fruit and vegetable preserving. The County of Nottingham, England, gave similar demonstrations and in addition gave lectures to mothers on the necessity of taking unusual precautions with reference to the health of babies at this period. It was customary in much of the work in England to have an agriculturist go with the teacher and give talks on spraying, elimination of pests, and conservation of garden products.