CREATIVE IMPULSE IN INDUSTRY _A Proposition for Educators_ BY HELEN MAROT 1918 TO CAROLINE PRATT WHOSE APPRECIATION OF EDUCATIONAL FACTORS IN THE PLAY WORLD OF CHILDREN, INTENSIFIED FOR THE AUTHOR THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE GROWTH PROCESSES IN INDUSTRIAL AND ADULT LIFE. PREFACE The Bureau of Educational Experiments is a group of men, and women who are trying to face the modern problems of education in a scientific spirit. They are conducting and helping others to conduct experiments which hold promise of finding out more about children as well as how to set up school environments which shall provide for the children's growth. From these experiments they hope eventually may evolve a laboratory school. Among their surveys the past year, one by Helen Marot has resulted in this timely and significant book. The experiment which is outlined at the close seems to the Bureau to be of real moment,--one of which both education and industry should take heed. They earnestly hope it may be tried immediately. In that event, the Bureau hopes to work with Miss Marot in bringing her experiment to completion. THE BUREAU OF EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENTS, 16 West Eighth Street, New York City. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. PRODUCTION AND CREATIVE EFFORT II. ADAPTING PEOPLE TO INDUSTRY. THE AMERICAN WAY III. ADAPTING PEOPLE TO INDUSTRY. THE GERMAN WAY IV. EDUCATIONAL INDUSTRY AND ASSOCIATED ENTERPRISE CREATIVE IMPULSE IN INDUSTRY INTRODUCTION A friend of mine in describing the Russian people as he observed them in their present revolution said it was possible for them to accept new ideas because they were uneducated; they did not, he said, labor under the difficulty common among educated people of having to get rid of old ideas before they took on new ones. I think what he had in mind to say that it is difficult to accept new ideas when your mind is filled with ideas which are institutional. The ideas which come out of formal education, out of the schools, out of books, are ideas which have been stamped as the true and important ones; many of them are, as they have proved their worth in service. But as they represent authority, they pass into a people's mind with the full weight of an accepted fact. The schools, the colleges, and the books are not responsible primarily for the fixed ideas; every established institution contributes fixed ideas as well as fixed customs and rules of action. The schools and colleges circulate and interpret them. The movement for industrial education in the United States is an illustration of this.