Our Schools in War Time—and AfterDean, Arthur D. (Arthur Davis)
History
Our Schools in War Time—and After
Dean, Arthur D. (Arthur Davis)
Education -- United States; World War, 1914-1918 -- War work -- Schools
The right leader will also have to think of reading matter for the
camp and of the problem of having the boys attend church services on
Sunday when the membership of the camp has varied religious beliefs. He
may have some orthodox Jews in camp when the country village has only a
Methodist church. He must satisfy the boys who want to have a minstrel
show, or the townspeople who offer to entertain the boys. He may even
have to arbitrate in labor disputes. He may be the local placement
bureau. He should be able to drive an automobile, in order that he may
carry a flying squad five miles from camp for a day's work for a farmer
who is in immediate need. He must be able to answer the questions
asked on blanks sent out by the state departments of agriculture
and education, by city boards of education, by state Y.M.C.A.'s, by
child-labor bureaus, and by all other organizations more or less
directly interested in the new aspects of old problems. If the boys
have been excused from school, he must certify that their labor-camp
work has been equivalent to the school work which they otherwise would
have had. He must be the banker of the camp and help the boys conserve
the money which they earn. He is accountable to the group for the
expenses of the camp, in order that these may be divided pro rata. He
must be able to buy supplies at the least cost.
It is with deliberate intention that this list has been made lengthy
and of wide range, in order to show that no man exists who could meet
adequately every condition imposed. He is bound to be "born short," as
William Hawley Smith would state it, on some of these angles. If he
is a social-minded man of the Boy Scout or Y.M.C.A. type, he will be
long on entertainments, recreation, food requirements, knowledge of
personal equipment, group work, first aid, and sanitation. If he is
of the school-teacher type, he will probably be strong on discipline,
efficient in looking after details of school credits, camp expenses,
records, moral conditions, letter writing, and keeping boys busy. If he
is a technical man in agriculture, he may know nothing about baseball
on Saturday afternoon or how to organize a minstrel show, but he will
probably know how to do more than keep boys busy. He will keep them
effectively busy; that is, he will arrange to have certain boys do the
lines of work adapted to their skill and knowledge. He will discover
ways of utilizing the labor of the unskilled boy. He will be able to
judge whether or not a boy is working to his full capacity, and he may
be somewhat pitiless if the boy does not measure up to a farm-labor
standard. In other words, such a man will be very largely interested
in a working camp. He will be interested in meeting the conditions
imposed by the farmers. He will know that the berries must be expressed
by four o'clock and that the picking may have to stop promptly at
two. He will know that a leaky crate of raspberries means a low price
for possibly a whole carload.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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