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
I. _Concentration, or training, camps._ These are usually located in
agriculturally strategic sections of the state, where boys may receive
preliminary training in camp life and in farm work under disciplinary
and instructional conditions. Of course such a camp can do nothing more
than give the boys a training in the elements of farm activities (such
as harnessing a horse, running a hand cultivator, using a hoe, driving
a team) and serve as a trying-out period for weeding out boys who are
unsatisfactory. These camps cannot be considered places which will give
a preliminary agricultural education, for that is very different from
giving a preliminary idea of farm operations. After these boys have
received a course of such training, they are sent out under leadership
to work in a section of the state where a group may work for one farmer
and live at the camp meanwhile or may work for individual farmers
and live with the employer. Obviously it is taken for granted that
such a camp is located in a good agricultural section and that its
surroundings have something more than fine swimming holes or beautiful
scenery. These boys must be trained in an environment and under
conditions similar to the farm life in which they are to participate
later. It would seem that the agricultural colleges of the country
and the secondary schools of agriculture would, generally speaking,
offer splendid locations for establishing training camps. Here
would be found, or ought to be found, good land. This is not always
true, because occasionally an agricultural college has been located
irrespective of good land. The technical and dormitory facilities,
however, would be available for the boys in training.
II. _Farm-working, or labor-distributing, camps._ These are
concentration camps in a certain sense, but they are located directly
in the farm district where the boys, after receiving their preliminary
training, are to find work in the community adjoining the camp.
Several camps of this order have started out with the idea of giving
a preliminary training in agriculture in the camp itself, and have
borrowed or bought farming implements and teams and leased land in
order to give the training. But in the majority of cases this idea was
abandoned, for it was found that these boys could receive all their
preliminary training with the farmers, provided the leader of the camp
could establish helpful relations between the boy and the employing
farmer and could, out of his wisdom and experience, protect the boy in
the early stages of the work and guide him in all its stages. In other
words, in this type of camp a city man, acting as leader, comes into a
community with a group of boys who live at the camp but receive their
training with the near-by farmers. A labor-supply camp, composed of
able-bodied boys, is a type which adequately meets the need at small
expense.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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