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
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.
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