Practical Applications as Parts of Academic Courses
The effect of these experiments in vocational education is clearly discernible in the traditional courses. Reading books are beginning to include extracts which deal with practical matters. Mathematics textbooks are presenting more than ever before practical problems drawn from commercial, trade, and agricultural life. Science, both in elementary and advanced forms, is turning to practical applications. In short, there is going on a kind of intellectual compromise which will eventually make training in skill an accepted part of a general training.
General training has until recently been so proud of itself that it has not willingly accepted association with courses designed to cultivate skill. The result is that the common man has gained the impression that there is a wide gulf fixed between general education and practical life. One hopeful symptom of the present situation is that discussions of general education are becoming very much more democratic. To be sure, there are examples of the proud exclusiveness of former days still to be found in the writings of those who do not understand the reach of modern reforms in the curriculum, but these cases are likely to become fewer as the years pass. In the meantime the practical world is making long strides in the direction of an appreciation of the value of a general education. The shop mechanic should read. He should be independent in his cultivation of contact with the most recent movements in his trade. The teacher who teaches reading is coming to recognize this as clearly as does the employer, and very shortly the idea that reading is an artificial somewhat, cultivated exclusively for purely intellectual reasons, will give way to the broader view that even the artisan gains in efficiency by reading.
When that time comes there will be no room for the theory that there should be a different school for the tradesman and the professional class. There will be differentiation within the courses. There will be an elective opportunity for each pupil which will adapt the curriculum to his special needs, but there will be no industrial school on the other side of the street, with a separate course, a different kind of teacher, and a different governing board. Such a cleavage of social interests would be disastrous to the academic subjects quite as much as to the practical subjects. Academic life cannot bury itself in the past; it must make its contribution to the activities of the present.