AN IMMIGRANT AND THE CHILDREN
The schools will change for the better when their life is made basically different from what it has been.
They are pointed in the direction of the fundamentals of knowledge, but working with the tools of the classicists. They have developed and developed until we find life on one side,—that is, outside the school,—and learning on the other side,—that is, inside the school. Now the schools must be pointed so that life and the school become one.
To begin with, better school conditions must be provided for the youngest children. The first steps in child teaching must be sound. The primary years of school must be worth while. Unless the basic structure is real, soul satisfying, higher education will be halting and futile. The child is entitled to a fine start in his life’s journey if he is to have a fair chance of carrying his head high and his shoulders straight.
He comes to school a distinct personality. He is joyous, spontaneous, natural, free. But from the first day, instead of watching, encouraging that personality, the school begins to suppress it and keeps up the process year in and year out. By and by we begin to search for the individuality that has been submerged. We make tempting offers to the student in the high school and in the college—we give him better teachers, better equipment, greater freedom, more leisure, smaller classes, direct experiences. We call upon him to stand out, to face the problems of life honestly, squarely,—to be himself. How blind we are! First we kill, and then we weep for that which we have slain.
We do not look upon the children as an important economic factor. Children are a problem to the parent and teacher, but not to the race.
Do you raise pigs? The government is almost tearful in its solicitude for their health and welfare. The Agricultural Bureau sends you scientific data gathered at great pains and expense. But do you raise children? Ah! They are very expensive. And there are so many of them! One teacher to fifty is the best we can do for you. Teachers who are specialists in their profession? Oh, now really! You know we could never afford that. We must pay for high-priced teachers for the high schools and upper grades, but for the little children—all you want is a pleasant personality that is able to teach the rudiments of learning. There’s not much to do in those grades—just the rudiments, you know. There’s no disciplining to do there, the children are so easily suppressed. It’s only in the upper grades we have the trouble!
Stupid and topsy-turvy!
We need the scientist, the child specialist, the artist, in the first year of school. We need few children to a teacher and plenty of space to move about in.
It’s there the teacher should eagerly, anxiously, reverently, watch for the little spark of genius, of soul, of individuality, and so breathe the breath of life upon it that it can never again be crushed or repressed.
We must spend more money on elementary education if the money we now spend on higher education is to bring forth results that are commensurate with our national needs. We spend fifty dollars a year on the education of a child and ten times that amount on the education of a young college man....
Do we really believe in children? Can we say with the Roman mother, “These are my jewels”? How long ago is it that the state legislature passed a bill enabling the canneries to employ children and women twelve hours a day? Fifty children to a teacher, adulterated foods, military discipline, are not beliefs in children. Enslaving mothers is not a belief in children.
Our belief in children, like our belief in many other good things, is mainly a word belief. What we need is a practical belief. We are still at the stage where we separate work and thought, action and theory, practice and ethics. If we would be saved, we must follow the child’s way of life. His way is the direct way. He learns from contact with the forces about him. He feels them, he sees them, he knows what they do to him. He thinks and does and discovers all in one continuous flow of energy.
The child says: “I am of things as they are. I am the fighter for the things that ought to be. I was the beginning of human progress, and I am the progress of the world. I drive the world on. I invent, I achieve, I reform. About me is always the glory of mounting. I have no fear of falling, of slipping down, down. I have no fear of being lost. I am truth. I am reality, and always I question chaos.”
When the child begins to question the wisdom of the group, its religion, its literature, its dress, its tastes, its method of government, its standard of judgment, that moment the group should begin to take heed. It should take the child’s questioning seriously. When the group fails to do this, it gives up its existence, it ceases to grow because it looks back, it worships tradition, it makes history in terms of the past rather than in terms of the future.
Belief in evolution is a belief in the child.
What the race needs is a principle of growth, spiritual growth, that can never be denied. Such a principle it will find in the child, because the spirit of the child is the one factor of the group existence that in itself keeps changing, growing. The child is nature’s newest experiment in her search for a better type, and the race will be strong as it determines that the experiment shall be successful.
We develop national characteristics in accord with our adherence to a common ideal. We must therefore surrender ourselves for the common good, and the common good to which we should surrender is epitomized in the child idea.
I feel that the attitude towards the school and the child is the ultimate attitude by which America is to be judged. Indeed, the distinctive contribution America is to make to the world’s progress is not political, economical, religious, but educational, the child our national strength, the school as the medium through which the adult is to be remade.
What an ideal for the American people!
When my father came to America, he thought of America only as a temporary home. He learned little or no English. As the years went by he would say, “It is enough; my children know English.” Then more years rolled by. One day he came to me and asked me to help him get his citizenship papers. He and I began reading history together. Month after month we worked, laboring, translating, questioning, until the very day of his examination.
That day I hurried home from college to find a smiling, happy father. “Did you get them?” I asked.
“Yes, and the judge wanted to know how I knew the answers so well, and I told him my son who goes to college taught me, and the judge complimented me.”
I have been a part of many movements to Americanize the foreigner, but I see that the child is the only one who can carry the message of democracy if the message is to be carried at all. If the child fails to make the connection between the ideals of the school and the fundamental beliefs of the people, there is none other to do it. The children are the chain that must bind people together.
I have told about parents growing because they sought growth for their children. I saw them grow through the initiative of the school. These were tenement dwellers. Would this thing hold where the parents are well to do, and the streets are clean and music is of the best, and home ideals are of the highest and the social life of the neighborhood is intimate? Is it still necessary for the school to gather the parents about itself? Is it still necessary for the school to go out into the community and get the parents to consciously work as a group for the children’s interest, to consciously shape their philosophy of life in conformity with the dynamic philosophy that childhood represents?
More necessary! If not to save the children, it should be done to save the parents.
No matter who the people are, they need the school as a humanizing force, so that they may feel the common interest, revive their visions, see the fulfillment of their dreams in terms of their children, so that they may be made young once more. Americanize the foreigner, nay, through the child let us fulfill our destiny and Americanize America.