Out of it all there looms up a new science of chemistry, improved methods of transportation in the air, a still greater standardization of making industrial products, a new conception of government control of trade and industry, a system of government insurance for individuals and corporations, new concepts of legislative authority and action, and a score of other things all heading up into a new sense of nationalism,—and who knows but even a sense of internationalism!
Is it credible that education alone will remain unaffected by these world changes?
CHAPTER V
THE OPPORTUNITY FOR MANUAL AND HOUSEHOLD ARTS
A new spirit of teaching practical arts is upon us. The aims, materials, and methods of instruction in manual training, cooking, sewing, agriculture, and commercial branches are changing. They have been influenced by the vocational-education movement, and because of it practical arts in general education must justify themselves or else be put into the scrap heap.
The development and organization of differentiated courses in industrial, agricultural, and household and commercial arts adapted to junior and senior high schools—more particularly in connection with the education of children from 12 to 16 years of age—offers a new field of service to teachers of these subjects who, up to now, have been following methods unsuited either to the needs of vocational training or to the needs of general education. Already the set of wood and iron models taken from the Russian system of the early seventies has disappeared, and the sampler book in sewing has passed away. The era of the coat hanger and sleeve board in manual training and of the set of doll's clothes and models of undergarments is doomed, and the cooking outline which starts out with making cocoa in September and in the thirteenth lesson takes up the making of an angel cake will soon meet the fate of flowerpot holders, doll's aprons, and book agriculture.
But there is a great field for the practical arts in general education,—a field which no scheme of vocational training can possibly occupy. Each has its place. Vocational training is fitting young persons for profitable employment in chosen vocations. Practical arts in general education consists of varied lines of activity taken from the fields of agriculture, commerce, industry, and the household and taught in the school for the purpose of developing capacity to deal with concrete things and of arousing social and industrial interests in the workaday world.
In the early years of the child's life practical-arts work has a strong motor and social value. In the middle years, say from 12 to 16, it has a social and vocational-guidance value. The chapter entitled "The Field for Industrial and Trade Schools" gives a number of suggestions as to the work which boys and, to some extent, girls may offer as their service contribution in time of war. However there are fewer than 100 industrial and trade schools in the country. The majority of our youth are taking some practical-arts work as a part of general education in either the elementary or the secondary school, and surely these young people will want to do something in this emergency. And certainly the teachers of sewing, manual training, cooking, and agriculture will desire to do their part, not only because they can be of service at this time but also for the reason that through war-service work they will be able to improve upon the practical-arts work and make it conform to the new spirit. The whole spirit of the new methods is based upon getting away from individual models created out of the mind of a teacher and imposed upon an unsuspecting student body which follows a "course in models" in about the same way that it takes a course in arithmetic.
The present scheme of teaching practical arts is based upon the project plan and not upon the model or exercise plan. It no longer depends upon the teacher's course of study founded on tool exercises or logical sequence of processes. It now comes out of a need which is as clear to the student as it should be to the teacher. The progressive teacher of manual training starts out with such a project, for example, as a garage. This involves making a sketch, working up a bill of materials, finding out the cost of lumber, cement, and so on. It involves work in concrete, laying the floor timbers, putting up the sides, laying out the roof, setting in the window and door frames, putting on the tarred paper or shingles or galvanized iron, and painting and staining.
The progressive teacher of domestic arts no longer thinks of catering merely to the personal decorative sense of young girls. She no longer has the girls spend the entire year making graduation dresses, or dish towels, caps, and aprons. She thinks in terms of quantity and in terms of social service which the domestic-arts work may render. She discovers that a hospital needs towels, aprons, caps, and bed linen, or that the orphan asylum near the school is sorely in need of children's garments, and then she tells of this need to the girls in her charge and the latter take up the problem in the same way that the boys take up the problem of building a garage. Each girl works in conjunction with others for a common purpose which all recognize as being worth while.