Our Schools in War Time—and After

by Arthur D. Dean

The mobilization which teaches the saving of our national resources, which directs the thoughtful distribution and wise use of our products, which cultivates the patriotic spirit of service in the boy and girl power of the nation, properly belongs to the field of education, not only in war but in peace. To the schools of America, therefore, the war has come as an opportunity for developing a closer relation between education and life, between life and service.

Our gradual entrance into the war and our distance from the conflict have given us the chance of pausing and surveying the situation before acting,—advantages which were unfortunately denied England and France. At the beginning of the war England apparently almost wrecked her schools, and is slowly repairing the mistakes of hurried action in suspending the attendance laws. France is saving her schools that the nation may go on after the war. It remains for America to use the war to make better schools.

The mobilization of our schools is not concerned with the introduction of military drill, whether voluntary or compulsory. It is an experiment in working out the relation of education to war. We are, all of us, empirics in this experiment; there is no body of tradition and theory to help us. The ancient world offers us no parallels; the modern German system throws no light on it. America, equally with the nations of the older world, is a pioneer in the field. This is a novel experience for us who have been originators only of free education in the past or of administrative systems, not of types of new education. Largely what we have to guide us is some experience of France and England in what to avoid. This negative counsel is valuable in restricting our experiments, but is scarcely constructive in its nature. One of its most valuable lessons, however, is to show us that we must not take our schools into the war, as England did, but bring the war into the schools.

The fact that the problem is a novel one and that it is experimental does not make it futile. All education is experimental in adapting the individual to his changing environment.

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.

In our study of the introduction of the war into our schools we may properly shut out discussions of elements which have no educational value. Many of the proposals for the war uses of our schools have been of a haphazard nature, called out by a well-meant desire to meet the emergency. Much of the legislation concerning itself with the employment of school children or of those under compulsory school age has been, and may yet be, harmful. The suggestion of using the schools as recruiting stations has lost value with the operation of the selective draft. Ill-considered proposals to turn over the vocational and manual-training departments to the government for the purpose of making munitions have shown a lack of knowledge of their meager equipment for an industry highly specialized with standard jigs and fixtures. A department store, a clothing factory, a library, or an office building would be about as fit for such a purpose as a school building. The same may be said of the use of our schools as hospitals. Our schools must be retained as educative plants,—training munition workers, if we will, but not making munitions; providing the government with skilled artisans and scientists, but by no means converting their function of education into that of industrial production.

The war work of our schools is more easily planned in those which have technical and vocational departments than in those which contain only the desk and office equipment. Distinctions must be made, too, between schools in agricultural and industrial centers. The experiments made in New York with "farm cadets" show that the country boy has certain advantages over the city boy in all forms of rural and garden employment. We must not expect the same kind of work from the high-school boys and girls in New York City that we may exact from country children of the same age.

The city boy may be needed in emergency office and factory work. Instead of contributing service as a farm cadet, he may become a "coöperator," giving part-time service to industry and to commerce and part time to school, as many of our city boys are now doing.