Our Schools in War Time—and After

by Arthur D. Dean

Only within two years have the vocational schools of our country even thought of instructing their pupils in the general principles of safety. Only since workingmen's compensation laws and industrial insurance have come into the foreground in legislative halls have public men considered the appalling need for "safety-first" instruction in factories and in technical schools.

For the duration of the war our thought of safety appliances for industrial life in peaceful times sinks into the background, and we think only of devices for preventing suffocation by poisonous gases, of means of withstanding liquid fire, of deflectors for bullets and camouflage for marching troops. But notwithstanding all these precautions, the inevitable results of war are before us.

The multitude of men who have been injured in the present war is out of all proportion to the number injured in any war with which history or experience makes us acquainted, and the fitting of them to be economically self-supporting is a task of stupendous proportions. For the problem of the support of these men cannot be met entirely by pensions; even if this were possible, the man would thus become a dead weight for the rest of the country to carry, an unenviable position from all points of view. In the case of the professional man, he may, even if handicapped, carry on his work; but the man with a trade, when maimed or blinded, must be taught some other vocation or be provided with some mechanical substitute for his loss in legs or arms and often with special tools and other apparatus which will enable him to carry on his former occupation or a new one. It will not be possible to place all these men as ticket sellers, news vendors, gatemen, and in other positions hitherto appropriate for the industrially disabled; and our vocational schools, the medical profession, and the national government must coöperate in a study of the reëducation of injured soldiers with the aim of putting them on the pay roll.

On July 31, 1917, announcement was made through the press of the United States that a government system for the rehabilitation and reëducation of men disabled in the fighting abroad would be made an adjunct of the proposed scheme for the federal insurance of soldiers and sailors, and that the plans for the rehabilitation of these men would probably, like those in Canada, be modeled after the systems in use in France and England. It is, of course, part of the government's duty to provide for the future of men crippled in its service. It is not the province of the several philanthropic agencies which in the past have commendably endeavored to care for the blind and the crippled by teaching them the handiworks of weaving, brush-making, etc. The work must be done on a sound and scientific basis, and be adjusted to economic conditions on a vast scale such as no philanthropic society can hope to maintain; that is, it must not be relief work, it must be governmental constructive work in reëducation which shall teach the disabled man how to overcome the disadvantage of his infirmity in reëntering the industrial world.

To learn the extent of what may be done in this work of rehabilitation, England, Canada, and the United States look to France,—to the municipal vocational-training school for soldiers at Lyons known as L'École Joffre and the many schools patterned after it in other cities; to the Institution of St. Maurice, at Paris, which has been established by the French government to be a model for other institutions; to the Laboratory of Research on Vocational Work, in Paris, directed by Dr. Jules Amar; and to the Anglo-Belgian hospitals, especially that at Vernon. It has been announced that the United States will pattern its training school after the Institution of St. Maurice, which is a clearing house of experiments and research for the continent.

There are also in France, as in England and Canada, convalescent homes for disabled soldiers,—many of which are supported by private benevolence,—where trades are taught. At the Institute of Les Amis des Soldats Aveugles, in the suburbs of Paris, the blind soldiers are taught the trades of basket-making, bootmaking, brush-making, netting, harness-making, and bookbinding, the course taking about six months before the pupils become proficient. The institution runs its own printing establishment for literature in Braille (the print for the blind). The blind are peculiarly incapacitated, and the occupations open to them are consequently limited. Private benevolence has done much to lessen their economic misfortune, and the government must do more. Some French doctors believe that tobacco manufacturing and matchmaking are adapted to the blind because of their well-known delicacy of touch; many hospitals are giving them lessons in the art of massage, for the same reason, believing that the blind man can qualify for this employment in a few months. The work, however, is still in the experimental stage. But the most progressive work in France has been done in the municipal and government training schools in equipping the maimed and crippled for work, and it is this of which this chapter will treat.

The government institution of St. Maurice follows the lead of the now famous L'École Joffre, which in turn learned much from a school at Charleroi, maintained before the war for victims of industrial accidents. L'École Joffre was the pioneer which has blazed the way for the technical instruction of the wounded. It was founded under the direction of the city of Lyons, with the mayor of the city, Edouard Herriot, most active in the undertaking, and Maurice Barrès to spread its fame with winged words. To house it, an old disused château in a populous part of the city was put in order late in 1914, and early in 1915 the men discharged from the hospital and pronounced suitable for training entered upon their course of instruction. The first one hundred cases received were restricted to those disabled but cured of wounds, the partially paralyzed, and those recovered from amputation. To direct the technical work, Monsieur Basèque, a professor in the industrial-accident school at Charleroi, was chosen. The success of the school was immediate, and by September another was opened in the outskirts of the city to accommodate 80 men.

Naturally, at first, experiments were made, and the experience of L'École Joffre is most valuable to us. Three schemes were inaugurated: one, called placement à domicile, where an allowance was made the man, who was to live in his own home while he entered a workshop to learn a craft of some sort; another, la mode de l'externat, where the man pupil lived at his home or in lodgings while attending classes daily, receiving at the school at noon a canteen meal in order to save the time which would otherwise be taken in going home; and a third, le régime de l'internat, where he lived in the institution as a pupil in a boarding school. Experience developed that this last method was the only one which might be adopted with any assurance of success, the others subjecting the men to possible discouragement, through the jealousy shown by other shop workers, the necessarily slow progress, the inequality of pay, the varying degrees of instruction, and insufficient supervision. Canada too, after investigation, has found that the men throughout their training must live at the school and be under supervision, in order to avoid discouragement and the forming of bad habits of idleness and alcoholism, and to insure continuity of interest in their work.

The condition of entrance to L'École Joffre in Lyons is that the man must be pronounced permanently unfit for military service. Next he is examined to ascertain his fitness for industrial work, a matter determined by his freedom from disease, his previous work, his general education and ability, the employment preferred, and the occupations open. Whenever possible, the man is kept in his former employment. This principle is sound economically and psychologically, and must be adhered to in our schools. The employments for which training is given are bookkeeping, shorthand and typewriting, paper-stitching, bookbinding, toymaking, shoemaking, woodworking and drafting, tailoring, wood carving, gardening, and machine adjusting. Office work offers special opportunity to the one-handed and the crippled, as stenography and typewriting do to the blind. The course with commercial subjects, it was found, had to be carefully restricted, for many without sufficient education wished to take it up, and there was danger of sending too many men into occupations already well supplied with competent workers.

L'École Joffre is a municipal undertaking, a free school, the men pupils paying no board or tuition. It is in a measure subsidized, for the school receives from the Ministry of War a grant of 3 francs 50 centimes for each pupil for each day's attendance. The other funds to support the school are provided in various ways—popular subscriptions and grants by provincial organizations and other official bodies. As for the men themselves, they do not, while in training, receive the government pension of 1 franc 70 centimes a day, but the school makes each man an allowance of 1 franc 25 centimes a day from its own funds, so far as they permit of such liberality.