At this time the government of the United States is going to learn how to become efficient. The state colleges of agriculture are testing their former efficiency,—the test being the power to serve. Schools may now learn what it means to be efficient by the service which they may now render. Not an activity is proposed nor a principle of educational practice given in the chapters which follow but should be brought into our schools in times of peace.
We are going to sew now for the Red Cross because it is war time. Later we shall sew for institutions in our community. Now we are going to develop part-time schools because industry needs boys. Later we shall have coöperative courses because boys at work need further schooling. Now we are placing city boys on farms because the farmers need labor. Later we shall place farms on the minds of boys because youth needs contact with nature. Now we have current-events discussions about loans, submarines, aëroplanes, and I. W. W.'s because the government needs support. Later we shall teach the meaning of the same things because thoughtfully trained people are needed by the government. Now we are to teach patriotism and thrift because the nation needs them. Later we shall teach them because they are essential in themselves.
Now we have extension courses in economical cooking for adult women as a war measure. Later we shall have it as a home measure. Now we are bringing adult women into the schools to receive instruction with their children. Later we shall do the same thing because it is the only sensible procedure under any and all conditions. Now we think in terms of reëducation of disabled soldiers because of the immediate need of helping these honored men. Later we shall turn what we have learned to do for these men into better provisions for making self-supporting our crippled and blinded children who are now in dependent institutions being made still more dependent by the very nature of the poor apology for vocational training which is given them. Now we have clearly before us the need for industrial education because the government is crying for workers. Later we shall see the need for industrial education because those who are to work in the industries need it. Now we hold a child-labor law before youth tempted by industry. Later we shall endeavor to hold before youth better opportunities for vocational, physical, and mental training in our schools as an inducement to stay in them.
What are the schools and colleges going to do about it all? Certainly they will not intentionally injure the cause of education by starting ill-developed ideas of war service. But the desire to avoid the bad should not by any means imply inaction. This is the psychological moment for all of us to justify our very existence as individuals or as parts of an institution or a movement. One could only pity a school man who recently said: "Really, I am envious of some of my colleagues. They have something to do at this time, while the subject which I am teaching can make no contribution."
There has never been a time in our school life when taxpayers, boards of apportionment, women's clubs, state granges, boards of trade, could be made more interested in having the schools broaden out along lines of continuation-school and part-time work, differentiated courses in our high schools, physical-training courses, evening courses for adult illiterates, thrift measures and school savings, teaching of current events, more practical science work, teaching of agriculture, unit courses in household arts, and a score of other things which the school men of America say they want and which they are always saying "the public will not stand for."
Shall we let the golden opportunity for enrichment pass until after the war, when cities will most certainly preach and practice poverty?
Now is the time to evaluate our school subjects, to bring in the new if they are worth while, to scrap the old if they do not stand the test of national needs. If a community will not "stand for" cooking when the H. C. L. rises like a specter before our doors, it will never vote for household arts after the war. If a city school favorably located near the open country will not now extend its educational program to include community gardening when prices of farm products are excessive, it will hardly broaden out when the crisis of our material needs is over. If a state will not line up with the Federal Board of Vocational Education for national aid for its vocational schools when its industries are crying for trained youth, it will never move forward in time of a normal demand. If we do not reorganize our schools to bring in the best while we may, we shall in all probability be required in the near future to discard some things which we have, without having any opportunity to develop the new things which we have stated in our conventions and teachers' institutes that we earnestly desire. World conditions challenge our schools. What is their program?
CHAPTER II
WAR AND COMMUNITY USES OF OUR SCHOOLS
An evaluating test for each of our school subjects has at last been found. The test is the capacity of the subject to respond to a national need or a national ideal. In many instances of the countries concerned in this great war the schools as a whole have amply justified their existence, and many of the subjects taught have stood through this world emergency the acid test of meeting national needs. The scientific and efficiency spirit of Germany is reflected in the posters spread over Berlin: "Send your cherry, peach, and plum seeds to the schoolhouse with your children," seeds being used for making fat and oil. The spirit of France has been reflected, as will be seen in the following pages, in the work of the teachers and the children for the preservation of that wonderful nationalism of France. The schools of England are reshaping themselves—in fact, are being remade—as a result of the shortcomings set forth by the war.