Our Schools in War Time—and After

by Arthur D. Dean

In Hull, also, the Educational Committee, besides encouraging work in school gardens, has authorized the labor of schoolboys in cultivating spare land in various places as a substitute for their usual manual training in the school shops.

In Hertfordshire there are school gardens for the production of potatoes, parsnips, beets, and onions, with school instruction in gardening given the pupils. During the period for planting there is a schedule of half-time attendance. In Bradford the successful vegetable gardening is correlated with the school work in nature study, composition, arithmetic, and drawing, and emphasis is placed on the educational value of the productive work.

It is difficult for America to see the food crisis as do the nations which are near the exhaustion point. While everyone must deplore the wholesale excusing of children to work without supervision, we ought to watch with interest all schemes which will increase production and yet will keep younger children in school for full time and will permit those older to work part time. This part-time work should be confined to the years of 14 to 18, except possibly in the case of work in the school garden, where younger children may labor for short periods.

The appeal of Neville Chamberlain, the Director-general of National Service, in the spring of 1917, for volunteers from such boys as were able to make the sacrifice, connects the need for agricultural labor with the necessity for providing proper supervision of the boys. His plan for utilizing the labor of English schoolboys has many features similar to devices employed in Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey.

It is well understood that an abundant supply of labor for the land during the coming summer months is an urgent national necessity. Many schemes have already been organized for the employment of soldiers, women, and prisoners of war, but it is desirable to form a reserve of labor so organized as to be available at short notice. For this reserve I turn to the boys at our public and other secondary schools. During the last two years many of them have given valuable help in hoeing, harvesting, and timber cutting, and at the present crisis I confidently hope that all for whom it is possible will make their services available both in summer holidays and, if necessary, during the coming term. I have accepted the offer of the Cavendish Association to place at my disposal their organization, which will act in conjunction with a committee—representative of schools and masters—having its headquarters at St. Ermin's, and working under the director of the agricultural section of this department. Full particulars of the arrangements and procedure will shortly be issued by the committee. The main points are as follows:

(1) The age of the boys permitted to volunteer should not be below 16 except in the cases where the school authorities consider boys of 15 sufficiently strong to undertake the necessary work. (2) The boys will be organized in squads of varying sizes, each in charge of a master or other responsible person. (3) It is proposed that during term time the period of continuous whole-time service should not exceed two weeks. Every effort will be made to find work for schoolboy volunteers in the neighborhood of the school, but if the work lies at some distance from the school, railway fares will be paid and careful provision will be made for board and lodging. No boy will be expected to volunteer for service during term whose school work is of immediate importance; for example, a boy who is preparing for a scholarship examination. I recognize that this part of the scheme may present some difficulties to all but the large public schools, but I hope that some of the larger state-aided secondary schools may be able to join in it. Before doing so, however, they should communicate with the Board of Education. (4) In the holidays they will work for not less than three or four weeks, and it is hoped that, if necessary, they may have leave of absence from school until the end of September. (5) The whole working hours will be carefully proportioned to the average strength of each squad, and the wages adjusted accordingly. If the total sum earned does not meet the cost of living, the deficit will under special conditions be made up.

I trust that when the call for boys' help comes, parents will recognize its urgency and will not hesitate to allow their sons to render this service for their country.

In Germany there has been a systematic contribution from schools to agriculture since March, 1915. Authority was given to the respective school officials to grant the necessary leave of absence to older children for farm and garden cultivation. With the increasing need of securing a sufficient supply of food for the nation, excuses of pupils from school increased. An additional service of pupils was required by an order issued on May 15, 1917, relative to combating fruit and vegetable pests.

Looking forward to future scarcity, Germany, with the help of the teaching staff and government leaflets, next enlisted school children in the work of collecting field and forest edible products. Children were engaged in the work of gleaning, and in the summer of 1915 the gleanings amounted to approximately $50,000, the greater part of which was turned over to the Red Cross as the children's contribution. In the summer and autumn of 1915 the children aided, too, in gathering fruits. During the following winter the schools gave instruction in the substitution of fruit products for fat and proteid. These were pointed lessons both in frugality and in public spirit.

Additional requirement of the children's services was made when the continued scarcity of fats made it imperative to conserve acorns, horse-chestnuts, and seeds containing oil, the gathering of which was impossible without the aid of school children. An order of August 21, 1916, authorized the employment of children to take part in the extraction from trees in the state forests of resin needed chiefly for the paper industry; and in the same season children were called upon to engage in the collection of kernels of cherries, plums, and apricots in enormous quantities for oil extraction.

The school administrators and teachers of America knew little, if anything, of the farm-placement ventures of European countries. But they were told most emphatically in the spring of 1917 that the military force was but one factor in national organization, and that the ultimate decision as to victory might well be with the farmer. So in American fashion we started at it; New Jersey with its "junior industrial army," Massachusetts with its bronze-badged boy farmers, and New York with its "farm cadets."

We all thought we were original, and perhaps we were; and yet it is certainly not new for schoolboys to work outside the school session when of proper age. Whether for the father or a neighborhood employer, boys 14 and over have worked in stores and gardens, in summer hotels, in offices, garages, and manufacturing plants. Nor is it unusual, for that matter, to have the outside work coördinated with the school and receiving due credit in the curriculum. The coöperative high-school and vocational courses in many cities—Fitchburg, Beverly, Providence, Hartford, Indianapolis, Chicago, and New York—are well known to those who are familiar with the extension and coöperative efforts of our vocational schools.