The industrial schools and the old type of schools are both adult schemes of getting children ready for adult life, not by experiencing it, but by doing certain things well so that they can be entrusted to do later on, what adults in their wisdom have decided that they are to do. But they fail to prepare children for the future as they fail to supply the children's present urgent needs. They use the period for ulterior purposes; purposes ulterior to the period of growth with which they are dealing. As they use this period for another time than its own, in effect they exploit it. Without consciousness of the fact so far as the children are concerned, the schools exploit this period of growth as effectively as the employers reap the profits of child labor. Employers as beneficiaries have more reason than the schools for diverting youth from its own purposes, as they are under the necessity of a price system which is competitive. The schools as well as industry use up the placticity of youth; they kill off the eagerness of children to explore and plan, and cast it aside for more consequential ends.
The consequential ends in America, we have seen, have been less clearly defined than in Germany. Within a year, the United States has become conscious as a nation of place and power, conscious that it is to play a part with the other states of the world. In playing this part, will it retain its rôle of servant of the people, or will it assume with its new world dignity the rôle, if not of master, then of leadership? If still servant, will it serve more efficiently than it has our dominant institution, industry? If the silent partnership between business and the state is strengthened, will not the promoters of industry be in a better position than before to appeal through the state, through the patriotism intensified by our newly acquired world position, for a more universal and a systematized adaptation of workers in industry? The schools in their disinterested capacity, disinterested, that is, in the profits of production, it would seem could be used most effectively toward this end. German manufacture made that clear to American manufacture before the war. It also must be remembered that it was Prussian pride for imperial position that inspired the complete and efficient surrender of the German schools to the needs of the German manufacturers.
America is, of course, "different." All peoples are. But so is our position in the world different from what it was. Our position is not now, nor could it be, the German position. Our past is different, and that will continuously have its effect on our future. But we are facing a great period of change, and the strongest forces in the country are the industrial, and the strongest leaders are the financiers. What the financiers and industrial managers most want is efficient, docile labor. The German system of education, in spite of the fact that we are different, might conceivably have that effect on the youth of this country. Under the pressure of industrial rivalry after the war, under the pressure of an imperial industrial policy, it may be that the people of the country will yield to the introduction of a scheme of education which it has been proved elsewhere can fit children better than any other known scheme into a system of mass production.
It is clear that industry could set up models of behavior more successfully in the name of education than in its own, and to the extent American children come up to these models the more employable they would be from the standpoint of business. If the pressure is sufficiently strong the people may yield to the introduction of a system of compulsory continuation schools similar to those of Germany. If they do, I believe they will eventually fail. But there is danger through loss of energy and loss of purpose in their introduction. Is it impossible for us to hold to our native experimental habits of life and attain standards of workmanship? Is it possible to realize the full strength of associated effort and at the same time advance wealth production?
Germany's industrial supremacy was due, as Professor Veblen shows, to the fact that machine industry was imposed ready-made on a people whose psychology was feudal. The schools of Germany, an essential part of her industrial enterprise, were organized on the servility of the people. We now know what building as Germany has built her educational and industrial system on the weakness of a people means. We are in the process of discovering whether in sacrificing the expansion of her people she can secure a permanent expansion of her Empire. It would seem the better part of statesmanship in America after the war to build industrially on the strength of our people and not on the weakness of another. It is the business of educators to point out the danger and to discover whether efficiency may not be gained in the country by giving children in their adolescent period the impulse for production and high standards of work, not for the sake of the state, but for themselves, for the sake of the community,—out of love of work and for the value of its service.
CHAPTER IV
EDUCATIONAL INDUSTRY AND ASSOCIATED ENTERPRISE
As capital and so far labor have failed to make industry an expansive experience it becomes, as Professor Dewey has pointed out, the business of educators concerned with the growth of individuals to cultivate the field.
If educators regard opportunities for growth with sufficient jealousy they will not wait for industry to emerge with a new program, or system of production; they will initiate productive enterprises where young people will be free to gain first hand experience in the problems of industry as those problems stand in relation to their time and generation. Their alliance should be made with engineers and architects and the managers of industry who have made themselves, through experience and training, masters of applied science and the economics of production. Engineers, not under the influence of business, are qualified to open up the creative aspects of production to the workers and to convince them through their own experience that that there are adventurous possibilities in industry outside the meagre offerings of payday. Mr. Robert Wolf is one of the engineers who is ready for the venture. He told the members of the Taylor Society that "scientific managers have not been scientific enough in dealing with this very important subject of stimulating the thinking and reasoning power of the workman, thereby making him self-reliant and creative." In describing the field in which practical engineers should operate, he laid stress on their giving large space to the originating, choosing, adapting power in men and the direction of it into positive constructive channels; to men's self-consciousness of their place in the great scheme of things.
This conception of the field of operation for engineers also described the field for educators. The latter have failed to seize the chance in the present industrial arrangement for the development of "the originating, choosing power" in the working man because they have been obsessed by the business appreciation of the working man's power of adaptation. It is because they labor under this obsession that they turn industrial education into industrial training whenever they include industry in their curricula. Educators know that there is adventure in industry, but they believe that the adventure is the rare property of a few. They believe this so finally that they surrender this great field of experience with its priceless educational content without reserving the right of such experience even for youth. They know, as we all do, that industrial problems carry those who participate in their solution into pure and applied science; into the market of raw materials and finished products; into the search for unconquered wealth. They know that the marketing of goods is an extensive experience in the world of men and desires. They are not alone in their lack of courage to admit that limiting this experience perverts normal desires and creates false ones. For the sake of education it is to be hoped that such engineers as Mr. Wolf may overcome the timidity of educators, and that, in conjunction with men capable of productive enterprise, they will undertake to give young people an experience which is not tagged on to industry under the influence of profits, but which is inspired by the desire to produce and the opportunity to develop the inspiration.