Creative Impulse in Industry: A Proposition for Educators

by Helen Marot

Before establishing a system of industrial education like Germany's, or extending the makeshift attempts which have been introduced here in the United States, it would seem well to undertake experiments which would stimulate the impulses of youth for creative experience, which would give them an industrial experience where the motive of exploitation is absent and where the stimulus was the content which the production of wealth offers. Such experiments would entail the organization of workshops in connection with schools in which the workshop experience was translated and extended.

Such workshops would be financed independently of the schools. They would not be financed on a basis of profits, but the capital invested would draw a legal rate of interest. The enterprise would be under the direction of managers competent in technological processes, in the estimate of costs, and the organization of the work on a basis of productive efficiency. The working force would be a corps of young people who had received their elementary school certificates and their certificates for employment together with the necessary complement of adult workers for the successful development of the plant. The working force would be paid the market rate of wages. The juvenile members of the force would be paid on a half-time basis as they would work in alternate shifts in the shop and in the school, so that work in the shop would be continuous and would run on full time. The exchange of shifts between the shop and school would occur daily or weekly or semi-weekly, as it was conducive to the health and the intellectual experience of the children and to the needs of production in the organization of the shop.

The workshop would be devoted to the production of some marketable article or articles which are simple in construction. The selection of the product would not depend upon technical processes of construction to furnish educational subject matter. Educationally speaking, the acquisition of technique is a factor, but not a primary one, in the modern scheme of production. The primary factors are those which have universal significance, that is which are common to all industry, the relation of labor, of mechanical equipment, of raw material, of the finished product to the whole and to each other; the relation of the market to productive effort and an effective organization of all of these.

The technical processes or their acquisition are of educational value, because they furnish the necessary experience for the evaluation and appreciation of workmanship; or would furnish a basis for such a valuation if the educational factors which are common to all industry were matters in which all the workers participated and were matters which they understood. It may be that there are certain mechanical processes which have universal technical significance and on that account would have special educational value, but even if those processes were determined and selected for industrial instruction and acquisition, it would not imply that those who acquired them were industrially educated. They would be industrially equipped to act as efficient factory attachments, but the acquisition of processes, even the fundamental ones we have had ample opportunity to discover, do not inspire creative interests and desires.

Because educational content in modern factory work is not accessible to the mass of workers, we have fostered the illusion that the educational subject matter of industry was inherent in the technical process of fabrication. As we have fostered this illusion, we have missed the educational principle applicable to the craft period, as well as to the present, that the condition of the educational requirement, is that workers' participation in productive enterprise coincide in the long run with creative intention and accomplishment. This central requirement of industrial education means that individuals learn to function with conscious creative intention in the environment in which they live and that their learning furnishes a basis for critical and informed evaluations in industrial activity. In the craft period the creative intention required the worker's mastery over every process of his craft. In this machine age of associated enterprise the creative intention requires the ability to associate with others in the administration of industry as well as to take the place of an individual in the routine of factory work

For the reasons I have just stated the educational experiments I am suggesting could cover advantageously one of the many industries which are generally classed as unskilled, and almost any one of these unskilled routine industries would serve as well as another. Almost any one of the so-called child labor industries could be made over into opportunities for young people to experience the stimulating effect of associating with others in a productive effort, and gain the impetus which the stimulation supplied to pursue their subject matter far afield in general mechanics, science, economics, geography, history and art.

For the educational purposes of the experiment the selection of the industry would not be made on the ground that the technical processes of one required greater intellectual activity than another; neither would the selection depend upon whether or not the industry chosen offered young people better chances than another for entrance to a trade where jobs, comparatively speaking, drew fair rates of wages, or the economic conditions were in other respects superior. The experiment would in no sense be a trade preparation but an experience where the enterprise of production was opened up and the possibilities of creative life were realized in association with others, so far as the conditions and time allowed.

The industrial basis for selection of such experiment should hinge, first, on whether or not the young people could function in the industry advantageously to themselves educationally speaking and to the industry socially considered: that is, whether or not the productive processes were in line with the capacity of adolescent children and the product was of social value; second, whether the product could be introduced successfully in the market and the enterprise become self-supporting.

At the present time, a proposition for the promotion of such an educational experiment is being worked out. Wooden toys have been chosen as the article for manufacture, because, first, the models were sufficiently simple in construction to make the work practical for young people who make up the workshop staff; it is practical for the majority of the staff to range in age from 14 to 17 years. Second, the work done by Caroline Pratt on children's playthings has disclosed the fact that the present toy market is below grade from the point of view of the service of toys to children. The market does not supply the children with the sort of material and the sort of tools they require in their play schemes. Therefore, the product chosen has a legitimate social claim on the market. However, it would be valid, though not so interesting, if a certain sort of paper box which filled a legitimate trade need had been selected and a paper box factory had been set up as the basis of the experiment. As a theoretical illustration of my general thesis, paper boxes would serve better than wooden toys, because the latter product, as it is conceived, covers special intellectual content. But the particular sort of content is not a fundamental requirement for the educational purpose of the experiment. However, as the experiment is actually being planned in connection with wooden toys, I shall use the plan, as far as it is worked out, as my illustration. I shall refer later in discussing the school curriculum to the special intellectual content which the manufacture of these toys will represent.

After I set down the details of the experiment, which is now being planned for a workshop and school concerned with the production of play materials, I am hoping that educators and industrial managers may readily make the application to other lines of industry. The plan is tentatively confined to a two years' course. It may be found that two years is too long a time to confine the pupils to the work and the problems of the shop. It may be found in the first year that the pupils will be interested in following some of the problems not in relation to their work and in that case they would break their connection with the shop.