Professor Dewey has laid down in this connection a principle of the utmost importance. He affirms that “we may produce in schools a projection in type of the society we should like to realise.”[[57]] If we are to train the young for social life, the proper method is to surround them in childhood, so far as that may be, with the conditions of the ideal social life toward which we look. The school should be the societas perfecta in miniature. This naturally requires a very considerable departure in tone from the conditions which still prevail. The pontifical and authoritarian tradition of the mediæval school is still with us; and an attention is devoted to problems of discipline and order which is disproportionate to the real business of preparing for life in a democratic commonwealth, and is to a great extent from an angle and in a spirit alien to the purpose in hand. A considerable breach in this system has already been made by the new emphasis upon the value of self-determination in education from the earliest stages; but the relaxation of the traditional canons of discipline does not carry us far enough. Self-determination must be recognised not only as an individual right but as a group responsibility; and the practice of popular self-government should begin in the schools. It is symptomatic of the present tendency among educators of a liberal and radical type that in the prospectus of a school soon to be established, it is laid down that the internal government “shall be increasingly democratic, scholars and teachers sharing both legislation and administration,” and that the external government shall be vested in a council, representing the trustees, the faculty and the scholars. This is a sane and fruitful method of initiating boys and girls into the larger responsibilities of social life. Already the plan has been adopted in some existing schools with a considerable measure of success; and if the school is to be the organ of a genuine training in social efficiency, we need a wide extension of this method.
[57]. Democracy and Education, p. 370.
But beyond this discipline in self-government, the school has to undertake the fitting of the child for other kinds of social contribution.
(a) He must be trained to contribute his share to the supply of the physical needs of the community. Obviously, in a school, the direct and complete application of this principle is impossible. It is laid down in the prospectus before referred to that “all must share, teacher and scholar alike, in the labour that lies at the basis of human life and unites all men through their common need”; and it is ordained that “the kitchen, the crafts-room and the garden shall rank equally with the classroom.” It is proposed to give the scholars “direct experience of agricultural processes and the preparation of the main articles of food, spinning, weaving, dyeing, sewing, carpentry, building, pottery, printing and any other crafts directly contributing to the life of the community.” Naturally, no child is required to become expert in all these occupations; but his training in them will presently serve to reveal his special aptitudes and to determine his own personal choice.
It is not contemplated in this particular experiment that machinery will be introduced to any considerable extent; and while it is stated that machinery will not be excluded, it is obvious that it is regarded with some dubiety, if not hostility. But it is necessary to accept the position that the machine industry is here with us and is here to stay; and a proper perception of its true function will save us from assuming a fallacious attitude in regard to it. While the incentive to the development and improvement of large scale mechanical processes has been the pursuit of profit, the real office of these processes is to diminish the purely mechanical and menial operations which are necessary to life, and consequently to release a larger volume of human energy for tasks of a more independent and creative nature. There are certain necessities of life concerning which our requirements are that they should be good in quality and abundant in quantity—and as no question but of utility arises in relation to them, they may be assigned to the large-scale machine industry. This, however, does not in the least absolve us from including in our school curriculum a provision for the habituation of children to mechanical processes of this kind. But because these processes are necessarily monotonous and irksome, every effort should be made to introduce into them what elements of interest may be attached to them; and to reduce to the lowest possible point the current tendency to make the worker a mere accessory of the machine.
Miss Helen Marot has recently described proposals for an educational experiment which aims at the association of discipline in industrial production with the educational process. This particular experiment takes the form of producing wooden toys; and while, as Miss Marot sees, the production of toys has anyhow an intrinsic interest, the details which are given show how radically the atmosphere of the machine industry might be changed by giving it a place in the school curriculum. Miss Marot’s assumption that the machine industry can be so transformed by democratic control as to satisfy the creative instinct has already been adversely criticised in these pages; but the present discussion is not affected by criticism of that particular point. What it is to our purpose to observe is that mechanical processes may be relieved of some of their present irksomeness by supplying them with their appropriate background. First of all, it is necessary that the worker should be acquainted with the whole process of manufacture in order that he may participate in his own special task with a measure of intelligent interest; and this will involve a degree of familiarity with the technical problems of management, with accounting and costing, with the internal conditions of the industry and the plant, and with the larger economics of the enterprise. But in addition to all this more immediate business of habituation to routine, provision is made for the development of artistic judgment and execution and for the acquisition of knowledge relating to the craft itself—consisting in this case of “authentic accounts and inspirational stories of industrial life, especially of the lumber, wood-working and the toy industry.”
Obviously not all trades command the interest which can be created around toy-making. In the manufacture of articles of utility which are produced by processes of a highly standardised kind, it would be less easy to introduce elements of romance and sentiment. Still much can and should be done in every trade; and admission to any particular trade should be preceded by some discipline of this kind. If ever industry is organised on the basis of national Guilds, surely one function of the Guilds will be to establish national trade schools in which a generous training of this kind can be given and which shall be closely co-ordinated to the entire scheme of public education.
III
But it cannot be too frequently emphasised that we are not to accept the present subordination of social life to the exigencies of the machine industry. That the machine industry is here to stay need not be argued; and we may dismiss as impracticable the suggestion of a return to the handicraft system. The machine industry must be retained for the production of utilities where no question of beauty or ornament arises; and it should be so ordered as to reduce the purely mechanical operations entailed in the manufacture of the staple commodities to a minimum. Consequently care should always be had to prevent an exaggerated emphasis upon the place of the machine industry in education. It is not to be pretended that mechanical processes can ever in themselves minister substantially to the joy of life. The best that can be said is that their present disadvantages can be materially reduced; but not even the sense of partnership and democratic control, the shortening of hours and the addition of intellectual interest, taken all together, can turn factory life into “a thing of beauty and a joy for ever.”
Some emphasis has already been laid upon the difference between productive and creative activity. Creation is not merely production, but reproduction, that is to say, the activity in which we express ourselves for the joy of the thing itself. The present writer was brought up in a slate-quarrying town in North Wales. The workers spent their time in mining and dressing roofing-slates—an industry which involves no special skill save only in the department of slate-splitting. This is handwork and no satisfactory mechanical substitute for it has yet been contrived; and there is much emulation among the workers in this process. Apart from this there is nothing note-worthy about the industry except the very considerable extent of partnership which prevails (or used to prevail) in the work itself and of fellowship in the dressing shops. But after the day’s work was done there was a somewhat remarkable activity of another kind. Sometimes a worker would take a piece of raw slate home with him and spend his spare time in turning it into candlesticks or some other article by means of a lathe or by direct manual work. The result from an artistic standpoint was doubtless very crude; but it was interesting and instructive to observe the almost instinctive way in which men, released from necessary toil, turned to the production of things of beauty. This free self-expression took other forms in other men. Welsh quarrymen have always been well-known for their literary tastes; and the town contained a considerable number of quite capable writers of both prose and verse in the Welsh language. Others there were—and these were a large number—whose dispositions were musical; and since the purchase of musical instruments was as a rule beyond these men’s pockets, they devoted themselves to vocal music. The congregational singing in the churches was famous throughout the country; and while there were many individual vocalists and composers of considerable merit, the development of choral singing reached an extremely high point. It was an intensely religious community and was full of religious activities of many kinds. It was perfectly plain that the real business and joy of life lay not in the production of roofing-slates but in the exercises of creative self-expression to which the men appeared to turn naturally and instinctively when the business of making a livelihood was over.