Chapter IX

       Industry And Educational Readjustment

       Table of Contents

      The chief effort of all educational reforms is to bring about a readjustment of existing scholastic institutions and methods so that they shall respond to changes in general social and intellectual conditions. The school, like other human institutions, acquires inertia and tends to go on doing things that have once got started, irrespective of present demands. There are many topics and methods in existing education which date back to social conditions which are passing away. They are perpetuated because of tradition and custom. Especially is it true of our institutions of learning that their controlling ideals and ideas were fixed when industrial methods differed radically from those of the present. They grew up when the place of industry in life was much less important than it is now when practically all political and social affairs are bound up with economic questions. They were formed when there was no positive connection between science and the operations of production and distribution of goods; while at the present, manufacturing, railways, electric transportation, and all the agencies of daily life, represent just so much applied science. Economic changes have brought about a closer interdependence among men and strengthened the ideal of mutual service. These political, intellectual, and moral changes make questions connected with industrial education the most important problem of present-day public education in America.

      The fact that the Greek word from which our word “school” is derived meant leisure suggests the nature of the change which has taken place. It is true at all times that education means relief from the pressure of having to make a living. The young have to be supported more or less by others while they are being instructed. They must be saved from the impact of the struggle for material existence. Opposition to child labor goes hand in hand with the effort to extend the facilities of public schools to all the wards of the nation. There must be free time for schooling, and pupils must not come to their studies physically worn out. Moreover, the use of imagination, thought and emotion in education demands minds which are free from harassing questions of self-support. There must be an atmosphere of leisure if there is to be a truly liberal or free education.

      Such things are as true now as when schools were named after the idea of leisure. But there was once assumed a permanent division between a leisure class and a laboring class. Education, beyond at least the mere rudiments, was intended only for the former. Its subject-matter and its methods were designed for those who were sufficiently well off so that they did not have to work for a living. The stigma attached to working with the hands was especially strong. In aristocratic and feudal countries such work was done by slaves or serfs, and the sense of social inferiority attached to these classes naturally led to contempt for the pursuits in which they were engaged. Training for them was a servile sort of education, while liberal education was an education for a free man, and a free man was a member of the upper classes, one who did not have to engage in labor for his own support or that of others. The antagonism to industry which was generated extended itself to all activities requiring use of the hands. A “gentleman” would not use his hands or train them to skill, save for sport or war. To employ the hands was to do useful work for others, while to render personal service to others was a badge of a dependent social and political status.

      Strange as it may seem, the very notions of knowledge and of mind were influenced by this aristocratic order of society. The less the body in general, and the hands and the senses in particular, were employed, the higher the grade of intellectual activity. True thought resulting in true knowledge was to be carried on wholly within the mind without the body taking any part at all. Hence studies which could be carried on with a minimum of physical action were alone the studies belonging to a liberal education. First in order came such things as philosophy, theology, mathematics, logic, etc., which were purely mental. Next in rank came literature and language, with grammar, rhetoric, etc. The pursuit of even what we call the fine arts was relegated to a lower grade, because success in painting, sculpture, architecture, etc., required technical and manual training. Music alone was exempt from condemnation, partly because vocal music did not require the training of the hands, and partly because music was used for devotional purposes. Otherwise education should train men to appreciate art, not to produce it.

      These ideas and ideals persisted in educational theory and practice long after the political and industrial conditions which generated them had begun to give way. Practically all the conceptions associated with culture and cultural education were created when the immense superiority of a leisure class over all working classes was a matter of course. Refinement, polish, esthetic taste, knowledge of classic literatures, acquaintance with foreign languages and with branches of sciences which could be studied by purely “mental” means, and which were not put to practical uses, were the marks of culture, just as they were the marks of leisure time and superior wealth. The learned professions—divinity, law, and, to a less extent, medicine—were admitted upon suffrance to the sphere of higher education, for the manual element in the service rendered to others was not so great as in industrial pursuits. But professional education was looked upon with disparagement in contrast with a liberal education just because its aim was rendering service to others. And for a long time medicine in particular occupied a mediocre and dubious position just because it required personal attention to the bodily needs of others.

      Opposition to the introduction into higher education of the natural sciences was due not only to the conservative dread of change on the part of established institutions, but also to the fact that these sciences emphasized the use of the senses (which are physical organs), of physical apparatus, and of manual skill required in its manipulation. Even the representatives of mathematical science joined those of literary studies in assuming that the natural sciences must be less cultural than sciences like geometry, algebra, and calculus, which could be pursued in a more purely mental way. Even when the progress of social changes forced more and more useful studies into the curriculum, the idea of a graded rank in the cultural value of studies persisted. Occupations like banking and commerce involved less manual activity and less direct personal service to others than housekeeping, manufacturing, and farming, consequently the studies which prepared for them were at least more “genteel” than studies having to do with the latter. Even at the present time many people associate mental activity with physical acquiescence.

      The first breach in this order of ideas occurred in elementary education. Along with the spread of democratic ideas which took place in the eighteenth century, there developed the idea that education was a need and right of the masses as well as a privilege of the upper classes. In reading Rousseau and Pestalozzi, an American student, who is used to the democratic idea of universal education, is not likely to notice that their conception of the educational development of all as a social necessity is even more revolutionary than the particular methods which they urged. But such was the case. Even so enlightened a liberal as John Locke wrote his educational essay with reference to the education of a gentleman, and assumed that the training of the laboring classes should be of a radically different kind. The idea that all the powers of all members of society are capable of development and that society owed it to itself and to its constituent members to see that the latter received this development, was the first great intellectual token of the democratic revolution which was occurring. It is noteworthy that Rousseau was Swiss by birth, that democratic political ideas were rife in France when he wrote, and that Pestalozzi was not only Swiss by birth but did his work in that republican country.

      While the development of public elementary schools for the masses inevitably puts emphasis upon the usefulness of studies as a reason for education, the growth of the public curriculum and methods was profoundly affected by the surviving ideals of leisure class education. Elementary education, just because it was an education for the masses, was regarded as a kind of necessary political and economic concession rather than as a serious educative enterprise. A strict line was drawn between it, with its useful studies, and the higher education