Some Objectives in Twentieth Century

Education

WALTER SCOTT MCNUTT, PH.D.,

STATE COLLEGE FOR WOMEN, TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA.

T

HERE are those who maintain that America has lost her proper sense of orientation in educational endeavor. To an impartial onlooker our frenzied activities in the production of educational theory, with no adequate means for practical application, would suggest. fundamental disorder and a lack of common unity and purpose in a national educational program. Possibly we are, to some extent, like unto a man digging for treasure, who, when he has found it, sells all and buys the field, later to learn that it is a fool's gold that he has purchased.

However, there is this one thing that must not be forgotten: we have made progress. Rural schools and rural life have improved; village schools, with their open libraries, have become educational centers and the educational endeavor from such schools has transformed community life; city high schools have taken the place and even transcended the older American colleges; great universities are springing up through the lavishment of the wealth of philanthropists, municipalities, states, and there is now rumor of a nationally supported university.

Nevertheless, much of American education is crude, in that it stresses facts without any bearing on life as it is lived. We are ever learning, yes, ever learning—but we lack insight. We have developed from a very simple origin to a most complex one; yet we are primitive in much that we do because we have not made adjustment to twentieth century life. We are deficient in human engineering.

In the early history of our country adjustment was simple and direct. We had only a few occupations and these were not highly specialized. Children prepared for life at home and attended school for the acquisition of the rudiments of learning, a broader formal culture, and for the socializing effect that came through a larger group participation. Twentieth century industrialized life sends the youth out in its complex structure without any form of home apprenticeship, with merely elementary cultural training in the schools, and here is your result: a wasted life that society cannot afford to lose.

There is no wonder the cry goes out: "Back to the good old days; re-establish homes; restore the ways of our grandfathers and grandmothers." This has ever been the cry of periods of readjustments. Life is a becoming. The backward look is impossible. The complexity of twentieth century life requires both diversity of gifts and specialized training. We need the proper adjustment of both home and school life to twentieth century conditions. Modern education is deficient in giving our youths sympathetic engineering in the participation of modern life. We must settle issues far more reaching than any other generation has been called upon to do. It is just here that we need human engineers who understand the science and art of directing the energies and capacities of man to the advancement of human well-being.

Human society belongs to a class of life which, to a large extent, determines its own destinies, establishes its own ethical codes, creates its own religions, and constructs its own systems of education. It is the place of the human engineer to discover the laws of human nature, and then to engineer life in the conservation, creation and perpetuation of human values. This the engineer achieves through his knowledge of life, human tendencies and institutions as agencies of development and control.

It would be preposterous for me to maintain that I have discovered the secret to twentieth century conditions, or to

offer a panacea for all human educational inconsistencies in American life. I am only the voice of one crying what human engineers have felt and more or less perfectly realized. What then shall be the objectives of human engineers?

1. We must strengthen our schools, in order to engineer our inherited youth into a constructive participation in modern life. The work is costly, but it must be done. Money wasted on private luxuries must find its way to the school funds to be spent for adequate buildings, better equipment, and efficient teachers, with the maximum utilization of all of these agencies.

2. A birth certificate law and the enforcement, with a cumulative record card containing the family history, various aptitudes, activities and achievements of the child, with placement in the work of life, with a follow-up record as an aid to sympathetic engineering in civic life.

3. Trained medical specialists and nurses must meet every child when he first enters school for the purpose of discovering and correcting all physical defects at the expense of the state.

4. A trained psychologist must work with the child, leading him to discover his aptitudes and help him direct them in a way to get the maximum results for himself and society. This means more than our mere I. Q. psychologists.

5. School funds must be distributed in such a way as to give every child an opportunity at the wealth of the state regardless of where he happens to be born. The child born at the "forks of the creek" is entitled to the same opportunity of developing his aptitudes as the child born in the palace of a metropolis. This must be maintained regardless of race, social taboo, or religious creed.

6. Vocational subjects and activities must be given in harmonious development with the play instincts of the child, with the gradual raising of the same to the work level, in order that the child may be progressively developed in harmony with his life work. This should not mean the loss of

the cultured element in education, but the strengthening of it. 7. A more adequate means of enforced attendance with a longer age requirement.

8. The creation and maintenance of more special schools for the mentally deficient, with a program of studies and activities adapted to train them to take their place in modern life and earn a respectable maintenance with a maximum degree of happiness.

9. In addition to our schools for the normal child we must, establish and maintain more special schools for the gifted children, and offer in the same a saner program for training in leadership.

10. Sane legislation and the enforcement thereof in the science of being well-born.

11. A universal promotion plan by subject, the only limitation to the child's progress being his physical and mental abilities.

12. A national department of education with a human engineer at its head, holding the official rank and power of a cabinet officer.

13. A system of national subsidy to the weaker and poorer states. Our nation can draft the citizenship of any state into its service when the situation demands it. Likewise the nation's wealth should be drafted to make efficient citizens when states are too poor to do it.

14. The creation and maintenance of an international educational commission, whose duties it shall be to engineer for the annihilation of national shortsightedness and the creation of international co-operation in the production of human well-being.

To achieve these objectives there is need of human engineering for a vigorous campaign of constructive state, national and international law-making and law-enforcing. We believe such objectives are within the possibility of achievement and that educational engineers should devote their endeavor in the creation of some unified program of procedure.

The Aims, Contents and Methods of a General

A

Course in Educational Sociology*

CLYDE B. MOORE, UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURG.

S new subjects are added to a professional curriculum they must stand a fire of criticism. This is especially true in any vocational or professional field, where the tendency is to take a pragmatic attitude and concede a place to a new subject only as its sponsors jutify its existence and function. Educational Sociology occupies vincammncē a place in the curricula of many institutions for the professional training of teachers, and those most vitally concerned are endeavoring to make clear its purpose and function as a professional subject. Here, as in other professional fields, with advancing knowledge and technique which may be applied to professional practice, there are introduced new branches of applied sciences which when properly articulated will improve professional procedure.

Education is here conceived of as a field of professional practice somewhat similar to the field of the professional practice of medicine. It is looked upon as a profession which presupposes a body of scientific and technical knowledge together with a degree of skill in application which comes from a prolonged study and practice. As in other professions, special intellectual capacities, equipment and individual aptitudes are essential, but in any event there is need for applying the contributions from any science which may add to the quality of the professional practice. Education has drawn heavily from the hierarchy of sciences, but as yet the draft upon sociology has been relatively slight. Mathematics has been brought into play in statistical procedures, physics in heating, lighting,

Given before the National Society for the Study of Educational Sociology, Chicago, February 26, 1924.