DEPARTMENT OF MANUAL TRAINING SECRETARY'S MINUTES OFFICERS President JESSE D. BURKS, principal, Teachers Training School, Albany, N. Y. FIRST SESSION.-TUESDAY MORNING, JUNE 30, 1908 The department met in Pilgrim Church at 9:30 o'clock in joint session with the Department of National Organizations of Women, and, in the absence of the president and vice-president, was called to order by C. R. Richards, director of manual training, Teachers College, New York, N. Y. William E. Chancellor, lecturer on education, University of Chicago, presented a paper on "Democracy in Education." The paper was discussed by Emma M. Perkins, Western Reserve University, Cleveland. Katharine E. Dopp, lecturer on education, Extension Division, University of Chicago, read a paper on the topic: "Equality of Opportunity Can Be Secured only by a Systematic Recognition of Individual Differences in Native Capacity and in Prosspective Career." Discussion followed by Foster H. Irons, supervisor of art and manual training, Superior, Wis. "The Requirements of Individual Differences Constitute the Rational Basis for Secondary, as Distinguished from Elementary, Education," was the topic presented by David S. Snedden, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, N. Y.; discussion by Frank P. Bachman, Normal College, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio. SECOND SESSION.-TUESDAY AFTERNOON, JUNE 30 The department met in Pilgrim Church at 2:30. S. Chester Parker, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, presented the subject: "Industrial Development Has Exerted a Pre-eminent Influence on Social Progress," which was discussed by Arthur H. Williston, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, N. Y. Carleton B. Gibson, superintendent of schools, Columbus, Ga., presented a paper on the topic: "The Industrial Aspect of Social Life Affords a Varied and Significant Body of Subject Matter Which Is an Essential Element in a System of Education Controlled by Social Standards;" discussion by Starr Cadwallader, superintendent of sanitation, Cleveland, Ohio. William Noyes, Teachers College, New York, N. Y., read a paper on: "The Important Function of Constructive Activities in Education Is to Reveal the Social Significance of Industrial Activities," which was discussed by James E. Addicott, Isadore Newman Manual Training School, New Orleans, La. THIRD SESSION.-THURSDAY AFTERNOON, JULY 2 A paper, prepared by Charles H. Morse, secretary of the Massachusetts Commission on Industrial Education, Boston, was read, in the absence of the author, by A. E. Dodd, North Bennett Street Industrial School, Boston. A general discussion was introduced by Carroll G. Pearse, superintendent of schools, Milwaukee, Wis. "The Requirements of a Program of Industrial Education" were presented as follows: a) "Constructive Activities as an Essential Part of Elementary Education," by M. W. Murray, supervisor of manual training, Springfield, Mass. Discussion by A. Dodd, North Bennett Street Industrial School, Boston, Mass. b) "Intermediate Industrial Schools Admitting Children to the Sixth School Year and Equipping Them for Entrance to Industrial Pursuits," by Edgar S. Barney, Hebrew Technical Institute, New York, N. Y. A preliminary report of the Committee on Collecting Data for Courses of Manual Training in Public Schools, outlining the plan of work, was presented by Charles H. Keyes, Hartford, Conn., a member of the committee. The report was accepted and the recommendation that the committee be allowed to increase its number to a minimum of fifteen or a maximum of twenty and that it be continued for another year was carried. The Committee on Resolutions presented resolutions of thanks to the officers of Pilgrim Church and the local committee of the Department, which were adopted. The Committee on Nominations reported as follows: For President, James E. Addicott, director, Isadore Newman Manual Training School, New Orleans, La. For Vice-President, Edna D. Day, a ssistant professor of home economics, University of Missouri, Columbia, Mo. For Secretary, A. E. Dodd, director of North Bennett Street Industrial School, Boston, Mass. The report was adopted and the nominees were declared elected. The department then adjourned. GEO. A. SEATON, Secretary pro tem PAPERS AND DISCUSSIONS DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION WILLIAM ESTABROOK CHANCELLOR, LECTURER ON EDUCATION Invariably, of necessity, men discover and diagnose the disease before they find the remedy. And only idle scoffers worry the diagnosticians. Less than a hundred years ago, we learned to isolate and to diagnose tuberculosis; but no man yet has discovered the remedy. We have but recently learned what poverty is and are only now learning that its several major causes proceed from sickness, ignorance, and fraud. Some are thinking today that the true remedy is education, while others are asking seriously what education itself. is. In other words, for the first time in world-history, man is resolutely attacking the second problem of civilization. The first is how to achieve civilization, the second is how to bring all men to share in it. The proposition is to educate all equally; that is, in the best possible manner. Any reduction of the educational opportunities of the most fortunate is, of course, out of the question. We are to equalize upward. This proposition is not academic but moral, for no issue that involves a principle can be academic. It is true that we cannot educate all equally now or at any time in the near future; but we can choose the haven and set the chart of the voyage by the compass. We can do so, and in this instance we have done so. That haven is democracy: the chart is universal education: the north pole of the compass is the equality of men and of women in rights. We propose to eliminate from society all the criminal and all the wretched, whatever be the causes of their wretchedness, by cutting off the supply. The process is the complete education of all. The exact question before us this morning, stated affirmatively, is: The ideals of democracy require that equality of opportunity in education be offered to all. Democracy is a simple matter: it means that authority belongs to the people not as individuals but as a whole, and it implies that the authority shall be used for the common good. In all things, pure democracy asserts that public opinion shall constitute the decision, with no mediate interpretation by any group or by any individual. Democracy sets up not merely public opinion but public decision and determination. Democracy has no room for representative legislatures or for law-making courts but only for the executives of its will. The moment we erect a legislature to do any independent ruling, that moment we depart from democracy. A constitution that binds us to the past is to that extent undemocratic and the court that interprets it is undemocratic; for democracy requires immediate obedience to the present popular will. So far as legislators keep their ears to the ground and short-circuit immediately to their mouths, cutting out conscious brain-operations; so far as judges bow to the popular command, looking to public approval rather than to the letter and spirit of the law; and so far as all executive officers keep their hands upon the public pulse, following its fevers and apathies-in that far government is democractic, whatever be its forms and methods. A New England town meeting is a phase of democracy; other phases may be readily discovered in some of the non-Episcopal Protestant churches. Democracy has hit upon the device of the ballot, one vote to a citizen, the plurality to rule, as its standard mode of registering its will. An essential principle of democracy is that "one man is as good as another." Absolute democracy would give the ballot to every man and woman. Now I do not need to say that we Americans are not democrats, pure and simple: we like to say that "we are democrats but not of the extreme type.” But this is by no means all. We are partial democrats at best in only a few of the social institutions and not completely even in them. The oldest of the social institutions, property, is not democratic in America. The family is not democratic. The church in most of its forms is not democratic. Government is only partly democratic. Occupation and business present almost no democratic features. Education and culture are, however, partly democratic; and charity would like to be, but cannot. War is the very antithesis of democracy. When, therefore, we talk of American society as democratic, we are talking of ideals and of tendencies. not of realities taken altogether in one view. This matter of democracy is sometimes said to be itself academic; but those who think so do not know American history and present American conditions. There are eddies and back currents, but the tide is toward and into democracy. It is therefore useless for the individual, upon such an occasion as this, to profess support of or opposition to democracy; one might as well talk for or against gravitation or electricity or sunlight. All that we can do is put ourselves in proper relation with that overwhelming tide. So wide and swift is the movement into democracy that it has but few martyrs, though many heroes. This view is so common that we don't talk much about democracy; we simply try to obey the social will. No two men are likely to agree as to what the ideals of democracy are; and a close examination of the present question shows that I do not need to discuss them. For the question may be stated affirmatively in this form: Equality of opportunity in education for all is an ideal of democracy. There is no person in America who will deny that proposition, even for the cases of negroes and of Chinese. Moreover, we may say equally that equality of opportunity in law and government, in business, in everything, is an ideal of democracy; and none will deny the proposition. There are, however, some who will promptly say: I believe in only a partial democracy, for it is entirely obvious that there is no reason why in America we should afford in education equality of opportunity to negroes, to Chinese, to Japanese, to Indians, to the city poor, to the isolated rural children, to the backward, and to girls, with white boys of well-to-do families of Teutonic stock in the cities. I shall not discuss this proposition, though it appears to be the answer of actual American practice to the democratic theory and tendency. Education is a process known by its results. In part, this process is natural. In some measure, every person grows; this feature of growth man shares in common with all life. But in large measure, in the cases of most persons in a civilized society, education is an artificial process-facilitated, if not actually forced. In the terms of physio-psychology, education increases the rate or speed of nervous action; it widens the field of consciousness, increasing the number of items held in attention; it improves the power of retention; and likewise, it improves the quality of recollection. Obviously, this is in part a physical, in part a psychical development. It is in part a matter of occasional acts and in part a matter of habits of action. With the same obviousness, it appears that these improvements may be so effected as to delay or even to prevent natural development, which is the familiar danger of encouraging precocity. The process of education may be stated in various other terms. In those of popular psychology, we may say that education produces quickness of thought, energy of motivation, power to concentrate attention and to recall former intellections, emotions, and volitions, and therefore produces better judgment. Or we may put this otherwise and say that education quickens energy and intelligence, induces and develops efficiency, establishes habits of moral action through the result of thoughtful consideration of experience. Education, again, may be stated in the terms of sociology and of economics, of ethics and of philosophy, and of common sense. It may also be stated in terms of knowledge. Education is always a zigzag or dialectic from inner to outer, from outer to inner; it is a two-cycle phase of objective and subjective; and it is a spiral whose limits of diameter and of altitude are suggested not by the average so-called "educated" man but by such as Aristotle, Michael Angelo, Newton, Shakespeare, and Washington. We educators only belittle education ourselves when we speak of a welleducated young collegian or high-school youth. I am not here in any capacity as a purist in English; but did you ever look for something in a dark closet and, failing to find it, get a good light? How different the task was: indeed, the task ceased at once. The right word is a light in a dark place. In the sphere of education, we are all the time using hyperbole, and we speak of "educate" when we mean simply "teach" or perhaps even that lesser matter, "instruct." This proposition-that equality of opportunity in education is a democratic ideal-employs the word "education," not the word "instruction." Equality of opportunity in instruction would soon paralyze the world with two surfeits of the uniformly taught and of the rejected. Some of us think that we have too much equality of opportunity in instruction now. Inequality and variety of opportunity in instruction, properly adjusted to individuals, produce equality and uniformity of opportunity in education. Education, of course, aims to produce the free man. Now the free man is the one who best knows the absolute laws and best obeys them. I speak of the laws that govern nature and human nature, without shadow of turning, not of the statutes and customs and fashions of the times. To become free a man must see and hear, know and obey the laws: he must be intelligent, efficient and moral. Some are born dull and apathetic but obedient: others are born bright but careless and disobedient. No uniform instruction deals honorably with all kinds. I know a man by nature of extraordinary persistence and concentration, energetic, thorough; but entirely unobservant and actually enslaved in a narrow morality in consequence. When he got out into life, he found it a hard school. Why? Because, though tremendously taught, his good qualities were bound about and into him until he became blind: he is like a steam locomotive, traveling a route of fixed rails. His soul cannot see through the steam that he leaks at every joint. He needed education in intelligence and receptivity. Of kindergarten, of nature-study, of drawing and music, of science and art, he was taught nothing. He lives in an immense world of his own creation, unlike the real world of men and of things. And I know another man, wide-awake to the world, a delight in conversation, but at sixty years of age he has yet to do anything or be anything of any value. All his sowing has been of the tares. He is a toggler with tools, a dabbler in business, a dilettante in art, too busy to think and to work. When a youth naturally spells correctly, remembers everything that he reads, imitates and emulates artists in English, what is the use of drilling him in. language and literature and history? My own answer is: find the deficiencies and develop them. |