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PRESENT DAY TENDENCIES

IN EDUCATION

CHAPTER I

EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

THE purpose in the minds of the founders of public

education was to make education accessible to all children. Horace Mann once said, "We will make a system of education which will make it possible for every child, rich or poor, to go to college." While Mr. Mann's conception of public education was different from that which progressive educators hold to-day, his idea was to educate every child. It is only on such a basis that he could have appealed to the people and have induced them to pay their taxes to support the schools. If the people had thought that the schools were to be run for the benefit of the chosen few, they would have let the chosen few pay the taxes.

The conception of public education held by its founders has now become general, and in every part of the country there are schools of all grades for all who will take advantage of them. The public is maintaining a system of public education which extends from the kindergarten, through the primary, elementary, and secondary schools, the college, and the university. The country is paying each year for these schools more than one billion dollars, and there are enrolled in them more than twenty million children.

SCHOOLS NOT YET DEMOCRATIC

Thus it would seem that public education has satisfied even the fondest dreams of its founders and that nothing more could be desired. However, a closer examination will show that these results are more apparent than real. In the first place, there is a great mass of the children of the country for whom the schools in general make no provision. The average public school makes no provision for the blind, the deaf mute, the feeble-minded, the subnormal, the delinquent, the anaemic, or the foreign. The program of the school has been laid out with a view to preparing the "average child" for college, but we are just beginning to see that this "average child" must be far above the average to do the work that is required of him. The founders of the public schools with their classical conception of education never thought of making provision for the child who was not strong enough to take the college-preparatory course. They were dominated by the social philosophy of the time, which held that "all men are created equal" and that it was within the power of every child of any significance to society to take the classical course; the summum bonum of all was to graduate from a classical college.

The founders of the public schools, too, had a false conception of the mental processes. They believed that the mind of the child in the beginning was like an empty bucket and that the end of education was to fill it. The question of varying capacity did not interest them, for they believed that all minds could with sufficient effort master the classical curriculum of the time. Even now it is a common saying among us, come down from the days of the American Revolution, that there is no limit to human capacity and that a man can do what he wants to do. If one man has mastered Latin, Greek,

and higher mathematics, another can. He may have to put forth a greater effort, but he can master them nevertheless.

We still believe that human capacities are limitless, but we have a somewhat different conception of what we mean by capacity. A man never absolutely reaches the limit of his growth along any line; but he reaches the point of diminishing returns along some lines sooner than along others, and finds it more profitable to turn his attention to other lines. The point of diminishing returns for most people in those old-time studies, such as Latin, Greek, analytics, and calculus, comes very early, and it will pay them to turn their attention to those subjects in which a greater exploitation is possible.

The failure to see that the varying capacities of children would render it impossible for many of them to be benefited by the old classical course caused the founders of public education to lose sight of the masses of the children. The great masses of the children of the country have received but little benefit from the public schools because the course of study has not been adapted to their needs and capacities.

Dr. Leonard P. Ayres of the Russell Sage Foundation says that only 12 per cent of the children who enter the public schools remain until they are sixteen years of age and that most of them leave during the next two years. In the report of the United States Bureau of Education for 1910 we find that the enrollment in the high schools of the country for that year was 915,061. The number of graduates from the high schools for the year was 111,363, and the number who were prepared to enter college was 37,811. In 1910 there were approximately eighteen million children enrolled in the public schools of the country. Thus we see that only 5 per cent of all

the children in the public schools were in the high schools, a little more than one-half of 1 per cent graduated from the high schools, and one-fifth of 1 per cent attended college. Only one-fifth of 1 per cent reached the desired goal. The others fell by the wayside.

If all the children were to stay in school, there would be at least 1,250,000 in each one of the grades, and there would be that many graduates each year. But how many are there as it is? There are 915,061 in the four grades of the high school, when there should be 5,000,000. There are 111,363 graduates, when there should be 1,250,ooo. Thus the graduating class is only 8 per cent as large as it should be. The question at once arises in the mind of every friend of public education: Where are the other 92 per cent?

An examination of the records of the schools in our own state will show that more than 50 per cent of the children enrolled in the elementary grades are from one to seven years behind where they should be, and conditions in the high schools are even worse. Under such conditions, can we expect the children to remain in school, and are we surprised that such a large percentage of them never reach the high school and that of those who do reach the high school 41 per cent are in the first year, 27 per cent in the second year, 19 per cent in the third year, and only 13 per cent in the fourth year? The statistics referred to above show that only about 12 per cent of those who enter the high school complete the course; and when we consider that less than 25 per cent of all the children ever reach the high school, and that only 12 per cent of that number take full advantage of the work that is offered them, we can see how far our schools are from reaching the standards of democracy.

In the United States there are more than twenty

million people attending school. Going to school is the business of about one-fifth of our total population. As stated before, the government is spending more than one billion dollars annually to furnish facilities for the schooling of this part of its population. It is doing this that they may be better prepared to perform the duties that will be placed upon them. The questions that we should honestly ask ourselves are: Is this money being spent to the best advantage? Could our schools be organized in such a manner as to bring a greater return on this vast expenditure? Many of our leading business men and educational thinkers are of the opinion that our schools are "slipshod, chaotic, mechanical," good in a few places, but for the most part not what they should be, and failing to give these twenty million people the training they need. It is certainly not a hopeful comment on the schools of the land that more than two-thirds of our boys and girls are forced to leave school before the age of fourteen years because the school program does not give them the necessary preparation for their places in the commercial, industrial, homemaking, agricultural, and political world where they belong.

BASED ON OUTGROWN THEORIES

No less renowned an educator than Dr. Paul H. Hanus of Harvard University says that "during the school period aversion and evasion are more frequently cultivated than power and skill," and that, worst of all, the boys and girls acquire during this period the "habit of being satisfied with inadequate or partial achievement." How could we expect results to be otherwise when we confine these boys and girls to such unattractive and, for the most part, for them absolutely useless subjects as technical grammar, ancient history, Latin syntax,

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