^^j^ijl^^s^^j^-^tf^^^''^'^'''^^^''''^ Hbui fork Hate (I|alle0e of Agriculture Kt (Siatnell UntacraltH 3titatu. N. 5. ICibrarji Cornell University Library Social aspects of education, a book of so 3 1924 013 430 750 The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013430750 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO DALLAS • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION A BOOK OF SOURCES AND ORIGINAL DISCUSSIONS WITH ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHIES BY IRVING KING, Ph.D. ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA Nein got* THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1916 All rights reserved CorVRlGHT, 1913, By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1912. Reprinted January,August, 1913; July, 1914; December, 1915; October, 1916. Koiioooli Vtnn J. 8, OnsUsg Co. — Berwick A: Smith Oo. Nonrood, Uua., IJ.S.A. PREFACE Probably no student of education questions the desirability of de- voting some attention to the social phases of that subject in a well- rounded teachers' training course. In fact, such would seem to be the logical outcome of the recognition of educational activities as as- pects of social activity and as bearing some important relation to social progress. Moreover, the processes of learning in the individual are conditioned to a large extent by the social environment both within and without the school, and this would seem to warrant approaching educational psychology, in part at least, from the point of view of social psychology. Furthermore, there is a growing recognition that the end of education, state it how we may, must for one thing take account of the fact that the child is, and probably will continue to be, a member of society, and that his efl&ciency as an individual will al- most inevitably be measured by social standards of some sort. Mani- festly the teacher should have a sympathetic and thoroughly practi- cal insight into these social factors, conditions and relationships, if he is to be a master of his craft. But, while all these things may be admitted to be true, there are doubtless many who feel an uncertainty as to how to instruct the would-be teacher profitably along these lines. The facts and rela- tionships of social education have not yet been brought together in any comprehensive way. There is much excellent material scattered through many magazines and journals, but it needs to be organized and evaluated. Several very suggestive books have recently appeared dealing with limited portions of the field, but there is as yet no gen- erally recognized statement of the problems and the content of a course in social education which is really scientific, that is, which is more than a mass of mere empirical details. If any body of fact is to have serious consideration in the scholastic field, it must have fairly definite and well-recognized principles of organization. Thus, while VI PREFACE the social impKcations of education are evident enough, most of the work offered teachers in their professional courses has been relatively individualistic. In educational psychology, for instance, the develop- ment of the mental process is described as if it took place largely within a social vacuum. The history of education is clearly an account of events that have been selected from the general history of social development, and yet in teaching the subject there is usually all too Uttle emphasis laid upon the connection between the successive events in educational history and the social matrix from which these events inevitably sprang. In the same way the problems of superintendence and administration are at bottom essentially social problems, but they are not usually presented in the light of this their broader setting. With reference to this state of affairs, two things might be done with profit. First of all, in the presentation of these standard edu- cational subjects there should be a juster recognition of important social relationships. With classes in educational psychology it is possible to introduce the social element in quite an organic and satis- factory manner, and the students thereby get a better balanced notion of the conditions of mental development. The other professional courses could be socialized in Uke manner, not through the tacking on of any adventitious material, but through the introduction into them of facts which properly belong there and which have been ignored because of narrow traditional views of the subjects. Over and above all this, however, there should be a specific course or courses in the social aspects of education. The subject of the social relations and impUcations of education is so large and so vital that it requires separate treatment. Such a course should give a compre- hensive and stimulating, as well as practical, survey of educational activities from the point of view of their internal and external social relationships. In general, the object of the course here outlined is to secure to the student a broad and suggestive view of education in its more evident social relationships and more specifically with reference to its rela- tions to social progress. This latter point is considered the problem of the course, and it is stated thus : First, to what extent may edu- cational forces be regarded as definite avenues of social progress; and, secondly, to what extent may certain educational forces, the school PREFACE vii in particular, become more efficient as agencies of instruction as well as more effective promoters of social progress through a recognition of their broader social relationships and their internal character as social groups? In other words, there are two sets of relations to take into accoxmt, those of the school to society at large, and those within the school itself as a social microcosm. The assumption is that a more intelligent appreciation of both these social aspects will ren- der educational forces more efficient for progress. . The course is divided into two parts. In the first we take up the broader social relations of the various educational forces. This af- fords a concrete beginning which is fairly comprehensible to all stu- dents. The second part of the course deals with the internal relations of the school as a social group, their bearing upon the life of the school in general and upon the learning activity in particular. In this sec- tion, also, is included a study of personality, in so far as it seems to be socially determined. The sequence of topics in this outline is not rigidly logical. It is merely a working scheme which experience has foimd adapted to the needs of the studeat who has done some little work in education and who yet must be appealed to by the concrete rather than the philo- sophical aspects of the subject. Nor is the selection of topics offered regarded as complete. In fact, they have been somewhat arbitrarily chosen. In my original scheme I proposed to include source ma- terials and discussions on such topics as vacation schools, night and continuation schools, the feeding of school children and medical in- spection. These lines of work are all current aspects of the larger view of the meaning and scope of education in its relation to social welfare. These and other topics will suggest themselves as worth taking up in connection with what is given here. It is, in fact, hoped that this volume will be regarded and used merely as an introduction and guide to the further study of a body of facts far too extensive to be adequately covered in any single volume. In the selection of materials to be reprinted, it was my aim to secure papers of two kinds: on the one hand, those which clearly discussed underlying principles; on the other, those which presented various concrete phases and applications. It is hoped that this will be found a desirable and usable combination. viu PREFACE The originals of most of the reprinted papers are easily accessible. It is thought, however, that by bringing them together in this way, with appropriate introductions and summaries, they may acquire a meaning and a unity which they would not have if taken alone. A cumulative efEect is here possible which would be lost altogether if the student were obliged to look them up separately in different places. It is hoped also that the fuller meanings thus brought to light will stimulate the student to a more extended acquaintance with the books from which these extracts are taken. I wish to thank the publishers and the various authors mentioned herein who have so generously permitted the reprinting of materials, much of which is copyrighted. Special mention should be made of Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons, The University of Chicago Press, The Charities Publication Committee, The School Review, The Century Company, The Macmillan Company, Ginn and Company, and The PubUc School Publishing Company. I am also imder especial obliga- tions to a number of individuals for assistance in the selection and preparation of my material, particularly to Mr. John A. Stevenson of the University of Wisconsin for enthusiastic and efficient help in many ways, and specifically in the annotation of parts of the bibliographies. Finally, I hope those who may use this book will be frank and free in offering any suggestions or criticisms which occur to them. IRVING KING. The State University of Iowa, lowA City, November i, 1911. CONTENTS Preface PART I EXTERNAL SOCIAL RELATIONS OF EDUCATION CHAPTER I Introduction: The Social View of Education • . . ■ 1-5 CHAPTER II The Social Origin of Educational AcfiNCiES (a) " The Education of the Pueblo Child." F. Spencer 6-23 6 17 22 23 ^^V) The Social Nature of Education as Seen in Primitive Life (c) Problems for Study and Discussion .... (rf) References on Primitive Types of Education . CHAPTER III The Social Responsibility of the School ; The Rural Situ- ation • • 24-53 (a) Current Extensions in the Meaning and Scope of Education : Their Social Significance 24 (*) Introduction to the Rural Situation and the Rural School Problem 25 (t) " The Hesperia Movement." Kenyon L. Butterfield . . 29 (d) " The Rural School and the Community." Kenyon L. Butter- field 37 («) " Community Work in the Agricultural High School." B. H. Crocheron * • • • • 43 (/) Problems for Study and Discussion S' (£) Selected Bibliography on Rural Education and Rural Life • S' CHAPTER IV The Social Relations of Home and School . . . 54-^4 (a) Home and School, Introduction ...... 54 (*) " Parents' Associations and the Public Schools." F. F. Andrews 58 \c) Topics for Study and Discussion 61 id) Bibliography 62 ix X CONTENTS CHAPTER V PAGES The School as a Center of Social Life in the Community 64-97 (a) " The School as a Social Center." J.Dewey. ... 64 " (6) " Rochester Social Centers and Civic Clubs." E. J. Ward . 75 (c) Comment on the School as a Social Center .... 91 (d) Bibliography 96 CHAPTER VI The Social Need for Continuing the Education of the Adult 98-108 (a) "School Extension and Adult Education." H. M. Leipziger 98 (6) Comment on Evening Lectures for Adults .... 106 (c) Topics for Study 108 ( Problem 0/ Vocational Education, p. 9. ' Snedden, op. cit., p. 13. INDUSTRIAL AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 171 2. Investigate as fully as possible the old apprenticesMp system, its origin, social advantages and disadvantages, adaptation to the social needs of its period. Wright. 3. Reasons for the present decay and disappearance of the appren- ticeship system. Wright, Wood-Simons. 4. What is meant by "the industrial revolution"? Relation to educational problems ? 5. Relation of the eUmination of pupils from school to the ques- tion of industrial education. Jones, Thorndike. 6. Study and state carefully the social waste and menace through the so-called juvenile occupations. Snedden, Dean, Bloomfield, Hanus, Massachusetts Commission, etc. 7. The "unemployables," their origin and social menace. Bloom- field, Dean. 8. At what period should the child's industrial or vocational training begin? Differentiation of earlier and later stages. Dean, Snedden, et al. 9. Need of more attention to practical applications in the case of the so-called hberal studies. Eliot, Dean, Snedden, etc. 10. Relation of vocational to cultural education. Snedden, Dean, Kerschensteiner. 11. Place a manual training in the present-day curriculum: a " hberal" or an industrial study. Snedden, etc. 12. Relation of industrial and vocational education to the underly- ing principle of democracy, "equal rights to all, unequal privileges to none." 13. Effect upon Germany of systematic industrial education since 1870. 14. Types of continuation schools in Munich. Hanus, Kerschen- steiner, Sadler. I s . Attitude of organized labor toward industrial education. Dean, Wood-Simons, Jones. 16. Describe systems of industrial and vocational training recently inaugurated in various American cities, e.g., in Cincinnati, Chicago, etc. 17. Compare our systems with the better developed ones of Eng- land, Germany and other European countries. Hanus, Kerschen- steiner, Jones, Sadler. 18. Need of cooperation of shop and school. Describe various methods of securing it. Dean, Dyer, Kerschensteiner, Snedden, Person, Orr. 19. Is it just for the employer to criticize the pubUc schools on the ground that the graduates are not immediately able to meet skillfiilly the technical requirements of his business? 172 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION 20. There is a widespread complaint on the part of employers that there is to-day a great dearth of skilled labor. Does any responsibihty rest upon employers to help their young employees become skilled workmen? Bloomfield, Dean, etc. 21. Should trade schools be under public or private control? Arguments for and against. Dean, Snedden, etc. 22. Compare national and state control with local control. Snedden. 23. Other problems in the administration of industrial and voca- tional training. Dutton and Snedden, Snedden, Dean. 24. Distinction between industrial and vocational training? 25. Estimate the various moral values of industrial training. Gillette, Dean, Washington. 26. What light upon the value of industrial education may be obtained from modern types of education of delinquents, dependents, negroes, etc. ? Gillette, Washington. 27. Problems of industrial training pecuhar to women? Snedden, Dean, etc. 28. What peculiar difficulties arise in connection with popular agricultural education? Snedden, Dean, etc. 29. Work and limitation of evening schools ; of the Y. M. C. A. ; and of correspondence schools in promoting industrial education. Jones, etc. 30. Influence of the recently developed system of "University Extension" upon the industrial uphft of the people. Study especially the Wisconsin system. BIBLIOGRAPHY ON VOCATIONAL AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION Addams, Jane. "Protection of children for industrial efficiency," in Newer Ideals of Peace. Bailey, L. H. "Education by means of agriculture in elementary and secondary schools," Cyclopedia of Agriculture, 4:382, 451, 467. An important and comprehensive reference. "On the training of persons to teach agriculture in the pubUc schools," Bulletin No. i of the U. S. Bureau of Education, 1908. Balliet, Thos. M. "Aim of industrial teaching in the pubhc school system," Am. S. B. Jour., January, 1909. A suggestive article. Bloomfield, Meyer. T?ie Vocational Guidance of Youth, Riverside Educational Monograph. Boston. .1911. Emphasizes inciden- tally the need of vocational education. INDUSTRIAL AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 173 Boone, R. G. "Manual training as a socializing factor," Ed., 22 : 395- Bricker. "Shall secondary agriculture be taught as a separate science?" Ed., 30:352. Buck, M. McC. "Work for the deformed. What is done to make crippled children useful members of society," Craftsman, 12 : 193. Bush-Brown, H. K. "The farm industrial school," Craftsman, 15 : 167. The present system of education fits boys for country houses, shops, etc. "Work, study, and play for every child," Craftsman, 15:330. Natural environment of child not books, but work. Carlton, Frank T. Education and Industrial Evolution. New York, 1908. A clear, comprehensive treatment of the problem of in- dustrial education : continuation schools, trade schools, negro education, apprenticeship system in the United States, organized labor and industrial education, relation of, to manual training. Carmen, G. N. "Cooperation of school and shop in promoting in- dustrial efficiency,". 5. Rev., 18 : 108. Illustrated by practical experience of Lewis Institute. Carr, J. F. "A school with a clear aim," W. W., 19 : 12363. Work of the Interlaken School, La Porte, Indiana. Shows how the definite and immediate application of training to work insures interest, earnestness, self-government, etc. Chamberlain, A. H. "The vocational middle school," Man. Tr. Mag., 12 : 105. A school to parallel the high school, advantages, course of study, etc. Chicago Association of Commerce. Industrial Education in Relation to Conditions in the City of Chicago. Published by the Associa- tion. Chicago, 1909. Clarke, I. E. "Art and industrial education," Monographs on Edu- cation, No. 14. Edited by N. M. Butler. Dabney, C. W. "Agricultural Education," Monographs on Educa- tion, No. 12. Davenport, Eugene. Education for Efficiency. An excellent treat- ment of the modem phases of industrial education in its relation to high schools, etc. Davis, B. M. "Present status of manual training in its relation to industrial education in the rural schools," Man. Tr. Mag., 11: 456. 174 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION Dean, Arthur D. The Worker and the State. A comprehensive and popular account of the whole current movement. DoDD, Alvin G. "Grammar grade vocational training," Man. Tr. Mag., II : 97. Button and Snedden. "Administration of Vocational Education," The Administration of Public Education in the United States, Chapter XXII. Dyer, F. B. "Industrial education in Cincinnati," 5. Rev., 19: 289. Eaton, J. Shirley. "Education for efficiency in the railroad serv- ice," Bui. U. S. Bur. Ed., 1909, No. 10. Eliot, C. N. The Conflict of Individualism and Collectivism in a De- mocracy. Gillette, J. M. Vocational Education. 1910. All school educa- tion should be organized about a vocational motive. Hailmann, W. N. "German views of American Education with particular reference to industrial development," Bui. U. S. Bur. Ed., 1906, No. 2. Hanus, Paul. The Beginnings of Industrial Education. Boston, 1909. Harcourt, Charles. "Reform for the truant boy in industrial training," Craftsman, 15 : 436. Describes actual efforts in Brooklyn and other places. Hawkins, Mason A. "Vocational Education," Ed., 31 : 141. 1910. HiNE, Lewis. "Industrial training for deaf mutes," Craftsman, 13: 400. "A practical school where an opportunity is furnished for them to become self-supporting citizens." Hunter, W. B. "The Fitchburg plan of industrial education," S. Rev., 1910, p. 166. The manufacturers of Fitchburg made it possible for boys to learn shop work in school ; go alternate weeks ; receive pay. James, J. E. "Commercial Education in the United States," No. 13, of Monographs on Education, edited by N. M. Butler. Jewell, J. R. "Agricultural Education," Bui. of U. S. Bur. of Ed., 1907, No. 2. Johnston, C. H. "The social significance of various movements for industrial education," Ed. Rev. February, 1909. Kerschensteiner, Georg. (i) Education for Citizenship. An argu- ment for a general public system of compulsory vocational edu- cation. His famous prize essay. INDUSTRIAL AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 175 ■ (2) " Fundamental principles of continuation schools," S. Rev., 19 : 162. Reprinted in this section. (3) " The organization of continuation schools in Munich," S. Rev., 19: 225. (4) "The technical trade schools in Germany," S. Rev., 19 : 295. MacDonald, M. I. "Our need for industrial education; what it would mean to have vocational schools added to the pubUc school systems," Craftsman, 15 : 466. Compares our condition with Bavaria and other Eiuropean countries. Marshall, F. M. "Industrial training for women," Nat. Soc. for Prom, of Ind. Ed., Bulletin No. 4, 1907. Massachusetts Commission on Industrial and Technical Education. Reports. Boston, 1906-1909. Orr, William. "Vocational training in large cities," S. Rev., 17 : 417. Osgood, C. L. "Raising the standard of efl&ciency in work," Crafts- man, 12 : 634. Practical training given by the Manhattan Trade School of Girls. Perkins, Agnes F. Vocations for the Trained Woman, Woman's Educational and Industrial Union, Boston, 1910. Person, H. S. "The ideal organization of a system of secondary schools to provide vocational training," S. Rev., 17 : 404. Industrial Education. A system of training for men entering upon trade and commerce. Boston, 1907. Reeder, R. How Two Hundred Children Live and Learn, Chapter III. Richards, C. R. " Trade schools : their place in industry, education and philanthropy," N. C. C. C, 1895, pp. 195-203. "The place of industries- in public education," Man. Tr. Mag., 12 : 47. "Problem is Jo place school in intimate cooperation with the industrial situation." Rogers, H. J. "Education with reference to our future industrial and commercial development," Lewis and Clark Educational Congress, p. 102. Row, R. K. The Educational Meaning of Manual Arts and Industries. Values of different types of manual training ; to what classes of children most important ; best methods for realizing these values. Sadler, M. Continuation Schools in England and Elsewhere. The most comprehensive accoimt of the status of industrial education in civihzed countries. 176 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION Snedden, David. The Problem of Vocational Education, Riverside Educational Monograph, 1910. Definition of, social need for, and support of vocational work; types; problems of relation and administration. Concise and suggestive. Snowden, a. a. "The industrial improvement schools of Wurtem- berg," The Teachers College Record. November, 1907. Stickley, Gustav. "The pubhc school and the home, the part each should bear in the education of our children," Craftsman, 16 : 284. All industrial training should not be crowded upon the school. "A visit to Craftsman Farms," Craftsman, 18:638. A school farm — pupils taught to do something useful with hands and brains. "Teaching boys and girls to work." What is needed is not more schools, but common sense. Craftsman, 18 : 428. Advocates more industrial training at home. Terman, L. H. Relation of the manual arts to health. Pop. Sc. M., June, 1911. Thorndike, E. L. "The elimination of pupils from school," Bui. of U. S. Bur. Ed., No. 4, 1907. The facts of eUmination bear directly upon the need of industrial education. Vanderlip, F. a. "American industrial training as compared with European industrial training," Social Education Quarterly, i : 105, 1907. Washington, B. T. Working with the Hands. Moral values of hand- work ; outdoor work for women ; pleasure and profit of work in soil. Wood-Simons. "Industrial education in Chicago," Ped. S., 17 : 398. An excellent statement of the social need for, and the attempts to respond to it. Woolman, Mary S. The Making of a Trade School. 1910. An account of the Manhattan Trade School for Girls. Wright, Carroll D. Industrial Evolution of the United States. New York, 1897. "The apprenticeship system in its relation to industrial educa- tion," Bui. U. S. Bur. Ed., No. 6, 1908. See Dean, A. D., Worker and State, for an extended classified bibliog- raphy. CHAPTER X VOCATIONAL DIRECTION, ONE OF THE LAEGER SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF EDUCATION Vocational Direction a Social Necessity A BOY just graduated from high school came to his principal and said : "I have finished the work of the school. What am I to do now ? " The principal said with a grandiloquent flourish: " We have led you out upon the broad sea of opportimity, and you can now steer your ship in any direction you choose. You are prepared to do anything." The youth replied with a touch of bitterness, " It seems to me you have led me out into a bank of fog." We are tardily beginning to see that the youth was right. The paper by Mr. Weaver, here reprinted, de- scribes concretely and forcefully what is being done by the schools in metropolitan centers to help boys and girls make satisfactory voca- tional adjustments. It is especially interesting because it shows first what the teaching force itself on its own initiative can accomplish. It is worth studying, also, because it brings to Ught some of the diflicul- ties of vocational adjustment that inhere in the training and habits of work of the young people themselves. In Boston, the work originated outside of the schools, but is being developed in close cooperation with the teachers and the school system as a whole. A surprisingly large amount and wide range of helpful material has already been printed, dealing with the problems of vocational adjustment. Bloomfield's admirable monograph. The Vo- cational Guidance of Youth, should be read by every student of the larger meaning of education. It describes the social need, and the attempts to meet the need not only in Boston, but also in other large cities in this country and Europe. The idea is rapidly spreading, and to-day many American cities are considering the establishment of Vocation Bureaus. The book by Parsons, Choosing a Vocation, N 177 178 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION describes the practical work and methods and results attained by the trained vocational counselor. As Bloomfield says : " We are indeed living in the midst of a restless period, impatient with crudeness, and too preoccupied to pause over the stumbhngs and gropings of its bewildered youth. Into the arena of tense effort, the schools of our country send out their annual thousands. We somehow trust that the tide of oppor- tunity may carry them to some vocational destination. . . . What becomes of that young multitude sent out to cope with the new conditions of self-support? Whose business is it to follow up the re- sults of this transition from school to work? Whose business to audit our social accounts, and discover how far our costly enterprises in education, the pain, the thought, the skill and the sacrifice we put forth with the growing generation, are well or ill invested in the field of occupation? There are vital questions, and perhaps the most vital is how far the work our children turn to is the result of choice, accident or necessity." All types of schools and all classes of people are, as he further says, concerned in this question. Too much of the strength of youth is wasted when " a helpful suggestion at the critical moment" might have directed aright and made possible happy, successful Uves where now there is maladjustment and dreary waste. The possibility of wisely directing young men and women in the choice of vocation is only beginning to be realized, but already the idea has passed from the stage of theory into that of successful practice. The impulse for vocational guidance in some places arose outside the school, in others within ; but, whatever its origin, and however it is being carried on, it is one of the significant phases of the modern broader conception of the scope and function of public education. It is an essential element in the movement to bring the school closer to society, to make it a more effective social instrument. No matter what sort of training the school may give, whether " liberal " or more narrowly practical, there is need of counsel and guidance that the youth may find his proper place in the adult world. Nor is the need to be met at the last moment when he is about to go forth. It is a part of the business of the agents of education to study him more or less continu- ously throughout his course with reference to his adaptabiUty to a par- ticular line of work. Whether the boy is to be always conscious that VOCATIONAL DIRECTION 179 he actually is daily laying the foundation for some sort of a vocation, the school must not lose sight of that fact, and the boy, as he grows older, must be made more and more to feel that the wise intelligent choice of a vocation is the culmination of his school training, a cul- mination to be attained only by intelligent cooperation with sympa- thetic advisers who have a broader view of the situation than he can possibly possess. In many respects the need of vocational guidance is distinctly a modern one, and one that is peculiarly associated with democratic institutions. The complexity and specialization of all types of work in modern society render it increasingly difficult for the youth to know how or where to take hold that he may finally be able to do a man's part. This was not the case even a few decades ago. Under simpler conditions, it was comparatively easy for a boy to find something fitted to his taste and ability. Furthermore, this is a prob- lem of democracy, because under such a form of government there is less fixity in occupations in a family or small group. Boys tend less and less to follow their fathers' occupations. Things are shifting and fluent. In a society where a boy's career was determined for him by that of his father, he had at least something definite to which he might look forward. He might not be well suited for it, but he, at least, did not waste time in trying, perhaps futilely, to find himself somewhere else. Such a system has, of course, obvious disadvantages. For one thing, it is so inflexible. It takes no account of individual adaptabil- ities. But even this could scarcely be worse than that the boy should cut loose from the parental occupation and try unaided to find a place for himself in the labyrinth of modern society. The possibilities of misfits and failiures are as great, if not far greater, than where the boy followed in the steps of his father. The question to-day, however, is not as to the desirability of going back to the old condition of fixity. The whole idea is repugnant to the sense of individual freedom and personal initiative, which, whether right or wrong, has been fostered in modern society, and if society fosters such attitudes, it must ap- parently face the problem of how to turn them to profitable account. It is possible that the failure thus far to make any adequate provision for the vocational guidance of youth is one of the subtle effects of the old and vicious doctrine of laissez faire and unlimited individual free- dom, — the theory that people must be let alone in all their compU- i8o SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION cated interrelations, — that in this way the best possible social and in- dustrial adjustments will work out automatically. Whatever might have been true of a simpler social order, we know that in the world of to-day this let-alone policy can breed only the gravest abuses. The self-interest of the employer will not lead him to properly safeguard the employee nor to give him a Uving wage. The self-interest of the merchant will not insure to the buyer of his goods full measure nor standard quahty. The theory and the practice of non-interference in the choice of a vocation is apparently a part of this outworn theory of non-interference in general social matters. To give definite and systematic counsel to the boy or to the girl would infringe on natural freedom. In some mysterious way the native bent and capacity of the youth would be an unerring guide. The very word " calling " is itself an expression of the idea that each one is predestined in some way to a particular life work. Such an idea is not altogether without its value or suggestiveness. The difiiculty, however, of the youth's finding the thing he is best fitted for is becoming increasingly apparent. The ease with which boys are at the close of compulsory school drawn into the well-named blind alley occupations is of itself sufficient evi- dence of how vital is the need of vocational guidance. It is a need common to all civihzed peoples. The recent report of the EngUsh Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress throws into clear Ught conditions more and more prevalent in both Europe and America. We cannot do better than quote Bloomfield's comment upon this report. It is true, as he says, that " such employments as that of errand boy are not necessarily demorahzing. Many a boy has started in this humble way on a career of success. But callings like this are apt to waste the years during which a boy should make a beginning at a skilled or developing occupation. The probabiUties are that younger, but trained, competitors eventually oust the im- trained workers, and at a time when these untrained workers are charged with adult responsibilities. "The necessity of guidance intended to avert the entrance of thou- sands of boys and girls into a vocational cul-de-Sac is appreciated by this Committee. Its conviction is clearly expressed that the most dangerous point in the lives of children in an elementary school is the moment at which they leave it. The investigations have shown how VOCATIONAL DIRECTION i8i difficult is the taking of the right step at this stage, and the lament- able consequences of taking the wrong one. This difficulty is due in large measure to the inability of parents to get the necessary informa- tion as to the conditions of employment, the wages and the future prospects of various occupations, as well as a knowledge of the edu- cational opportunities and requirements for efficiency in the occu- pations. The Committee has found that there are parents who are under no compulsion to send their children to work, and that they would be both wilhng and able to accept lower wages at first for the sake of subsequent advantages in the vocations; but their ignorance of these matters makes it impossible for them to select wisely for their children. " ' Unless children are thus cared for at this turning point in their lives,' says the Consultative Committee, ' the store of knowledge and discipline acquired at school will be quickly dissipated, and they will soon become unfit either for employment or for further edu- cation.' " The intervening years, then, between leaving school, which the great majority do at fourteen years of age, and the entrance into an occupation that promises any development at all are largely wasted. Society gains little by the labor of thousands of its children at the most important period of their growth. It is not that much of this work is not of social value, but with our present neglect we offer no corrective for the injury that follows. The reports of the two commissions on Industrial Education in Massachusetts; investigations into street trades in Boston, Chicago and elsewhere; and all the observations of the child-saving societies ia this country confirm the Royal Com- mission's alarm over juvenile labor as now performed. " The employer is very often as much a victim of these conditions as the boy himself. The allurement of high wages for uninstructive work is soon understood by many a boy, and his restlessness in these occu- pations, where often, without any provocation, he throws up his place, is a constant source of vexation and destroys any plan which the em- ployer might have in view for the promotion of his boys. This skip- ping from job to job can only mean for most boys demoralization. They become vocational hobos. They are given work only because nobody else is in sight, and they stay at work as little as they may. Juvenile wages are their portion, no matter what services they render, nor for how long a period. A tragic situation is here disclosed. Not only do we find that modern working conditions ' put a man on the shelf ' in the prime of his years, because the speed and skill of younger brains and hands are required, but we find, too, a shelving of youth itself before life has given the young workers even an opening. They seem doomed to be juvenile adults bound by an iron law of juvenile i82 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION wages. The ' dead end,' or ' blind alley,' occupations, therefore, with their bait of high initial wages and their destructiveness to any serious life-work motive are breeding costly social evils. Unanimous testimony on this point by the special investigators of the Royal Com- mission has led to the opinion that this perhaps is the most serious of all the problems encountered in its study of unemployment. A term of sinister import has been coined to describe the products of this vocational anarchy — the Unemployables. " The unemployables are people whom no ordinary employer would wilhngly employ, not necessarily because of their physical or mental capacity, but because their economic backbone has been broken. The wasted years have landed their innocent victims on economic quick- sands. Attractive wages with no training, the illegitimate use of youthful energy, long hours of monotonous and uneducative work, have produced at his majority a young man often precocious in evil and stunted in his vocational possibilities." Two natural consequences of the doctrine of " hands off " are to be noted. In the first place, while a few men and women of pronoxmced talent and initiative do find their proper work, or, if it does not already exist, they carve it out for themselves, the vast bulk drift into this or that work purely by chance. They have no clear idea of their own capacities nor of the different types of opportunities open to them in the world. . Often it is admiration of the work of a con- spicuously successful man or woman which determines the choice. More often it is the opportunity for work that lies closest at hand and which seems most desirable merely because the youth has no clear idea of anything else. The majority of men and women admit that]the choice of their life work was more or less fortuitous. There was no care- ful study of social needs, no careful attempt to determine the relation of one's individual resources to these needs. The individual as well as the social waste involved in such a procedure is of course incalcu- lable. In the second place, from this doctrine of " hands off," it has been almost inevitable that the youth postpones his choice of a vocation unduly. How common it is for a young man of twenty or even older to say that he does not know yet what he will do! Naturally it is be- coming harder and harder for a youth to find himself, — and so there are wasted years of indecision, of haphazard appUcation of energy whether he be out of school or in. Hjs elders may even encourage him VOCATIONAL DIRECTION 183 in his indecision, assuring him that there is no hurry, and that he will find out in good time what he is best able to do. There are seri- ous objections to this point of view. In the first place, it deprives the boy, especially while in school, of any sufiicient motive for his study. Lack of adequate motivation is the crying defect of the traditional type of adolescent education which still largely prevails. In fact, the courses of study are planned for "general training" as if to keep from the boy as long as possible the thought that he will ever have to do any specific work. There is beginning, however, to be a significant change along this line in the attitude of thoughtful people. It is seen to be quite con- sistent with a broad and liberal training that there should be an ear- lier appreciation of a life purpose. In fact, such a purpose vitalizes the school work of the adolescent. It awakens his energies and gives him enthusiasm, where before he worked with indifference and even apathy. The life motive not only may appear in early adolescence; the con- ditions should even be such as to encourage its early appearance. To be sure, there is danger of putting this problem prematurely to boys and girls, but the possibility of going to an extreme in this direction is not a good excuse for ignoring it altogether. The wise course is, step by step, according to the age of the child, to call his attention to the importance of his life work, and by wise counsel set him to thinking along such lines. As he grows older, the problem will become more and more defimite. When he finally faces the crisis of an actual choice, he will be able to make it intelhgently instead of blindly. That there can be an early and yet sensible cultivation of Ufe mo- tives culminating in intelligent choice of a vocation is being proved abundantly by the practical work that has already been done in many pkces. Its ultimate success depends upon the development in the first place of what Bloomfield calls " a new profession, that of the vocational counselor." In the second place, it demands a careful and often continued study of the individual, not merely that he may come to a consciousness of his own powers, or that he may be on the guard against habits of body and mind that will tend to hinder him in, if not actually to disqualify him for, the vocation he may choose to follow, but also that the vo- 1 84 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION ^ cation counselor may have acciu-ate knowledge of the person whom he advises. In the third place, the success of vocational guidance demands an intimate and continued study of the various occupations with refer- ence to the need of new workers, the mental and physical quahties requisite for success, etc. Whether carried on directly under the supervision of the school or by outside agencies in cooperation with the school, it is essentially an educational enterprise of the highest social significance. " Early in the spring of 1909, the School Committee of Boston passed a reso- lution inviting the Vocation Bureau to submit a plan for vocational guidance to assist the public school graduates. The Bureau pre- sented the following suggestions : — " First, the Bureau will employ a vocational director to give practi- cally his entire time to the organization of vocational counsel to the graduates of the Boston Public Schools during the ensuing year. " Second, the work of this vocational director shall be carried on in cooperation with the Boston School Committee or the Superintendent of Schools as the Committee shall see fit. " Third, it is the plan of the Bureau to have this vocational direc- tor organize a conference of masters and teachers of the Boston high schools through the Committee or the Superintendent, so that members of the graduating classes will be met for vocational advice either by this vocational director or by the cooperating schoolmasters and teachers, all working along a general plan, to be adopted by this conference. " Fourth, the vocational director should, in cooperation with the Superintendent of Schools or any person whom he may appoint, ar- range vocational lectures for the members of the graduating classes. " Fifth, the Bureau believes that schoolmasters and teachers should be definitely trained to give vocational counsel, and therefore, that it is advisable for this vocational director, in cooperation with the Superintendent of Schools, to establish a series of conferences to which certain selected teachers and masters should be invited on condition that they will agree in turn definitely to do vocational counseling with their own pupils. " Sixth, the vocational director will keep a careful record of the work accomplished for the pupils during the year, the number of pupils counseled with, the attitude of the pupils with reference VOCATIONAL DIRECTION 185 to a choice of vocations, the advice given, and, as far as pos- sible, the results following. These records should form tJie basis for a report to the Boston School Committee at the end of the year. The Bureau cherishes the hope that it can so demonstrate the practi- cability and value of this work that the Boston School Committee will eventually establish in its regular organization a supervisor of vocational advice. " ^ Acting under the direction of the Boston School Committee, the Superintendent of Schools appointed a committee of six to work with the Vocation Bureau director in that city. After nearly a year's work, this committee rendered the following report, which is quoted because it indicates some of the practical aspects of the work as well as its dominant ideals. " The Committee on Vocational Direction respectfully presents the following as a report for the school year just closed. The past year has been a year of beginnings, the field of operation being large and the problems complicated. A brief survey of the work shows the following results : — " A general interest in vocational direction has been aroused among the teachers of Boston, not only in the elementary but in the high schools. " A vocational counselor, or a committee of such counselors, has been appointed in every high school and in all but one of the elemen- tary schools. " A vocational card record of every elementary school graduate for this year has been made, to be forwarded to the high school in the fall. " Stimulating vocational lectures have been given to thirty of the graduating classes of the elementary schools of Boston, including all the schools in the more congested parts of the city. " Much has been done by way of experiment by the members of this committee in the various departments of getting employment, counseling and following up pupils after leaving school. " The interest and loyal cooperation of many of the leading philan- thropic societies of Boston have been secured, as well as of many prominent in the business and professional Ufe of the city and the state. " A good beginning has already been made in reviewing books suit- able for vocational libraries in the schools. ! Blopmfield, Vocational Guidance of Youth, pp. 32-3'^: i86 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION " It was early decided that we should confine our efforts for the first year mainly to pupils of the highest elementary grade as the best point of contact. The problem of vocational aid and counsel in the high schools has not as yet been directly dealt with, yet much that is valuable has been accomphshed in all our high schools on the initiative of the head masters and selected teachers. It is safe to say that the quality and amount of vocational aid and direction has far exceeded any hitherto given in those schools. The committee, through open and private conferences, and correspondence with the head masters, have kept in close touch with the situation in high schools, but they feel that for the present year it is best for the various tj^es of high schools each to work out its own plan of vocational direction. The facts regarding their experience can properly be made the basis of a later report. A committee of three, appointed by the Head Master's Association, stands ready to advise with this com- mittee on all matters relating to high school vocational interests. Once during the year the principals of the specialized schools met in conference the vocational counselors of the city and have presented the aims and curricula of these schools in such a way as to greatly enlighten those responsible for advising pupils entering high schools. " The committee have held regular weekly meetings through the school year since September. At these meetings every phase of vo- cational aid has been discussed, together with its adaptability to our present educational system. Our aim has been to test the various conclusions before recommending them for adoption. This has taken time. Our most serious problem so far has been to adapt our plans to conditions as we find them, without increasing the teachers' work and without greatly increased expense. We have assvuned that the movement was not a temporary ' fad,' but that it had a perma- nent value, and was therefore worthy the serious attention of educators. " Three aims have stood out above all others: first, to secure thoughtful consideration, on the part of parents, pupils and teachers, of the importance of a Hfe-career motive ; second, to assist in every way possible in placing pupils in some remunerative work on leaving school ; and third, to keep in touch with and help them thereafter, sug- gesting means of improvement and watching the advancement of those who need such aid. The first aim has been in some measiure achieved throughout the city. The other two have thus far been worked out only by the individual members of the committee. As a result we are very firmly of the opinion that until some central bureau of information for pupils regarding trades and mercantile opportuni- ties is established, and some effective system of sympathetically fol- VOCATIONAL DIRECTION 187 lowing up pupils, for a longer or a shorter period after leaving school, is organized in our schools as centers, the effort to advise and direct merely will largely fail. Both will require added executive labor which will fall upon the teachers at first. We believe they will accept the responsibiUty. If, as Dr. EHot says, teachers find those schools more interesting where the life-career motive is present, then the sooner that motive is discovered in the majority of pupils the more easily will the daily work be done and the product correspondingly im- proved. " In order to enlist the interest and cooperation of the teachers of Boston, three mass meetings, one in October and two in the early spring, were held. A fourth meeting with the head masters of high schools was also held with the same object. As a most gratifying result the general attitude is most sympathetic and the enthusiasm marked. The vocation counselors in high and elementary schools form a working organization of over a hundred teachers, represent- ing all the schools. A responsible ofl&cial, or committee, in each school stands ready to advise pupils and parents at times when they most need advice and are asking for it. They suggest whatever helps may be available in further educational preparation. They are ready to fit themselves professionally to do this work more intelligently and discriminatingly, not only by meeting together for mutual counsel and exchange of experience, but by study and expert preparation if need be. " As a beginning of our work with pupils we have followed out two lines: the lecture and the card record. The addresses have been mainly stimulating and inspirational. It seems to the committee, however, that specific information coming from those intimately con- nected with certain lines of labor should have a place also in this lecture phase of oin: work. In a large number of high and elementary schools addresses of this character have been given by experts during the year. The committee claim no credit for these, though carried out under the inspiration of the movement the committee represent. The custom of having such addresses given before Junior Aliunni Associations, Parents' Associations and evening school gatherings has become widespread, the various masters taking the initiative in such cases. The speakers are able to quote facts with an authority that is convincing to the pupil and leads him to take a more serious view of his future plans, especially if the address is followed by similar talks from the class teacher, emphasizing the points of the speaker. This is a valuable feature and should be extended to include more of the elementary grades, especially in the more densely settled portions of the city, from which most of our unskilled workers come. iSS SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION " A vocational record card, calling for elementary school data on one side and for high school data on the other, has been furnished all the elementary schools for registration of this year's graduates. The same card will be furnished to high schools this fall. These cards are to be sent forward by the elementary school counselors to high schools in September, to be revised twice during the high school course. The value of the card record is not so much in the registering of cer- tain data as in the results of the process of getting these. The efiEect upon the mental attitude of pupil, teacher and parent is excellent, and makes an admirable beginning in the plan of vocational direction. " The committee are now in a position where they must meet a demand of both pupils and teachers for vocational enlightenment. Pupils should have detailed information in the form of inexpensive handbooks, regarding the various callings and how to get into them, wages, permanence of employment, chance of promotion, etc. Teach- ers must have a broader outlook upon industrial opportunities for boys and girls. Even those teachers who know their pupils well generally have little acquaintance with industrial conditions. The majority can advise fairly well how to prepare for a profession, while few can tell a boy how to get into a trade, or what the opportunities therein are. In this respect our teachers will need to be more broadly informed regarding social, industrial and economic problems. We have to face a more serious problem in a crowded American city than in a country where children are supposed to follow the father's trade. " In meeting the two most pressing needs, viz. the vocational enlightenment of teachers, parents and pupils, and the training of vocational counselors, we shall continue to look for aid to the Voca- tional Bureau. The Bureau has been of much assistance during the past year, in fact indispensable, in matters of correspondence, securing information, getting out printed matter and in giving the committee counsel based upon a superior knowledge of men and conditions in the business world. " The question of vocational direction is merely one phase of the greater question of vocational education. As a contributory influ- ence we believe serious aggressive work in this line will lead to several definite results, aside from the direct benefit to the pupils. It will create a demand for better literature on the subject of vocations. It will help increase the demand for more and better trade schools. It will cause teachers to seek to broaden their knowledge of opportimities for mechanical and mercantile training. Lastly, it will tend to a more intelligent and generous treatment of employees by business houses, the personal welfare and prospects of the employee being taken into ac- count as well as the interests of the house itself." ^ • Reprinted in Bloomfield, op. cit. pp. 35-41. VOCATIONAL DIRECTION 189 Report of the Students' Aid Committee of the New York City High School Teachers' Association on Vocational Guidance There are now in all the day and evening high schools of New York City special committees whose aim it is to aid deserving students to secure employment during vacations and for out-of-school hours in order to earn a part of their support ; to advise those who are ready to leave school, and others who are compelled to leave school, in the choice of a vocation; to direct them how best to fit themselves for their chosen vocation and to assist them in securing employment which will lead to success in those vocations. All these local committees have representatives in the general committee of the association. . . . The general committee has been aiming to assist the local com- mittees of the several schools: (i) by bringing to the attention of employers the fact that the schools are willing and ready to help them to select suitable recruits for their service ; (2) by collecting information in regard to the opportunities which are open to the high school stu- dents who must seek employment; (3) by setting on foot movements for seciuring vacation employment. Vacation employment has been found helpful to those who must earn something towards their own support in order to continue in school : (i) in supplying a little money to the boy whose growing spirit of independence tempts him to break with the school in order to satisfy that spirit through the possession of some money of his own ; (2) in giving to the boy who becomes restless under the conditions of school work a taste of the prosy work-a-day world so that he may be better satisfied afterwards with the restrictions which the school must impose. ... Regarding the relative efficiency of the high school product it may be noted that of the ten thousand students who went out of the high schools into the commercial and industrial worlds less than 10 per cent applied to the committee for assistance and advice in the matter of securing employment. It may be assumed that among this tenth were those who were the most helpless. At four different times during the year the registers of applicants for employment were practically exhausted. This means that all the students who went out of these schools seeking employment had no difficulty in finding employment, and yet the reports of a hundred and ninety-three representative labor unions for December, 1908, indicate that out of sixty thousand members 28 per cent were out of employment. A canvass of all of the eleven hundred students attending one of the large evening high schools during the last week of December indicated that only thirty- two, or less tiian 3 per cent, were imemployed. Within a week the IQO SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION local committee representing the school was enabled to place three fourths of that number. The students attending the evening high schools are, for the most part, those who are compelled to drop out of the day school. Another significant fact bearing on this question is the report of an investigation made about the same time by the Society for Improving the Condition of the Poor of one thousand consecutive applicants to the employment department of that society for assistance. It was found that 40 per cent of them were skilled laborers, and that the idleness of only 3 per cent of the entire number was due to inefficiency. These were also products of our public schools. Their condition seems to have been due not so much to the inefficiency of the schools from which they came as to the faulty industrial organ- izations which could not utilize their efficiency. That employers are ready to use the product of the schools proves that this product is economically efficient, that the students who go out of the schools in their immaturity readily find employment during a season when labor is far in excess of the demand, proves that the high school student is relatively more efficient than any other class in the labor market. If the high school product does not continue to develop after it enters the market, it may prove that employers do not so organize their forces as to enable the employee to continue his develop- ment after he enters their service. It is time that the schools, which have been subjected to the criti- cisms of the employers, should know what after care the students receive who go out from their walls. What would it profit the future of the state if she were to set aside her forest preserves, secure plants of good stock, prepare the ground and set out the seedlings, and then leave the young plants without thought or care to the mercenary who would exploit them for his own advantage ? The state does not per- mit the intelligent and wealthy orphan of eighteen to intrust her fortune to the keeping of her relative without the consent and over- sight of the courts, and yet she permits the well-trained but poor boy, who has no asset in the world but his time and his ambition, to sell the same in the market, without oversight or advice, to the employers of a city, among whom are those whose inhumanity has compelled the legislature to place upon our statute books the pitifully inadequate child labor laws. The government does not permit a grocer to sell to a millionaire a bottle of milk without its supervision, and yet it stands idly by while a young man or a boy gives the precious years of his youth for less than his board and clothes to an employer in ex- change for prospects of advancement which the employer knows have no existence except in his own " help wanted " advertisement. If the government which has found it necessary to compel reform in the advertisements of food products and proprietary medicine will VOCATIONAL DIRECTION 191 compel every advertiser for help to give his proper name and address, and to state what he expects and what he is willing to pay, a great service will be done for the most helpless part of our population. A study made by Mr. H. G. Paine at the request of the Charity Organization Society into the character of the " help wanted " adver- tisements in two representative New York dailies for twelve Sunday issues showed that out of a total of 18,214 advertisements, 6130 were fakes. This is a most wasteful process, to say the least. Its bearing on the education of youth may be illustrated by a typical case of a genuine advertisement. On a rainy morning in July, one of the members of the committee went with a timid small boy to a stock broker's office in answer to an attractive advertisement for a bright, well-educated office boy. They found the outer office crowded with small boys. The manager supposed that the only man in the crowd was a prospective customer, called him into the office, and engaged his boy, joked about the mob outside, and directed his clerk to scatter it. The so-called mob of small boys consisted of a score of boys who had been graduated from the public schools the week before, got up early, scanned the papers, dressed themselves up, started out into the strange parts of the city, morning after morning, spending their scant allow- ance of pocket money in car fares to meet with most inconsiderate receptions and to write letters which were -rarely answered. After each unsuccessful application they placed lower and lower estimates upon their own value. It was found afterwards that in this particular case the opening for the boy was to be only for the time during which the regular boy was absent on his vacation. The day after this episode, the newspaper, to show what a valuable advertising medium it conducted, had a most humorous but a very unfeeling account of how it had rained office boys in Wall Street on the previous day. This account was accompanied by a cartoon, and the chairman of the committee was grateful that the cartoonist was ignorant of his presence in the deluge. The present methods of conducting these columns permit managers of cheap commercial schools and irresponsible employment agencies to insert attractive advertisements for the purpose of securing choice lists of addresses to which to mail their hterature. It is hard to under- stand why a reputable newspaper is a party to such petty frauds upon the poor and helpless. Let us look at a few young people through the eyes of the employers in order that we may note what the causes are which give rise to the complaints from the employers. I will quote two cases which may emphasize what you already know. The first boy has nothing in his favor except the training and the ambition which he has received in the public schools of the city. 192 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION He was graduated in February, wanted to go to college, but had to go to work in order to earn the money wherewith to pay his college expenses. The Monday after he had been graduated he went to work as an extra clerk in a large financial institution following another high school boy, who by doing the work in this position during his out-of-coUege hours for four years had paid his college expenses. This boy will never know but one employer until he is ready to enter upon the practice of his profession. His employer may never know this boy because the boy is not one of the blundering kind, and in the great concerns of this city, as in some high schools, the responsible heads become well acquainted only with their inefficient subordinates. The contrasting case is that of a boy who graduated in the same class by virtue of complying with the minimum requirements of the school. The employment agent of his school declined to help him until he had shown that he had made an effort of his own in the direc- tion of securing employment. After several weeks he came back with proofs that he had applied by letter or in person to over a hundred employers. He was directed to call upon his adviser at nine o'clock the following Saturday morning to go to interview an employer. He called at eleven instead, because his father " needed him to go on an errand first." As an advertisement of the inefiiciency of the schools he is going about among employers raising himself to the one hun- dredth degree while your eflScient product stands as a single unit. It is because the employer who advertises for help receives his replies largely from this floating and misfit element that the schools are so harshly judged. The remedy is found by teaching the employer that the best of the reserve corps is in the rear of the army in training, and not among those who are playing hide and seek around the camp baggage. Of course, we must always expect to find some ne'er-do-wells, some who cannot represent themselves to good advantage to employers, and others who always will be unemployable ; but it becomes us so to frame our courses of study and so to plan the routine of the schools as to help the first and to reduce the number of the second class. We want to know first why some are unemployable. A study of a few concrete cases will help to make our knowledge definite. Some do not readily find employment because of a lack of knowledge of what is required by the market. From one of our high schools there came to the chairman of the committee recently a young man who was called home in the middle of his freshman year in college because of a domestic catastrophe which had shattered his home. His mother needed his help. It was impossible to discharge his new obligations by accepting the meager wages which are usually paid to beginners. Despondent and discouraged as he was, unskilled VOCATIONAL DIRECTION 193 and unfitted for any immediate work, he wandered around the city for several weeks before applying to his former teacher by whom he was sent to the committee. There are in this city thousands of employers who are looking for such young men. These employers, however, do not need to advertise for help. Somewhat awkward, but a splendid specimen of young manhood, loyal and unselfish, ambitious and deter- mined he was. He was not at an age when he could present himself to good advantage. Within a" week he was placed in congenial sur- roundings, and the committee has since received expressions of appre- ciation both from the boy and from the employer. To help such young people to find themselves, this newly proposed vocation society can do a great service by making available to them the right kind of information at the time when they may need it. The committee, prompted by the need of such information, has under- taken the preparation of a series of vocation leaflets covering the dif- ferent occupations which are open to the young people who go out from the high schools. In these are set forth the qualifications necessary for success and the remuneration and rate of advancement which may be expected in each of the several lines. These leaflets will be printed as fast as the funds of the committee will permit this to be done. Some of our young people are imfortunate in making business con- nection because of too much faith in themselves. We have before us the case of a young man who was compelled at the last moment to seek work instead of taking a graduate course at college. Through the efforts of the committee a position was secured in a promising line for him. After his first week, because of some harsh criticism, he left his work. His case is typical of an increasing class. This young man may have had too much of teaching and too little learning in his school life. He had a ready mind, had acquired a great deal of knowl- edge, but he had never learned to take pleasure in solving diflSculties for himself. He is learning that lesson, but he is paying heavily for the tuition. The undue prominence which has been given to interest as an ele- ment in education, the disposition to expect more of the teachers and less and less of effort on the part of the student is perhaps responsible for the young people who have never acquired capacity for doing what they have not been taught. At best they can only expect to take and to retain positions as hired servants of some kind or other. Many teachers have a feeling that the inspector judges them chiefly because of their power to direct and control the attention of the chil- dren; that he holds it is the teacher's business to supply the right outward stimuli and to ward off unfavorable distractions. Sometimes the boy gets the feeling that the teacher is responsible for his conduct ; from this condition it is easy for him to develop into the attitude which 194 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION leads him " to do things because he wants to and the teacher can't touch him." The teachers, one after another, are wearied into passing the boy along until he has become indifferent to all the novelties which the best strategist of the school can invent. I remember one such boy. We stated his case fairly to an employer who afterwards agreed to give him a trial. After a few weeks in his position he was tempted to play a trick on a stupid associate. It was the kind of a trick which, in school, would have secured the boy a hoUday until his mother or his father could have made arrangements to take a day off to see the principal, taken an hour or two of the valuable time of that official, made it necessary for the teacher and the clerk of the principal to make various and sundry entries in a conduct book and generally punished every one but the offender himself. In the business house it needed only twenty minutes to help the offender on with his over- coat, to give him his pay envelope and plant him on the sidewalk. The boy was unemployable and will likely remain unemployable as his recent history has seemed to indicate. That power of self-control which is so necessary to those who would get along with their fellows had never been developed in the boy. It might possibly have been developed by a well-graded course of treatment for nervous disorders, according to the prescriptions of the wise King Solomon. An employer who uses a large number of girls in a factory in which the girls are expected to attend to certain machines stated in a public conference recently that not over lo per cent of the girls who apply to him are employable at this work because of their inability to keep their eyes from wandering away from their work. It may be well to en- courage the activities of the small child, to give its natural inclinations free play, but if young people are to be trained for usefulness in highly organized industries, they must be trained so that they may have the power of self-control and the ability to restrain themselves and the readiness to forego their inclinations and desires. That he may be trained to useful service it would seem that as he advances from the kindergarten to the finishing school the child should find in his successive teachers less and less of the entertainer and more and more of the taskmaster. His high school teacher ought to have the highest standards of excellence and to regard with intolerance the lazy attitude of the adolescent boy. Of course, much harm may be done if a boy is to be punished for infirmities which are due to the physical condition of the adolescent. I have in mind a case of this kind. I met the boy on the street in a gang of toughs after he had been dismissed from school in which he had in five terms succeeded in doing the work of only two terms. He was a fairly good grammar school boy, he entered the high school with good intentions, he succeeded fairly well in the first term. In his VOCATIONAL DIRECTION 195 second term the little boy suddenly outgrew his knickerbockers and became an uncouth, awkward fellow nearly six feet tall. He couldn't move without getting into some one's way. He was abused and ridiculed until he lost faith in himself and ceased making any effort whatsoever either in the way of work or of right conduct. Possibly provisions should have been made for putting him away where he could have done no harm until his nervous and muscular systems could have properly coordinated. We took him off the street, got him into the hands of an employer in a factory where he was useful in carrying about trays of bolts from one department to another. Regular physical occupation, good sur- roundings, and some oversight by his evening school teacher saved the boy, and the boy who did only two terms' work in five terms in the day school completed his preparation for the technical school in three short terms of the evening school. He will be graduated as a mechan- ical engineer this season from one of our best schools and expects to reenter the services of the firm by whom he was first employed. It should be emphasized, therefore, that it is a serious tlung for the school, if, by setting too high a standard, it leads a boy to beUeve that he is not of the average capacity. If the high school work is well done, if the boy studies with care either biology or history or mathe- matics, so that he has in any sense a comprehensive grasp of either one of these subjects, it must follow that he will have a sense of his own in- significance which is wholly unknown to the young man who knows everything within the limits of one city block and knows nothing else. From its very nature, earnest and sound work in school and college tends to promote humility, while the man who masters only a limited field of endeavor, as does the man in the shop or the office, acquires in his own element a very great deal of confidence. This explains per- haps in a measure, why the young high school and the college graduate appear to such disadvantage when they first go out to work side by side with those of their same age with a foimdation of experience in their common work. If the school knows to what work the student goes, it can, by a little advice, help him meet these first disadvantages which are inherent to the situation. The school should do this. The high schools should endeavor to enlist a large number of the students in those activities which are planned to develop in the stu- dent the power of initiative. It must be imfortunate if students have been under direction throughout their entire school course. It may be the case that the assigned work employs their energies so completely that they lose all desire to learn anything which they are not directed or required to do by some one in authority. A girl who had been graduated from one of our high schools and had afterwards taken a course in stenography in a business school was sent 196 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION by the employment committee of her own school to the chairman of the general committee. Her family had made sacrifices in order to secure for the girl the training which should make her independent. She had been attracted to stenography by the glowing terms in which a girl friend had painted this work. As she had been out of school for some time and was out of practice she was employed by the general committee until a suitable opening presented itself. After a week, an opening did present itself, and on the recommendations of the committee she was taken on trial and she held the position Just one day. She was in despair over the failure. She had been well taught, she had good judgment in the use of words and was able to take notes and to transcribe correctly. She had no special interest in learning an unfamiliar typewriting machine at which she was set to work by the committee, she was satisfied to ask her employer to make the adjustments of the machine for her, she had not learned to keep her papers in order, or that the work must be done in a specified time. She expected her employer to be the successor of the indulgent teach- ers who had always been ready to wait upon her, and to put her things in order for her after the day's work was over. She may learn these lessons, but I fear that she also will pay heavily for the tuition. If the pupils of our high schools are to be trained to go out for serv- ice, they must be taught to take some interest in their own surround- ings, and ought to be made responsible for the things which they use and handle in school. In another state they are wrestling with an unfeeling member of the school board who cannot be made to see why the taxpayers should pay the laundry bills for the domestic science classes of the high schools. In our city, the students learn that high-salaried teachers must be ready to hand out to them paper and pencil and pen whenever they have need for the same. They learn to be waited on, and for the time it may be well enough, but it makes it so hard when they fall into the hands of an employer who does not readily learn new ways of doing things. Just one more criticism. In one of the large evening schools, on a given evening a notice was sent to all the rooms requesting that those who were seeking employment should be sent to a room for a conference with a member of the committee. It was particularly specified that this conference would be at 7.30 o'clock. This was the time for the opening of the session, and it was assumed that the boy who was out of emplo3anent and who failed to be promptly on hand at the opening of the session was not a boy whom the committee cared to recommend. At the time specified eighteen candidates out of an attendance of over eight hundred appeared. After a very brief talk, the representative of the committee observed that two of the candidates were likely to prove acceptable to employers from whom calls had been received. VOCATIONAL DIRECTION 197 Letters of introduction were given to these two, and the next day they both reported engagements. By way of a test, the others were in- structed to prepare a letter of application. They were directed to state in a separate letter to the representative of the committee what they would like to do and to make their letter of application to the employers a clear statement of the reasons why they should be engaged for the desired position. They were told that the committee would forward these letters to employers ia the chosen Hues of business. They were also instructed to have these letters ready the following evening at 7.15. Let it be remembered that this crowd of sixteen represented a very small remnant and the poorest remnant of all the great army from which it was sifted by the merciless operation of the laws of selection. Why were they eliminated? The next evening at the appointed time not one had appeared. The first one, when questioned, remarked that he " didn't think it mattered." It was particularly specified that they were to write letters on unruled papers because it was supposed that it would be necessary for them to specially purchase this paper for this purpose. Not one had that kind of paper. Some had foolscap ; most of them had little sheets of cheap letter paper, because they thought it " would do just as well." The writing was fairly good, but the matter of the letters was very indifferently expressed, and either the ability or the disposition to carry out instructions was absent. On several occasions, through the courtesy of advertisers, I have been permitted to have the letters of rejected applicants for positions, and I am of the opinion that such letters are written largely by the element which was represented in this evening school residuum of sixteen. As yoxmg people, such persons are unemployable. A discussion of this problem with many employers leads us to the belief that the kind of vocational training which the best of employers of this city would appreciate and the kind of vocational training which will be the best insurance against unemployment does not depend upon the content of the course of study. It is the vocational training which will give the student the capacity to understand instructions, the ability to interpret them, and the disposition to obey orders even though he does not at the time understand the reasons for doing what is required of him. Let me not be misunderstood. I am dwelling upon these ineflScient students for the purpose of caUing attention to some things which might be remedied. These cases are the more noticeable because so few stu- dents whose progress has been followed by the members of the commit- tee have failed to meet the expectations of their employers. By way of contrast with these bits of biography which I have given, let me quote from a letter which has been received by a member of the committee : — igS SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION " Perhaps you have forgotten me. When I graduated from the high school, I came to you with a long tale of woe because I could not afford to go to college in order to fit myself to become an engineer. You kindly planned a course for me and secured for me a position. I have been advanced from time to time by my employer. I am now twenty-one years old, and by the time the next college year begins, I shall have to my credit in the savings bank $1200. Some time ago I told my boss of my plans, and I offered to get him a high school boy to break in to do my work before I should leave. " A few days afterwards he called me into his office and asked me fully about my plans. He then offered to put me in charge of a new department which the firm is organizing, if I should agree to remain with them. The firm is rapidly expanding its business, is connected with some of the leading financial institutions and contracting firms of the city. " Now the question is, shall I give up my long-cherished plan to go to college ? I have argued myself to a standstill on the subject, and I must depend upon you for advice. For any consideration which you can give the question and any time you can spare me at your con- venience, let me thank you in advance, and let me again express my gratitude for your kindness and help in the past." la a leading editorial in the Brooklyn Eagle under date of June 2, 1908, in referring to the work of the committee, the writer ended with this remark, " Some of the finest results of teaching come not from the routine of the classroom, but from the incidental association of pupils with men and women of character and helpfulness." The letter files of the committee are an indication of the confidential relations which exist between the pupils and their high school teachers. Departmental teaching, the semiannual reorganization of the schools and the unusual size of our high schools tend to prevent the development of these confidential relations between pupils and teacher, unless special attention is given to the matter. This interest in the student should not cease after his graduation. The successful student makes an appreciated school, and where the school is appreciated by the patrons, the work of the teacher becomes easier, and the influence of the school over the student becomes stronger. As the ratio of the young people to the entire population of a city becomes less and less, it becomes more and more important that every cause which hinders the proper development of the young people should be removed. If the young people who go out from our schools and colleges of the smaller city of this day are not ready when their time comes in the much larger city of the future to manage the great enterprises, the alien must come in and do it for them. The young people must be well equipped, and they must be started VOCATIONAL DIRECTION 199 in the right direction, but the large concerns in which they are em- ployed shovdd be so organized as to give to their workers reasonable encouragement to continue their own development after they enter upon their employment. In order to insure continuity of employment and to be enabled to direct the subsequent development of these young people who were sent to their first employers, the committee has encouraged them to make periodical reports of their progress and to call upon the members for consultation, and it has been particularly emphasized that no stu- dent for whom the committee stood sponsor should of his own accord leave an employer without first consulting with the representative of his school. After making all due allowance, the committee has learned enough from these reports of the young workers to be deeply impressed with the necessity for a change in the methods of handling new recruits, which even at this advanced day prevail in some business estab- Ushments. We had a bright boy who was compelled to leave school because of the death of his father. In the course of the routine of our work we mail our employment circulars to firms by whom boys who come to us seeking work have been discharged. In answer to one of these circu- lars we received a request for a boy for a firm from whose services an evening school student had been discharged a few days before. They desired to secure a well-bred, intelligent boy to begin with " small salary and prospects of advancement." A representative of the committee went with the orphan to interview the manager. It was just the boy for whom he had been looking, and he was ready to engage him at once. The boy was expected to come to the place of business early, to set in order the outer ofiice and to act as a sort of page and doorkeeper. After talking with the young fellow who had been dis- charged by the firm, it was discovered that he had been doing just that work for about two years, receiving four dollars a week the first year and five dollars the second year, and that he was expecting an increase to six dollars. Instead of advancing him, he was dismissed, and the firm saved two dollars a week by employing a new boy. The business biography of another boy who went out of the lower grades of one of our schools four years ago indicates that he has been specially trained by the firm which employs him, and at present he is taking at one of our best schools a course of lessons in Spanish. The ' firm pays the tuition and allows him the time to attend upon instruc- tion. In this city, the special training which is required in different lines of business is so varied that it would seem to be impossible for the schools to arrange to give all the training and instruction which may be needed to fit students for highly specialized service. To secure this 200 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION specialized training, the student must sacrifice so much time and energy, and since much of it has so little value outside of one particular line, and considering that the business interests of the city must pay for this training whether given in the school before the boy enters upon his employment or given after he enters the service of a given firm, it would seem far more economical for the firms who seek the services of specialists to encourage their own employees to acquire the required skill. Much of this specialized training is of far more value to the firm than it is to the individual, and the individual should not be expected to serve the firm at a loss to himself while he is getting the experience and special skill which is needed by the firm, unless that special skill has some value to the individual outside of his work in connection with that particular firm. The worst of these antiquated methods is the fact that this unregu- lated apprentice service gives opportunity to unprincipled individuals to speculate upon the needs of the most helpless part of the com- munity. A most aggravated case of this kind came to the attention of the committee. It should be said at the outset that such cases are not numerous. The vocation record of an evening school student was brought to the attention of the committee. The card showed that the boy had graduated from an elementary school at the age of four- teen ; this seemed to indicate that he was a normal boy. He had been in the service of the same employer during the two years since gradua- tion ; this seemed to indicate that he was reliable and faithful. He had been regular and punctual in his attendance upon the evening school since graduating from the elementary school, even though he had to travel considerable distance in order to reach the evening school ; this seemed to indicate that he had ambition and tenacity of purpose. His earnings were given at $3.50 per week. He was sent for, and a quiet talk was had with him in regard to his prospects and the nature of his employment. The boy's father was dead, his mother was a working woman, and the boy's employer was a member of the church of which both the boy and his mother were members. The boy and the mother were under the impression that he was learning a trade ; on the contrary, the boy was employed to deliver packages of considerable value in different parts of the city. It was necessary to hold a special conference with the boy's mother to secure her con- sent to permit the boy to accept employment at another place at seven dollars a week. It is usual for a member of a committee to call upon a firm when the first request for help is received in order to know what is expected, so that selections may be more carefully made. The manager of a long- established firm, by way of apology for the low wages which it offered, said that the boys have opportunity to earn considerable above their VOCATIONAL DIRECTION 201 regular weekly pay. A good young fellow was sent to them. In his first report he wrote : " I am only receiving $6 per week. The other fellows think I am easy because I do not fall into the practice of delay- ing my work until after the closing hour so that I can cash in my overtime check for the extra fifty cents which is paid to those who are kept beyond the usual time." This system surely seemed to offer a premium to delinquents, and it did not really add to the earnings of the boys, because the extra fifty cents was considered as so much money " found " and was squandered accordingly. In justice to the firm it may be added that when the young man's letter was forwarded to the manager, he promptly promoted the writer over the heads of his fellows to a more responsible position at increased pay. The committee has issued a special circular setting forth some of the conditions under which boys are accepted by responsible firms in order to learn trades. It has been surprising to notice how few boys cared to consider these opportunities. This may be due to the expe- rience of other members of their families. In most of the trades the boys and girls are made to be parts of automatic machines so long that they become useless to themselves and the community and their employers whenever a change on the methods of the factory puts the particular machine at which they are working out of business. A boy of twenty who had found himself a part of such an organization was struggling to emancipate himself. After several conferences with him, his evening school teacher reported what seemed to be the condi- tions of this factory. It was a fountain pen factory. All the parts were made by specially constructed and automatic machinery. A worker's highest efficiency was secured by keeping him at one of these machines. Boys and girls were found to be taught readily and to become, in a little time, very efficient, but the work was deadening, and it destroyed the worker himself. After he had grown up, he lost some of his muscular activity, became restless because of the low wages which prevailed in the shop, was discharged, and other boys were hired to take his place. Even if a boy should develop a higher skill than that which is demanded by the particular work which he is engaged to do, it is difficult in many highly organized concerns for him to make his new acquisitions known to his responsible superiors. These superiors are not so much to blame in many cases as the system under which the work is carried on. A young man who graduated from one of our high schools four years ago was employed in a large factory. After he had been at work for some time with the firm, in a conference with his adviser, he expressed an ambition to get into the firm's laboratory. He was directed to enter Cooper Institute for the evening course in chemistry and to specialize in the work which was most likely to be 202 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION required by his firm. He took the advice, plodded on year after year in his self-imposed task, and completed his education in that line, but he could not get his firm to recognize nor to consider his request to be transferred to the department for which he had prepared himself. It was only after he had secured a position with another firm through the efforts of the committee that his former employers made him an offer to advance him to the laboratory. It would be wrong to leave the impression that other methods do not prevail. The best firms employ especially trained men and women to look after the welfare of their employees ; many of them have in oper- ation systems which are designed to develop the efficiency of their employees and to bring to the front those who show unusual degrees of efficiency. Others offer cash premiums and valuable prizes to the employees who show special skUl or who devise improvements in the methods of doing business. But enough has been said. The employers of labor have done much to make this great city what it is. They need our young people. There are those who deserve the best we can give them. Courses of study, fixed programs and graduation from the high school are im- portant, but the real important aim is to keep the boy in school until he is fit for something and then to have him ready, when the demand comes for him, to hand over to the employer for whose services by nature and training he is best fitted and whose service is designed to develop the employee as well as to profit the employer. This work has passed the experimental stage, and the committee has recommended (i) that the vocational officers of the large high schools should be given at least one extra period of unassigned time to attend to this work and that they should be relieved from all special assignments in consideration of the time out of school which this work is likely to require, (2) that they should be provided with facilities for keeping the records of the students who go out from their schools and the records of the requirements of the employers who may call upon them from time to time for assistance in selecting recruits for their service, (3) and that they should be furnished opportunities for hold- ing conferences with students and employers. Through these vocational advisers the schools may be able to help the comparatively small number who need help of thiis kind. For the larger number it is not so much that they need help in securing em- ployment as that they need advice in wisely selecting their work and oversight in working out their vocational aims. That this advice may be given wisely, a knowledge of the constantly changing wants of the city must be made available to teachers. To secure this knowledge and to make it available to teachers and students, there should be a properly organized vocational directory for the community. VOCATIONAL DIRECTION 203 The functions of the director should be to enhst the cooperation of the business men to study the requirements of employers and to establish friendly relations between groups of employers and those schools which, because of the character of their students, their location or their facilities for instruction, are best designed to meet the wants of these employers. He would also be in a position to recommend such modifications of the work of the schools as to enable them best to meet the wants of the employers with whom they are in touch. Such a vocational director should collect and make available for the teachers, and for the students of the several schools through pub- lications and lectures, information which should deal with the require- ments for success in the learned professions, the skilled trades and the commercial pursuits, the readiest means through which these require- ments can be met by the young people, and the return which properly qualified young people may expect after they enter the several voca- tions. By anticipating industrial and commercial changes through such an agency it would be possible to prevent the overcrowding in some lines of work and to provide for the needs of new activities. The vocational director of the community would be doing for its young people, in order to help them realize their highest possibilities, what the government is now doing for the industrial and agricultural classes. Such a plan, to be successful in the highest degree, must enlist all classes of employers, and serve impartially all efficient educational agencies of the city. In order to enable him to be the real- exponent of the business community, to be free to refuse to help inefficient stu- dents and to aid unfair employers, the general vocational director should perhaps be supported independently of the school authorities. Maintenance of such a general vocational agency would require but a fraction of the amount which would be needed to endow a college. Because it would provide a means of stimulating the intel- lectual enterprises of the city, provide an agency for promoting greater industrial efficiency, become an active force for insuring the welfare of large masses, the organization and development of a pioneer enter- prise of this kind must surely appeal to generously minded people of this city who have been so ready in the past to give vast fortunes for the establishment of training schools in this and in other lands, and other fortunes for the amelioration of the conditions of the defective, the de- pendent and the delinquent classes. It is an appeal to them to establish proper guide posts which will enable poor but deserving young people of this city who have struggled to fit themselves for usefulness and whose parents meanwhile have made sacrifices to find their way to success with- out loss of time or waste of energy in the very complex life of this city. Report of the Work of the Students' Aid Committee of the High School Teachers' Association of New York City, by E. W. Weaver. 1909. 204 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION PROBLEMS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION 1. Study carefully for critical discussion the self-examination questions prepared by the Boston Vocation Bureau. Parsons, Choos- ing a Vocation. 2. What influences tend to make a youth postpone unduly the choice of his life work? What remedies can you suggest for this condition ? 3. What can be said for or against the early realization of a life- career motive ? 4. OutUne carefully the social importance and social need for voca- tional guidance. Bloomfield, 1-23; 109-116. 5. Describe the different types of vocational guidance attempted both in this country and abroad. (Bloomfield, Publications of the "Students' Aid Committee" of New York City, etc.) 6. Vocational guidance as an aspect of pubhc education. 7. The training and duties of the vocational counselor. 8. What are some of the dangers attending the work of vocational guidance ? REFERENCES ON VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE Bloomfield, Meyer. The Vocational Guidance of Youth, Riverside Educational Monograph. Boston, 191 1. Classified bibUography. Beooks, Stratton D. "Vocational Guidance," 5. Rev., 19:42. Gordon, Mrs. Ogilvie. Handbook of Employments. Aberdeen, Scot- land. Hanus, Paul H. "Vocational Guidance and Public Education, S. Rev., 19 : 57. Keeling, Frederick. The Labor Exchange in Relation to Boy and Girl Labor. London. Leavitt, F. M. " The Boston Conferences on Industrial Education and Vocational Guidance," 5'. Rev., 19 : 63. Leslie, F. J. Wasted Lives. Liverpool, 1910. MiJNSTERBERG, HuGO. "The choice of a vocation," in American Problems. New York, 1910. Parsons, Frank. Choosing a Vocation. Boston, 1909. The best account of the practical work of the vocational counselor, ex- amination questions, sample interviews, etc. Students' Aid Committee of the High School Teachers' Association of New York City. E. W. Weaver, Chairman. This committee VOCATIONAL DIRECTION 205 publishes a number of bulletins containing practical suggestions on choosing a vocation, e.g. " Choosing a Career, a circular of in- formation for boys," etc. Womens' Educational and Industrial Union. Vocations for the Trained Woman, other than Teaching. Boston, 1910. "Vocational guidance, a conference on," Outlook, Vol. 96, 659. Edi- torial, December 10. Vocations, a library of practical information for young men and women. 10 vols. President William DeW. Hyde, Editor-in-chief. CHAPTER XI EDUCATION AS A FACTOR IN SOCIAL PROGRESS The School and Social Progress We are apt to look at the school from an individuaUstic stand- point, as something between teacher and pupil, or between teacher and parent. That which interests us most is naturally the progress made by the individual chUd of our acquaintance, his normal physi- cal development, his advance in ability to read, write and figure, his growth in the knowledge of geography and history, improvement in manners, habits of promptness, order and industry, — it is from such standards as these that we judge the work of the school . And rightly so. Yet the range of the outlook needs to be enlarged. What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the commu- nity want for all its children. Any other ideal for our schools is nar- row and unlovely ; acted upon, it destroys our democracy. All that society has accomplished for itself is put, through the agency of the school, at the disposal of its future members. All its better thoughts of itself it hopes to realize through the new possibilities thus opened to its future self. Here individualism and socialism are at one. Only by being true to the full growth of all the individuals who make it up, can society by any chance be true to itself. And in the self-direction thus given, nothing counts as much as the school, for, as Horace Mann said, " Where anything is growing, one former is worth a thousand re-formers." Whenever we have in mind the discussion of a new movement in education, it is especially necessary to take the broader, or social, view. Otherwise, changes in the school institution and tradition will be looked at as the arbitrary inventions of particular teachers; at the worst transitory fads, and at the best merely improvements in certain details — and this is the plane upon which it is too custom- ary to consider school changes. It is as rational to conceive of the locomotive or the telegraph as personal devices. The modification going on in the method and curriculum of education is as much a 206 EDUCATION AS A FACTOR IN SOCIAL PROGRESS 207 product of the changed social situation, and as much an effort to meet the needs of the new society that is forming, as are changes in modes of industry and commerce. It is to this, then, that I especially ask your attention : the effort to conceive what roughly may be termed the " New Education " in the light of larger changes in society. Can we connect this " New Education " with the general march of events ? If we can, it will lose its isolated character, and will cease to be an affair which pro- ceeds only from the overingenious minds of pedagogues dealing with particular pupils. It will appear as part and parcel of the whole social evolution, and, in its more general features at least, as inevi- table. Let us then ask after the main aspects of the social move- ment; and afterwards turn to the school to find what witness it gives of effort to put itself in line. And since it is quite impossible to cover the whole ground, I shall for the most part confine myself to one typical thing in the modern school movement — that which passes under the name of manual training, hoping, if the relation of that to changed social conditions appears we shall be ready to con- cede the point as weU regarding other educational innovations. I make no apology for not dwelling at length upon the social changes in question. Those I shall mention are writ so large that he who runs may read. The change that comes first to mind and the one that overshadows and even controls all others, is the industrial one — the application of science resulting in the great inventions that have utilized the forces of nature on a vast and inexpensive scale: the growth of a world-wide market as the object of production, of vast manufacturing centers to supply this market, of cheap and rapid means of communication and distribution between all its parts. Even as to its feebler beginnings, this change is not much more than a century old ; in many of its most important aspects it falls within the short span of those now living. One can hardly beheve there has been a revolution in all history so rapid, so extensive, so com- plete. Through it the face of the earth is making over, even as to its physical forms; political boundaries are wiped out and moved about, as if they were indeed only lines on a paper map ; population is hurriedly gathered into cities from the ends of the earth ; habits of living are altered with startling abruptness and thoroughness; the search for the truths of nature is infinitely stimulated and facili- tated and their application to life made not only practicable, but commercially necessary. Even our moral and religious ideas and interests, the most conservative because the deepest-lying things in our nature, are profoundly affected. That this revolution should not affect education in other than formal and superficial fashion is inconceivable. 2o8 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION Back of the factory system lies the household and neighborhood system. Those of us who are here to-day need go back only one, two, or at the most three, generations, to find a time when the household was practically the center in which were carried on, or about which were clustered, all the typical forms of industrial occupation. The clothing worn was for the most part not only made in the house, but the members of the household were usually familiar with the shearing of the sheep, the carding and spinning of the wool, and the pl)dng of the loom. Instead of pressing a button and flooding the house with electric Ught, the whole process of getting illumination was followed in its toilsome length from the killing of the animal and the trjdng of fat, to the making of wicks and dipping of candles. The supply of flour, of lumber, of foods, of building materials, of house- hold furniture, even of metal ware, of nails, hinges, hammers, etc., was in the immediate neighborhood, in shops which were constantly open to inspection and often centers of neighborhood congregations. The entire industrial process stood revealed, from the production on the farm of the raw materials, till the finished article was actually put to use. Not only this, but practically every member of the household had his own share in the work. The children, as they gained in strength and capacity, were gradually initiated into the mysteries of the several processes. It was a matter of immediate and personal concern, even to the point of actual participation. We cannot overlook the factors of discipline and of character building involved in this : training in habits of order and of industry, and in the idea of responsibility, of obligation to do something, to produce something, in the world. There was always something which really needed to be done, and a real necessity that each member of the household should do his own part faithfully and in cooperation with others. Personalities which became efiective in action were bred and tested in the medium of action. Again, we cannot overlook the importance for educational purposes of the close and intimate acquaintance got with nature at first hand, with real things and materials, with the actual processes of their manipulation, and the knowledge of their social necessities and uses. In all this there was continual training of observation, of ingenuity, construc- tive imagination, of logical thought and of the sense of reality acquired through first-hand contact with actualities. The educative forces of the domestic spinning and weaving, of the sawmill, the grist- mill, the cooper shop and the blacksmith forge were continuously operative. No number of object lessons, got up as object lessons for the sake of giving information, can afford even the shadow of a substitute for acquaintance with the plants and animals of the farm and gar- EDUCATION AS A FACTOR IN SOCIAL PROGRESS 209 den, acquired through actual Hving among them and caring for them. No training of sense organs in school, introduced for the sake of training, can begin to compete with the alertness and fullness of sense life that comes through daily intimacy and interest in familiar occupations. Verbal memory can be trained in committing tasks, a certain discipline of the reasoning powers can be acquired through lessons in science and mathematics ; but, after all, this is somewhat remote and shadowy compared with the training of attention and of judgment that is acquired in having to do things with a real motive behind and a real outcome ahead. At present, concentration of in- dustry and division of labor have practically eliminated household and neighborhood occupations — at least for educational purposes. But it is useless to bemoan the departure of the good old days of children's modesty, reverence and implicit obedience, if we expect merely by bemoaning and exhortation to bring them back. It is radi- cal conditions which have changed, and only an equally radical change in education suffices. We must recognize our compensations — the increase in toleration, in breadth of social judgment, the larger acquaintance with human nature, the sharpened alertness in read- ing signs of character and interpreting social situations, greater ac- curacy of adaptation of differing personalities, contact with greater commercial activities. These considerations mean much to the city-bred child of to-day. Yet there is a real problem: how shall we retain these advantages, and yet introduce into the school some- thing representing the other side of life — occupations which exact personal responsibilities and which train the child with relation to the physical realities of life? When we turn to the school, we find that one of the most striking tendencies at present is toward the introduction of so-called manual training, shop work and the household arts — sewing and cooking. This has not been done " on purpose," with a full consciousness that the school must now supply the factor of training formerly taken care of in the home, but rather by instinct, by experimenting and finding that such work takes a vital hold of pupils and gives them something which was not to be got in any other way. Conscious- ness of its real import is still so weak that the work is often done in a half-hearted, confused and unrelated way. The reasons assigned to justify it are painfully inadequate or sometimes even positively wrong. If we were to cross-examine even those who are most favorably disposed to the introduction of this work into our school system, we should, I imagine, generally find the main reasons to be that such work engages the full spontaneous interest and attention of the chil- dren. It keeps them alert and active, instead of passive and recep- 210 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION tive; it makes them more useful, more capable and hence more inclined to be helpful at home ; it prepares them to some extent for the practical duties of later life — girls to be more efl&cient house managers, if not actually cooks and seamstresses; the boys (were our educational system only adequately rounded out into trade schools) for their vocations. I do not underestimate the worth of these reasons. Of those indicated by the changed attitude of the children I shall indeed have something to say in my next talk when speaking directly of the relationship of the school to the child. But the point of view is, upon the whole, unnecessarily narrow. We must conceive of work in wood and metal, of weaving, sewing and cook- ing, as methods of life, not as distinct studies. We must conceive of them, in their social significance, as types of the processes by which society keeps itself going, as agencies for bring- ing home to the child some of the primal necessities of community life and as ways in which these needs have been met by the growing insight and ingenuity of man ; in short, as instrumentahties through which the school itself shall be made a genuine form of active commu- nity life, instead of a place set apart in which to learn lessons. A society is a number of people held together because they are working along common lines, in a common spirit, and with reference to common aims. The common needs and aims demand a growing interchange of thought and growing unity of sympathetic feeling. The radical reason that the present school cannot organize itself as a natural social unit is because just this element of common and pro- ductive activity is absent. Upon the playground, in game and sport, social organization takes place spontaneously and inevitably. There is something to do, some activity to be carried on, requiring natural divisions of labor, selection of leaders and followers, mutual coopera- tion and emulation. In the schoolroom the motive and the cement of social organization are alike wanting. Upon the ethical side, the tragic weakness of the present school is that it endeavors to prepare future members of the social order in a medium in which the con- ditions of the social spirit are eminently wanting. The difference that appears when occupations are made the articu- lating centers of school life is not easy to describe in words ; it is a difference in motive, of spirit and atmosphere. As one enters a busy kitchen in which a group of children are actively engaged in the preparation of food, the psychological difference, the change from more or less passive and inert recipiency and restraint to one of buoy- ant outgoing energy is so obvious as fairly to strike one in the face. Indeed, to those whose image of the school is rigidly set the change is sure to give a shock. But the change in the social attitude is equally marked. The mere absorption of facts and truths is so ex- EDUCATION AS A FACTOR IN SOCIAL PROGRESS 211 clusively individual an affair that it tends very naturally to pass into selfishness. There is no obvious social motive for the acquire- ment of mere learning, there is no clear social gain in success thereat. Indeed, almost the only measure for success is a competitive one, in the bad sense of that term — a comparison of results in the recita- tion or in the examination to see which child has succeeded in getting ahead of others in storing up, in accumulating the maximum of in- formation. So thoroughly is this the prevalent atmosphere that for one child to help another in his task has become a school crime. Where the school work consists in simply learning lessons, mutual assistance, instead of being the most natural form of cooperation and associa- tion, becomes a clandestine effort to relieve one's neighbor of his proper duties. Where active work is going on all this is changed. Helping others, instead of being a form of charity which impoverishes the recipient, is simply an aid in setting free the powers and further- ing the impulse of the one helped. A spirit of free communication, of interchange of ideas, suggestions, results, both successes and failures of previous experiences, becomes the dominating note of the recita- tion. So far as emulation enters in, it is in the comparison of in- dividuals, not with regard to the quantity of information personally absorbed, but with reference to the quality of work done — the genuine community standard of value. In an informal but all the more pervasive way, the school life organizes itself on a social basis. Within this organization is found the principal of school disci- phne or order. Of course, order is simply a thing which is relative to an end. If you have the end in view of forty or fifty children learn- ing certain set lessons, to be recited to a teacher, your discipline must be devoted to securing that result. But the end in view is the development of a spirit of social cooperation and community Ufe; discipline must grow out of and be relative to this. There is little order of one sort where things are in process of construction ; there is certain disorder in any busy workshop ; there is not silence ; per- sons are not engaged in maintaining certain fixed physical postures ; their arms are not folded ; they are not holding their books thus and so. They are doing a variety of things, and there is the confusion, the bustle, that results from activity. But out of occupation, out of doing things that are to produce results, and out of doing these in a social and cooperative way, there is born a discipline of its own kind and type. Our whole conception of school discipline changes when we get this point of view. In critical moments we all realize that the only discipline that stands by us, the only training that be- comes intuition, is that got through life itself. That we learn from experience, and from books or the sayings of others only as they are related to experience, are not mere phrases. But the school has been 212 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION so set apart, so isolated from the ordinary conditions and motives of life, that the place where children are sent for discipline is the one place in the world where it is most difficult to get experience — the mother of all discipline worth the name. It is only where a narrow and fixed image of traditional school discipline dominates that one is in any danger of overlooking that deeper and infinitely wider disci- pline that comes from having a part to do in constructive work, in con- tributing to a result which, social in spirit, is none the less obvious and tangible in form — and hence in a form with reference to which responsibility may be exacted and accurate judgment passed. The great thing to keep in mind, then, regarding the introduction into the school of various forms of active occupation is that through them the entire spirit of the school is renewed. It has a chance to affiliate itself with life, to become the child's habitat, where he learns through direct living instead of being only a place to learn lessons having an abstract and remote reference to some possible living to be done in the future. It gets a chance to be a miniature commimity, an embry- onic society. This is the fundamental fact, and from this arise con- tinuous and orderly sources of instruction. Under the industrial re- gime described, the child, after all, shared in the work, not for the sake of the sharing, but for the sake of the product. The educational results secured were real, yet incidental and dependent. But in the school the typical occupations followed are freed from all economic stress. The aim is not the economic value of the products, but the develop- ment of social power and insight. It is this liberation from narrow utilities, this openness to the possibihties of the human spirit, that makes these practical activities in the school allies of art and cen- ters of science and history. But all this means a necessary change in the attitude of the school, one of which we are as yet far from realizing the full force. Our school methods, and to a very considerable extent our curriculum, are inherited from the period when learning and command of certain symbols, affording as they did the only access to learning, were all- important. The ideals of this period are still largely in control, even where the outward methods and studies have been changed. We sometimes hear the introduction of manual training, art and science into the elementary, and even the secondary, schools deprecated on the ground that they tend toward the production of specialists — that they detract from our present scheme of generous, liberal cul- ture. The point of this objection would be ludicrous if it were not often so effective as to make it tragic. It is our present education which is highly specialized, one-sided and narrow. It is an educa- tion dominated almost entirely by the medieval conception of learn- ing. It is something which appeals for the most part simply to the EDUCATION AS A FACTOR IN SOCIAL PROGRESS 213 intellectual aspect of our natures, our desire to learn, to accumulate information, and to get control of the symbols of learning; not to our impulses and tendencies to make, to do, to create, to produce, whether in the form of utility or of art. The very fact that manual training, art and science are objected to as technical, as tending toward mere specialism, is of itself as good testimony as could be ■ offered to the specialized aim which controls current education. Unless education had been virtually identified with the exclusively intellec- tual pursuits, with learning as such, all these materials and methods would be welcome, would be greeted with the utmost hospitality. But why should I make this labored presentation? The obvious fact is that our social life has undergone a thorough and radical change. If our education is to have any meaning for life, it must pass through an equally complete transformation. This transformation is not something to appear suddenly, to be executed in a day by conscious purpose. It is already in progress. Those modifications of our school system which often appear (even to those most actively con- cerned with them, to say nothing of their spectators) to be mere changes of detail, mere improvement within the school mechanism, are in reality signs and evidences of evolution. The introduction of active occupations, of nature study, of elementary science, of art, of history ; the relegation of merely symboUc and formal studies to a secondary position ; the change in the moral school atmosphere, in the relation of pupils and teachers — of discipline ; the introduction of more active, expressive and self-directing factors — all these are not mere accidents; they are necessities of the larger social evolution. It remains but to organize all these factors, to appreciate them in their fullness of meaning, and to put the ideas and ideals involved into complete, uncompromising possession of our school system. To do this means to make each one of our schools an embryonic community life, active and with types of occupations that reflect the life of the larger society, and permeated throughout with the spirit of art, history, and science. When the school introduces and trains each child of society into mem- bership within such a little community, saturating him with the spirit of service, and providing him with the instruments of effective self-direction, we shall have the deepest and best guarantee of a large society which is worthy, lovely and harmonious. . . . From the standpoint of the child, the great waste in the school comes from his inability to utilize the experiences he gets outside the school in any complete and free way within the school itself _; while, on the other hand, he is unable to apply in daily life what he is learn- ing at school. That is the isolation of the school — its isolation from life. When the child gets into the schoolroom, he has to put out of his mind a large part of the ideas, interests and activities that pre- 214 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION dominate in his home and neighborhood. So the school, being un- able to utilize this everyday experience, sets painfully to work, on another tack and by a variety of means, to arouse in the child an interest in school studies. While I was visiting in the city of Mo- line a few years ago, the superintendent told me that they found many children every year, who were surprised to learn that the Mississippi River in the textbook had anything to do with the stream of water flowing past their homes. The geography being simply a matter of the schoolroom, it is more or less of an awakening to many children to find that the whole thing is nothing but a more formal and definite statement of the facts which they see, feel and touch every day. When we think that we all live on the earth, that we Hve in an at- mosphere, that our lives are touched at every point by the influence of the soil, flora and fauna, by considerations of light and heat, and then think of what the school study of geography has been, we have a t5^ical idea of the gap existing between the everyday experiences of the child and the isolated material supplied in such large measure in the school. This is but an instance, and one upon which most of us may reflect long before we take the present artificiality of the school as other than a matter of course or necessity. Though there should be organic connection between the school and business Hfe, it is not meant that the school is to prepare the child for any particular business, but that there should be a natural connection of the everyday life of the child with the business environ- ment about him, and that it is the affair of the school to clarify and liberalize this connection, to bring it to consciousness, not by intro- ducing special studies, like commercial geography and arithmetic, but by keeping alive the ordinary bonds of relation. The subject of compound-business partnership is probably not in many of the arithmetics nowadays, though it was there not a generation ago, for the makers of textbooks said that if they left out anything, they could not sell their books. This compound-business partnership originated as far back as the sixteenth century. The joint-stock company had not been invented, and as large commerce with the Indies and Americas grew up, it was necessary to have an accumulation of capital with which to handle it. One man said, "I will put in this amount of money for six months," and another, " So much for two years," and so on. Thus by joining together they got money enough to float their commercial enterprises. Naturally, then, " compound partnership " was taught in the schools. The joint- stock company was invented, compound partnership disappeared, but the problems relating to it stayed in the arithmetics for two hun- dred years. They were kept after they had ceased to have practical utility, for the sake of mental discipline — they were " such hard EDUCATION AS A FACTOR IN SOCIAL PROGRESS 213 problems, you know." A great deal of what is now in the arithme- tics under the head of percentage is of the same nature. Children of twelve and thirteen years of age go through gain-and-loss calcula- tions and various forms of bank discount, so complicated that the bankers long ago dispensed with them. And when it is pointed out that business is not done this way, we hear again of " mental discipline." And yet there are plenty of real connections between the experience of children and business conditions which need to be utilized and illuminated. The child should study his commercial arithmetic and geography, not as isolated things by them- selves, but in their reference to his social environment. The youth needs to become acquainted with the bank as a factor in modern life, with what it does, and how it does it ; and then relevant arithmetical processes would have some meaning — quite in contradistinction to the time-absorbing and mind-killing examples in percentage, par- tial payments, etc., found in all our arithmetics. There is much of utter triviality of subject matter in elementary and secondary education. When we investigate it, we find that it is full of facts taught that are not facts, which have to be unlearned later on. Now, this happens because the " lower " parts of our system are not in vital connection with the " higher." The uni- versity or college, in its idea, is a place of research, where investi- gation is going on ; a place of libraries and museums, where the best resources of the past are gathered, maintained and organized. It is, however, as true in the school as in the university that the spirit of inquiry can be got only through and with the attitude of inquiry. The pupil must learn what has meaning, what enlarges his horizon, instead of mere trivialities. He must become acquainted with truths, instead of things that were regarded as such fifty years ago, or that are taken as interesting by the misunderstanding of a partially educated teacher. It is difi&cult to see how these ends can be reached except as the most advanced part of the educational system is in com- plete interaction with the most rudimentary. The school must come out of its isolation and secure the organic connection with social life of which we have been speaking. The object of these forms of practice in the school is not found chiefly in themselves, or in the technical skill of cooks, seamstresses, carpenters and masons, but in their connection, on the social side, with the life without, while on the individual side they respond to the child's need of action, of expression, of desire to do something, to be constructive and creative, instead of simply passive and conforming. Their great significance is that they keep the balance between the social and individual sides — the chart symbolizing particularly the connection with the social. Here on one side is the home. How 2i6 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION naturally the lines of connection play back and forth between the home and the kitchen and the textile room of the school ! The child can carry over what he learns in the home and utilize it in the school, and the things learned in the school he applies at home. These are the two great things in breaking down isolation, in getting connec- tion — to have the child come to school with all the experience he has got outside the school, and to leave it with something to be imme- diately used in his everyday life. The child comes to the traditional school with a healthy body and a more or less unwilling mind. Though, in fact, he does not bring both his body and mind with him ; he has to leave his mind behind, because there is no way to use it in the school. If he had a purely abstract mind, he could bring it to school with him, but his is a concrete one, interested in concrete things, and unless these things get over into school life, he cannot take his mind with him. What we want is to have the child come to school with a whole mind and a whole body, and leave school with a fuller mind and an even healthier body. Thus I have attempted to indicate how the school may be connected with life so that the experience gained by the child in a familiar, com- monplace way is carried over and made use of there, and what the child learns in the school is carried back and applied in everyday life, making the school an organic whole instead of a composite of isolated parts. The isolation of studies as well as of parts of the school system disappears. Experience has its geographical aspect, its artistic and its literary, its scientific and its historical, sides. All studies arise from aspects of the one earth and the one life lived upon it. We do not have a series of stratified earths, one of which is mathe- matical, another physical, another historical and so on. We should not live very long in any one taken by itself. We live in a world where all sides are bound together. All studies grow out of rela- tions in the one great common world. When the child lives in varied but concrete and active relationship to this common world, his studies are naturally unified. It will no longer be a problem to correlate studies. The teacher will not have to resort to all sorts of devices to weave a little arithmetic into the history lessons, and the like. Relate the school to life, and all studies are of necessity correlated. Moreover, if the school is related as a whole to life as a whole, its various aims and ideals — culture, discipline, information, utility — cease to be variants, for one of which we must select one study and for another, another. The growth of the child in the direction of social capacity and service, his larger and more vital union with life, be- comes the unifying aim; and discipline, culture and information fall into place as phases of this growth. J. Dewey, Extracts from The School and Society. Chicago, 1899. EDUCATION AS A FACTOR IN SOCIAL PROGRESS 217 Relation of Education to Social Progress Thoughtful people of all times have regarded the school as an im- portant factor in social evolution. Ross 1 says, " School education, in our day, is a mighty engine of progress. The teacher has a wider outlook and a freer mind than the average parent." Scott," " The school at its best is a prophecy of a better and nobler life." EUwood,* " Education is a means of control- ling habit and character in complex social groups, and as such it is the chief means to which society must look for all substantial social prog- ress. It is the instrument by which human nature may be apparently indefinitely modified, and hence, also, the instrument by which so- ciety may be perfected. The task of regeneration is essentially a task of education." Dewey calls the school a fundamental means of social progress and reform. Such statements as these shoidd stimulate the student of the social aspects of education not only to a detailed and carefvd analysis of the relation of education to progress, but also to a determination of the ways in which it may play an even larger part in social development. To deal even in a general way with such questions as these, we need to have at least a working hypothesis of what may properly be meant by social progress. We must be careful, however, not to devote attention to mere niceties of thought so as to lose sight of the more concrete and practical phases. It is easier to tell some of the changes that have taken place and are taking place in society than to define progress abstractly. If we are convinced beforehand that modern society is progressive, we will then think of these changes as, in the main, making for progress. We all probably believe, for one thing, that genmne social progress must mean increased human happiness in some form or other. This is not the place to discuss the conditions of happiness. The ultimate ground of happiness, of course, is the individual himself and his way of looking at life and the thoughts he harbors in his mind. There are, to be sure, many external conditions which help or hinder the development of the proper inner attitude, and social progress may be stated to some extent in terms of these external conditions. Hence we think of de- ' Social Psychology. ^ Social Edncalion. ' Sociology and Modern Social Problems. 2i8 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION crease of disease, poverty and crime, betterment of heredity, increase of general material comfort, of opportunities for recreation and social intercourse, opportunity for each individual to engage in some sort of production recognized as useful to society and increase of knowl- edge as evidences of social progress. Human society is in process of ceaseless change and differentiation, changes which often seem to bear no positive relation to individual and social betterment. In fact, the chief difiSculty of defining human progress lies in its complexity and in the fact that it is too often un- equal. In the long run, the mastery and the conservation of the re- sources of nature are elements of social evolution, although at any given moment misery rather than increased happiness may seem to be the outcome. Progress, we may conceive, as involving a series of more or less complex changes in human nature, in social relations and in man's relation to his environment which, in the long run, make for greater general happiness and greater efficiency in the attainment of life's ideals.^ How are these things accomplished? Ellwood specifies three means. " The lowest method of evolution was by [natural] selection, and that . . . cannot be neglected. The next method of social evolu- tion apparently to develop was the method of adaptation by organized authority, and . . . organized authority in society, or social regulation by means of authority, must indefinitely persist and perhaps increase, rather than diminish; but the latest and highest method of social evolution is not through biological selection nor through the exercise of despotic authority, but through the education of the individual. . . . Human society may be modified best, we now see, through modifying the nature of the individual, and the most direct method [of doing] this is through education." ^ When we come to specify in detail the ways in which education may make for social betterment, we note first of all what it may actu- ally accomplish when reduced to its lowest terms. The crude edu- cation of savage peoples serves to keep the primitive social group up 1 It would carry us far beyond our present purpose to attempt to say what these ideals are, or whence they come. We shall here simply assumfe that man has ideals and that prog- ress is to be measured by the degree of his attainment of them. 2 Sociology and Modern Social Problems, p. 318. EDUCATION AS A FACTOR IN SOCIAL PROGRESS 219 to the existing level of culture. It is at least a conserver of existing culture. In some way or other, every society must accomplish this much, or retrogression is inevitable. Furthermore, every educational process tends to be selective. Not every aspect of even a primitive culture can be taught in detail ; something must be chosen and much ignored, and, in the long run, it is probable that the higher aspects of a society's culture are selected and emphasized through education. In this' way, something, little though it may be, is contributed to the ad- vancement of the social group. It is then through the more or less conscious selection of the more useful knowledge, and of the best modes of conduct and through the endeavor to eliminate the less de- sirable habits and modes of thought, that society is able in some meas- ure to lift itself through its schools. It is of course the ideal of the best educators to teach the best and most stimulating phases of human achievement, to fill the minds of boys and girls with noble examples of high-minded living from history and literature. In so doing, they are contributing in an important way to social progress. The chief limitation of this influence is that it does not occupy the child's at- tention sufficiently. There are so many other influences within and without the school to dim, if not to obliterate, the impression. How- ever, something can thus be accomplished. To give some very simple illustrations, the level of purity and effectiveness in the use of the mother tongue can thus be raised. The appreciation of the best hter- ature can be more widely disseminated; public taste for music and art can be improved. There can be no doubt but that by such a pro- cess of wise selection of materials the schools do effect a gradual im- provement in society in various lines. In precisely the same way moral improvement of society may be fostered, although pitiably Ut- tle in this direction is to-day attempted by pubUc education. It is manifest, however, that selection will not go far toward se- curing social progress unless it is guided by a consciousness of its possi- bilities and a systematic attempt to utilize the opportunities afforded. It is just this conscious and definite attempt to select and teach the best to the immature members of the social group that is the most significant aspect of modern educational activity. In the chapters preceding we have taken up various aspects of this extension of current education. The movements for vocational train- 220 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION ing, for playgrounds, for school gardens, all represent various attempts to select, emphasize and promote certain desirable aspects of present- day culture. In these far-reaching extensions of teaching activity it would seem that, for the first time, social progress is to be definitely and largely determined by educational forces. It is perhaps sufficient, for all practical purposes, to recognize these tendencies and to note that they are apparently a natural and inevitable expression of the type of social life which is unfolding in our midst. The thinker, however, will be interested to relate this broadening of educational activity to general social movements, to determine if possible the principles underlying this extension of the teaching function. In other words, to find, if possible, a consistent theoretical justification for the school as an active factor in the processes of social readjustment and social progress. This justification, on the side of educational theory, may be based upon the point of view presented in earher sections of this book; namely, that in the beginning educational activity takes its rise in some more or less clearly felt social need. Social grpups demand training of particular kinds, and various schools spring up to furnish it. All schools depend ultimately upon some aspect of the social process for their right to exist. Schools are not, however, mere tools, mere passive instruments for the registration and expression of an external social will. They them- selves represent a part of the general activity of society, one of its institutions, one mode of expression of the social consciousness. Ac- cording to this conception it is not the function of educational pro- cesses simply to register social progress. Educational forces may quite legitimately take an active and conscious part in the general struggle upward. If society be conceived as organized, in part at least, into various institutions, each with a more or less distinct function, then it is easy to see that progress, whatever it may be, is largely a resultant of the activities of the various institutions, one of the ways in which these institutions perform their respective functions. There is not, in other words, any particular institution or portion of society which is alone responsible for the progress of society as a whole. Each part must contribute its impulse, its share to the larger movement. It should EDUCATION AS A FACTOR IN SOCIAL PROGRESS 221 be the business of each part of the social body consciously and syste- matically to extend and to develop its particular function. It is thus that the church expands and presses into new and wider fields of serv- ice; so with organized charities, systems of exchange and of com- munication. All these phases of social activity are constantly de- veloping new aspects, new modes of expression. The public press is a particularly good illustration of this development and expansion of a given fimction. In addition to merely printing and circulating an accoimt of the events of the day, it frequently undertakes to make original investigations in all sorts of vital social and political problems and give its findings to the public. In various ways this publicity function has expanded, until its points of contact with society as a whole far surpass anything of which the first publishers ever dreamed. It is, in fact, only as a social agent keeps dynamic and progressive that it can maintain itself in a progressive society, for the work which such a society needs to have done is, in the nature of the case, growing in complexity, and either old agents must be able to handle it or new means of meeting the need must be developed. Now, with reference to the school, its function is preeminently that of instruction and training, and not only is there a greater social need than ever before for just this type of service, but also it is more than ever the business of the school to study current situations with refer- ence to new ways of teaching and training, not merely children, but even adults. The educational forces of the country must systemati- cally study and work out new avenues and modes of expressing the teaching function. That the burden of this development will depend largely upon those engaged in educational work is natural, because they above all should be in touch with the general social need of in- struction. They, best of all, should be able to see wherein the work of the schools can be profitably extended so as to perform various social services as yet unprovided for. This presupposes an extension of the teaching function far beyond that which first appeared necessary in primitive social groups. But present-day society is vastly more complex, and why should not this aspect of its activity be correspondingly broader? And why should not those charged with the duties of instruction study to extend their work still further, to exploit, as it were, their function in the social 222 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION group ? Only as every element of the social plexus is dynamic, or reaching out for fuller and more complex modes of expression, can there be genuine social progress. There is, in fact, no logical reason why the educational forces of a community should not be constantly striv- ing to extend their activities on every side as far as they have resources and as far as they do not find the field preempted by other forces. There is really no intrinsic limit to the development of any fimction except the limit of resources and the possible preemption of the field by other social agencies. There is another aspect of the problem of the relation of education to progress which should not be neglected by the student who TOshes to go into the matter thoroughly. Our attention has thus far been fixed upon the school's opportunity to influence progress through the material or content which it selects and impresses upon the learner. The further question arises as to whether the way in which a thing is taught as well as the thing itself has any significance for progress; that is, whether it may be taught so as to cultivate individuality and an eager progressive spirit in the learner, or whether it serves rather to obliterate the child's native spontaneity and adjust him to more or less predetermined external conditions. To answer this question requires some consideration of the familiar concept of the ideal of social progress as some sort of adjustment to a particular kind of environment. Many thinkers on sociological subjects have followed the lead of Herbert Spencer, who, in his Data of Ethics, defines the goal of human progress as complete conformity or adaptation to environment. Thus, a recent writer defines social progress as " the adaptation of society to a wider and more universal environment. The ideal of human progress is apparently adaptation to a perfectly universal environ- ment, such an adaptation as shall harmonize all factors whether in- ternal or external, present or remote, in the life of humanity." ^ As these concepts are further defined and discussed, they lose some of their vagueness. Taken, however, on their face value, they seem to imply an external, inflexible, physical and social order to which the individual can do nothing more than conform, or adjust, himself. There might be some question as to whether in this and in many other • Ellwood, Sociology and Modern Social Problems, p. 314. EDUCATION AS A FACTOR IN SOCIAL PROGRESS 223 formulations of the meaning of progress, there is not too great stress placed upon adaptation to environment. It depends, of course, to a large extent upon what is meant by environment. The conceptions both of adaptation and of environment have come into social and edu- cational science from biology. In biology the term ' ' environment ' ' has undoubtedly been taken to mean a relatively fixed set of external con- ditions to which living forms must conform or perish. The environ- ment is Uke an unyielding Procrustean bed on which all surviving forms must succeed in stretching themselves. The environment demands speed of the deer, and speed it must gain, or perish. It may be prop- erly said that the deer thus becomes adjusted to its environment. It is true that for the lower forms of life the environment is practi- cally fixed and fairly simple. But the higher we rise in the scale of being, the more complex and plastic it becomes, the more subtle are the ways in which it affects the organism. With growing complexity it becomes more plastic, more subject to change. Moreover, the higher forms of life on which this complex environment plays become increas- ingly capable of modifying it, of adjusting it to themselves as well as themselves to it. We may find clear beginnings of this adjustment of the environment to the animal form in the animal series below man. Whenever a bird builds a nest for its eggs, instead of laying its eggs on the ground, it is as truly a utilizing of environment, an adaptation of it to the bird's needs as it is an adaptation of the bird to the environ- ment. The bird is no longer at the mercy of the elements. The mud, sticks, straw, strings, become plastic at its deft touch and are serv- ants instead of unyielding masters. The higher the position in the scale of Ufe, the greater and more manifest becomes the capacity of the living form to adjust the environ- ment to itself. The human species, of course, affords the most con- spicuous examples of this capacity. We do not, to be sure, lose sight of many and great adaptations, on the part of man himself, but if man's adaptations of his environment to his unfolding needs have not been as great as the changes he himself has been forced to undergo, they at least cannot be ignored. The whole process of civilization has been a gradual freeing of mankind from subserviency to brute natural conditions. More and more has it been possible to readjust and re- shape these conditions until, as is sometimes said, civilized man lives 224 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION in a highly artificial environment. Of course, this is not an environ- ment which any one individual has constructed. It is the result of the collective activity of many generations, but it is none the less arti- ficial and none the less an adjustment of nature to meet man's needs. The foods, the clothing, the shelter, of the modern man are all the re- sults of his determination to change his environment rather than him- self. It is true that in all this utilization and adjustment of the forces and materials of nature to himself there has been a measure of adapta- tion on man's part to the conditions imposed by nature. The culti- vation of the soil for a crop of grain is both adaptation of and adapta- tion to the conditions of nature. The building of a dam that we may render the power of the water available to run a mill is making nature serve us, but this is attained through submitting to certain conditions imposed by nature. We have to-day harnessed some of the exhaust- less supplies of electrical energy which have been present everywhere in nature since the beginning of time. In this we have made nature serve us, but we have also had to meet conditions imposed by nature, among others the construction of a certain tj^e of machine, the dy- namo. In making dynamps and building power houses we are in a real sense adjusting ourselves to our environment, but this concession on our part has resulted in even greater concessions to us on the part of our environment. We may, then, properly think of the environment as well as the man as plastic, changing quantities. The environment is not the whole world outside of the individual's own body. It is actually only an infinitesimal portion of this world, that hmited portion which we have to contend with in our effort to realize some impulse or desire. It is that plexus of materials and forces, whether mechanical, vegetable, animal or human, which we must either readjust so that it will cooper- ate with us or at least not obstruct us in our purposes or with reference to which we must reconstruct oiu: purposes, and be content to carry them out in some modified form, that forms the real environment. Human evolution may then, from one point of view, be regarded as a progressive realization of purposes through gradually increasing skill in detecting the environmental materials and forces which can be turned to account in their realization. The whole situation involved in progress is complicated and subtle EDUCATION AS A FACTOR IN SOCIAL PROGRESS 225 in the highest degree. It defies, in fact, really adequate statement. We cannot describe one aspect of it without apparently doing some other aspect of it injustice. With due recognition of this fact, we may at least say that no concept of social progress based merely on the biologi- cal idea of adjustment or adaptation to a fixed environment is adequate or even true. For any one individual, life may seem to involve more adjustment than utilization — and yet, if progress, on the whole, con- sists in utilizing as well as adjusting, it is clear that a progressive so- ciety must have a good proportion of individuals who are capable of large initiative, who shape conditions to suit their purposes rather than merely suit their purposes to conditions. The fxmdamental condition of human progress is the human quality of eagerness, of impulse, of reaching out for something as yet unat- tained. This lies at the basis of all social unrest and consequent so- cial changes. It is the quaUty possessed by those individuals and races which have been endlessly experimenting, trying to do things in new ways, prying into the hidden things of nature, exploring with avidity the surface of the globe and discovering its character and re- sources. The races which have been most active in these ways are said to be the progressive races. Not that mere change means prog- ress. It may as easily be retrogression. But, imless there is an impulse to strike out into new paths, to try new things, there can be little or no movement either one way or the other. A certain amount of progress is possible among peoples which pos- sess little initiative, but it is dependent upon the slow action of nat- ural selection, and it is questionable whether a really high social state could be attained in any such manner. The savage races of the present day are recognized as essentially unprogressive. What little they have attained to has probably come through blind natural selection. But natural selection unaided does not seem to be able to do more than produce an adaptation little different from that of the brute to the physical environment. Here is mere adaptation without initia- tive, without that divine discontent which changes the environment to suit one's needs instead of submitting to it. The xmclothed body of the central Australian has become inured to the extremes of cold and heat to which it has been subjected for unknown generations. His stomach has become adjusted to the food conditions. Sometimes Q 226 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION nature furnishes abundant food, sometimes almost none. He is able to live under conditions which impose on him alternate gorging and deprivation. This remarkable endurance of the Australian has been gradually wrought out by natural selection. Those who could not conform perished by inexorable law. The central Australians, there- fore, present a remarkable degree of adaptation to environment. At their hands natural conditions have suffered a minimum of alteration. They have not tried to make clothes or to construct any adequate shelter or to till the soil. They eat the roots, fruits, game and even the grubs and insects that nature provides. They have simply taken things as they are and have learned to endure them, except that en- durance is not the proper word from their point of view, for they know nothing else and are therefore quite content. Similar and more or less striking illustrations are afiorded by all other non-progressive races. There is no question but that the stage of culture they have reached is almost purely the result of natural selec- tion. When we turn to the so-called progressive races, we find large numbers who simply conform to conditions imposed upon them. There are always a greater or less number, however, who are restive under all conditions; they are always reaching out and apparently seeking for fuller and fuller expression of themselves. The quahties of perseverance, energy, curiosity, eagerness for ex- periment and exploration, in a word, initiative, are probably native ones, the peculiar endowments of certain races. It seems likely that the beginnings of the quahties may be attributed to natural selection. But one of the important fields of operation of these quahties has been that of the training of children. In other words, the progressive quali- ties, themselves largely beyond our control, set in operation forces and modes of activity which may and do contribute greatly to social improvement. The betterment and the increased eflSciency of human life are in a large measure dependent upon conscious purpose. Man lifts himself by giving thought thereto, and not the least effective means of taking thought is through education. Even in the lowest savage societies, education, while not making for progress, performs, as we have seen, an important function. It at least helps maintain the tribe in its existing culture. In various crude EDUCATION AS A FACTOR IN SOCIAL PROGRESS 227 ways the accomplishments of the fathers are impressed upon the chil- dren. There is no thought or desire that the children shall improve upon the ways of the fathers. In fact, in all savage types of educa- tion, impulses to vary a jot or tittle from the pattern are severely repressed. The keynote of their training is unquestioning imitation. But even at this level, education preserves that which has been attained, though it does not make for higher levels of efficiency. It is somewhat surprising at first thought to find this same emphasis upon imitation in the education of the progressive races. The chief concern of adult society seems to be that the children should spend most of their time acquiring the wisdom and skill of the past. We should not criticize this concern if it had coupled with it a clearer recognition that this is only the beginning of the process, not an end in itself but a means to an end. The most precious heritage of pro- gressive races is personal initiative, and their most serious problem is how to conserve and direct this initiative wisely. Undirected, it is of no more value than un confined steam; it is mere vaporing. The child studies certain aspects of the culture of past generations, not merely to absorb it or to become, as it were, a receptacle in which to preserve that culture intact, as the arts and crafts of other times are preserved in museums for the inspection of the curious. He studies rather that he may use, that he may have better tools for the expres- sion of his initiative, that his impulses may avoid past failures and take advantage of past successes. The emphasis in a truly progressive society must then be upon a wise cultivation of the individual capacities of the child for initiative rather than upon his simply acquiring in passive fashion the culture of the past. This is a broad generalization which must be interpreted with due recognition of varying conditions. Children vary in their individual capacity for initiative. Some persons will attain the most useful lives when they simply follow unswervingly in the steps of their fathers. Moreover, the importance of cultivating initiative in progressive so- cieties does not rest upon the narrow conception of education as merely for the making of great leaders. It is true, however, that the quaUties of leadership, for which there is such a large place in the modern world, will be fostered and developed by such a type of education. But while all cannot be leaders in various lines of industrial, professional, 228 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION political and social activity, all do need, in wider or narrower spheres, the capacity of self-direction and the alertness to meet and take ad- vantage of new conditions. A part of the poverty and crime of mod- ern society is due to the rapid changes in the conditions of life. The pauper is not merely the inefScient one; -he is often one who was by his training fitted or adjusted to a social and industrial order which had changed ere he had established himself. He could not readjust himself to fit the new conditions, and hence dropped down into the ranks of the incapable. Here we see the great objection to the ideal of education as adjust- ment, especially if adjustment is taken to refer to a fixed social order.^ A fixed social order is a characteristic of savagery rather than of civiU- zation. It certainly does not exist amongst ourselves. A child trained for a particular type of service in modern society will almost surely find conditions so altered when he comes to try his hand that unless he possesses a large endowment of initiative and originality he will have great diflSculty in fitting in. That so large a proportion of our young men and women do succeed in life is an evidence of their large native endowment along these lines. It may be safely said that mod- ern school education does little to cultivate this which is not merely so essential to individual success in present-day society, but which is also a fundamental condition of hxmaan progress. The forces of education fall far short of being as effective for prog- ress as they might be. They are adjusted to an older and less pro- gressive social order. Hence, it is natural that it should lay relatively great emphasis upon discipline, conformity to type, adjustment to en- vironment, as ends in themselves instead of as tools to the attainment of other things. A common statement of the end of education as social efficiency attains its fullest meaning when it is recognized that this depends quite largely upon the development of individuality and initiative in the school child under the guidance of social ideals and in connection with daily opportunities for social service. Of course an uncontrolled development of these quaUties would be a social curse rather than a ' To say that the object of education is to adjust the child to a progressive society is simply another way of saying that initiative must be emphasized. The term " adjust- ment" is here misleading and should be dropped. EDUCATION AS A FACTOR IN SOCIAL PROGRESS 229 blessing. We no longer believe in the unmitigated doctrine of lais- sez-faire in social life. The greatest good for the group is not attained by permitting each individual to cultivate all his native endowments of initiative for himself alone. In emphasizing the place of initiative in the education of a progressive society, we have constantly in mind, then, the absolute requirement that it shall, throughout, be dominated by ideals of social responsibility and social service. REFERENCES ON EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS Addams, Jane. Democracy and Social Ethics, Chapter VI. Carlton, F. T. Education and Industrial Evolution, Chapter IV. Dewey, John. The School and Society. Extracts from, reprinted in this chapter. Eliot, Charles. The Conflict between Collectivism and Individualism in a Democracy. Chapter II, The need of concerted action on the part of educators to conserve the desirable human "sport." Ellwood, Charles A. Sociology and Modern Social Problems, Chapter XV. "Education and social progress." Definition of social progress. Need of recognition of social nature of education if progress is to be furthered. Jenks, Jeremlah. Citizenship and the Schools. Chapter I, Train- ing for citizenship. Chapter II, Social basis of education. Ward, Lester. Applied Sociology, Chapters VIII-XII. Dynamic Sociology, Vol. II, Chapter XIV. CHAPTER XII EDUCATION AND SOCIAL REFORM We are here concerned with the problem of social reform in so far as it can be dealt with by educational means, and from one point of view this may be said to include the whole problem. The reformation of the individual, especially the youthful individual, is more and more recognized as a legitimate task for education in its larger sense. School- ing, in other words, may have as its object, not merely the development and instruction of the normal child, it may also succeed to a most sur- prising degree in making over the victims of perverted development. In a broad sense, all agencies of social reform are educational agencies ; that is, they are all concerned with effecting changes of some sort in people. The betterment of the individual physically, intellectually or morally is the starting point for all social improvement. The educational agencies which make for reform, if they are com- pletely enumerated, are of the most diverse character, and they may be directed toward the most diverse classes of people. Among these educational agencies must be included such activities as campaigns for parks and playgrounds, for school gardens, for medical inspection of schools and scholars, and even the various activities directed toward social ameUoration in general. These, also, are educational in some sense. They aim primarily to effect changes in the attitudes and opin- ions of people, usually adults. - Their imagination has to be quickened as to existing abuses'; their ideas have to be clarified ; their consciences may need to be developed. All such undertakings are, therefore, es- sentially educational in their nature, even though they lie outside the work of the school as such. More and more is it seen that social re- forms of every type must depend for their success upon an antecedent education of a portion of the people concerned that they may really demand the reform suggested. In this section, however, we may confine ourselves to a narrower 230 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL REFORM 231 aspect of education and social reform, that which is concerned with the delinquent child. The proper care of the delinquent child is a ques- tion which belongs to the social aspects of education in a twofold de- gree : First, the end to be attained through caring for the delinquent is social betterment through diminishing the number of individuals in each generation with criminal or anti-social tendencies ; secondly, the means to this end is largely a more thoroughly socialized form of edu- cation than that which prevails for normal children. It is with this latter aspect, the means, that we are here especially concerned. Broadly speaking, the reform of the delinquent child depends in most cases upon two factors — first, the removal or the correction of physical defects, and secondly, upon placing him in a thoroughly normal and healthful social environment which will stimulate growth in the right directions. Restraints and punishments of various sorts, neces- sary though they may be at times, are purely incidental and tem- porary, and are not to be regarded as far-reaching and generally valu- able means of improving character. The successful workers with juvenile delinquents quite properly assume that such boys and girls are usually not really "bad," but are rather on the road to badness through unfavorable conditions, either physical or social. Regarding unfavorable physical conditions, the words of the Superintendent of the Lyman School, Massachusetts, are significant : "I am coming to believe that much delinquency is due to low vitahty that may be caused by various organic difficulties. In the future, I am convinced that the medical and physical side of the work should be more and more emphasized. I attach much importance to the work of the physician in removing tonsils and adenoids, in giving a careful examination of the eyes and ears, and in giving especial care to any manifested organic troubles, such as the difficulties of the heart, lungs, and digestive organs. The work of the dentist [also] cannot be too highly recognized." ^ This attention to the physical condition of even the normal child is to-day regarded as a legitimate part of the work of the school, and it may thus be included among the ways in which the school may make for social reform. Delinquency is not, however, connected solely with physical defects, and, whether it is or not, it at least shows itself in some form of mal- ' Sixteenth Annual Report, 1910, p. 28. 232 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION adjustment to social conditions. It is here that the second phase of the problem appears, and it is one of the serious problems of all civilized peoples. Adult civilized society, even at its best, presents many con- ditions which are unfavorable to the normal development of boys and girls. Such society, in its worse phases, is, of course, still more detri- mental to normal growth. Most boys and girls are born with certain propensities or impulses to activity of various sorts, which are quite healthful and upon the satisfaction of which normal growth depends. Among these are love of physical activity, of adventure, curiosity, and comradeship. These impulses and many others may be summarized in the phrase "superabundance of spirits." Every student of child life knows that these spirits are the raw material of character, and that they must have adequate and legitimate means of expression. Now it is certain that, with the increasirig urbanization of the population, the opportunities for the normal expression of childhood impulses are pro- gressively diminished, and this is true in even the best social commu- nities. The interests of child and adult are different, and when these interests clash, for example, on the question of who may use the streets, the child usually has to give way to the adult. The outcome is almost inevitable ; namely, perverted or exaggerated expression of impulses. Thus the boy of well-to-do parents in the city seldom has sufficient opportunity for all the free, vigorous play which he needs. He can seldom go out in quest of the adventure he craves without infringing upon some social conventionality of adulthood. To make matters worse, he has little regular work outside of school, and even that may engage his energies only indifferently. Interest in work and a definite responsibility for something worth while to himself and to others are important factors in restraining the adult from immoraUty. The social demands made upon the boy usually lack these very character- forming elements. Society expects the boy to "just grow," faiUng to see that there are certain conditions of growth which are absolutely essential, and that society must furnish these conditions. There are two general ways of offsetting the unnatural conditions of child Ufe which modern society tends to develop. On the one hand, adequate opportunities for play and healthful work must be furnished to the city boy. This is to-day accomplished more and more through the supervised public playgroimd and the school garden. Through EDUCATION AND SOCIAL REFORM 233 such means the normal boy is kept sound, and the delinquent boy is frequently restored to soundness. The juvenile court supplements the work of the playground and of the school garden by giving the sup- posedly bad child a fairer chance. In the second place, the delinquent child may be transferred to an environment especially adjusted to his needs, to a school, for example, where he can be subjected to those needful influences which were lack- ing in his home environment. In general, these schools probably pre- sent exaggerated conditions from the point of view of the normal child. In the Junior Republic, for instance, great stress is placed upon work, and each youth is completely responsible for his own economic support. If the delinquent boy is physically sound (as he must be if admitted to the Junior Republic) there is nothing which will straighten him out more efiectively or speedily than just such responsibility. The reforma- tory influence of work, of economic interests and of corporate responsi- bility as illustrated in this school shoiild receive the careful attention of the student at this point. It should also be noted that it is not only work and responsibility that the youth needs, but also the right sort of restraining public opin- ion and the right sort of social ideals. The possibihty of building up such a social atmosphere and its character-forming power are ad- mirably illustrated in the work of the Junior Republic. Whatever the Umitations in the scope of this school, — and it is confessedly not adapted to all tj^es of delinquents, — it is at least a fine illustration of the de- pendence of reform upon an adjustment of social relationships. Aside from the correction of physical defects, it would seem that the problem of reforming the wayward child is really a problem of reforming social conditions so that his normal self may have a chance to develop. REFERENCES Addams, Jane. "Pubh'c recreation and social morality," Char., 18: 492. Benson, W. E. " Manual training as a preventative of delinquency among colored children," N.C.C.C., 1904, pp. 257-268. Bergen, C. McP. " Relation of play to juvenile delinquency," Char., 18:562. 234 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION Boston Children's Aid Society, Reports. 43-46 Charity Building, Boston. Burns, Allen. "Relation of playgrounds to juvenile delinquency." Reprinted from The Proceedings of the Second Annual Playground Association, New York. Children's Aid Society of Pennsylvania, Reports. 1506 Arch St., Philadelphia. DeBolt, Mrs. L. N. "Industrial employment as a factor in the reformation of girls," N.C.C.C, 1900, 210-220. Girls taught habits of order, promptness, and health; acquire self-control, self-repect, and ambition through industrial training. "Discipline and management, of juvenile reformatories," Char. Rev., 9 : 436-450. 1899. A helpful and valuable census of opinion. George, W. R. The Junior Republic. 1909. A stimulating, sug- gestive account of an important enterprise. GuNCKEL, J. E. Boyville, a History of Fifteen Years' Work among Boys. Toledo, 1905. Reform through social organization and wise leadership. Harcourt, Chas. " Reform for the truant boy in industrial train- ing and farming," Craftsman, 15 : 436. Secret of success is in the boy's being kept busy. Heller, Mrs. H. H. "The playground as a phase of social reform." Reprinted from The Proceedings of the Second Annual Playground Association. Henderson, C. R. Modern Methods of Charity, igo/^. Brief accounts of preventative and reformatory measures in the United States and other countries. Industrial School for Boys of Waukesha, Wisconsin, Reports. KiNGSLEY, Sherman C. "The substitution of family care for in- stitutional care for children," Proceedings of the Second New Jersey Conference of Charities and Corrections. 1903. Reprinted by the Boston Children's Aid Society. 1910. i Lee, Joseph. Constructive and Preventive Philanthropy. 1902. Broad in scope, includes the home, vacation schools, baths, play- grounds, outings, boys' clubs, industrial training. LiNDSEY, B. B. " Childhood and morality," N.E.A., 1909, p. 147. "Reformation of the juvenile delinquents through the juvenile courts," N.C.C.C. 1903. Lyman and Industrial Schools, Reports Massachusetts Public Docu- ments. EDUCATION AND SOCIAL REFORM 235 Mangold, G. B. "The delinquent child," Bk. IV of Child Problems. New York, 1910. Morrison, W. D. Juvenile Offenders. New York, 1897. New York's Juvenile Reformatories, CAar., 12 : 621-630. 1904. Arti- cles on New York State Training School for Girls at Hudson, In- dustrial School at Rochester, House of Refuge at Randall's Island, and Reformatory at Hart's Island. NiBECKER, F. H. "Essential work of a juvenile reformatory," Char. i?CT., 9:450-452. 1899. Shows that it is purely educational and should not be cut short before full results have been attained. Reeder, Rudolph. How Two Hundred Children Live and Learn. New York, 1909. Gives many interesting sidelights on proper methods of reform through education. Rhode Island, Reports of Board of State Charities and Corrections. Providence. RiCHMAN, Julia. "Incorrigible child," Ed. Rev., 31 : 484-506. 1906. Discusses the truancy problem and shows the methods of influence employed in a New York truant school. Points out the proper attitude of the teacher toward the misdemeanant. Snedden, D. S. "Pubhc school and juvenile delinquency," Ed. Rev., 33 : 374-385. 1907. Believes that the scope of the public school system should be enlarged so as to include all children of school age. Mentions points in which public schools and reform schools may profit by each other's experience. Administration and Educational Work of American Juvenile Reform Schools. New York, 1907. Spaulding, W. F. Delinquent and Wayward Children. The new Massachusetts methods of treatment. The law of 1906, together with an analysis of new legislation. The law establishing the Boston Juvenile Court. Pamphlet. 32 Brattle St., Cambridge. 1907. "Modern juvenile court and its probation system," Mass. Prison Assoc, No. 26. Concord, N.H. 1909. " PossibiUties of Probation System." Pubhshed by the Mass. Prison Assoc. 1908. Travis, Thomas. The Young Malefactor. New York, 1908. A study in juvenile delinquency. Zueblin, Charles. "Pubhc recreation," in American Municipal Progress, 1902, pp. 276-301. Describes the estabhshment of playgrounds, baths, recreation piers, in various cities, and a sum- mer camp for Boston boys. PART II INTERNAL SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION CHAPTER XIII THE GENERAL NATURE OF SOCIAL LIFE The General Nature of Social Life Education is in a double sense, as we have seen, a social process. We have thus far devoted ourselves to its larger or external relations. We have regarded it as one of the special functions of the great social complex in which it exists. We turn now to what may be called its internal social aspects, those aspects which grow out of the fact that the school is itself a little society. This corporate life of the school has definite and important bearings upon the process of learning, both in its particular and in its general aspects. In this section we shall consider, however, not merely the social life of the school and its bear- ings upon education, but certain aspects of the larger problem of the relation of society to the individual. It is important, before attempting to study the educational phases, to have some general understanding of the nature of social life itself. Hiunan society is not composed of individuals merely massed to- gether as shot or pebbles may be piled up. It is a peculiarly intricate organization, and people are what they are because they were born into this organization and have grown up in it. Only in recent times has there been any appreciation of what society really is or how the individual person is related to it. When philosophers first began to think of these things, they tended to regard the human being as first of all an independent individual and of social relations as an after- thought, an expedient imposed upon men who were originally free from all such restraints. Thus Hobbes and Rousseau conceived of 236 THE GENERAL NATURE OF SOCIAL LIFE 237 society as a voluntary compact into which men entered for mutual protection. The happiest state was that in which each lived to him- self alone, absolutely unfettered by social bonds of any sort. But men were inevitably thrown together, and society represents the out- come of a conscious attempt of people to adjust themselves to one another. It has involved also the voluntary surrender of many natu- ral privileges or rights for the sake of the advantages of combined action in offense and defense. In time it was seen by social philosophers that the voluntary con- tract theory did not accurately describe the facts. Society is an in- stinctive affair extending far back into the lower stages of animal life. Men have probably never lived alone, but rather always in groups. The fundamental traits of human personality have been developed, or built up, through human association, not in some supposedly prior individualistic state of being. Hence, man is fundamentally a social being. Every shred and fiber of his being is a resultant of his manifold and subtle relations with other people. He is not part individual and part social in his nature, he is rather all soci^,l. Hence, he has not, as a member of society, had to give up or suppress purely individual- istic impulses. The contrast is not between the individual and so- ciety but between different kinds of society, different sorts of social impulses. The theory that society is a conscious compact made between those who were natm-ally individuaUstic or antisocial thus gave way to the theory of society as an organism after the analogy of the biological organism, the individuals corresponding to the cells of the animal body, and the various social functions of protection, production, distribution and so forth, corresponding to such physiological func- tions as seeing, eating, digestion, circulation and respiration. This comparison of society to an organism is not without significance. It is certainly truer to some facts than was the " contract theory." It goes, however, to the opposite extreme, and through the analogy of the relation of the single cell to the whole animal body completely subor- dinates the individual to society. To hold that each individual is through and through a social being is not equivalent to saying that he has no worth of his own as an individual. He has a personal life quittf other than that of the single cell, even though that life is formed by 238 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION mutual action and reaction with other human beings. In other words, individuality is quite as real a fact as society; in no sense can we con- sider it as finally subordinate to a larger life in the way that the ceU is subordinate to the life of the animal. These considerations have led to a still different conception; namely, that it is an organization rather than an organism. It is an organization of individuals inti- mately bound together in all they think and do and yet each possessed of a Ufe of his own. No individual exists merely for the good of so- ciety. Each one has his own desires and purposes that demand satis- faction. They demand satisfaction, however, not as purely separate affairs, but in organic relation with the desires and purposes of other people. It is not here our purpose, however, to enter into a detailed study of social processes nor of the relation of the individual to society, but rather to get clearly defined the meaning of social or corporate life as a basis for the study of the social life of the school. The best illustra- tions of true corporate life are to be found in relatively small groups of people. These " primary groups " as Cooley calls them are the real units of society. In them we find the most adequate expression of human association. Inasmuch as a full appreciation of the nature of the life of the primary group is fundamental to the study of the social life of the school, extracts from Cooley's admirable discussion in his Social Organization are here reprinted. The student's first endeavor should be to gain a clear concept of the " primary groups " as actual existences in which he daily participates. He should find many examples of his own to illustrate the points made in the discussion. Primary Groups and Primary Ideals By primary groups I mean those characterized by intimate face-to- face association and cooperation. They are primary in several senses, but chiefly in that they are fundamental in forming the social nature and ideals of the individual. The result of intimate association, psychologically, is a certain fusion of individuals in a common whole, so that one's very self, for many purposes' at least, is the common life and purpose of the group. Perhaps the simplest way of describing this wholeness is by saying that it is a " we " ; it involves the sort of sympathy and mutual identification for which " we " is the natural THE GENERAL NATURE OF SOCIAL LIFE 239 expression. One lives in the feeling of the whole and finds the chief aims of his will in that feeling. It is not to be supposed that the unity of the primary group is one of mere harmony and love. It is always a differentiated and usually a competitive unity, admitting of self-assertion and various appro- priative passions ; but these passions are socialized by sympathy, and come, or tend to come, under the discipline of a common spirit. The individual will be ambitious, but the chief object of his ambition will be some desired place in the thought of the others, and he will feel allegiance to common standards of service and fair play. So the boy will dispute with his fellows a place on the team, but above such dis- putes will place the common glory of his class and school. The most important spheres of this intimate association and co- operation — though by no means the only ones — are the family, the play group of children, and the neighborhood or community group of elders. These are practically universal, belonging to all times and all stages of development, and are accordingly a chief basis of what is universal in human nature and human ideals. The best comparative studies of the family, such as those of Westermarck or Howard, show it to us as not only a universal institution, but as more alike the world over than the exaggeration of exceptional customs by an earUer school had led us to suppose. Nor can any one doubt the general prevalence of play groups among children or of informal assemblies of various kinds among their elders. Such association is clearly the nursery of human nature in the world about us, and there is no ap- parent reason to suppose that the case has anywhere or at any time been essentially different. As regards play, I might, were it not a matter of common observa- tion, multiply illustrations of the universality and spontaneity of the group discussion and cooperation to which it gives rise. The general fact is that children, especially boys after about their twelfth year, live in fellowships in which their sympathy, ambition and honor are engaged even more, often, than they are in the family. Most of us can recall examples of the endurance by boys of injustice and even cruelty, rather than appeal from their fellows to parents or teachers — as, for instance, in the hazing so prevalent at schools, and so difficult, for this very reason, to repress. And how elaborate the discussion, how cogent the public opinion, how hot the ambitions in these fellowships. Nor is this facility of juvenile association, as is sometimes supposed, a trait peculiar to English and American boys ; since experience among our immigrant population seems to show that the offspring of the more restrictive civilizations of the continent of Europe form self- governing play groups with almost equal readiness. Thus Miss Jane Addams, after pointing out that the " gang " is almost universal, 240 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION speaks of the interminable discussion which every detail of the gang's activity receives, remarking that ' ' in these social folk-motes, so to speak, the young citizen learns to act upon his own determination." Of the neighborhood group it may be said, in general, that from the time men formed permanent settlements upon the land, down, at least, to the rise of modern industrial cities, it has played a main part in the primary, heart-to-heart Ufe of the people. Among our Teutonic fore- fathers the village community was apparently the chief sphere of sympathy and mutual aid for the commons all through the " dark " and middle ages, and for many purposes it remains so in rural districts at the present day. In some countries we still find it with all its ancient vitality, notably in Russia, where the mir, or self-governing village group, is the main theater of Ufe, along with the family, for perhaps fifty millions of peasants. In our own life the intimacy of the neighborhood has been broken up by the growth of the intricate mesh of wider contacts which leaves us strangers to people who live in the same house. And even in the country the same principle is at work, though less obviously, diminish- ing our economic and spiritual community with our neighbors. How far this change is a healthy development, and how far a disease, is perhaps still uncertain. Besides these almost universal kinds of primary association, there are many others whose form depends upon the particular state of civilization, the only essential thing, as I have said, being a certain intimacy and fusion of personalities. In our own society, being little bound by place, people easily form clubs, fraternal societies and the like, based on congeniality, which may give rise to real intimacy. Many such relations are formed at school and college, and among men and women brought together in the first instancfe by their occupations — as workmen in the same trade, or the like. Where there is a httle common interest and activity, kindness grows like weeds by the roadside. But the fact that the family and neighborhood groups are ascendant in the open and plastic time of childhood makes them even now incom- parably more influential than all the rest. Primary groups are primary in the sense that they give the indi- vidual the earliest and completest experience of social unity, and also in the sense that they do not change in the same degree as more elabo- rate relations, but form a comparatively permanent source out of which the latter are ever springing. Of course they are not iad^en- dent of the larger society, but to some extent reflect its spirit ; as the German family and the German school bear somewhat distinctly the print of German militarism. But this, after all, is like the tide setting back into creeks, and does not commonly go very far. Among the THE GENERAL NATURE OF SOCIAL LIFE 241 German, and still more among the Russian peasantry, are found habits of free cooperation and discussion almost uninfluenced by the character of the state; and it is a familiar and well-supported view that the village commune, self-governing as regards local affairs and habituated to discussion, is a very widespread institution in settled communities, and the continuator of a similar autonomy previously existing in the clan. " It is man who makes monarchies and estab- Ushes republics, but the commime seems to come directly from the hand of God." . . . These groups, then, are springs of life, not only for the individual but for social institutions. They are only in part molded by special traditions, and, in larger degree, express a universal nature. The re- ligion or government of other civilizations may seem alien to us, but the children or the family group wear the common life, and with them we can always make ourselves at home. . . . The view here maintained is that human nature is not something existing separately in the individual, but a group nature or primary phase of society, a relatively simple and general condition of the social mind. It is something more, on the one hand, than the mere instinct that is born in us — though that enters into it — and something less, on the other, than the more elaborate development of ideas and senti- ments that makes up institutions. It is the nature which is de- veloped and expressed in those simple, face-to-face groups that are somewhat alike in all societies ; groups of the family, the playgroimd and the neighborhood. In the essential similarity of these is to be found the basis, in experience, for similar ideas and sentiments in the human mind. In these, everywhere, human nature comes into exist- ence. Man does not have it at birth, he cannot acquire it except through fellowship, and it decays in isolation. . . . Life in the primary groups gives rise to social ideals which, as they spring from similar experiences, have much in common throughout the human race. And these naturally become the motive and test of so- cial progress. Under all systems men strive, however blindly, to realize objects suggested by the familiar experience of primary association. Where do we get our notions of love, freedom, justice and the like which we are ever applying to social institutions? Not from abstract philosophy, surely, but from the actual life of simple and widespread forms of society, like the family or the play group. In these relations mankind reahzes itself, gratifies its primary needs, in a fairly satis- factory manner, and from the experience forms standards of what it is to expect from more elaborate association. Since groups of this sort are never obliterated from human experience, but flourish more or less under all kinds of institutions, they remain an enduring criterion by which the latter are ultimately judged. 242 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION Of course these simpler relations are not uniform for all societies, but vary considerably with race, with the general state of civilization and with the particular sort of institutions that may prevail. The primary groups themselves are subject to improvement and decay, and need to be watched and cherished with a very special care. Neither is it claimed that, at the best, they realize ideal conditions ; only that they approach them more nearly than anything else in general experience, and so form the practical basis on which higher imaginations are built. They are not always pleasant or righteous, but they almost always contain elements from which ideals of pleasant- ness and righteousness may be formed. The ideal that grows up in familiar association may be said to be a part of human nature itself. In its most general form it is that of a moral whole or community wherein individual minds are merged and the higher capacities of the members find total and adequate expression. And it grows up because familiar association fills our minds with imaginations of the thought and feeUng of other members of the group, and of the group as a whole, so that, for many purposes, we really make them a part of ourselves and identify our self-feeling with them. Children and savages do not formulate any such ideal, but they have it nevertheless ; they see it ; they see themselves and their fellows as an invisible though various " we," and they desire this " we " to be harmonious, happy and successful. How heartily one may merge himself in the family and in the fellowships of youth is perhaps within the experience of all of us ; and we come to feel that the same spirit should extend to our country, our race, our world. " All the abuses which are the objects of reform . . . are unconsciously amended in the intercourse of friends." A congenial family is the immemorial type of moral unity, and source of many of the terms — such as brotherhood, kindness and the Like — which describe it. The members become merged by intimate associa- tion into a whole wherein each age and sex participates in its own way. Each lives in imaginative contact with the minds of the others, and finds in them the dwelling plaoe of his social self, of his affections, ambitions, resentments and standards of right and wrong. Without uniformity, there is yet unity, a free, pleasant, wholesome, fruitful, common life. As to the playground, Mr. Joseph Lee, in an excellent paper on " Play as a School of the Citizen," gives the following account of the merging of the one in the whole that may be learned from sport. The boy, he says, " is deeply participating in a common purpose. The team and the plays that it executes are present in a very vivid manner to his consciousness. His conscious individuality is more thoroughly lost in the sense of membership than perhaps it ever becomes in any THE GENERAL NATURE OF SOCIAL LIFE 243 other way. So that the sheer experience of citizenship in its simplest and essential form — of the sharing in a public consciousness, of having the social organization present as a controlling ideal in your heart — is very intense. . . . " Along with the sense of the team as a mechanical instrument, unseparated from it in the boy's mind, is the consciousness of it as the embodiment of a common purpose. There is in team play a very intimate experience of the ways in which such a purpose is built up and made effective. You feel, though without analysis, the subtle ways in which a strong character breaks out the road ahead and gives confidence to the rest to follow ; how the creative power of one ardent imagination, bravely sustained, makes possible the putting through of the play as he conceives it. You feel to the marrow of your bones how each loyal member contributes to the salvation of all the others by holding the conception of the whole play so firmly in his mind as to enable them to hold it, and to participate in his single-minded de- termination to see it carried out. You have intimate experience of the ways in which individual members contribute to the team and of how the team, in turn, builds up their spiritual nature. . . . " And the team is not only an extension of the player's consciousness ; it is a part of his personality. His participation has deepened from cooperation to membership. Not only is he now a part of the team, but the team is a part of him." Moral unity, as this illustration implies, admits and rewards strenu- ous ambition, but this ambition must either be for the success of the group, or at least not inconsistent with that. The fullest self-realiza- tion will belong to the one who embraces in a passionate self-feeling the aims of the fellowship, and spends his life in fighting for their attainment. The ideal of moral unity I take to be the mother, as it were, of all social ideals. It is, then, not my aim to depreciate the self-assertive passions. I believe that they are fierce, inextinguishable, indispensable. Com- petition and the survival of the fittest are as righteous as kindness and cooperation, and not necessarily opposed to them ; an adequate view will embrace and harmonize these diverse aspects. The point I wish particularly to bring out in this chapter is that the normal self is molded in primary groups to be a social self whose ambitions are formed by the common thought of the group. In their crudest form, such passions as lust, greed, revenge, the pride of power and the like are not, distinctively, human nature at all, but animal nature, and so far as we rise into the spirit of family or neigh- borhood association we control and subordinate them. They are ren- dered human only so far as they are brought under the discipline of 244 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION sympathy, and refined into sentiments, such as love, resentment and ambition. And in so far as they are thus humanized they become capable of useful function. Take the greed of gain, for example, the ancient sin of avarice, the old wolf, as Dante says, that gets more prey than all the other beasts. The desire of possession is in itself a good thing, a phase of self-realiza- tion and a cause of social improvement. It is immoral or greedy only when it is without adequate control from sympathy, when the self- realized is a narrow self. . . . The improvement of society does not call for any essential change in human nature, but, chiefly, for a larger and higher application of its familiar impulses. . . . To break up the ideal of a moral whole into particular ideals is an artificial process which every thinker would probably carry out in his own way. Perhaps, however, the most salient principles are loyalty, lawfulness and freedom. In so far as one identifies himself with a whole, loyalty to that whole is loyalty to himself ; it is self-realization, something in which one can- not fail without losing self-respect. Moreover, this is a larger self, leading out into a wider and richer life, and appealing, therefore, to enthusiasm and the need of quickening ideals. One is never more human, and, as a rule, never happier, than when he is sacrificing his narrow and merely private interest to the higher call of the congenial group. And without doubt the natural genesis of this sentiment is in the intimacy of face-to-face cooperation. It is rather the rule than the exception in the family, and grows up among children and youth so fast as they learn to think and act to common ends. The team feeling described above illustrates it as well as anything. Among the ideals inseparable from loyalty are those of truth, serviqe and kindness, always conceived as due to the intimate group rather than to the world at large. Truth or good faith toward other members of a fellowship is, so far as I know, a universal human ideal. It does not involve any abstract love of veracity, and is quite consistent with deception toward the outside world, being essentially " truth of intercourse " or fair dealing among intimates. There are few, even among those reckoned lawless, who will not keep faith with one who has the gift of getting near to them in spirit and making them feel that he is one of themselves. Thus Judge Lindsey of Denver has worked a revolution among the neglected boys of his city, by no other method than that of entering into the same moral whole, becoming part of a " we " with them. He awakens their sense of honor, trusts it and is almost never disappointed. When he wishes to send a boy to the reform school, the latter promises to repair to the institution at a given time, and invariably does so. THE GENERAL NATURE OF SOCIAL LIFE 245 Among tramps a similar sentiment prevails. " It will be found," said a young man who had spent the summer among vagrants, " that if they are treated square, they will do the same." The ideal of service likewise goes with the sense of unity. If there is a vital whole, the right aim of individual activity can be no other than to serve that whole. And this is not so much a theory as a feeling that will exist wherever the whole is felt. It is a poor sort of an in- dividual that does not feel the need to devote himself to the larger purposes of the group. In our society many feel this need in youth, and express it on the playground, who never succeed in realizing it among the less intimate relations of business or professional life. All mankind acknowledges kindness as the law of right intercourse within a social group. By communion minds are fused into a sym- pathetic whole, each part of which tends to share the life of all the rest, so that kindness is a common joy, and harshness a common pain. It is the simplest, most attractive and most diffused of human ideals. The golden rule springs directly from hiunan nature. Accordingly this ideal has been bound up with association in all past times and among all peoples ; it was a matter of course that when men acted together in war, industry, devotion, sport or what not, they formed a brotherhood or friendship. It is perhaps only in modern days, along with the great and sudden differentiation of activities, that feeling has failed to keep up, and the idea of cooperation without friendship has become familiar. . . . Every intimate group, like every individual, experiences conflicting impulses within itself, and as the individual feels the need of definite principles to shape his conduct and give him peace, so the group needs law or rule for the same purpose. It is not merely that the over- strong or the insubordinate must be restrained, but that all alike may have some definite criterion of what the good member ought to do. It is a mere fact of psychology that where a social whole exists it may be as painful to do wrong as to suffer it, — because one's own spirit is divided, — and the common need is for harmony through a law, framed in the total interest, which every one can and must obey. This need of rules to align differentiated impulse with the good of the whole is nowhere more apparent than on the playground. . . . No doubt every one remembers how the idea of justice is developed in children's games. There is always something to be done in which various parts are to be taken, success depending upon their efficient distribution. . . . Freedom is that phase of social ideal which emphasizes individu- ality. The whole to which we belong is made up of diverse energies which enkindle one another by friction ; and its vigor requires that these have play. Thus the fierce impulses of ambition and pride may 246 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION be as organic as anything else — provided they are suflScientty hu- manized as to their objects — and are to be interfered with only when they become destructive or oppressive. . . . The idea of the germinal character of primary association is one that is fast making its way in education and philanthropy. As we learn that man is altogether social and never seen truly except in connection with his fellows, we fix our attention more and more on group con- ditions as the source, for better or worse, of personal character, and come to feel that we must work on the individual through the web of relations in which he actually lives. The school, for instance, must form a whole with the rest of life, using the ideas generated by the latter as the starting point of its train- ing. The public opinion and traditions of the scholars must be re- spected and made an ally of discipline. Children's associations should be fostered and good objects suggested for their activity. . . . It is much the same in the country. In every village and township in the land, I suppose, there are one or more groups of predatory boys and hoydenish girls whose mischief is only the result of ill-directed energy. If each of these could receive a little sympathetic attention from kindred but wiser spirits, at least half of the crime and vice of the next generation would almost certainly be done away with. Extracts from Chapters III and IV of Social Organization by C. H. Cooley. Courtesy of Charles Scribner's Sons. TOPICS FOR STUDY 1. In what way does the conception of society as an organization differ from the conception of society as an organism? 2. Contrast present-day conceptions of the origin of society, of the nature of law, of government and of the proper fimction of punish- ment with earlier conceptions. 3. In what sense may a social group be said to have a mind, a will, habits, impulses, morals? 4. Show that moral questions are ultimately social questions. 5. LeBon's conception of a crowd. Characteristics of. 6. Compare the general notion of society suggested by LeBon with that suggested by Cooley (vide Social Organization). Are they mutually exclusive? 7. Difference between absolute and social standards of conduct. Cooley {Social Organization). 8. What is meant by the assertion that all real reform must be sympathetic ? Is it possible to say that any people are chiefly given over to conscious badness? How does the answer to this question THE GENERAL NATURE OF SOCIAL LIFE 247 bear on social reform? How upon the problem of dealing with the bad boy at school ? 9. If we accept the view that our acts are socially determined, what becomes of individual responsibilitly ? Can you show that it is increased rather than diminished ? WTiy is the consciously bad man less harmful socially than the ill doers who believe in themselves? How can a person be an evil doer who acts with a "good conscience" ? 10. What does Cooley mean by an "unbalanced doctrine of re- sponsibility"? Can you see how it might affect certain school problems ? 11. What conception of punishment do you get from Cooley? Work out its implications in school practice. Do you think that he would condemn corporal punishment in school? Why? 12. What are primary ideals ? Show how each one is a more or less spontaneous expression of primary group hfe. What problems pre- sent themselves in the extension of primary ideals? REFERENCES ON THE NATURE OF SOCIETY Baldwin, J. M. The Individual and Society. 1911. Cooley, C. H. Human Nature and the Social Order. New York, 1902. Social Organization, A Study of the Larger Mind. New York, 1909. GiDDiNGS, F. H. Principles of Sociology. New York, 3d ed., 1909. Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth. Le Bon, Gustave. The Crowd, A Study of the Popular Mind. Ross, E. A. Social Psychology. New York, 1908. Rousseau, J. J. The Social Contract. Spencer, Herbert. Principles of Sociology. 3 v. Tarde, Gabriel. Social Laws, translated by H. C. Warren. New York, 1899. Ward, L. F. Dynamic Sociology. 2 v. New York, 1897. CHAPTER XIV THE SP0NTANE0T7S SOCIAL LIFE OF CfflLDREN Spontaneous Social Organizations among Children In the preceding section the general nature of society as an organi- zation was discussed. It was seen that this organization is spontane- ous, that it is not subversive but rather conducive to individuality, and that its best examples are the primary groups, the nurseries of human nature and the basis of most of our ideals of that conduct which is regarded as human, and, hence, right. Among the various primary groups which might be mentioned, the school stands out as having many if not all the necessary character- istics. Preliminary, however, to a study of the social nature of the school group it will be well to note some of the tendencies of children of a certain age to develop spontaneously a group or community life. These tendencies appear particularly in their group games, in the gangs of street urchins and in the various clubs which boys especially tend to form. Child life, always social, tends, when a certain age is reached, to seek expression in some more or less temporary corporate association. A study of these spontaneous social tendencies throws important light upon the nature of the corporate life which develops quite as spontaneously in the school. As source material, extracts from Johnson's valuable study, Riidi- mentary Society among Boys, are here reprinted. The object of the author appears to have been to show how primitive usages with refer- ence to private property, law-making judicial procedure and money are strikingly paralleled in the spontaneous activities of modern boys. Our interest in the facts recorded may be slightly different without in any way distorting them. The activities here recorded were those of a true " primary group." There was " intimate face-to-face asso- ciation and cooperation," and the unity displayed was clearly not always " one of mere harmony and love." ?48 THE SPONTANEOUS SOCIAL LIFE OF CHILDREN 249 Although this boy society developed upon a school farm, its deter- mining features may be said to have been formed independently of the school life. It was just such a society as tends to develop quite of its own accord wherever children of a certain age are thrown together for any length of time and active interests are stimulated. The McDonogh farm afforded an arena for a wide range of activity. On the basis of this opportunity the boys developed a rudimentary social organization within which conflicting interests were adjusted and a crude justice administered. It affords an admirable illustra- tion of certain of the " primary ideals" specified by Cooley, — for instance, these of lawfulness, of truth, of freedom and of natural right. We are introduced through this paper to a wide and important field for inductive study; namely, the institutional activities of chil- dren. A thorough understanding of these activities in their general phases should throw much hght upon the nature of the corporate life of the school, as one of their particular manifestations. Already, much valuable material has been collected, but much remains to be done. Boys left entirely to themselves form cliques, or gangs, which possess, even though on a low plane, the raw material for a higher social development. The social organization of the McDonogh School is not presented as in any sense ideal. The laws permitted the develop- ment of grave social abuses ; the justice that was administered was often crude. But the group that lived there did show a dawning sense of lawfulness and of justice ; so do all the spontaneous associations of children. The recognition of this tendency has led to many at- tempts on the part of adults to utilize for educative ends the instinc- tive social activities of boys and girls. The boys' club is a redeemed gang. It is a corporate existence in which there is just enough con- tact with a wise, mature mind to make it a positive character-forming agency. The boy scout movement rests upon the same basis and, for the same reasons, has great possibilities for character development. Another interesting illustration is furnished by the organization of the Toledo newsboys, described by Gunckel in Boyville. All in all, the remarkable results attained by skilled workers in turn- ing to some good the corporate tendencies of boys mark them as most important aspects of educational work, work which is thus far scarcely recognized by the agencies of public instruction, 250 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION Rudimentary Society among Boys At the top of one of the low, fertile hills that cover much of the coxmtry to the north and west of Baltimore, stands the McDonogh School. Around it stretch the eight hundred acres of the school farm. . . . Over these teeming eight hxmdred acres the " McDonogh boys " roam at will, each according to his ability striving to become a mighty hunter in the earth. During the first spring after the opening of the school, the boys found the woods abounding with birds' eggs and squirrels, which they might have for the trouble of taking. During the autumn they gathered chestnuts and walnuts and stored them away to be cracked and eaten before the big fire in the schoolroom. Whether in spring or in autumn, all who went to the labor of searching were rewarded with an abxmdance. When the frost had killed the green shoots and troubled the rabbits to get a living, every boy that chose to do so set traps in the swamps and ditches, and baited them with sweet-smelling apples, or more pungent and effective onions. The ground was then regarded as the property of the commimity, and while, like the ancient Teutonic villager, each " McDonogh boy " took pains to exclude strangers from the Mark, each regarded himself with the rest as a joint owner of the harvest of nuts, and aU had equal rights of hunting and trapping in the waste. As in the precursors of those Aryan villages of the East, recently studied by Phear, "land was not conceived of as property in the modern sense, or as belonging to any individual." The whole was common to them all, and every boy had a right to a portion of the fruits of the ground. . . . Among the " McDonogh boys," as among many savage societies, the beginning of property in land is seen as " the collective ownership of the soil by groups of persons." I had almost continued the quota- tion to make it include the words, " groups believing or assuming that they are " united in blood relationship. But while such a statement here would be untrue, the feeling of union among the " McDonogh boys" is of a very striking intensity. They become greatly indignant, and even have a sense of wrong done them when they discover a young- ster from the neighborhood trapping game upon " our farm." This sentiment they have sometimes manifested in attempts to prevent the children of the men employed on the farm from gathering eggs in the woods ; and the schoolboys regard their few competitors in hunting with an aversion often put into words and sometimes into acts. . . . This feeling of brotherhood is so deep and lasting that it might be said of the " new boy," on his admission into the McDonogh School, " in sacra transiit." The feeling of the boys is well shown in their conception of their rights to the property of the school, many of them THE SPONTANEOUS SOCIAL LIFE OF CfflLDREN 251 regarding themselves as the legatees of John McDonogh, the philan- thropist, who gave his fortune to Baltimore in trust for the education of poor boys. He fills the niche once occupied in the minds of their Aryan progenitors by the common ancestor, from whom all the mem- bers of the primitive community thought themselves to have sprung. For the primitive fiction of common descent they have substituted the real bond of school fellowship and the pretended bond of succession. As they sometimes express it, " McDonogh left his property to us," and the idea that any other than " McDonogh boys " have any rights over the property, they do not easily accept. This feeling is clearly dis- played in their attitude toward one of the rules of the school. They are not permitted to pluck the fruit in the orchards, and some of them are honestly unable to see the justice of such a regulation. The fact that the fruit is given to them after it is gathered does not at all satisfy them. Conscientious boys have often said in my hearing that, as they owned the fruit, no one had a right to prevent them from pulling it. They are, however, debarred from carrying this idea into practice, and the truth has often been pointed out to them ; so this notion is not universal among them. But as no one has interfered to dispel their belief that they have property in the nuts, eggs and squirrels, they have made this a cardinal doctrine of their politics. With this feeling of ownership constantly in mind, the boys that entered the school at its opening went peering through the high grass of the meadows in search of bobolinks' eggs ; and chmbed the rough pin oaks to the nests of the hawks. The first score of urchins were able to get as much as they desired from the fields and woods ; but when the school grew in numbers, and fifty adventurers had boxes of bran to be filled with zoological specimens, and bins each holding bushels to be stored with walnuts, the demand for these treasures began to exceed the supply. Then competition set in and disputes arose, out of which, with the aid of an apparent instinct for pohtics, the boys were able to bring custom and law, and a system of property which was odd and imexpected, yet orderly find intelligible. . . . To understand their position in the line of progress, we must first see how they now gather the crop, and how they formerly harvested it. Just after midnight some morning early in October, when the first frosts of the season have loosened the grasp of the nuts upon the limbs, parties of two or three boys might be seen (if any one were sufficiently interested to leave his bed at such an untimely hour) rushing at full speed over the wet fields. When the swiftest party has reached a walnut tree, one of the number cHmbs up rapidly, shakes off half a bushel of nuts and scrambles down again. Then off the boys go to the next tree, where the process is repeated unless the tree is occupied by other boys doing likewise. This activity continues during play hours 252 SOCIAL • ASPECTS OF EDUCATION until all the walnut trees on the place have been appropriated. Nut hunters coming to the tree after the first party has been there and wish- ing to shake the tree further are required by custom to pile up all the nuts that lie under the tree. Until this is done, the unwritten law does not permit their shaking any more nuts upon the ground. Any one that violated this provision and shook nuts from a tree before pQing up those beneath, would be universally regarded as dishonest, and every boy's hand would be against him. To collect aU these nuts into a pile requires no small labor, and rather than undergo this the second party wQl usually go off in search of another tree. Consequently the partial shaking commonly enables the boy that first climbs a tree to get pos- session of all its fruit. A certain justice xmderlies this custom. Labor has been expended in the first shaking. If another comes and shakes more nuts to the ground before picking up those already there, the fruit of the first boy's labor wiU be mixed up with that of the second, and thus the first owner will lose some of his work. The moral sense of the community agrees that no part of the labor shall be lost to him that performs it, and to prevent such a result the present regulation seems effectual. In what notions, ethical or other, this practice of seizing trees was begun, we cannot now discover ; but all analogies indicate that the justice of the matter was not the sole consideration. But if it is hard to discover the origin of this custom in the moral nature of the boys, we may yet see how it illustrates their views of property. Inasmuch as a tree is the property of a boy and his partners only so long as his nuts remain un- piled on the ground, and since the trees may be shaken again by any boy who chooses to pile up the nuts, it is evident that in the eyes of the boys the trees belong to all of them. The simple expedient for redistributing the trees at intervals of a year is to cause all titles to expire at the end of the harvest. A boy's right to a tree lasts no longer than a single autumn. If in all that time he does not remove his crop, and if no one else piles up the nuts and gathers the rest of the yield, still his right expires by limitation ; and at the opening of the next season the first comer has a right to establish a title for himself. It may be said that permitting each boy to seize trees as he can is hardly to be called an equitable method of redistribution, but, as I desire to establish only the fact of redistribution, this is not a valid objection. It is, however, true that efforts have been made looking toward a fair division. The keen competition for walnuts led many boys to shake trees in the middle of September, and thus to acquire a title to them long before the fruit was ripe. When baseball Tvas still the main idea of the majority, perhaps a fortnight before the first frost (everjrwhere recognized as marking the ripening of the crop), the greediest or the most enterprising boys would set out to seize and shake THE SPONTANEOUS SOCIAL LIFE OF CfflLDREN 253 as many trees as possible. Having no competitors, they would be able in a few days to take possession of a whole crop of nuts. To alleviate this evQ, a day ui October was fixed as the date of the begmning of harvest. An assembly of the boys, where all may take part, is the body which determined and stUl determines the opening of the season. The meaning of this public act is evident. It was felt that the few had seized what the many owned, and to prevent the recurrence of this robbery, it was made unlawful to gather any part of the crop before all knew it was ripe. By fixing a day when the harvest should begin; the boys did what they could towards equalizing the shares of each. They at least put all upon the same footing as regards the time of gathering, and they made each boy know when he must enter upon the competi- tion. Though not all the starters could have the mside track, all got away together. While the community thus does what it can to give each member a fair chance, no effort has been made to equalize the industry of the competitors. The hardest workers still gather the biggest crop. The day for the opening of harvest is reckoned to begin at midnight, and the boys that are most in earnest stay awake till twelve, and then, issuing from their beds into the chilly moonlight of the October fields, they seize such trees as they desire. The same feeling of common ownership of the woodland and the same attempt at redistribution, which appear in the custom of gather- ing the walnut crop, are apparent in the usages of the school on the subjects of egg gathering and squirrel hunting. As eggs grew scarce and the boys grew more numerous, those who most desired the eggs worked hardest to get them, climbing higher trees and wading through muddier swamps. As the more industrious boys saw the birds buQd- ing nests over their heads, what was more natural than a desire to possess them before the laying began, and thus to acquire a title to the eggs? A boy who had spent hours in a weary search and had at last found a nest, felt that his labor gave him the right to it. Accordingly some boys began to invent ways of marking the trees in which they had found nests, and to claim ownership, not of the eggs, which were not then laid, but of the tree in which they knew the eggs would soon be brought forth. Commonly when a boy found a nest, he laid a dead limb against the trunk as a warning to others that the tree had become his, and was no longer common property, to be taken by any one pass- ing by. Rights thus acquired were not always respected by the cove- tous, and eggs were so often taken from marked nests as to lead to an intolerable condition of quarreling and fighting. The community then interfered to regulate the use of the Mark. After much angry discussion the assembly adopted the plan of nailing upon the trees a ticket bearing the finder's name and the date of the discovery. This 254 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION ticket gave to the boy whose name it bore a right of property during the rest of that year to all the nests that might be made in that tree and to all their contents. On the last day of December all titles were to lapse, to be renewed only by the new ticket. Before the first bluebird has laid her pale azure eggs in the leafless orchards, the egg hunters, in conformity with this statute, provide themselves with strips of paper bearing their name and the date. These tickets and some tacks they take with them whenever they go into the woods. Where a hollow Hmb presages the birth of a brood of squirrels, one of these labels is nailed upon the trunk beneath, and another is placed under every crow's nest building in the branches. During the year no other honest boy will take eggs or squirrels from a tree thus appropriated, and [the first discoverers] may go at leisure and collect the new-laid specimens for their cabinets or the weak-eyed pets for their pockets. When the explorations of the boys revealed the presence of nuts, eggs and squirrels, numbers of rabbits were also discovered. At- tempts were at once made upon the lives of these animals, for the pur- pose of adding a delicacy to the commonplace round of boarding school fare. Every boy that chose to do so made traps and set them at such spots as struck his fancy, for at the start the equal rights of all to the woods and game were fully recognized. But ownership in severalty was soon established on the ruins of the system of common property. Clearly to understand this economic revolution, we must consider it historically. The rabbit-trapping season begins about the middle of October and ends early in December. Its opening depends upon the weather, and not, like the walnut harvest, upon the legislation of the boys. If there is an early autumn, the rabbits may be induced by the scarcity of food to enter the traps sooner than if the warm weather continues till late. In the first autumn after the opening of the school, each boy that chose to do so made a box of planks, fitted one end with a door that would fall at the touch of a trigger, and having found a promising spot, there set his trap. The hungry rabbits were tempted with fragrant apples and appetizing onions, and a few victims were enticed within the fatal door. At that time no boy set more than half a dozen traps, and almost the whole school enjoyed the delightful anticipation of having rabbits for breakfast on some future morning. But the spots where the rabbits can be caught on eight hundred acres are comparatively few, and hence the closeness of the traps inter- fered with the amount of the catch. It is a habit with rabbits to move about in well-marked paths, and the boys usually set their traps in these places. Generally a rabbit wQl enter the first trap in his path, and boys often complained that their traps were rendered useless by THE SPONTANEOUS SOCIAL LIFE OF CfflLDREN 255 the proximity of others. After a year or two of this iinsatisfactory state of affairs, a large boy, who had set his traps rather earher than the rest, began dropping heavy stones upon all traps set closer to his own than he thought desirable. In such a society as we are studying, a hard-fisted fellow of fifteen is a great personage, and has much the same influence as a great .warrior in a primitive village. The example of this boy magnate was imitated by all who dared ; and by common consent, or perhaps by common submission, a limited distance between traps was agreed on. . . . Boy Legislation. — The legislation of the boys has been already re- ferred to in speaking of the growth of ideas of property in nests and trees. We have seen how the school fellows fixed the date of the walnut harvest, and determined that nests should not be taken from trees marked with a ticket. No account, however, was given of the legislative body and its procedure. The former resembles, in the ex- tent of its powers, the primitive assembly, or village council. Its origin, however, was entirely independent and not the result of any imitation. The boys have never the faintest notion that they are reproducing one of the most ancient institutions. They do what seems good in their own eyes, with no reference to the outside world, and with no intention of imitating anything belonging there. . . . Each of the assembHes is democratic and primary ; each legislates ; as will presently appear, each judges ; each is guided by an unwritten law ; each exerts itself to make as nearly as possible a fair division of the communal property ; each fixes the date of the opening of harvest. The infor- mahty of the Russian Assembly is naturally exceeded amongst the schoolboys. In the Russian body, every man is so independent that the Village Elder has only the semblance of a presiding officer's author- ity, without the power even to call a member to order. At McDonogh no president is known. Whoever is most influential takes the lead in dispatching the business of the moment. It is not, however, neces- sary to break the wind of our comparison by driving it too far ; all that is desired is to point out the general similarity of the Assembly at McDonogh to a tj^ical village council. The entire informahty of the proceedings of the boys and the princi- ples that underlie their actions are well brought out in the accounts they have given me of the passage of their more important laws. When attempts were first made at exclusive ownership of trees containing birds' nests and squirrels' dens, the community took notice of the matter. Some boys had the habit of marking a tree by laying a piece of wood at the foot, and others by writing their names upon a piece of paper and fastening this upon the bark. The conservative boys desired that no system of marking should be permitted. The debate on the question of what should be done was not held on a fixed day, or in a 256 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION settled place, or even in the presence of the whole body. School work and play were too pressing for all to gather at once. On the contrary, the subject was talked over wherever several boys came together. Traditions vary as to whether a meeting of all the boys was held to make the final test of a vote ; and whether the time of voting was ex- tended over a whole day or even several days. But whatever may have been the details, the essential facts are clearly enough described in all the accounts. After much debate, three resolutions respectively embodying the views of the three parties were written out and pasted upon the wall of the schoojroom. The vote was then taken, and each boy signed his name beneath the proposition that he favored, where it was in full view of every one. Upon counting the signatures, a majority was found to be for permitting the placing of tickets upon trees as evidence that they were claimed by individuals. This " rule " (which is the term the boys apply to their enactments) immediately went into effect, and has ever since been a law. The decision was by most voices as it would have been at Washington or Westminster. In that hes the cardinal fact. Whether by imitation or by instinct, the boys hit upon the principle that hinges all " government by discussion." Some years after the passage of the law providing for the ticketing of trees as a means of taking possession, it was found that labels tacked upon the trunks occasionally fell to the ground ; whereupon a passer-by, although he might see the label lying at his feet, would take possession of the eggs that it was intended to protect. A strict adherence to the letter of the law is counted as righteousness among primitive peoples, and our boys are yet in the savage state of morality. In order to im- prove the security of property, a meeting was held at which, I under- stand, but few boys were present. It was agreed by them without any of the formality of a written vote, that it would thereafter be unlawful to disturb any nest where the label intended to make it could be seen lying upon the ground. After this assembly broke up, the consent of a sufficient number of other boys, who had been absent, was ob- tained by going about and asking them to agree to the " new rule." The informality of the passage of this statute seems to have caused no remark, and it is still part of the law. Upon its application turned an interesting cause to be hereafter described. Some incidents seem to point to the downfall of the popular system of lawmaking. The fact that a small number of boys have sometimes agreed upon a " rule," and afterwards obtained the consent of a suffi- cient number of the rest to put it into operation, is a constant temptation to the stronger and more influential boys to propose laws and declare them adopted without the consent of a majority. The land monopo- lists take the lead in this revolutionary measure, and their course is THE SPONTANEOUS SOCIAL LIFE OF CHILDREN 257 skillfully chosen. They are careful to make such regulations as meet with general approval. A small body of large boys may easily avoid a collision with the others and yet impose laws without the formality of consulting the rest. The next and easy step is to an ohgarchical gov- ernment. There are indications that before many years it will be taken, and that equality of political rights will share the fate of the equaUty of property. Judicial Procedure. — Inquiries into the customs of the " McDonogh boys " cannot be carried far before one is struck with the peace and good order generally prevalent in the community. Fights between angry boys do sometimes occur,, to be sure, but the belief of the authorities of the school is that the number of these combats has steadily decreased with the lengthening life of the institution. Little fellows who have not lived at the school long enough to have become imbued with the general feeling often tug and strike impotently at each other ; but the older boys so seldom ask the decision of the fist that a fight between two of them is an event never to be forgotten, which tradition hands down with greater embeUishment at each succeeding year. When a combat does begin, it rarely happens now that the matter at issue is connected in any way with rights of property. Insults and bullying may lead to fights, but disputes over nests or trees usually come to a peaceable end. Yet this result has not been reached by active efforts on the part of the principal and his assistants to prevent fighting, or even greatly to discourage it. No boy has ever been punished because he was the bearer of a pair of blackened eyes ; and further than to pre- vent exhibitions of violence in their immediate presence, the teachers have not interfered with any arrangement for settling quarrels that might be made by pupils. In spite of the objections that may be offered to this official apathy by the sentimental reader, a close ap- proach has been made among the members of a quite heterogeneous body to the desirable state of peace and good will. No control having been exercised by the faculty, the boys themselves have regulated the matter. The custom of the school from the earUest days has been, when a fight is in progress, to form a ring of excited and vociferous spectators around the enraged pair, and to regard the struggle as a gladiatorial exhibition for the entertainment of the throng. The fighters, thus made the center of the pubUc interest, are usually impelled by self-respect to desperate efforts; but where this is not so, the lookers-on, feeling themselves defrauded of a proper gratification, will often insist upon a continuance of the struggle until one or the other of the combatants is thoroughly beaten. Every boy, therefore, feels he must beware of entrance to a fight, and all other possible measures are usually tried before an appeal is made to force. 258 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION I should give a very incorrect impression, however, if I permitted it to be thought that the McDonogh boys never yield to ill-temper. As will presently appear, they are in possession of an effective means for settling quarrels over the title to property, but the punishment of offenders is left to the injured person and his friends. When, in the autumn of 1S83, a boy from the neighborhood was detected in robbing rabbit traps, the owners of the game summarily and successively gave him a beating, without the least formality or authorization. A case has also come to my knowledge where a debtor, who had made an assignment of his property which proved insufficient to meet all de- mands, was trounced very soundly by an angry creditor. Another debtor had exhausted the patience of his creditors by unfulfilled prom- ises to pay, and was plainly told by them at last that unless his debts were liquidated within two weeks, he must fight them all in succession. While such deeds of violence stand out in the reader's mind, in the daily life of the boys they bear the same insignificant ratio to the quiet whole that the murders held up to daily horror in the press bear to the humdrum life of the world. This peaceful condition appears in a more striking light when one considers the great number of questions for dispute certain to arise in the daily life of the " McDonogh boys." He often hears discussions over the rights of the rabbit trappers to the possession of the land ; he can hardly fail to weigh the arguments by which their practice is attacked and defended ; and he is sure to take sides either for or against them. The perplexing questions of the ad- vantages and disadvantages of a system of individual land holding are not the only diflSculties with which his sympathies and his reason have to deal ; for the working of the customs of the school frequently forces upon his notice intricate problems of right and usage. It is apparent that in the operation of the somewhat complicated system of property heretofore described, it is impossible to avoid disputes, and other causes of contention are not wanting. . . . Disputes arising from their peculiar customs of ownership are settled by boys assembling at the place where the controversy is carried on. Most commonly this is in the play room, where they can be free from observation. When Black and Landreth found the nest of a dove in the pines, seeing no mark of prior owners upon the tree, they took the eggs and brought them to the house. As they sat in the play room with needles and straws, preparing the eggs for their cabinet, Delphey over- heard their talk, and questioned them about the spot where the nest was discovered. He soon convinced himself that the nest was one that he had found but a few days before, and on which he had placed the mark of himself and his partners. When he was satisfied on that point, he at once laid claim to the eggs. Landreth and Black angrily refused to give them up, and they were soon hot in dispute. Under THE SPONTANEOUS SOCIAL LIFE OF CfflLDREN 259 the law made for such cases the question of ownership is a nice one. It is granted on both sides that if Delphey, the first finder, is to retain a good title, his label must either remain upon the trunk of the tree, or else in sight upon the ground beneath, where it has fallen by accident. If neither alternative is complied with, any subsequent finder may either take the nest or mark the tree with his own label. By this time a knot of a dozen boys, who had been idling about, had formed around Delphey, hstening mtently. In a few moments he called Duvall, his partner^ for confirmation, and with the utmost particular- ity related the circumstances in which he had found the nest. Del- phey told of the route they took over the stream, through the swamp, and up the hill ; and mentioned the boys they met on the way, whom he compelled to corroborate his assertions. By the time Duvall takes up the accoiuit, the ring surrounding them has become larger ; perhaps twenty boys have gathered, and they listen with strained attention. He proceeds to describe the tree in which the nest was placed, and dwells with convincing minuteness upon its exact situation, upon the color of the bark, the broken Umb, the knot halfway up the trunk, and the nailing of the label upon it. To all his statements it may be that his adversaries, Landreth and Black, assent, only interjecting at intervals the words : " But there wasn't any mark on the tree when we were there." The declarations of either party are addressed as much to the throng around as to their opponents, and it is evident, in the heightened color of the bystanders, in their sparkling eyes, and in their tense muscles, that to them the question is of absorbing interest. Now that the argument of the plaintiffs has been heard in full, there can be no doubt that they marked the nest as they declare ; and yet there is nothing to indicate that the defendants have any intention of restoring the property. Seeing the angry looks and threatening gestures of all the group, one who does not know the school may judge that blows will follow next, and that a general conflict is about to ensue between the partisans of the claimants. Nothing could be farther from the truth. What has occurred is but the ordinary proceeding of a verr primitive court of justice. Delphey knows that Black's arms are strong, his fists hard, and his blows rapid. Landreth has no desire to risk the destruction of his treasure in a struggle where, even if he retains it, he is sure to do so at the cost of bruises and blood. As he rises angrily from his seat and pushes through the crowd, he is not seeking space in which to fight, but a witness to estabhsh his title. This body of spectators, who seem intent upon hearing the whole matter and sifting it to the bottom, is — if the name will serve — the folkmote, the assembly of the people, met to see justice done according to law. Each boy standing in the ring aroimd the orators knows that to-morrow he may be there to 26o SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION maintain his rights before a similar body, in which the plaintiff and the defendant of to-day will alike have a voice to decide upon his claims. He has a feeling that a decision contrary to established cus- tom, however it may accord with his momentary sympathies, will be treated as a precedent to overthrow his most cherished, interests, and to prevent the operation of rules upon which he has confidently counted in every venture in which he is engaged. Every boy there is deter- mined upon the entire preservation of the system of law upon which he has based all his hopes of filling his egg cabinet. We have turned aside a moment from following the actions of the litigants. The clamor of voices rose louder as Landreth moved off, but it subsided somewhat as he reappeared, accompanied by Miller, on whose testimony he relied. The newcomer rapidly explained to those around him that he, too, had seen the nest on the day Landreth took it ; he had examined the tree, and Delphey's mark was not upon it ; he had searched the ground beneath, and could not find the label there ; he would himself have carried off the find, but for the fact that he saw only a single egg, and thought it better to put his own claim mark upon the trunk, and wait till more eggs were laid ; when he had intended to return and get them. It had happened, however, that during his previous search for nests he had, in marking other discoveries, used up all of his labels that he had brought with him, and he had therefore been unable to appropriate the tree at the time. It was after he had gone away, and before he could return with a label, that Landreth had found the nest and possessed himself of its contents, which had mean- while been increased to two eggs by the industrious bird. This evidence ended the trial. Loud cries arose from all parts of the throng. " It's Doggie's nest. It wasn't marked when he found it," said one member of the tumultuous court. " Your mark was blown away, RuflSe," exclaimed another. " It's Doggie's nest." No opposition of importance was made, and, the decision being rendered, Delphey and his partner saw their case was lost and slowly walked away. Landreth and Black, who retained the eggs, returned to their work of blowing them with straws. The making of the claim, the trial and the decision occupied less than half an hour. If not sure, this justice is at least swift. A word may here be given to the ethical questions brought up by this decision. It was admitted by all parties that two boys had found the nest before Landreth and Black had seen it. Landreth's claims in the view of equity would have to yield to Delphey's, who not only found the nest but marked it, and who, in so far as prior discovery gives any rights, clearly had them all. Landreth's title rested upon a piurely technical ground. Yet, with a characteristic analogy to primi- tive habits of thought, it was considered that the perfect title was THE SPONTANEOUS SOCIAL LIFE OF CfflLDREN 261 obtained by a literal fulfillment of the words of the law, by an exact compUance with its minutest provisions. The law provided that no one should take a nest when the mark was on the trunk beneath, or in sight upon the ground. As it had been proved by Miller's testimony that Lan- dreth could not have seen Delphey's label, Delphey's rights vanished. There can be little doubt that the negligent driving of a tack was all that made Landreth the better owner than Delphey, and that Landreth was perfectly aware of this fact. When the suitors and judges were questioned as to why such a decision was given, the only reply to be obtained was, " That's the rule." Like Shylock, Landreth might have said : " I stand here for law," and his determination was to maintain to the full every legal privilege. The idea that the law might give advantages, the use of which morality could not sanction, is so late of development in the legal history of mankind that we must not regard the absence of such a conception among these boys as an indication of an abnormally low state of moral culture. To look for exalted views of right and wrong among them would be to expect them to reverse the usual processes of mental progress. I have treated this incident at such length because of its typical character, and of its hkeness to primitive usage. If it was an event of rare occurrence, its significance would be less ; but it is, in fact, an example of what occurs almost daily at McDonogh. The crowd of boys assembled about the contestants, whose verdict decides the controversy, is, in many respects, the counterpart of a primitive as- sembly of the people on the folkmote. Every boy has the right to express an opinion and every boy present exercises his privilege, though personal prowess and great experience in matters of law have their full share of influence on the minds of the judges. The primitive idea that dispensing justice is a pubUc trust, which the community itself must fulfill towards its members, is embodied in this usage of the " McDonogh boys." The judges are not arbitrators chosen by the disputants, nor are they public fimctionaries, whose sole business is to preside over the courts, but the whole body of the population declares by word of mouth the right and wrong of the matter. This tumul- tuous body of schoolfellows, giving decisions in quarrels and deter- mining questions of custom, reproduces, with remarkable fidehty, the essential character of the primitive Assembly. John Johnson, Johns Bopkins University Studies in History and Political Science, Second Series, No. XI. TOPICS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION I. Make a first-hand study of a boy's gang: as to its personnel, its leader, its objects, its moral influence on it? members and on others, etc. 262 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION 2. The general moral influence of the gang. Puffer, Buck, Chapter II. 3. To what extent can the club take the place of the gang ? Buck, etc. 4. How organize a boy's club? Buck. 5. Let the student analyze the industrial, social and moral situa- tion in a commimity well known to himself, and describe how he might organize a boys' club and what it might accomplish. 6. To what extent can the boys' clubs organized by adults really enlist the hearty support of boys, really utilize their group-forming instincts ? 7. The type of personaUty required by the club adviser. 8. The origin, social significance and probable future of the boy- scout movement. 9. What "primary ideals" seem to be fostered by the gang? Puffer, etc. 10. How do the primary ideals developed by the club differ from those of the gang? 11. Ways in which the institutionaUzed forces of education could strengthen their work by taking into account the corporate or group- forming tendencies of youth. BIBLIOGRAPHY Addams, Jane. The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets. Beard, A. E. S. "Baden-Powell boy scouts," World To-day, 19: 741-743, July, 1910. Good for general reference; concise and brief. Blumeield, R. D. "Boy scouts," Om/Zooj^, 95:617-629, July, 1910. Brown, L. E. T/jc /(iea? Boys' C/m J, Albany, New York. The author. Brown, T. J. "The gang instinct in boys," Association Outlook, 9: No. 8. Buck, Winifred. Boys' Self-governing Clubs, 1906. The best ex- tended account of the practical working of boys' clubs. CuLiN, S. "Street games of Brooklyn," Jour. Am. Folk-Lore, 4 : 221- 237- Durban, W. "The boy scouts and boys' brigades," HomileHc Review, 60 : 375, November, 19 10. Ellis, Havelock. The Criminal, 1900. FoRBRUSH, W. B. The Boy Problem, 1907. THE SPONTANEOUS SOCIAL LIFE OF CfflLDREN 263 GuLiCK, L. H. "Psychological, pedagogical and religious aspects of group games," Ped. S., 6 : 134. GuNCKEL, John E. Boyville, 1905. The work of the newsboys' association of Toledo. A suggestive study of the character-form- ing power of corporate life. Hartson, L. D. "The psychology of the club," Ped. S., 18:353. Johnson, John. "Rudimentary society among boys," Johns Hop- kins University Studies, Second Series, No. XL Selections from, reprinted herewith. LiNDSEY, Ben. B. "The gang and juvenile crime," Work with Boys, 4:43- McCoRMACK, William. "Results in a boys' club," Work with Boys, 6: 171-177. O'Shea, M. V. Social Development and Education, pp. 302-319. Powell. The Knights of the Holy Grail: A solution of the boy problem. Puffer, J. Adams. '"Roys' gaxigs," Pedagogical Seminary, 12:175- 212. A valuable, well-known inductive study. Riis, Jacob. The Children of the Poor, Chapter XIII. Rogers, J. E. "The theory of the boys' clubs," Ed., 30:40. Pur- pose to supervise pleasures, to provide proper environment, positive instruction and training. Russell, Charles E. S., and Rigby, Lilian. Working Lads' Clubs. A complete description of the English Clubs. Seaton, E. T. "Organized boyhood," Success, December, 1910. Sheldon, H. D. "Institutional activities of American children," Am. J. Psych., 1899, 9 : 425-448. Sykes, M. "Let's play lada.a,n," Everybody's, 23:473-483, October, 1910. White, Wm. Allen. The Court of Boyville. The social evolution of the boy based on the culture-epoch hjrpothesis. Woods, Robert A. The City Wilderness. Work with Boys, Vol. I (1900), — , contains many interesting papers not herein mentioned, dealing with boys' clubs. CHAPTER XV THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SCHOOL The Social Life of the School and Social Education In a preceding section we studied " primary groups," one of the fundamental manifestations of social life. We noted that " primary groups " develop with entire spontaneity in childhood and youth. As has been suggested the school, whatever its character or its ideals, has a corporate or group life, of some sort, is in a word a primary group with all the possibilities for shaping or misshaping character, which go therewith. This corporate life is, in fact, an inevitable outcome of the bringing together of young people for the purpose of study and training. It might be called a by-product of regular school activity, but it is an unavoidable by-product, and all who are concerned with education must reckon with it. Indeed, the very fact that some sort of corporate life tends to develop in the school has brought educators to a recognition of the general need that children be trained along so- cial as well as along intellectual lines. Well-developed notions of the significant social side of school work are only beginning to make themselves felt. First there was the spontaneous uncontrolled social life of the school. Then there was a growing recognition of the necessity of the school's supervising and directing these social tendencies that they might not interfere with the regular and proper work of education, and last of all the conviction has gradually shaped itself that not merely must this social Ufe be controlled, but also that it should be a part of the function of public education to develop it, that the educational ideal of social efficiency cannot be attained through a purely intellectual training of youth. The school, then, as a social group presents important problems to the teacher. It is possible to study this school life from two fairly dis- tinguishable points of view. First, there is the social life as a thing in itself, a sort of corporate existence with a definite character and 264 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SCHOOL 265 mode of expression. Secondly, there is the problem of the specific in- fluence exerted by this group life upon the traditional work of teaching and learning. At first thought, this last problem might appear to be only a special aspect of the first one, but it is really a separate and even larger question, having to do with the general social conditions of in- tellectual development.! The problem now before us is that of gaining a clear concept of the nature and significance of the corporate hfe of the school, the ways of controlling it, when necessary, and even of systematically developing it and, furthermore, of the desirability and methods of a social as well as an intellectual training. That there is a social life of the school there is no need here to argue. Whenever people of any age come together and work together for any length of time, some sort of esprit de corps is apt to develop, and it is not strange that it should develop in the school. To be sure this group life varies in character with the age of the pupils. In the ele- mentary school, for instance, it consists of little more than a primitive mob spirit which is manifested only occasionally. More and more, as the secondary school age is approached, does a higher corporate life appear among the pupils. Its beginnings are to be noted in the gradual emergence of opinions of various sorts which exert a marked control- ling influence upon each individual. The pupil gradually becomes conscious of a pubhc opinion among his associates to which he must bow. All sorts of organizations, clubs, and cliques begin quite spon- taneously to grow up. The pupils work more and more in groups. Leaders appear, and a full-fledged social life is soon in full swing, whether the teacher has given the matter his attention or not. The first reaction of the teacher to this budding social spirit is often a feeling that it should be suppressed because of interfering with the le- gitimate work of the school. As soon, however, as it is seen to be in- evitable, the thought comes that it should at least be controlled, so as to produce a minimum of distractions or, perhaps, that it may furnish a safety valve for the bubbUng spirits of youth. There can be no question of the need of this oversight and control, but we are now be- ginning to see that its object is not that of holding in check a necessary evil. Instead of an evil, the corporate life of the school is one of the ' The treatment of this latter phase will be reserved for a later section. 266 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION most important opportxmities of present-day education. As Brown well says : — " There are other factors besides discipline and good order in the school that should enter into the question of its social life. Is it not possible so to control and direct this great adolescent impxilse that it shall become a valuable factor in the education of boys and girls, both from the viewpoint of their own individual welfare and from that of social efficiency? The dominating influence of the impulse seems to challenge our ability to find a valuable use for it rather than to restrain it merely, and from the purely educational point of view this is much the larger part of the problem. What is the educational value of the social life that is possible in the high school? " ' The social development of the pupil is certainly scarcely less im- portant than his intellectual and moral training. In fact, it is seen with increasing clearness that these latter phases are in very intimate ways dependent upon social factors and that they are bound to be distorted if the social side is ignored. It will be well at this point to try to state just what is meant by so- cial education and wherein the need for it exists. Abstractly stated, it may be said that the -object of social education is to develop and afford proper expression for a weU-balanced social nature. As one writer says,^ it is the whole child who goes to school, and he must be provided for as a whole. School is life only in so far as it provides for all fimdamental interests of those who attend. The school brings children together and it is a part of the school's duty to teach them to live together as they will have to live as adults, " serious and useful, but also glad and happy lives." The social training needful is much more than what would be com- prised in learning to conform to the usages of polite society. What we have rather in mind is the larger need of learning to mingle with (Other people and being an effective member of a social group. A man with ever so well trained a mind will neverthele-ss be seriously handi- capped if he does not know how to talk to his fellow-men, how to per- suade them, how to cooperate with them in common enterprises. There are a thousand things of the utmost importance for a successful • J. F. Brown, American Eigh School. ' W. B. Owen, "Social education through the school," School Smew, Vol. is, p. i3- THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SCHOOL 267 life which can be learned only by being an active member of a well- organized social group. A man who would succeed in any kind of business must know how to meet people and how to deal tactfully with them, how to enjoy them, and his sense of humor must be keen. It will be greatly to his advantage to know how to conduct himself with- out embarrassment and with frankness and coiurtesy among those of the opposite sex. In a word, our truly successful man must be good mannered, sympathetic, sociable, himian. The school group affords many opportunities for providing for just these needs, for effecting a wholesome development of the social nature of the youth. The qualities enumerated above, although they rest upon instincts, are largely shaped by proper social intercourse. Nor are the so-called social conventionalities to be despised in edu- cation. They often in themselves seem artificial and arbitrary even to the point of absurdity, but they are safeguards of individual and public morality. Training in social usages affords to adolescents a legitimate outlet to impulses, which are, at their age, in very definite need of both expression and regulation. A controlled or conventiona- lized social life is a safety valve for which the school may well do its part to provide. " The educational value of experience in more or less formal life is very great, especially for those young people whose social positions would deprive them of it elsewhere. Probably it is of no less value to the children of the rich or cultured if they learn through it the lesson of true politeness and graciousness." '■ " What is wanted [then] is a hearty recognition of the desirability of many forms of social activity in the high school, and the active participation of the faculty or specified members thereof in their de- velopment. Already there are some evidences of this in the matter of athletics. Under a director of physical education, having a broad view of the physiological and social significance of sports and ath- letics, much can be done, as experience shows. Possibly in other social matters a large high school could not do better than to develop some kind of social secretary or school visitor who should study social needs and cooperate in the realization of means to meet them. In some schools the practice has arisen of having each society which is organized with the school as a basis select some member of the faculty 1 J. F. Brown, of. cii. 268 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION as an advisory or counseling member. This works well, and thfi teachers should be provided with time and means to cooperate. In small schools an active principal, of course, keeps the advisory func- tions in his own hands, but under present traditions he is not always sympathetic, looking upon social activities as something to be toler- ated, but not to be encouraged." ^ It is important to bear in mind that the social life of the school is a great deal larger and more complex than a mere series of evening parties or other so-called social functions. It , is true these may be one of the modes by which that social life finds expression, but there are other and even more important modes. It is this narrower aspect, however, which the superficial critic usually has in mind when he urges against the development of the social life of the school that there is already too much of that very thing. True there may be too many parties, but there can hardly be too much of properly controlled social hfe. At any rate the social life is there and will remain there, and it is the abnormal distorted phases which inevitably develop, when school officials refuse to recognize the societary character of the school or try to suppress it, that are open to criticism. Of this there may easily be too much. It is the normal, healthful, corporate life, which finds expression in many ways, of which each pupil is a part and to which each pupil contributes something that is referred to in this discussion. It re- veals itself in various activities of the school as a whole and also in all sorts of subsidiary and yet contributing activities. " The entire small school may well form the social vmit. Even in the largest schools the whole must be the unit whose interests domi- nate. Smaller groups may be advantageously formed, but their ac- tivities must be properly limited, and they must not be left to run themselves without the interest or supervision of teachers. . . . "These groups may be organized with the best purposes, but the instances are extremely few in which they can run successfully without the assistance of a wiser head." ^ The subordinate groups are to be thought of as expressions of dif- ferentiated interests, affording to the several members of the school ' Button and Snedden, pp. 379, 380. ' J. F. Brown, The American High School, p. 368. THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SCHOOL 269 group opportunity for contributing to the general life according to their individual interests and capacities. The school may be made more of an avenue for social training in the best sense by cultivating various expressions of general corporate life such as are found in ordi- nary schools. Among these, the commonest and often least appre- ciated is the school assembly for morning exercises and for other simi- lar functions. Another important expression of the life of the school as a whole occurs in interschool contests in oratory, debate or ath- letics. These contests serve to bring out and develop group feeling in ways that are most healthful if they are properly controlled. It is not, however, the mere spirit as such that is important, but rather opportunities afforded by these strong general interests for various lines of cooperative activity in which the entire school may participate. Here the pupils get valuable lessons in the art of working together and subordinating self-interest to the general welfare. There are also unlimited opportunities for learning how to meet and talk to people, plead causes, shape opinions of one's fellows, all of which is indis- pensable to one who wishes to be able to handle such many-sided vo- cations in present-day society as those of the educator, doctor, lawyer, minister or business man. The school festival as developed by the Ethical Culture School, New York, is an admirable illustration of the way the school life may find fruitful expression". " There are two important effects which may be said to be the basic ideas of the festival. The one has to do particularly with the school body as audience, the other with those who in any particular festival are the performers. The festival serves as a unifying influence which is felt by every one in the school audience. This results from the, fact that although parents are welcomed as visitors, the festival is prepared for the members of the school and is adapted to their needs. The assigning of various festivals to grades, from different sections of the school, and treating the contributions of each as that which one part of the family gives to the whole, also adds to this result. Thus, at harvest or Thanksgiving time, the members of the oldest class may present their message to all their younger mates ; at Christmas time the entertainers are an intermediate grade ; on May Day, the pri- maries. Then, again at the Christmas season, each class may join 270 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION in the grand procession, and with gay costumes, rollicking song or simple action contribute its part to the whole. Each gives what it can, and all receiving this in a sympathetic way are thus bound into one large family or social group. The appreciative applause with which the older greet the younger, who in their turn at the proper time repay the compliment, gives rise to a school feeling and pride which is an inspiration and help to all. " Possibly the most important imderlying idea is this : For those who are presenting the festival, there are certain advantages that can hardly be secured in any other way. The responsibility for the occa- sion introduces a peculiarly valuable motive which affects even the most unresponsive members of the class. The problem of learning has a new aspect, for the question of communication here appears in its best form. To the performers comes a transforming standard; not what we know, but what we can make others know ; not what we feel, but what we can make others feel. Very soon arises a conscious- ness of that first element of effective communication ; namely, abso- lute clearness and definiteness on the part of the one who is to give the message. Pupils become conscious of their own weaknesses, as they strive to collect their material. In the desire to help others they find they must prepare themselves. There arises a spirit of self-induced activity which is of the greatest value. Books are read, authorities consulted, pictures studied, that the teacher hardly knows about." ' Aside from these general expressions of group life there are, as we have indicated, the differentiated activities of various minor organiza- tions, all, however, contributing something of interest to the general Ufe of the school. Of such are the various clubs, athletic, dramatic, debating, camera and musical; the chorus, the orchestra, etc. In each case something of more or less general interest is worked out by those specially adapted for it. A part of the interest is due to the knowledge that they are doing something in whose accomplishment all are to some extent interested. In fact, the very life of a club depends upon some degree of social approval — upon some recognition of social service. " The school must seek out and develop lines of social par- ticipation, and must aim in a friendly manner to aid those of spon- taneous development. Only thus can it recognize the vast impor- ' Peter Dykema, Craftsman, it : 649, 650, THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SCHOOL 271 tance of this period in social education. Social education of the best type will not be found in books, nor even through the contact of teach- ers of high social power. It must be learned in action, and the schools must aid in the development of channels for these activities." ' In these smaller organizations there is again abundant opportunity for the individual to learn the lessons of the social arts of conversa- tion, of service, of cooperation and of leadership. It is most important that the members of the various subsidiary organizations should feel that what they do is a sort of specialized contribution to the common life of the school. In this life of the school as a whole and of the vari- ous organizations within the school there is fertile soil in which primary ideals will almost spontaneously spring up and flourish. Aside from the social training from participation in the general and specialized phases of school life, some have felt that there is need for a social training in the narrower sense. Thus it is held ^ that the school must provide for mere social recreation, and that it should offer in its program, at stated intervals, opportunities for social intercourse of the more formal sort. The first and most valuable result of such op- portunities for social recreation is that they satisfy a natural and harm- less desire, " and thus contribute to the happiness of the individual. The youth who has no social life is usually unhappy, and is sometimes driven by his solitude to unfortunate habits of thought or conduct. In mature life one is glad to remember a happy youth as well as a happy childhood, and whatever contributes innocently to that end is com- mendable." ' The average modern family, even if it fully understood the need, is scarcely able, financially, to provide properly for the social recrea- tion of its children. The school at least has an opportunity that the home does not have. The children are already together and are under more or less definite control. It usually has some suitable places such as classrooms or gymnasium in which social functions can take place with little expense and under proper supervision. Moreover, as Owen says, " the natural companionship of the pupil is with his schoolmates. The school society, in reality, is formed every morning when the pupils ' Dutton and Snedden, op. cit., p. 380. ' W. B. Owen, "Social Education through the School," School Review, Vol. 15. • Brown, op. cit., p. 311. 272 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION leave their homes, and is dissolved every evening as they reach their homes. The very act of bringing the young together for school pur- poses is a stimulus to their social instincts. The school ought to recog- nize this, and in connection with, and imder the control of, the school there ought to be provided ample opportunity for purely social rec- reation. This policy would not contemplate at all the confusing of two different aims, the intellectual and the social^ but the fusion of the two into a larger and more inclusive aim. I would advocate, to be explicit, the introduction into 'the program of the school regular social occasions, as stated, at reasonably frequent intervals. These social meetings might take whatever form the circumstances would suggest. They should be conducted under school control in such a way as to be a source of pleasure to the pupils and of real educational value. Ask yourselves about our ideals as to the all-around training of our own children. Do we not consider their social training an es- sential element in their future success, just as essential as their intel- lectual training? Can we not secure this training in large measure, if we but know how, in connection with their school life? We trust this whole side of education to the family. But I submit that the family does not and cannot control the social training that for good or ill is an inevitable accompaniment of the gathering together of so many young people into the school. Instead of dehberately neglecting these patent facts, why should we not utihze them as a golden oppor- timity for roxmding out our educational scheme? We should thus imify and enrich the life of the children and bind them by the strongest ties to the school, and the indirect influence of such a course on the purely intellectual work of the school would be of the best. I know of an experiment of this kind in a school, and I can bear testimony that in the opinion of teachers and pupils the experiment is an unqualified success. ^ " That some such provision is needed in our schools is proved by the development of the high school fraternities and sororities. The real meaning of these organizations is that the pupils have in this way at- tempted to provide just such social opportunities as we have suggested. It is idle to object to them that they are selfish and inadequate, when we remember that they are the creations of young and inexperienced children. It is equally idle to declaim against them unless we can THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SCHOOL 273 provide some other system that will do for all what they do for some. I am strongly opposed to the fraternity system in oiu: schools, but I hope that I am not bigoted on the question. My fimdamental and single objection to them is the fact that they organize the school on a social basis that is narrow and selfish. I can conceive, however, a social organization of the school in which they might possibly be of but little significance. But as long as the life of the school is what it now is, they serve but to emphasize our neglect. I can appreciate the theoretical defense made in their behalf by a culture-epoch theory of history. The simple fact is that they stand in the way of a social organization of the school that shall provide for all free expressions to social instinct, controlled development of social power, and a happy enjoyment of the society of one's fellows. The best way to deal with the school fraternity is to beat it at its own game. "Other vexed questions of school policy and management find a rea- sonable solution when viewed from this standpoint. School athletics ' are an instance in point. As at present conducted, they are for the selected few. All that is said for them as developing individual cour- age and prowess and as focusing at times the spirit of the school could as well be said were they but incidental to a larger athletic life in which all could participate. Provision for supervised and directed play for all pupils is the ideal, not toward which we should strive, but with which we should begin. We talk a great deal about the play instinct and its place in intellectual and social development. But we promote a system of school athletics that throws our theories to the winds. Let some one of our schools set itself resolutely to experiment with this problem and give us all the benefit of the results. Could we ask for a better chance to provide social and moral training than might be found on a well-equipped playground under the control of rightly trained instructors? The park commissioners have recognized the opportunities, even if the board of education has not. "If the point of view we have developed is correct, what shall we say of coeducation in the schools? The problem is not an easy one, and it bids fair to become more difficult with the growing complexity of our life. Admitting, then, the difficulties to exist, what shall be our method of procedure? We have a system thoroughly established — at least in the schools of the Middle West. In the main, it has worked 274 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION satisfactorily. Now that we are conscious of certain unfavorable tendencies and results, what should be our recourse? Should we hastily retrace our steps and abandon what we have already gained? Should we not rather ask ourselves if these shortcomings of the sys- tem are not due to the neglect to round out and complete it ? I pre- fer to believe that the latter is the way of wisdom. Mechanically to mass boys and girls together in a classroom or in the halls is not co- education. The problem does not have its origin in the classroom. It is pushed in from outside. Not originating there, it cannot be solved there. It is a problem again of the organization of the whole school life. Why can we not realize what the problem is and adopt direct means to solve it instead of evading or retreating? Boys and girls should be taught to live and work together as they will be called upon to live and work in life." It is scarcely necessary to specify at length the objections to an un- controlled social life in the school. As suggested in the above quota- tion, the fraternity is one of the results. In general, lack of control results in the development of factions and cliques. A school with such a social life is more open to, the lower aspects of suggestion. A distinctly low plane of sociaHty develops. The pupils get no well- balanced social education. Some are crowded out and others appro- priate the lion's share of the privileges that should be for all alike. In the pages which follow is described the practical experience of one school which has attempted to provide for the social needs of its pupUs. The Social Organization of the High School That the school is a society, that the child is a social being, that education is not preparation for life, but life itself, are statements found in many oft-recurring forms in the literature of pedagogy. Of the truth of the principle involved, there can be no doubt. In recent times the curriculum of the secondary school has been ex- amined in the light of this doctrine, and important modifications have been made involving the dropping of some subjects, the addition of others, and marked changes in methods of instruction. But no one will declare that with all these changes on the formal side our high schools are now making adequate provision for the social training of their pupDs. THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SCHOOL 275 Sociability is a marked characteristic of the period of adolescence. Young people of this age form natural groups for team games, for literary and artistic pursuits of a more or less serious nature, and for less serious enjoyments such as dancing. The reason underlying the formation of all these groups is their desire to be together. The home is able to provide for these social enjoyments only in a small degree, and in most cases does not do so at all. The church does something in this direction for those whom it is able to reach. Some churches have formed clubs for their boys and girls which in a meas- ure satisfy the social needs of a few, but these organizations are usually restricted by lack of suitable leaders and of the facilities required to give variety and permanent attractiveness to their work. The Young Men's Christian Association also partly meets the needs of many. But the street corner, vacant lot, billiard hall, and some- times less desirable places are often the only places in which this natural instinct finds unrestricted opportunity for development. Under these conditions it is small wonder that the satisfaction of this desire for social activity on the part of young people often takes forms anno)dng to the older and more serious members of the com- munity, if not positively harmful to the young people themselves. But while the home, the church and similar organizations are unable to meet the social needs of the adolescent boy and girl, the high school is pecxiliarly adapted to this end. It is the natural center for the promotion and proper regulation of this side of the pupil's life. Thrown together intimately during a large part of their waking hours, the pupils most naturally form their social groups from their school- fellows. The classes form natural units for competition in athletic games; the pupil's interest in hterary, musical or artistic activities often makes it possible to turn his social instincts in directions which promote his intellectual and aesthetic development. There is also the additional advantage that the authority of the teachers, which controls the pupils as no authority outside of school does, if extended sympathetically to the social life of the pupils, assures a better regu- lation than can possibly be provided in any other way. It is apparent that the high school has generally failed to recog- nize its responsibility in this direction. Athletic, literary, debating, musical and art clubs, with the other forms of social activity natural to this period, are seldom thought of by school authorities as a means of securing an important educational end. Save as a principal or teacher has a chance to interest himself in some particular form of the social life of his pupils, little attention is paid to those features of school life except to repress or control their troublesome developments. For proof of this, one need only look through the proceedings of our educational societies and the periodicals of secondary education, 276 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION where he will find numerous articles dealing with the pathological side of the situation. Prominent among these are numerous papers dealing with the diflSculties arising from the financial mismanagement of school athletics and the low standards of sportsmanship prevailing in high schools. Perhaps the best illustration of the serious conse- quences of the prevalent attitude of school authorities toward these matters is found in the school fraternity, which grew up and flourished recently in response to a real need of the pupils for the satisfaction of which the school made no provision. But neither the difficulties connected with school athletics nor the more serious ones of the school fraternity can be permanently removed by the method of repression. Unless we give more serious and intelligent consideration to the real nature of the problem, we shall find ourselves before long confronted by the same difficulties in another form. We cannot change the nature of the boy, nor should we try to do so. Only as we come to understand him and work sympathetically with him can we expect to secure peace for ourselves and an adequate social training for him. The English public schools since the time of Arnold have recog- nized the importance of sports in developing the many qualities which make for sound character. One need only visit the playing fields of Rugby on an afternoon of a half holiday and watch the boys at play, or walk through the cricket clubhouse where no lockers are necessary to insure the security of one's possessions, to reaUze that there are standards of honesty and sportsmanship attainable among boys which we have as yet hardly dared to hope for. It is true that the boys in these schools come from a distinct social class and present a homogeneity of ideal and training which is found in none of our pub- lic high schools and is only approached in a few of our private schools; yet the traditions and practices of the great public schools of England are the result of an appreciation of the possibilities of utilizing the natural social instincts of the boys and of a definite plan of organi- zation for the purpose of securing through these the best possible training for the leaders of the next generation. Of late, notable success has been secured in the same direction in the Enghsh mu- nicipal day schools, which are very much like our public high schools. The most valuable lesson which we may learn from the English schools is in their recognition of the value of the more purely social activities as a means of training the youth and in their method of organizing these activities in such a way as to secure the best results. In this country many schools have adopted elaborate systems of social organization called " school cities " and generally spoken of under the rather misleading caption of " student self-government." These have consciously imitated the forms of organization of mature society, particularly on the repressive side, with policemen and courts THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SCHOOL 277 of justice through which offenders against the requirements of the school society are detected, apprehended, tried and sentenced by their fellows. It is claimed that practical civics may best be taught in this way, that pupils develop greater independence, a higher sense of honor, and more consideration for the rights of others. These desirable ends have doubtless been secured through the operation of the plan under favorable conditions. However, its adoption by teachers who had not considered sufficiently the details of the plan or by those who were not adapted to this peculiar method of control has led in many cases to its failure and abandonment. In the last analysis there is no such thing as successful student self-government. The guiding personality of the teacher, however tactfully he may conceal himself, is the one feature to its success. It may further be said that this form of organization is highly artificial, and the duties which the pupils assume with the offices to which liiey are elected are likely to become uninteresting and arduous. After all, the school city does not, as an essential part of its opera- tion, make provision for those natural social activities to which I have just referred as so prominent in the life of the English public school. In these, the house, in which from forty to sixty boys live, forms the natural unit of organization of the social life. On entrance to school a boy is placed in a certain house of which he continues to be a member so long as he remains in the school. In this house center all his social interests and enthusiasms. For its honor he contends in football, cricket and the other forms of contests, feeling greater concern only for the honor of his school as a whole. The same method of organization has been employed in many English day schools, the boys being divided into groups called " houses," carrying over this name from the boarding schools, although of course the boys do not live together in separate houses. Among the advantages of this method of organization are the following: the houses form vmits of convenient size and provide a large number of positions in which boys are learning how to be effective leaders ; the permanency of the group makes it possible to build up strong and helpful traditions; the presence in the same house of boys at all stages of advancement brings the younger boys into intimate relation with their leaders and provides for the control of the younger by the older boys. The house method with some modification has been adopted in some of our American boarding schools, but it is not adapted to con- ditions in our high schools. What we may learn from the English school is not so much in the direction of formal organization as in the attitude of the teachers toward the social Ufe of the boys. In England the secondary school teacher feels it as much a part of his work to share in the sports of his boys on the playground as to instruct them 278 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION in the classroom. It is not difficult to trace to its own source the real reason why sport is enjoyed by English boys for its own sake and why the low standards of honesty and sportsmanship so often found in American schools are not to be found there. Instead of placing our teachers in responsible charge of the boys at their games, more often we leave them without supervision or give them into the hands of professional coaches whose personal habits are frequently questionable and whose chief desire is that their team may win at whatever cost. It is absolutely essential to the proper organization and control of the social activities of the high school that the teachers shall recognize their value and share in the responsibihty and labor involved. It is only fair to expect that time and effort spent by teachers in these directions shall be taken into consideration in the amount of other work assigned in the more formal work of teaching. No such basis as the English schools find in their house plan for the formation of suitable groups seems to be at hand in our high schools. The classes form natural groups around which certain social activities center, but in the various literary, scientific, musical and other clubs, no such basis of selection is appropriate. Here similarity of interests seems to offer the only basis for the formation of groups. One principle must be insisted upon, that all except class clubs shall be open to all members of the school, both pupils and teachers. The details of organization adapted to any individual school may best be worked out by those in charge. It may not be inappropriate to state with some completeness the methods employed and the results secured in the school with which the writer is connected. The University High School, Chicago, is a day school of six hundred pupils of whom about two thirds are boys. The school aims to pro- vide for all the proper social activities of its pupils. These activities are in charge of four committees of the faculty as follows : Committee on Athletics and Games, Committee on Literary Clubs, Committee on Science and Art Clubs, Committee on Student Publications. The following rules have been adopted governing all clubs in the school : (i) All clubs have faculty advisers. (2) No club holds its meetings in the evening. (3) New clubs to be formed must obtain the approval of the appropriate faculty committee. (4) All clubs in arranging for the time of meeting must consult the appropriate faculty committee. (5) The days of meeting of the different clubs are : Monday — Music Clubs ; Tuesday — Science and Literary Clubs ; Wednesday, Arts and Crafts Clubs; Thursday — Debating Clubs; Friday — Parties. It is apparent that these activities are under careful supervision. This, of course, does not mean that the teachers exert a repressive influence that robs the social life of the pupils of its natural spon- THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SCHOOL 279 taneity. They are rather helpful advisers sharing with the pupils in their enjoyment of their social life. The requirement that all meet- ings of clubs shall be in the daytime removes many difficulties that are found where pupils gather in the evening. All meetings are held on the school premises, the usual hour being three o'clock, the hour when the session of the day ends. The schedule providing for meet- ings of certain groups of clubs on certain days makes it possible for a pupU to belong to clubs of various sorts and thus extend his social activities more widely than he otherwise might. Athletics naturally interest the greatest number of both boys and girls. For the boys, athletics include football, baseball, track, basket ball, swimming, golf, tennis and gymnastics; for the girls there are basket ball, baseball, hockey, tennis, golf, swimming, track and gymnastics. These sports are in charge of the Department of Phys- ical Instruction, which consists of two men and two women who devote all their time to the physical training of the pupils with such assistants as are necessary to secure careful supervision of all games. There are contests throughout the entire year in these various sports, out of doors when the weather is suitable and indoors at other times. Most of the contests are between different teams of the school. For these teams the classes form the basis of division, though the num- ber of teams from a given class is not confined to one in each sport. For example, in the autumn, in football each class has -its first and second teams. Definite schedules are played by the boys' class teams in football, baseball, track (both indoor and outdoor), basket ball, and tennis, and by the girls' teams in basket ball, swimming and tennis. With competition running high for places on these different teams and with daily practice or games, it will be seen that every afternoon throughout the entire year finds a large number both of the boys and of the girls engaged in competitive games of some sort. During the autumn of last year there were eight football teams prac- ticing and playing regularly. It is possible in this way to rob of all weight the objection that athletics actually furnish physical training only to a few pupils and those the ones who least need it. While the school does not yet secure, as do the English public schools, that each pupil who is physically able shall compete regularly in some form of athletic sport, yet a large part, both boys and girls, actually do engage in such sport with regularity under careful supervision. While in most schools interschool games with the preparation of the teams for these contests comprise all the athletic training and are participated in by a very small number of pupils, in the Univer- sity High School the interschool games comprise but a small part of those, actually played. For example, last autumn, while there were more than one hundred boys who played in football games, there 28o SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION were only four games played with teams from other schools. In some other forms of sport the number of interschool games was larger than in football, but in all the sports the number of games played between teams within the school was much in excess of those played with teams from other schools. It has been urged that distinct advantage would be gained if all interschool athletic games could be given up and all contests be confined to teams within the school. The high schools of one city have tried this plan, and reports indicate that the results have been most satisfactory. This is doubtless an effective method of getting rid of the serious difficulties that have attended interschool games in the past. But these difficulties are not without possibility of remedy, and giving up interschool contests is a distinct loss to a school. Dr. Gulick has shown that while the physical resxilts of interschool athletics are inconsiderable, the chief end sought in these contests is not physical, but social and moral, training in which the whole school shares. By being loyal to his school, whether a member of a team or not, a boy is developing " the qualities of loyalty, of social morality and of social conscience. These are the essential elements out of which social loyalty and morality may be developed." With clear vision and firm insistence upon high standards of sports- manlike conduct on the part of athletic teams, school officers may lay ■ the foundation of traditions for clean and gentlemanly sport which every member of the school, as well as the members of the team, will take pride in maintaining. Not many years ago the annual football game between two schools was attended with a general fight between the supporters of the opposing teams in which it was necessary for the police to take a hand, followed in the dark- ness of night by defacement of the walls of the school buildings by the painting of opprobrious epithets. Last autumn on the evening before the game between these same schools, the members of one team were entertained at dinner by the members of the other, and while the game was attended by intense enthusiasm on the part of the supporters from each school, there were none of the unfortvmate occurrences of the former year, and the two schools actually cheered for each other more than once during the game. There is no doubt that here was a distinct gain in social morality on the part of some two thousand young people which was worth much effort to secure and which could not have been gained except through the agency of carefully conducted interschool athletics. In order to establish the relation of host and guest between the opposing teams, in the con- tract for two games in successive years with the only team outside Chicago with which our team will play, there is a specific agreement that the home team shall entertain their visitors socially at dinner on the evening before the game. THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SCHOOL 281 At the close of the season for each sport, school emblems are awarded to members of the teams which have represented the school, and to the class teams the privilege of wearing the class numeral is given. These are voted by the faculty committee on athletics on the recommendation of the member of the Department of Physical Training in charge of the team and the captain of the team. In awarding these emblems, faithfulness in training and in practice and loyalty to the team and school are fundamental requirements which are considered in addition to ability and performance in the games. It has happened that an athlete of exceptional ability has failed to receive an emblem because he did not meet the high standard set outside that for mere abihty in the sport. When it is also considered that the privilege of representing the school in any form depends upon the satisfactory performance of scholastic work, it will be under- stood that, the school emblem is perhaps the most coveted possession one may secure. At the last assembly of each quarter the successes of the teams are recounted by their fellows, and the members are called upon the platform, where, amid great enthusiasm, they receive their emblems. But opportunity is never lost at these times to point out the real meaning of the occasion and to restate and strengthen the traditions for manly sport that are becoming every year more effective in the school. While athletics probably engage a larger amount of time and interest than all other forms of social life combined, provision is made for a great variety of social activity of other sorts. Debating is carried on in class clubs which meet at regular intervals and in the Clay Club, an organization which dates from the first year of the school. Debates are held each year with other schools, for which the debaters are selected by competition open to the entire school. After the contests the sting of defeat as well as the elation of victory is tempered by bringing the representatives of the two schools together socially on the basis of guest and host. The Engineering Club holds regular meetings throughout the year, at which reports are made and papers read both by members of the Club and by others. The Camera and Sketch clubs interest many, and make creditable exhibits of their work at the end of the year which attract the attention not only of members of the school, but of many visitors. The Dramatic Club supplements regular work given to an elective class in connection with the EngHsh Department. Perhaps the most creditable public per- formance connected with all the social work of the school has been the annual dramatic entertainment, which attracts a large and appre- ciative audience. Two short plays, of high literary and artistic merit, are presented, the object being to provide opportunity for as large a number as possible to share the benefits resulting from this training. 282 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION Competent judges select the participants in trials open to all pupils of the school. There are various musical clubs, both vocal and in- strumental, which meet regularly and furnish music for the school assemblies and various public occasions. Modern language clubs make agreeable social adjuncts to the classroom work in these departments. Reference has been made to the classes as forming natural group divisions in athletics. These are also used for debating, music, class parties, etc. Class meetings give excellent opportunities for gaining knowledge and practice in parliamentary usage. Class elections are always held by ballot in the school office. Nominations are made by a committee elected by the class, and additional nominations may be made by petition signed by ten members of the class. In practice this method of nomination is always employed. There are three student publications, — a daily newspaper, a monthly devoted to literary work, and an annual of the usual sort. Each of these is under the careful supervision of a teacher. The daily is a four-page sheet which covers in a thorough manner the daily hap- penings of the school and also serves as a bulletin for announcements to pupils and faculty. A separate group of editors has charge of each day's issue during the week, thus distributing the work so that it is not excessive. The material used in the monthly is selected from the regular theme work of the class. The Students' Council is an organization consisting of fifteen mem- berS) comprising the presidents of each of the four classes and four members of the senior class, three members of the junior class, and two members each from the sophomore and freshman class. It is thus a representative group of the entire school. Regular meetings are held at which matters of general interest to the school are dis- cussed. Recommendations from the students to the faculty are made through the medium of the council. Measures under consideration by the faculty are sometimes referred to the council and their opinion sought. Aside from these deliberative functions, the council nomi- nates the candidates for managers of the various athletic teams before their election by the Faculty Committee on Athletics and Games. A group of " honor societies " presents what is, perhaps, a unique feature in the high school. One of these, open both to boys and girls, is based on scholarship. Its object, as stated, is to maintain the standard of scholarship and to promote good fellowship among the members of the school. Election to this is confined to members of the senior class who have been members of the school not less than two years, who have maintained a certain high record of scholarship, and who are of good moral character. All who have satisfied these conditions are elected to membership on approval of the deans. Membership in this society is a highly coveted honor. Two other THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SCHOOL 283 societies, one each for boys and girls, are composed of members of the senior class selected because of distinguished service in promoting the social, as contrasted with the scholastic, life of the school. The membership of the boys' society is limited to fifteen, and of the girls' society to ten. For purpose of election to these societies, the more important of the offices in connection with the various social organi- zations are divided into two classes, major and minor. Those holding major offices become ex officio members. Of those holding minor offices, enough are selected by the senior class to fill the membership of the boys' society to fifteen, and of the girls' to ten. In these elec- tions, which are held by ballot in the school offices, boys vote for boys, and girls for girls. All candidates for these societies, both ex officio and by election, must be approved by vote of the faculty. That it may not appear that too great a premium is placed on the holding of office, it should be stated that no one of these offices, either major or minor, can be held by one who has failed in any study during the previous quarter or whose work in any study is unsatisfactory at the time of election. That membership in these societies is the most highly coveted honor in the school will be easily appreciated. It is interesting to note that there are several instances each year in which the same pupil is a member of the honor society based on scholarship and of that based on social prominence. The general school assembly plays an important part in the social life of the school. This occurs on Monday morning and occupies a full hour. It is introduced by a brief formal religious service. The remainder of the hour is used in various ways to serve the interests of the school. All announcements regarding the different clubs and other student organizations are made by the student officers, who always speak from the platform. A sense of responsibility is thus encouraged in the officers, and, besides, there is no small value in this practice in extemporaneous speaking before a large and critical audience. School activities not easily under observation are made the subjects of special programs. An example of this sort is the school daily, to which an entire program was given, embodying a description by several members of the staff of the process of bringing out a single issue. The awarding of emblems to the athletic teams at the close of each quarter has already been described. Frequent musical programs are furnished by members of the faculty and pupils. There are lectures and addresses on appropriate _ subjects from time to time, and of course there are certain vital topics which need to be presented by the officers of the school. In general it is the purpose to make the assembly an occasion in which the whole school gathers to consider together, in as informal a manner as pos- sible, the things which are vitally interesting to the school. 284 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION The University High School, in common with most city high schools, has had its fraternity problem to settle. Five years ago there were in the school several secret societies among both boys and girls. The whole question was considered carefully for a year by faculty, parents and students. As a result of much discussion it was decided by vote of the Parents' Association to rid the school of these organizations by requiring a pledge from the pupils who were then members that they would take no further members into their societies. The original societies, with constantly diminishing membership by reason of graduation or removal, had a legitimate existence in the school up to last year. All applicants for admission to the school be- fore their applications are accepted are now required to present the fol- lowing pledge signed by themselves and their parents or guardians : — " I hereby declare that I am not a member of any fraternity, sorority, or other secret society, and that I am not pledged to any such society. I hereby promise without any mental reservation that, as long as I shall be a member of the University High School, I will have no connection whatever with any secret society, in this school or elsewhere. I also declare that I regard myself bound to keep these promises, and on no account to violate any of them." The present situation with reference to fraternities has not been secured without many difficulties. These have been increased by the proximity of other schools in which chapters of the fraternities repre- sented in the University High School could not be prevented from initiating members of the school. It has been necessary to remove from school a few who have violated their pledges. It may, how- ■ ever, fairly be said that the fraternity problem has been successfully solved. The school authorities, however, have recognized that the fra- ternity represented the students' attempt to satisfy for themselves a genuine need. To provide for this natural desire of boys to get together in a place which they may call their own, the University High Club was started a little more than two years ago. Fortunately, there was a two-story dwelling house situated on the school ground, and owned by the University, which was easily made available for the use of the club. The house has a reception room, a reading room, a dining room, and a kitchen on the first floor ; the second floor is occupied by the billiard room and one or two other small rooms. The clubhouse is open each day from 12.30 to 6 p.m. to members, who may be either boys or male teachers of the school. The mem- bership fee is within the reach of all. Additional income is obtained from the billiard and pool tables and from the lunch room, which, by its profits, pays the expenses of a competent steward for the house. The officers of the club are boys who are under the supervision of a THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SCHOOL 285 member of the faculty. Regular meetings of the officers and direc- tors are held, and a good deal of enterprise is shown in the manage- ment of club affairs. There is always a feeling of responsibility on the part of the officers who are among the older and more reliable boys which has absolutely prevented any serious misuse of the privi- leges of the club. The clubhouse is much frequented, boys and teachers enjo5dng its privileges together. Occasional social events take place here on Friday or Saturday evenings, such as small enter- tainments given by members of the club, or talks by men, some- times the fathers of the boys. Visiting athletic teams are entertained here, the boys taking peculiar satisfaction in extending this courtesy in a clubhouse which is their own. Occasionally on a Saturday or some other special day, the clubhouse has been turned over to the girls, who have greatly appreciated this borrowed privilege. For the past two years there has been a Girls' Club, membership in which is open to all girls in the school without charge. Seven rooms in an apartment house on the school groimds have been attractively fur- nished by the girls and their mothers, and are used exclusively for the club. The club is organized similarly to that of the boys, and meets the social needs of the girls of the schopl. These clubs form the center of the social life of the boys and girls. In both there is a con- sistent effort to maintain a democratic spirit and to avoid the atmos- phere of snobbishness, which is fundamentally the worst feature of the fraternity and sorority. A recent innovation which promises to be of significance in the moral training of the boys of the school has been this year carried on in connection with the city Young Men's Christian Association. On each Wednesday evening a supper is served in the Y. M. C. A. build- ing to the boys of the University High School and the Hyde Park High School, a public school in the same section of the city. The privilege of attendance has not been limited to members of the Asso- ciation. From fifty to one hundred boys with three or four instructors sit down together at table. After supper they disperse to different rooms, where some form of Bible study or the consideration of some distinctively moral subject is taken up for forty-five minutes. The experience of one year indicates that these groups are likely to become centers of moral influence affecting the life of the entire school most beneficially. Up to this point no direct reference has been made to that side of the social life growing out of the association of boys and girls in the same school. Of course, these relations have been imphed in connection with the class organizations and the various dramatic, musical, literary and art clubs, in which the boys and girls mingle freely. It is, however, in connection with the parties that the boys 286 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION and girls come together for the sole purpose of enjoying one another's society. On each Friday afternoon during the autumn and winter quarters, there is a dancing party in the gymnasium from three to four-thirty. This is in charge of the teacher, who gives the regular class instruction in gymnastic dancing; there are also other teachers present and always a considerable number of parents. The party is open to all members of the school, but to no one else. No one is allowed to enter after the party opens nor leave until its close, and all who are present participate. The dancing takes the form of a cotilUon, in which the figures are so devised as to secure a frequent and general mixing of the participants. The party closes formally, the parents and teachers standing in Une to receive the good nights of the pupils as they pass out. These parties are largely attended, are evidently greatly enjoyed, and are marked by naturalness in the relations of the boys and girls toward each other. The period since these parties have been held has witnessed a constant diminution in the silliness which is supposed to accompany the relations of boys and girls at this age, and a corresponding increase in natural and un- affected conduct in the presence of each other. At the end of the autumn and winter quarters, two of these parties are made special occasions, one for the two lower, and the other for the two upper, classes. At these the Parents' Association provides favors, refresh- ments and special music. Again, toward the close of the year, an- other party is given to the whole school under the same auspices, which is the only school party for the year held in the evening. All the activities thus far mentioned are planned directly for the pleasure or profit of the members of the school community. An opportunity for a larger social outlook is found in the University settlement, with whose aims and work the pupils are brought into intelligent and sympathetic contact. At least once each year some of the settlement workers speak at the school assembly. A settle- ment committee of boys and girls has occasional meetings and makes plans for assisting in the work. During the last two years the follow- ing results have been accomplished : a group of girls gave an exhibi- tion of class work and games in the settlement gymnasium ; Christ- mas parties for a number of old people have been held at the settle- ment, for which the pupils prepared enormous stockings filled with all sorts of articles useful and otherwise ; two dramatic entertain- ments prepared for the school's own enjoyment have been repeated on the settlement stage; considerable sums of money have been secured through musical and other entertainments and by contribu- tions from pupils which have provided for camping excursions for a large number of city boys who otherwise could not have enjoyed this pleasure. There has been a conscious effort to avoid the danger of THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SCHOOL 287 making the boys and girls self-righteous prigs by having their con- tributions to the settlement as far as possible grow naturally out of the activities of their own social life about school. Reference has several times been made to the parents in connection with the social life of the school. It will easily be understood that no such elaborate social organization can be conducted successfully without the intelligent and substantial cooperation of the parents and pupils. The Parents' Association has taken up for consideration many of the features in the social organization described, has provided the money necessary to their inauguration, and each year provides the money necessary to maintain these activities. Through committees and individuals they come into very close contact with the social hfe of the school. . It is at once apparent that the conditions which make such a com- plete organization of the social life possible are peculiar to a few schools, and that the resources necessary cannot be secured in most public, and many private, secondary schools. However, at the first, no one foresaw the full development of the elaborate organization in the University High School. The present condition has been an evolution which began in the idea that it was the function of the high school to provide for the training of the pupil's whole nature, followed by a determined effort to make this idea effective. With the same idea and determination any school, whatever its situation or cir- cumstances, may at once begin to make effective those agencies which, as no others in our public school can, train boys and girls to become morally self-reUant men and women. F. W. Johnson, reprinted from The School Review. December, 1909. TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION 1. State fully the reasons for regarding the school as a social group. What view of the school does traditional school practice seem to be based upon ? 2. Contrast the views of LeBon and Cooley as means of inter- preting the school hfe. Do both have a place ; or is one or the other pathological ? 3. Opportunities afforded by the school for the development of "primary ideals. " Obstacles in the school to their development. 4. What can you say of the desirabiUty of developing and con- serving a social hfe of a school as a whole? Explain the English "House system" as a means. Its adaptation to large schools of the American type. See Findlay. Consider also the Abbottsholme School described by Scott. 288 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION 5. Relation of subsidiary organizations to the general school life. 6. What are the social objections to the secret fraternity in the high school ? 7. Justify if you can the ideal that the school should provide for the social as well as the intellectual development of children. 8. How would you meet the objection that there is already too much social life in the school ? 9. What aspects of the social Ufe of the school can you distinguish aside from what may find expression in parties and other functions ? BIBLIOGRAPHY ON THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SCHOOL Allen, Chas. R. "Educational progress for 1907," topic, "A new educational process," 5. Rev., 16 : 305. Recounts recent experi- ments in development of the social life of the school. "Educational progress in 1908," S. Reo., 17: 289. "It is plain that school methods may have much to do with the develop- ment of effective loyalty, and that group work has a permanent place in school procedure as a method directly preparing for social living." Bishop, J. R. "The high school as a social factor," N. E. A., '97 : 696. Brown, J. F. The American High School, Chapter XI, "Social Life." BuENHAM, W. H. "Everyday patriotism," Outlook, November 7, 1908. An illustration of, and a plea for, a development of a civic and neighborhood spirit in a community as a base for a larger patriotism. AppUes directly in school. Cronson, Bernard. Social value of the morning assembly to the school. See his Pupil Self-government, p. 58. New York, 1907. Cutler, J. E. "The social side of the public school," Char., 20 : 487. Dewey, J. The School and Society, pp. 27-31. Chicago, 1899. The school an embryonic society. "The significance of the School of Education," El. S. T., 4 : 441. 1904. Dykema, Peter. "The school festival," Craftsman, 12 : 649. The festival a means of unifying the school and developing a higher social hfe, illustrated in the practical experiments of the Ethical Culture School. Findlay, J. J. "The corporate life of the school," 5. Rev., 15: 144; 16:601. Describes the Enghsh "house system" in the board- ing and in the day schools. Its moral and educational value. THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SCHOOL 289 GiBBS, Louise R. "Making a high school a center of social life," 5. Rev., 17 : 634. Gordon, M. K. "School athletics: what they are and what they should be," N. E. A., 1908, 616. Griggs, E. H. Moral Education, 77-83. New York, 1905. GuLiCK, L. H. "Team games and civic loyalty," S. Rev., 14:676. The opportunity afforded by interschool contests for develop- ment of loyalty, honesty, courtesy, spirit of fair play. Halleck, R. p. "The social side of secondary education," N. E. A., 1902, 459. Harding, H. H. "Social needs of children," El. S. T., 4: 205. Heller, H. H. "The social life of the adolescent," Ed., 25 : 579. HoLLiSTER, Horace A. High School Administration, pp. 187-198. Boston, 1909. Howerth, I. W. "Education and the social ideal," Ed. Rev., 24: ISO- Johnson, F. W. "The social organization of the high school," S. Rev., 17 : 665. 1909. Keelee, H. " The financial responsibility of high school managers of athletics," S. Rev., 11:316. 1903. Keller, P. G. "Open school organizations," S. Rev., 13: 10-14. 1905. Method of getting open organizations in place of secret ones; plan of six schools. KoHLSAAT, P. B. "Secondary school fraternities not a' factor in determining scholarship," 5. Rev., 13 : 272. 1905. Morrison, G. B. "Social ethics in high school hfe," 5. Rev., 13 : 361- 370. 1905. High school social functions, need of; teachers should be on same social status with pupil as parents; reasons for the fraternity. Nason, a. H. "The Cony High School Assembly. An unconscious experiment in citizenship," 5. Rev., 14 : 505. 1906. An assembly of high school students who administered the financial side of athletic and other school enterprises. Owen, W. B. "The problem of the high school fraternity," 5. Rev., 14:492. 1906. PrevaiUng methods of deahng with, and their harmful results ; need of social functions in the school to supply the legitimate demand for social intercourse. 290 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION "Social education through the school," 5. Rev., 15 : 11-26. 1907. The school a society : what may be done to teach children social duties. The problem and a plan. Parlin, C. C. "An illustration of the management of athletics in the high school," 5. Rev., 11 : 709. 1903. Reeder, Rudolph. How Two Hundred Children Live and Learn. Chapter V, "The School." New York, 1909. A fine illustration of corporate life developed in an institution. "Report of the Committee on the Influence of Fraternities in Secon- dary Schools," Questionaire, S. Rev., 12 : 2-3. 1904. Results of inquiry, S. Rev., 13 : i-io. 1905. A useful report. Parkinson, W. D. "Individuality and social adjustment as means and ends in education," Ed. 29 : 16-24. One supplementary to the other. Scott, Colin A. Social Education, Chapter II. Boston, 1908. "Tests for the school." ScuDDER, M. T. "A study of high school pupils," S. Rev., 7 : 197. Sheldon, H. D. Student Life and Customs. New York, 1901. Deals with social activities of students in all ages. Stamper, Alva W. "The financial administration of student or- ganizations in secondary schools," S. Rev., 19 : 25. Stokes, J. G. P. "Pubhc schools as social centers," An. Am. Acad., 23 : 457. 1904. The need of developing the social nature of the child. Stowe, a. M. "The school club and its relation to several educa- tional ideals," El. S. T., 9 : 364. 1908. TucKERj'W. J. " How shall pupils be taught to estimate themselves ? " S. Rev., 13 : 597. Tyler, J. M. "The boy and the girl in high school," Ed., 26: 462. "Washington decision on the high school fraternity," S. Rev., 14 : 731. 1906. Supreme court of Washington sustained the Seattle board of education in excluding members of high school fraternities from all high school functions except classes. Wetzel, A. "High school student organizations," S. Rev., 13 : 429. 1905. CHAPTER XVI DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT OF SCHOOLS Our Schools are Monarchies. — We live in a democracy. Our schools, therefore, should be democracies, but they are not. They are monarchies. The teacher is the monarch, the pupil the subject. Like the subjects of all monarchies they feel no responsibility for the order and conduct of the community in which they live. It is the duty of the ruler — the monarch — the teacher, to see that law and order are maintained ; that wrongs are righted in the community by those who belong to the " governing classes." Yet we call this fitting for citizenship in a democratic form of government! Is it any wonder that we are beginning to feel that our schools are not doing their duty in this education, fitting for citizenship? If there is any excuse for public education at all, it is to fit pupils for these duties and responsi- bilities that are delegated to all the people in a democratic form of government. The schools of two hundred years ago, which are still the models for school governments, were the schools for the training of the individual for his own advantage — not for the good of the state. We have discarded the monarchical government of the nation for the demo- cratic, but we still cling to the old monarchical school government. . . . We have, it is true, modified its severity somewhat. The rod has been nearly or quite discarded. Moral suasion has taken a more prominent place, yet with all these changes it is still a monarchy. The futiure citizens of the republic — the pupils — have never been asked to begin here to learn their citizen duties. They grow up feel- ing that they have no duties beyond getting their lessons. The teacher is still responsible for conduct, for the restraining of the wayward or thoughtless, for the enforcement of rules and regulations that are for the good of all. All this should be radically changed. The pupils should be taught to participate in the government of the school as they afterwards must in the government of the community and state. The pupils should feel that they have a public duty in the school community as they will later have in the adult community. They should be carefully trained in school life to see their relations to law and order and their enforcement in the school, as they must later see them in adult life, if they do their duty as law-abiding and law-enforcing citizens. zgi 292 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION This does not mean pupil government, but pupils assisting in school government. It does not necessarily mean the substitution of some elaborate plan of " Pupil City " government, or any other form of the modern machinery of government. Indeed, the writer, aftei sixteen years of experimenting on the subject, believes that any such radical change wUl, in most cases, fail. What is needed is some simple plan that wUl have the minimum of the forms and officers of modern city, state or nation as models for government, with a maximum of in- dividual education in the personal duties of the public towards the control of himself and the school. Let the pupils be delegated such simple duties for the preservation of good order, honesty of work, and the general welfare of the school, as they are wUling to assume. Let them be stimulated to exercise an influence for right conduct in others and be taught clearly to see how such conduct — good or bad — - does concern them, and that they should not be passively submissive or indifferent to wrong acts. Let them, above all, be taught to get control of themselves — to " Do Right " without being watched or told to do it. ... In most schools the teacher stands alone as the representative of good conduct and order, and has arrayed against him all the vicious and bad element of the school. It is true, there is in every school an ele- ment which is neutral, pupils whose natural tendencies and train- ing lead them to do right, or to be disposed to do right. They are, however, not inclined to take sides. They are mere " lookers-on in Venice." They are not led to believe that they have a duty or even a right to take sides in the never ending contest. They know that the teacher must have order and obedience if he properly conducts the school. They also feel a degree of sympathy and even admiration for the fellow-pupil who is disposed to have fun and to disobey the rules or quietly outwit or deceive the teacher. They even have quiet ad- miration for the boy or girl who has the " nerve " to disobey orders or to do disorderly and annojdng things. When that bad boy expects them to hide from the teacher his misdeeds, they readily lend them- selves to their classmate's wishes. Thus it turns out that the pupils are, as a matter of fact, all arraigned against the teacher, the majority by remaining passive in their influence, and the remainder more or less active — openly or secretly — by doing disorderly, dishonest or annoying things. We say the government and order is more or less good, according as this neutral class is large or small in proportion to the active class. The teacher's ability to govern well is measurably his tact and firmness in keeping this actively bad class in reasonable subjection. As a rule he does it unaided by any sympathy or systematic assistance from the neutral class. ... DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT OF SCHOOLS 293 The Defect of Military Government. — No matter what guise it takes, it presupposes ofl&cers of some kind in authority, responsible for conduct, thinking for the student, watching the student. The pupil is no longer a free agent being taught to be responsible for his own acts. He is an automaton with only volition enough left in him to obey orders, to stop and start and step when told to and in unison with others. All responsibility for order, conduct and general move- ments rest on those in authority, whether these be members of the faculty or persons chosen from the body of the students. In such schools the " lock step " prevails, both in a physical and a mental sense. Individuality of thought and action and volition is lost. The re- sponsibility in all such military forms of control rests with the few, the teacher or oflScer ; the many — the masses — are left untrained in " the habit of responsibility " so essential to the true citizen. No amount of education or ordinary literary training will give this habit of personal self-control and the " habit of responsibility " in the control of others. It must be begun in youth, upon the child's entrance into the community life of the school. There let him be carefully trained to think and act for himself as freely as we expect him to do in his intellectual development. Let him have as few bosses over him, either pupils or teachers, as possible. Compel him to think and act for himself, and be responsible for his own acts in all his social relations with his schoolmates. Let not some one think and act for him, in things that he knows well he should do, or refrain from doing. Let him learn that liberty is not license. Let him learn during every day of his. school life that he is responsible for his own conduct, no matter what his associates may do. Let him learn the habit in his school life of watching himself and his own conduct, not of being watched by others. He should early learn in his school life that he must guard his own right and privileges if he wishes to retain them and enjoy them. He must therefore learn to influence others to right conduct; learn to make others respect his rights by quiet moral suasion and not by physical force. Let him be taught clearly to see that each is affected by the conduct of others and that all are, therefore, equally interested in the deportment of others. The teacher should, as far as possible, throw upon the pupils the responsibility of regiilating their own conduct without being con- tinuously watched by her. Especially should this be true during hours of relaxation outside of the room. Encourage the children to organize for their own protection. Let them elect such officers as may seem wise' to assist in regulating and controlling the conduct of pupils. These officers should only assist, the responsibility rests upon all. These officers' duties should never partake of the military idea of com- 294 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION manding or of relieving all others from the "habit of responsibil- ity." ... Now, let us look at some of the things that are taught our children by our present way of governing and conducting schools. The little child comes to us ready to " learn to do by doing." . . . He naturally wants to participate in regulating the conduct of others as it affects him. His natural instincts are to do right and to have others about him do right. The teacher, however, promptly tells him that what others do is no concern of his. He should do right himself, but not concern himself about what his neighbor does. He soon learns that it is the teacher's business to regulate the conduct of the school, not his. He must not even report it, — this would be " tattling," the capital sin in school life ; so the teacher teaches and the pupil believes. Soon he learns that there is no one responsible for good conduct and order but the teacher. He soon learns that he need fear no exposure of wrong acts from his fellow-schoolmates. They hide his misdeeds, and he must hide theirs. The teacher is the only one to be feared when misconduct takes place. All learn to keep their own counsel, hide and endure the misdeeds and impositions of their fellow-schoolmates and let the teacher govern the school in the best way he can. The good boy in this httle monarchy must simply be a passive sub- ject of the monarch over him. He is neither asked nor allowed to help that monarch in the government, as he should be. Later, in the higher grades, he sees dishonesty in examinations and other irregularities of conduct, but it does not disturb his mind or con- science. His lesson of minding his own business and letting those in authority find these things out has been well learned. It wOl not only stay with him through the high school, but through life. He will not, as a pupil or a citizen, do wrong himself, but he has no duty now to the teacher, nor, later, to civic authority, to expose or suppress the mis- conduct of others. " It is none of my business what my neighbor does, " says the, self-satisfied citizen who is the product of this train- ing in his school days. His civic conscience is diilled and warped in his school training. It never rights itself in after life. Can any one doubt for a moment that the man in after life gets his ideas of lus duty to the community, and to those in authority, from the ideas taught him of his duty to the school community, and to the teacher representing authority? Will not the boy who cheats in examination make the man who will cheat the city on a street contract? Will not the boy who scorned to cheat in an examination himself, but sat by content to have his classmate cheat, develop into the self-righteous " good citizen " who takes no interest in having honest city oflScers, and who laughs DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT OF SCHOOLS 295 at the sharp city official who can line his pockets dishonestly? Will not the boy who openly does wrong before his schoolmates, expecting them to suppress it, make the brazen lawbreaker who defies public opinion and the law alike? Will not the young man who thinks it right not to tell on his school- mates, and who is allowed to believe so, make the future alderman who thinks it honorable to refuse to expose the briber who offered him a thousand dollars for his vote? In short, will not the man be what the boy was taught to be? Can the impure spring have flowing from it anything but an impure stream ? As the child's com- munity life is in school, so wUl be his civic life in after years. What should school life teach the boy? It should teach him that he is a part of the school cominunity — responsible for its acts, and affected by every act of his schoolmates. He should, therefore, be taught that the Mosaic law, the English common law, and the statute law of his state make it the duty of every citizen to testify when called upon ; that hiding a crime makes him a party to it. He has, therefore, no right to set these principles aside in school life, either because of his own wishes, or the false idea of his teacher. He should be taught to see clearly that the restrictions placed upon his actions in school are due chiefly to the abuse of liberties by a few of his schoolmates, and he should, therefore, be directly interested in the conduct of these schoolmates. He should be taught to feel that the rightly disposed boys should assert themselves as positively and persistently for good conduct as the careless or indifferent boys do for evil. He should be made to feel that it is a duty to himself and to his school to assist in every way the securing of right conduct as faithfully as does his teacher. These habits, in school life, can be secured only by enlisting the pupil from the first year of school in taking an interest in the active govern- ment and control of the general conduct of his schoolmates in their common intercourse. . . . Organization. — All government requires some kind of organization. We believe, however, that it is a mistake, except, possibly, in high schools and colleges, to model the school government after the more complex form of city, state or nation. The mechanisms of school self-government should be very simple and direct. The government should be " by all, for all," — not by a set of officials, and the masses of the pupils excused from all responsibility. This is but shifting the responsibility from the teacher to a few pupils. The duty of assisting in governing the school rests alike on eoery one. The teacher and " tribunes " are but the responsible heads, to see that all partici- pate in the lesson of learning to live properly in this first community life — the school. The pupils, by thus regulating themselves through 296 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION an officer of Itheir own number, in time come to the habit of correcting most abuses among themselves without constantly seeking to invoke the higher power — the teacher. For the same reasons, written constitutions for the self-governing school, and elaborate details of rules, regulations and duties of officers or pupils are of little value. " Do right yourself, respect your neigh- bors' rights, and have an influence over others for right " is the key- note of any successful plan of pupil government. Around this central thought pupil government in a school can be successfvilly built up. Mode of Instituting. — A few practical suggestions as to the mode of instituting self-goVernment of pupils will answer the questions of many. The less machinery about any such plan the better. It fails often in colleges and high schools because of the elaborate system established. In a primary or grammar school nothing of the kind can be success- fully used. The children are too young to either deliberate or legislate. The plan contemplates only the election of tribunes by ballot on the first of each month. This is in the hands of the teacher and is a formal affair every month. The teacher can make this hour the occasion for appointing other citizens, and discussing the general subject and the duties of the pupils. Many make the mistake of attempting to introduce pupU govern- ment at once, without properly preparing the pupils for it. This is a great mistake. Self-government must be a growth from within, not something imposed from without by the teacher. The plan must be a growth, and it takes time for all growth. The teacher can stimulate this growth by surrounding the pupil with the proper conditions. Discuss with the pupils the duties of good citizenship. To testify for the right; to discountenance wrongdoing; to influence wrong- doers to do right ; to promptly assist in exposing wrongdoing to the proper authority; if personal influence will not accomplish it, show them that this is the custom and practice in our courts. The position demanded by law of every citizen is : to testify ; to expose wrong ; to personally obey the law. The teacher's personality may be a large factor in preparing the pupils to take up the plan successfully. If the seventh and eighth grades take the right attitude, it is well to begin with these rooms. Their influence and example are the most potent, but the experience of some schools is, that these grades are the slowest to yield to the plan. Their habits are more fixed. The first and second grades will the most readily fall into the plan from habit. Do not make the mistake of exchanging the surveillance of the teacher for that of monitors or captains. If the pupils must still have some one to tell DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT OF SCHOOLS 297 them what to do, and to watch them, it might as well be the teacher as a pupil. . . . Pupils' Cooperation in the High School Government. — [Where pupil cooperation in government in secondary schools has failed], the trouble is often over-organization. We try to copy after the necessary complex forms of government of a municipahty or a state, for example, and attempt to have their various departments represented in some way in the school. Besides the deliberative body, council or senate or whatever we call it, we feel that there must be a department of police, a department of health, a fire department, a judicial depart- ment, besides the necessary legislative and executive departments. Most of these are wholly unnecessary, useless and often burdensome upon the time of the pupils. . . . Again the responsible head of the institution or the teachers, having started the machinery of student government, get the idea that it will take care of itself, and leave it to the student body to manage. This will not do. The principal of a school that gets any such idea must either abandon the idea of student government or abandon the idea that he can turn all responsibility over to the students, and thus relieve himself of it. The student body must be held firmly to the belief that this form of government is adopted only for its educational value, not to let the burden fall upon the students and thus make the teacher's work lighter. So far as the teacher is concerned it should not be merely a shifting of responsibility and work of government to the students, but rather a shifting of the methods of government and methods of teaching right conduct. The teacher must constantly bring up before his students the prac- tical questions that arise day by day in the social intercourse of the students. He must carefully discuss with his students the reasons for following certain lines of conduct; for establishing and enforcing certain rules and the necessity for this or that habit among indi- viduals or in the school as a whole. He must have a watchful eye to every oflScer and see that he does his duty or is removed. He must privately suggest stricter attention to duty on the part of this officer, a less rigid and literal enforcement of regulations, to that one. He must quickly check by prompt advice to the students any tendencies in the wrong direction that the students, as a whole, seem to be falling into, whether these wrong tendencies be acts of omission or of com- mission. The teacher must ever remember that student government is still a school for teaching government as well as any other subject. He should, therefore, no more abandon the careful attention of teaching students to govern than he should abandon the teaching of history or mathematics. Let the teacher abandon the teaching of history 298 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION and there will be no history class ; equally, let him wholly abandon giving attention to teaching participation in government, and soon there will be no student government. . . . Extracts from Democratic Government of Schools, by John Thompson Ray, Public School publishing Company, Bloomington, Illinois. Some Facts about Pupil Self-government After years of successful trial the pupil self-government plan of practical training in civics and ethics has passed beyond the experi- mental stage. It is employed in hundreds of schools in the United States to-day. Under various forms it is in operation in twelve schools in New York City. The principals who have undertaken to conduct their schools on this plan from the large idea of real, practical training for the development of moral character and good citizenship could not be persuaded to return to the old method of conducting a school. Mr. Andrew W. Scarlett, of the Oakwood Avenue School, Orange, New Jersey, who has conducted a system of pupil self-government for several years, says : " The results have been most gratif3dng. ■Briefly summarized they are: — " (i) A change in the attitude of pupils towards school authority. The new regime gives pupils an opportunity to cooperate with those responsible for the management of the school. " (2) The pupils develop a strong desire to have things go right. The wrongdoer meets with indignation and discouragement from his fellow-pupils instead of sympathy and covert encouragement. " (3) Pupils learn to discriminate between tattling and giving testimony, between muckraking and a righteous exposure of a fraud. " (4) They learn that great lesson of democracy — that each one should be treated according to his own individual merits, paying no attention to his creed, to his ancestors, to his social position or finan- cial condition." Similar commendations from school authorities in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Minnesota, Kansas, Utah, Arizona, California and Washington attest the success of the plan under the varying conditions of widely separated communities. In some of the schools the pupil-government system has been in opera- tion continuously for ten years, and the principals are unanimous as to its indispensability. The forms of pupil self-government are many, the principle one and the same. In some of the schools the organization takes the form of a pure democracy, in others that of a representative government ; the DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT OF SCHOOLS 299 same spirit of self-reliance and responsibility for the common welfare that makes of school life an apprenticeship in good citizenship obtains in all. With an organization of pupil self-government in the school the academic work is not altered save in so far as the teachers' disciplinary tasks are lightened, thereby making more effectual the teaching work. Emerson says, " We send our children to the master, but the boys edu- cate them." The underlying truth of this is becoming more apparent every day. The child is coming into his own. And so we have grow- ing up on all sides self-governing clubs, self-governing communities, self-governing institutions of children — all embodying the principles of democracy. The democratization of our schools is the need of the hour. Thomas Mott Osborne, a deep student of social questions, says : " We have as yet only just begun to develop the possibilities of democ- racy ; it remains to educate our citizens by applying the Democratic Principle to our school system (still dominated by aristocratic and paternalistic ideals — the ideals of outworn social systems) ; to apply the Democratic Principle to our factories and thus solve the labor problem; to apply the Democratic Principle to our prisons and reform our ignorant brethren who have faUed to adapt themselves to society. And these events are not afar off — they are close at hand if we but will it so." It is an accepted principle of teaching that we learn to do by doing. This is the basic idea in empirical studies. The physics of the labora- tory is as important as the physics of the lecture hall. Drawing, carpentering and other useful things are taught by practical work. The world's work is thus actually begun in the school " shop " and in the school laboratory. Why not in the schoolroom ? How is it with civics ? — not long ago it was almost entirely con- fined to the hurrah of the school assembly and the celebration of national hoUdays, but as former Governor Hughes once said, " It is a very doubtful advantage to generate an emotion which has no practical use, and the emotions of patriotism ought to be stimulated with regard to certain important and practical ends." What doth it profit to sing the national airs, wave the Star Spangled Banner and laud the founders of the Republic if the children are not given an oppor- tunity to crystallize their patriotic emotions into actions of mutual forbearance, helpfulness and loyalty? Pupil self-government con- verts the children's Fourth of July emotions into everyday actions. Political developments in this country in recent years have made apparent the fact that the average citizen's sense of civic duty was at a very low ebb. Dishonesty in high places and low was laid bare in a wave of reform that spread over the land. Hardly a village escaped the prober's lance, and trickery and graft were uncovered everywhere 300 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION to the shame of the apathetic citizen. In the wake of such an upheaval there came a series of remedial propositions. Exposure and prose- cution reached only unfortunate individuals; it did not go deep enough to reach the underlying causes that made the deplorable conditions possible. The supine attitude of the citizens in a representative government is the occasion of civic sins. Eternal vigilance is the price of honest and efficient government. But a temporary wave of reform does not change the habits of a lifetime, and when the novelty of exposure ceases, the people at large relax into their former civic indif- ference. Students of social and political life are of one mind as to an effective remedy for the shortcomings of our body politic — only through the proper training of our youth can a lasting betterment of conditions be effected. Good citizenship is a moral attitude and springs from the mind and heart of a well-rounded moral being. No amount of intellectual training solely will warm the heart to a love of probity, or quicken it to a desire for " The righteousness that exalteth the nation." In that remarkable community of young citizens at Freeville, New York, the following episode, which illustrates that good citizenship is a moral and not an intellectual matter, took place : A good football player was unfortunate enough to be in the toils of the law on a day when his presence on the team was urgently needed ; a session of the Supreme Court was held to consider the advisability of his parole. Arguments pro and con were urged without conspicuous success until a public- spirited citizen thus summed up the situation. " Your Honor," said he, " in most schools and colleges nowadays a fellow has to gain a certain standard of scholarship in order to be a member of any athletic team. Now, up here at the Junior RepubUc, our standard is citizen- ship, and if a fellow can't keep out of jail, he has no business to play on a football eleven." That settled the matter. He did not play. No amount of theoretical study of the ramifications of government could make possible such a reply ; it sprang from a heart filled with a profound sense of the dignity and sacredness of the rights and privi- leges of citizenship. It is such characters that are molded by giving children an oppor- tunity to conduct their own affairs, thus cultivating early in Iffe a sense of the obligations of every man to his fellows. The principals in whose schools pupil self-government is a factor invariably point out that one of the chief results of the system is a strong spirit of coopera- tion. Thus is created a healthy public opinion, ever ready to applaud everything that adds to or to frown upon everything that detracts from the honor of the school. The claim is not made that pupil self-government is a panacea for all DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT OF SCHOOLS 301 social ills, nor a plan by which all school problems are solved. It has its shortcomings and its dangers, and they are neither few nor trivial, neither are they insurmountable nor fatal. Wise, constant, discreet supervision is the guarantee, and the only guarantee of success in this work. But those who have been conducting their schools with this ' judicious participation in the children's efiorts declare that the returns in moral and civic training splendidly justify the efforts put forth. The conspicuous success of pupil self-goverrmient in many places is proof beyond question that the principle is a sound one pedagogically. Is it not then inexcusable for public servants in the departments of education to dismiss the question after a superficial study of it with the verdict of "Impracticable," "Absurd," "Not worth while," "A beautiful dream, but an impossible proposition " ? The day is not far off when an awakened public will demand of its officials the introduc- tion of some system which will make effective the preparation for citizenship. . . . It may be well here to review the chief reasons why a plan of Public Self-government is not in operation in every school in this country. A careful study of the situation has disclosed the following difficulties : — (A) The principal and other supervisors are so harassed by a multitude of minor obligations that they feel that the time cannot be spared for the organization and direction of a pupil community. (B) An equally formidable difficulty is the fact that with the present overloaded curricula teachers are strongly averse to the idea of adding anything to their burdens. (C) The third difficulty of importance is an ill-founded antipathy towards the " School City " and kindred ideas. But these, after all, are difficulties, and as such exist only to be over- come. (a) Was it ever intended that the principal of a school should be a mere clerk ? Yet how many there are whose sole business seems to be the adjustment and keeping of records. Should not the principal be the intellectual and moral leader of the school ? (b) Pupil self-government has but little to do with the curriculum of study. It is concerned rather with the relations of the children towards one another and towards the school authorities. Experience with the plan has proved that it so lessens the out-of-class work of the teachers that they can do more effective teaching work than under the old system of school government. (c) The vinpopularity of the School City is as regrettable as it is unjustified. In Philadelphia it was done to death by that arch enemy of education, politics. Where it has ceased to be a part of the school life elsewhere it has been generally due to a change among those having authority. 302 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION We come now to the objections to pupil self-government. These were gathered in a canvass of two hundred schools of the metropolitan district. The answers to them are supplied by a New York City principal who has conducted his school on the plan for seven terms. (i) Pupil self-government calls for a mental development that children do not possess. Neither is it desirable that children should become " Legislative, Judicial and Executive." We want to keep them young as long as we can. (i^) We have found the pupils of the sixth, seventh and eighth years, adequately and normally developed, able to conduct their own affairs — under discreet supervision. As for the contention that self-government induces precocity, it is unfounded. The children, both officers and citizens, are thoroughly normal, healthy and sport- loving Young Americans. (2) It takes up too much time. (2 A) The actual time consumed by the formal side of the School Republic is ten minutes for election at the beginning of the school term and the time of three teachers per week for an hour after school ; the latter a voluntary work of the teachers. (3) Children, when vested with power, become arrogant. (3^) Seven terms of pupil self-government have failed to bring forth a domineering state official. (4) If men cannot successfully govern themselves, how can children ? {4 A) No amount of priori reasoning can argue away the fact that children do govern themselves relatively well. May it not be one of the contributory causes of the shortcomings of our democracy that as children our people were not effectively trained for participation in civic life? Are we not now paying the price of the despotic school- master rule of the old days ? What preparation for living in a democ- racy was so ill-designed as the none too benevolent despotism of the birch-rod master? And even under the present system of textbook civics, what actual preparation is there for a life as a citizen ? The science of number is taught by the use of numbers ; physical training is carried out by a scientifically developed course of physical exercises ; drawing is drawing, and nature study is pursued largely by a first- hand study of objects, but civics takes its place with astronomy in that it deals with things remote. The vitalization of civics calls for some mode of pupil self-government. (s) In the last analysis the supervision necessary makes mere puppets of the children. (S^) Not a fact. Judicious supervision exercised along the lines of friendly control without dictation serves the twofold purpose of foster- ing initiative and preventing the children from attempting too much. (6) The machinery is so elaborate that the purpose is destroyed. DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT OF SCHOOLS 303 (6^) Yes, if the machinery is so elaborate, but it need not be, and it is not. Elaborate systems fall to the ground of their own weight. The best results are obtained along the simplest lines. (7) The energy expended is not worth while. (7^) If a wealth of school spirit and a splendid cooperative attitude on the part of teachers and pupils is not worth while, is anything in this world worth while ? (8) Pupil self-government is simply for show; it cannot take care of those serious cases, e.g. thievery, etc., which come up in every school. (8 A) This objection supposes that the entire government of the school is in the hands of the pupils. Rather is pupil government an auxiliary of the regularly constituted school regimen and makes the handling of untoward events a simpler procedure than usual. (9) The children of our day are more in need of respect for authority than the exercise of it. (9^) Why? The children of our day have been quickened by the inquiring spirit of our times and are quick to detect the shallowness of the autocratic system. But where they are trained to a rational respect for authority through a realization of the necessity and the participation in the exercise of it, their respect and loyalty becomes unshakable. (10) In the economic conditions under which we live, our children need all of the knowledge that they can get, to prepare for the struggle for existence. (10.4) The economic conditions under which we live are extremely trying, because we have let slip from our grasp the power that right- fully belongs to us. The fundamental remedy is to teach our children the value of working together, reclaiming that power and reestablish- ing the conditions of true democracy. (11) Pupil self-government destroys one of the greatest influences of the school, i.e. the principal's and teachers' personal influences. (11^) Through seven terms the principal and teachers and pupils have been brought constantly into closer and more efl&cient coopera- tion. (12) The activities of pupil self-government are mere play and are recognized as such by the pupils. (12 A) Even if it is pleasurable, it is real play. The pupils con- sciously imitate the procedure of enlightened citizens, but find great enjoyment in it. Therein is its great value. They play, they learn, they develop, they prepare. What more can one ask of an educational device than that it molds character effectively and joyfully? From a free bulletin of the School Citizen's Committee, by Richard Welling ; No. 2, Wall Street, New York. 304 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION Comment on Pupil Cooperation in School Government Our study of " primary groups " and particularly of the social life of the school furnishes the point of view from which to understand the nature and value of pupil self-government or pupil cooperation in government. The problem of managing a school is intimately connected with the fact that it has a corporate life. Government is always a social affair; that is, it always involves some sort of inter- actions between people, whether in a gang, a club, a school or a state. This is true even in those schools in which the teachers are autocratic rulers and the pupils obey, not as free agents, but because they must. It is even more thoroughly a social matter in a school with a normal, well-developed corporate life. In the former type of school the system of control is external; it is thrust upon the pupils from without. In the latter the control is internal; that is, it is one of the natural ex- pressions of the school's corporate life. As we have seen, all social groups exercise quite naturally and neces- sarily a definite control over the individuals within them, and they possess in some form or other what may be called an instinct or pos- sibly an ideal of lawfulness. Without some authority over the in- dividual and without some capacity to harmonize diverse interests, the group would soon cease to exist. Control and lawfulness in some form are basic presuppositions for all social life. Even the worst school, then, has at least the raw material for the higher organic type of social control. In such a school, the ideal of lawfulness is present, even though it may not be exercised for the highest good of the school. Likewise the conduct of each individual pupil is controlled in certain definite ways by the group in which he moves, notwithstanding the conduct thus produced may be far other than that most desired by the teacher. It is the fact, however, that there is a social control and a sense of justice, even though exercised on low levels, that has ren- dered possible the development, sometimes under most unpromising conditions, of student participation in school government. The arguments for, and illustrations of, pupil cooperation in gov- ernment are clearly stated in the quoted papers. It will be sufficient in this summary to emphasize certain underlying principles. There are two main reasons for such cooperation: First, it is for the good of the school as a whole, because the government thus secured is usually DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT OF SCHOOLS 305 better than that secured through the old monarchical system. It taps reserve springs of control of whose existence the autocratic teacher does not dream. Cronson says of one such democratically governed school, " The most striking thing about this school is the prevaihng attitude of geniality and contented industry which seemed to fill the dingy old building from top to bottom." ^ In two districts of New York City where this type of government has been in vogue, it is stated that suspensions of pupils for misconduct have not been found neces- sary for several years." In another New York City school the prin- cipal reports : " Under the plan in operation here each child feels a responsibility in the common welfare and a pride in the general progress of the pupil community. We have found also that the ele- ment of conflict between teacher and pupil — once thought to be an inevitable part of school life — has been almost entirely eliminated, and in its place has been established the spirit of cooperation. . . . The sense of common ownership of school property and individual responsibility for its protection is one of the logical developments of our pupil self-government.' In the second place, this form of govern- ment is most important for the pupils individually. Each one needs as a part of his education for future citizenship just the training that comes from genuine participation in a healthful corporate life with its varied social responsibilities. The development of character in the individual child is intimately connected with his social relationships. The control exercised by a group over the conduct of the persons com- posing it, to which reference has just been made, may have a very vital influence upon the development of character. Of course, in its baser forms as seen in the mob, the person is completely subordinated to the will of the mass. This can scarcely make for the betterment of the individual. But in its higher forms, group control becomes a great character-forming agency. In the school the power of pubUc opinion to restrain the individual from wrongdoing and to punish him in case he has offended is much greater and more effective than that possessed by any teacher or superintendent. The books of Dr. Reeder and Mr. George give striking illustrations of this.* • Pupil Self-government, p. 57. * Report of the City Superintendent of Schools, igio. 'Public School No. no, Manhattan, Miss Adeline Simpson, Principal. * Bow Two Hundred Children Live and Learn and The Junior Republic. X 306 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION That a school group does thus exercise a certain amount of control over each separate pupil is the best answer to those who contend that childhood and early youth are incapable of self-government, that those are periods of unquestioning obedience, of subjection to author- ity. As is made clear in the quoted articles, pupil cooperation in government does not mean the abdication of the teacher and the plac- ing of full responsibility upon the children ; it means rather utilizing, as far as it is available, the group control, instead of letting it develop along lines antagonistic to good order. It means giving the pupils such responsibility as they are able to carry, instead of giving them none at all. That the teacher or principal has final authority does not mean that the pupil cooperation is make-believe any more than a president with veto power is inconsistent with a democratic form of national government. The teachers must be genuine factors in the school group, sharing in its Ufe and contributing their part toward making it what it is. Their part may be a preponderant one, but it need not rob the pupils of vital responsibility. It is a factor ia char- acter development because it makes the pupils conscious of the prob- lems of conduct and demands of them the exercise of initiative and choice rather than dependence upon the decision of anothet. Unless such things are raised to the level of consciousness and made subjects of reflection, they do not become means of real growth in boys and girls. Proper ideals of conduct can be developed only through daily practice in evaluating acts and in choosing one thing rather than another. A pupil trained in the monarchical tjrpe of school may acquire excellent habits of conduct, but more than hkely he will have done so little in- dependent thinking and choosing that when he leaves school he will be unable to carry them over and adapt them to the needs of his adult hfe. In a school, on the other hand, which affords participation in the problems of government, the pupil not only acquires good habits, but also right ideals of life, and these he is much more likely to carry away with him from the school, and much more likely is it that he will pre- serve them as vital principles of conduct when he enters adult society. DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT OF SCHOOLS 307 BIBLIOGRAPHY ON PUPIL PARTICIPATION IN SCHOOL GOVERNMENT Bagley, W. C. Classroom Management, pp. 290-298. A brief de- scription, a note of warning, advantages. Charter of the Arsenal School City, Hartford, Connecticut. Brewer, J. M. "Plans for student cooperation in school govern- ment," Ed. Rev., 37 : 519-525. 1909. Reports some personal ob- servations and gives plans for introduction of. Brown, J. F. The American High School, 297-301. Brief comment upon different types of school government. Buck, Winifred. Boys' Self-governing Clubs. New York, 1903. Affords many illustrations of the controlling power of corporate life. BusHNELL, C. J. "Hiram House Social Settlement," World To-day, 12 : 532-535. 1907. The plan and working of a juvenile city. Too much evidence of adult authority. Call, A. D. "Government in school and college," Ed., 27 : 253-341. Clapp, H. L. "Self-government in pubhc schools," Ed., 29:335- 344. 1909. Devoted to arguments against ; picks out extreme cases of laxity ; points worth considering. Cornman. N. E. a., 1908, 290. A criticism. Cronson. Pupil self-government, its theory and practice. New York, 1907. Best extended discussion of principles and methods. Dewey, J. "Teaching ethics in the high school," Ed. Rev., 6:313. FiSKE, George W. Boy Life and Self -Government, Y. M. C. A. Press. 1910. Confined to boys' clubs under auspices of the Association. Foeester. Schule und Character, 219-233. French, C. W. "School government," S. Rev., 6:35. 1898. An enhghtening article based on experience, giving ; objects of school city; nature of organization; results of experiments and con- clusions. "Problems of school government," 5. Rev., 8 : 201. Reason for, and importance of, self-government. Will make schools more truly American ; will develop social life ; will afford basis for moral instruction by teaching purpose of law and its relation to will of individual. ■ "School cityidea," 5. Rev., 13 : 33-41. 1905. Reasons for failure in some places ; aims to develop a working knowledge of practical 3o8 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION politics ; obligations of individual to society ; personal righteous- ness. AH these things actually accompUshed. FiNDLAY, J. J. "The corporate hfe of school," S. Rev., 15 : 744-753 ; 16:601-608. Opportunities for pupil participation in govern- ment offered by the EngUsh "house system." George, W. The Junior Republic. Many fine illustrations of the restraining power of group Ufe, especially of one's peers. GuNCKEL, J. Boyville. Fine illustrations of the character-forming power of healthy pubUc opinion. HoLLisTER, H. High School Administration, 198-200. Two illustra- tions of successful self-government. Leland, a. "Self-government in a Jimior RepubUc," Char., 13 : 36. McAndrew, W. a. "High school self-government," 5. Rev., 5 : 456- 460. Scheme once in vogue in Pratt Institute High School. Mackenzie, J. C. "Honor in student Ufe," 5. Rev., 7:69. Dis- cusses ethics of students' concealing the misconduct of fellow students. Maxweli,, Wm. Annual Reports of the New York City Schools, espe- cially for years 1905, 1906, 1910. Recommends school city idea and reports progress of scheme in various schools of city. Nason, a. N. "The Cony High School Assembly: an imconscious experiment in training for citizenship," ^S*. Rev., 14 : 505. Refers to power of student body to control and administer for good of school the finances of certain student organizations. O'Shea, M. V. Social Development and Education, Chapter XIII^ "Cooperation in group education." Perry. The Management of a City School, 283-290. A practical dis- cussion and working suggestions. Philips, W. L. "Pupil cooperation in school government," Ed., 22: 538-554. An epitome of history of movement; some testi- monials given. PtTFEER. "Boys' gangs," Fed. S., 12 : 175-212. An empirical study throwing light on problems of corporate control. PuGSLEY, F. L. "Control over school children by school authorities," Ed., 28 : 265. Ray, John T. Democratic Government of our Schools. 1899. (Pam- phlet.) Vide preceding quotations from. Reeder, Rudolph. How Two Hundred Children Live and Learn, Chapters VI, VII. ControUing power of the opinion of one's peers. DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT OF SCHOOLS 309 'Report of Commissioner of Educaiion, 1902, 1:235. "Educational pathology or self-government in school." Robinson, L. V. "City of Hawthorne," Char., 15:182. Self- government on a playground ; children elect officers, make laws and punish lawbreakers. Sadler, M. Moral Instruction and Training in Schools. Suggestions as to status of self-government in England. Smith, B.N. " Self-government in public schools," Atlantic, 102 : 675. Stowe, Lyman Beecher. "School Republics," Outlook, 90:939- 948. A valuable description of actual working of, in certain New York schools. Thtjeber, C. N. "High school self-government," S. Rev., 5:32-35. An early account. Walker, P. A. "Self-government in the high school," El. S. T., 7:451-457- 1907- Welling, Richard. Some Facts about Pupil Self-government. Free pamphlet, published by the School Citizens' Committee, 2 Wall Street, New York City. The best summary available ; avowedly a propaganda. Yendes, L. a. "School children who govern themselves," Chaut., 30 : 135. First experiment of the sort ; serious government, not a mimic affair. CHAPTER XVII THE PERSONAL FACTOR IN THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SCHOOL Personal Influence and Leadership In our study of group, or corporate, activities, we have as yet not specifically raised the question as to whether they are shaped and directed in any great degree by single individuals. The question here involved is the large one of the place of the person in the social process. Is the apparently dominant individual really an important factor in determining a course of events, or is his seeming control over them an illusion, he being borne along in a current over which he has little or no control? Views quite the opposite of each other have been held by social philosophers. Carlyle, for instance, considered the great man as of supreme importance in history. His Heroes and Hero-Worship is a eulogy upon the part played by a commanding personality in shaping the course of human events. Tolstoy, on the other hand, held that the so-called great man is little more than a puppet pushed for- ward by happenings over which he really has no control."^ An induc- tive study of social psychology, and of primary groups in particular, makes it clear that neither of these views is wholly correct. Every individual in a social group both influences the behavior of his fellows, and is in turn influenced by them. Each person adds something to the common hfe and takes something from it. The amounts received and taken are not fixed, but vary with time, place, and individual. A single person may exert a great influence in the life of a limited group, for example, in a family, a neighborhood or a school, but his definite contribution to the course of events in the great world without is very much less. In relatively restricted circles personal ascendency and influence are very real forces, and must be reckoned with. What Carlyle has to say of the hero is quite true within primary groups; beyond these narrow circles it has a rapidly diminishing significance. 1 War and Peace, Vol. IV. 310 PERSONAL FACTOR IN SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SCHOOL 311 But even though Tolstoy may have been correct in holding that the great national hero has little to do with shaping the happenings with which he is associated, the problem of personal ascendency and leadership is not less real or important. The larger movements of society are made up in part of the smaller movements of the subordi- nate groups, so that history in the end may be regarded as the resultant of the influence of the dominant individuals of these elementary so- cial bodies. Moreover, the problem of personal ascendency is particu- larly important in a social view of education, because the educative process itself is actually a primary group process. Whatever may be the influence of the single individual in the world at large, he is ca- pable of being a vital factor in the corporate life and corporate activity of the school. First of all, let us note how personal ascendency or leadership is of importance within the smaller social circles. As has been suggested, the dominant individual, or leader, is nearly always present in the family, in the neighborhood, on the playground, in the gang and in the club. The realization, within these groups, of the ideals of justice, of fair play, of lawfulness, requires either temporary or permanent ascendency of a few individuals. The very fact of intimate face-to- face association carries with it the need of a certain amount of control of the individuals concerned. The group as a whole always exercises some restraining influence upon the individual member, but this social will is apt, at times, to find expression through a single person who stands in a measure for the rest. The presence within the group of such a lawgiver is not of necessity inconsistent with a natural, spon- taneous corporate life. In fact, it is often the leader who makes this life possible. If each one did exactly as he pleased, the conflict of impulses would almost certainly break up the group. Leadership is, of course, natural and welcome in proportion as the leader is a genuine member of the circle, for in that case the control which he may exercise is recognized as an expression of the animating spirit of the group, a control coming from within and not imposed upon it from without. Lawgiving is easy when the one in authority has the confidence of those controlled, and this he can have only as he is in some sense one of them. The promoters of the modern playground movement find that it is of the first importance that a playground should 312 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION have a director. There must be some one to interpret and focalize the best impulses of the children, to start the games, to keep the strong from imposing on the weak, and to see that each child has his proper turn. It has been found that the children as a whole not only need, but desire, such a leader. He is in no sense a despot ; on the contrary, if he is successful, he is quite truly an organic part of the corporate Ufe of the playground. He helps the play group to reaUze in fact the desire for lawfulness and fair play which is already there implic- itly. Playground leadership, then, is clearly not inconsistent with the spontaneity and joyousness that must be in all real play. In fact, this is essential to its fullest reahzation. It is evident that the leader is a genuine social product. As a gen- eral principle, it may be said that whenever people assemble with the slightest commonalty of purpose, a more or less temporary leader develops. The conditions which tend to give to some individual this prestige or ascendency furnish an interesting field for inductive study. Specifically, the problem is this : What serves to constitute a leader in any group and particularly in the school group, and of what signifi- cance for the Ufe of the school and for its work are the phenomena of leadership ? As for underlying principles, it may be said that they are both bio- logical and psychical. The survival and development of most forms of animal life depend upon some sort of unified or cooperative activity. A class of animals, the individuals of which possess httle or no capacity for acting in cooperation with others of their kind, is at a distinct disadvantage which must be offset by some other qualities if the species hold its own. Thus a nongregarious type may survive by having unusual reproductive powers or extraordinary fighting or defensive capacities. Among all types of animals, including, of course, the human species, which have developed some sort of group life, whether for protection against foes or for securing of food, some one individual must almost of necessity take the lead, or set the pace or the pattern for the rest. Only thus could there be a high degree of imified, and hence efiective, action. This primitive biological need is sufiicient to account for the instinctive way in which a group of animals or of men, particularly in times of stress, will accept the guidance of some one of their number. PERSONAL FACTOR IN SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SCHOOL 313 This biological need is, also, responsible in part for the development of certain psychical characteristics in social animals, such as imitative- ness and suggestibihty. In man especially the tendency to imitate the action of others is a highly important factor in binding a little group together and securing unity of action. While imitativeness and openness to suggestion are the conditions which produce personal ascendency, it is clear that to some extent the needed unity in a social group may occur without definite leaders. In fact, in all stages of human development there is a substratum of corporate life and com- monalty of action depending upon the mere tendency of the members of a society, standing upon a common level, to imitate and take sug- gestions from one another. But a high degree of unity and organiza- tion of forces is not possible imless some one person acquires sufficient prestige to command the attention of his fellows. In that case his action becomes a copy for the rest to follow. It is not necessary that the copy thus set be of superior merit, that is, better than what any one else might have done. Its value rests primarily upon the fact that it focaUzes attention upon some one mode of procedure. This of itself makes for definiteness, and hence for efficiency of action. If it be granted, then, that the leader is a socially important factor, the question next arises, what gives him his prestige? Are the quali- ties which enable an individual to rise above his fellows and set the pattern for their behavior capable of being determined? In general terms, they are nothing more nor less tha,n capacity readily to attract and hold attention. This power may, and often does, have no intrin- sic relationship to the particular Une in which the person acts as a leader. It may be merely sufficient for him to catch the attention of his fellows to render everything that he does of importance. On the other hand, the leader may actually have such personal power as to make him the natural leader of his group. In attempting to determine the qualities which give the individual prestige and power over his fellows, it is worth while to keep in mind that there are two types of conditions, — the extrinsic and the in- trinsic, or, as LeBon has it, the artificial conditions and the personal ones. Both types are means of attracting attention, and in actual life they combine in intricate ways. Even the true leader of men is not altogether independent of those accidents of position and circimi- 314 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION stance which, though subordinate and accessory, are nevertheless often real factors in giving him prestige. A few illustrations will perhaps render the above distinction clearer, and may perhaps help us better to understand the place and meaning of the leader in the corporate hfe of the school. Among the lower ani- mals and, to a large extent, among primitive peoples, mere physical size, physical aggressiveness or prowess, are important elements in giving an individual prestige, and these characteristics are not without importance as accessories even among the cultured races. These qualities are first of all significant because they attract attention, fix the mind of the group upon their possessor, and hence tend to make anything he does or says seem of unusual importance. Prestige, however, unless it is based, in part at least, upon mental ability, that is, upon intrinsic qualities, will usually be quite short-Uved. It will be remembered that Saul, the first king of Israel, stood head and shoulders above his fellows. Samson was reputed to have been the strongest man of his generation, and on this depended his prestige. The crafty Odysseus is an illustration of one whose prestige de- pended on a certain mental superiority. There have been studies in the origin of leadership among primitive peoples, but none of them can carry us back of these elemental physical and mental qualities which enable a man to do something that may help or hurt his fellows, hence something which they fear or admire. An interesting illustration is furnished by certain Indian tribes which have no chiefs except in time of a great himt or a war. Then the strongest, most successful hunter or the most intrepid fighter al- most automatically becomes the leader. As soon as the need or the crisis has passed, he drops back into the common ranks. Among some primitive but less warlike races, prestige may depend in part upon property or upon the reputed possession of some mysterious or magic power. This explains the power of the medicine man and the prophet. Among some of the AustraUans there are no chieftains other than the old men, and among the old men the oldest has the greatest au- thority. But here, as elsewhere, mental quahties play an important r61e. LeBon instances name, social station, uniforms and wigs, as among the accessory or accidental elements of life which give one at least a temporary advantage over one's fellow men. " The burning PERSONAL FACTOR IN SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SCHOOL 315 black eyes " of Mohammed have been mentioned as contributing to his power. The great leader adds power of personaHty to these external ad- vantages, a quaUty which one may attempt to describe by certain adjectives, but which is after all indefinable. Sometimes it seems to consist largely in unwavering self-confidence, an attitude which, if properly balanced, creates in others the attitude of expectation and readiness to take suggestions. If one can add to his self-confidence, forcefulness and definiteness in word and action, courage, dignity, winning power, his capacity to lead is still further enhanced. These qualities help in various ways to gain and hold the attention of his fellows. They might be summarized by the characterization of the leader as strongly affirmative in his attitude. He is resourceful and positive rather than critical or negative. The power of a definite affirmation over men's minds is well known. A simple affirmation is easily grasped, in external form at least, and, whether thoroughly understood or not, may act as a powerful sugges- tion for shaping conduct in a particular way. The critical faculty is not highly developed in the average adult, and certainly not in chil- dren. Hence when the reasons for action begin to be discussed, and even a desirable procedure is subjected to analysis and criticism, it often loses its hold on people's minds. The man who leads his fellows is, then, one who has a clear vision of something definite to be done — is able to give a few good reasons for doing it, and rests content with keeping these persistently in the attention of his group. To attempt to give more elaborate or deep- seated reasons or to discuss possible objections, serves only to confuse people and destroy their confidence in the plan's feasibility. It fol- lows that those who are preeminent in intellectual lines alone cannot expect to have a wide following, partly for the reason that their minds are too analytic, and partly, also, because their peculiar abiUty does not appeal to the popular imagination. A Newton or a Galileo, even though their final influence on human progress may be great, cannot even yet gain that immediate power over their fellows that comes so readily to a man of action. When a scholar does gain ready accept- ance as a national hero, it is usually because he has done something which has attracted attention in a large way. Thus, in France, some 3i6 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION years ago a vote, which was supposed to be representative, was taken to determine who, in the popular mind, was the greatest Frenchman of the nineteenth century. Pasteur outranked all others. But it was scarcely his abiUty as an abstract scientist that gave him this prestige, — rather the fact that he had, in his discovery of a cure for hydrophobia, for the silkworm disease and for anthrax, rendered great social services readily comprehended and appreciated by the masses of his country- men. A thoroughly competent and scholarly man, imless he has done something spectacular, can with difiSculty secure election to an im- portant office in a democracy. In the preceding discussion we have shown that the power of the leader depends on his ability to command attention and inspire con- fidence. This is the fundamental condition even in the case of highly complex social groups, and, difficult as the problem seems of fusing diverse impulses and bringing them into effective action, it may often be accomphshed in quite simple ways. The power of the leader often consists not so much in the elaborateness of the means he uses, but upon the insight which enables him to diagnose the situation and make use of relatively simple expedients. The social effectiveness of a person is measured by his ability to Uberate and coordinate the greatest amount of useful energy in those among whom he moves. The mere fact that a man gains power over his fellows through means that are gross and primitive is not of itself sufficient to condemn him. He may thereby liberate the maximum of energy in his fellows and actually lead them to the accomplishment of a worthy end. The real difficulty, for instance, with mere brute aggressiveness is that it is more than likely not effective in any genuine sense. A group of people may seem to be led for a time, may appear to be unified and effective, but as a matter of fact their best energies are not called into play nor their real purposes accomplished. They are rather dominated by an overbearing will, and, instead of realizing their own purposes fully, they become subordinated to the selfish purposes of the leader. Under such circumstances the energies of a body of people may be said to be exploited by the leader for his own aggrandizement. The power of Napoleon over France was of this sort. In no sense could he be said to have aroused or enlisted the true genius of the nation. He did not interpret his people, but seized upon PERSONAL FACTOR IN SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SCHOOL 317 certain isolated brute impulses and exploited them for his own selfish ends. Any and all of the means which tend to give a man prestige and power over his fellows are to be condemned if they are not used for social ends, if they are not used to help the group to do more effectively that which it was already striving bUndly to accomplish. The true leader must be an interpreter of his group, one who helps it to a fuller realization of the best quaUties impUcit within it. This does not mean that he should be a mere time server, simply giving his followers what they think they want. It is too often that pohtical leaders do not rise above such a plane of service as this. The true leader sees deeper than the popular cry and tries to bring to bear the awakened energies of his group upon that which is as yet only imperfectly realized, that which is still formless and incoherent, but which his insight tells him is the true, underl3mig self struggling for expression. The great leader thus stands ahead of his people and is yet in vital sympathetic relation with them. These fundamental principles of personal ascendency have a practi- cal bearing upon almost every phase of human life, and certainly upon the corporate life of the school. Not only do the phenomena of lead- ership find interesting illustration in this miniature society, they are of great significance, also, for the proper understanding and control of the educational process which the school is supposed to direct. Among the pupils themselves it is inevitable that there should be some with more influence than others. The teacher, also, by sheer virtue of his position and seniority, has presumably some ascendency, and the school could hardly be called a successful one in which the teacher is not in actuaUty a genuine leader of his boys and girls. The same qualities which attract attention and give prestige in adult society are operative in the school, with perhaps greater em- phasis upon those of the more primitive t)T)e. At least this is the case if the school society is allowed to take care of itself. In the aver- age school the pupil of fine or strong physical appearance and of ag- gressive social temperament is quite apt to gain a decided power over his fellows and to determine in large measure what they shall think and do. One of the practical and serious problems of education is that of recognizing and utilizing to the best advantage this personal element which is so inevitably involved in the educative process. 3i8 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION When a school first assembles, certain pupils will quickly and natu- rally take the lead of their fellows ; some one or more will dominate the whole school group; others will dominate the lesser groups of classes and chques. If the children are largely unknown to each other, these first leaders will gain their power through the grosser, more striking, qualities which have the power to excite ready attention, such as strong physical presence or social aggressiveness, — braggadocio, clothes or some other physical possession. The general behavior of these pupils, their opinions, attitude toward the school work and sports, will be spontaneously imitated by the rest of the school. As the school group becomes more thoroughly acquainted, there may be a shifting of the dominant persons. Those who first gained prestige must make good, or they will not keep their following. To make good requires that they should have abihty that is real, even though not of the finest type. The boy must be really strong, really able to put up a skillful fight, accomplished in some sport as ball, marbles or jumping, or, as some have expressed it, able to show his companions how to do something which appeals to them. The girl must have real social qualities and perhaps superior taste. Here in the little school society all the principles of personal ascendency in general and of leadership in particular will be found to hold good. But, just be- cause of the immaturity of the participants, if the matter takes care of itself, it is more than likely that the pupil leader will be of an inferior type, — that is, instead of his being genuine, an interpreter and organizer of the sentiments and impulses of his fellow pupils, he may, more or less thoughtlessly, merely dominate them and exploit their energies for his own selfish gratification or love of power. Every school, in fine, has many types of personality, some of which are bound to gain prestige and power, and the type which naturally ac- quires this power is not necessarily of the most desirable sort. A teacher's control over a school often depends entirely upon his ability to enhst in his behalf a natural leader, who, if left to himself, would ruin the school. It is a part of the teacher's problem so to develop and control the school's social life that the natural leaders may co- operate with him, and that the finer qualities of character in both teacher and pupils will have due opportunity to assert themselves in the school life. And furthermore he must so organize the work of PERSONAL FACTOR IN SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SCHOOL 315 the school that all pupils will have some opportunity for self-asser- tion. All cannot be leaders in the narrow sense. But, all should have forceful personaUties. One of the defects of school education is that it does not sufficiently develop individuality and initiative; pupils are too ready to be directed and led rather than to take the lead. As Terman says : "It seems that initiative and leadership are sometimes matters of habit. The habit, however, wiU develop only when nour- ished by self-confidence. If one is too early made conscious of one's weakness and shortcomings by stronger friends, the chances are that a chronic timidity will make the person a follower and hanger-on for life instead of a leader. It is essential to the healthy development of any youth that in something or other he should feel himself superior to any one aroxmd him. If leadership does not develop in youth, it is never likely to appear, or, if it does, only in narrow lines." ^ The teacher, then, must seek for ways to give to each pupil some- thing of the confidence and self-reliance that is inherent in the natiu'al leader. And he should furthermore seek out the really strong char- acters and see that no petty circumstance prevents their having their rightful influence in the school group. But even the finer types of character must not be too far removed from the general level of the school. If they are much superior, they must have some qualities at least which will appeal to the whole school body. In schools with a healthy social atmosphere, however, it is not imusual for students of fine character to be the leaders in opinion and conduct. A particular illustration comes to mind. It was a small private academy of per- haps eighty pupils. The acknowledged leader of the school was a senior girl of good physical presence, an excellent student, quiet and dignified in manner, not openly aggressive, but sociable, sympathetic and tactful. She was the arbiter of public opinion and taste in that school. Rough boys acquiesced to her decisions, and there were few who had the hardihood to appeal from what she decided was proper. Important for the work of the school as are the facts of personal ascendency among students, they are even more vitally significant in the case of the teacher. If a teacher is anything at all, he must be a man of force and a leader, a dominating personality in his school. That he should be such a power is not in any way inconsistent with ' Pedagogical Seminary, 11 : 443. 320 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION right ideals of education. It is true that the strong teacher may be a benevolent despot, but it is not necessary that he should be. He may be the dominant individual in a perfectly normal, spontaneous school life. His dominance does not express itself by imposing his own ideas upon his pupils; it rather comes through helping them realize the best type of corporate hf e and by acting among them as an interpreter and coordinator of diverse interests. In such a school there may be real participation of the students in the matter of government, real development of initiative and self- reliance. In fact, the best tjrpe of personal influence on the part of the teacher, instead of being a hindrance, is the most important condi- tion for the development of these very quaUties in the pupils. But, in the case of the teacher, as of the student body, there are wrong as well as right types of personal ascendency. As has been said, the true teacher must be an interpreter of the life of his school — ever endeavor- ing to bring it to a higher realization of its best impulses. This is what is meant by the statement that the teacher must be an inspirer, a person who can arouse each individual pupil to do his very best and who can, more than that, arouse the best energies of the student body as a whole. Of course, a teacher may fall far short of this sort of leadership. He may control his school by primitive means and be in no sense an interpreter. As Conover says: " Children may be bullied and tricked into order and a certain kind of attention ; they will ad- mire the grand manner and obey the voice and gesture of the charlatan, but their hearts are not won; and worse than all is the destructive lesson in the shallowness of man. It surely is better that a man should never have been born than that he should cause one of these little ones to lose faith. A child is a hero worshiper before he is a critic, and often an unconscious mimic of what he may afterwards despise." ' And again, " One wonders at the apparent success of a man who is often harsh and brutal in voice or manner ; and a yoimg teacher will be thus tempted to assume the hardness he does not feel. Success of this sort is like the success of any other tyrant, and is criminally out of place among teachers of children." ^ If the teacher is to be an interesting and inspiring person, the most essential of all things is that he should be honest. He who is genuine » Personality in Education, p. g. ' lUd., p. i8. PERSONAL FACTOR IN SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SCHOOL 321 and sincere in all his acts and thoughts is almost inevitably attractive. What no one is interested in, is artificiality, and pupils are adepts at detecting it and putting it to scorn. We want our leaders first of all to be themselves. We give almost instinctive acquiescence to one who speaks a genuine word. Nor is this sincerity in word and life something the teacher can counterfeit, or put off and on at will. He must every minute be of a truth the character he pretends to be. Along with sincerity must go beUef in one's self and in the worth- fulness of what one is doing and above all joy in the doing of it. A teacher who does not believe in himself and in the value of his work even to the point of exaggeration' will not gain many followers. It is especially necessary for the teacher to be enthusiastic and joyful. He faces the diflEicult problem of building up new interests in boys and girls, interests often remote from the restricted native impulses with which they come to school. The average boy will not be convinced that arithmetic or geography, Latin or botany, are worthy of his best efforts unless he is taught by one who is full of enthusiasm for these subjects. His first interest will often be simply some of the eagerness of his teacher, imparted to him by suggestion. " The pupil believes in the value of the subject matter because the suggestiveness of the teacher's enthusiasm makes him see it with new eyes." ^ It is a dull person, indeed, who can work under such an ardent teacher and not begin to have his own soul fired with the same zeal. If in the ordinary studies the teacher must be possessed of a genuine and forceful per- sonality in order to infuse his pupils with a living interest, it is even more important from the point of view of moral training that he should be such a person. The principles of right living and of duty are not attractive unless they find concrete embodiment in the Ufe of some forceful man or woman. Here, as elsewhere, the interest in, and enthusiasm for, ideals must be built up by daily contact with one who is already thoroughly vital himself. The teacher, then, as a leader in the school group, must be genuine, unselfish, sympathetic and joyful, and yet with plenty of the forceful- ness and belief in one's self which belongs to a virile manhood and womanhood. As one has said, we refuse to be helped by those who ' Miinsterberg, Psychology and the Teacher, p. 317. 322 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION wish to do so from a sense of duty, but we readily yield to the one who ma]5;^s us feel he is having the time of his Ufe when he is assisting us. " Unless we heartily enjoy ourselves, other people will not allow us to improve their minds or their morals." The teacher who is lacking in these important qualities can do much by self-suggestion to supply his deficiencies, that is, by determinedly thinking right thoughts — by building up his personaUty through persistent suggestions of cour- age and efficiency. A person of weak, uninspiring presence can thus make himself over more or less completely into a real leader. After all, the best account of the meaning of personality is to be found in the lives of some of the great teachers. What has been said of Alice Freeman Palmer must in some degree hold true of every real teacher. " Because of its combined variety and firmness (her) nature contained some provision for all ; nor was it ever closed to any. She seemed built for bounty, and held nothing back. Gayly she went forth throughout her too few years, scattering happiness up and down neglected ways. A fainting multitude flocked around to share her wisdom, peace, hardihood, devoutness and merriment; and more easily afterwards accommodated themselves to their lot. Strength continually went forth from her. She put on righteousness, and it clothed her, and sound judgment was her daily crown. Each eye that saw her blessed her ; each ear that heard her was made glad." ^ TOPICS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION 1. Make as complete a list as possible of the extrinsic and intrinsic qualities which give a person influence in a social group. Underline those which you have mentioned from your own observations. Con- sult, if necessary, LeBon, Ross, Larned, Cooley. 2. Consider the extent and the ways in which one might increase his intrinsic powers of leadership. Self-suggestion, its scope and methods. After reflection, consult Brown, Faith and Health, Chapter IV, Miinsterberg, Psychotherapy, pp. 370-398. 3. Study President Hyde's conception of a teacher's proper philos- ophy of fife. Might it be acquired and actually used by a teacher to make himself a real leader ? The Teacher's Philosophy in and out of School, William DeWitt Hyde, Riverside Educational Monographs, 1910. 4. Study the lives of such teachers as Thomas Arnold, Mark • Life of Alice Freeman Palmer, by G. H. Palmer, pp. 348, 349. PERSONAL FACTOR IN SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SCHOOL 323 Hopkins or Alice Freeman Palmer, and attempt to state some of the sources of their personal power. 5. Look rapidly through Larned's Stt4dy of Greatness in Men, to get additional light on the nature of great leaders with reference to practical apphcations in the school society. 6. The significance of the "inspirer" in Spartan education. 7. To what extent must the quaUties of the leader vary with the age of those led ? Illustrate as fully as possible. Cf . Terman. 8. What elements of personal ascendency are possessed by the bully? What does he lack of the quaUties of a real leader? Cf. Terman. 9. What are the effects upon a child or youth of being constantly snubbed ? 10. Write out a brief analysis or description : (o) of a pupil of superior personal influence ; {b) of a teacher of the same type whom you have known intimately. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bell, Sanford. "A study of the teacher's influence," Fed. S., 7 : 492-525. Age at which children are most susceptible to teacher; importance of kindly, sympathetic attitude in teacher. Brown, C. R. Faith and Health: Chapter IV. Building up of one's personaUty by self-suggestion. Brown, J. F. The American High School, 207 : 214. The per- sonaUty of the teacher dependent upon health, sympathy, honesty, sense of humor, poise, firmness, personal appearance, faith in human nature, etc. Carlyle, Thomas. Heroes and Hero-Worship. CoNOVER, J. P. Fersonality in Education, Chapter I, "The Teacher." CooLEY, C. H. "Leadership or personal ascendency," Chapter IX in Human Nature and the Social Order. This is the fullest and best available analysis; defines the relation of the leader to the group ; the mental traits and other sources of power of the leader ; ques- tion as to whether he really leads. FiNDLAY, J. J. Arnold of Rugby, Pt. II, "School Ufe at Rugby." Cambridge. 1897. A valuable account of the social Ufe at Rugby as shaped by the dominant personaUty of Arnold. See also various of Arnold's sermons in this volume. Hyde, W. DeWitt. The Teacher's Fhilosophy, Riverside Educa- tional Monographs, 1910. Keatinge. Suggestion in Education. 324 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION Larned, J. N. A Stiidy of Greatness in Men. Boston, 1911. Espe- cially Chapter I, "The making of a great man." A suggestive analysis of the quaUties which make for personal ascendency. LeBon, G. The Crowd, "Leaders of crowds and their means of persuasion," Bk. II, Chapter III. A briUiant but one-sided anal- ysis of, the conditions of personal ascendency. Regards the masses too largely as unthinking and helpless automata. MuMEORD, Eben. The Origins of Leadership. Chicago, 1907. A study of the conditions making for personal ascendency among primitive peoples. MiJNSTERBERG, HuGO. Psychotherapy. Contains suggestions as to the conditions of mental health, and hence of greater f orcefulness of personality. Psychology and the Teacher, Chapter XXIX, "The Teacher." The teacher must have belief, sincerity, enthusiasm. His per- sonality, more than his learning, counts. O'Shea, M. V. Social Development and Education, pp. 295-302. Palmer, G. N. "The ideal teacher," in The Teacher. A stimulat- ing analysis of certain traits of a good teacher — an aptitude for . vicariousness, accumulated worldly means, an ability to in- vigorate life, a readiness to be forgotten. Life of Alice Freeman Palmer, especially Chapters V-VIII, XV. An inspiring account of the personal qualities and methods of work which made this woman such a great teacher. Ross, E. A. Social Control, Chapter XXI, "Personality," pp. 275- 290. Brief characterization of great leaders. The elements of natural and acquired prestige. Terman, L. H. "The psychology and pedagogy of leadership," Ped. S., 11:413-451. Leadership among animals; the bully, the child leader, variations according to age, etc. Tolstoy, Count Leo. War and Peace, Vol. IV. Contains a fine statement of the relation of the individual to the great move- ments of history. CHAPTER XVIII THE SOCIAL ASPECTS OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT Introductory Statement Thus far in Part II we have devoted our attention to the general nature of corporate Ufe and its relation to the work of the school. We now turn to the study of certain facts and principles which may prop- erly be viewed in relation to, or even as appUcations of, what has gone before. The general problem is that of the influence of the social group upon the character of the individual member of the group. This is a large problem with many aspects. The phase of it which is of most interest to us in this study is that which relates to the social conditions of the learning process, particularly as that process goes on in the school, and to the social conditions underlying the development of moral character. As a basis for the proper understanding of these matters, we will first study the social influences involved in the mental growth of the child and the final social character of personality. Two important discussions are here reproduced as a basis for study of this subject. In the one by Royce is a suggestive account of the way in which social forces begin to play upon the infant almost from the moment of birth and continue throughout life. But not merely are our intellectual processes developed and refined by social contact, the very personality, the sum of all these intellectual and emotional activities, receives clearer and clearer delimitation through our con- tact with other selves. Growth in individuality may be considered as the outcome of ten thousand subtle imitations and contrasts set up between ourselves and others. This social basis of personaUty is discussed in the extracts from Cooley. It is of some importance to have in mind in the very beginning of this aspect of our study the problem of the ultimate relation of the 32s 326 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION individual to the social group. There are some thinkers who assume a complete subordination of personality to society. Both logically and historically, however, the two are coordinate; the individual is a center of energy, a creator of purposes. As he strikes out, he inevi- tably influences the hves and purposes of other people, and in turn has his own purposes modified. But even to start with, his purposes can- not be considered as antisocial. He may, it is true, react against the society in which he hves, but his acts are not thereby any the less the social acts. His very individuaUty gains its uniqueness and its force through the contrast set up by his reaction upon or against his fellows. In the study before us we shall attempt to determine the nature and consequences of these human interrelations, especially in the field of individual growth and education. That we shall dwell upon this aspect should not be taken to indicate a failure to appreciate the meaning or reality of individuality. It is the specific function of another science, psychology, to deal with that phase. In all the fol- lowing discussions of social influences we shall assume that a high social development is attainable only as it is correlated with a high degree of individual development, that individuaUty is a real and primary fact, but that it is none the less a social fact, the very defini- tion of individuality, depending as it does upon the presence and influ- ence of others. As iron sharpeneth iron, so the countenance of a man sharpeneth that of his friend; that is, not merely a man's countenance, but his whole personality, are thrown into clearer relief because of his intimate association with others. The Social Aspect of the Higher Forms of Docility Man's response to his environment is not merely a reaction to things, but is, and in fact predominantly is, a reaction to persons. There is not opportunity, in the present connection, to trace with any detail the rise and growth of our consciousness of the human personalities with whom we are accustomed to deal. The laws of habit and of association are unquestionably of importance as throwing light upon the way in which we come to regard certain objects in our environment not merely as physical things possessing size, movement, etc., but as objects endowed with an experience like our own, and possessing a consciousness that, inaccessible as it may be to us, is still, in so far as we get its expressions, essentially intelligible and profoimdly interest- THE SOCIAL ASPECTS OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 327 ing to us. It is necessary in the present connection, without under- taking in the least the task of a specific social psychology, to give some indication of the way in which all our higher intellectual and voluntary habits are affected by this our conscious interpretation of the inner life of our fellows. The foundation for our whole social consciousness seems to lie in certain instincts which characterize us as social beings, and which begin to assume considerable prominence toward the end of the first year of an infant's Ufe. These instincts express themselves first in reactions of general interest in the faces, in the presence and in the doings of our social fellow beings. Among these reactions some show great pleasure and fascination. Some, the reactions of bashfulness, show fear. This fear is an instinctive character, and in some cases may display itself in reactions of violent terror in the presence of strangers. But on the whole, more prominent, in the Ufe of a nor- mally tended infant, is pleasurable reaction at the sight of people. It is unquestionable that, from the very first, these instincts are subject to the regular processes that everywhere determine our docility. Our social environment is a constant source of numerous sensory pleasures, and by association becomes interesting to us accordingly. But, in addition to the pleasures of sense, which are due to our human com- panions, there are, no doubt, from the first, deep instinctive and heredi- tary sources of interest in the activities of hiunan beings. On the basis of the general social interests, there appear more special instincts, amongst which the most prominent is the complex of instincts suggested by the name imitation. It is by imitation that the child learns its language. It is by imitation that it acquired all the social tendencies that make it a tolerable member of society. Its imitativeness is the source of an eager and restless activity which the child pursues for years under circumstances of great difficulty, and even when the processes involved seem to be more painful than pleasurable. Imi- tativeness remains with us through Ufe. It attracts less of our con- scious attention in our adult years, but is present in ways that the psychologist is able to observe even in case of people who suppose them- selves not to be imitative. This human imitativeness assumes very notable forms in excited crowds of people, in what the recent psychologists have called in gen- eral " the mob." A mob, in the technical sense, is any company of persons whose present set of brain involves the abandonment of such habits as have most determined their customary individual choices, and the assumption, for the moment, merely of certain generaUzed modes of reaction which are of an emotional, a sociaUy plastic and a decidedly imitative type. Under the influence of such social condi- tions, the members of th^ jnob may perform, acts of the type before 328 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION referred to, acts which seem to the casual observer qidte out of charac- ter in view of the training and of the ordinary opinions of the people concerned. Outside of the mob, the imitative reactions appear in all the phenomena of fashion and of transitory custom, such as any popular craze of the day, or the success of any favorite song, opera or novel, may daily illustrate. The most of people's poUtical opinions, the most of their religious creeds, the most of their social judgments, are very highly imitative in their origin. Side by side with the social processes of the imitative type appear another group of reactions practically inseparable from the former, but in character decidedly contrasted with them. These are the phenomena of social opposition and of the love for contrasting one's self with one's fellows in behavior, in opinion or in power. These phenomena of social contrast and opposition have an unquestionably instinctive basis. They appear very early in childhood. They last in most people throughout life. They may take extremely hostile and formidable shapes. In their normal expression they constitute one of the most valuable features of any healthy social activity. This fact may be illustrated by any lively conversation or discussion. As a rule, the acts that express tJiis fondness for social contrast, and for opposing one's self to the social environment, are, in their origin, secondary to the imitative acts. It is true that the instinctive basis for them appears quite as early as do the manifestations of the imitative instincts. And since this fondness for opposition is in part based upon the elemental emotions of the tjrpe expressed in anger, obstinacy and unwillingness to be interfered with, the instinctive basis for the type of action here in question may be said to be manifest even earlier in in- fancy than is the case with the imitative reactions. But while the instinctive basis of opposition is primitive, the social acts that can express such instincts must be acquired. And in order to contrast one's self with one's social environment, it is necessary, in general, first to learn how to do something that has social significance. I cannot oppose you by my speech unless I already know how to talk. I cannot rival you as a musician unless I already understand music. I can- not endeavor to get the better of a political rival unless I aheady under- stand politics. But speech and music and poUtics have to be learned by imitation. Hence, the social reactions which express the fondness for contrast and opposition must on the whole follow in their develop- ment the social reactions dependent upon imitation. This accounts for that close weaving together of the two types of functions, of which we have already spoken. The playful child already seizes whatever little arts he has acquired by imitation to express his willfulness, or to develop his own devices, or to display himself to his environment. And, on the other hand, a form of willfulness, or of obstinacy, in an THE SOCIAL ASPECTS OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 329 already highly intelligent being, may lead to a deliberately painstaking process of imitation, such as happens whenever an ambitious artist devotes himself long to training in order that thereby he may get the better of his rivals. In brief, the preservation of a happy balance between the imitative functions and those that emphasize social contrasts and oppositions forms the basis for every higher type of mental activity. Arid the entire process of conscious education involves the deliberate appeal to the docility of these two types of social instincts. For whatever else we teach to a social being, we teach him to imitate. And whatever use we teach him to make of his social imitations in his relations with other men, we are obliged at the same time to teach him to assert himself, in some sort of way, in contrast with his fellows, and by virtue of the arts which he possesses. The full consideration of the social value of imitativeness and of the love of social contrast and opposition would carry us wholly beyond our present limits. What we are concerned to notice, in this elementary study of psychology, is that the nature of these functions profoundly affects the structure and the development of the processes known as thought and reasoning. We are also concerned merely to mention a fact into whose adequate consideration we cannot hope to enter; the fact, namely, that all the functions which constitute self-consciousness show themselves outwardly in social reactions, that is, in dealings with other real or ideal personages, and are, in our own minds, profoundly related to, and inseparable from, our social consciousness. To specify more exactly the matters to which reference has thus been made : what is called thought consists (as has already been pointed out) of a series of mental processes that unquestionably tend to express them- selves in characteristic motor reactions. Many of these reactions noto- riously take the form of using, or applying, and of combining words. Now the reasons why our thinking process should so largely depend upon using words have often been discussed by psychologists, but at first sight they may appear to the elementary student of psychology somewhat puzzling. The general solution of the problem lies in the fact that words are the expressions of certain reactions that we have acquired when we were in social relations to our fellows. If we once understand how these social relations determine that character of our consciousness which essentially belongs to all thinking, we become able to see why verbal associations and habits should be so prominent in connection with all the thinking processes. We shall also be able to see what is frequently neglected by psychologists; namely, the possi- biUty that processes of thought should on occasion appear dissociated from verbal expression, although never dissociated from tendencies to action which have a social origin essentially similar to that of language. Our words are first learned as part of our social intercourse with our 330 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION fellows. As recent students of the psychology of the language of childhood have pointed out, words cannot be said at the outset to express to a child any exact abstract ideas. They are at first, as Wundt and his school have well insisted, rather the expressions of feeUngs than the embodiments of thought. The whole vocal life of infancy is primarily an expression of feeling. In social relationships it later becomes to a child associated with his socially fascinating feelings, with the sense of companionship, with his joy in the power to make sounds which others admire, and to imitate sounds which he hears others make. But now, in time, these expressions of the child's feeUngs become associated not only with social situations and deUghts, but with objects and deeds observed. The social utility of taking advantage of these associations is emphasized, in the child's training, by the behavior, and by the deliberate efforts at instruction in lan- guage, which he meets with in his elders. At length a stage comes when language is the expression of the child's wish, at once to charac- terize objects present in his experience, and to appeal intelligibly to the minds of his fellows. Now these two aspects of the language pro- cesses are never to be separated from one another, either in the life of childhood or in our much later rational development. A word, a phrase, a discourse, is always at once a response to certain facts in the outer or inner world which we attempt to characterize, and an appeal to the consciousness of our fellow. It is the latter aspect which gives language its primary practical importance. Language is not a direct adjustment to the facts apart from the purpose of communication. It is the purpose of communication that alone makes language essentially significant as a part of our mental equipment. But in view of this fact it is obvious that language acquires its value as a means of charac- terizing facts through processes which appear, in the mind of one who learns language, in the form of a long-continued, a laborious, and gener- ally a fascinating process of comparing his own way of using words with the ways employed by other people. From the time when a child plays at imitating his nurse's words, or at hearing his own babble imitated, to the time when, perhaps, as a lawyer, he adjusts his arguments to the requirements of judges and juries, and to the criticisms of an opponent, he constantly adjusts his reactions, as he speaks, to the reactions of other people, by comparing his own way of behavior with the behav- ior of others. Such comparison involves inevitably both of the two great social motives before emphasized. That is, it involves both the motives of imitation, pure and simple, and that love of social contrast which has before been emphasized. But now what is the inevitable result of all such activities ? It is that the one who makes such social comparison becomes very highly conscious of the details of his own acts, and of the criticisms th?it othei THE SOCIAL ASPECTS OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 331 people are making upon these acts, and of the feeUngs which these acts arouse both in himself and in others. But now it is at the same time the case that the acts of which one becomes conscious are also acts which one is also seeking to adjust to objects as well as to social judg- ments. The result of this twofold adjustment is precisely the kind of consciousness which constitutes thinking. For thinking differs from naive action chiefly in this : When we act in naive fashion, we are espe- cially conscious of the objects to which we adjust ourselves, and of the feelings of success or of failure, that is, of satisfaction or of restlessness, of pleasure or of pain, that accompany these acts. Of the details of our acts we are not in such cases conscious, although our consciousness of our objects is xmquestionably dependent upon the performance of our acts. Thus, one who seeks food is very imperfectly aware of how he moves his legs or his arms in walking or in grasping ; but he is aware of his images of the food, and of his relatively satisfactory or unsatis- factory efforts to obtain it. The reason why the details of our acts do not come in such cases clearly to consciousness is dependent upon the fact that our sensory experiences of the objects in question are prominent, while our sensory experiences of our acts, just in so far as the acts have become habitual, tend to be too swift for consciousness to follow ; while only our feelings remain, amongst our internal expe- riences, as the prominent accompaniments of the act. But, on the other hand, one who thinks makes it part of his ideal to be conscious of how he behaves in the presence of things. And this he does because the social comparison of his acts with the acts of other people not only controls the formation of his acts, but has made his observation of his own acts an ideal. For so far as he is imitating others, he is fascinated by the adjustment of his behavior to the behavior of others. So far as he is dwelling upon social conflicts and contrasts, he is displaying his own acts to the other people ; and so he is conscious that they are ob- serving him, and is desirous that they should do so. In consequence, the social conditions, under which language is acquired, produce the think- ing process, just because it is of the essence of the thinking process that we should become aware of how our acts are adjusted to our objects. The acts in which we express our thinking are not, however, exclu- sively confined to the process of using words or of combining them. The drawing of a scientific diagram, the construction of a work of art, the performance of an experiment, the adjustment of the playing of one's musical instrument to the criticisms of one's musical rival, or to the guidance of the conductor of an orchestra, — all these are activities which involve thinking processes. They do so because they are social adjustments of the type now in question ; that is, social adjustments, involving imitations and social contrasts, and including the consciousness of how one performs the act, and so of how it is adjusted to the ideal. 332 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION Such, then, is the general character of thought; namely, that it is our consciousness of an act or of a series of acts adjusted to an object, in such wise as fittingly to represent that object, or to portray it, or to characterize it, and in such wise that the one who thinks is conscious of the nature of his act. Hence it will follow that all the special processes of thinking, such as those usually discriminated as conception, judgment and reasoning, exemplify this general character of the thinking process, and result from the effects of social stimulations. The process of con- trasting my own acts with my fellow's acts, and in consequence of con- trasting my own views with what I regard as the ideas of my fellow, this is the process which is responsible for that kind of consciousness which appears in all of our thoughtful activities. Let us exemplify these considerations by a few words about each of the thinking processes which have just been mentioned. The process called Conception, or the formation of Abstract General Ideas, is rightly regarded as essential to the thinking process. General ideas are the ideas which we associate with those words that have an appli- cation to any one of many individual cases or situations. The word " man " or " horse " is a word of general application. The knowledge of what this word means involves a possession of a general idea of men or horses. Now of what mental material does such an idea con- sist ? When it is a lively, or a highly conscious, idea, it unquestionably involves, in all cases, and in one aspect, some kind of mental imagery. This imagery may, in visuaUzing people, take predominantly the form of mental pictures of representative men or of representative horses. It may in some minds take the form of vague mental pictures corre- sponding to what one might call " composite photographs," such as the mind would seem to have formed from retaining in imagination the characters common to many individual horses or men, while forgetting the characters wherein various individuals differ from one another. But it is, nevertheless, possible for one who is not a visuaKzer to have as clear an idea of what he means by " man " or " horse " as the visuahz-' ing man possesses. And our more developed abstract ideas, such as mathematical abstractions, or such as our conception of justice, involve mental processes to whose portrayal visual imagery is extremely inade- quate. One comes nearer to dwelling upon the essential characteris- tics which the abstract ideas of a horse or of a man must possess when one observes that whoever knows what a horse or man in general is, knows of some kind of act which it is fitting to perform in the presence of any object of the class in question. The fact that too many psychological accounts of the nature of general ideas have resulted from confining psychological attention to the fragmentary images which may appear at any stage of the develop- ment or expression in consciousness of a general idea, instead of con- THE SOCIAL ASPECTS OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 333 sidering the total mental process which is needed in order to portray with relative completeness any general idea whatever, is responsible for the result that the traditional account of general ideas has usually missed this, their relation to our conduct. But if this relation exists, if every complete general idea is a conscious plan of action, fitted for the characterization and portrayal of the nature of that of which we have a general idea, the psychological question regarding the genesis of general ideas is simply the question as to how we could become clearly conscious of such plans of action. For, as we pointed out above, we are not usually clearly conscious of precisely those acts which have become most habitual, unless special conditions call our attention to their constitu- tion. Our answer to the question thus raised has already been stated. The fact that all our general ideas have been formed under social conditions, and that the ways in which we describe, portray and characterize things have been throughout determined lay motives of communication, by a disposition to imitate the behavior of our fel- lows, and by a disposition to compare our own mental attitudes with theirs, this fact sufficiently explains why the social contrasts and com- parisons in question have tended to make us and keep us conscious not only of our own objects, but of our own modes of rational behavior in their presence. Meanwhile, the essentially imitative character of all complex general ideas appears in all our most thoughtful processes; namely, in our more elaborate scientific general ideas. Such general ideas are best expressed by drawing' diagrams, or by going through the processes of a scientific experiment, or by writing formulas on a blackboard, or, finally, by describing objects in well-ordered series of descriptive words. From this point of view one might declare that all our higher conceptions, just in proportion as they are thoughtful and definite, involve conscious imitations of things. And these conceptions are general, merely be- cause the fashion of imitation that we employ in the presence of one object will regularly be applicable to a great number of objects. Our numerical ideas illustrate this principle very well. They are more or less abbreviated expressions of the motor activity of counting, and of the results of this activity. The geometrical conception of a circle as a curve that can be constructed by fixing one end of a straight line, by leaving the other free, and by allowing this end to rotate in a plane, is another instance of a conception that is identical with our memory of a certain mode of portrayal by which a circle can be recon- structed. In brief, we have exact conceptions of^ things in so far as we know how the things are made, or how they can be imitatively reconstructed through our portrayals. Where our power to imitate ceases, our power definitely to conceive ceases also. All science is thus an effort to de- 334 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION scribe facts, to set over against the real world an imitation of it. Hence the vanity of endeavoring to describe the process of conception merely in terms of images, without remembering that mental imagery, when definite, is always related to our action. But it is our social life that has made us conscious of our actions, and that has thus taught us how to form abstract ideas. The mental process called Judgment is the second essential aspect of the thinking process. While judgment involves many other aspects, its essential feature lies in the fact that, when we judge, we accept or reject a given proposed portrayal of objects as adequate, or as fitting for its own purpose. The general conception, as we have just seen, is a portrayal which one may compare to a photograph of a man. The act of judgment is comparable to the act whereby one to whom the photog- rapher sends the proofs of a photograph accepts or rejects the photo- graph as a worthy representation of the object in question. But our consciousness regarding the acceptance or rejection of proposed por- trayals of objects has become critical, has come to involve a sharp dis- tinction between truth and error, because we have so often compared our judgments with those of our fellows, and have so often criticized, accepted, or rejected their expressions, their attitudes toward things. Here again the conditions upon which the social consciousness depends have proved necessary to the formation of our thought. The process of reasoning, the third aspect of the thinking process, is in general the process of considering the results of proposed conceptions and judgments. As reasoning involves a constantly more and more elaborate con- sciousness of the nature and results of our own action, so again we see, from the whole history of the development of the reason amongst men, that reasoning is a consequence of social situations, and especially of the process of comparing various opinions and connections of opinion, as these have grown up amongst men. The whole method of the reasoning process has come to the consciousness of men as the result of disputa- tion ; that is, of processes whereby men have compared together their various ways of portraying things, and of taking accounts of the results of their own actions. Nobody learns to reason except after other people have pointed out to him how they view his attempts to give his own acts of thought connection, and to proceed from one act to another. Like the thinking process in general, the reasoning process develops' out of conditions which at the outset involve a very rich, and in fact predomi- nant, presence of feelings and of complex emotions. That is, reasonings have resulted from what were at first decidedly passionate contrasts of opinion; and the dispassionate reason has grown up upon the basis of decidedly emotional efforts of men to persuade other men to assume their own fashions of conduct, and their own self-conscious view of how THE SOCIAL ASPECTS OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 335 their various acts were connected together. If the process of concep- tion is the formation of a plan of conduct, the process of reasoning results from trying so to portray this plan as to persuade other men to assume it. Persuasion and controversy, upon earher stages of mental development, are always associated with passionate vehemence. The ineffectiveness of mere passion to attain its own social ends, the growth of ingenuity in the process of persuasion, and the gradual elaboration of social habits, formed through the successful bringing of men to agree- ments, — such are the motives upon which the development of the reasoning process has depended. It remains here very briefly to characterize the highest and most com- plex of all the intellectual processes ; namely, that one which has to do with what is called our " Self -consciousness " in general, that is, the consciousness which the Ego, the Self, possesses of its own life activities and plans. The Self of any man comes to consciousness only in contrast with other selves. There is no reason why one should be aware of his whole plan of life, or of his personal character, or of the general con- nections amongst his various habits, or of the value of his own life, or of any of the features and attributes which our present conscious- ness ascribes to the Self, unless he has had occasion to compare his behavior, his feelings, and his ideals with those of other men. It is true that when developed, this Self includes amongst its possessions all the states of consciousness that make up the inner life of which we spoke in our opening paragraphs, that inner life which we conceived as in some sense inaccessible to, and sundered from, the inner life of anybody else. But there is no reason why these states of consciousness should form, from our point of view, a world by themselves, unless we had some world of other facts to compare and contrast them with. And the whole evidence of our social consciousness is to the effect that it is by virtue of our ideas of other people, and of their minds and conscious states, that we have come to form the conception of our own inner life as, in its wholeness, distinct from theirs. The conception of the so-called Empirical Self, that is, of the Self of our ordinary experience, is one which we find to be especially centered about certain of our most important organic sensations, and also centered about those feelings of pleasure, pain, restlessness and quiescence, which are most persistent and prominent in our lives. But the mere possession of these organic sensations and feelings is not suflacient to explain why we regard them as pecuUarly belonging to the Self. It is only when we see the importance that our social life without fellows has given to these organic sensations that we recognize how we first have come to contrast our own experience with what we for various reasons conceive to be the inner experiences of other people, and then, by virtue of the prominence which our social contrasts and oppositions 336 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION give to these organic sensations, have come to regard them as especially the immediate expression of our independence, and of that which keeps us apart from all other selves. That the Self comes to consciousness in normal cases only in con- nection with organized plans of conduct, is obvious from what has already been said. Our social self-consciousness leads us to form such plans, and to compare them with those of other people. Our conscious- ness of ourselves as personalities is therefore simply an extreme in- stance of that relation between social consciousness and the higher intellectual development which we have already set forth in our accoimt of the general nature of thought. Reprinted from J. Royce, Outlines of Psychology, Chapter XH. The Social Basis of Personality The social self is simply any idea, or system of ideas, drawn from the communicative life, that the mind cherishes as its own. Self- feeling has its chief scope within the general life, not outside of it, the special endeavor or tendency of which it is the emotional aspect find- ing its principal field of exercises in a world of personal forces, re- flected in the mind by a world of personal impressions. As connected with the thought of other persons it is always a con- sciousness of the peculiar or differentiated aspect of one's life, because that is the aspect that has to be sustained by purpose and endeavor, and its more aggressive forms tend to attach themselves to whatever one finds to be at once congenial to one's own tendencies and at variance with those of others with whom one is in mental contact. It is here that they are most needed to serve their function of stimu- lating characteristic activity, of fostering those personal variations which the general plan of life seems to require. Heaven, says Shake- speare, doth divide " The state of man in divers functions, Setting endeavor in continual motion," and self -feeling is one of the means by which this diversity is achieved. Agreeably to this view we find that the aggressive self manifests itself most conspicuously in an appropriativeness of objects of com- mon desire, corresponding to the individual's need of power over such objects to secure his own peculiar development and to the dan- ger of opposition from others who also need them. And this extends from material objects to lay hold, in the same spirit, of the attentions and affections of other people, of all sorts of plans and ambitions, including the noblest special purposes the mind can entertain, and indeed of any conceivable idea which may come to seem a part of THE SOCIAL ASPECTS OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 337 one's life and in need of assertion against some one else. The at- tempt to limit the word "self" and its derivatives to the lower aims of personality is quite arbitrary; at variance with common sense as expressed by the emphatic use of " I " in connection with the sense of duty and other high motives, and unphilosophical as ignoring the function of the self as the organ of specialized endeavor of higher as well as lower kinds. That the " I " of common speech has a meaning which includes some sort of reference to other persons is involved in the very fact that the word and the ideas it stands for are phenomena of language and the communicative life. It is doubtful whether it is possible to use language at all without thinking more or less distinctly of some one else, and certainly the things to which we give names and which have a large place in reflective Qiought are almost always those which are impressed upon us by our contact with other people. Where there is no communication, there can be no nomenclature and no developed thought. What we call " me," " mine," or " myself " is, then, not something separate from the general life, but the most interesting part of it, a part whose interest arises from the very fact that it is both general and individual. That is, we care for it just be- cause it is that phase of the mind that is living and striving in the common life, trying to impress itself upon the minds of others. " I " is a militant social tendency, working to hold and enlarge its place in the general current of tendencies. So far as it can, it waxes, as all life does. To think of it as apart from society is a palpable absur- dity of which no one could be guilty who really saw it as a fact of life. " Der Mensch erkennt sich nur im Menschen, nur Das Leben lehret jedem was er sei." * If a thing has no relation to others of which one is conscious, he is imlikely to think of it at all, and if he does think of it he cannot, it seems to me, regard it as emphatically his. The appropriative sense is always the shadow, as it were, of the common life, and when we have it, we have a sense of the latter in connection with it. Thus, if we think of a secluded part of the woods as "ours," it is because we think, also, that others do not go there. As regards the body I doubt if we have a vivid my-feeling about any part of it which is not thought of, however vaguely, as having some actual or possible reference to some one else. Intense self-consciousness regarding it arises along with instincts or experiences which connect it with the thought of others. Internal organs, like the liver, are not thought of as pecuUarly ours unless we are trying to communicate something • "Only in man does man know himself; life alone teaches each one what he is." — Goethe, Tasso, Act 2, Scene 3. 338 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION regarding them, as, for instance, when they are giving us trouble and we are trying to get sympathy. " I," then, is not all of the mind, but a peculiarly central, vigorous, and well-knit portion of it, not separate from the rest, but gradually merging into it, and yet having a certain practical distinctness, so that a man generally shows clearly enough by his language and behavior what his " I " is as distinguished from thoughts he does not appropriate. It may be thought of, as already suggested, under the analogy of a central colored area on a lighted wall. It might also, and perhaps more justly, be compared to the nucleus of a living cell, not altogether separate from the surrounding matter, out of which indeed it is formed, but more active and definitely organized. The reference to other persons involved in the sense of self may be distinct and particular, as when a boy is ashamed to have his mother catch him at something she has forbidden, or it may be vague and general, as when one is ashamed to do something which only his con- science, expressing his sense of social responsibility, detects and dis- approves ; but it is always there. There is no sense of " I," as in pride or shame, without its correlative sense of you, or he, or they. Even the miser gloating over his hidden gold can feel the " mine " only as he is aware of the world of men over whom he has secret power ; and the case is very similar with all kinds of hidden treasure. Many painters, sculptors, and writers have loved to withhold their work from the world, fondling it in seclusion until they were quite done with it; but the delight in this, as in all secrets, depends upon a sense of value of what is concealed. In a very large and interesting class of cases the social reference takes the form of a somewhat definite imagination of how one's self — that is, any idea he appropriates — appears in a particular mind, and the kind of self-feeling one has is determined by the atti- tude toward this attributed to that other mind. A social self of this sort might be called the reflected or looking-glass self : — " Each to each a looking-glass Reflects the other that doth pass." As we see our face, figure and dress in the glass, and are interested in them because they are ours, and pleased or otherwise with them according as they do or do not answer to what we should like them to be ; so in imagination we perceive in another's mind some thought of our appearance, manners, aims, deeds, character, friends, and so on, and are variously affected by it. A self-idea of this sort seems to have three principal elements; the imagination of our appearance to the other person ; the imagina- tion of his judgment of that appearance, and some sort of self-feeling, THE SOCIAL ASPECTS OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 339 such as pride or mortification. The comparison with a looking- glass hardly suggests the second element, the imagined judgment, which is quite essential. The thing that moves us to pride or shame is not the mere mechanical reflection of ourselves, but an imputed sentiment, the imagined effect of this reflection upon another's mind. This is evident from the fact that the character and weight of that other, in whose mind we see ourselves, makes all the difference with our feeling. We are ashamed to seem evasive in the presence of a straightforward man, cowardly in the presence of a brave one, gross in the eyes of a refined one, and so on. We always imagine, and in imagining share, the judgments of the other mind. A man will boast to one person of an action — say some sharp transaction in trade — which he would be ashamed to own to another. . . . I doubt whether there are any regular stages in the development of social self-feeling and expression common to the majority of children. The sentiments of self develop by imperceptible gradations out of the crude appropriative instinct of new-born babes, and their mani- festations vary indefinitely in different cases. Many children show " self-consciousness " conspicuously from the first half year ; others have little appearance of it at any age. Still others pass through periods of affectation whose length and time of occurrence would probably be found to be exceedingly various. In childhood, as at all times of life, absorption in some idea other than that of the social self tends to drive " self-consciousness " out. Nearly every one, however, whose turn of mind is at all imaginative, goes through a season of passionate self-feeling during adolescence, when, according to current belief, the social impulses are stimukted in connection with the rapid development of the functions of sex. This is a time of hero- worship, of high resolve, of impassioned reverie, of vague but fierce ambition, of strenuous imitation that seems affected, of gene in the presence of the other sex or of superior persons, and so on. Many autobiographies describe the social self-feeling of youth which, in the case of strenuous, susceptible natures, prevented by weak health or uncongenial surroundings from gaining the sort of success proper to that age, often attains extreme intensity. This is quite generally the case with the youth of men of genius, whose exceptional endowment and tendencies usually isolate them more or less from the ordinary life about them. In the autobiography of John Addington Symonds we have an account of the feelings of an ambitious boy suffering from ill-health, plainness of feature — peculiarly mortifying to his strong aesthetic instincts — and mental backwardness. "I almost resented the attentions paid me as my father's son. ... I regarded them as acts of charitable condescen- sion. Thus I passed into an attitude of haughty shyness which had 340 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION nothing respectable in it except a sort of self-reliant, world-defiant pride, a resolution to effectuate myself, and to win what I wanted by my exertions. ... I vowed to raise myself somehow or other to eminence of some sort. ... I felt no desire for wealth, no mere wish to cut a figure in society. But I thirsted with intolerable thirst for eminence, for recognition as a personality. . . . The main thing which sustained me was a sense of self — imperious, antagonistic, unmalleable. . . . My external self in these many ways was being perpetually snubbed, and crushed, and mortified. Yet the inner self hardened after a dumb blind fashion. I kept repeating, 'Wait, wait. I will, I shall, I must.' " At Oxford he overhears a conversa- tion in which his abilities are depreciated and it is predicted that he will not get his " first." " The sting of it remained in me ; and though I cared little enough for first classes, I [then and there resolved that I would win the best first of my year. This kind of grit in me has to be notified. Nothing aroused it so much as a seeming slight, exciting my rebellious manhood." Again he exclaims, " I look round me and find nothing in which I excel. ... I fret because I do not realize ambition, because I have no active work, and cannot win a position of importance like other men." This sort of thing is familiar in literature, and very likely in our own experience. It seems worth while to recall it and to point out that this primal need of self-effectuation, to adopt Mr. Symond's phrase, is the essence of ambition, and always has for its object the production of some effect upon the minds of other people. We feel in the quotations above the indomitable surging up of the individualiz- ing, militant force of which self-feeling seems to be the organ. Sex-difference in the development of the social self is apparent from the first. Girls have, as a rule, a more impressible social sen- sibility ; they care more obviously for the image, study it, reflect upon it more, and so have even during the first year an appearance of subt- lety, finesse, often of affectation, in which boys are comparatively ladling. Boys are more taken up with muscxilar activity for its own sake and with construction; their imaginations are occupied somewhat less with persons and more with things. In a girl das ewig Weibliche, not easy to describe but quite unmistakable, appears as soon as she begins to take notice of people, and one phase of it is certainly an ego less simple and stable, a stronger impulse to go over to the other per- son's point of view and to stake joy and grief on the image in his mind. There can be no doubt that women are as a rule more dependent upon immediate personal support and corroboration than are men. The thought of the woman needs to fix itself upon some person in whose mind she can find a stable and compelling image of herself by which to Uve. If such an image is foimd, either in a visible or an ideal per- THE SOCIAL ASPECTS OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 341 son, the power of devotion to it becomes a source of strength. But it is a sort of strength dependent upon this personal complement, without which the womanly character is somewhat apt to become a derelict and drifting vessel. Men, being built more for aggression, have relatively a greater power of standing alone. But no one can really stand alone, and the appearance of it is due simply to a greater momentum and continuity of character which stores up the past and resists immediate influences. Directly or indirectly the imagina- tion of how we appear to others is a controlling force in all normal minds. The vague but potent phases of the self associated with the in- stinct of sex may be regarded, like other phases, as expressive of a need to exert power, and as having reference to personal function. The youth, I take it, is bashful precisely because he is conscious of the vague stirring of an aggressive instinct which he does not know how either to effectuate or to ignore. And it is perhaps much the same with the other sex; the bashful are always aggressive at heart ; they are conscious of an interest in the other person, of a need to be something to him. And the more developed sexual passion, in both sexes, is very largely an emotion of power, domination, or appropriation. There is no state of feeling that says, " mine, mine," more fiercely. The need to be appropriated or dominated which, in women at least, is equally powerful, is of the same nature at bottom, having for its object the attracting to itself of a masterful passion. " The desire of a man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man." Although boys have generally a less impressionable social self than girls, there is great difference among them in this regard. Some of them have a marked tendency to finesse and posing, while others have almost none. The latter have a less vivid personal imagination ; they are unaffected chiefly, perhaps, because they have no vivid idea of how they seem to others, and so are not moved to seem rather than to be ; they are unresentful of slights because they do not feel them; not ashamed or jealous or vain or proud or remorseful, because all these imply imagination of another's mind. I have known chil- dren who showed no tendency whatever to lie; in fact, could not under- stand the nature or object of lying or of any sort of concealment, as in such games as hide-and-coop. This excessively simple way of look- ing at things may come from unusual absorption in the observation and analysis of the impersonal, as appeared to be the case with R., whose interest in other facts and their relation so much preponderated over his interest in personal attitudes that there were no temptations to sacrifice the former to the latter. A child of this sort gives the impression of being nonmoral ; he neither sins nor repents, and has not 342 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION the knowledge of good and evil. We eat of the tree of this knowledge when we begin to imagine the minds of others, and so become aware of that conflict of personal impulses which conscience aims to allay. Simplicity is a pleasant thing in children, or at any age, but it is not necessarily admirable, nor is affectation altogether a thing of evil. To be normal, to be at home in the world, with a prospect of power, usefulness or success, the person must have that imaginative insight into other minds that underlies tact and savoir-faire, morality and beneficence. This insight involves sophistication, some under- standing and sharing of the clandestine impulses of human nature. A simplicity that is merely the lack of this insight indicates a sort of defect. There is, however, another kind of simplicity, belonging to a character that is subtle and sensitive, but has sufficient force and mental clearness to keep in strict order the many impulses to which it is open, and so preserve its directness and unity. One may be sim- ple like Simple Simon, or in the sense that Emerson meant when be said, " To be simple is to be great." Affectation, vanity and the like, indicate the lack of proper assimilation of the influences aris- ing from our sense of what others think of us. Instead of these in- fluences working upon the individual gradually and without disturbing his equilibrium, they overbear him so that he appears to be not him- self, posing, out of function, and hence silly, weak, contemptible. The affected smile, the " foolish face of praise " is a type of all affectation, an external put-on thing, a weak and fatuous petition for approval. Whenever one is growing rapidly, learning eagerly, pre- occupied with strange ideals, he is in danger of this loss of equilibrium ; and so we notice it in sensitive children, especially girls, in yoimg people between fourteen and twenty, and at all ages in persons of un- stable individuality. This disturbance of our equOibrium by the out-going of the imagi- nation toward another person's point of view means that we are under- going his influences. In the presence of one whom we feel to be of importance there is a tendency to enter into and adopt, by sympathy, his judgment of ourself, to put a new value on ideas and purposes, to recast life in his image. With a very sensitive person this tendency is often evident to others in ordinary conversation and in trivial mat- ters. By force of an impulse springing directly from the delicacy of his perceptions he is continually imagining how he appears to his inter- locutor, and accepting the image, for the moment, as himself. If the other appears to think him well-informed on some recondite mat- ter, he is likely to assume a learned expression; if thought judicious, he looks as if he were; if accused of dishonesty, he appears guilty; and so on. In short, a sensitive man, in the presence of an impres- sive personality, tends to become, for the time, his interpretation of THE SOCIAL ASPECTS OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 343 what the other thinks he is. It is only the heavy minded who will not feel this to be true, in some degree, of themselves. Of course it is usually a temporary and somewhat superficial phenomenon; but it is typical of all ascendency, and helps us to understand how persons have power over us through some hold upon our imagina- tions, and how our personality grows and takes form by divining the appearance of our present self to other minds. So long as a character is open and capable of growth it retains a corresponding impressibility, which is not weakness unless it swamps the assimilating and organizing faculty. I know men whose careers are a proof of stable and aggressive character who have an almost feminine sensitiveness regarding their seeming to others. Indeed, if one sees a man whose attitude toward others is always assertive, never receptive, he may be confident that man will never go far, because he will never learn much. In character, as in every phase of life, health requires a just union of stability with plasticity. There is a vague excitement of the social self more general than any particular emotion or sentiment. Thus the mere presence of people, a " sense of other persons," as Professor Baldwin says, and an awareness of their observation, often causes a vague discomfort, doubt and tension. One feels that there is a social image of himself lurking about, and not knowing what it is he is obscurely alarmed. Many people, perhaps most, feel more or less agitation and embar- rassment under the observation of strangers, and for some even sitting in the same room with unfamiliar or uncongenial people is harassing and exhausting. It is well known, for instance, that a visit from a stranger would often cost Darwin his night's sleep, and many similar examples could be collected from the records of men of letters. At this point, however, it is evident that we approach the borders of mental pathology. Possibly some will think that I exaggerate the importance of social self-feeling by taking persons and periods of life that are abnormally sensitive. But I believe that with all normal and human people it remains, in one form or another, the mainspring of endeavor and a chief interest of the imagination throughout life. As in the case with other feelings, we do not think much of it so long as it is moderately and regularly gratified. Many people of balanced mind and congenial activity scarcely know that they care what others think aboutthem, and will deny, perhaps with indignation, that such care is an impor- tant factor in what they are and do. But this is an illusion. If failure or disgrace arrives, if one suddenly finds that the faces of men show coldness or contempt instead of the kindliness and deference that he is used to, he will perceive from the shock, the fear, the sense of being outcast and helpless, that he was living in the minds of 344 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION others without knowing it, just as we daily walk the solid ground without thinking how it bears us up. This fact is so familiar in litera- ture, especially in modern novels, that it ought to be obvious enough. The works of George Eliot are particularly strong in the exposition of it. In most of her novels there is some character like Mr. Bul- strode in Middlemarch or Mr. Jermyn in Felix Holt, whose respect- able and long established social image of himself is shattered by the coming to light of hidden truth. It is true, however, that the attempt to describe the social self and to analyze the mental processes that enter into it almost una- voidably makes it appear more reflective and " self-conscious " than it usually is. Thus while some readers will be able to discover in them- selves a quite definite and deliberate contemplation of the reflected self, others will perhaps find nothing but a sympathetic impulse, so simple that it can hardly be made the object of distinct thought. Many people, whose behavior shows that their idea of themselves is largely caught from the persons they are with, are yet quite innocent of any intentional posing ; it is a matter of subconscious impulse or mere suggestion. The self of very sensitive but non- reflective minds is of this character. Extracts from Chapter V of Human Nature and the Social Order, C. H. Cooley, New York, 1902. Courtesy of Charles Scribner's Sons. Summary and Comment upon the Social Aspects of Mental Development It has been the purpose of this section to point out in a general way the extent to which the stimuli leading to true mental growth in the individual are determined by the presence of other people, and fur- ther, the effect of this social quality upon the process of education itself. The importance of early social intercourse in determining the child's character was clearly recognized by Froebel, and in his Mother- play he gives abimdant illustration of the way it may occur, even in the earliest stages of mental growth. We can excuse some of the artificiality and the symbolism that pervades this book, if we read it in the light of the fundamental truth here suggested. Froebel ap- parently thought that the attitudes of adult life were latent in the baby and that, if he were exercised in various ways, these attitudes would thereby become explicit. In a sense all of this is true. That is, the raw material of impulse is there, waiting only to be organized through the child's interaction with the social and material forces in THE SOCIAL ASPECTS OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 345 his environment. In each one of the sections of the Mother-play Froe- bel shows how the social environment stimulates the baby's activities and helps to organize them in particular directions. In the first "play," for instance, the mother holds out her hands for the baby to press his feet against. The initiative is within the child, he is already trjring to do something, he is kicking in a general way, but the mother is at hand and furnishes a part at least of that environment within which he may try his first powers. She thus helps to give definite direction to his impulses and thereby to organize them into rather explicit reactions. The pressing of the feet against the mother's hands is representative of the way an increasingly large number of his impulses are conditioned and organized by his social environment. At the first, other people merely attract his instinctive attention, but soon, vmder their influence, his vaguely directed movements tend to fall into the channels that are more or less in accord with the behavior of the people about him. The r61es of imitation and social contrast become increasingly important. As Royce says, " The playful child seizes whatever little arts he has acquired by imitation to express his willfulness, or to develop his own devices or to display himself to his environment. . . . The social reactions which express the fondness for contrast and opposition must on the whole follow in their develop- ment the social reactions dependent upon imitation." We are not here especially concerned with the nature or mechanism of imitation. We need only note that the baby does at a very early period begin to imitate or set himself over against various of the activi- ties and attitudes of other people and that thus, in innumerable and subtle ways, sometimes obviously and sometimes obscurely, does his behavior become modified by the types prevailing in his social milieu. The learning of the language of his associates is, of course, the most striking example of the influence of others in the determination of the development of the child's impulses. " Words are the expressions of certain reactions that we have acquired when we were in social rela- tions with our fellows. . . . Our words are first learned as part of our social intercourse with our fellows." ^ The social utiUty of language is impressed upon the child from the start. The desire to express the objects of his experience and to appeal intelligently to 1 Royce. 346 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION the minds of his fellows is the same thing from different points of view.' Through language, an almost infinite number of avenues of social influence are opened up to the child. By its help he can ask questions, give vent to his curiosity and, in general, discover what other people know or are thinking about. In this social crucible, by the help of the reagent language, his own ideas acquire shape and gain in substance. It is no exaggeration to say that, in these early years, by these well- known means, the child acquires the foundations of all the important mental attitudes and feelings of value that are present in the social context in which he lives and moves about. At any rate the attitudes which he does acquire are definitely related in form and texture to the influences he has breathed in from his social atmosphere. We do not mean that in every case the attitudes must be like the copies furnished by the social environment. Not only can they never be exactly alike, they may even be markedly in contrast. But this very difference may in large degree be due to the influence of others. The changes due to social contrast, or contrary suggestion, as Royce and Baldwin have pointed out, are as genmne types of social influence as are those due to imitation. In other words, when a child tries purposely to be dif- ferent from other people, and this is by no means an infrequent en- deavor, he is not thereby escaping from social impression but literally acts as he does just because of this influence. As Royce suggests, a child's early mental life is a long process of comparing and contrasting himself with others. Such, then, in general are the presuppositions for the importance of a more serious consideration of the social conditions of learning as a whole and even of the narrower aspects of the processes of learning. From the preceding discussion certain general propositions may be deduced; thus : (a) The motives for learning and the specific stimuli thereto are furnished by our contact with people; (J) The presence of a social context within which impulses may be put forth modifies in important ways the intensity and efficiency of such impulses; (c) The fact that the conditions under which impulse finds expression are social means that the product will, in definite ways, be determined socially. Putting all this in a single proposition, we may say : Our association with others stimulates us to greater activity in specific and ' Royce, op. cit., pp. 280-281. THE SOCIAL ASPECTS OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 347 important ways, determines either positively or negatively the par- ticular organization of that activity and the particular quality of the results it attains. A conclusion from the above would be that no ade- quate control of the process of learning is possible which does not recog- nize explicitly the social factors necessarily involved in it. The above propositions have been briefly illustrated in the case of the beginnings of mental growth in the individual, but they have, as well, a general application to the accumulation of knowledge in the human race as a httle reflection may help us to see. For example, rival interests in land helped to develop the first crude geometrical ideas; the necessities of commerce, social necessities, led to the de- velopment of geographical science. All the modern sciences show abundantly the influence of social interactions of various types. Every branch of human knowledge has developed in large measure along two lines. In part the problems have arisen in some one's mind out of the fact itself that there are other people present in one's en- vironment, so that, whether the problems are distinctly social or not, they acquire importance because of their being associated with human life and need. In some measure the problems relative to the causes and the control of such diseases as Asiatic cholera, typhoid fever, yellow fever, are of this type. On the other hand, some of the prob- lems of science have been more individualistic in origin, i.e. they have grown out of the curiosity of the individual rather than out of social need or social pressure. And yet because a number of different people happen to be curious along the same general directions such problems have more than an individual interest. Just because of their more or less general interest many different individuals contribute or cooper- ate in their solution, as has been abundantly illustrated in the develop- ment of electrical science. Here the problems had at the first no direct social origin and yet the product was distinctly a social one, for many different individuals contributed to the development of the whole and the discoveries of any one man would certainly not have been possible except for the work of many predecessors and contem- poraries. In any case the average solver of problems can hardly abstract himself from some idea of social approval as he pursues his work. He cannot work long without some sort of audience, real or ideal. 348 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION Mere social intercourse is in itself capable of exerting a powerful stimulus toward the realization of problems and toward mental growth generally. We have already referred to this point in the case of the baby and Uttle child. We may now consider it with reference to people in general. We are constantly taking certain points of view, and as we take them we feel that we must express them, explain them or defend them. For instance, a-yoxmg man through reading and re- flection came to the idea that the principle of free trade is not only more logical but fairer to the general interests of the country than is that of protection. It all seemed clear enough to himself as he thought it over, but he did not realize how imperfectly he really conceived his new point of view until he tried to state it to one of his friends. He then discovered with some astonishment that the mere statement of the free-trade doctrine in its abstract form was not of necessity con- vincing to one who believed the opposite, and that before he could hope to convince others he must clear up his own mind much fvurther upon the subject, that he must organize his facts so they would be more tell- ing, that ways of presenting them must be studied out so that they might not only be clear but forceful and unexceptionable. He was brought face to face with this necessity only through conversation with his friends, and through conversation he succeeded in clearing up and organizing his ideas where before he had had only vague feeHngs. This case is quite typical. As a recent author says,^ ideas are clarified by the white heat of free discussion : nothing so helps one to know his own powers as measuring them with those of others. In endeavor- ing to enlighten others we find ourselves enlightened. True conversa- tion is always reciprocally beneficial. " No matter how much you give you are sure to receive something. . . . The more you give, the more you have to give. Expression of thought makes it grow. As soon as you express one thought, a himdred others may start from it, the avenues of the mind open at once to new views, to new percep- tions of things." ^ " On the wings of conversation the seeds and germs of new productions are constantly scattered, and the thoughts of one mind cause new thoughts to spring into being from contact with those of another." ^ " The inner being, the mind and heart, are nearly always shaped by intimate and familiar conversation, which, springing ' R. Waters, Culture by Conversation. ' P. 41. > P. 42. THE SOCIAL ASPECTS OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 349 spontaneously and naturally among friends and acquaintances, oper- ates unconsciously in forming the character, in inspiring thought, in shaping one's aims and ambitions, and in creating a desire for in- tellectual expansion." ^ It appears that the ancient Greeks were the first to recognize the value of discussion in the development of meanings and the reaching of conclusions. Socrates and his immediate school are represented as depending altogether upon the exchange of thought in conversation in the development of their ethical and philosophical points of view. In fact, the very problems which led to the discussions were rife in the social order of the time. It was in the everyday street-corner talk, in familiar conversation upon questions actually present in their social and poUtical life, that they finally came to formulate points of view, concepts of the good, of justice, of the perfect state and the perfect life. Although they finally got into the depths of philosophy, in the beginning their questions were quite concrete. It was not abstract goodness or justice that started them to thinking. It was the problem of how to live lives with more of the concrete reality of justice in them, or perhaps whether the just life was really practical and desirable after all or not. As they discussed such questions this way and that, definite philosophies of conduct were developed. The great work of Aristotle, as a systematizer and as a thinker, was the outcome of the seemingly endless discussions of his predecessors. His problems came to him along with many suggestions toward their solution through the re- peated reaction upon them of other minds. Socrates is sometimes represented as affecting ignorance that he might more effectively draw out and thus teach some youth. It is just possible that this was not all pretense, however, and that he genuinely sought to clear up his own ideas by inducing some unso- phisticated mind to react upon his problem, or perhaps, even to find the problem itself in the naive unreserved expression of opinion on the part of some young man (unreserved because the youth would not be abashed by any affectation of superiority in the questioner). But whether Socrates' ignorance was real or pretended, there have been people since his day who, though able to reflect independently, have found it immensely easier and more productive of results to ^Op. cit., pp. ix, X. 35° SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION develop their ideas through discussing them with others. The prev- alence of the dialogue form in the literature of philosophy may possibly indicate that the presence of even an imaginary social group tends to stimulate one's thinking. Many of our most important scientific distinctions, classifications, concepts, etc., have been de- veloped, either in our efforts to justify or make clear our own attitudes to others, or through the mutual reaction of individuals upon a com- mon problem. What each person does in a case of this kind stimu- lates his companions to further effort so that the intellectual conclu- sions are a genuine social product. It seems impossible for one mind to see all sides of a question or to detect all of its bearings. When, therefore, several people are active together in the solution of a prob- lem, it often occurs that the most unexpected difficulties are unearthed and met. One can never know just how sensible his own ideas are until he hears the comments which other people make upon them. In developing a train of thought it is almost impossible to take a stand outside and view it impartially; it is too much a part of ourselves. Hence the need of friendly discussion such as social intercoiurse medi- ates. If the interaction of minds in conversation and discussion is so potent in the development and organization of the ideas of adults, is it not possible that there may be great and unappreciated opportuni- ties in conversation as a means of mental development in children ? The prattle and questions of little children seem endless and often wearjdng, but everything points to this same insatiable desire to talk as a most important channel for securing in them healthful mental growth, provided, of course, the fact is appreciated by their adult companions. Too often the adult regards the talk of the child as merely childish, and when he joins in with him it is in monosyllables and with much patronizing affectation. But the child really needs and normally desires that his questions be taken seriously and answered candidly. He needs the reaction of his parents and others to his child- hood problems. Just as we find our own thought processes stimulated by the con- versation of some people and deadened by that of others, so must it be with the child. He finds the same difference in the replies to his questions which he elicits from his elders, and in the conversation they THE SOCIAL ASPECTS OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 351 share with him as we find in our intercommunications. Sometimes his spirits are lifted up and expanded; sometimes they are completely flattened out. The parent can thus deaden or stimulate the spirit of inquiry in his child. The child can just as truly find his parent " sug- gestive " in what he says and in the way he says it as does the parent the words of some brilliant adult conversationalist. Through the proper answering of the child's questions, and through talking to him about things within his range of interests, such results as the following may be attained and in perfectly natural ways : (a) His fund of available knowledge may be increased, (b) He may be brought to a consciousness of new problems and may be stimulated to grapple with them, (c) Through conversation his ideas may be cleared up and organized into natural and useful attitudes or systems, (d) All these are merely ways of sajdng that his whole intellectual outlook as well as his valuations and appreciations of life may be in this manner appreciably broadened. The information which one seemingly gives another to whom he talks is not really merely given, if the conversa- tion is genuine, and, by genuine, we mean mutual activity along some given line of thought. The case is quite different when a person pas- sively receives the information through a lecture or a book. It is information that comes to one in this way that is noneducative. If intelligent conversation has such a place as this in mental growth, how cruelly perverse was the old adage that children must be seen and not heard! The distraction and teasing quality of much of the talk of children is the direct outcome of the failure of the child to find in the parent or companion any adequate response to his impulses and inquiries. Hence we are not standing for the proposition that mere child talk is of great value. The value arises only as it fuses with an appreciative response in some older person who is awake to the importance of his opportunity when he holds communion with the child spirit. Scott, in his Social Education (pp. i8o ff.), gives an interesting illus- tration of how a child may, through conversation with an adult, obtain information that will be truly educative. A four-year-old girl is walking in the woods with her father and sees some toadstools which she calls " httle tables." A conversation ensues in which the father does not attempt to correct the child's notion directly, but rather to 3S2 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION draw her out and to discuss with her the impUcations of such a view of toadstools. To quote from Scott : " Both father and child are working on the same stream of thought, and it makes Uttle difference which of them expresses the thoughts that come. The father may express the child's thought, or the child may express her own. The father may even express his own thoughts in so far as they are not accepted authoritatively." In other words, where there is mutual interchange of thought, where there is genuine activity on both sides with reference to a common problem, the points of view brought out will belong genuinely to both parties. An idea which one person gets from another imder such circumstances is not merely annexed; it becomes an organic part of his own psychical attitude because he is himself active in the same direction. Persons thus in rapport with each other constitute a psychical unity which is of the greatest signifi- cance for all types of mental enlargement. " Children who have grown up in homes in which the talk ran on large lines and touched on all the great interests of life will agree that nothing gave them greater pleasure or more genuine education. There are homes in which the very atmosphere makes for wide knowledge of life, for generous aims, for citizenship in the world, as well as in the locality in which the home stands. Teachers in schools and colleges find the widest differences in range of information and quality of in- telligence in the boys and girls who come to them. Some children bring a store of knowledge and sound tastes with them ; others seem to have had no cultivation of any sort, are ignorant of everything save the few subjects which they have been compelled to study, and have no personal acquaintance with books or art or nature or the large affairs of the world. They have absorbed nothing, for there has been nothing to absorb ; all that they know has been poured into them. The fortunate children have grown up in association with men and women of general intelligence, have heard them talk and lived among their books. " There is no educational opportunity in the homes more important than the talk at table. But this educational influence must issue from the spirit and interests of the parents; it must never wear a peda- gogic air and impose a schoolroom order on a life which ought to be free, spontaneous and joyful. The home in which the talk is prear- THE SOCIAL ASPECTS OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 353 ranged to instruct the children would be, not a garden where birds and dogs and children play together, but an institution in which the inmates Uve by rule and not instinct. . . . "It is not the child of six who sits at the table and listens; it is a human spirit, eager, curious, wondering, surrounded by mysteries, silently taking in what it does not understand to-day, but which will take possession of it next year and become a torch to light it on its way. It is through association with older people that these fructifying ideas come to the child ; it is through such talk that he finds the world he is to possess. " The talk of the family ought not, therefore, to be directed at him or shaped for him ; but it ought to make a place for him. If the Balkan situation comes up, let the boy get out the atlas and find Bosnia and Bulgaria ; it is quite likely that his elders may have forgotten the exact location of these countries; it is even possible that they may never have known. . . . "Talk on books, plays, pictures, music, may have the same quality of a common interest for those who listen as well as for those who talk. There are homes in which the informal discussion of these matters is a liberal education; and long years after, children, who were not taken account of at the time, remember phrases and sentences that have been key words in their vocabulary of life. . . . " Children are part of the family and have a right to a share in the talk; do not silence them by the old-fashioned arbitrary rule com- manding them to be " seen but not heard." If they are in the right atmosphere, they will not be intrusive or impertinent ; perhaps one reason why some American children are aggressive and lacking in respect is the frivolity of the talk that goes on in some American fami- lies. Make place for their interests, their questions, the problems of their experience ; for there are young as well as old perplexities. En- coiu-age them to talk, and meet them more than halfway by the ut- most hospitality to the subjects that interest and puzzle them." '■ So much for the general significance of conversation in the process of mental growth. It is possible, however, as Royce has done, to carry the analysis still further and to show that the various psychical pro- cesses usually discussed in psychology as purely individuaUstic affairs •From the Outlook, Nov. 14, 1908. 354 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION are definitely social in their development and depend upon sodal stimuli for their practical efficiency. This has been admirably done in the preceding extract from Royce. Social influences react upon the development of our meanings, of our appreciations and of our feelings in general. Our dominant habits are social, our perceptive activity is, in a measure, socially determined, and to some extent also are our organizations of ideas, that is, our associative systems, and our concepts are social. Of judgment, Royce says, in substance, that it is essentially an acceptance or a rejection of a proposed portrayal of objects as adequate or fitting for its own purpose. This critical atti- tude develops " because we have so often compared o;ir judgments with those of our fellows." Reasoning, he maintains, is " the process of considering the results of proposed conceptions and judgments." " Reasoning is a consequence of social situations, and especially of the process of comparing various opinions and connections of opinion as these have grown up among men. The process of contrasting my own acts with my fellow's acts, and in consequence of contrasting my own views with what I regard as the ideas of my fellow, this is the pro- cess which is responsible for that kind of consciousness which appears in all our thoughtful activities." " Nobody learns to reason except after other people have pointed out to him how they view his attempts to give his own acts of thought connection." " Reasoning results from trying so to portray a plan (of conduct) as to persuade other people to assume it." Reasoning is a reduced conflict ; we have be- come critical and sharp in our distinctions between truth and error be- cause we have so often compared judgments with other people, have criticized, accepted or rejected their expressions and their attitudes toward things. We see, thus, that it is quite possible to view the different elementary mental processes as phases of mental differentiation dependent in very important ways upon our contact with one another. They are certainly of this type, rather than spontaneous developments of the mind produced by its mere reaction upon the external world of physi- cal objects. In other words, it is not only conceivable, but also alto- gether probable, that an individual brought into contact with a purely physical environment would scarcely rise above the mere feeling and simple apprehension of the animal level of intelligence. THE SOCIAL ASPECTS OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 355 REFERENCES Baldwin, J. M. Social and Ethical Interpretations. New York. Bawden, H. H. "The social character of consciousness and its bear- ings upon education," El. S. T., 4 : 366. BoHANNON, E. W. _ "The only child in a family," Fed. S., 5 : 475- 496. Such children strikingly inferior, especially morally, to children with associates. CooLEY, C. H. Human Nature and the Social Order. New York, 1902. The entire book is relevant. See especially Chapter I treating of the general relations of individual and society ; Chap- ter II, suggestion and choice, the significance of imitation; Chap- ters V and VI, the social character of personality ; Chapter IX, nature of leadership. FiTE, Warner. Individualism, pp. 135-182. New York, 1910. Holds that individual, if not of primary significance, is at least coordinate with society both in origin and in function. Hartson, L. D. "The psychology of the club," Fed. S., 18:353. An inductive study. Quite general. King, I. "IxaitsLtion," The Fsychology of Child Development. Chicago, 2d ed., 1904, Chapter X. An interpretation of imitation as an expression of individuality. LeBon, Gustave. The Crowd. A Study in the Fopular Mind. Con- tains much suggestive material. Mead, G. H. "The psychology of social consciousness as implied in instruction," Science, 31 : 688. May 6, 19 10. " Social psychology as a counterpart of physiological psychology," Fsychological Bulletin. December, 1909. "Fite's Individualism," Fsychological Bulletin. September, 191 1, p. 323. An acute criticism. O'Shea, M. V. Social Development and Education. Boston, 1909. Part I deals with the fundamental social manifestations in early mental development. See also Chapters XI, XII, XVI, XVII. The character of the only child, 252. Ross, E. A. Social Fsychology. New York, 1908. RoYCE, J. "The social aspect of the higher forms of docility," Out- lines of Psychology, Chapter XII. Reprinted herewith. Scott, C. A. "Social Education," Ed., 30: 67, 163, 210. Illustrates the need of and method of developing self-organized groups. 3S6 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION Small, M. H. "The suggestibility of children," Ped. S., 4 : 176-220. 1896. "On some psychical relations of society and solitude," Ped. S., 7 : 13-69. 1900. Vincent, G. E. The Social Mind and Education. Chapter IV. New York, 1897. CHAPTER XIX THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE OF THE SCHOOL AND THE LEARNING PROCESS The Social Aspects of Learning Introductory Statement We considered in the last section the general influence exerted upon the individual by his social environment. In this section we take up the more specific problem of the social nature of the learning process, especially as it occurs in the school. It is, first of all, of interest to know that the mere presence of others in one's immediate environment exerts a marked influence upon one's mental processes. This influence has been made the subject of many experiments, the more important of which are summarized in the ac- companying paper by Bumham. As he suggests at the close, however, there is a still wider point of view, " In a true social group the rela- tions are more vital " than are those described in these experiments. This primary, possibly instinctive, susceptibility to other people is increased many fold when individuals gain that spiritual rapport with each other that is characteristic of true social relationship. The mem- bers of a school or of a class influence one another not in the bare ele- mentary fashion due to mere proximity of one to another. They form rather a vital spiritual unity in which every susceptibility is greatly enhanced. In view of this fact the student will find Mead's paper of particular value as a statement of the need of more definitely recognizing social motives and stimuU in the regular work of the school. We saw in the preceding section what an important part communication, social exchange of ideas, has played in the development of the race and of the individual. Mead points out that the average school almost entirely ignores this factor in attempting to train the child. In the extract from Dewey, certain of the traditional school studies are dis- ss? 3S8 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION cussed from the point of view of their value as means of social communi- cation and social development. In the extracts from Scott, the student will find an account of an interesting attempt to make available, in the practical work of the school, the social motives and group influ- ences described by the previous writers. Scott admits that it may not be possible to do in all schools just what he has done, but his work is nevertheless most suggestive. Whether all the details of his experi- ment are generally practicable or not, as a whole it calls attention to a large and neglected fund of resources which, if utilized even in part, would do much to vitalize and render more effective the work of the school. But whether or not a teacher is so situated as to put into operation some special device such as that employed by Scott, he can at least do much in the schools, as they are to render the work of instruction and of learning less individualistic and more social. This phase is discussed in the comment at the close of the section. The Group as a Stimulus to Mental Activity As the social instincts in man are fundamental, one of the most important factors of his environment is the presence or absence of other human beings. This cannot be ignored. The problem I wish to present is this : What is the effect on mental activity of the presence of a group of other persons, if studied objectively, like the effects of temperature, barometric pressure or the like? Perhaps the best way to present this problem is to recount briefly the meager but important results of investigations already made.' Studies in social psychology have shown that an individual alone and the same individual in a group are two different psychological beings. Recent investigations show that the same is true of children. The child working alone is different from the chUd working in a class. A few years ago Dr. Mayer, of Wiirzburg, studied experimentally this difference as regards the ability to do school work. His problem was to determine whether and under what conditions the work of pupils in a group give better results than the individual work of isolated pupils. He tested the ability of pupils to work alone or in company with others, using dictation, mental arithmetic, memory tests, combination tests after the manner of Ebbinghaus, and written arithmetic. 'For reference to the studies mentioned below, see Psd. S., Vol. 12, June, 1905, pp. 220-239. SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 359 Dr. Mayer's method was briefly as follows: a number of boys in the fifth school year of the people's school in Wiirzburg were given five different tasks as class exercises, and also each boy was required to prepare a similar task for comparison in which he sat alone in the classroom, only the class teacher or a colleague being present. The material for the tasks was carefully chosen and was familiar to the pupils. The pupils were representative of very different elements as regards school ability, behavior, temperament and home conditions. The number tested was twenty-eight; the average age, twelve years. In general, the result of the work of the pupils in groups was supe- rior to their work as individuals. This appeared not only in the de- crease of time, but in the superior quality of the work done. In individual cases, the saving of time was especially striking ; for example, one pupil for a combination test required ten minutes and 25 seconds when working alone, for a similar test when working with the group 7 minutes and 30 seconds; another, alone 13 minutes and 11 seconds, with the group 6 minutes and 45 seconds. Dr. Triplett tested the influence of the presence of a coworker on a simple physical performance. His subjects were forty school chil- dren, and he had them turn a reel as rapidly as possible. The children turned the reel now alone and then in company with another child, in both cases with directions to turn as rapidly as possible. Two results were noted. It appeared, on the one hand, that pupils worked more rapidly when another child worked in combination; but, on the other hand, in case of many children, hasty, uncoordinated movements appeared which reduced their performance. Wherever men are together, the individual is influenced by others without being aware of it. This is specially well illustrated by cer- tain experiments in the laboratory. Meumann cites the case of a subject whose work at night with the ergograph had a very definite value. Accidentally one evening Meumann entered the laboratory, and at once the work done was decidedly increased in comparison with that of other days, and this without the subject's making any volun- tary effort to accomplish more. In such experiments the subject always attempts to do his utmost, and hence the significance of the increased work done in the presence of another individual. Many examples of such effects of suggestion have been reported by psychol- ogists. Meumann, in experiments in the People's Schools, corroborated the results of Triplett and Fere in a striking manner. Seven pupils of the age of thirteen or fourteen were tested repeatedly with the dynamom- eter and ergograph. In case of the test of the pupils separately, with no one else in the room, the amount of work was always less than when others were present. If the experiments were made in the presence of 36o SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION the teacher alone, the pupils did not do as much work as when they were all together without the teacher. From all this it appears, as Mayer points out, that pupils in a class are in a sort of mental rapport; they hear, see and know continually what the others are doing, and thus real class work is not a mere case of individuals working together and their performance the summa- tion of the work of many individuals ; but there is a sort of class spirit, so that, in the full sense of the word, one can speak of a group per- formance, which may be compared with an individual performance. The pupils are members of a community of workers. The individual working by himself is a different person. Schmidt in his careful inves- tigation testing school children in their home work as compared with their school work found that for most kinds of work the product in the classroom was superior. His results are to a considerable degree evidence in corroboration of the results found by Mayer. The child studying school tasks at home is relatively isolated ; in the class he is one of a social group with common aims. A noteworthy residt of these investigations is the apparent im- munity of children to distraction from ordinary causes. Schmidt found that the outside disturbances — the noise from the street, from adjoining rooms, and the like had little effect upon them. It was only interruptions that distracted their attention, such as con- versation with others, that afifected the quality of their work. It appeared even that a home task completed without disturbance might be poorer than the corresponding class work, and that a home task when the pupil was disturbed might be better than the class work. And from Mayer's study, it appeared that the tendency to distraction is diminished rather than increased by class work. Meumann, in tests of the memory of pupils alone and when working together, found similar results. Disconnected words of two syllables were used, which were written down, pronounced once to the pupils, and then written down immediately by them from memory. It would naturally be supposed that the children working in the classroom with all the inevitable noises and disturbances, would not remember as well as when tested alone. The result of Meumann's investiga- tion, however, was surprising. While in case of children thirteen and fourteen years of age there was no essential difference in memory for the individual and the common test, the difference was remarkably large in case of those eight and nine years of age. On an average, with the individual test the children remembered considerably less than in the class. The results were constant. Not a child was found who remem- bered more in the individual test than in the class test. From this Meiunann concludes that the great number of disturbing influences to which children are inevitably exposed in the classroom — the noise of SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 361 writing, whispering, walking about, the occasional words of the teacher, the sight of the movements of the pupils, and the like, which one might naturally suppose would make the results inferior, have no special influence. Meumann asked a number of the pupils in case of the individual tests whether they would prefer to take such exercise in the class or alone, whether they were disturbed by the noise of the other people. To his surprise, 80 per cent of the pupils gave the decided answer that they would prefer to do the work in the class. Some 15 per cent gave no definite answer. The others, an extremely small minority, replied that they were disturbed in the classroom ; and in most cases these were sensitive, nervous or weak children, although among them were some individuals of decided talent. Thus it appears that the presence of a group distinctly affects the mental activity. Of course, the easy explanation of the mcreased ability to work often found in the group is to say that it is due to ambition, rivalry and the like. This is all true enough, but we can analyze this a little further. A few things are pretty obvious. First of all, where activity is involved, there is the stimulus to greater exertion which comes from the sight of another performing an act. As Professor James has said, the sight of action in another is the greatest stimulus to action by ourselves. This has manifold illustrations from the activities of primi- tive man to modern experiments in the laboratory. In early stages, for example, an institution sometimes found is the praesul. A leader stands before a group who are engaged in work or a dance and himself performs perhaps in pantomime the activities which they are attempt- ing. This stimulates and renders easier the activity of the group. Every paced race on the athletic field also furnishes an excellent illustration. Again in the laboratory, Fer6 found that the amount of work one could do with the ergograph was increased by having another person simply go through the action of contracting the muscles of the finger in sight of the subject of the experiment, the second person acting as a sort of pace-maker for the first. The clearer and more intense the idea of an action, the more efficient the action. There is undoubtedly also an effective stimulus in the presence of the group. This is the stimulus which comes from our social impulses as inherited from the past, and yet it should be noticed that such effective stimuli, which, I take it, are what is really meant by ambition and the like, may act either to increase or to inhibit the mental activity. A certain degree of affective stimulus undoubtedly increases the ability to work, but if the stimulus is extreme, the work is checked or inhibited altogether. For example, extreme anger, stage fright, and even extreme joy, in the presence of the group, may inhibit the mental activity. 362 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION In many individuals at least, the presence of the group is a stimulus to greater concentration of attention. In case others are doing the same thing, this helps us attend better to the activity in hand; and even in case others are doing something different, the distraction itself is sometimes a stimulus to better attention, because the individual tries to resist the attraction, and there is an over-compensation which improves the attention. Meumann, for example, has found this result in certain experiments. Meumann emphasizes particularly this compensation power of attention. Not merely is it true that the performance of an indi- vidual often increases when there are disturbing stimuh, because the increased concentration to overcome the distractions increases the work ; but more than this, the compensation, which in this case be- comes an over-compensation, shows that the disturbing stimulus has the effect of increasing rather than decreasing the energy; that is, it has a dynamogenic effect, although this effort does not occur in case of all individuals. . . . To describe the stimulus to the imagination from the group would be commonplace. We need not go to the laboratory nor cite the case of children for illustration. The man in the crowd has always been able to see what has happened, and more besides ; to foresee impending danger, or anticipate success, or hear voices from the unknown and behold inspiring visions. . . . As regards the relative merits of solitude or a social environment for scholastic pursuits I am not concerned here to speak. But the weight of evidence thus far seems to be to indicate the advantage of group work, except when individual and original thinking is required. This is perhaps one reason why the man of genius has frequently desired solitude. There are undoubtedly, also, great individual differences as regards the effect of social environment ; there are even perhaps dif- ferent types as regards the effectiveness of the stimuli from the social group. There may perhaps be one t)^e that does its best work in solitude, another type that does its best work in the group. This again is one of the problems that should be investigated. Again, of course, the question is relative to the kind of work done. Mayer's experiments indicate that for some kinds of work the stimulus of the social group is needed. For some kinds of work, especially where original thinking is demanded, the environment of solitude is better. What we may call the social stimulus to mental activity is such a commonplace matter that probably very few realize its significance. When, however, we recall the fundamental character of our social instincts, it is not strange that the presence of other people should be a most potent stimulus, either increasing orchecking the mental activity. SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 363 Psychologists have always recognized the fundamental character of stimulus from ambition, rivalry, and the like. But this social stimulus goes much farther back, and is rooted in the reflexes of the sympathetic nervous system that are correlated with emotion. This is well illus- trated in experiments with animals. Mosso found in his experiments testing directly the sympathetic reflexes in the dog that the presence of the master in the room at once affected the reflexes ; and Dr. Yerkes, of Harvard University, finds that in his experiments with dogs the presence of the experimenter is always likely to affect the results. The fundamental character of the social stimulus is shown also in many fields of human activity. According to one view of aesthetics, the artist always works with the audience in his mind. The teacher also and the orator are apt to do much of their work with the class or audience in mind. I am not concerned here with the fact that this often becomes a grotesque and exaggerated mark of the profession, but merely with this as an illustration of the fundamental character of what we have called the social stimulus. In fact, this social stimulus colors everything. It is comparable only to the constant peripheral stimulation which is necessary to keep us awake ; in like manner, a social stimulus is necessary as an internal condition, as we may say, of consciousness. . . . The social instincts are so strong in children that if they are so un- fortunate as to be largely isolated from others they are apt to create imaginary companions and to live in a dream world of society. The aim of this paper is to present the problem. Let me, for a moment, however, hint at a wider point of view. The investigations referred to have chiefly concerned the mere presence or absence of other individuals performing similar tasks. In a true social group, the relations are more vital. Each individual feels a responsibility and performs some service for the group. Here the stim- ulus is likely to be greater. Perhaps the greatest stimulus to mental activity from the group is social success to those who can achieve it. Both experiment and observation have shown the great stimulus re- sulting from success in general. Social beings that we are, no form of success is so stimulating as a social success. When we reflect that under present conditions many of the children in our schools are so placed that a social success is impossible we see the significance of this point. Wm. H. Burnham. Selected extracts from an article in Science, N. S., Vol. 13, pp. 761-766, May 20, 1910. The Psychology of Social Consciousness implied in Instruction The sociologist notes two methods in the process of primitive education. The first is generally described as that of play and imi- 364 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION tation. The impulses of the children find their expression in play, and play describes the attitude of the child's consciousness. Imita- tion defines the form of unconscious social control exercised by the community over the expression of childish impulses. In the long ceremonies of initiation education assumed a more conscious and almost deliberate form. The boy was induced into the clan mysteries, into the mythology and social procedure of the com- munity, under an emotional tension which was skillfully aroused and maintained. He was subjected to tests of endurance which were calculated not only to fulfill this purpose, but also to identify the end and interests of the individual with those of the social group. These more general purposes of the initiatory ceremonies were also at times cunningly adapted to enhance the authority of the medicine man or the control over food and women by the older men in the community. Whatever opinion one may hold to the interpretation which folk- psychology and anthropology have given of this early phase of educa- tion, no one would deny, I imagine, the possibiUty of studying the education of the savage child scientifically, nor that this would be a psychological study. Imitation, play, emotional tensions favoring the acquirement of clan myths and cults, and the formation of clan judg- ments of evaluation, these must be all interpreted and formulated by some form of psychology. The particular form which has dealt with these phenomena and processes is social psychology. The important features of the situation would be found not in the structure of the idea to be assimilated considered as material of instruction for any child, nor in the lines of association which would guarantee their abiding in consciousness. They would be found in the impulse of the children expressed in play, in the tendency of the children to put themselves in the place of the men and women of the group, i.e. to imitate them in the emotions which consciousness of themselves in their relationship to others evoke, and in the import for the boy which the ideas and cults would have when surcharged with such emotions. If we turn to our system of education, we find that the materials of the curriculum have been presented as precepts capable of being as- similated by the nature of their content to other contents in conscious- ness, and the manner has been indicated in which this material can be most favorably prepared for such assimilation. This type of psy- chological treatment of material and the lesson is recognized at once as Herbartian. It is an associational type of psychology. Its critics add that it is intellectualistic. In any case, it is not a social psychology, for the child is not primarily considered as a self among other selves, but as an apperceptionsmasse. The child's relations to the other members of the group to which he belongs have no immediate bear- ing on the material nor on the learning of it. The banishment from SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 365 the traditional school work of play and of any adult activities in which the child could have a part as a child, i.e. the banishment of processes in which the child can be conscious of himself in relation to others, means that the process of learning has as little social content as possible. An explanation of the different attitudes in the training of the child in the primitive and in the modern civilized communities is found, in part, in the division of labor between the school on one side and the home and the shop or the farm on the other. The business of storing the mind with ideas, both materials and methods, has been assigned to the school. The task of organizing and socializing the self to which these materials and methods belong is left to the home and the indus- try or profession, to the playground, the street and society in general. A great deal of modern educational literature turns upon the fallacy of this division of labor. The earlier vogue of manual training and the domestic arts, before the frank recognition of their relation to in- dustrial training took place, was due in no small part to the attempt to introduce those interests of the child's into the field of his instruc- tion which gathers about a socially constituted self, to admit the child's personality as a whole into the school. I think we should be prepared to admit the implication of this edu- cational movement — that however abstract the material is which is presented and however abstracted its ultimate use is from the imme- diate activities of the child, the situation implied in instruction and in the psychology of that instruction is a social situation ; that it is impos- sible to fully interpret or control the process of instruction without recognizing the child as a self and viewing his conscious processes from the point of view of their relation in his consciousness to his self, among other selves. In the first place, back of all instruction Ues the relation of the child to the teacher, and about it he the relations of the child to the other children in the schoolroom and on the playground. It is, however, of interest to note that so far as the material of instruction is con- cerned, an ideal situation has been conceived to be one in which the personality of the teacher disappears as completely as possible behind the process of learning. In the actual process of instruction, the emphasis upon the relation of the pupil and teacher in the conscious- ness of the child has been felt to be unfortunate. In like manner, the instinctive social relations between the children in school hours is repressed. In the process of memorizing and reciting a lesson, or working out a problem in arithmetic, a vivid consciousness of the per- sonality of the teacher in his relationship to that of the child would imply either that the teacher was obliged to exercise discipline to carry on the process of instruction, and this must in the nature of the case 366 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION constitute friction and division of attention, or else that the child's interest is distracted from the subject matter of the lesson to some- thing in which the personality of the teacher and pupil might find some other content; for even a teacher's approval and a child's dehght therein has no essential relation to the mere subject matter of arithmetic or English. It certainly has no such relationship as that implied in apprenticeship, in the boy's helping on the farm or the girl's helping in the housekeeping, has no such relationship as that of members of an athletic team to each other. In these latter in- stances, the vivid consciousness of the self of the child and of his master, of the parents whom he helps, and of the associates with whom he plays is part of the child's consciousness of these personal relationships and involves no division of attention. Now it had been a part of the fallacy of an intellectualistic pedagogy that a divided attention was necessary to insure application of attention — that the rewards, and especially the punishments, of the school hung before the child's mind to catch the attention that was wandering from the task, and through their associations with the schoolwork to bring it back to the task. This involves a continual vibration of attention on the part of the average child between the task and the sanctions of school discipline. It is only the psychology of school discipline that is social. The pains and penalties, the pleasures of success in competition, of favorable mention of all sorts, implies vivid self-consciousness. It is evident that advantage would follow from making the consciousness of self or selves, which is the life of the child's play — on its competition or coopera- tion — have as essential a place in instruction. To use Professor Dewey's phrase, instruction should be an interchange of experience in which the child brings his experience to be interpreted by the expe- rience of the parent or teacher. This recognizes that education is interchange of ideas, is conversation — belongs to a universe of discourse. If the lesson is simply set for the child — is not his own problem — the recognition of himself as facing a task and a task-master is no part of the solution of the problem. But a difficulty which the child feels and brings to his parent or teacher for solution is helped on toward interpretation by the consciousness of the child's relation to his pastors and masters. Just in so far as the subject matter of instruc- tion can be brought into the form of problems arising in the experience of the child — just so far will the relation of the child to the instructor become a part of the natural solution of the problem; actual suc- cess of a teacher depends in large measure upon this capacity to state the subject matter of instruction in terms of the experience of the children. The recognition of the value of industrial and vocational training comes back at once to this, that what the child has to learn is what he wants to acquire, to become a man. Under these conditions SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 367 instruction takes on frankly the form of conversation, as much sought by the pupil as the instructor. I take it therefore to be a scientific task to which education should set itself, that of making the subject matter of its instruction the material of personal intercourse between pupils and instructors and between the children themselves, the substitution of the converse of concrete individuals for the pale abstractions of thought. To a large extent our school organization reserves the use of the personal relation between teacher and taught for the negative side, for the prohibitions. The lack of interest in the personal content of the lesson is, in fact, startling when one considers that it is the per- sonal form in which the instruction should be given. The best illus- tration of this lack of interest we find in the problems which disgrace our arithmetic. They are supposed matters of converse, but their content is so bare, their abstractions so raggedly covered with the form of questions about such marketing and shopping and building as never were on sea or land, that one sees that the social form of instruction is a form only for the writer of the arithmetic. When further we consider how utterly inadequate the teaching force of our public schools is to transform this matter into concrete experience of the children or even into their own experience, the hopelessness of the situation is overwhelming. Ostwald has written a textbook of chem- istry for the secondary school which has done what every textbook should do. It is not only that the material shows real respect for the intelligence of the student, but it is so organized that the development of the subject matter is in reality the action and reaction of one mind upon another mind. The dictum of the Platonic Socrates, that one must follow the argument where it leads in the dialogue, should be the motto of the writer of textbooks. It has been indicated already that language being essentially social in its nature, thinking with the child is rendered concrete by taking on the form of conversation. It has been also indicated that this can take place only when the thought has reference to a real problem in the experience of the child. The further demand for control over atten- tion carries us back to the conditions of attention. Here again we find that traditional school practice depends upon social consciousness for bringing the wandering attention back to the task, when it finds that the subjective conditions of attention to the material of instruc- tion are lacking and even attempts to carry over a formal self-con- sciousness into attention, when through the sense of duty the pupil is called upon to identify the solution of the problem with himself. On the other hand, we have in vocational instruction the situation in which the student has identified his impulses with the subject matter of the task. In the former case, as in the case of instruction, our 368 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION traditional practice makes use of the self-consciousness of the child in its least effective form. The material of the lesson is not identified with the impulses of the child. The attention is not due to the organization of impulses to outgoing activity. The organization of typical school attention is that of a school self, expressing subordina- tion to school authority and identity of conduct with that of all the other children in the room. It is largely inhibitive — a consciousness of what one must not do, but the inhibitions do not arise out of the consciousness of what one is doing. It is the nature of school atten- tion to abstract from the content of any specific task. The child must give attention _^rrf and then undertake any task which is assigned him, while normal attention is essentially selective and depends for its inhibitions upon the specific act. Now consciousness of self should follow upon that of attention, and consists in a reference of the act, which attention has mediated, to the social self. It brings about a conscious organization of this particular act with the individual as a whole — makes it his act, and can only be effectively accomplished when the attention is an actual organization of impulses seeking expression. The separation between the self, implied in typical school attention, and the content of the school tasks makes such an organization diJBScult if not impossible. In a word, attention is a process of organization of consciousness. It results in the reenforcement and inhibitions of perceptions and ideas. It is always a part of an act and involves the relation of that act to the whole field of consciousness. This relation to the whole field of consciousness finds its expression in consciousness of self. But the consciousness of self depends primarily upon social relations. The self arises in consciousness pari passu with the recognition and defini- tion of other selves. It is therefore unfruitful, if not impossible, to attempt to scientifically control the attention of children in their formal education, unless they are regarded as social beings in dealing with the very material of instruction. It is this essentially social character of attention which gives its peculiar grip to vocational training. From the psychological point of view, not only the method and material, but also the means of holding the pupils' attention must be socialized. Finally, a word may be added with reference to the evaluations — the emotional reactions — which our education should call forth. There is no phase of our public school training that is' so defective as this. The school undertakes to acquaint the child with the ideas and methods which he is to use as a man. Shut up in the history, the geography, the language and the number of our curricula should be the values that the country, and its human institutions, have ; that beauty has in nature and art ; and the values involved in the control over nature and social conditions. SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 369 The child in entering into his heritage of ideas and methods should have the emotional response which the boy has in a primitive com- munity when he has been initiated into the mysteries and the social code of the group of which he has become a citizen. We have a few remainders of this emotional response in the confirmation or conver- sion and entrance into the church, in the initiation into the fraternity, and in the passage from apprenticeship into the union. But the complexities of our social life and the abstract intellectual character of the ideas which society uses have made it increasingly difficult to identify the attainment of the equipment of a man with the meaning of manhood and citizenship. Conventional ceremonies at the end of the period of education will never accomplish this. And we have to further recognize that our education extends for many far beyond the adolescent period to which this emotional response naturally belongs. What our schools can give must be given through the social consciousness of the child as that consciousness develops. It is only as the child recognizes a social import in what he is learning and doing that moral education can be given. I have sought to indicate that the process of schooling in its barest form cannot be successfully studied by a scientific psychology unless that psychology is social, i.e. unless it recognizes that the processes of acquiring knowledge, of giving attention, of evaluating in emotional terms must be studied in their relation to selves in a social conscious- ness. So far as education is concerned, the child does not become social by learning. He must be social in order to learn. G. H. Mead. Reprinted from Science, N. S., Vol. 31, pp. 688-693, May 6, 1910. The Social Values of the Curriculum The principle of the school as itself a representative social institution may be appUed to the subject matter of instruction — must be apphed, if the divorce between information and character is to be overcome. A casual glance at pedagogical literature will show that we are much in need of an ultimate criterion for the value of studies, and for deciding what is meant by content value and by form value. At present we are apt to have two, three, or even four different stand- ards set up, by which different values — as disciplinary, culture, and information values — are measured. There is no conception of any single imifying principle. The point here made is that the extent and way in which a study brings the pupil to consciousness of his social environment, and confers upon him the ability to interpret his 370 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION own powers from the standpoint of their possiblities in sodal use, is this ultimate and unified standard. The distinction of form and content value is becoming familiar, but, so far as I know, no attempt has been made to give it rational basis. I submit the following as the key to the distinction: A study from a certain point of view serves to introduce the child to a con- sciousness of the make-up or structure of social Ufe; from another point of view, it serves to introduce him to a knowledge of, and com- mand over, the instrumentaUties through which society carries itself along. The former is the content value; the latter is the form value. Form is thus in no sense a term of depreciation. Form is as necessary as content. Form represents, as it were, the technique, the adjustment of means involved in social action, just as content refers to the realized value or end of social action. What is needed is not a depreciation of form, but a correct placing of it, that is, seeing that since it is related as means to end, it must be kept in subordina- tion to an end, and taught in relation to the end. The distinction is ultimately an ethical one because it relates not to anything foimd in the study from a purely intellectual or logical point of view, but to the studies considered from the standpoint of the ways in which they develop a consciousness of the nature of social life, in which the child is to live. I take up the discussion first from the side of content. The conten- tion is that a study is to be considered as bringing the child to realize the social scene of action ; that when thus considered it gives a criterion for the selection of material and for the judgment of value. At present, as already suggested, we have three independent values set up : one of culture, another of information, and another of discipline. In reahty these refer only to three phases of social interpretation. Information is genuine or educative only in so far as it effects definite images and conceptions of material placed in social life. DiscipUne is genuine and educative only as it represents a reaction of the informa- tion into the individual's own powers so that he can bring them imder control for social ends. Culture, if it is to be genuine and educative, and not an external polish or factitious varnish, represents the vital union of information and discipline. It designates the socialization of the individual in his whole outlook upon life and mode of dealing with it. This abstract point may be illustrated briefly by reference to a few of the school studies. In the first place, there is no line of demarca- tion within facts themselves which classifies them as belonging to science, history or geography, respectively. The pigeonhole classifi- cation which is so prevalent at present (fostered by introducing the pupil at the outset into a mmiber of different studies contained in SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 371 different textbooks) gives an utterly erroneous idea of the relations of studies to each other, and to the intellectual whole to which they all belong. In fact, these subjects have all to do with the same ulti- mate reality, namely, the conscious experience of man. It is only because we have different interests, or different ends, that we sort out the material and label part of it science, part history, part geography, and so on. Each of these subjects represents an arrangement of materials with reference to some one dominant or typical aim or process of the social Ufe. This social criterion is necessary not only to mark off the studies from each other, but also to grasp the reasons for the study of each and the motives in connection with which it should be presented. How, for example, shall we define geography ? What is the unity in the different so-called divisions of geography — as mathematical geography, physical geography, poUtical geography, commercial geography? Are these purely empirical classifications dependent upon the brute fact that we run across a lot of different facts which cannot be connected with one another, or is there some reason why they are all called geography, and is there some intrinsic principle upon which the material is distributed under these various heads? I understand by intrinsic not something which attaches to the objec- tive facts themselves, for the facts do not classify themselves, but something in the interest and attitude of the human mind towards them. This is a large question, and it would take an essay longer than this entire paper adequately to answer it. I raise the question partly to indicate the necessity of going back to more fundamental principles if we are to have any real philosophy of education, and partly to afford, in my answer, an illustration of the principle of social interpretation. I should say that geography has to do with all those , aspects of social life which are concerned with the interaction of the Ufe of man and nature ; or, that it has to do with the world considered as the scene of social interaction. Any fact, then, will be a geo- graphical fact in so far as it bears upon the dependence of man upon his natural environment, or with the changes introduced in this environment through the life of man. The four forms of geography referred to above represent, then, four increasing stages of abstraction in discussing the mutual relation of human life and nature. The beginning must be the commercial geography. I mean by this that the essence of any geographical fact is the consciousness of two persons, or two groups of persons, who are at once separated and connected by physical environment, and that the interest is in seeing how these people are at once kept apart and brought together in their actions by the instrumentality of this physical environment. The ultimate significance of lake, river, 372 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION mountain, and plain is not physical, but sodal ; it is the part which it plays in modifying and functioning human relationship. This evi- dently involves an extension of the term commercial. It has not to do simply with business, in the narrow sense, but includes whatever relates to human intercourse and intercommunication as affected by natural forms and properties. PoUtical geography represents this same social interaction taken in a static instead of in a dynamic way ; takes it, that is, as temporarily crystallized and fixed in certain forms. Physical geography (including under this not simply physiography, but also the study of flora and fauna) represents a further analysis or abstraction. It studies the conditions which determine himian action, leaving out of account, temporarily, the ways in which they concretely do this. Mathematical geography simply carries the analysis back to more ultimate and remote conditions, showing that the physical conditions themselves are not ultimate, but depend upon the place which the world occupies in a larger system. Here, in other words, we have traced, step by step, the links which connect the immediate social occupations and interactions of man back to the whole natural system which ultimately conditioned them. Step by step the scene is enlarged and the image of what enters into the make-up of social action is widened and broadened, but at no time ought the chain of connection to be broken. It is out of the question to take up the studies one by one and show that their meaning is similarly controlled by social consideration. But I cannot forbear a word or two upon history. History is vital or dead to the child according as it is or is not presented from the sociological standpoint. AVhen treated simply as a record of what has passed and gone, it must be mechanical because the past, as the past, is remote. It no longer has existence and simply as past there is no motive for attending to it. The ethical value of history teach- ing will be measured by the extent to which it is treated as a matter of analysis of existing social relations — that is to say, as affording insight into what makes up the structure and working of society. This relation of history to comprehension of existing social forces is apparent whether we take it from the standpoint of social order or from that of social progress. Existing social structure is exceed- ingly complex. It is practically impossible for the child to attack it en masse and get any definite mental image of it. But type phases of historical development may be selected which will exhibit, as through a telescope, the essential constituents of the existing order. Greece, for example, represents what art and the growing power of individual expression stands for; Rome exhibits the political elements and determining forces of political Ufe on a tremendous scale. Or, as these civilizations are themselves relatively complex, a study of still SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 373 simpler forms of hunting, nomadic and agricultural life in the begin- nings of civiUzation ; a study of the effects of the introduction of iron, iron tools and so forth serves to reduce the existing complexity to its simple elements. One reason historical teaching is usually not more effective is the fact that the student is set to acquire information in such a way that no epochs or factors stand out to his mind as typical ; everything is reduced to the same dead level. The only way of securing the neces- sary perspective is by relating the past to the present, as if the past were a projected present in which all the elements are enlarged. The principle of contrast is as important as that of similarity. Because the present life is so close to us, touching us at every point, we cannot get away from it to see it as it really is. Nothing stands out clearly or sharply as characteristic. In the study of past periods attention necessarily attaches itself to striking differences. Thus the child gets a locus in imagination, through which he can remove him- self from the present pressure of surrounding circumstance and define it. History is equally available as teaching the methods of social progress. It is commonly stated that history must be studied from the stand- point of cause and effect. The truth of this statement depends upon its interpretation. Social Ufe is so complex and the various parts of it are so organically related to each other and to the natural environ- ment that it is impossible to say that this or that thing is the cause of some other particular thing. But what the study of history can effect is to reveal the main instruments in the way of discoveries, inventions, new modes of Ufe, etc., which have initiated the great epochs of social advance, and it can present to the child's conscious- ness type illustrations of the main lines in which social progress has been made most easily and effectively and can set before him what the chief difficulties and obstructions have been. Progress is always rhythmic in its nature, and from the side of growth as well as from that of status or order it is important that the epochs which are t)rpical should be selected. This once more can be done only in so far as it is recognized that social forces in themselves are always the same — that the same kind of influences were at work one hundred and one thousand years ago that are now — and treating the par- ticular historical epochs as affording illustrations of the way in which the fundamental forces work. Everything depends, then, upon history being treated from a social standpoint, as manifesting the agencies which have influenced social development, and the typical institutions in which social Ufe has expressed itself. The culture-epoch theory, while working in the right direction, has failed to recognize the importance of treating past periods with relation to the present — that is, as affording insight 374 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION into the representative factors of its structure ; it has treated these periods too much as if they had some meaning or value in themselves. The way in which the biographical method is handled illustrates the same point. It is often treated in such a way as to exclude from the child's consciousness (or at least not sufficiently to emphasize) the social forces and principles involved in the association of the masses of men. It is quite true that the child is interested easily in history from the biographical standpoint; but unless the hero is treated in relation to the community Ufe behind him which he both sums up and directs, there is danger that the history will reduce itself to a mere story. When this is done, moral instruction reduces itself to drawing certain lessons from the life of the particular personalities concerned, instead of having widened and deepened the child's imagi- native consciousness of the social relationships, ideals and means involved in the world in which he lives. There is some danger, I presume, in simply presenting the illus- trations without more development, but I hope it will be remembered that I am not making these points for their own sake, but with refer- ence to the general principle that when history is taught as a mode of understanding social life, it has positive ethical import. What the normal child continuously needs is not so much isolated moral lessons instilling in him the importance of truthfulness and honesty, or the beneficent results that follow from some particular act of patriotism, etc. It is the formation of habits of social imagination and conception. I mean by this it is necessary that the child should be forming the habit of interpreting the special incidents that occur and the particular situations that present themselves in terms of the whole social life. The evils of the present industrial and political situation, on the ethical side, are not due so much to actual perverse- ness on the part of individuals concerned, nor to mere ignorance of what constitutes the ordinary virtues (such as honesty, industry, purity, etc.) as to inabihty to appreciate the social environment in which we live. It is tremendously complex and confused. Only a mind trained to grasp social situations, and to reduce them to their simpler and typical elements, can get sufficient hold on the realities of this life to see what sort of action, critical and constructive, it really demands. Most people are left at the mercy of tradition, impulse or the appeals of those who have special and class interests to serve. In relation to this highly complicated social environment, training for citizenship is formal and nominal unless it develops the power of observation, analysis and inference with respect to what makes up a social situation and the agencies through which it is modified. Because history rightly taught is the chief instrumentality for accomplishing this, it has an ultiniate ethical value. SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 375 I have been speaking so far of the school curriculum on the side of its content. I now turn to that of form, understanding by this term, as already explained, a consciousness of the instruments and methods which are necessary to the control of social movements. Studies cannot be classified into form studies and content studies. Every study has both sides. That is to say, it deals both with the actual make-up of society, and is concerned with the tools or ma- chinery by which society maintains itself. Language and literature best illustrate the impossibiUty of separation. Through the ideas contained in language, the continuity of the social structure is effected. From this standpoint the study of hterature is a content study. But language is also distinctly a means, a tool. It not simply has social value in itself, but is a social instrument. However, in some studies one side or the other predominates very much, and in this sense we may speak of specifically form studies; as for example, mathematics. My illustrative proposition at this point is that mathematics does, or does not, accompUsh its full ethical purpose according as it is pre- sented, or not presented, as such a social tool. The prevailing divorce between information and character, between knowledge and social action, stalks upon the scene here. The moment mathematical study is severed from the place which it occupies with reference to use in social life, it becomes unduly abstract, even from the purely intellec- tual side. It is presented as a matter of technical relations and formulae apart from any end or use. What the study of numbers suffers from in elementary education is the lack of motivation. Back of this and that and the other particular bad method is the radical mistake of treating number as if it were an end in itself instead of as a means of accomphshing some end. Let any child get a conscious- ness of what the use of number is, of what it really is for, and half the battle is won. Now this consciousness of the use or reason im- plies some active end in view which is always implicitly social, since it involves the production of something which may be of use to others, and which is often explicitly social. One of the absurd things in the more advanced study of arithmetic is the extent to which the child is introduced to numerical operations which have no distinctive mathematical principles characterizing them, but which represent certain general principles found in business relationships. To train the child in these operations, while paying no attention to the business realities in which they will be of use, and the conditions of social life which make these business activities necessary, is neither arithmetic nor common sense. The child is called upon to do examples in interest, partnership, banking, broker- age, and so on through a long string, and no pains are taken to see that, in connection with the arithmetic, he has any sense of the social 376 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION realities involved. This part of arithmetic is essentially sociological in its nature. It ought either to be omitted entirely or else taught in connec- tion with a study of the relevant social reaUties. As we now manage the study, it is the old case of learning to swim apart from the water over again, with correspondingly bad results on the practical and ethical side. I am afraid one question still haunts the reader. What has all this discussion about geography, history and number, whether from the side of content or that of form, got to do with the underlying principles of education? The very reasons which induce the reader to put this question to himself, even in a half-formed way, illustrate the point which I am trying to make. Our conceptions of the ethical in education have been too narrow, too formal and too pathological. We have associated the term " ethical" with certain special acts which are labeled virtues and set off from the mass of other acts, and still more from the habitual images and motives in the agents perform- ing them. Moral instruction is thus associated with teaching about these particular virtues, or with instilling certain sentiments in regard to them. The ethical has been conceived in too goody-goody a way. But it is not such ethical ideas and motives as these which keep men at work in recognizing and performing their moral duty. Such teaching as this, after all is said and done, is external; it does not reach down into the depths of the character-making agency. Ulti- mate moral motives and forces are nothing more or less than social intelligence — the power of observing and comprehending social situa- tions — and social power — trained capacities of control — at work in the service of social interest and aims. There is no fact which throws light upon the constitution of society; there is no power whose train- ing adds to social resourcefulness which is not ethical in its bearing. I sum up, then, by asking attention to the moral trinity of the school. The demand is for social intelUgence, social power and social interests. Our resources are (i) the life of the school as a social institution in itself; (2) methods of learning and of doing work; and (3) the school studies or curriculum. In so far as the school represents, in its own spirit, a genuine community life; in so far as what are called school discipline, government, order, etc., are the expressions of this inherent social spirit; in so far as the methods used are those which appeal to the active and constructive powers, permitting the child to give out, and thus to serve ; in so far as the curriculum is so selected and organized as to provide the material for affording the child a consciousness of the world in which he has to play a part, and the relations he has to meet ; in so far as these ends are met, the school is organized on an ethical basis. J. Dewey. Extracts from "Ethical Principles underlying Education," in Thi Third Yewhook of the NifHonal Herbart Society, SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 377 Social Significance of Self-organized Group Work There is something of a contrast between the biological organism and the organization of .individuals called society. In the body the ceU unit is, for the most part, permanent in place and hereditarily fixed in function. With the higher animals substitution of function among the different parts is very rare, and most apparent in the brain, which is the organ immediately subserving social action. The case is quite different in all highly developed societies. Here individuals move freely from one position to another, and constantly change their r61es, sometimes to a very great extent. For America especially, this feature is fundamental and characteristic. The successful mule driver of to-day may be the successful President of to-morrow. Every kind of equality of opportunity for each and all is, as we are never tired of saying, the presupposition and the aim of democracy. Such interchange or development of social function is impossible without the greatest plasticity on the. part of individuals. This plasticity, however, while it has a biological basis, is useful only as it is played upon by society. Habits of social action, not so permanent that they may not be changed if occasion demands, must be formed and used in building up the structure of society. The social situation in which a person finds himself, or the group with which he is in con- tact, has thus the most to do with his role or function in society and his success in life. The family in which the average individual is brought up has usually even more to do with his serviceableness to society than the one in which he is bom. No doubt the possibiHties must be latent in the individual, but different grouping with quite similar material produces entirely different results. If, then, we are to educate the children of democracy, it is the nature of the groups in which they work, the varying constitution and de- velopment of these, and the repercussion of them on the constituent individuals, which form the most important element in the process. The group or society of which the teacher aims to be the leader and inspirer from a social standpoint is usually more or less of a mere aggregate, rather than an organization. There is every reason why the teacher should aim to organize this aggregate. In no other way can he become really the leader. When this is not done, the aggregate does not remain in a neutral condition. Organization sets in, independently of the teacher. It is not always fully conscious of itself, but it is none the less influential. Certain boys or girls are looked to by others for guidance, and become centers of disturbance. They are watched by the others for indications as to how far the class as a whole may go in opposition to the teacher. Sometimes there are chiefs for war and chiefs for peace. When g. teacher runs against such a chief, it i§ 378 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION no longer an individual he is dealing with, and even when he finds fault with some humble member of the tribe, unless the chief consents to ignore or to condone the treatment given, the teacher may meet with as much difficulty and silent antagonism as if the individual had been socially important. The flag of the tribe protects its feeblest member. Frequently more than one such group or clique can be fotmd in a class, and although there may be some rivalry, there is usually a status quo. Those not in any group are left over, either as the teacher's pets, or as the offscouring of the class. When groups have once formed, the teacher who does not realize it is lost. His best resource is in some way to get hold of the leaders. In old-fashioned schools leadership was often determined by actual fighting. If the teacher " licked " the leader, he had the rest of the school. In modem city schools, leadership is a good deal more subtle, and the appeal to force, by calling in the head master, or by physical punishment for offenses, is not very effective. The group still remains loyal, and treats the punishment as an act of war. This is just because such punishment is not at all a fight in which personal address and vigor have any part. The teacher, on the contrary, is merely calling in the organized force of the community of adults to which he belongs. This is known to be superior to any form of frontal attack. Guerrilla warfare is all that is possible. It is the impression of the present writer, due to a fairly wide ex- perience of schools, both in the East and West, that at least 50 per cent of the higher-grade classes in the public schools are, to a greater or less extent, in such a state of antagonism to the teacher. This is not always carried so far as to prevent a certain kind of work from being done. The teacher may be respected as one would respect an officer of an opposing army, but he is not in any real sense a leader. It is also to be noted that the members of the children's groups, taken individually, have usually nothing criminal or even unsocial about them. It is the group to which they belong, rather than their own personaUty, which determines their conduct. Such organizations, however, even when largely instinctive and unconscious, are a menace to the best interests of the children, who, no matter what their achieve- ments may be in reading, writing and arithmetic, are getting an edu- cation in hostility to many of the best things in society as a whole. In some way the teacher must creep into or break into this child com- munity, if he is to lead it out of its narrowness and set it on the way to a higher development. Sometimes the doors open by accident, and the teacher, if he realizes it, may enter naturally. A case told me by a distinguished Boston educator of his own experience when teacher of a ninth grade will SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 379 illustrate this point. A case of discipline had arisen, and the teacher said to a certain boy, " Well, there is no doubt that I shall have to punish you." The boy replied in the presence of the class, " Oh, yes, punish me ; you're always down on me." This touched the teacher, and, being human enough to flare up, he said impulsively : " I'll leave it to the rest if you don't deserve it. More than that, I'll turn my face to the wall, and they can vote without my seeing them, and I'll never ask a boy how he has voted." The vote was reported to the teacher as unanimously in favor of the boy's being pxmished. At this point the boy broke down completely, and through his tears said, " Well, it must be right, since everybody says so." The interesting and significant feature of this experience is the effect of the class sentiment on the boy. His attitude of defiance in the first place was evidently conditioned by his thought that the class was back of him ; and, indeed, so it might have been but for the action of the teacher. The case throws a strong Hght on the real nature of punishment. This is never the mere infliction of pain or other incon- venience. With a desirable social backing boys are proud of these signs of prowess. Although they may suffer, and sometimes give vent to the natural expression of their suffering, they are no more guided by this in their future action than is a mart}rr on the rack. Pimish- ment is the disapproval and repression of the group one feels he be- longs to. Nothing else is pimishment. It may sometimes require a rite or ceremony like the administration of pain to make it under- stood and to show that it is serious, but it is the spirit of exclusion which is the reality back of this physical expression. Indeed, the infliction of some more or less revengeful pain often has the effect of reconcile- ment. By this act the community still remains in contact with its recalcitrant member. It puts him in a position where his fellows ob- serve him closely. He is the central figure of the tragedy. The others watch him and imagine how he is feeling. If he acts in such a way as to awaken sympathy either by heroism or by more or less dignified humiUty and repentance, the hate of the community generally turns to a degree of admiration, and the pimishment is over. Capital punishment, unless where the imagination carries the drama into the next world, is thus the only form which is quite hopeless from this stand- point. When a teacher administers punishment or reproof, it is absolutely necessary that he carry with him the best sentiment of the class. He can do this on ordinary occasions, at least, only if the punishment be applied to prevent hindrances, not to such activities as the teacher thinks are desirable, but to those which the class can be made sincerely to approve. To get in sight of the solution of such a problem, no mere knowledge of individuals as such, or course of study, however excellent, 38o SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION will ever sufiS.ce. It is the social action of the class, the nature of the groups really at work, their aims and ideals, their leadership and organization, which the teacher must find an opportunity to study, and, if possible, to modify or control. The most reasonable way out of the diflSculties we have described would seem to be, not to hand over the strictly governmental fimctions to the children, although this may sometimes partially succeed, but to make some suitable opportunity in the regular work of the school for real leadership and organization on their part. If this phase of work is to exclude the use of force, it must find an opening into the course of study. It must not be relegated to off days, Friday after- noons, or to the home or the street, but must be represented on the time-table. As we have seen, the leadership of the antagonistic class groups does not depend much, in modern city schools at least, on the use of force. These groups are attractive enough to hold themselves together without it. If, now, we can bring out the leadership involved in these mistaken efforts of the children, and use the force at the dis- posal of the teacher to foster and protect the organizations that would be formed, the class would get a lively sense of the benefits springing from the teacher's power, and would be more disposed to admit its use on other occasions. The leaders themselves would get an op- portunity for a full swing, and they would get this in the presence of the teacher, and with his approbation and consent. The teacher might, to some extent, become a follower in some groups, and offer advice and opinions which might not always be accepted by the leader. Indeed, if this did not sometimes happen, two alternatives would arise. Either the teacher would stand off and merely observe at a distance the operations of the group, or there would be a feeling on the part of the children that the teacher after all was the real leader of the group. Both of these alternatives would be fatal to this phase of education. The teacher needs to get into the groups as much as possible, but by no means as. an authoritative leader or organizer. His advice must have no more weight than its evident good sense and its capability of furthering the real interests of the children will afford. When the class reverts to the previous condition of affairs, and when the teacher becomes again the director, he will have an entirely different community to deal with. Not only will he have discovered some of the natural leaders (and who they are may often be a surprise to him), but he will have been able to learn a good deal about how the followers are influenced. Best of all, he will be regarded by the leaders as one of themselves. If he is broad enough to allow his newly acquired experience to modify his old habits, they will be disposed to study his methods of leadership rather than to continue to waste energy in warfare. They remain conscious of the power in SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 381 them, which is shortly again to have opportunity for exercise and dis- play. Under such conditions the latent, underground kind of organiza- tion may find a normal outlet, an opportunity to become more con- scious and progressive, and at the same time it may provide the teacher with a natural opening into the heart of the children's social life. As will be seen, it is not a revolutionary or radical change of all school procedure which the introduction of self-organized purpose groups would bring about. Such a change means rather a conserva- tion and development of the educational values that are already to be found in the real leadership of the teacher, although leadership on the part of many of the students would also be made possible. It might be asked, though hardly by practical people, why, if a given attitude or relationship between pupil and teacher is a good and social thing for one part of the day, something different is needed for another; or, if a teacher can catch the spirit of true leadership which makes room for all the children as active and constructive followers, why he should not continue to lead throughout. This true leadership is of course excellent, but it will come much more surely and naturally as a result of the observation of children's independent groups than it ever can without them. For the very lowest grades, however, such an attitude is probably all that can be expected. But, as we have already tried to show, the true constructive power of a follower can- not be measured when he is under the direction of another, nor is it to be expected in a democratic society that leadership should be confined to one or a few. We often hear that he who would command must first learn to obey. Nothing could be truer, except its converse, that he who would obey in spirit and in truth must also know how to command. There is no individual in a democratic community who has not found it necessary, on occasion, to direct others. This direc- tion may not apply to many at a time, and it may not be for long, but when the opportunity comes, much more depends upon his action than when he played a follower's role. At present our society suffers more from the lack of true leadership, and the kind of insight and moraUty necessary for such a function, than from any other fault. The leader is so scarce that an undue premium is placed upon him. This shows itself strikingly in commerce as in politics, where the wage of even blundering leaders forms an enormous tax upon the commimity. With greater practical experience and insight into what leadership really means, we may hope to produce more competent leaders to select from and more intelUgent followers to select them. Besides being a test and measure of the capacity of the social work of the teacher to Uve and maintain itself when his direction is removed, the_ self- organized group ought to afford a direct means of education designed 382 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION to touch the democratic problem at the point of its culminating service to the community at large. The reader has now before him some of the social needs which free, self-organized work would go far toward satisfying. In each of the three schools studied in the previous chapters, we found elements of a high degree of social value, and an approximate solution of the problem of educative social organization. Space prevents us from studying other schools in detail, although one of them at least, the Ethical Culture School of New York, founded by Felix Adler, has arrived under Mr. Manny, its recent superintendent, at a high degree of social efficiency, and would amply repay investigation. We must, however, hurry on to the problem of the average grade school of the times, and attempt to show how it is possible, even with crowded classes and without special equipment, to obtain in the people's schools those cooperative and self-sustaining motives which are worthy of democracy and best able to measure the teacher's work. The experiences to be described may be called experiments, but not in the sense that they were instituted merely to see how they would turn out. They were experiments simply in the sense that all hfe is experimental, and were devised with the view that the development of intention and resourcefulness on the part of the pupil is the greatest and most undeniable duty of any form of education. They are not, however, the outcome of any particular a priori theory of either in- dividual or social action, and they have, therefore, the character of scientific data, from which useful generalizations may be made, capable of carrying both thought and practice into larger fields. The natural- ness of the data is shown by the fact that in different schools, and in the same schools from year to year, a given piece of work is never repeated. As some one has said, " Constant change is the unchang- ing lay of humanity." Different conditions and different children always produce different results. There has been nothing to justify any expectation that we should ever be able to obtain by our experi- ments an ideal course of study capable of being handed over to other schools. There was no hope that we should ever be able to stereotype the results in textbooks and fix them upon the brains of a rising gen- eration. The experiments naturally start from a background of dictated work derived from the usual course of study, and it was always a con- dition that no work was to be permitted, the plan of which the teacher did not approve ; although after it was started it might fail or succeed without the teacher's stepping in to bolster it up or to coerce its sup- porters. There never was any likelihood that in the lowest grades, at least, the children's self-organized work would absorb the whole of the school work or all the time on the program. Dictated work SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 383 which the teacher leads directly, and courses of study, however much they may be modified, will always be needed to some extent in the education of the young. Several years ago the present writer, in cooperation with two third- grade teachers in the Chicago and Cook Country Normal School (Miss Margaret Mclntyre and Miss Jessie Black), introduced the proposition of self-organized work to their pupils. Each teacher said to her class, with as much simpUcity as was possible, something like the following : " If you had time given you for something that you enjoy doing, and that you think worth while, what should you choose to do? When you have decided how you would spend the time, come and tell me about your plan. You may come all together, or in groups, or each by himself ; but whatever you say you want to do, you must tell the length of time you will need to finish it, and how you expect to do it." We thus called for a plan as definite as possible, both as to time and materials. It was understood that if the teacher could not be con- vinced that the plan was feasible, or that it was sufficiently worth while, she would not allow it to begin. At first in one class there was but a single plan. This started with three boys, eight or nine years of age, who said they wanted to print. " How can you print? " the teacher asked. " We have no printing press." " Oh, yes ; Harry here (the real names are not used) has a press that his father gave him at Christmas, and if you will let us, we'll print a list of those hard words, the names of the days of the week, which you gave the class to spell. We will place a copy on the desk of every pupil, and you will see how quickly they will learn them." "How long will it take you?" the teacher inquired. "Three, or perhaps four half-hours. We can divide up the work so that we think we can get it done in that time." The teacher gave the period from 11.30 to 12 on Monday, Wednes- day and Friday. They chose the back of the rooni to work in, and they agreed to be as quiet as possible so as not to disturb the rest of the class, which meanwhile was doing such work as the boys could best afford to miss. They succeeded admirably, and completed their work within the time specified. When they were fairly at work, the rest of the class woke up, and the teacher was presented with a nuniber of plans, many of them of a very mushroom character, devised mainly to escape the regular work of that hour. But when the teacher asked in detail about the plans, how long they would take to finish, etc., these latter were spontaneously given up by the children, or enlarged so that they had become more practical. After the printing group had finished their first contract, they still kept together with the idea of becoming class printers when needed. In the other third-grade class a similar group was started, which 384 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION soon took in more boys who wanted to join. On one occasion the teacher found that they were not doing what they had planned for that day. She asked them what was the matter, and pointed out that if they did not do what they said they would, they would have to go back to their seats. They had a Uttle consultation among themselves, and decided that there were too many in the group for the work to be done, and that they interfered with one another instead of helping. The group was thinned by its own action, and the work was finished successfully. This group also kept on for some time, and printed a number of things for the class. Here is a sample of their work: — Criticism of Report of Group 2 on Beef Tea The Group did not know all they should know about it. . It was worth giving. Some time after the- beginning of these groups, and when nearly the whole class was engaged in one or another of them. Professor Albion Small paid them a visit. One of the boys said to him : " Look at those girls cooking. Now I don't see the good of that. But this work is just the thing for me. I am a very poor speller, and every word I set up I learn to spell." This group interested some of the families from which the boys came, for they were never tired of talk- ing of it at home. One of the fathers, although a working man, con- tributed fonts of type to the value of $15. Pieces of work were taken home, and their merits and defects fully criticized. These printing groups had a leader, although he was not given any special name. In one class three cooking groups were started. The first of these was started to cook — " just to eat," as one of the members stated. It was at first composed of four girls and one boy. The initial prep- arations required a good deal of management. The mothers had to be persuaded to give money or material. One girl brought an old gas oven, and another a heater on which it was placed ; also a table had to be provided, and shelves for dishes. An attachment had to be made in order to use the gas. For this the permission of the principal of the school was required, and how best to approach him was care- fully considered by the group. Books of recipes were obtained, and although the reading was difiicult for third-grade pupils, much reading was done and the merits of different recipes were discussed. A cake was finally decided upon. I was called in as a guest when the cake was finished, and since it was a sacrament of friendship, I did my best to eat my piece. As we were sitting around, the boy said between his mouthfuls, " It seems to me this cake ain't as good as it ought to be." " What's the matter with it? " was the rather sharp retort of the Uttle girl who was the leader of the group. The boy, SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 385 who was phlegmatic, replied without a rufHe, " Well, maybe it's the butter; it might have been butterine." " You bought the butter," said the little girl. The boy said nothing, but later he went to the grocery store where he had bought it, and asked if it was butterine. The grocer, probably vexed, said among other things, " If you don't like the butter, perhaps you'd better write to the Health Department." When the boy came back to school, he asked the teacher, " What is the Health Department, and what did the man mean by sajdng I'd better write ? " The teacher told him, and said that perhaps it would be a good thing to write. This he did, and got back a sheaf of pamphlets. Most of them were too diflScult for him, but in one was a marked passage telling how to test for butterine by noting the rate of melting. The whole group was so interested in this that they stopped cooking and started in on the test for butterine. They were quite successful, and they used the test on several occasions afterwards. By this time they had decided to keep all the recipes they used, and each made a cookbook for his or her own use. They obtained rubber stamps and " printed " these recipes, and although it became somewhat like drudgery later on, they insisted that no member of the group should shirk that part of the work. The experiment with the butterine was also printed in their cookbooks. This is the way it ran (grams were used because the children could get no other weights in the school. The directions called simply for equal weights) : Experiment with Butterine 5 grams butterine melted in 66 seconds. 5 grams butter melted in 60 seconds. 5 grams lard melted in 39 seconds. 5 grams of tallow melted in 629 seconds. Test for butterine. Butterine smells bad when it melts because it has tallow and lard in it. It sputters when it melts because it has tallow in it. It melts slower than butter. Meantime, the children had seen in a window a man binding books, and they thought that it would be a good plan to have their cookbooks bound. They visited the bookbinder, and he showed them how to stitch the leaves together and make a stiff cover. As a consequence they all bound their books, an art which was copied by some of the other groups that needed it. After several experiments in cooking, the necessity of having their plans made the night before, so that every one would know what to bring for the next day, was seen to be so important that the group 386 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION decided to have a chairman, whose duty it would be to see that this was done. The original leader was, without debate, made chairman. The term " chairman " was attractive, and was copied by some of the other groups, but in a few cases, after being used, it was discarded, the children saying : " What do we want a chairman for? Every one knows what to do, anyway." In the cooking group, however, the chairman was a necessity. The third or fourth thing that they wanted to cook was Charlotte Russe. When the group assembled there were no lady fingers. These were to have been brought by the boy. Since the cooking could not be carried on that day, the children had to go back to their seats and do some work which the teacher outlined for them. They were very much vexed at the boy and talked of asking him to leave the group. The boy said, however, that the fault was not his, but his mother's. His mother had told him that she was tired of giving him money all the time. The group then went to the teacher about the mother problem. They wanted her to write to the mothers and say that they were to send the things the children asked for. The teacher did not look at the question in this light, and said she did not think that she could write to the mothers, since the group work was their own affair, in which they must depend upon themselves. They talked the matter over again, and the chairman finally said : " Well, it wasn't Harold's fault. It never would have happened if we hadn't let Harold bring so many things that cost money. For all the things we have cooked he has brought more than any of the rest of us. What we want to do is to get it evened up. Then those who can't bring money can bring eggs or butter or sugar, but no one should have to bring more than his share." They perceived very clearly what they wanted, but they did not see the means by which it was to be accomplished. So they went to the teacher with the difficulty. " The recipes," they said, " give things by cupfuls or spoonfuls, while these same things are bought by the poxmd." The teacher pointed out to them that they could get, for instance, a pound of sugar and find out how many cupfuls were in it and then divide the cost of the pound by the number of cupfuls. This idea they grasped at once. But after they had got the cost of material by the cupful, they did not see how it could be divided evenly among the pupils. The teacher again showed them the simple averaging that was necessary, and although averaging is not usually introduced into the third grades, and they were never shown again, they used this method constantly and without errors throughout the rest of their work. The plan of the chairman to meet the mother problem turned out to be quite successful. SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 387 This cooking group, as it was first formed, was very harmonious, and the resistance that they had to overcome was almost wholly from the outside. It was the introduction of a new member which started friction and gave rise to internal resistances which for a time hampered the success of the work. A new pupil appeared in the grade, and as she was a merry, black-eyed little thing with attractive ways, she had an invitation to join from every one of the groups then organized. Of all these invitations she accepted the one from the group that were cooking " just to eat." It was not long before trouble appeared. Bessy was constantly forgetting things. The chairman mothered her, pinning slips of paper on her coat to remind her, etc., all to no purpose. She would Uck cream off spoons, refuse to wash dishes, etc., and, since the group were now in a little room by themselves, would act noisily, so that the rest of the group were afraid that their privileges might be withdrawn. At last they came to the teacher and complained, asking her to put Bessy out of the group. The teacher said : " I did not invite her, you know, to join your group ; but I am very willing to do what I can. Just now, however, I have a meeting, and you'll have to wait here an hour till I retmrn ; then we can talk it all over." When she came back the children were gone, but on her desk was a note asking her to give the following papers, one from each member of the group, to Bessy. " I think Bessy talks too much and I think she plays round the room too much, and I think she makes too much noise. Bessy did not bring her things while the others did to cook with. And she did not stay to print at nights after school only once or twice. She would not help wash the dishes. Then we told her we would put her out if she did not do the work, and we thought we could do better without her. Then she brought her things and helped wash the dishes, but she quarreled so. — L." " I think that Bessy ought to get out of the group because she wants everything. — Harold. " " Bessy plays tag and she says, ' This is mine, this is mine.' And she is always fussing all the time. I think she ought to be put out of the group. — M. " ' ' I think we could get along better in the group without Bessy because she talks too much, and disturbs us too much and we can't do so much work. And she wants to do all the work and no one else to do any of the work ; she wants to do all the cooking. I think she should be put out. — M. " "Bessy plays tag when we are cooking and she is too fussy, and I think she talks too much and too loud and she is too noisy and she is always fussing and quarreling with the other children, and I think she ought to be put out of the group. — B. " 388 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION " I think Bessy should be put out of the group because she does not help in printing and when we cook she quarrels with us. — S. " The papers were handed to Bessy as the children had requested' After reachng them she took up her pen and wrote the following reply, in which it will be noted the beginning does not hang very well with the admissions at the end. " Well, what I think about it, I have always brought the things they told me to bring and when they told me to print I have always done it. And to the other school we would talk so loud and I am so used to it. If they put me back again I would do lots better than I did before and I woiild bring the things they would tell me to and I would bring everything when they told me to and I would do everything. " ^ They did not, however, take her back, nor was she ever invited into any other group while she remained in the school, a fact which did not seem to depress her in the least. Her family moved again before the end of the term, and Bessy departed with them. The teacher asked the children why they had written the papers. The chairman replied that if one person told Bessy that the group didn't want her any more, she would be mad with that person (who probably would have been the chairman), and more than that, she might cry; while now there was no one in particular to be mad at, and if she wanted to cry, she could cry by herself. To the student of government it is interesting to see how the children went to the teacher when it was a matter probably involving force. They wished to use the policeman power of the teacher to insure Bessy's removal. This, in case of any refusal on her part to leave, would natu- rally have been exercised. In the same way a clergyman or member of a church who is voted out is compelled to respect this decision by force of law if in no other way. The law, however, stands outside of the organization itself. The method of writing on serious occasions was copied by some of the other groups. The following papers from another working group indicate a happier termination. 1 . " Mildred as chairman. Mildred is not chairman and she wants to boss everything. I Uke her, but I do not want her to do everything. — L." 2. "What we think about Mildred. I think that Mildred is too bossy. I think that we ought to write to her and tell her what we think. She made a good chairman whether she bossed us or not, but she bossed us too much. — S." Mildred replies as follows : — " I think that what Sarah and Lila said was all right. I think that we will get along all right now and a good deal better. I think that the money is fixed. I think that we are going to have a better soup." SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 389 There was no doubt that Mildred had been bossy. We wondered indeed that the children had stood it so long. After this for a week Mildred was a marvel of self-control, but it wore on her and she per- suaded her conurades to take turns in the chairmanship. Neither of them, however, had anything like the natural executive abiUty of Mildred, and they did not succeed so well. Nevertheless, Mildred made no comment. When it was her turn again, the others asked her to be chairman all the time, and to this she consented. She at times broke out in the old ways, but the others bore with it, and she herself was evidently anxious to improve in this respect. It can hardly be doubted that all the members of the group had in this experience a real lesson in ethics much more practical and persuasive than any formal instruction. The third cooking group in this room was composed wholly of boys. They said : " We don't want to cook as these girls do. But if any one should be sick in the house, then we should like to be able to cook something." In accordance with this, the first thing they attempted to cook was beef tea. They inquired into everything that made the beef tea nutritious. They were told that it should not look gray when it was done, as that shows that the albumen in the meat, which is the same substance as the white of an egg, has become hardened and cannot be digested so quickly. They beat out of pieces of meat some of the juice and compared it with the white of an egg at the teacher's sugges- tion. They were perfectly free, however, not to do this if they did not wish to. This group did not last as long as the others, but broke up voluntarily, the boys joining other groups formed for other purposes. During the year this class formed only fourteen groups. Among them were a photograph group, a group for modeh'ng in clay, two sew- ing groups, two science groups, one printing group, and two groups for plays. The work of these groups was usually carried forward to a considerable degree of success. The photographic group was composed of several boys. They fitted up a closet as a dark room. They were always looking for information on photography, and teachers often brought them books and pamph- lets. To some extent they were photographers for the class, and they took photographs of some of the plays and made lantern sUdes for them. After they had been at work for several weeks the rest of the class wanted them to tell them something of their work. The group were a little doubtful about the capacity of the others to understand, but the leader thought of something which he believed would help in this re- spect. Dining the period for group work he fitted up his camera and focused it on some buildings opposite. He then called out, one after another, each member of the class, made him put his head under the doth, and asked him, " What do you see ? " "I see the buildings up- 390 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION side down." " Do you want to know why it's like that? If you do, we're going to show you next time." This they did, explaining how the rays of light cross one another in the lens. The boys of this group kept a record of their work, and, as with the cooking group, bound it in a book. One boy made a small pinhole camera, which, without any lens, took some very fair photo- graphs. One of the plays given in this room was " The Sleeping Beauty." There was no dramatic version of this tale that the children knew of. They brought to school all the different editions of the story they could find, and started to turn it into dramatic form. This they did by arranging the cast first. " You may be the prince, and you the queen," etc. The members of the cast then began to extemporize the words. The action was thus first thought of. As they went on rehearsing, different members of the group would criticize the words used, saying, " That doesn't so\md right." They avoided using big words or hard phrases from the book. They divided the story into scenes, made the costumes and strung a curtain on a wire in front of the teacher's desk. They used the blackboard as scenery, drawing on it the castle seen through a forest. To bring this in, a scene was invented which con- sisted of the prince inquiring of two countrymen his way to the castle. It was not until after the play had been nearly fixed in its final form that they began to write it down. By this time there were changes suggested and accepted about which a dispute would sometimes arise afterwards, but one of the main reasons for writing was pride in the play. One of the boys of this group was very desirous of learning t3rpewriting. He brought an old machine to school, and, among other things, made a typewritten copy of the play. . . . This plan created great interest in the homes, and the teacher was surprised to receive many requests from the mothers and other members of the family for permission to see it when presented. This, of course, was granted, and the simplicity of the play, with all the earmarks of genuine child production, was thoroughly appreciated by the audience. The attitude of the teachers with relation to this play was the same as in the other groups. I may perhaps call myself one of the teachers, for I came into the room very frequently while the children were re- hearsing. I used to think over what I had seen the day before, and see if I could add anything or offer any suggestion that the children would take up. Sometimes the children would say, " That's right, let's do it that way," but at other times they would shake their heads and say, No. It was at first a little disconcerting to be overruled, especially in matters where I was quite siure I was artistically correct ; but I was consoled by the reflection that only those criticisms which they freely and voluntarily accepted were the ones which entirely SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 391 suited their stage of development, and when they rejected modifications of my proposing I saw that ethically, if not artistically, they were right. I felt that they were standing on their own feet with perfect honesty of conviction. Indeed, until they refused to do something which I had recommended, I was never quite sure that they were really inde- pendent. I knew, too, that it was a better example, to their minds, of real service to them than if I had insisted on my proposals. To come in contact with reaUties in a child is the most attractive thing about teaching. It is these reaUties which we admire in chil- dren, and which afford the greatest pleasure to parents in their contact with them. In schools of the usual sort most of this naive originality is overruled and crushed. It is feared that it may lead to lack of dis- cipline, and, moreover, where the initiative flows continuously from the teacher, there is Uttle room for it, and it comes out accidentally, if at all. The teacher thus robs himself of a great part of the pleasure of his work, becomes formal, " teachery," and at the same time blinds himself to the real capacities of the children. The time which was at first allowed for this work was, as already said, three half-hours a week, but after a short time many of the groups began to say to the teacher that they wished they could have more time. They were sure that they could do a great deal better, if the time were extended. The teacher replied that she was not sure that every group could use the time well, and since it was a matter that concerned the whole class, she could not extend the time unless she was sure of this. The children used part of their group-work time to dis- cuss this, and convinced the teacher that all would be benefited. She accordingly extended the time, at first two half-hour periods, and later on, after further requests, to three quarters of an hour per day. This contented the children of this age completely. Their power to plan seemed to be entirely used, and after this they never asked to have more time. The teacher noticed also that they were better satisfied to be carried along by her in work of her planning during the rest of the day than ever they had been before. From my experience with six third-grade classes, I can say that no class ever asked for more time than an hour a day. These experi- ences thus show with a certain degree of conclusiveness that there is a distinct limit beyond which the children are not able to go. Whether it would always be best to go so far as this limit is not asserted. In the case cited it seemed, in view of the best interests and total work of the class, the wisest thing to do. The teacher constantly kept in mind the detail problems of her grade, particularly reading, writ- ing and arithmetic. Many of the groups directly promoted interest and progress in the routine subjects, so that the class made as good ad- vance along these lines as any class had previously done. Leaving . 392 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION aside the higher concerns of character, resourcefulness and social organization, the teacher felt that, from the lower standpoint of subject matter alone, the time allowed was amply justified. In this class there were four children who were never in any group. They did not desire to join any, and the teacher gave them work to do by themselves. They were all physically rather inert, and were always pleased to do as well as they could anything that the teacher directed. In the other class, during this year, instead of fourteen groups there were thirty-eight formed, and there was no child who was not in one or more of these groups. This was in a class of fifty children, so that the percentage of leadership was high, probably over sixty per cent, — if we allow for some who were leaders of more than one group. When such a result is possible with children eight or nine years old, the outlook for democracy is good. Each child was in six or seven groups during the year, and there were usually about seven groups nmning at the same time. The teacher did not find these too many to keep in contact with, although there was some difficulty in getting time for consultation during the planning of each group and before it was started. The teacher pointed out this fact to the children, and it was proposed to put the plans in writing so that the teacher could read them at some other period. There was the ad- vantage of definiteness in the writing, although children of this age only wrote the salient points, and verbal discussion was also necessary. The moral and social effect of the organization of the groups, rather than the artistic perfection of the plays, is of course the first concern. In illustration of some of the effects on individual character, one or two experiences may be cited. There was a boy of great imagination, who had no difficulty in projecting any number of ideas, but who foimd carrying them out quite another matter. In the ordinary classroom work under the teacher his hand was always up, whether his answer was very much to the point or not. No ignoring or snubbing made any difference. It was felt by the teachers that he was given to " showing off." When self -organized group work started he was the originator of several groups. He left some of them, and was put out of others without ceremony. The formula in one group was, "Jack, you're fired; you talk too much and do nothing." To this he did not even answer, but turned on his heel and went off. At last he could get no one to join him in anything that he proposed, nor was he included in any other group. After a while he cultivated the friendship of a rather awkward and qvdet boy who had just come to the school. It turned out that he was impressing him with the merits of a grand play that he had in his mind. The steadiness of this boy was sufficient to enable them in combination to get others, and the play was finally started. SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 393 As is easily seen, the social force in each little group ran out readily to the whole class, and tended to extend itself to the rest of the school and to the home. Although there was not always a direct recogni- tion on the part of each group that they were working for the whole class, this was usually felt. In the plays it was intended from the beginning that they were to be offered to the class. When the first play was judged by the group running it to be as good as they could make it, the question of presenting it to the class was brought up before the teacher. She said that she could not give time on tj^e pro- gram beyond what she had already given for group work, and therefore they would need to ask the rest of the class whether they wanted to give up the various things they were doing in order to hear the play. The group went before the class and told them that the play would take but ten minutes, and asked them if they cared to hear it enough to give up their own work. This was done, and some time was added on to discuss the play and ask questions about it. Some of the pupils were in as many as fifteen different groups during the year. Of course these groups did not last so long as those referred to in the above paper. There was thus a variety of experience suitable for young children, and undue speciaUsm was avoided. The whole class, moreover, was interested in everything done by each group. During the year the same kind of work was introduced into the fourth grade, and here the pupils, during the latter part of the year, took possession of the large attic in the school and formed a village, with houses and workshops in different parts. There was a town- hall where the class met together as a whole. The different houses were furnished with wall paper, chairs, flowers, etc. Dishes were modeled in clay. One boy set up a battery of his own, made to run a bell as a signal to the villages. Calling was conducted formally, calling cards were printed, and a nimiber of different activities were instituted. C. A. Scott. Extracts from Social Education, Ginn and Company. Comment on the Social Aspects of Class Instruction The whole educative. process, as far as it goes on at all, is one of the ways in which the group life of the school manifests itself. That is to say, the processes of study and of learning are not external activi- ties, superenforced upon the little social group formed by the school. Everything the school does is influenced by the fact that it is a group, whether any conscious account is taken of the fact or not. In this we do not have specifically in mind such a type of school as has made a definite attempt to introduce social activities — so called. We shall 394 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION consider only the average school, and we wish to suggest that what goes on within it are definitely social activities ; that, whether we will or no, whatever is attempted and whatever is done is, in every case, more than the summation of many individual purposes and acts, but are the resultants of the interaction of minds. This could be illus- trated in many ways, but it will probably be more suggestive for present purposes to note the truth of the statement in those forms of activity which are usually considered the preeminent function of the school, viz. in the preparation and reciting of lessons. In these activities the teacher of course has his most characteristic function, at least traditionally speaking. But his actual function in this case is not merely that of a purveyor of certain objective facts which in one way and another he devises means of conveying to his pupils and then becomes a quiz master to determine how much the pupils have gotten and retained. Of course the teacher may seem to do merely this, but even on its lowest plane this process can never be mere mechanical transmission and testing of knowledge. The teacher can never even though crude he may be, eliminate himself — he will always be a person in the presence of his pupils and whatever he does, whether it be little or much, will always be saturated with the fact that he is a person and not a phonograph. We say he cannot eliminate himself, and it is not desirable that he should, if he could, for, as we have seen, practically all our human problems have originated, in one way or another, through human association, and mental activity is stimulated and sustained by social pressure. Hence it is not even desirable that the teacher should step into the background when he has once brought the pupil and the facts to be learned together, hoping thus to develop initiative and indepen- dence in the pupil. It is not thus that these quaUties of mind are de- veloped, nor are they hindered in their development by the presence of others with the learner. It is only under these latter conditions that they can really appear in any normal way — and if the teacher finds that his presence tends to make the pupils dependent and lacking in energy, it can only be said that he has somehow missed the true way in which to associate with them. The point holds for all teach- ing. It is always a process between persons, and the whole gamut of influences imphed in personahty is inevitably brought to bear in every SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 395 process of teaching. It is not a question of whether the teacher should be a person or not, but as to how he shall make his personality operative. Before following up this phase further, we should note another as- pect of the situation, viz. the presence of other pupils. Whatever the teacher does is always done within the group formed by the teacher and the class and has its group effects — so with each act of the pupils. We thus see that the conception of teaching and of the recitation as a relatively mechanical process or one having no social background is altogether inadequate and misleading. Under all circumstances the work of teacher and pupils, in or out of the recitation, whether good or bad, is a social affair. What are the consequences of this, or how should the process of teaching and of learning be stated, if they are to be taken socially rather than individually? As we have said, the teacher is a personal- ity, " a psychical and moral object in the pupils' environment." As we have already shown, knowledge cannot be transferred bodily from one mind to another — it must be built up by each one for him- self. This very conception plays directly into our social theory, for once the mechanical transmission of knowledge is seen to be impos- sible the teacher as a social factor appears, i.e. the way in which the teacher exerts his influence is of necessity along social hnes. The situation between teacher and pupils is exactly that which we have sketched as characteristic of the relations of people in life outside the school ; the influences are of the same sort and the results are the same ; except that here the process may be controlled and hence conducted with more economy. Outside of the school, as we have seen, problems arise in many ways through social intercourse. Intellectual activity is so stimulated, and different individuals contribute to the solution of problems. It is essentially a complicated give-and-take process. It is the same in the school as far as there is any activity of an edu- cative sort and not mere stagnation. We have seen that, in general, the social group tends to be the me- dium through which problems arise, or at least when a problem has arisen, interest in it is maintained through social intercourse, and that the final working out of the problem is apt to be due to the contribu- tions of many different individuals. It is usually impossible for one person to see all sides of a question, and hence only by cooperation 396 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION either simultaneous or successive can a really successful solution be brought to pass. As we have also pointed out, the individual's interest is apt to fluctuate, but if his interest is shared by others, it is more apt to survive the fluctuations and even to be sustained and intensified. No one doubts that a problem felt by a real social group can command more intense effort of different individuals than if it is felt by one person only. Now, in just the same way, in the class or even in the school, not merely will questions appear which are directly related to the mere fact that a number of people are thus brought into rather close rela- tionship, but farther than this, the interaction of minds, teacher's and pupil's, will be productive of questions which would not have come to them separately. That is to say, in the subject matter studied, natural questions will appear through the very fact that many different minds are at work upon it. We have made the point in an earlier section that much of real growth comes through the organization and application of one's powers in the solution of problems which are for the individual gen- uine, and hence full of appeal. It has possibly seemed to the reader that the proposal that all education should proceed through problems imposed conditions which, practically, are almost impossible to meet, however desirable they may be otherwise. And the difficulty is a genuine one if the pupil is considered in isolation. When, however, he becomes a part of a social group, as he almost inevitably does, if he has a teacher and is in a class, a possible solution of the diflSculty appears, for it is in such conditions, as our previous discussion has shown, that problems may be expected to arise quite normally and spontaneously. If the activity is really of the group sort, the problems will be quite genuine, and the effort of each pupil will be stimulated and sustained. It has been stated, also, that no facts can in any proper sense be transferred bodily from one mind to another ; that what is really done is to stimulate a constructive activity which results in the building up within the learner of ideas which may be analogous to those of the instructor, but not the same. In the situation of informal conversation and discussion and in the true recitation, we have the nearest approach to what might appear a mere transfer of fact from teacher to pupil. But this is possible because the mental action of both is moving along the same Une, each contributing to the move- SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE AND THE LEARNING PROCESS 397 ment; and the solution or other ideas, which each finally share, are really resultants of cooperation in the solution of the question in hand; the process has been one of genuine " give-and-take." We share most nearly the mental contents of others when we are working with them toward a common end. Under such conditions, we wish to em- phasize the interchange of thought as not only normal, but truly edu- cative — i.e. it is interchange and not mere transfer. What the teacher gives the pupil, the pupil feels the need of, and really appropriates, and, on the other hand, the reaction of the pupil upon the problem will be suggestive in many ways even to the teacher. We may assert, then, that the true effectiveness of the recitation and of teaching generally lies in the fact that it is some sort of "give- and-take " process between teacher and pupils and between the pupils themselves. We say some sort because it always occurs in varying degrees as far as there is any teaching and learning at all. We thus see that we have here conditions of utmost significance for effective learning, or, more generally, for genuine growth. The point in mentioning and discussing them in detail is that we may have a better conception of the conditions of the process, and hence be better able to get the full value afforded by the social situation. TOPICS FOR STUDY 1. To what extent does Scott's self -organized group work succeed in making the things to be learned material of personal intercourse between pupils and instructors and between the children themselves ? 2. How can social interests and social motives be infused into elementary arithmetic and elementary science? 3. Discuss the view held by some educators that the personality of the teacher should disappear as much as possible in instruction. 4. Is there, on the other hand, danger of the teacher s bemg too much in evidence? Why? 5 To what extent might it be said that present-day class work is too largely dominated by the teacher? Give evidences of. _ 6. Ways in which instinctive social relations of children in school hours are apt to be repressed. , , . , ., . u 7. In what way does the teacher's relation to pupils present ab- normal or unnatural social aspects ? See Mead. 8 Contrast the social atmosphere in a well-regulated home and that in the school with reference to their relations to learmng. 398 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION 9. Extent to which problems are of social origin. 10. Justify the statement that real instruction involves an inter- change of experience, an interaction of personalities, in which the child brings something which he actively contrasts and compares with that furnished by teacher or book. 11. The conversational ideal in the school. 12. What various conclusions may be drawn from Bumham with reference to school instruction? 13. What do you conclude as to the relative values of home and school study? 14. Of individual vs. group study. REFERENCES BuRNHAM, W. H. "The hygiene of home study," Ped. S., 12 : 213- 230. 1905. See end of this article for extensive bibliography. Chambers, W. G. "The conversational method, its dangers and principles," Ed., 31 : 169. Clark, L. "A good way to teach history," S. Rev., 17: 255. 1909. Dewey, J. The School and Society, 47-70. Chicago, 1900. Jastrow, J. Fact and Fable in Psychology, p. 301. An interesting account of how the social atmosphere faciUtated a difficult piece of learning. Johnson, N. C. "Habits of work and methods of study of high school pupils in some cities in Indiana," S. Rev., 7 : 257-277. 1899. Keith, J. A. " SociaUzing the materials and methods of education," £;. 5. r., 8:174. O'Shea, M. V. "Social Development and Education, p. 295. Boston, 1909. Children's self-discipline in the group. Scott, C. A. Social Education. See especially his accounts of the self-organized groups. Extracts reprinted herewith. Strayer, G. D. a Brief Course in the Teaching Process, Chapter XII, "Social phases of the recitation." New York, 1911. Tarde, Gabriel. "The interpsychology and interplay of human minds," International Quarterly, 7 : 59-84. Triplett, Norman. "The dynamogenic factors in pace-making and competitions," Am. Jour. Psy., 9 : 507-533. 1898. Waters, Robert. Culture hy Conversation. New York, 1908. Edu- cational and intellectual influence of conversation. Has many stimulating suggestions. CHAPTER XX THE CORPORATE LIFE OF THE SCHOOL IN RELATION TO MORAL TRAINING Social Aspects of Moral Training Every institution has its moral atmosphere and tone. Strong personalities estabhsh the standards and cut the patterns which per- sist year after year by imitation and repetition. The children come and go, but the institution with its traditions, its moral standards, its rules and regulations, chiseled as it were in adamant, remains. Its molds a,nd dies give shape to all who pass through. Moral training with children is more a matter of atmosphere and standard, of example and imitation, than of formal instruction. The various forms of education and training discussed in previous chapters of this book are shot through with moral relations. These, however, may not appear in the consciousness of the child. It is important that they should appear and that they should exercise a controlling influence ; for morahty is a quaUty of character, and not merely a mental acquisition. One may be trained intellectually, industrially or economically without being moral. Character, how- ever, is not made up of separate compartments. Each child is a unit, although a very complex one. If the character is morally sound, its expression in every direction — social, intellectual, industrial, eco- nomic, etc. — will be moral. An education which does not rest on a moral foundation is worse than ignorance. The goal of the entire educative process is moral character. Conceding the truth of this proposition, as almost all parents and teachers do, it is remarkable that instruction in morals receives so little attention from them. The National Education As- sociation is the most representative body of educators in the country. In running through the annual reports of the past fifty years of its history, one finds a surprising dearth of matter on the subject of teach- ing morals. Each branch of the curriculum in its manifold aspects of content and method has been treated again and again, and great progress in the making of a course of study better adapted to the needs of the children, and of the times has undoubtedly resulted from 399 400 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION these discussions. But instruction in morals has never received ex- tended or intensive treatment at the hands of this great association, and from the present status of moral instruction in our public schools as compared with any former period, it is not easy to see that any prog- ress whatever in this field has been made. In his paper before the meeting of the National Council of Education at Los Angeles, in 1907, Mr. Clifford W. Barnes, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the International Committee on Moral Training, said: " Generally speaking, systematic moral instruction may be said to have no place in our American school system, for it has only been tried to a very limited extent in a few small places." It is not difficult to see why our pubhc schools have made such in- different progress in the teaching of morality during the past fifty years. The deterioration of the home as a center of moral influence during the same period is also easily accounted for. Our public school system was established as an adjimct to the home and the church at a time when both of these institutions stood for much more in the Ufa of the child than they do to-day. It was estabhshed at a time when the child was much less a ward of the state than he is to-day ; when life was rural, and homes were houses and lands, with firesides and gardens, not tenement boxes ; when the course of study was rich in the Utera- ture of moral and rehgious truth; when religion was potent in the home, parental authority was unquestioned, and the church and the minister functioned largely in every community. These conditions have all changed. The delinquent child of to-day is the product of city and town fife. Out of one hundred and thirty thousand children in our reformatories, ninety-eight per cent come from cities, towns and villages. In Baltimore, crime is said to be fifty per cent greater in the slum district than in the city at large; in Chicago over two hundred per cent greater. With the growth of factory industries the home as an industrial center has steadily dechned. With the elimination from home life of the old-fashioned chores and daily responsibilities for home-making service and industries has come the breaking down of family discipline and parental control. Occupation and behavior must go hand in hand. Children cannot behave if they have nothing to do. Along with the weakening of home influence has come an immigra- tion of a million or more foreigners annually, — parents too ignorant to learn our language, with children quick to grasp the privileges of American liberty, but without the sense of self-control or civic respon- sibility which safeguard it. The result of all these disintegrating fac- tors upon child life is not only an increase of juvenile depravity, but a ratio of precocious crime and delinquency not known a half century ago. MORAL TRAINING 401 While only a passive agent in the moral deterioration of the home resulting from these social, economic and industrial changes, the state has been an active agent in the elimination of religious instruction ■> from the public school. Moral instruction in the earUer period of education in this country was inseparably bound up with religious instruction. But through the gradual drawing away of the pubUc schools from church influence, the function of the teacher as a monitor in religious matters has been greatly reduced, the literature of religious truth, as such, excluded from the classroom, and the whole situation secularized to such an extent as to effect almost a complete elimination of religious instruction from public education. This condition has forced a schism between religious and moral instruction, and left the latter swinging in the air. Whether the state could have done other- wise and yet safeguarded in the public schools our American ideals of freedom of conscience and religious liberty, is a question. Our only purpose here is merely to call attention to the fact. Whatever may be true of the ability of the mature mind to form moral conceptions and act upon moral groimds independent of rehgious feeling or of the con- sciousness of a Supreme Being, it is certainly true that such ethical abstractions do not appeal to the child mind. At each step in the elimination of religious instruction from public schools, society has assumed increased risk. Public elementary edu- cation is the extension downward of the nation's authority by moral suasion. It is the peaceful arm of the police system before it has be- come necessary to display the blue coat, brass buttons and locust wand. The only rational and adequate means within the power of a democracy to conserve and perpetuate herself, her laws and her institutions, is through public education. We are expending immense sums of money trying to correct grievous iUs by legislation. This is attempting to effect social upUft by throwing our weight on the short arm of the lever. It is a thousand times better to form than to reform. The children of to-day make the state of to-morrow. Nine tenths of these children receive their education in the pubhc elementary schools. Character by culture through education, instead of by laws and penal- ties, should be the aim of society. An education which is not moral is unsafe both for the individual and for the state. Not only is the public school shorn of much of its power for moral instruction by excluding from it all rehgious instruction, but it is also further handicapped as a moral influence by the fact that ordinary academic instruction does not offer a large field for moral action. The end of moral training is freedom. Freedom is hberty of choice coupled with suflicient moral insight and self-control to choose the right ; for choosing what is wrong results in a limitation of freedom. One is free who does as he pleases, but pleases to do right. Moral training is, 402 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION therefore, not merely informing the intellect by means of moral stand- ards and ideals, but it is forming the will to choose aright. Character has been defined as a perfectly formed will, but it must be understood that the principal agent in forming the will is the will itself. The will,' building character by its own conscious acts, is the supreme aim of moral training. The child that is trained up "in the way he should go will not depart from it," because his will has become morally formed, and he does not choose to. How to provide the child with a moral experience rather than simply moral ideas, is the problem we have to work out in moral training. We all distrust direct moral instruction, and yet in our public schools are scarcely able to furnish an environment that contains any- thing worth while in the way of moral experience. The point of con- tact between teacher and pupil is intellectual and academic rather than moral and practical. School life as the child finds it is forced and artificial. It is not real life, and the child knows it. The material with which the school deals is remote from the child's natural interests. He fails to see its con- nection with practical everyday living. He, therefore, does not take it as seriously and genuinely as he does his life outside the school. If to him the environment is artificial, the content of his studies unrelated to the life about him, the moral standards required of him in the schoolroom will likewise be merely academic. This rather empty and negative condition of the public school, with respect to moral training, would be greatly relieved through an enrichment of the school curricu- lum and a vitalizing of its activities by an infusion of the warm cur- rent of the child's everyday interests and experiences outside the school. Unless we are able to do this, we must be content ourselves with merely skimming the ground of moral training in public school education. That which reaches the child through his experience is tenfold more a part of him than that which comes to him through mere ideas or sen- sory stimulus. One moral experience is worth a score of formal les- sons in morality. One of the boys in our garden class stole radishes from another boy's garden and was caught in the act by two or three of his companions. All of the gardeners were at once assembled; the boy and his case were set before them. After some informal dis- cussion a motion was made by one of the children that the boy forfeit his garden. It was one of the best in the plot, and he had spent much time on it, but by his deed he had violated property rights and thus forfeited his right of its ownership. The motion was unanimously carried. When the assembly was asked if there was any further busi- ness concerning the matter, it was moved by one of the children that this boy be required "to weed all of the other gardens." This motion MORAL TRAINING 403 was not entertained by the chair, but would no doubt have carried if a vote had been taken on it : first, because recent rains had greatly in- creased the growth of weeds in the gardens ; second, because of natural laziness in relation to such work as weeding gardens ; and third, because the thief was an unpopular boy. Soon after the walls and ceilings of one of the boys' cottages in our Orphanage had been decorated, a boy made with a nail an ugly scratch about ten feet long through the paint on the wall of one of the dormi- tories. This is the boy referred to in the chapter on Punishment, who was brought to the oflSce by other boys of the cottage with the request that he be "everlastingly licked." But they were shown that there was no connection between the culprit's offense and a "licking." They were then given some instruction as to principles of punishment with special reference to the fact that punishment should bear a natural relation to the offense, and that it should, when possible, take the form of an indeterminate sentence. The matter was referred back to the boys for further deliberation. The decision reached and presented the following day was that the boy should sleep in the attic, going to bed in the dark, until such time as it was thought safe for him to return to the dormitory. He was kept sleeping in the attic for about six weeks. Several interesting inferences may be drawn from such instances as these. First, that children are capable of rational action upon moral questions. Second, that it is unsafe to give absolute authority into their hands, as has been attempted in some of our school govern- ment schemes ; for children are emotional and may be mercilessly cruel in passing judgment and executing moral or governmental functions. Third, that participation in government under proper restriction is an essential factor in the training of the future citizens of a democracy, and that helping to disciphne and govern others promotes self-gov- ernment. Not one case of steahng from gardens has been reported, or to our knowledge has occurred since this case, which happened three years ago. The damage to the wall was repaired, and no similar case of vandalism in the cottage has occurred for about the same period. Each new boy received into the cottage comes up against a moral leverage with respect to certain home-making refinements, group ideals and industrial standards, which he cannot resist. He is seized and shaped to the molds by forces which he cannot withstand. The same may be true with respect to moral standards in any school, if the teacher works wisely and diligentiy to estabKsh them. Children, as far as they are able to understand, should be conscious of the process through which they are passing. Nothing will secure their cooperation more surely than to understand your purposes con- cerning them, the habits which you want them to form, and the prm- ciples which you want regnant in their lives. I have found it a good 404 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION plan to place before them for solution problems in child training con- cerning themselves and other children. Attempts to solve such prob- lems lead the child to introspection and self-inquiry. You fight the battle alone in training a child if you do not have his conscious coopera- tion in the work. He is your strongest ally against the foes that are within or the temptations without. A thorough system of discrimina- tion with respect to individual merit or demerit discipline, scholar- ship, service rendered, etc., is an important factor in moral training. Nothing is more wholesome and helpful to the child than to know he stands on his own feet, that he is not merely one of a crowd. In this Orphanage we endeavor to reward every best effort or ex- cellency in the work and conduct of each child, and to offer numerous opportunities for individual initiative along many Unes. This is especially needed in institutional life, where the besetting sin is pretty sure to be dead levelism. Make the boys and girls conscious of this fact, and open ways for them to escape from such a condition, and they wUl break through the crust of solidarity which may have settled over them like a pall. Moral training requires that children should be put upon their honor and trusted. Responsibility lies at the very foxmdation of morality. Children are quick to sense the moral atmosphere in which they are placed. If it is one of distrust, they immediately respond with its natural accompaniment, deception. The less you trust children, the less worthy of trust do they grow. It is better to trust and be deceived than not to trust at all. Expect much in this regard and you will get much. Distrust and lack of confidence beget irresponsibility and de- linquency. The sense of moral guilt is much keener when the child betrays or abuses a trust than it is if he does wrong when expected to do so if he gets a chance. Wrongdoing should be a surprise and not a matter of course. No more surveillance and coercion in moral action should be exer- cised than is absolutely necessary. The coercion may not be that of a personal force, but rather that of a system. There should be a pro- gression from younger to older in the matter of responsibility. The playgrounds of our Orphanage are open and unfenced. Our children are not under surveillance while at play any more than are the children of any well-regulated family. A child can run away if he wants to. No one is watching him to see that he does not run away, any more than you would have some one watch your own children in a country home. The boys wander over most of the place (comprising over forty acres) in their play, or after cherries, diestnuts or wild flowers. Every pleasant Sunday afternoon the children take walks into the country. They go in groups of from three to twenty, the girls always accompa- nied by some older person, the boys usually without escort other than MORAL TRAINING 405 one or two of their own number. Children fourteen years of age or older frequently make visits of several days or weeks to relatives, for we believe in strengthening kinship ties where they are safe and proper. Our children go to New York, Yonkers and Hastings on errands fre- quently and alone. About fifty weeks of visiting with relatives and friends were among the privileges which the boys and girls of the Orphanage enjoyed during the past year. Ample opportunity must be provided for the child to exercise free- dom of choice whenever consistent with his highest good. Nothing makes for individual responsibility like the exercise of free choice. Since the child will soon be sent forth into the world, where he will do all of his own choosing, it is important that he should do some of it now, while under training, as a preparation for that greater responsibility. The child of fourteen should have wider range of free choice than the chUd of twelve. The superintendent of a New York institution some time ago re- ceived a letter from the people to whom an orphan child fifteen years of age was apprenticed, stating that the child would never take a bath unless made to do so. The regular custom in the institution was two baths a week for all the children. As this child had been in the insti- tution about ten years, it had repeated the practice of bathing about a thousand times, and yet the habit of taking a bath had not been formed. In a subjective or psychological sense, however, this child had really never taken a bath. If we analyze the complex process of taking a bath into its elements, we note the following : feeling the need of a bath, desire to satisfy the need, choosing the time, manner and condi- tions for taking a bath, and finally the application of soap and water. With but one of these steps had the child had anything whatever to do during the entire ten years of her life in the institution. Hence the child had not acquired the habit of bathing. The forming of a habit above the level of mere instinct requires something more than repetition. If feeling, desire and choice are necessary steps in the act which is to become habitual, they must func- tion in the genetic process of establishing the habit. Without pur- poseful effort no habit will be formed even by endless repetition. This is why institutionalism is so empty and barren of intelligent response in character and efficiency on the part of those who have been subjected to its stupefying regime. Pubhc sentiment may become as potent a factor for moral uphft among children as among adults. Almost unlimited possibilities for good he in this comparatively neglected field in school discipline. Two of my children attended a high school in Massachusetts where there was almost no cheating or cribbing, and what httle there was, was frowned upon by the students ; the tone of the school was against 4o6 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION it. Later on, they attended school in another state where there was no sentiment against cribbing, and the practice was very prevalent. I am confident if the garden thief and the cottage vandal had been dealt with as individuals only other similar cases would have followed, no matter what the punishment might have been. The inflicting of punishment upon a child for an offense against his fellows, by the one in authority, is by no means so effective as punishment administered by the social group injured or caused to suffer by the offense. In the latter case the moral standards of the community are defined and estab- lished by the social whole. Each individual shares in the influence and uplift of every moral judgment. The culprit also accepts his punishment with better grace, feels the force of the moral standards of the community more strongly, and is much less liable to experience feel- ings of personal resentment than he is when the punishment is decreed and administered by an individual. Every enrichment of the child's Hfe, every new interest in play, in- dustry or study, every increase of liberty or possession, brings new temptations. But interests and temptations, industry and freedom, constitute Hfe. They furnish the concrete situations and conditions in which moral relations arise. G and K , two boys of the Orphanage, have an unusually elaborate tree hut built some fifteen feet above the ground in a clump of chestnut trees. They wanted a waterproof roof on it. Workmen on the place were using tar paper for damp proofing the walls of a new cottage in process of construction. The boys stole — or you may say, "carried off" — two half rolls of tar paper for use in their playhouse enterprise. At the same time they greatly needed a saw, whidi they also found in the contractor's outfit and appropriated. The circum- stance offered an opportunity for moral instruction and moral training of which we have many in the Orphanage, and always wUl have as long as the children have possessions and carry on constructive play. To make things, own things and do things is life ; and Hfe — real life — is moral. In the assembly of boys it was voted that these boys should return the stolen property, apologize to the contractor, and promise not to take anything more. They also understood that any repetition of the offense would mean a forfeit of their ownership of the house. A , a fourteen-year-old boy, has a dovecote which he built last year. He is raising pigeons. He needed food for them and stole a generous supply from the poultry feed room of the Orphanage. The desire to use rather than to possess was the chief motive in the theft. In the former case it was a suggestion to those in authority that chil- dren should be provided with material for their playhouse enterprises, or at least be given honest means of providing it for themselves. In the latter case, opportunity to buy, or to earn by labor, food for pets MORAL TRAINING 407 was suggested and thereafter offered. It is a wise parent or teacher whose foresight is equal to these natural demands of the child's inter- est, and who anticipates them far enough in advance to prevent dis- honest outbreaks. Direct as well as indirect instruction in morals should be given to children. The fear of making a moral lesson or application too direct or too obvious has become a fetish with many parents and teachers, and the result often is that no moral instruction whatever is given. The old-fashioned appeal, "Is it right?" and "Do right," are seldom heard nowadays ; and yet as long as the human mind has a conscience it is well to press these claims upon it, abstract as they are, for the re- sponse will usually be morally uplifting. In attempting to adjust methods of discipline and instruction to the caprice of the child, many parents and teachers have themselves become opportunists, relying upon devices and expedients rather than upon principles. I once knew an indulgent mother who was unable to get her young son to bed with- out resorting to devices, one of which was for a member of the family to impersonate a hotel proprietor, receive the boy as a guest and show him his room. The three following cases, in which direct instruction given in season would no doubt have served as prevention, are t5T)ical of other similar ones which have come within my experience. An undersized fourteen- year-old boy, when asked why he was so small for his age, told me he could not account for his lack of physical development and vigor unless it was due to smoking cigarettes, from about seven years of age until brought to the Orphanage School. He said he did not know the habit would injure him. He is a good boy, trustworthy and well disposed, ana would no doubt never have formed the habit had he been properly instructed. M , now fourteen years of age, brought with her when she en- tered the school four years ago, a vulgar Bowery song which she imme- diately proceeded to teach to the other httle girls. The song was brought to the office by an older girl. The child showed little knowl- edge of the meaning of the song when questioned concerning it, and is now, four years later, one of the most refined girls in the school. K , at fifteen years of age, told me what a hard struggle he had had to break up an injurious personal habit after my first conference with the boys on the subject some two years before ; also, that he had not known the practice was wrong or would work injury to him, until so instructed. Just as school nurses and settlement workers find, m thousands of homes, deplorable ignorance concerning dietary, sanitation, the care of the children and the sick, resulting in ill health and a high mortality rate, so may teachers, if they inquire, find distressing ignorance among 4o8 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION school children concerning personal habits, purity, temperance, right- eous living, etc., resulting every year in a record of juvenile delinquency, vice and crime. In such cases there is need of direct instruction, and, if properly given, it will go a long way toward enlightenment and pre- vention. Rudolph R. Reeder, Eow Two Hundred Children Live and Learn, Chapter VII. The Social Basis of Moral Education The problem of moral training is primarily a phase of the larger problem of social education. This fact is admirably illustrated in the preceding extract from Dr. Reeder's book. Although it refers specifi- cally to conditions in an institution for dependent children, the social life is apparently so normal and well-balanced that it is quite typical of what is possible in other sorts of schools. Dr. Reeder's discussion of the social conditions of sound moral development is also particularly clear and forceful and merits the most serious study, especially with reference to ways in which these principles may be worked out in the public schools. The recognition of the social basis of moral education has come in part from a fuller appreciation of the nature of morality. This is seen to-day to be essentially a social phenomenon. Apart from partici- pation in social life, the principles and precepts of ethics have no significance. It is through social intercourse, through intimate co- operative and competitive activity, that rules of conduct have slowly evolved. Elementary moral laws are clearly present in the social life of all savage peoples. There are laws of the chase, of war, of the proper division of food, laws which prescribe the form of the camp and the conduct of the youths, especially toward- their elders. All these regulations are the direct consequence*4)f hiunan associations. It would be inconceivable that they should ever be thou^t of, much less practiced, if these savages were not social creatures. Out of these primitive face-to-face social relations develop higher moral laws; from them come our conception of the good and the bad, of the vices and the virtues of the moral idea of standards of conduct. The savage boy receives his moral training by participating in the actual social life about him. So have the youth of all stages of culture, even to oiur own. All ideas regarding right and wrong that possess MORAL TRAINING 409 any vitality, all conceptions of noble virtue and of compelling ideals, have come through the social medium and have been defined and reenforced by the examples of others, whether mother, playmate, friend or great historical character. This sort of moral training has been going on in all ages, and is as effective to-day as it ever was. It is noteworthy, however, that when the instituted agencies of education have undertaken the moral train- ing of the children, these primary conditions of moral growth have often been ignored. Some abstract and purely formed method has usually been adopted and practiced. Thus, in European schools the attempt is made to hand over ready-made moral principles to boys and girls. Certain things are taught as good, other things as bad; simple ethical principles are taught in the same formal way that the principles of arithmetic or the rules of grammar are studied out of books and memorized as so many external facts. The same methods have been tried and are being tried in this country to some extent, al- though, in most schools on the whole, little attention, comparatively, is given to the matter of moral training. Formal instruction in morals is good as far as it goes, but it needs supplementing by opportunities for practice. Its inherent defect is that it is apt to give only an intellectual recognition of the principles of conduct. Mere knowledge of what is right unfortunately does not always make a person do the right. The formal instruction, however, is not to be entirely condemned or rejected. Indeed, it has a place if it is accompanied by proper reenforcement through healthful social relations. The savage tribes usually tell their children exphcitly what they shall and shall not do, — but their moral training does not stop with this. It is continued and illustrated and emphasized in every detail of familiar daily social intercourse and social duties. Moral training is, as suggested, not dependent upon whether we are thinking about it or not. It does not stop when we cease our formal instruction. This, however, does not render the problem of moral education less important. It suggests rather new lines of attack. Instead of confining our attention to the purely formal aspects, neces- sary as they are, it indicates other and even more important avenues of moral training which can be rendered vastly more effective by sys- tematically taking them into account. Instead of ignoring the social 4IO SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION aspect, the effort to-day is to understand it better and utilize it as far as may be possible, without robbing it of its effectiveness. The in-, formal relations of intimate social interaction are admitted to have a character-forming value. But the character thus formed is not always of desirable sorts. The street gang furnishes a social at- mosphere which has profound character-forming capacity, but unfor- tunately character of the worst sort. In the ordinary country vil- lage, there are powerful influences at work to shape the life and ideals of boys and girls. But partly because nobody pays any attention to them, these influences are apt to be vicious rather than uplifting. The recognition of the possibihty of controlling and shaping social life so that it may contribute to the moral uplift of the community is one of the aspects of the modern impulse for conservation. It is well known that in modern industry everything is utilized; the waste products are becoming less and less every year. Things once thrown aside as valueless are now turned to account and found to be the most profitable aspects of the business. The by-products of the packing houses are said to be worth more to-day than the meat products. In education, likewise, we are realizing that there are many opportu- nities for effecting educational results which in times past have been entirely ignored. We hardly dare predict the results when we shall set about to turn to some definite account the hitherto neglected op- portunities for moral education. These opportunities are particularly those which are afforded by the social life of the school. This social life which in uncontrolled ways is making moral character of a somewhat uncertain, nonde- script type may be vastly more effective in the production of moral character of a better sort, if the teacher can realize in general how much depends upon the social relations, and specifically how to organize the details of these relations so as to accomphsh a high, rather than a low, order of character development. The first point to recognize is that the school is a " primary " social group. Like all " primary groups " — e.g. the family or neighbor- hood — it is a veritable nursery of human nature. It affords pecuhar opportunity for intimate, face-to-face cooperation and community of interest which are of supreme value in the formation of sound moral ideals. All that was said in a previous chapter about primary groups MORAL TRAINING 411 and primary ideals has specific application here. In the group life of the school is the soil from which may spring up quite naturally those fundamental quaKties of human nature which are the raw material of all character, — namely, loyalty, truthfubess, cooperation, en- durance, justice, kindness. These quaUties do not have to be implanted in the children ; they are there to start with, waiting only for a little encouragement to call them forth. The encouragement needed is little more than face-to- face cooperative and competitive work and play. Without any over- sight, by wise teachers these qualities burst forth, but are often nar- rowed in scope and perverted in function, as is seen in the street gang and in the unsupervised playground. Nor is supervision of the primary groups of school and playground inconsistent with the at- tainment of their moral possibihties. As far as the playground is concerned, it is recognized by all who have given attention to it that supervision is not only necessary, but is welcomed by the children as the condition under which all can enjoy its opportunities most fully. Neither is it inconsistent with the best moral possibilities of the school that its social life should be consciously supervised and molded with a view of obtaining the full limit of the social forces which spring up there, whether one will or no.^ The first consideration and the one of most general importance is that the social life of the school shall be natural and as ii^arly as pos- sible a reproduction of the healthiest social life of the community and of the country. If the boy or girl is to participate intelligently in the activities of the larger society, he must be trained along these lines in the school. If he is to be a member of a democratic and progressive society, he should attend a school dominated by the principles which lie at the basis of such a society. " He must be educated for leader- ship as well as for obedience. He must have power of self-direction and power of directing others, power of administration, ability to as- sume positions of responsibility." These are qualities quite essential to success in modern society, and they are prime essentials to effective moral character. If the school is a vital social institution, these quali- ties will be nourished and developed. If it is not, they will be corre- spondingly neglected. •See Reeder, pp. es-fig. 412 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION " In a certain city there is a swimming school where youth are taught to swim without going into the water, being repeatedly drilled in the various movements which are necessary for swimming. When one of the young men so trained was asked what he did when he got into the water, he laconically replied, ' Sunk.' The story happens to be true ; if it were not, it would seem to be a fable, made expressly for the purpose of typifying the prevailing status of the school, as judged from the standpoint of its ethical relationship to society. The school cannot be a preparation for social life excepting as it reproduces, within itself, the typical conditions of social life. The school at pres- ent is engaged largely upon the futile task of Sisj^hus. It is endeavor- ing to form practically an intellectual habit in children for use in a social life which is, it would seem, carefully and purposely kept away from any vital contact with the child who is thus undergoing training. The only way to prepare for social life is to engage in social life. To form habits of social usefulness and serviceableness apart from any direct social need and motive, and apart from any existing social situation, is, to the letter, teaching the child to swim by going through motions outside of the water. The most indispensable condition is left out of account, and the results are correspondingly futile." ' The first problem of moral education is, then, that of providing in the little social group of the school real copies of normal social rela- tionships, of developing in it " an embryonic typical community life." Without such provision all moral training will be in part formal and in part artificial and incapable of connecting with the inevitable con- ditions of the larger world. In the world of adult society, for example, the normal individual is not consciously hedged about by all sorts of restrictions. He is not restrained from wrongdoing by the knowl- edge that the eye of the law is ever watching him, ever ready to re- press him. In fact, he thinks very little about the limitations imposed upon him. He is busy with his vocation, which is probably a decent one and one which is an avenue for some definite service to society as well as a means of livelihood for himself and family. He is not con- stantly harassed by the fear that he may do something forbidden by the law. If he should constantly feel himself under surveillance by ' Dewey, Ethical Principles underlying Education, pp. 13, 14. Reprinted from the Third Yearbook oj the National Herbart Society. MORAL TRAINING 413 the officers of the law lest he might do something wrong, his productive capacity would be cut in two. As it is, he is constantly stimulated to do his best in his particular line through the knowledge that he has a work of his own and that it is work which is worth something to others as well as to himself. The major part of his attention is directed, not toward avoiding wrongdoing, but performing positive service. This holds true in practice with even the humblest worker, even though he may not state the matter to himself in any such sophisticated fashion. No one can doubt that these social conditions have a great moral value for the individual, or that he develops in character under their influence. The school, however, seldom works along such lines. " Too often the teacher's concern with the moral life of pupils takes the form of alertness for failures to conform to school rules and routine. These regulations, judged from the standpouit of the development of the child at the time, are more or less conventional and arbitrary. They are rules which have been made to order that the existing modes of school work may go on ; but the lack of inherent necessity in these school modes reflects itself in a feeling, on the part of the child, that the moral discipline of the school is arbitrary. Any conditions that compel the teacher to take note of failures rather than of healthy growth give false standards and result in distortion and perversion. Attending to wrongdoing ought to be an incident rather than a prin- ciple. The child ought to have a positive consciousness of what he is about, so as to judge his acts from the standpoint of reference to the work which he has to do. Only in this way does he have a vital stand- ard, one that enables him to turn failures to account for the future." * The moral value of work in which a person can truly express himself is strikingly illustrated in an increasingly large number of modern reform schools. Of these the Junior Republic previously discussed is typical. The majority of those entering these schools have never felt the restraining influence of any definite work. As Mr. George says, the "-physical energy, vitahty, superabundance of spirits, in the normal boy, is bound to have some outlet." If he has no definite work into which he can turn his energy, if he " is irresponsible, care- free, because he has parents, friends or some society to furnish food ' Dewey, Ethical Principles underlying Education. 414 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION and comfort," he is almost sure to sow wild oats liberally. When such a one is made responsible for his own support, and has aroused in him an interest in property, he is likely to experience a moral trans- formation. In other words, when he is thrown into a social group where the normal economic conditions of adult society prevail, he learns for the first time what it means to work steadily and patiently, and in this way rapidly acquires the interests and becomes adjusted to the restraining influences that prevail among normal adults. The thoroughness with which the most vicious and lawless characters are made over into law-abiding citizens by being thus subjected to the influences of a normal social group is convincing proof that moral development is dependent upon a social medium which provides defi- nite responsibility in the shape of work and property and with it the opportunity for that social service which each one performs who pur- sues a vocation with skill and industry. Perhaps these measures would be too drastic for the boy or girl who had not strayed into actual criminality. We cannot be too mindful that in many quarters children are systematically robbed by modern industry of the joyfulness and freedom that belong to childhood. The evil of child labor is not merely that it is exhausting physically and mentally and thus prevents natural growth, but also that it is imposed upon its victims. They are mere drudges, not finding in their work any opportunity for joyful self-expression. The work that is morally uplifting is not of the exhausting, externally imposed type, but rather that which gives organized healthful outlets to the impulses of self- activity. " The farmer boy, in his wide range of daily tasks, from milking the cows and feeding the pigs in the morning to digging the potatoes for dinner, weeding the garden in the afternoon, and finally littering the stables at night, may expend ten times as much energy as the factory boy, and go to bed tired at night, but it is wholesome work, and out of it all he will get a good deal of fim and no end of physical tone and appetite." ^ If, then, children are ever to become desirable factors in hiunan so- ciety, they must begin in their formative period to acquire some of the qualities of life which will be demanded of them. If participa- tion in the interests and activities of a normal social group has • Reeder, p. 92. MORAL TRAINING 415 such salutary effect upon the lawless child, may it not have values that should be secured also for the normal boy or girl? For every age above babyhood there is a normal requirement of work and re- sponsibility. To deprive the child of this privilege is to deprive him of the conditions of normal growth. This artificiality of the school atmosphere is an outcome of the tend- ency of the school, as an institution, to develop a life of its own which becomes more or less independent of the society that it serves. When the entire commimity was active in the training of its children the atmosphere of education was identical with that of the social group. It is perhaps inevitable that it would lose its vital social quality as the school is differentiated and gradually acquires a peculiar technique and traditions of its own. But this is an age in which the maximum of productivity is demanded of all investments. The same constant and careful scrutiny which is being applied to other lines of human activity to insure the best returns must be applied to the] school. Its tendency to become iso- lated and artificial, natural though that tendency may be, must be constantly checked by the determined effort of wise teachers. A more widespread conception of the school as a social institution and as one of the media of social conservation and regeneration must displace the narrow idea of its fimction as that for merely imparting a Uttle formal knowledge. This intelligent appreciation of the meaning of the school will exert a constant influence in preserving in it a true and healthful relation to the social whole. There is a striking contrast between the well-ordered home and the school m this particular. The home does not lay upon the children duties and responsibilities that are different from the social life in which it participates. The children have in the home the same motives for right doing and are judged by standards similar to those which prevail in the wider adult society. " Interest in community welfare, an mterest that is intel- lectual and practical as well as emotional,— an interest, that is to say, in perceiving whatever makes for social order and progress, and in carrying these prmciples into execution, — is the moral habit to which all the special school habits (as the special family habits) must be re- lated if they are to be animated by the breath of life." '■ 1 J. Dewey, Moral Principles in Education, igio. 41 6 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION In a preceding section we have seen that the specific teaching of the school may be rendered more effective by a recognition of the so- cial quality of these functions. This increased effectiveness will con- tribute to the moral as well as to the intellectual side. Enlightened methods of socialized instruction will be far more productive of genuine moral growth than any formal instruction in the principles of right doing. Moral character is more than a set of ideas, it is much more the whole attitude of life with its subtle complex of habits gradually built up through the method and spirit in which countless little things have been done. We thus see that every phase of school activity, in- cluding that of the mental teaching, has its moral possibilities. For instance, compare the different moral consequences of emphasizing " construction and giving out rather than absorption and mere learn- ing." The latter method is essentially individualistic and inevitably, though unconsciously, shapes the child's point of view and determines his future modes of action. " Imagine fourth-grade children all engaged in reading the same books, and in preparing and reciting the same les- sons day after day. Suppose this process constitutes by far the larger part of their work, and that they are continually judged from the standpoint of what they are able to take in in a study hour and re- produce in a recitation. There is no opportunity for any social divi- sion of labor. There is no opportunity for each child to work out some- thing specifically his own, which he may contribute to the common stock, while he in turn participates in the productions of others. All are set to do exactly the same work and turn out the same products. . . . One reason why reading aloud in school is poor is that the real motive for the use of language — the desire to communicate and to learn — is not realized. The child knows perfectly well that the teacher and all his felloi^^ pupils have exactly the same facts and ideas before them that he has ; he is not giving them anything at all. And it may be questioned whether the moral lack is not as great as the intellectual." Moreover, prevailing methods of instruction not only fail to culti- vate the social spirit, they inculcate motives that are positively indi- vidualistic. The teacher seeks to hold the child to his studies, not through his social interest, but through his personal regard for the teacher, to please him, to retain his esteem, or even fear for the dis- MORAL TRAINING 417 approbation of the teacher which may become morbid and paralyz- ing. Likewise, emulation and rivalry are appealed to, and the child is constantly encouraged to judge of his success not by his own in- dividual and unique contributions, but by comparing himself with his mates. In this way a demoralizing external standard is substituted for the intrinsic one of love for the thing itself as well as for its social meaning. He glories not in his own powers, but in theh supposed superiority to some one else. As Professor Dewey says, the child is thus " laimched prematurely into the regions of individualistic com- petition, and this in a direction where competition is least applicable; namely, in intellectual and artistic matters, whose law is cooperation and participation." There is another aspect of school method or rather of characteris- tic school emphasis which tends to weaken rather than to build up a sound moral attitude; that is, the frequent reference to a remote future to justify present tasks. There is no sufficient immediate mo- tive for doing this or that thing. What difference does it make if one does not do his best just now? Why not put off till to-morrow some of the duties assigned for to-day? It can make no special difference ; the goal is so far away that the matter of an hour or two or a day or two will not appreciably affect one's final attainment. How different are the pupil's attitudes if he feels that what he does has present value, immediate and tangible consequences ! Reeder well says, " when I have attempted to attain certain definite results with children and failed, I have rarely found the chief cause to be in the children. It generally means that the motive or attainment has not been adequate. The goal was too remote, appreciation of its value too slight, or there was lack of personal touch and inspiration, so that whatever was necessary to energize the full capacity of the child was wanting. The remedy would naturally be to quicken the interest in the end sought." He goes on to tell how, when they moved into their new cottage homes some years ago, a serious problem presented itself with reference to preventing reckless breakage of the china with which each house was furnished. The children were expected to do all the work which in- volved handling the china, but they seemed to have no conscience what- ever about doing it carefully. While fining them for breakage acted as a slight deterrent, it did not go far enough. Then a social as over 2£ 4i8 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION against an individual motive was devised. " We fixed a maximum as a standard of reasonable care. If the breakage exceeded this al- lowance, the excess was replaced with plain agate ware. This new fea- ture touched the strongest asset in the cottage system; namely, cot- tage pride. By carelessness on the part of those children who served in the pantry and dining room, a cottage might lose all its beautiful china. Three of them did lose a fourth of their table ware before they became thoroughly aroused. But the effect was salutary. By the end of the first six months the total amount of breakage was re- duced fifty per cent, in some cottages seventy-five per cent. . . . For the past three six-month periods the average breakage per cottage has been less than one piece per week. ... It is no uncommon thing for a child to serve six months in dining room or pantry without a break- age. . . ." As the author says, this experiment in motivation is typi- cal in character. To fine a child for his carelessness was purely an individual matter. No one suffered but the one who paid the fine. But under the scheme the carelessness " reflected upon the social and moral standing of the whole cottage group. Breaking china became no longer merely an individual mishap ; it was a social offense. The unfortunate child that tripped up and smashed a half dozen saucers stirred up the whole cottage group," who felt the disgrace of being thus forced to use agate ware upon their table.^ Here was a situation in which care had decided present value. The future value of habits of carefulness would have furnished no adequate motive to the children for being circumspect in the present. The thing was worth doing not as a preparation for adult life but because to omit it meant individual loss and stern social disapproval of one's peers then and there. As Dewey says : " Who can reckon up the loss of moral power that arises from the constant impression that nothing is worth doing in itself, but only as a preparation for something else — for some genuinely serious end beyond." In the case of futiure values also the motive is largely egoistic, as far as it goes, rather than social. Whatever be the future values of the things studied, there should always be for the learner at least a little present social justifi- cation for the task. Whenever the active impiilses are appealed to, wherever the pupil finds for himself the joy of discovery, of making, • Reeder, op. cit., pp. 184-187. MORAL TRAINING 419 of producing something, rather than merely demonstrating his su- perior absorbing power, his mind is opened for reciprocity, for co- operation and for personal achievement that is social and hence mor- ally uplifting. One aspect of the social basis of moral training we have not as yet considered, — it is that which grows out of the personal touch with teachers or adults generally. The relation of teacher to child can never be purely formal; there is always the personal element and this as we have seen in the chapter on " personality " is always a social factor. Even in the most formal moral instruction, which, taken by itself, has little value, there is always added thereto the positive or negative influence of the teacher as a person in the child's social environment. Hence instruction in morals through telling of stories or discussing simple ethical principles is a social process and the interaction of child and teacher must be included among the social bases of moral train- ing. This interaction is, of course, much more widely extended than actual class teaching. It is as inclusive as is the life of the school itself. The moral values of personal touch also vary widely; in the case of some teachers the influence may, of course, be altogether negative ; from this as a lower limit it may range upward in almost limitless de- gree. " One of the most potent of all incentives in child life is the example and influence of older people whom the child respects and admires. Example and imitation always outrun instruction; thus this personal touch of older and wiser but genial and companionable people is the greatest need in child life everywhere. (Children may) become inexpressibly lonely, although constantly in a crowd of children. To suppose that about all children need to make them happy are play- things and other children to play with, is a great mistake. They weary of one another much sooner than of older people. In fact, if the older associates are interesting and companionable, their company is preferred to that of children. ... It is seldom that children in their own homes receive that sympathy and cooperation from older people in either work or play for which they deeply yearn." ' "The best that has come to parents and teachers through heredity, education and experience can be passed on to their children, not by formal instruction, but through comradeship and intimate association ' Reeder, pp. 18S-189. 420 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION with them in all of the relations and interests which enlarge and en- rich home life. . . . Wise parents will enter into the games and pas- times of their children, will swim and skate and coast with them, will read and stroll and play games with them, will plan and build and sympathize with them in their struggles, in their failures, and in the training of their pets." ' It is in this daily sympathetic, communicative contact of the child with healthy minded, vigorous manhood and womanhood that some of the truest, most effective moral training occurs. At least is it in- dispensable that in the general social atmosphere of the home and of the school this should be included as one of the most important ele- ments. TOPICS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION 1. The relation between formal moral training and a social atmos- phere favorable to the development of good morals. 2. Can one go without the other ? What illustrations of Reeder's show the need of both sides? 3. Can you give others? Give several illustrations of your own of the way in which public sentiment will control an individual. 4. Can a person become moral by mere imitation ? Which should be prior, the practical experience which the teacher may call the child's attention to as having a moral significance, or the moral precept itself which the child may later apply as he sees the need ? 5. Give practical illustrations of the evil consequences of the teacher's having as her predominant attitude that of watching for offenses. 6. Why is expectation of good conduct psychologically sounder? REFERENCES ON THE SOCIAL BASIS OF MORAL EDU- CATION Addams, Jane. Democracy and Social Ethics. Chapter VI, "Edu- cational Methods." Buck, Winifred. Boy's Self-governing Clubs, New York, 1903. Suggestive chapters on the ethical lessons of the playgroimd and of the business meeting. CooLEY, C. H. Social Organization, New York, 1909. Chapter IV, "Primary Ideals." The social basis of certain fundamental moral qualities. ' Ibid., p. 198. MORAL TRAINING 421 Dewey, J. Moral Principles in Education, Riverside Educational Monographs. Boston, 1910. FoRBUSH, W. B. The Boy Problem, 6th ed., 1907. Especially Chap- ter II. "The by-laws of boy life." George, Wm. The Junior Republic, New York, 1910. Gives many illustrations of the restraining moral power of public sentiment. Gilbert, Chas. C. "The morale of the school." Chapters III and IV of The School and its Life. Griggs, E. H. Moral Education. Chapter XII, "Moral influence of the social atmosphere." Chapter XIII, "Principles of govern- ment in home and school." HoLDEN, E. S. "How honor and justice may be taught in the public schools," Cosmopolitan, 29 : 667. Jenks, Jeremiah. "The social basis of education," Chapter II of Citizenship and the Schools. McCuNN, John. Making of Character, New York, 1900. "Family, school, friendship," Chapter IV, Part II. Moral Training in the Public Schools, five authors. See especially p. 107. Reeder, R. How Two Hundred Children Live and Learn, Chapters VII and VIII. Illustrations of the social motive for good conduct. Value of adult association in moral growth. Scott, C. A. Social Education. Chapter XII, "The education of the conscience." Helpful, general suggestions. SissoN, E. O. The Essentials of Character. Chapter VIII, "The social ideal." Basic truths of human Ufe, social inteUigence, love of man, courtesy. Welton and Blanford. Principles and Methods of Moral Training. Chapter VI, " The school community." INDEX Adult, education of, i8. Agricultural high school, community work of, 43 f . Antagonism between pupils and teacher, 378. Athletics in a socially organized high school, 279 f. Attention, influence of group upon, 360. Boy legislation, 255. Clubhouse for high school, 284. Clubs, civic, 83, 84, go, 117; boys', 82, 249; girls', 86; farm, 44; women's, 86; in high school, 278. Conception, social basis of, 332. Continuation schools, 149 ; development of, in Germany, 150; time allotted to, 152; in Munich, 152 f. Contract theory of society, 231. Controlling power of the group upon the individual, 304 f., 379, 406 f. Conversation, educational value of, 348 f. ; recognition of, by ancient Greeks, 349; between child and adult, 351 f. Com congress, 47. Corporate life of school, 264; value of, 26s f. Curriculum, social values of, 369 fif. Dancing parties in high school, 286. Delinquency due to physical defects and to social maladjustments, 231; methods of treating, 232 f. Democratic government of schools, 291. Education and progress, 3, 21, 220; increas- ing social responsibility of, 4 ; social origin of, 6 ff. ; moral and religious, of savages, 9, 19; development dependent upon natural selection, 17; imitation and famil- iar social intercourse the basis of, 18; social need for, 20 f., 24 ; tendency to be- come irresponsive to social need, 21, 25 f.; dependence of, on past, 156; enlarging scope of, 221 ; and social reform, 230. EfiBciency of high school graduate, 189 f. Evening lecture system of New York City, 98; aims of, 99; types of lectures, 100; social value, loi, 105, 107. Festival, school, 269. Fraternity, the high school, 272; tion of, 284. prohibi- Gardens, school, 129 f. ; kinds of, 129, 133 f.; social values, 130 f. ; influence of, on re- mainder of school work, 132; educational significance of, 140. Geography, social meaning of, 371. Give and take in class work, 396. Group as a stimulus to mental activity, 358 ; explanation of, 361 ; self-organized group work, 383 f. Herbartian psychology, individualistic, 364. Hesperia movement, 29 f. ; ideals of, 31. History, social meanings of, 372. Home and school associations, 30 f., 35; work of, s8 f. Home and school, separation of, 54 f. ; need for cooperation, 55; school gardening a bond between, 137. House system, English, 277. Imagination, group influence upon, 362 f. Imitation, 327. Impulse and initiative factors in progress, 225; conservation of, by school, 226 f. Individual and group, 325. Industrial training among primitive peoples, 7. See also Vocational education. Initiation ceremonies, educational signifl- cance of, 364. Instincts, 327, 363. Interscholastic sports, 279, 423 424 INDEX Judgment, social basis of, 334. Judicial procedure among boys, 257. Language, a social acquisition, 329 {., 345. Lawfulness, a social ideal, 245. Leadership in the school, 310 f. ; character of the schooUeader, 318; qualities producing prestige, 312; biological need of, 313; among primitive peoples, 314; affirmative quality of, 315 ; leader an interpreter of his group, 316 ; lower types of, 316 ; teacher as leader, 320 ; in the old fashioned school, 378. Learning, social aspects of, 357. Lectures for farmers, 46; evening lecture system, g8 f . McDonogh School, 250 f. Manual training, supposed values of, is7; vs. industrial training, 158. Mathematics, social meaning of, 375. Medical attention to delinquents, 231. Memory, influence of group upon, 360. Mental activity conditioned by presence of others, 358 ; experiments by Mayer, 358 ; Meumann, 339 f . ; Triplett, 359. Mental development socially conditioned, 326 f. ; recognition of, by Froebel, 344; in race, 347. MiUtary governnjent, defects of, 293. Moral unity, a social ideal, 243. Moral training, social basis of, 399 f . ; among primitive peoples, 408; defect of formal moral training, 409 ; continuous character of , 410 ; neglected opportunities for, 410 f. ; teacher's attitude often unfavorable, 413 ; moral value of work and responsibility, 413 f. ; individualistic methods, 416; question of sufficient motives, 417; per- sonal touch with older persons, 419. Morning assembly, social value of, 269 ; work of, 283. Occupations, social value of, in education, 210 f. Parents' associations in high school, work of, 281. Parent teacher associations, 30 f . Personality, social conditions of, 336 f. ; stages in the development of, 336 f . ; sex differences in the development of, 340. Pittsburgh, playgrounds of, 115 f. Playgrounds, 109 ; ideals of, 109 ; need for, iiof. ; play organizer, 113, 119; directed play, 112, 120; expenditures, 113 ; Massa- chusetts playground act of 1908, 114; development of, in Pittsburgh, iij t.; ignorance of how to play, 118; play and child labor, 121; play festival, 121; social values of playground extension, 124 f. Primary groups, 238 f . Primary ideals, 241 f. Problems, social origin of, 347, 350. Pupil cooperation in school government, 291 ; organization of, 295 ; in high school, 297 ; extent of in United States, 298; civic training through, 299 f. ; objections to, answered, 301 f . ; capacity of children for, 304- Reasoning, social basis of, 332, 334, 354. Rochester social centers, 75 f. Rural school problem, 25 f., 28 f . ; Hesperia movement, 29; adapting rural school to needs of country, 39 f. School a primary group, 264; a. society, 276. Self, sense of, a social product, 335. Self-organized group work, 385 f. ; moral and social value of, 392. Social centers, 65 f . ; rural schools as, 39, 41 four developments leading to, 68 f. function of, 73; in Rochester, 75 f. cost of, 91 ; need for, 91 ; differing types of, 92 ; reasons for use of school property, 94- Social character of the adolescent, 275. Social criterion needful in course of study, 371- Social impulses lacking in the traditional school regime, 365. Social nature of class instruction, 393 f. Social organizations among children, 242 f . ; aspects of moral training, 399 f . ; contrast in early mental development, 328. Social progress, 3, 206 f. ; nature of, 217; means of, 218 ; school as an instrument in ; adaptation theory of progress criticized, 223; dependence of, upon impulse and initiative, 226. Social reform and education, 230. Social secretary in high school, 267. Social self-feeling, 343. Social value of school festival, 269. Society, general nature of, 236 ; an organism, 237 ; an organization, 238; the " primary group " the unit of, 238. INDEX 42s Sororities in high school, 272. Subordinate organizations in the school society, 270. Thinking sodally conditioned, 331. Truth and good faith in " primary groups," 244. University high school, Chicago, social or- ganization of, 278. Vocational direction, 177 f. ; development in New York, 189 f. Vocational counselor, 183, 203. Vocational education, public responsibility for, 14s ; not narrowing, 14s ; moral value of, 146 f., 148, 154; vs. manual training, 158; typical state movements, 161; na- tional appropriations for, 162; social significance of, 1:65 f., 210; moral and intellectual values, 168 f. , older than liberal education, 170. Printed in the United States of America. 'T'HE following pages contain advertisements of books by the same author or of inter- est to students of education The Development of Religion A Study in Anthropology and Social Psychology By IRVING KING Author of " The Psychology of Child Development," published by The University of Chicago Press. 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