Schools of to-morrow · John Dewey
EDUCATION THROUGH INDUSTRY
The experiments of some of our cities in giving their children training which shall make them intelligent in all the activities of their life, including the important one of earning a living, furnish excellent examples of the best that is being done in industrial education. The cities chosen for description are Gary, Chicago, and Cincinnati. This book is not concerned with schools or courses which are designed simply to give the pupils control of one specialized field of knowledge; that is, which train people for the processes of one particular industry or profession. It is true that most of the experiments in industrial education tried so far in this country have taken the material offered by the largest skilled industries of the neighborhood for their basis, and as a result have trained pupils for one or more definite trades. But wherever the experiment has been prompted by a sincere interest in education and in the welfare of the community this has not been the object of the work. The interest of the teachers is not centered on the welfare of any one industry, but on the welfare of the young people of the community. If the material prosperity of a community is due almost entirely to one or two industries, obviously the welfare of the individuals of the community is very closely connected with those industries. Then the educational purpose of training the children to the most intelligent use of their own capabilities and of their environment, is most easily served by using these industries as the material for the strictly utilitarian part of this training. The problem of general public-school education is not to train workers for a trade, but to make use of the whole environment of the child in order to supply motive and meaning to the work.
In Gary this has been done more completely than in any other single place. Superintendent Wirt believes firmly in the value of muscular and sense training for children; and instead of arranging artificial exercises for the purpose, he gives children the same sort of things to do that occupy their parents and call for muscular skill and fine coördination in the business of everyday life. Every child in Gary, boy and girl, has before his eyes in school finely equipped workshops, where he may, as soon as he is old enough, do his share of the actual work of running and keeping in order the school buildings. All of the schools except one small one where there are no high school pupils, have a lunch room where the girls learn to cook, and a sewing room where they learn to make their own clothes; a printing shop, and carpenter, electrical, machine, pattern, forging, and molding shops, where boys, and girls if they wish, can learn how most of the things that they see about them every day are made. There are painting departments, and a metal working room, and also bookkeeping and stenography classes. The science laboratories help give the child some understanding of the principles and processes at work in the world in which he lives.
The money and space required to equip and run these shops are saved from an ordinary sized school budget by the “two school system” that has been described above, and by the fact that all the expense usually charged by a school to repairs and paid out to contractors, is spent on these shops and for the salaries of the skilled workmen who teach in them. The buildings are kept in better repair than where all the work is done during the summer vacation, because as soon as anything needs to be fixed the pupils who are working in the shop that does that kind of work get at the repairs under the direction of the teacher. These shops can not be considered in any way an unnecessary luxury because they are used also by the high school pupils who are specializing for one kind of work and by the night and summer school for their vocational classes. The school management says in regard to the success of this plan, “When you have provided a plant where the children may live a complete life eight hours a day in work, study, and play, it is the simplest thing imaginable to permit the children in the workshops, under the direction and with the help of well-trained men and women, to assume the responsibility for the equipment and maintenance of the school plant. An industrial and commercial school for every child is thus provided without extra cost to the taxpayers.”
The first three grades spend one hour a day in manual training and drawing, which take the form of simple hand-work and are not done in the shops, but in an especially equipped room with a trained teacher. The pupils draw, do painting and clay modeling, sewing and simple carpentry work. The five higher grades spend twice as much time on manual training and drawing. The little children go into the shops as helpers and watchers, much as they go into the science laboratories, and they pick up almost as much theory and understanding of processes as the older children possess. The art work and simpler forms of hand-work are kept up for the definite training in control and technique that comes from carrying through a problem independently. Because the small child’s love of creating is very great, they continue until the pupils are old enough to choose what shop they will go into as apprentices to the teacher. Since sixth grade children are old enough and strong enough to begin doing the actual work of repairing and maintaining the building, in this grade they cease to be watchers and helpers and become real workers. Distributing school supplies, keeping the school records and taking care of the grounds are done by the pupils under the direction of the school office or the botanical laboratory, and constitute a course in shop work just as much as does painting or repairing the electric lights. The school heat and power plant is also a laboratory for the pupils, in which they learn the principles of heating and lighting in a thoroughly practical way because they do much of the work connected with keeping the plant running.
The shop and science courses of the schools last only a third of the year, and there is a shorter probation course of five weeks. The pupils choose with the advice of their teachers what shop course they will take; if at the end of five weeks they do not like it they may change. They must change twice during the year. In this way the work can not lose its educational character and become simply a method of making juvenile factory hands to do the school repairs. Taking three shop courses in one school year results in giving the pupil merely a superficial knowledge of the theory and processes of any one kind of work. But this is as it should be, for the pupils are not taking the courses to become carpenters, or electricians, or dressmakers, but to find out how the work of the world is done. Moving as they do from one thing to another they learn as much of the theory of the industry as children of their age can understand, while an all-around muscular and sense training is insured. To confine the growing child too long to the same kind of muscular activity is harmful both mentally and physically; to keep on growing he must have work which exercises his whole body, which presents new problems, keeps teaching him new things, and thus develops his powers of reasoning and judgment. Any manual labor ceases to be educative the moment it becomes thoroughly familiar and automatic.
In Gary, the child of the newly arrived immigrant from the agricultural districts of eastern Europe has as much chance to prepare for a vocation, that is really to learn his own capabilities for the environment in which he finds himself, as the child of the educated American. From the time he enters the public school system, whether day nursery, kindergarten, or first grade, he is among people who are interested in making him see things as they are, and in teaching him how to do things. In the nursery he has toys to play with which teach him to control his body; and he learns unconsciously, by being well taken care of, some of the principles of hygiene and right living. In the kindergarten the work to train his growing body to perform useful and accurate motions and coördination goes on. In the first three grades, emphasis is put on teaching him to read and write and obtain a good foundation for the theoretical knowledge which comes from books. His physical growth is taken care of on the playground, where he spends about two hours a day, doing things that develop his whole body in a natural way and playing games that give him opportunity to satisfy his desire to play.
At the same time he is taking the first steps in a training which is more specifically vocational, in that it deals with the practical bread and butter side of life. He learns to handle the materials which lie at the foundations of civilization in much the same way that primitive people used them, because this way is suited to the degree of skill and understanding he has reached. On a little hand loom he weaves a piece of coarse cloth; with clay he makes dishes or other objects that are familiar to him; with reeds or raffia he makes baskets; and with pencil or paints he draws for the pleasure of making something beautiful; with needle and thread he makes himself a bag or apron. All these activities teach him the first steps in the manufacture of the things which are necessary to our life as we live it. The weaving and sewing show him how our clothing is made; the artistic turn that is given to all this work, through modeling and drawing, teach him that even the simplest things in life can be made beautiful, besides furnishing a necessary method of self-expression.
In the fourth grade the pupils stop the making of isolated things, the value of which lies entirely in the process of making, and where the thing’s value lies solely in its interest to the child. They still have time, however, to train whatever artistic ability they may possess, and to develop through their music and art the esthetic side of their nature. But the rest of their hand-work takes a further vocational turn. The time for manual occupation is now all spent on intensive and useful work in some one kind of work or industry. These pupils are now less interested in games, so they spend less time playing and more time making things. The girl goes into the dressmaking department and learns to sew from the point of view of the worker who has to produce her own things. She is still too young to carry through a long, hard piece of work, so she goes for the first two years as a watcher and helper, listening to the lessons in theory that the seventh, eighth, or ninth grade pupils are taking, and helping them with their work. A girl may choose dressmaking for her first course, but at the end of three months she must change to some other department, perhaps helping cook the lunch for the school and learning about wholesome foods and food chemistry for the next three months. Or if she is fond of drawing, she may devote nearly all her time for shop work to developing her talent for that.
In the same way the boy chooses what shop he will go into for three months. In the carpenter shop he will be old enough really to make for himself some of the simpler things needed in the school building. If he choose the forging or casting shop he will have a chance to help at shoeing the horses for the use of the department of education, or to help an older boy make the mold for the iron stand to a school desk. In such ways he finds out something about the way iron is used for so many of our commonest things. In the fifth and sixth grades nearly all the boys try to get at least one course in store keeping. Here they go into the school storerooms with the janitor; and with the school lists at hand unpack and check up the material which comes in both from the workshops and from outside. Then as these things are needed through the building they take the requisitions from the office, distribute the material, and make the proper entries on the books. They are taught practical bookkeeping and are responsible for the smooth running of the supply department while they are working there. As they learn the cost of all the material as well as the method of caring for it and distributing it, they get a good idea of the way a city spends its taxes and of the general business methods in use in stores. Both boys and girls may take a beginners’ course in bookkeeping and office management. Here they go into what is called the school bank, and keep the records of the shop work of all the pupils in the school.
Before pupils can graduate from school they must have completed a certain number of hours of satisfactory work in the school shops. In order to fit the needs of every individual pupil, the amount of credit does not depend upon the mere attendance through a three months’ course, but each pupil is given credit by the shop teacher for so many hours of work for the piece of work he has done. The rate of work is standardized, and thus a more equal training is insured for all, for the slow worker will get credit for only so much completed work regardless of the time it has taken him, and the fast worker will get credit for all he does even if he outstrips the average. A fixed number of “standard hours” of work entitle the pupil to “one credit,” for which the pupil receives a credit certificate. When he has eight of these he has completed the work required by the vocational section of the Gary schools for graduation. All the work connected with keeping the records for these credit certificates is done by pupils under the direction of an advanced pupil.
From the seventh grade the pupils are the responsible workers in all the shops. A pupil who knows that he has to leave school when he has finished the eighth grade can now begin to specialize in the workrooms of some one department. If he wishes to become a printer he can work on the school presses for an entire year, or he can put in all his shop time in the bookkeeping department if he is attracted by office work. The girls begin to take charge of the lunch room, doing all the marketing and planning for the menus and keeping the books. Sewing work takes in more and more of the complications of the industry. The girls learn pattern drawing and designing, and may take a millinery course. The work for the students in office work is now extended to include stenography and typewriting and business methods. The art work also broadens to take in designing and hand metal work. There is no break between the work of the grades and the high school in the vocational department, except that as the pupil grows older he naturally tends to specialize toward what is to be his life work. The vocational department is on exactly the same level as the academic, and the school takes the wholesome attitude that the boy who intends to be a carpenter or painter needs to stay in school just as many years as the boy who is going to college. The result is the very high per cent. of pupils who go on to higher schools.
The ordinary view among children of laboring people in large cities is that only those who are going to be teachers need to continue at school after the age of fourteen; it does not make any difference that one is leaving to go into a factory or shop. But since the first day the Gary child began going to school he has seen boys and girls in their last year of high school still learning how to do the work that is being done where, perhaps, he expects ultimately to go to work. He knows that these pupils all have a tremendous advantage over him in the shop, that they will earn more, get a higher grade of work to do, and do it better. Through the theory lessons in the school shop he has a general idea of the scope and possibilities in his chosen trade, and what is more to the purpose, he knows how much more he has to learn about the work. He is familiar with the statistics of workers in that trade, knows the wages for the different degrees of skill and how far additional training can take a man. With all this information about, and outlook upon, his vocation it is not strange that so few, comparatively, of the pupils leave school, or that so many of those who have to leave come back for evening or Sunday classes.
The pupil who stays in a Gary school through the four years of high school knows the purpose of the work he is doing, whether he is going to college or not. If he wants to go into office work, he shapes his course to that end, even before he gets his grammar grades diploma perhaps. But he is not taking any short cut to mere earning capacity in the first steps of office work. He is doing all the work necessary to give him the widest possible outlook. His studies include, of course, lessons in typewriting and stenography, bookkeeping and accounting, filing, etc.; but they include as well sufficient practice in English, grammar, and spelling so that he will be able to do his work well. They include work in history, geography and science, so that he will find his work interesting, and will have a background of general knowledge which will enrich his whole life. The student preparing for college does the work necessary for his entrance examinations, and a great deal of manual work besides, which most high school pupils are not supposed to have time for. It is just as valuable for the man who works with his brain to know how to do some of the things that the factory worker is doing, as it is for the latter to know how the patterns for the machine he is making were drawn, and the principles that govern the power supply in the factory. In Gary the work is vocational in all of these senses. Before the pupil leaves school he has an opportunity to learn the specific processes for any one of a larger number of professions. But from the first day he went to school he has been doing work that teaches the motives and principles of the uses to which the material world is put by his social environment, so that whatever work he goes into will really be a vocation, a calling in life, and not a mere routine engaged in only for the sake of pay.
The value of the pupils’ training is greatly increased by the fact that all the work done is productive. All the shops are manufacturing plants for the Gary school; the business school finds a laboratory in the school office. In dressmaking or cooking the girls are making clothes which they need, or else cooking their own and other people’s lunches. The science laboratories use the work of the shops for the illustration of their theories. The chemistry is the chemistry of food; botany and zoölogy include the care of the school grounds and animals. Drawing includes dress designing and house decoration, or pattern drawing for the hand metal shop. Arithmetic classes do the problems for their carpentry class, and English classes put emphasis on the things which the pupils say they need to know to work in the printing shop: usually paragraphing, spelling, and punctuation. The result of this coöperation is to make the book work better than if they put in all their time on books. The practical world is the real world to most people; but the world of ideas becomes intensely interesting when its connection with the world of action is clear. Because the work is real work constant opportunities are furnished to carry out the school policy of meeting the needs of the individual pupil. The classification according to fast, slow, and average workers, both in the vocational and academic departments, has already been described. It enables the pupil to do his work when he is ready for it, without being pushed ahead or held back by his fellow pupils; the slow worker may learn as much as the rapid worker, and the latter in turn does not develop shiftless habits because he has not enough to do. But if for any reason a pupil does not fit into any of the usual programs of classification, he is not forced to the conclusion that the school holds no place for him. The pupil who is physically unfit to sit at a desk and study goes to school, and spends all his time outdoors, with a teacher to help him get strong.
In the same way the two-school system enables the child who is weak in arithmetic to catch up without losing his standing in other subjects. He simply takes the arithmetic lessons with two grades. In the shops the poor pupil simply works longer on one thing, but as his progress is not bound up with that of the class it makes no difference. The pupil who thinks he hates school, or is too stupid to keep on going, is not dealt with by threats and punishments. His teachers take it for granted that there is something wrong with his program, and with his help fix it for him. The child who hastens to leave school without any reason as soon as he may, is told that he may come back and spend all his time on the thing that he likes. This often results in winning back a pupil, for after he has worked for a few months in his favorite shop or the art room, he finds he needs more book knowledge to keep on there and so he asks to go back to his grade. The large number of foreign pupils is also more efficiently dealt with. The newcomer concentrates on English and reading and writing until he is able to go into the grade where his age would naturally place him, and the pupil who expects to go to school only a very short time before going to work can be put into the classes which will give him what he needs most, regardless of his age or grade. The work around the school buildings which can not be done by the pupils under the direction of the shop or department heads, is not done by outside hired help, but is given to some school pupil who is interested in that sort of work and is ready to leave school. This pupil holds the position for a few months only, until he has no more to learn from his work or gets a better position outside. These pupil assistants are paid sightly less than they could earn if they went into an office, but the plan often serves to keep a pupil under school influences and learning when he would otherwise have to leave school in order to earn money, perhaps just before he finishes his technical training.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.