"^du c e. t i 113.1 r? p . S, C, Moore A f^ =!= A^ C/5 -= X = == 33 = = 33 5 — 8 — > 6 ^ =^= CD = 3) 4 — =:: O 9 = ^^= — f r\ ^^ This bool ,/xN IAN 3 192^ ■ APR 1 1927 WAY 2 3 APR 2 5 1£ MOV 21 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. REC'D LO-URt ORION mojIqW* V1I1YC101».J VA w%»-« Lo8 Angeles Form L I UA rdVlAl LIBRARY •LOS AIS/GELES, CALIF EDUCATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION ERNEST CARROLL MOORE Reprinted from The International Journal of Ethics, Vol. XXIX, April, 1919 '•J J — 7 192 > • 350 IXTERXATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS. EDUCATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. ERNEST CARROLL MOORE. I. WHAT is the chief lesson of the war? It has tested man}' a theory and rejected many a conclusion. The activities of almost every department of human life have been forced to submit themselves to its criticism. Politics, ethics, religion, philosophy, science, economics, literature, and even art emerge from its crucible different, very different, from what they were before it laid its bloody hands upon them. So impartially has it brought human interests to trial by ordeal of battle, that each separate man of us is convinced that its chief lesson concerns his own, rather than his neighbor's calling. The world is in a highly pro- gressive condition with such a wealth of newly proved insight to put to work. Education is among the human interests which have been put to the trial. The war has, indeed, been the prov- ing stage of two colossal educational experiments. The first of these began some fifty years ago, in Germany, at the time that her autocratic government began to form its plans for the subjugation of the world. Germany's educa- tional experiment is in some respects the most remarkable demonstration of the power of teaching in the annals of the world. Mr. Benjamin Kidd, the author of that very remarkal)le Ijook, "The Science of Power," regards the transforming influence of the German schools as a dis- tinguishing mark of modern history. Their education was directed "almost exclusively to the ends of war and to the fastening on the world of ideals founded on war for their maintenance. Even so directed, it has ])roduced an example in history of self-sacrifice, so colossal and so admirable," he says, "as to appear, to use the words of a recent American writer, 'almost superhuman,' albeit an exaniijh' Jd.*!iF>iiiost'simenli.iiinai3 pijvS'c'r sO >1iJjA>{rrc5ed as to ... V. .;•: •;• •••• LA 7 2.^ EDUCATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 351 A? 7gt constitute 'one of the most pathetic events in the history <^^pf of mankind.' " All wars, we are told, are wars about doctrine. Germany prepared this one by a process of indoctrination, so delib- erate and so thoroughgoing as to be without a parallel in the records of men. National existence and national strength are due to folks agreeing, uniting, and sticking together to the end. The Germans desired the same things, hoped for the same things, and worked almost super- humanly to accomplish them. The time came when they began to see that their plan could not succeed. At that point they gave it up, at least for the time being, but they were apparently as united concerning the desirability of their plan at the end as they were at the beginning. They . . . plotted, planned, and almost accom- plished the enslaving of the race. They carried their purpose into execution with a brutality which has never been exceeded. How did they transform their own people into such willing implements of slaughter? How did they persuade flesh and blood folks to devote themselves to a cause so unrighteous? If we can find out, we may be able to use the process — or some parts of it — for better ends. The means which Germany used were her schools. The war was schoolmaster made. She had twenty-one univer- sities and eleven technical high schools of superior grade. Since the founding of the Empire, her population increased from forty miUions to sixty-five millions, but the number of students in these institutions of higher learning increased from eighteen thousand to sixty thousand. There were some thirty-four hundred professors in the universities, and about seven hundred fifty in the technical schools, or a total professorate body of four thousand two hundred men. All were state officers. Formerly they made much of their freedom; but in recent years they have become ''mere gramaphones" for the officials. There is evidence that their transformation has been going on a long while Even as long ago as 1880 Hillebrand wrote that "the na- tion in which Madam de Stael did not find two minds 352 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS. thinking alike on any subject has become singularly grega- rious, nay uniform; the great producer and consumer of original ideas is content nowadays to feed on some few watchwords mechanically repeated." ''Money, titles and decorations play a considerably more important part at present than during the first half of the nineteenth cen- tury," said Paulsen when he wrote his German Education — Past and Present. The German patriotism which produced the war was not naive and natural, like that of older days; it was forced, intentional, manufactured, the result of that pounding-in process which Price Collier found so nauseating. The great professors and the little professors have for many years back been apostles of Weltmacht. In every one of the twenty-one universities and the eleven technical high schools there was never-ending talk about race psychology and the natural superiority of Herrenvolk to Pohelvolk, the blessing of war and the lofty duty of all Germans. The Germans have a saying that a professor is a man who al- ways has another reason. But those three hundred and fifty-two professors who on June 20, 1915, signed the petition to the Imperial Chancellor urging the government to utilize the military results, gained at such great sacrifice, ''to the extreme attainable limit," did not have "another reason." They were engaged only in echoing official opinion — even as the famous ninety-three in their declara- tion had done at the beginning of hostilities. It is difficult to understand how a crime so colossal and so deliberate came to be conceived. Its origin will have to be investigated more carefully than it has yet been, before we can be quite sure of the details of its beginning and the steps of its development. It is quite clear that the forty-two hundred professors in the universities and technical schools were active agents in ])romoting it. It may even in time be discovered that some of their number originated it and supplied it to the government. Von Treitschke seems at least to have aspired to that role. At any raio, when the offirials had once taken it up, EDUCATIONAL RECOXSTRUCTIOX. 353 the professors became the most active propagandists which it had. German higher education clearh- had a Jekyll and Hyde character. It seemed to be concerned with the humanities, with ethics, Uterature and philosophy, but its real objec- tive was something very different — something as far re- moved from these things as the East is from the West. The results of its cultivation of the humanities were quite indifferent, but what it really purposed it achieved. An even more interesting question concerns the German people. If the universities indoctrinated the leaders, who indoctrinated the followers? That is a truly amazing story. There is a book which circulated freely in our country before we entered the war, which has something to say upon that subject. It is a propagandist volume called "Modern Germany, by various German Writers." Professor Troeltsch contributes an article on German Kultur in the course of which he explains that in Germany ''the school organization parallels that of the army. The public school corresponds to the popular army. The latter, as well as the former, was called into being during the first great rise of the coming German state in opposi- tion to Napoleon." The philosopher Fichte advised the Germans to adopt an educational program of three parts, schools for the people, middle schools, and the university. "This," says Professor Troeltsch, "has become the real formative factor of the German spirit." The Germany which made the war was a land of castes. Her school system was not intended to open opportunity to everyone. They did not set up a ladder reaching from the kindergarten to the university. They made the Volksschule a thing apart to keep the toiling millions of the lower classes in their place, and teach them such un- questioning obedience as would make them pliant and devoted tools of the officials. The Volksschule was a free school; the others were not. The German child of work- ing parents entered it at six j^ears of age, and normally continued in its classes until he reached the age of fourteen. 354 IXTERNATIOXAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS. He studied no foreign language during this period. But the child of more fortunate parents who was to be trained for a career did not go to the Volksschule. He entered the Gymnasium, or the Realschule, or the Real Gymnasium at the age of nine and at once began the study of a foreign language, for a long training in foreign languages was neces- sary^ before he was qualified to enter a German university. The Volksschule did not lead through the middle school to the university; it led away from it. It was intended to do that. The Germans built a wall of foreign languages about their higher education which effectually kept it away from the mass of their people. Ninetj'- per cent of them had to be sat- isfied with what was furnished them free in the Volksschule. Professor Alexander's The Prussian Elementary Schools tells the story of the training which made the war possible. In all Germany eight hundred and ninety-two boys out of every thousand attended the Volksschule. It is a cheap school, the cost per year per pupil being $16, while in the middle and higher schools the cost per pupil is $34 and $70, respectiveh'. The average number of pupils per teacher in the Volksschule was 55; in the middle school, 30; in the higher school, IS.G. There is much overcrowding, some classes having 90 pupils and others even more than that number. Four out of every five of the elementary school teachers of Germany are men. When the teacher enters the schoolroom, the children must rise and remain stand- ing until they are told to sit. When the teacher is ad- dressed, there is enforced curtsying and deep bowing. WTien the boy recites, he takes the military j^osition. Fear i)resides in these schools, the teachers talk in a loud voice and not infrcfjuently yell their instructions. Slap- ping is general and whipping common. The method of instruction is significant. The teacher talks or lectures to the children, and at the close of his dis- sertation he calls them up, one by one, to repeat to him what he has said. I>essons are thus learned from teachers rather than from text-books. Some years ago, a leading Amcri( an teacher became so enamored of their plan of con- EDUCATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 355 ducting school work for children that he came back home and gave expression to his feeling of the superiority of their way of giving instruction in the saying: "The Ger- man teacher teaches, but the American teacher hears les- sons." But if one is habituated from infancy to hear and believe the living voice of authority, will he not thereby be prepared to obey the commands of the drill sergeant, the lieutenant, and the captain? *'It is part and parcel of the purpose of the whole elementary system of education in Germany, to destroy individuality and initiative among the lower classes. ... I had visited over three hundred classes in the Volksschulen in Prussia before I heard a ques- tion from a pupil or a request for an explanation of a ques- tion which had occurred to him," writes Alexander. It was by pounding in the same lessons to her sixty million people that Germany produced the miracle of a nation that thought, moved, and acted as one man directed. Vv^hat w^ere the lessons which brought about that amazing and unnatural unity? The great subject of instruction in the Volksschule was religion. All the people were taught by incessant repetition, from the first day of school to the last, that God, King, and Fatherland were existences of the same order; that obedience to the King and the Fatherland was as necessary as obedience to God himself. The divine right of the Hohenzollern was no fiction to the German school child. German history was made to produce the conviction that the German people are the greatest, the best, and the only folks of much consequence on earth. The study of the German language and literature was undertaken to effect *'a German attitude of mind." The German schoolmasters carried out the instructions of the Government. They did their work well, so well as to leave no doubt in any thinking mind henceforth that the schools of a nation can, indeed, if they will, mold its people to whatever end the national will may set before itself as its objective. That our interpretation is not wrong is proved by the character of the changes in German education which the 356 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS. Socialist ^Minister of Instruction, Herr Hanisch, announced as soon as the revolution brought him to power in Novem- ber last. Among them were: the separation of church and state; religion no longer to be an examination subject; no teacher may in future be compelled to give religious edu- cation; a plan for the introduction of unsectarian moral teaching is being prepared: supervision of schools by the clergy is abolished; all chauvinism is banished from the instruction, and especially from the instruction in history; mixed education of boys and girls has already been intro- duced in some schools; teachers and scholars are given powers of self-government; the uniform school (Einheits- schule) is secured, and the abolition of all class schools will be begun immediately; a system of national high schools is to be built on large Unes, and to be placed in organic con- nection with existing schools and high schools; freedom of doctrine in the universities is to be rid of its last fetters. So much for the German educational experiment. It supplied the cement which unified a people and kept it solidly devoted to its unholy purpose through four yeai-s of unparalleled sacrifice and self-denial, and in the end it yielded only to the inevitable disintegration of failure. II. Let us turn to the American experiment. When the war came we were not prepared. It took us two years and eight months to realize that our liberties were in danger. The Germans made no secret of their intentions, they dis- closed their methods from the first outbreak of hostilities, they made war upon our citizens both at home and abroad, and ill their complacency assured us that we were too cowardly to defend our rights. Wo failed to reaUze what they were doing. That is the supreme proof of the failure of our educational system, for a nation that cannot discern impending destruction in less than two years is not able to preserve itself. It must become more keenly sensitive to the conditions amid which it lives. EDUCATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 357 And when we finally discovered that our very existence as a people was in jeopardy and had been all along, we promptly made certain other discoveries which were not at all reassuring. We discovered that a good many of us could not read or write, that some seven hundred thousand in the first registration could not read the government's instructions or fill out the blanks which they were called upon to fill out. And when the first national army found itself in camp ready for intensive training, not only were there thousands of men who could not read the manual of arms, but thousands who could not understand the sim- plest commands in English. In spite of all that could be done, men made their way into the Signal Corps who could not spell the simplest words with letters, let alone wdth signal flags or in the Morse code; and men made their way into the front trenches and took their turn at sentry duty who did not know enough English to give their fellow- soldiers the alarm when a gas attack began. The Provost Marshal General reported that the physical examination of the men called up for duty showed that twenty-nine per cent of them were physically unfit to defend the homeland. That seems to me to be the most pathetic disclosure of the war, for when armies are gathered and battles are fought we expect that wounds will be given and cripples be made and that starvation and sickness will come, but we do not expect to find that these conditions have been allowed to obtain unchecked and unremedied in peace time. The schools cannot control such conditions, but it is, neverthe- less, true that a school system which allows such a propor- tion of its students to grow up physicallj'' unfit is to that extent a failure. When the men of the draft were called into camp, it was found that, though they had been taught music in school, they did not know and could not sing the songs of our nation and had to be trained to sing them. The country was divided into districts and a carefully selected corps of speakers went from camp to camp to give addresses on the causes and meaning of the war. I am told by one of these speakers, a well known professor of his- 358 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS. tory in a large American university, that they all found much the same condition in the different camps. The men were capable, alert fellows, eager to answer their country's call and to do whatever it demanded of them, but when they began to talk to them about the causes of the war, thej^ met a dead wall of lack of understanding. I am told that it is a cherished belief of many of our army officers that soldiers do not need to know an>i:hing about the cause for which thej^ are fighting, that all that is really necessary is a man with a bayonet who knows how to use it, and has visceral strength enough to let that knowledge function on occasion. It seems otherwise to that large body of students of human nature who hold that morale is at least three-fourths of the strength of every army and that every soldier is under-armed who does not know of his own knowl- edge that his quarrel is just. There were other shortcomings which quickly made their presence known. We found that as a people we knew far too little about the production of food and about the selec- tion and preparation of foods. We found that we knew wofully little about geography, wofuUy little about our own history, and less, far less even, about the history of our neighbors in Europe. Then began our real experiment in education. Officers had to be trained, ammunition makers, infantrymen, artillerymen, motor transport men, flying men, men for a hundred forms of service. Instead of three years in which to train and prepare an army, we had but six months and did the job, but only by means of brief intensive courses for all arms which abandoned almost all the previously followed ritualism which the learning of the subject was supposed to involve, and having first of all determined the objective to be reached, thereupon analyzed the opera- tions which were absolutely essential to the attaining of that objective and regarded everything else as of no impor- tance. ]\Iiracles were performed here, too, as well as in (lermany, but miracles of a wholly different order. We found it was possible to train pretty efficient mechanics to EDUCATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 359 do a specific type of expert work in eight weeks; that it was possible to produce a trained officer, a trained artilleryman, a trained flyinc; man in six months. Whoever will collate and write the detailed history of this colossal educational experiment and will reinforce its lesson with an account of how England and France and Italy performed a similar miracle of cjuick training for war in all its branches, will perform a service of no slight dimensions to the race. It is quite clear that this contains the corrective for our hitherto almost aimless and desultory educational practices. There can be no question that before the war we put our trust in educational rites. We had no clearly conceived objectives. We did not analyze our operations. We thought of education as sitting in schoolrooms for a certain number of years and keeping almost any sort of company with the recognized and com- monly accepted subjects of study. By that hit and miss process, taking a long time for it, we managed to accom- plish something, but by no means as much as we now see that we should have accomplished in a much shorter time. We are now in the throes of educational reconstruction. We are trying to define our objectives and analyze our processes. A little book on '^ Individual Instruction in Rifle Practice" by Lieutenant-Colonel A. J. MacNab is on my table. It is typical of a procedure which must, I be- lieve, be applied to all subjects of instruction. It outlines a system of training first developed by the Second Battal- ion, 14th U. S. Infantry. The officers of that battahon became convinced that there was no reason why every man could not learn to shoot. The manual contains only what everj' m.an should know in order to do that. The process is analyzed to its lowest terms. There are three essentials to good shooting: (1) Correct aiming, (2) correct posi- tions, and (3) correct trigger-squeeze. In rapid fire three more are added. An instructor is necessary to explain the requirements, see that each man understands them, and then to stand beside the man to watch what he does and point out his errors to him. The schedule of instruction is 360 IXTERXATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS. for one week of intensive training. Each man's record in all the constituent processes is each day entered upon a carefully tabulated blank. The range practice is devoted almost exclusively to teaching him to squeeze the trigger as he should, but habits of position, breathing, and aiming are watched as well. This is a rational proceeding as unlike the thing that used to pass for instruction in the use of the rifle as the ritualistic teaching of spelling, geography, history, civics, and the use of the English language is unlike what it would be if a similar analysis were applied to the teaching of each of these subjects. For example, why do we teach speUing? There are 400,000 words, more or less, in the English language. Makers of speUing books up to recent days have thought that it makes little difference which of them we try to learn to spell since we should, if possible, learn to spell them all. That is, their books were made on the principle that spelling is for its own sake, that we should learn to spell words because words are spelled. But why should anyone study spelling? The answer is, because he will have need to spell certain words when he writes. Then if we can find out what the words are which folks spell when they write and teach him those, that will greatly simplify our understanding and, perhaps, make it possible for everyone, or nearly everyone, to learn to spell. Dr- Leonard P. Ayres some years ago began an investigation to find out what those words are. Others have carried it on. Our aim in teaching spelling begins to take rather definite form, but our practice has yet to be made to con- form to it. And an analysis of the process of learning even these words is yet to be supplied. To apply the same method in every study which is taught will take a long time and call for i)retty resolute work on the part of the whole body of educators. But that is the thing which the war has taught us we must do, and that is the reconstruction which is afoot in education to-day. But the war is teaching us much beside that. It is teaching us that the administrative machinery which EDUCATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 361" we have trusted as sufficient to run the pubUc schools is not sufficient. We are a democracy — a government which exists by the consent of the governed. But Germany's autocracy existed by the consent of the governed. No government ever existed without the consent of the people it governed. Consent of the governed is a phrase of many meanings. It may be passive or it may be active. It may signify in- active minds and very active bodies, or it may stand for a high degree of mental, as well as physical, participation in the maintenance of the nation. That ours may be a government of the people, for the people, and by the people, the public must have an opinion and must at all times be fit and ready to take its part not only in shaping the policies of the nation but in carrying them out. That it cannot do while so many do not speak the language of the country and cannot be communicated with through the medium of print. Public education with us, as with Germany, is the one means which can make the nation one in attitude, desire, aspiration, and action; but public education which is our sole national reliance is, legally, an affair not of the nation but of the forty-eight states. It is, indeed, a coat of many colors. Schools are well provided in one state, the schoolhouse is good, the teachers well trained, the term is long, and the standards are high, but in the neighboring state the opposite may be true. The war has shown us that the nation must supplement the educational activities of the states if the results which we as a people require are to be attained. To that end the National Education Association has prepared what might be called a National Education Bill, for it is the American counterpart of the English Education Law. That bill provides for the creation of a Secretaryship of Education in the President's cabinet, and the annual appropriation of $100,000,000 from the national treasury to supplement the expenditures for public education on the part of the states. Of that sum it is proposed to devote S7, 500, 000 to co-operating with the states in the 362 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS. abolition of illiteracy, $7,500,000 to co-operating with the states in the Americanization of immigrants, $50,000,000 to co-operating with the states in the efforts to equalize educational opportunity, $20,000,000 to co-operating with the states in the promotion of physical and health educa- " tion and recreation, $15,000,000 to co-operating with the states in preparing teachers for the schools, particularly for rural schools. The bill contains the provision that no state shall share in these several apportionments unless it devotes a sum equal to that which it would receive to the specific purpose for which the apportionment is asked. All provisions of Congress for co-operating with the states in the promotion of education are to be supervised by the proposed Department of Education. What is proposed is a nationalizing of education, but only in the sense that the strength and resources on the nation are to take their place behind the activities of the schools. Local responsi- bility for their welfare is not to be diminished, but rather increased, by this measure, and local control of them is to be complete save that if the people of a state want to share in the national allotments for education, they must bring their schools up to the standard which the nation may set. It will readily be seen that if this measure becomes a law, it will effect a wholesome strengthening of the school activities of the land. But national reorganization is not the only kind that is needed. This is a time for reconstructing the administra- tive machinery in the states as well. That reconstructing is generally needed and nowhere more than in the adminis- trative machinery for conducting the schools of the state. Massachusetts, for example, requires that the work of every school shall be supervised, but has, as yet, provided but very little help from the state for those towns which are too poor to support their schools. The wealth of the state is not taxed to educate the children of the state, the state exercises but slight control over it, and as a result education is a Joseph's coat in Massachusetts. In Con- necticut, apathy and indifference are the rule. Great EDUCATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. 363 masses of foreign born workers fill the towns. The foreign- ers have the children and the Americans, the property. The part which the state as a state plays in education is by no means as strong as it should be. California has a better system. But her State Superintendent of Public Instruction is elected by the people, and her State Board of Education appointed by the Governor. As a conse- quence, she has a two-headed school administration. The State Board of Education appoints three Commis- sioners of Education who are supposed to serve as deputies and assistants to the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. It will be seen that the parts of this adminis- trative machine have not yet been put together. The rural schools of the state are organized and controlled by districts. The districts are too small and too poor to make their schools going concerns. There is little super- vision, little standardizing, and rather indifferent results. Every state has conditions of this sort to repair. The war has brought about a transvaluation of former values. We see now that education is, indeed, as Plato said it was so long ago — the one thing needful for the preservation of states and the ordering of lives. Ernest C. Moore. State Normal School, Los Angeles, Cahfornia. 57192 / ; Lithomount Pamphlet Binder Gaylord Bros. Makers Syracuse, N. Y. PAI. JAN 21 1508 - • ■''9''. >/3 m \