Creative Impulse in Industry: A Proposition for Educators

ent years labor protection from the point of view of statesmanship has been urged in England and America. The waste of life is a matter of unconcern in the United States so lon

ent of the Empire. Whatever was good for the Empire was good, it was assumed, for the people. The humanitarians in the United States who tried to introduce labor legislation in their own country accepted this na?ve philosophy of the German people, which had been so skilfully developed by Prussian sta

rs in surrendering concrete interests for some abstract idea of a state. He could find no greater pleasure in being exploited by the state than he now finds in exploitation by private business. The average American values life for what he ca

r well calculated rest periods or even change-off from one kind of routine work to another. As important as these may be, reform in labor hours does not compensate the worker for his exclusion from the directing end of the enterprise of which he is a part and from a position where he can understand the purpose of his work The trade union interferenc

ices which organized workers make for some small and equivocal gain or who watches them in their periods of greatest activity, knows that the labor movement gets its stimulus, its high pitch of interest, not from its struggle for higher wage rates, but from the worker's pa

erman workers depended on their political representatives almost wholly to gain their economic rewards. Their organizations made their appeal to the sort of

s rest with the state; they will know perhaps whether for the protection they have been given and for the regulation of their affairs and dest

is affected by it is illustrated better by their educational system and its re

le. A state may be used, we are all aware, as an instrument, either by Prussian junkers or American business men; either may capture a state to serve their ends. But as a state serves special individuals it belies its professed reason for existence, and in America is in danger of falling from grace, so far, that is, as the common people are concerned. But when a state stands in the minds of a people as the embodiment of their ideals as it has in Germany, it must for its own purpose spend time and substance in purchasing the people's confidence. In assuming the place of guardian it must of necessity

or the German purpose falls to the schools. The sorting out of individuals begins at the early age of ten in the elementary schools, when each child's social and economic position is practically determined. It is decided then whether he shall be one of the great army of wage workers or whether he shall fall into some one of the several social class

t. The habit of letting children escape into life with their place unsettled creates confusion and makes calculations in serious things like industry difficult. Therefore, unfaithful to the development of our own concepts of life we are expected to emulate Ger

the shop. Their attendance at the continuation schools is compulsory. This compulsory attendance does not only insure supplementary training for a particular job, but holds the children to the industry which was chosen for them. That is, a boy is compelled, if he works in the din

om jobs just because they are uncongenial are thus quite effectively closed together with, the chance to experiment with life-the chance which Americans take for granted. But it is just this element of waywardness and the opportunity America leaves open for its

rther the aim of the state." "Having accomplished this," he says "the next duty of the schools is to accustom the individual to look at his vocation as a duty which he must carry out not merely in the interest of his own material and moral welfare but also in the interest of the state." From this, he says,

ade place, after he has accepted this ready-made place on the authority of modern technology and business, on the authority of the state and religion, that the place given him is his to fill; to fill in accordance with the standards determined by the schools and by i

cation and a reorganization of school systems more in conformity with the German. The demand of the manufacturers for reorganization came at a time when intelligent educators in America were recognizing that some reorganization was necessary to bring the school experience of children into relation with their environment a

n. The enervating trades are wholly automatic, and induce a lethargic state of mind and body. His comment on the situation is: "We are rapidly dividing mankind into a staff of mental workers and an army of purely physical workers. The physical workers are becoming more and more lethargic. The work itself is not character building; on the c

it may or may not hold, for the general run of pupils it leads up a blind alley because the apprenticeship does not fulfill the promise which apprenticeship supposedly holds out. That is, the pupil, when he becomes a worker, will be thrown back into some factory groove where his experience as an apprentice cannot be used, where he is closed off from the chance to develop and use the knowledge or training he received. If, as Dean Schneider asserts, "we are rapidly dividing mankind into a staff of mental workers and an army of purely physical workers," and if "we cannot reverse our present economic order

he Schneider system fills, as well as can be filled, a scheme of apprenticeship in conformity with the prevailing shop organization and requirements, but it is not a fulfillment for youth; it is not educational. There is no progression f

an the ordinary school drill in its colorless and vapid subject matter. This fact is necessary to bear in mind, but it should not obscure the even more significant fact that the blighting character of industry is d

choice of occupations should be governed primarily by economic considerations; that even from the point of view of the school, educational factors could not take precedence over economic. They said: "The primary considerations in the intelligent selection of a vocation relate to wages, steadiness of employment, he

circumstances, the worker's experience to any important extent. It accepts the bald truth that all the material classed as cultural will count for nothing of value in a factory worker's life in comparison with the highest possible wage in the most enervating of industries. It stresses this highly important factor, as it should, but merely as a physical necessity. There is vital

e children and of the community. The children are an actual part of the repair and construction working force on Gary school buildings and on the equipment. As the children are involved in the upkeep of a school it becomes their school. They experience the responsibility of maintaining the school plant, not by some artificial scheme of participation, but by the actual application of trade stand

ustry; they are a world apart; they represent, as all schools are supposed to, moments sacred to education and growth. They are not subjected to the test of co?rdination in the world of industry. They give the children a respect for productive enterprise that should be invaluable later in effecting their resistance to the prostitution of their creative power. They do not give them experience in t

l. They are accepted by the children in the spirit of authority which the school carries, as they would not be so finally accepted by them in the shop. The impress of a developed curriculum, connected with an active trade experience, that is, a trade in which the children are at work, like the curriculum of a continuation school, is greater than the curriculum which has been evolved for its abstract cultural values. As the curriculum co?rdinates shop and school activities and as it fails at the same time to stimulate inquiry on the part of the pupil into industrial or special trade processes as they are practiced in the shop, it becomes a positive, inhibiting factor in the intellectual life of the children. The perfection of an industrial school room equipment with its trade samples, it

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ir promotion merely on account of good workmanship, but through influence. It might be that they had had their "chance" through a relative or successful business man, or it might be that they "got next" to a politician, who required no other qualification than "smartness." A boy in a telegraph or a lawyer's office has a better opportunity to reach influence than a boy in a workshop. The scholastic requirement for such advancement as these vocations contemplate, is prov

fit the children to rule their own lives; to give them an equipment which will protect them from a servitude to others. Its ability to do this had not been questioned a generation ago and, theoretical as its original intention is to-day, its traditional purpose to develop the power of each child to govern his destiny, holds over. If training children to read, write and count, training them in facts relating to hi

curriculum increased more materially than has the wage earning capacity of their children. The results for individual children are not sufficiently striking to advertise the departure, and if they were, the departure would not warrant the endorsement of the community on the ground of the hig

e contemporaneous with that life, as are all serviceable institutions. As a school reflects the life of a community it enriches the experience of the children and endows them with the knowledge and power to deal with environment. When a school system disregards, as our established system does, the entire reorganization of the industrial world, it stultifies grow

al disposition, is as valueless as a crutch for a man without arms. An elaboration of technology through instruction in the general principles of physical science, industrial and political history and the aesthetics of industry only emphasizes the absence of the really significant factors. The conspicuously absent factors in all industrial educational schemes are those which give men the ability to control industry. No work in subject matter is educational which does not in intention or in fact give the person involved the ability to participate in the administration of industry, or the abili

the system with history and aesthetics of textiles or other raw material which the workers handle, or introduce the story of past proces

d shipping, with descriptions showing the principles of the chief machines and labor-saving devices, at any rate so far as they are not trade secrets; it should include a glance at markets, prices, effects of business advance, depression and strikes, perhaps something about the hygiene of the foot, about bootblacks and what is done for them, history of the festivals and organizations from St. Crispin and the guilds down, tariffs, syndicates, societies, statistics, social conditions in shoe towns, nationality of operatives,-all these could be concisely set forth to show the dimensions, the centers of interest, the social and commercial relations of the business, etc. What is not yet realized is that all these things could and should be put down in print and picture, almost as if it were to be issued as a text-book or a series of them; all of this could be done to bring out the very high degree of culture value now latent in the s

y Hall, Educational

to read about shoes. They would not for this simple reason; the workers' "individual and vocational interest" does not exist. They would say that they already knew more than they cared to about shoes. No literature could add culture or dignity to the job of stitching vamps for all the working hours and days of a wage earner's year, while there is no experience of cultural value in the occupation, divided as the making of a shoe is into some ninety operations, and distributed among ninety workers. Dr. Hall's suggestion that a Shoe Book be written is a good sug

ational education, is wanting."[A] Dr. Hall recognizes some evils which are inherent in the present scheme of industry and which are antagonistic to growth, but neither he nor any of the advocates of the German methods of industrial education make provisions in their educational schemes for eliminating the aspect which contemplates the dumping of workers on scrap heaps. None of the advocates view the equipment of workers for industry in t

ey Hall-Educationa

of this preference was their wholesale exodus from schools when they reached an age where they were acceptable to employers or where they were not prevented by law. Back of the exodus, universal as it is, there is an urge of elemental force. A common accounting for it, the nearest at hand, is that parents of working class children are penurious; or that they are too ignorant to understand the deteriorating effect of factory life o

or real subject matter would be found. The change off from old school subject matter to instruction in methods of industry was a logical experiment. But the movement for industrial education was not inspired by a watchful sympathetic observation of children's needs;

ch they lived. "We have neglected to study the most vital thing in the situation, namely the zests of the young ... we have not taken account of the nature of the great upheaval at the dawn of the teens, which marks the pubescent ferment and which requires distinct change in the matter and method of education. This instinct is far stronger and has more very ostensive outcrops than in any other

y Hall-Education Pr

rest and connected in some way with their own conception of their functioning in the adult world. Courses of study in processes of indus

, the relation of all persons involved to each other and to the product. The schools with their industrial education courses do not undertake to supply their young people with an opportunity to plan; they are true reflections of factory existence as they eliminate all the adventure of industry, the opportunity for ex

fact for eager children is estimated beyond its purchasing power. For them it is an acknowledgment, a very real one, that they have been admitted, are wanted in the big world where they are impelled by their psychic needs, to enter. It places them more nearly on an equality with the older members of their family and entitles them to cons

esent urgent needs. They use the period for ulterior purposes; purposes ulterior to the period of growth with which they are dealing. As they use this period for another time than its own, in effect they exploit it. Without consciousness of the fact so far as the children are concerned, the schools exploit this period of growth as effectively as the employers reap the

f still servant, will it serve more efficiently than it has our dominant institution, industry? If the silent partnership between business and the state is strengthened, will not the promoters of industry be in a better position than before to appeal through the state, through the patriotism intensified by our newly acquired world position, for a more universal and a systematized adaptation of workers in industry? The

st forces in the country are the industrial, and the strongest leaders are the financiers. What the financiers and industrial managers most want is efficient, docile labor. The German system of education, in spite of the fact that we are different, might conceivably have that effect on the youth of this country. Under

ressure is sufficiently strong the people may yield to the introduction of a system of compulsory continuation schools similar to those of Germany. If they do, I believe they will eventually fail. But there is danger through loss of energy and loss of p

ustrial system on the weakness of a people means. We are in the process of discovering whether in sacrificing the expansion of her people she can secure a permanent expansion of her Empire. It would seem the better part of statesmanship in America after the war to build industrially on the strength of our people and not on the weakness of another. It i