On the Firing Line in Education | Page 3

of the United States during these troublous days;
nor Mr. McAdoo how to manage the railroads; nor Mr. Pershing all
about war; nor any local worker how to lead the Red Cross work, any
more than the lower schools have taught the boys who went into the
trenches how to use the gas mask and how to go without food; how to
shoulder arms and how to march. But the schools all along the line did
help to give them ideals, did train them in team-play; did instil into
them the principles of democracy and the love of country, so that when
the need came they arose as one man to repel the foe. And the study of
arithmetic, geography, and grammar; of chemistry, physics, and
medicine; of Latin, Greek, and history has, in each case, made its
contribution to the preparation of home workers, soldiers, scientific
experts, financial managers, and statesmen--has helped to make each an
individual of initiative.
Under the guidance of our educational leaders, following principles that
they had workt out, the schools of the country were moving quietly
along, each one of the 750,000 teachers doing faithfully the work at
hand day by day. We had never thought of war as a possibility for us,
and of course preparation for it had not been made, in the slightest
degree, a part of the work of the schools. But when war, with all its
horrors, was finally forced upon us and we needed statesmen and
scientists and military leaders to guide and direct, they were at hand in

the graduates of our colleges and universities--broadly trained men
capable of assimilating, or learning, or in other ways gaining quickly,
the specific form of efficiency needed in the particular activity assigned.
And when we needed soldiers they were at hand in the person of our
boys of the schools, both common and high, from every nook and
corner of the land--boys and men who merely needed direction and
leadership, capable of at once falling into line and quickly taking on the
professional phase of their training. Could we have asked our schools
to do more? The supreme test had come, and it was being met in a
manner gratifying to all. The boys and the girls, the men and the
women, on the farm, in the store, in the home, in the workshop, in the
schools and colleges, have responded "Here am I. Show me what you
want me to do, and I will do it even unto death." It was done, and they
did it. The schools had nobly demonstrated their efficiency.
To be sure, all this was not done without making mistakes. Not all the
products of all the schools were able to rise to the occasion and to be
depended upon in our hour of need. When the great national
search-light was trained upon the product of the schools, seeking
leaders of infinite variety and number, and likewise hosts of followers
to do definite and difficult things, many deficient ones were
discovered--some deficient in mental caliber, some weak in moral fiber,
some lacking in physical stamina. And right here is to be seen the only
serious failure of our schools. Not every boy, not every girl, had been
made as efficient as could have been desired. But, happily, in our great
numbers enough were found to do even the stupendous work at hand,
and to do it well. In spite of moral lapses, not a few, in spite of
instances of mental incompetence, far too many, and in spite of
physical handicaps, distressingly large--in spite of all this, I say, the
United States surprised the world with the quickness with which we
pulled ourselves together, and with the marvelous efficiency with
which we mobilized all our resources. Many losses of course there
were--losses of men, losses of days, losses of dollars. But when all is
said and done, the losses were slight when compared with the
accomplishments. Credit to whom credit is due! But because of these
losses unthinking men immediately began to criticise the schools. They
should have been trade schools, or industrial schools or military

schools--any kind of schools that they were not. And how clearly it was
being demonstrated, we were told, that the time formerly spent on
music and drawing, art and literature, algebra and geometry, history
and Latin, had all been wasted! How much better it would have been if,
instead of these "frills," the children had been given "practical subjects"!
(Practical. Save the mark. One is tempted here to go off on a by-path
and discuss the topic, "What is Practical?") Thus the criticism of the
unthinking--of the laymen who went off at half-cock.
And this criticism was deepened and strengthened and extended and
made more vehement, again by the unthinking, when