On the Firing Line in Education | Page 3

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 the fine results of the Plattsburgh experiment were revealed, in which, thru the processes of intensive training, men were quickly whipt into shape for new, and difficult, and responsible undertakings. And the equally good results that came from the officers' training schools, in which college boys by a similar program were metamorphosed, almost at over-night, into capable army officers, had