VOL. 2

NO. I

IN

N raising the question of the relation of the schools to the other social agencies of the community there is suggestion of a need for team play. There was a time when church, school, court, and even theater were embodied in one institution-the church; but in the secular society of today this close unity has disappeared. Schools and courts have come under the control of the state; recreation' has become largely commercialized or left to volunteer effort; religious organizations have become divided and somewhat isolated; and all these institutions are set against a background of industrialism that remains largely individualistic. Meanwhile, life has become a vast deal more complex and artificial, and the youth who enters upon his responsibilities has a far more difficult problem of adjustment than has been the lot of youth in previous times. What we call social work has developed as a kind of response to the increased hazards of living for large numbers of people. It is a method of dealing with individuals or groups to the end that there may be better standards of living, improved health, and more harmonious social relationships within the family and within the community at large. It has no exclusive bearing upon the work of relief agencies, but concerns all institutions of the community where people are the units and welfare in its broadest sense is the goal to be reached. But to attain the ends of All rights reserved. Arthur E. Wood.

social work it is necessary for each agency in the community not only to do its own. part effectively, but to realize the part that is played by others.

It is not too much to say that by many people the chief reliance for the improve-: ment of social conditions is placed in the schools. It was certainly the faith that popular education would produce good citizens that inspired the people to establish public schools. But in these days when we are called upon to account for our faith in established institutions, the schools do not escape criticism. The fact is that many children drift out of the schools unable to perform their economic functions, to care properly for their health, or to assume their civic responsibilities; while the comparatively few who remain in the educational caravan until it seems to be getting somewhere are highly specialized, but ignorant of the social process as a whole. Their citizenship is thus somewhat timid and indifferent; a social cleavage leaves them strangers to those who left the procession when it was in the desert, by which I mean the curriculum that one often finds in the grades. The chief school problem is, then, as I see it, to restore the faith of the founders; to adapt the schools to life conditions; and to create a unity of sentiment, effective in peace as in war, among citizens of differing social position and capacities.

If all this is to be accomplished the schools must abandon their time-honored

isolation from the rest of the community. This involves, in general, two types of change: one in the point of view of many of the teachers, and the other in the curriculum.

Regarding the teachers it may be said that the true teacher is a social worker, and not an operator of an automatic educational machine. In this connection I have observed that the teachers in the grade schools are often more informed about conditions in the community than the high-school teachers, in spite of the fact that the latter are supposed to be more "highly" educated. The grade-school teacher knows that Johnnie is out of school because his father is out of work, or that Mable cannot keep awake in school because she has not at home proper conditions and time for sleep. Poor nourishment, poverty, the influence of bad neighborhoods, and disturbed family conditions are more observable in the grades than in high school, chiefly because in the latter are to be found only 10% of the children, of whom the most come from a superior economic class.

Still, with all the opportunities for observation of the effect of social conditions afforded to grade teachers, they are often at a loss to know what to do with their first-hand knowledge; and this is because in their own training they have not learned to see the schools functioning in association with other institutions in the community relief and employment agencies, housing bureaus, health centers, clinics, courts, legal aid societies, recreation departments, and so on, any one of which may in an emergency be of more importance to the child than his school. The need for these different agencies has arisen since the establishment of the schools, and many of them would have been set up in the schools, if the educational system had been sufficiently plastic and adaptable. As it is, they have grown up, touching the life of the children at a hundred points or more, but not affecting the schools, which too often remain like vine-clad memorials to the

past amid new and stimulating surroundings. ings. The teaching profession itself must protest against this imposed asceticism. The broader community outlook should not be the exclusive possession of the school visitor and the school nurse who enter the educational system as new types of specialists. Indeed, the work of these people depends upon the fullest understanding and co-operation on the part of the teachers, if the system as a whole is to touch the child effectively. Needless to say, the teaching of the prescribed subjects will take on new meaning if the teacher can see more than one phase of the child's life, and enter broadly into his varied experience.

But the newer, and, if I may call it so, the sociological point of view will result not only in benefit to the teacher, but also in very great advantage to the child. The teacher who can recognize a child problem when it appears in the school, and is aware of the community's equipment for dealing with it, can be of invaluable assistance to the child and the whole community. Why does the community establish expensive social agencies for varied forms of social service, if they are not to be used when occasion arises? Not long ago a colored child was obliged to leave a Detroit school because his sister had to have an expensive operation. It was afterwards learned that this medical service could have been performed under the auspices of one of the medical social service agencies at a much less cost, and if its aid had been sought the child might have remained in school. Can the teacher say in this case that she was employed to teach spelling or number work and not to advise a child concerning his personal affairs? It is feared that too many teachers thus forego opportunities for being of wider service. Already, the success of the Parent Teacher Association bears witness to the value to all concerned of a closer co-operation between the school and the home. The next step in correlation should be between the school and the other social agencies besides school and home, to the

end that wherever these touch the lives of children, the total effort of the community should be consistently effective. But such co-operation requires many-sided teachers; and teachers and other social workers must learn to recognize the common aspects of their different tasks.

Probably, to secure an adequate supply of teachers, disposed to regard the schools in the light of their social functions and coordinations, it will be necessary to begin with those institutions where teachers themselves are trained. I speak as a layman when I express my notion that the curricula of normal schools where grade teachers are trained could profitably undergo examination in this regard. I have always wondered what formal "pedagogy" and "education" were about, and I have an idea (it is again a mere notion) that there is much time wasted upon them. On the other hand, there is a great accumulation of concrete and fascinating material, relating to child. welfare and the work of agencies furthering it, which might properly be made the subject of study for prospective teachers. The upshot of this matter of training for special work seems to be this: that, whereas we must all work in and with institutions, our preparation should prevent us from becoming institutionalized. Law, business, preaching, as well as teaching, have a deadening effect upon their votaries unless each one in these respective callings sees from his own particular angle the larger circle of relationships, and functions as though these really existed and bore some reference to his own task.

To sum up the argument thus far: the present problem is to adapt the schools to life conditions, and the first requirement of this adjustment is for teachers to see the schools not in isolation, but in working relations with other agencies in the community that affect child life either in special emergencies, or in the ordinary course of things. A second requisite concerns certain changes in the curriculum.

Doubtless, in these days, many fools rush at the curriculum with destructive intent. Nevertheless, underlying the criticism of the

schools with respect to what is taught is the sane demand that this be more closely related to the needs of the modern worker and citizen. Traditionally, the schools have been concerned with imparting knowledge of the use of tools, "the three R's," not appreciating the fact that such knowledge may be made to serve good or bad ends. It is precisely the social ends or purposes that are lost sight of in modern school discipline. Success is emphasized and there is a sharpening of the aquisitive instincts; but of that which relates to the nature and the conditions of a truly democratic success there is nothing. Child labor, epidemics, juvenile delinquency, and a generally ignorant citizenry are among the more notorious byproducts of the traditional school. But how can we in the curriculum break with tradition?

A truly socialized curriculum results from a balancing of considerations, arising from the requirements of society, on the one hand, and from the physiological, psychological, and social needs of the child, on the other. Education is not a goal, but a continuing process in which more satisfactory adjustments between the individual and his material and social environment are prepared for. Thus, the school system which directs the process must look both ways: to the needs of the child, and to the life conditions which he must meet. In many respects the child is to be molded, disciplined, civilized; in other ways the environment itself must be resisted, especially where it will repress the personality and real human qualities of the child. Herein, I suppose, is to be found the justification of those who maintain that the cultural needs must not be sacrificed to vocational ends. To adjust the curriculum so as to satisfy both the individual and social requirements is the real educational problem.

To make these generalizations somewhat more specific, I would say that the school curriculum could be socialized in three respects: first, so as to enable the child to appreciate the significance of economic life; secondly, to teach him the care of his mind and body; and thirdly, to prepare him for