THE SCHOOL 
 
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 Garden City New York 
 
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The School of To-morrow 
 
THE SCHOOL 
 OF TO-MORROW 
 
 A COLLECTION OF 
 PRIZE ESSAYS FROM 
 THE WORLD'S WORK 
 
 Garden City New York 
 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 1911 
 
v*> 
 
 Copyright ion 
 
 By 
 
 Doubled ay, Page & Company 
 
 ©CI.A295271 
 
IHE SCHOOL OF TO-MORROW 
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 The Educational Revolutionists 
 
 Introduction 
 
 By Walter H. Page. 
 
 The Boy of To-morrow .... i 
 By Arthur D. Dean. 
 
 The Boy of To-morrow .... 35 
 By Eugene M. Gollup. 
 
 The Girl of To-morrow .... 59 
 By Benjamin R. Andrews, Ph.D. 
 
 The Girl of To-morrow .... 77 
 By Edith Hedges Baylor. 
 
 Half Time at School and Half Time 
 
 at Work 105 
 
 By Frank Parker Stockbridge. 
 
 How to Choose a Public-school 
 
 Teacher . . .... 127 
 
 By Wi Ham McAndrew. 
 
 The Albany Vocational School . . 135 
 By Frank L. Glynn. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 ^. THE EDUCATIONAL REVOLUTIONISTS 
 BY WALTER H. PAGE 
 
 Editor of The World's Work 
 
 The essays in this volume show no longer 
 merely the revolt against the traditional 
 matter and method of education but con- 
 structive efforts at training with other kinds of 
 matter and with other methods. For mere 
 criticism or complaint is passed. If the old 
 education be outworn, it is time to make a 
 new education,., and these essays are con- 
 structive efforts in that direction. Specula- 
 tion and timidity, too, are passed. These 
 writers have the courage of their convictions; 
 and the school of to-day is a very different 
 thing from the school of yesterday. 
 
 To a layman the change seems good, very 
 good. The old humdrum drill in subjects 
 that had little relation to the lives of the 
 pupils was in the main for most of them 
 misdirected energy. "To save my soul I 
 can't prove that the 'mental discipline' of 
 
Introduction 
 
 a Latin grammar was any better than the 
 mental discipline of a carpenter's bench — 
 under a competent instructor." I am quot- 
 ing from a conversation with one of the 
 most famous of our old-time school-masters. 
 "And," he went on to say, "for nine tenths 
 of the boys and girls in the world what they 
 will learn at a carpenter's bench will serve 
 them a better turn than what they might 
 learn from a Latin grammar." 
 
 The one fear is that the revolutionists of 
 this new educational era may themselves 
 in turn become dogmatic and, therefore, 
 narrow. For, as soon as a system (any 
 system, even the best system in the world) 
 begins to seem satisfactory, the system 
 itself is expected to work results. That 
 was the chief trouble with the "old" edu- 
 cation. To put a boy or a girl through a 
 certain routine was regarded as educating 
 them. The truth, of course, was and is 
 that training is good or bad chiefly in pro- 
 portion to the skill of the trainer. 
 
 In all the discussion of education that has 
 filled our American world with noise these 
 recent years — discussion of matter and 
 discussion of method — less has been said 
 and written about the quality of teaching 
 
Introduction 
 
 than about any other important part of the 
 subject. Yet everybody knows that more 
 depends on the teacher than on the subject. 
 If a great teacher can do more to educate 
 a boy at a carpenter's bench than a common- 
 place teacher can do with a Latin grammar, 
 the reverse also is true: a great teacher can 
 do more to educate a boy with a Latin gram- 
 mar than a commonplace teacher can do 
 with a carpenter's bench. Those who make 
 great changes incur great obligations. The 
 first duty laid on the "revolutionists," then, 
 is to make sure that they put a better quality 
 of teachers in the schools than the schools 
 of yesterday had. 
 
 There is good reason for the hope that they 
 can. For teaching after the old method 
 was not a very interesting occupation except 
 to the few who were born with an especial 
 aptitude for it. Most teachers went round 
 the same circle year after year. The system 
 did not often force them to do more and it 
 permitted them to do their work mechani- 
 cally. Thus the profession became a refuge 
 for routine minds. 
 
 But the more practical turn of education 
 is making it intrinsically a more interesting 
 occupation. There is less going around the 
 
Introduction 
 
 same circle, a greater chance and even a 
 necessity for inventiveness, for variety, for 
 adaptability to changing conditions. The 
 school-master's work becomes more interest- 
 ing and more original as he depends less on 
 books. This gain in the intrinsic interest 
 of the work makes the "new" school more 
 interesting not only to the pupil but to the 
 teacher also; and this increased interest in 
 turn is bringing into the profession a larger 
 number of capable and enthusiastic persons. 
 The more interesting the work, the better 
 the workers that it attracts. 
 
 And the " practical" school-men have the 
 thanks of laymen for checking the tendency 
 toward an unintelligible educational pro- 
 fessionalism. < A little while ago men of 
 other professions found " educators" becom- 
 ing persons of a mysterious cult — in fact, 
 of many cults and schools. They seemed to 
 be giving more thought to elaborated systems 
 than to the plain business of teaching. Now 
 the "new" plan does not forget the pupil, 
 who, after all, is the person for whom edu- 
 cation is carried on — a fact that has some- 
 times seemed to escape proper emphasis. 
 These revolutionists, then, deserve the suc- 
 cess they are winning because they strip 
 
Introduction 
 
 the problem of its old-time mystery and 
 complexity and reduce it to a direct effort 
 to train the young. Even if some of their 
 efforts should go wrong, they at least keep 
 to the main business. 
 
 The turning of school-life in the direction 
 of the work that awaits the pupil in after- 
 school years; the training of the mind to 
 logical processes and to swift action by 
 exercise in '" practical" things; awakening 
 the pupil's interest by giving him tasks 
 whereby he may achieve visible results 
 — these are the main items in the new edu- 
 cational creed; and it is a sound creed as 
 well as useful and interesting and practical. 
 But it is not a complete educational creed. 
 
 To complete it there must be added the 
 furnishing of the mind, for a strong and 
 empty mind is no better for the higher 
 uses of life than a strong and empty house 
 for comfortable living. An idea of the 
 proper correlation of the great departments 
 of human achievement and of human ex- 
 perience and of human knowledge, a right 
 value of the gifts of the past to the present, 
 some glimpse, in proper perspective, of the 
 marching armies of thought and action and 
 
 
Introduction 
 
 of their leaders and of their conquests and 
 of their purposes and problems — these are 
 necessary to give an horizon to life and a 
 sky-line to the world. Else your "new" 
 pupil, however well he may succeed by his 
 efficiency, will nevertheless make a barren 
 and dull business of living. 
 
 But the furnishing of the mind, as I under- 
 stand these educational revolutionists, is 
 not to be forgotten in their new order of 
 training; and, with this, they have a right 
 to their high hopes of to-morrow. 
 
The Boy of To-morrow 
 
THE BOY OF TO-MORROW 
 
 WHAT THE SCHOOL WILL DO FOR HIM 
 
 The first prize in the World's Work educational 
 contest 
 
 BY ARTHUR D. DEAN 
 
 (CHIEF OF THE DIVISION OF TRADE SCHOOLS IN THE NEW YORK STATE 
 EDUCATION DEPARTMENT) 
 
 "^ 
 
 My father sent me to a school of yester- 
 day so much that I very nearly missed an 
 education. It was this way: he had labored 
 so hard to obtain what he called "an educa- 
 tion" that he was afraid I would be missing 
 one if by any possible chance there was any 
 let-up on the books. Somehow he forgot 
 that his splendid health, his sanity of vision, 
 his capacity for work, and his wholesome 
 attitude toward life resulted from a contact 
 with other educational forces than the school- 
 house, and that the very hardships of his 
 boyhood constituted in themselves an educa- 
 tive process. 
 
 He held two degrees — M. C. (master of 
 character) and M. I. (master of industry) — 
 from what was then the largest fitting school 
 
 3 
 
4 The School of To-morrow 
 
 in the land — the University of Hard 
 Knocks. I suspect that it had a curriculum 
 unrivaled by the schools which I attended. 
 It began in a good New England home, 
 managed by thrifty and sterling parentage. 
 Its course in farm chores had plenty of ex- 
 ercises and contact with Nature. Its spell- 
 ing bees, husking parties, and church suppers 
 furnished wholesome recreation. In fact, 
 my father had in one way or another all the 
 essentials of the school of to-morrow — physi- 
 cal and moral training, vocational education 
 and direction, contact with Nature, and 
 directive recreation. 
 
 The school of "day before yesterday' ' 
 did its part in making him, in the best sense 
 of the word, an educated man in that his 
 few months of attendance were sufficient to 
 supplement his nine months of actual doing. 
 
 Predigested education and printer's ink 
 will not produce successful and virile men. 
 When a mother waits on her boy, prides her- 
 self that he is to be a "gentleman," and 
 urges the self-made father to hire a gardener 
 to mow the small lawn and trim the bushes 
 in order that her boy may have time to loaf 
 physically or to browse intellectually, she 
 little realizes that she is doing the very 
 
The Boy of To-morrow 5 
 
 things that may prevent him from following 
 in the footsteps of that husband of whom she 
 is so justly proud. She fails to grasp that 
 habits of order, industry, obedience, and 
 right thinking can come only out of practice 
 and that thought is only valuable as it is 
 nslated into action. 
 
 In the school of to-morrow it will be boys 
 more than books, and living more than letters. 
 It will make for the health of the body — 
 fresh air, wholesome food, adequate exercise, 
 and manly work; it will make for the health 
 of the mind — sanity, alertness, and relia- 
 bility; it will make for the health of the 
 spirit — habits of social justice and ex- 
 pressions of divine truth. Furthermore, it 
 will direct its youth into the paths of indus- 
 trial efficiency and world service. 
 
 I am thinking of the whole boy of to- j 
 morrow and all that makes for his human 
 wealth, and the unfolding and perfecting 
 of his human spirit are not to be discussed 
 in terms of any single pet theory; neither 
 shall I attempt to square my opinion with 
 all the prevailing theories of education. 
 Somewhere I must draw the line or else the 
 outcome will be like that of the chameleon 
 owned by a politician. This man had a pet 
 
6 The School of To-morrow 
 
 chameleon with which he entertained his 
 friends. At last it was gone and a friend 
 inquired for it. "Well, you see," said the 
 owner, "I used to put him on brown and he 
 was brown, on green and he was green, on drab 
 and he was drab; but one day I put him on 
 Scotch plaid and he just wore himself out 
 trying to make good." 
 
 The school of to-morrow will have over 
 its door, "We conserve the whole boy." 
 The watchword of the school of yesterday 
 has been, "We preserve the entire course 
 of study." Those who managed the schools 
 of yesterday thought that children were 
 created for the exemplification of the cur- 
 riculum. In the schools of to-morrow the 
 controlling motive will be that the curricu- 
 lum is arranged to serve the needs of the 
 pupils. In place of machine operatives in 
 the factory of instruction we shall have 
 teachers who believe that they are rendering 
 the right service when they teach boys and 
 not merely subjects. I inquired once of a 
 group of teachers what they taught. One 
 said mathematics; another replied English; 
 still another science; but the fourth — God 
 bless the little prophetess — merely said, 
 "Please sir, just boys." 
 
The Boy of To-morrow 7 
 
 In the days of to-morrow the boys had 
 somehow become the all-important thing 
 in school. Perhaps the school men took 
 their cue from the Department of Agricul- 
 ture, which had been doing very effective 
 work in increasing the capacity of horses, 
 hogs, and hens. Very probably the change 
 in attitude was due to the people themselves, 
 who came to realize that the greatest re- 
 source in the world was human wealth, and 
 that they ought to take as much interest 
 in the welfare of boys, their health, their 
 disposition, and their productive efficiency 
 as they had been taking in the construction 
 of barns and hen coops, in the study of 
 alfalfa, and in the development of dairy cows. 
 
 Quite recently I happened to be in a town 
 in New York where a herd of cows was 
 attacked by a contagious disease. The 
 owner telegraphed to Secretary Wilson (who 
 said the other day that he had three thousand 
 experts in animal and plant diseases), and 
 the reply was: " Certainly. I will send 
 you a man right away." Sure enough, the 
 man came. He brought his degree of D. V.S., 
 a government syringe, and a bottle of govern- 
 ment medicine; he treated the cows and they 
 got well. 
 
8 The School of To-morrow 
 
 Now it was not cranky for the Govern- 
 ment to do this, and it could afford the ex- 
 pense, too, for the cows meant milk, butter, 
 and beef. 
 
 The- schools of to-morrow will think that 
 they can afford to look after the health of 
 children by providing baths, gymnasiums, 
 swimming pools, and play-grounds. They 
 will elect on their faculties the sun, fresh air, 
 the lakes, and the fields. Moreover they 
 will believe it possible and wise to make 
 specific preparation to increase, through 
 vocational training, the productive capacity 
 of the world's future workers. So it came 
 about that the people enlarged their point 
 of view from the rather materialistic one of 
 "be a cow and be worth saving" to the more 
 human one of "be a boy and be worth 
 conserving." 
 
 In the days of yesterday discerning ones 
 saw that there was danger of our becoming 
 the best schooled but the most poorly edu- 
 cated people in the world. They were 
 opposed by those who took special delight 
 in decrying everything which had not been 
 traditionalized by the customs of the Middle 
 Ages. 
 
 I shall never forget a district school meet- 
 
The Boy of To-morrow g 
 
 ing when the question of appropriating 
 two thousand dollars for a course in agricul- 
 ture was before the townspeople. After the 
 school official had explained the details an 
 irate taxpayer arose and said: "We don't 
 want no greenhouses and shovels in our 
 schools. What do we want of such dicker- 
 ings? We want our boys to know their books. 
 What we want is more education. " 
 
 So completely did I forget myself that I 
 shouted "Amen!" to his last statement. I 
 owe him much for the train of thought 
 which he started. We do want more educa- 
 tion and the school of to-morrow will bring 
 it to the boy of to-morrow. But the word 
 education is a far broader word then the 
 irate taxpayer meant. 
 
 We must look at the whole boy and the 
 educative process in its entity. I shall not 
 attempt to stretch this school of to-morrow 
 upon the dissecting table, for the moment 
 I do I shall find it is already dead. True 
 education is a unitary process and there are 
 no mathematically accurate subdivisions. 
 Its constituent parts are interesting and 
 significant, but if they are cut out of the 
 whole we shall find that they have ceased to 
 live. 
 
io The School of To-morrow 
 
 Neither will I ask you to admire the 
 machinery of instruction, the buildings, the 
 laboratories, and the courses. I am afraid 
 I shall ignore that supposedly all-important 
 matter of having pupils "cover the subject.' , 
 I have taught enough to know that I not only 
 covered the subject but also the boys. I 
 shall not try to interest you in the rather 
 unworthy task of having children learn with 
 much worry and vexation of matters not of 
 first-rate importance and which might easily 
 be learned later in life should they ever be 
 wanted. 
 
 I simply propose to have you think of 
 sound, healthy, accomplished, and lovable 
 boys and how the school is going to do its 
 share toward getting them. 
 
 To accomplish this end I would have the 
 school of to-morrow do everything toward 
 making sound and vigorous health a necessary 
 end. I would have it offer every provision 
 for the cultivation of all the senses. I would 
 have it build up that great source or power, 
 the emotional life. I would even go so far as 
 to have it make each moment of its life an end 
 in itself, to be made beautiful and glorious 
 in and for itself and not merely a jumping-off 
 place for another and higher school. 
 
The Boy of To-morrow n 
 
 In short, I would look squarely at life 
 itself and see what the day after to-morrow 
 requires of its citizen-to-be, and I would 
 centre my energy and his energy upon the 
 mastery of these things — health, character, 
 interest in and capacity for service, appre- 
 ciation of the beautiful and true, and such 
 details of theories, facts, and past accom- 
 plishments as will make possible the devel- 
 opment of human efficiency. 
 
 There will be no question of the primary 
 importance of good health as the first 
 requisite for efficiency. Its absence in the 
 school of to-morrow will be counted as a 
 moral delinquency, and it will be recorded 
 on the report card, if there is one, long before 
 the teacher even thinks of the boy's failure 
 in cube root. Only yesterday my neighbor 
 said: "I must take Charlie out of school, 
 he does not seem very well." With the dawn 
 of a new era the parent will say, " Charlie 
 has not been very well; he seems to be pale 
 and sickly. I must send him to school more 
 regularly, for that is the place where they 
 keep him well." 
 
 Among the ironies of the school of yester- 
 day was the purely theoretical use which 
 was made of the study of physiology and 
 
12 The School of To-morrow 
 
 hygiene. If the human body in those days 
 was anything like the courses in these sub- 
 jects, then most certainly it was fearfully 
 and wonderfully made. They centred largely 
 around the use of alcoholic liquor and nar- 
 cotics. To smoke on earth was equivalent 
 to smoking hereafter, and the descriptions 
 of the deadly character of all alcoholic drinks 
 reminded one of patent medicine advertise- 
 ments. The teacher appeared before the 
 class with a bottle o" alcohol and a glass 
 containing the white of an egg. He said: 
 "Children, I will now pour some alcohol 
 into the glass. You will see that the egg 
 coagulates. Now, the lining of your stomach 
 is like the white of an egg and alcohol acts 
 on it as it does on this egg." He did not 
 add that the alcohol was 95 per cent. pure. 
 
 I have absolutely no desire to minimize 
 the importance of sane teaching on the evils 
 resulting from the use of cigarettes and 
 intoxicating liquor. But there are larger 
 questions involved in the study of physiology 
 and hygiene. Sound health is basic. Char- 
 acter and productive efficiency rest upon it. 
 
 The school of yesterday taught the names 
 of the bones of the body to a boy that had 
 gulped down a cup of coffee and a doughnut 
 
The Boy of To-morrow 13 
 
 before coming to school, and then asked him 
 to study improper fractions. At recess it 
 turned him out into a brick-covered school 
 yard or down into an ill- smelling basement, 
 with the opportunity of purchasing a fried 
 pie or a sugared doughnut for his lunch. 
 Meanwhile it ignored his adenoids, enlarged 
 tonsils, decaying teeth, imperfect eyesight, 
 and poorly nourished body. It spent $200 
 instructing a boy who was defective in hear- 
 ing or eyesight, when ten cents spent on 
 medical inspection would have made apparent 
 why he sat with a gaping mouth or head 
 buried in a book. 
 
 The boy of yesterday was taught the 
 " fundamentals " (God save the word as 
 then used) and to chance or a Divine Provi- 
 dence was left the most important funda- 
 mental of them all — a boy's rightful heritage 
 to a sound body. The school thought that 
 it did its duty when it taught the English 
 branches. It left to the home or the street 
 the more important things. It would have 
 been better to have let the home teach the 
 three R's and to have retained for itself such 
 questions as the sort of food which would 
 have given the best results in the way of 
 nutrition and growth, the kind of baths, the 
 
14 The School of To-morrow 
 
 amount of sleep, and the sort of play which 
 should have been encouraged. It should 
 have realized that for a boy to know how to 
 swim and how to resuscitate one who was 
 overcome was more important than the 
 binomial theorem. 
 
 I offer no excuse for placing such emphasis 
 on the sound body of our boy of to-morrow. 
 Any one who has patted the sun-tanned back 
 of a sturdy lad just as he dives off the wharf 
 at a summer camp, has heard his wholesome 
 shout of joy when he comes up with the 
 tightly clasped pebble, has seen him eat the 
 simple, substantial, nourishing food at the 
 pine table, has listened in the quiet of the 
 twilight to those confidences which he is 
 only too glad to give to those whom he loves, 
 and has softly tiptoed to the tent and seen 
 in the moonlight his deep and gentle breath- 
 ing, knows whereof I speak. It is then that 
 we see that the wealth of the world is human 
 and that it consists of strong, virile boys who 
 make the men of the morrow. 
 
 But to continue the discussion of the 
 educative process. The school of yesterday 
 served its courses table d'hote, and the pupils 
 in order to get to the dessert course had to 
 take all the previous courses, and scarcely 
 
The Boy of To-morrow 15 
 
 one in ten got even to the meat course, to 
 say nothing of those dainties which came last. 
 The school of to-morrow will serve a la carte, 
 with a menu adapted to boys who have varied 
 interests, varied capacities, and varied desires, 
 and who have varying personal opportunities 
 for the full enjoyment of the privileges of 
 education. It will recognize that there are 
 many processes by which boys can be edu- 
 cated, and that one process will be best for 
 one group and another process for a different 
 group. 
 
 In this it will differ from the school of 
 yesterday, which believed that all its boys 
 should be able to do one thing as well as 
 another, and if perchance a given boy showed 
 an apparent aptitude for doing one thing, 
 and an apparent inaptitude for doing other 
 things, then time and effort were spent 
 teaching him the things for which he had no 
 aptitude. 
 
 The following shrewd and pointed bit of 
 allegoric sarcasm, given some years ago 
 by the late Professor Dolbear of Tufts Col- 
 lege, strikingly tells the story of the utter 
 foolishness of the uniform course of study. 
 You may draw your own conclusions. 
 
 In antediluvian times, while the animal 
 
1 6 The School of To-morrow 
 
 kingdom was being differentiated in swimmers, 
 climbers, runners, and fliers, there was a 
 school started for their development. Its 
 theory was that the best animals should 
 be able to do one thing as well as another. 
 If an animal had short legs and good wings 
 attention should be devoted to running so 
 as to even up the qualities as far as possible. 
 So the duck was kept waddling instead of 
 swimming, and the pelican was kept wagging 
 his short wings in the attempt to fly. The 
 eagle was made to run and allowed to fly 
 only for recreation, while maturing tadpoles 
 were unmercifully guyed for being neither 
 one thing nor another. 
 
 The animals that would not submit to such 
 training but persisted in developing the best 
 gifts they had were dishonored and humiliated 
 in many ways. They were stigmatized as 
 being narrow-minded and specialists. 
 
 No one was allowed to graduate from the 
 school unless he could climb, swim, run, and 
 fly at certain prescribed rates; so it hap- 
 pened that the time wasted by the duck 
 in the attempt to run had so hindered him 
 from swimming that his swimming muscles 
 had atrophied and he was hardly able to swim 
 at all, and in addition he had been scolded, 
 
The Boy of To-morrow 17 
 
 punished, and ill-treated in many ways so 
 as to make his life a burden. In fact, he left 
 school humiliated. The eagle could make no 
 headway in climbing to the top of a tree and, 
 although he showed he could get there just 
 the same, the performance was counted a 
 demerit, since it had not been done according 
 to the prescribed course of study. 
 
 An abnormal eel with large pectoral fins 
 proved he could run, swim, climb trees, and 
 fly a little. He attained an average of 60 
 per cent, in all studies. He was made vale- 
 dictorian of the class. 
 
 The public schools of to-morrow will 
 express their educative process through three 
 great divisions — primary, advanced, and 
 supplemental. 
 
 I call the first division primary, not be- 
 cause it is a "primary school," but rather 
 because it is a school of primary importance. 
 We are keeping in mind that the early years of 
 boyhood, up to say fourteen years, are marked 
 by tremendous physical activities and that 
 the body and mind are extremely plastic and 
 sensitive to environment and nothing is to 
 stand in their way, not even the call of the 
 factory or the traditions of educational 
 monks. 
 
18 The School of To-morrow 
 
 Did you ever stop to think of that strange 
 psychological condition in the school of 
 yesterday — the school state of mind — 
 and compare it with the attitude of mind of 
 the same boy at play? In the latter instance 
 you see a vivacious, inquisitive being seek- 
 ing information everywhere as a pleasure. 
 In the former you see him at school a weary, 
 shrinking sort of creature, repeating with his 
 lips some one else's thoughts in some one 
 else's words. 
 
 The report card comes home and you 
 begin to wonder. For only on last Sunday's 
 outing he explained to you the workings of 
 a trolley car, he asked about the formation 
 of snowflakes, he described freely his yester- 
 day's game of hockey, he had even ideas 
 regarding the state senatorship fight; and you 
 listened to him, and even encouraged the 
 activities of his growing mind and body. Yet 
 you have never claimed to be a school 
 teacher. Your heart was simply wrapped 
 up in your boy. 
 
 You may not have known that your peda- 
 gogy was that of the teacher of to-morrow, 
 who believes and practises the scientific 
 fact that it is quite impossible to get at the 
 brain except through the avenues of the five 
 
The Boy of To-morrow 19 
 
 senses; who concerns himself with reaching 
 the boy's brain through such activities as 
 gymnastics, manual arts, music, and the 
 spoken language; who thinks of education in 
 terms or the three H's — head, heart, and 
 hands — and not alone of the three R's. 
 
 Would you like to examine the day's pro- 
 gramme of our little man of the school of 
 to-morrow? He leaves the home well- 
 nourished, for the school of to-morrow is in 
 the city of to-morrow, where there are no 
 half-fed children, because human society 
 has seen to it that the science of distribution 
 has been as well worked out as was the 
 science of production of yesterday. 
 
 He enters the schoolroom, which is equipped 
 with chairs and tables, and with plenty of 
 free space, for his teachers know that activity 
 is the call of nature. The day begins with 
 music, and the teacher reads a lesson in 
 which history and geography, interwoven 
 with stories, are treated as literature. Then 
 comes the period of gymnastics, with march- 
 ing and singing, and ending with free play and 
 its chance for spontaneous action. Then 
 follows more reading, in which the boy does 
 his part. You will notice that he reads well, 
 and the secret lies in the fact that he is reading 
 
20 The School of To-morrow 
 
 something that appeals to him. Then comes 
 the period of handwork. You will find that 
 this work is not given in the cold and damp 
 basement, for in the school of to-morrow 
 this phase of organic education is deemed 
 worthy of the best room in the building. 
 Here he fashions and decorates his handwork, 
 which involves some number work in the 
 fundamental processes of arithmetic. On 
 pleasant days there are excursions to the park, 
 games in the school yard or on the roof garden, 
 and outings to the river, to the lake, and to 
 the woods. 
 
 Have I forgotten the formal lessons in 
 arithmetic, geography, or grammar? Can 
 our youngster tell the route of a sack of flour 
 from Minneapolis to Bombay, via the Suez 
 Canal, as the boy could in the school of 
 yesterday? I trust no one will be horrified 
 to find that our little man may know nothing 
 of these things. He simply likes his teacher, 
 his school, and his mates; he stands well on 
 his feet, reads intelligently, and has an interest 
 in the world of nature; he is well fed, alert 
 in his mind, and ready and willing to obey. 
 
 The school day ends at four o'clock and 
 our boy leaves the building without books, 
 with hands free, and yet freer heart. Let 
 
The Boy of To-morrow 21 
 
 us expect that he goes to a good home and 
 loving parents; that he has wholesome play- 
 mates; that he renders little services and 
 helps about the house; that he has a nourish- 
 ing and simple supper; that he goes to bed 
 in a well-ventilated room and sleeps the 
 sleep of the just, with no conscience to prick 
 him over lessons unlearned or books un- 
 strapped. 
 
 If you are about to dispute my programme 
 of this school of primary importance I 
 would have you remember that out of these 
 earlier years of training in sound health and 
 a good disposition flow all the possibilities 
 of the years to come. 
 
 However, we must move forward to the 
 advanced school, for the boy has reached 
 the period of early youth. 
 
 I can offer only the same wares in this type of 
 school — a sound body, an attentive mind, and 
 a high moral purpose. Possibly we shall find 
 that somehow our boy customer has changed. 
 There has been an advance step taken by 
 Nature. The sturdy little man of the yes- 
 terday of to-morrow has suddenly become 
 an awkward and perhaps troublesome youth, 
 while the boy who was the bane of the 
 teacher's existence has apparently risen to 
 
22 The School of To-morrow 
 
 the position of saint. The teacher will not 
 be in despair, for he knows that the period 
 of adolescence has come. The "he" refers 
 to a man, for in the days of to-morrow those 
 who manage our schools will have its boys 
 taught by men teachers at least during the 
 adolescent age. 
 
 Probably before this you have wondered 
 how the boy ever got into this advanced 
 school. I have implied that he knows no 
 formal grammar nor partial payments. The 
 high school of to-morrow took him simply 
 because he was strong and well, clear-eyed 
 and accomplished, full of promise and power, 
 and looked as though he could do its work. 
 
 The advanced step taken by Nature means 
 an accompanying change in the way of 
 approach to mental development. The 
 foundation has been well laid. Now comes 
 the formal work in language, mathematics, 
 and science. Even the teachers of yesterday 
 who may be left in the school of to-morrow 
 will not try to undo the work of the earlier 
 years. They will have no temptation, for 
 the boy stands first, and not the college 
 entrance requirements. To speak in con- 
 fidence, the latter have disappeared in the 
 development of the school of to-morrow. 
 
The Boy of To-morrow 23 
 
 The algebraic proof that A = 1 has gone 
 into oblivion. The self-evident fact that 
 only one perpendicular can be drawn from 
 a point to a line has met its reward. The 
 problems of falling bodies have dropped 
 even further than was ever calculated in 
 any class. 
 
 Why, you ask? Simply because it has 
 been decided that there are better things 
 to teach. The teacher has learned that the 
 doctrine of formal discipline was as absurd 
 as infant damnation. He has discovered 
 that the useful in education is also liberalizing 
 in its results. He recognizes that culture 
 must always be a by-product and that a 
 liberal training without vocational direction 
 is often ineffective and always inefficient. 
 He has awakened to the fact that there is a 
 wealth of scientific applications about him 
 which can be brought into the schools. He 
 sees that history is being made every day 
 and that there are more political and social 
 forces at work with their problems to solve 
 than ancient Rome ever dreamed of. He 
 realizes that there have been some good 
 writers since Chaucer and Milton and that 
 the magazines and editorial pages are, to 
 say the least, up to date. 
 
24 The School of To-morrow 
 
 I need not enlarge upon these more formal 
 studies in the advanced school or upon the 
 organic work in music and handicraft or 
 upon the uses made of the well-equipped 
 gymnasiums and swimming tanks, for they 
 all provide for the wholesome life of the body, 
 of the mind, and of the spirit. 
 
 I might say just a word about the careful 
 and practical instruction given to the boy 
 in the race instinct of his preservation. This 
 will be taught in all reverence and sweet- 
 mindedness by the teacher. It will rest 
 upon a thorough knowledge of physics 
 and chemistry, and in this way it will be 
 scientific. It will be treated frankly and 
 helpfully, for in the days of to-morrow it 
 is to be hoped that the body will be so beau- 
 tiful and so wholesome that we shall not be 
 ashamed of it. 
 
 In other ways the advanced school of 
 to-morrow will contrast strongly with the 
 high school of yesterday. It will teach 
 its boys how to study. Much home work 
 will be eliminated and the school day will be 
 longer. The teacher will not spend all his 
 time in hearing recitations; he will not issue 
 commands, "Get the next fifteen lines in 
 translation," "Do the next twenty-five prob- 
 
The Boy of To-morrow 25 
 
 lems," and leave the boy to work out the les- 
 sons assigned to him in the best way he can. 
 
 In the days of yesterday the home was 
 usually the place for acquiring knowledge 
 and the school the place for reciting it. In 
 the days of to-morrow the recitations will 
 be the acquisition and not the inquisition 
 period. In this way the cause of culture 
 will be furthered by turning to account the 
 amount of energy which formerly went toward 
 keeping students out of school by helping 
 them after they get in. 
 
 Perhaps you have received a letter from 
 the teacher of yesterday complaining that 
 John did not get his lesson. I wonder if 
 you ever were on the point of answering, 
 as my friend McAndrew says that the parent 
 of one of his pupils did: "If instead of 
 writing letters you would explain your lessons 
 to John and would teach them to him you 
 would not need to waste postage." 
 
 In the days of to-morrow the educative 
 process will continue for the whole twelve 
 months. It was direct evidence of a lack 
 of efficiency for the school of yesterday to 
 have limited its unfolding of a human spirit 
 to five-hour days for five days of the week and 
 for one hundred and sixty days of the year. 
 
26 The School of To-morrow 
 
 Possibly you provide for your boy in the 
 private summer camps. You may do this 
 to save his mother's nerves. Even then 
 you hardly realize that the summer season 
 is the best time of the year for the richness 
 of the development of a wholesome, sturdy 
 boy. 
 
 In the old days, I know, both the teacher 
 and boys needed a rest. From experience 
 I realize how tiresome it was for teachers 
 to ask questions all day long when they 
 already knew the answers, and how hard 
 it was for immature boys to play the edu- 
 cational game when they felt that the cards 
 were stacked. 
 
 The school of to-morrow, standing for 
 health and joy in labor, will not have its 
 work interrupted by an excess of holidays 
 and vacations. In fact, the educative pro- 
 cess will be so wisely distributed between the 
 work done in the school and the home that 
 every day will be both a holiday and a work 
 day, the school simply adapting its occu- 
 pations to the requirements of the season. 
 We have not forgotten that the schools of 
 the future will have open playgrounds or 
 roof gardens, that the cities will have large 
 public recreation centres, and that the parks 
 
The Boy of To-morrow 27 
 
 will have some free play space where "Keep 
 Off the Grass" remains unposted. Further- 
 more, the city of to-morrow will not leave 
 to private enterprise, with its sordid idea 
 of gain, the control of its popular amusements 
 and its breathing spots by lake or beach. 
 
 I have mentioned a third division, supple- 
 mental education. Up to this time we have 
 been thinking of the educative process in 
 terms of the fundamental requirements of 
 life, a sound body, an alert mind, and a 
 humanized soul. Our boy will be well 
 grounded in language, citizenship studies 
 and responsibilities, in elementary and ap- 
 plied science. Unconsciously he will have 
 absorbed the elements of culture. He is 
 ready to supplement this groundwork by 
 further study at the University. I will 
 leave him at its doors, knowing that the 
 good health and organic power which has 
 been built up with so much care will be con- 
 served and heightened in this institution. 
 
 However, not all boys can walk leisurely 
 through the halls of learning. Some must 
 of necessity quicken their pace, for they 
 are about to go to work. Perhaps some 
 have already entered upon the world's 
 work. My a la carte service must provide 
 
28 The School of To-morrow 
 
 for a quick lunch, and it must be open day 
 and night. In this way it will be avail- 
 able to the boy all through his life. There 
 must be no distinct line of cleavage between 
 his period of formal education and wage- 
 earning work. He must always be a student 
 as well as a worker, with time enough to spare 
 from both for recreation and the full enjoy- 
 ment of life. 
 
 Many a boy left the school of yesterday 
 at fourteen with the feeling of relief that his 
 school days were over. He said, "My educa- 
 tion is finished," and we believed him. It 
 had pointed him toward the academic callings 
 and he had failed to make good. He was 
 not one of the talented tenth, and so the 
 school lost him. The choice of his occupa- 
 tion was left to chance and he went to the 
 mill, to the store, or to the office without any 
 knowledge of his fitness for the work or any 
 preparation to give him a broad outlook 
 upon his chosen vocation. 
 
 The school of yesterday trained its youth 
 for a "job," while the school of to-morrow 
 will train its youth for a vocation. It will 
 provide for every vocation for which there is 
 a reasonable demand, and in the school the 
 boy must remain until there is ground for 
 
 
The Boy of To-morrow 29 
 
 believing that he has found a calling for which 
 Nature and his own effort has prepared him. 
 At that time the boy will not have to be of 
 the Negro race to go to a Tuskegee, or be 
 a youthful criminal to learn a trade at an 
 Elmira. Furthermore, to earn wages at 
 a trade for $4 a day will be as honorable 
 as clerking at a salary of $10 a week. 
 
 Moreover, the school will furnish to the 
 boy reliable information and competent advice 
 as to the various vocations open to him, the 
 conditions prevailing in each, and what the 
 rewards of success may be. The principal 
 in the school of yesterday knew little of the 
 industrial and commercial requirements. If 
 a boy showed little aptitude for static culture 
 and his economic condition forced him to go 
 to work early in life his teacher had little 
 advice to offer with reference to the world's 
 work. If the boy was particularly dull with 
 books and uncouth in manner he was told 
 to learn a trade. If he was gentle-mannered, 
 smooth-talking, and kept his trousers creased, 
 a clerkship in a store was suggested to him. 
 But the whole scheme was based upon fitting 
 the job in mind to the attainments that the 
 boy now had. 
 
 The school of to-morrow, however, will 
 
30 The School of To-morrow 
 
 try through vocational guidance to fit the 
 boy to the job that he will at some future 
 time be able to fill. In order to do this 
 effectively it will employ an expert who makes 
 investigations of conditions in the trades 
 and different lines of business of the locality, 
 prepares for the use of pupils and parents 
 material that will furnish the best available 
 information concerning the vocational op- 
 portunities, and bring about a cooperation 
 between the employer who needs the right boy 
 and the boy who needs the right job. 
 
 The school of to-morrow will not only 
 help the boy to get the best possible job 
 but it will make provision for him to continue 
 the educative process. The boy will not 
 have closed against him the door of further 
 liberal and vocational training just because 
 he has gone to work. It will be recognized 
 that the stability of an industrial democracy 
 depends upon the attitude of its citizens 
 toward work and the way in which they do it, 
 and that any line of employment which fails to 
 leave a healthy reaction on the individual is 
 detrimental to the interests of the State. 
 
 Through its system of continuation schools 
 Germany has given the word to the school 
 of to-morrow. The dull monotony of the 
 
The Boy of To-morrow 31 
 
 factory grind will be broken by attendance 
 upon a public day school for a few hours a 
 week in order that the boy may receive in- 
 struction in the science of his trade and in 
 those liberal studies which will make for joy 
 in work. 
 
 In the days approaching the to-morrow 
 it was thought wise and proper for the State 
 to regulate the hours of child labor, to require 
 in the factory so many cubic feet of fresh air 
 per hour, to demand safety devices for dan- 
 gerous machinery. In the to-morrow it 
 will have a further right to step in and say 
 to the employer: "This boy is still in his 
 teens. He needs to grow mentally and 
 physically. His present work is confining 
 and narrowing. You want his services. 
 He needs your money. We recognize these 
 mutual relations. However, still more does 
 the State need him as a useful and efficient 
 citizen. For this reason we require you to 
 release him from his work and allow him to 
 attend a part-time school in order that he 
 may expand." 
 
 I have said enough to make it clear that 
 the schools of yesterday were so arranged 
 as to make it convenient to teach. Those 
 of to-morrow will be arranged to make it 
 
32 The School oj To-morrow 
 
 convenient to learn. The people of yester- 
 day boasted of the free-school system and 
 its compulsory education. But schools free 
 in tuition and hidebound in traditions were 
 not truly free. Compulsory education was a 
 misnomer. It was an impossible end. Com- 
 pulsory attendance was possible, but it re- 
 quired a truant officer and a court order. 
 We can compel a boy to sit upon a dictionary, 
 but that does not mean that he will learn 
 to spell. We can not compel boys to learn. 
 They must be interested and see some good 
 in it all. Furthermore, their parents must 
 believe in the educative process. 
 
 A stream cannot rise above its source. 
 The teachers of yesterday were piece-workers 
 and the schools were educational factories. 
 It was the day of specialization. No teacher 
 saw beyond his machine and his pet process. 
 There were many machine hands on as many 
 machines, all working to make a finished 
 product by a single system of production. 
 The parts had to be assembled and this all- 
 important feature was left to the boy. Few 
 fitted them together. The world was strewn 
 with the wreckage of these half-finished 
 parts, and the by-products of character 
 building and culture were lost in the scrap 
 heaD of unrealized ideals. 
 
The Boy of To-morrow 33 
 
 The principal and superintendent were 
 interested in developing an educative process 
 which had all the analogies of a business 
 organization. They alone were in the posi- 
 tion to assemble all the parts of instruction, 
 but in their bookkeeping, cost accounting, 
 and ratings of work they lost sight of the 
 finished product — the boy. 
 
 In the school of to-morrow the teacher 
 will be a master craftsman. He will be 
 the artist and not the machine hand. He 
 will take the human clay and fashion it 
 into its various shapes rather than dump it 
 in a common mold between the levers of 
 tradition and uniformity. He will have 
 before him as his model the image of the 
 perfect man of to-morrow — sound, accom- 
 plished, and beautiful in body; intelligent 
 and sympathetic in mind; reverent in spirit, 
 and productively efficient. The teacher and 
 man-to-be pupil will be ready to place these 
 qualities at the service of the social purpose 
 of to-morrow. 
 
 You ask what is this social purpose. It 
 is increase not alone of material but of 
 human wealth. 
 
The Boy of To-morrow 
 
THE BOY OF TO-MORROW 
 
 WHAT THE SCHOOL WILL DO FOR HIM 
 
 The article receiving the second prize in the World's 
 Work educational contest 
 
 BY EUGENE M. GOLLUP 
 
 Let us take a few minutes to go through 
 school over again. We will do it backward 
 this time — begin with college. Take any 
 college; take your own, if you please. 
 
 We come to college with high ideals and 
 lofty aspirations — age nineteen. Public 
 school and high school were college prepara- 
 tory. Here at last we should have teachers 
 who are Ph. D.'s, wonder-men who write text 
 books and actually make knowledge. We are 
 determined to work hard and "get there"; 
 we remember that " there is always room at 
 the top" and " where there's a will there's 
 a way." We are conscious of treading on 
 holy ground when we first cross the campus. 
 Our first look at the professor carries with 
 it a world of respect and veneration. 
 
 A gradual change comes over us as the 
 
 37 
 
38 The School of To-morrow 
 
 days pass. We soon find that we have 
 been fooling ourselves. The teaching is 
 positively worse than in the high school; 
 the subjects are called by high-sounding 
 names, but jprove rather tame and. humdrum. 
 Some courses are prescribed, others are elec- 
 tive — we carry five, six, or seven at a time. 
 We get the things thrown at us by lecturers 
 who teach "math" or " chem" or "sike" or 
 "dutch." We begin to find that we are not 
 studying, but taking down lectures. We are 
 assumed to be a lot of bottles, more or less 
 leaky. We are given fine marks in philos- 
 ophy, psychology, economics, ethics, but 
 we know well that we really know next 
 to nothing. We cover "ground"; we take 
 up great books, mouth them a bit in class, 
 review them in essays, and pass "exams" 
 on them. And so we get to see the whole 
 business as a huge joke. The glory has 
 departed, but the lessons are left as a sort 
 of necessary nuisance. We get to speak of 
 our studies as "mush," "wind," and "that 
 sort of rot," and take the limit in "cuts." 
 Only the "pluggers" study, and they are 
 looked upon as boys well deserving of con- 
 tempt and a little pity. For a bright boy 
 does not need to study if he knows how to 
 
The Boy of To-morrow 39 
 
 steer his courses, and this he learns in his 
 freshman year. We do nothing crooked on 
 the campus or on the athletic field, but 
 " cribbing " is perfectly right, though seldom 
 necessary; and then there's the risk of getting 
 caught. We don't mind handing a well 
 written essay on " conscience" to a fellow 
 who is going to take the course in ethics next 
 year — it will save him two hours of pen- 
 manship. For learning ethics here is copy- 
 ing it out of a book. But we do study the 
 teacher; we study ways and means of getting 
 a passing mark with the least possible waste 
 of time and effort. Then there are laboratory 
 courses, but here the emphasis is thrown on 
 note-taking and routine. The most tech- 
 nical experiments are done first — we do 
 them in their "logical" order. All work is 
 done with a view toward an "exam." 
 
 Strange to say, the most irksome work 
 is that in physical education (prescribed). 
 Athletics is one thing but "physical ed" 
 should not be mentioned with it in the same 
 breath. We do athletics for ourselves, phy- 
 sical education for the professors. 
 
 There is no competent advice to be had 
 as to what should be studied, what courses 
 should be chosen. Our professors and ad- 
 
40 The School of To-morrow 
 
 visers do not know us; they are too busy with 
 research to pay any attention to us. 
 
 So we turn to athletics and social life 
 and we give most of our attention to these 
 things. Here everything costs; those who 
 have money take joy-rides and late suppers, 
 those who have not play hand-ball in the 
 "gym" and, occasionally, have a dance. 
 At this point the fellow who " works his 
 way" gets "scarred." A fellow who has 
 to pay visits to a pawnshop cannot get 
 very far into college society, whether he 
 happens to be in Yale, or in Columbia, or 
 in the University of Missouri, or anywhere 
 else. 
 
 We are always glad to start on a vacation 
 and always sorry when class-work must 
 begin again. Vacation comes and vacation 
 goes and between vacations we peck at spots 
 on the surface of all sciences and all arts. 
 The daily assignments and petty directions 
 become unbearable, but we have got to 
 graduate. And we do. We march to the 
 tune of the baccalaureate sermon and get the 
 "dingle-dangle." We are "through" college. 
 
 It does happen sometimes that a student 
 becomes permanently inspired by some great 
 personality, a Sumner, a James; but that 
 
The Boy of To-morrow 41 
 
 does not happen to everybody. College 
 life is not conducive to such happenings, 
 for the great man seldom comes from behind 
 his desk. He is too busy. Boards of trus- 
 tees are in control of everything and the great 
 educators are kept on the "back porch." 
 
 Let us now go back of the college and 
 into the high school. Here we find boys 
 swallowing text-books. High schools have 
 gone through a reform wave and there is 
 now some choice of subjects permissible. 
 Unfortunately the choice has to be made 
 before the subject is taken, so that the 
 boy takes his " chance, " not his choice. 
 Those who oppose free choice properly 
 object that the boy does not know what 
 to choose and has nothing upon which to 
 base his choice. With the prescribed sub- 
 jects, on the other hand, we get total dis- 
 regard of the individual differences of the 
 pupils. But with text-book teaching, the 
 subject chosen or prescribed does not make 
 much difference. It is not a choice between 
 history and mathematics, but between swal- 
 lowing one text or another text. A popular 
 teacher often becomes the cause of the pop- 
 ularity of his subject. 
 
 Quite another side of life is represented 
 
42 The School of To-morrow 
 
 by sport. Here we get football, baseball 
 and basket-ball. We get living, breathing, 
 rough, tough sport versus shadowy, bodiless 
 "subjects." We now divide life into sport, 
 which we love, and work, which we hate. 
 
 A dogged hope seems to be the distinguish- 
 ing characteristic of the boy in high school. 
 He has high ideals and tries to live up to 
 them. Most high-school boys look upon 
 themselves as college material; they become 
 accustomed to think of themselves as students 
 and try to bring a student atmosphere into 
 their lives; they form literary and debating 
 societies and "frats." They are very fond 
 of athletics and read the "sporting pages" 
 of the evening papers. 
 
 The school does not undertake to control 
 and direct these activities into educative 
 channels. It devotes itself to administering 
 text-book absorption, without regard to 
 individual needs or utility. It treats the 
 child as the landlady treated her sick boarder. 
 The good woman administered Specific 
 No. 1 8 without effect. So she tried two 
 doses of No. 9, but still the fever prevailed. 
 She now forced three doses of No. 6 down 
 his throat, but the sick man only got worse; 
 whereupon she gave up and called a doctor. 
 
The Boy of To-morrow 43 
 
 "Oh, Doctor, what is the matter? " she 
 asked in desperation. 
 
 "Well," answered the doctor thought- 
 fully, "the patient is suffering from a number 
 of complaints." 
 
 "Yes, yes!" exclaimed the woman, "But 
 what number?" 
 
 Thus in the school; it bottles up some 
 studies in text-books and then it proceeds 
 to administer "specifics" — that is to be 
 considered an education. And then we 
 wonder why the boy is not educated. In 
 education, as in medicine, it will not do 
 to prescribe "specifics," but each case 
 must be diagnosed by itself and be treated 
 according to the advice of an expert in 
 education. We have been in the habit 
 of looking upon the educational process 
 as a sort of "pouring in" and have not 
 yet gotten over our surprise to find that 
 that is not educative. It would be in- 
 human to start a young man in life with 
 nothing but a "good" education of the 
 "pouring-in" kind. Happily, we don't 
 do anything so cruel; we send the boy 
 out among his fellows and let him get used 
 to real situations, as best he may, outside 
 of school. 
 
44 The School of To-morrow 
 
 One phrase I heard so often in grammar 
 school that it is ringing in my ears even 
 at this moment, was — "I want your atten- 
 tion." How often I did wish I could give 
 it to her for keeps ! I can see her now — 
 my " school-marm " — tall, bony, and stern, 
 wielding a ruler about double the length of 
 ours. I was ten years old when she spent a 
 day in trying to tell me that an apple di- 
 vided into two parts became thereby two 
 half apples. She believed in going "from 
 the known to the unknown"; first, "prepara- 
 tion"; second, "presentation," etc., etc.; 
 never a "step" would she skip — she was 
 well acquainted with Herbart. She began 
 every day by telling us that we were a lazy 
 lot of good-for-nothings, and finished it with 
 rapping our knuckles with her overgrown 
 ruler. 
 
 I wish I could put behind steel bars the 
 tyrants — teachers, so called — who para- 
 lyze the child with fear, physical and moral. 
 I have heard "teachers" say laughingly, 
 "My children call me a 'murder.'" There 
 are many "murders" in our schools to-day. 
 
 Get up early any white winter morning 
 and take a long walk on the newly fallen 
 snow. You will find that the boys have 
 
The Boy of To-morrow 45 
 
 been there ahead of you, and you will find 
 them there till the snow is all sodden and 
 muddy. They work; they work hard. They 
 make snowmen and build forts and em- 
 bankments; for there is nothing a boy loves 
 so much as to be up and "doing." And yet 
 teachers find it difficult to get children to 
 work. 
 
 There is a sameness about school which 
 makes it terribly tiresome and hard. Out- 
 side there is a continuous good time to 
 be had and the days are only too short. 
 In school, boys are asked to sit and listen 
 and to repeat meaningless tables. This is 
 truly a heavy burden, but the New York 
 Child Welfare Exhibit, comprehensive as 
 it is, forgot all about it, forgot the enormous 
 burden of books that brings a premature stoop 
 to the boy's shoulders, puts unsightly glasses 
 on his eyes, and ruins the health of the most 
 obedient and the most studious. Who can 
 tell to what extent the delicate health of 
 our prize boy is due to his studiousness? 
 
 We spend hundreds of millions of dollars 
 in getting children to "cram" for examina- 
 tions — and what is there educative in 
 preparing for an examination? What quali- 
 ties do we select by means of an examination? 
 
46 The School of To-morrow 
 
 Wherefore the nerve-racking grind to "cram" 
 down hundreds of pages of text? If I mem- 
 orize Spencer, do I therefore know the 
 universe? On January twenty-third, last, 
 the Dean of Teachers' College, New York, said 
 to an audience of about six hundred teachers 
 and students of education, "You know and 
 I know that examinations are a farce." He 
 was applauded to the echo. Let us then say 
 good-bye to examinations. Expert opinion 
 has pronounced against them, and this is 
 the age of the expert. Surely we are not 
 barbaric enough to continue prostituting 
 our educational activities to examinations. 
 
 That, doubtless, is the dark side of the 
 picture, but it is all that could be said for 
 the typical school of yesterday. Along 
 with all that, however, we find in the school 
 of to-day tendencies toward better things 
 and more rational treatment of the school 
 problem. We now think more of the child 
 and less of the subject; we do not frown on 
 song, as we once did, and play is no longer 
 sacrilege. But even to-day we leave a 
 yawning chasm between play and work; we 
 cut the child's life into stripes, and make ugly, 
 unharmonious patterns. 
 
 The faults of the school of yesterday were 
 
The Boy of To-morrow 47 
 
 due to lack of knowledge of the nature of 
 the child as a growing organism, but the re- 
 cent development of the sciences of biology, 
 psychology, and sociology has now made 
 it possible to go about the work of education 
 as the expert engineer goes about the building 
 of a bridge. The engineer knows the prop- 
 perties of his material and what sort of struc- 
 ture he wants to build. The educator knows 
 the boy and, also, he knows that he wants to 
 produce a man capable of taking his place 
 as a citizen in a free democracy. It becomes 
 evident that, as taught in the past, the 
 boy of to-morrow will hardly get very far 
 in the direction desired. The science of 
 education condemns wholesale teaching. Each 
 child requires treatment suitable to his 
 own nature, to his own needs, to his 
 own future requirements. The kindergarten 
 is now trying the newer methods in education 
 and it therefore becomes the link between 
 the school of yesterday and the school of 
 to-morrow. Indeed, it may properly be 
 called the school of to-day. The schools of 
 higher grade, so called, are still employ- 
 ing the coercive, disciplinary, text-stuffing 
 methods of yesterday, of the unscientific 
 past. 
 
48 The School of To-morrow 
 
 We have, then, the boy of to-morrow, 
 coming up from the kindergarten, where he 
 is a member of a simple society, protected 
 alike from bad habits and from being run 
 over by fast automobiles. The play instinct 
 and the instincts of curiosity and imitation 
 are here utilized under the leadership of 
 the teacher, who works shoulder to shoulder 
 with the boy. The subject of study is the 
 making of things — all things which a child 
 can learn to make. If he is working with 
 things, his attention will never wander; 
 he will not need to be told that he is lazy. 
 We will eliminate the chasm between work 
 and play. We will throw drudgery over- 
 board and make play productive and edu- 
 cative. We will make it unnecessary for 
 our boys to go to "Jesse James" books and 
 to the " comic" Sunday Supplement. From 
 infancy, through childhood, and into the 
 early teens play will continue to be the basis 
 for an introduction to the simpler pursuits 
 of everyday life. The period, which is now 
 wasted on " compound interest" and "square 
 root" and the geography of Africa and on 
 listening to inspired lectures on attention 
 and laziness, will be given instead to useful, 
 educative activities, to learning the use of 
 
The Boy of To-morrow 49 
 
 things, to useful " doing," to making simple 
 household implements, to singing and danc- 
 ing. The school will help the boy acquire 
 facility in the spoken and written use of the 
 mother tongue and in the expression of 
 ideas by means of drawings and pictures. 
 This he will learn through the free exercise 
 of his instinctive powers of expression and 
 through the formation of good habits of 
 expression under the guidance of his teachers. 
 We are not going to hamper his progress by 
 scientific grammatical generalizations and 
 disquisitions on the philosophy of language 
 until he reaches a stage, in college perhaps, 
 when he will be prepared for such studies. 
 Most of the boy's time must of course be 
 spent in the fresh air, in active, unrestricted 
 physical exercise, so as to permit the building 
 up of a healthy body. Instead of "crap 
 .shooting" we will have wholesome play 
 directed toward getting control of body and 
 mind — play directed into educative 
 channels. Children gamble because the 
 streets present no material for legitimate 
 play; adults gamble because they got into 
 bad habits as children. We'll give our 
 children things to play with and teachers 
 to direct them; we will save the necessary 
 
50 The School of To-morrow 
 
 money cost by the reduction of the amounts 
 appropriated for court and police and prison 
 expenses, which the right kind of educational 
 facilities will make possible. We can do 
 good through normal play activity, properly 
 directed; we can do only harm, physical, 
 moral, and social, through unnatural re- 
 strictive prohibitions. 
 
 Instead of requiring stereotyped uniformity 
 and stagnation, the teacher of to-morrow 
 will encourage multiformity and inventive- 
 ness. He will teach boys, not " partial 
 payments." He will teach boys the meaning 
 of " denominate numbers" by letting them 
 work with quarts and pecks, not by verbal 
 drumming in of the "dry measure." How 
 many of my readers can tell me which is 
 right, "4 quarts make 1 peck" or "4 pecks 
 make 1 quart?" I myself do not know, 
 yet I have drummed at "dry measure" 
 for many a long spring morning. Let the 
 children measure several quarts and pecks 
 of sand, let them accumulate fortunes in 
 sawdust, and I warrant they will never 
 forget "dry measure." Let them learn to 
 love the fair and square deal at school, let 
 them get into the habit of giving "full mea- 
 sure to everybody" before they leave school 
 
The Boy of To-morrow 51 
 
 Our schools will be in use all the time; 
 we may even devote a room or two and a 
 teacher or two to giving a little embyro 
 President of the United States the wholesome 
 sleep which he may be unable to obtain at 
 his home in an East Side tenement. De- 
 cidedly, five hours per day will not be set 
 as the limit for the use of school buildings. 
 Under proper leadership, teachers — true 
 teachers — will be proud to give their lives to 
 the service of humanity; but, in return, they 
 will be treated as teachers, not as machines; 
 they will have an intelligent word to say 
 about the curriculum, the course of study, 
 and the conduct of the school. 
 
 In early adolescence the boy will be ready 
 to be introduced to the social life of the adult 
 community, for which he will be prepared 
 by his experience in the simpler boy organiza- 
 tions. It is well worth while for the state 
 to see to it that boys be made ready to take 
 their places as citizens in a free democracy. 
 
 I can see the boy of to-morrow growing 
 up to a fruitful youth through a happy and 
 industrious boyhood. He will be brought 
 up by earnest, public-spirited men and 
 women, who will be artists in teaching and 
 vmo will have, at the same time, a clear 
 
52 The School of To-morrow 
 
 conception of the importance of their mission. 
 But let us remember that the boy of to-mor- 
 row will be just a boy — much like the boy 
 of to-day — full of fun and frolic and jollity. 
 He will have all the material and oppor- 
 tunity necessary for wholesome play, so that 
 he will never need to tie a can to a yellow 
 dog's tail. Our boy will be just a clear-eyed, 
 rosy- cheeked fellow; we will not find him car- 
 rying, over a pair of thick spectacles, the 
 towering brow full of weighty wisdom. He 
 will not need to go for recreation to coarse 
 " supplement" matter nor to " blood and 
 thunder" five-cent literature; his ideals will 
 be personified by the clean, loving men and 
 women around him and not by "Wild 
 Cat Harry." There will be no deep, un- 
 bridgeable contrast between work and play, 
 so that he will have no need for explosion 
 of pent-up spirits — no "Sis-boom-bah" 
 matter. His fun will be just healthy "fun," 
 and we shall always feel free to join in the 
 laugh with him. 
 
 The souls of our children will be safe 
 if we refrain from poisoning them through 
 narrow prejudices and metaphysical quib- 
 blings. If we surround them with clean 
 and healthful conditions of life, if they meet 
 
The Boy of To-morrow 53 
 
 none but whole-souled, honorable, and loving 
 men and women, we need have no fear as 
 to the outcome of their education on the 
 moral side. We must remember that a 
 religion, a philosophy of life, cannot be 
 strapped to the head of a child. We will 
 not give it to him until he is ready, in mind 
 and heart, to accept it as a free man. Until 
 then we will leave no gaps whereby evil may 
 enter into his soul; we will protect him against 
 pollution. 
 
 A boy of thirteen is ready for work directed 
 into special channels. There is no good 
 reason why every boy, growing into man- 
 hood, should not aim to become an expert 
 at something. At this point the selective 
 powers of the school must show their quality. 
 The responsibility for getting the boy into 
 the trade or profession where he will be most 
 efficient should rest with the expert in edu- 
 cational psychology and not with the child. 
 "Free choice" for the child should not be 
 used as a shield for the ignorance and im- 
 becility of the teacher. The school of to- 
 morrow will make it part of the teacher's 
 duty to see that there are no misfits anywhere. 
 Teachers — big brothers who know all about 
 you and love you — will make it their 
 
54 The School of To-morrow 
 
 business to know all about the boy. They 
 will use all the devices known to scientific 
 psychology to ascertain definitely what may 
 best become this or that boy's life-work 
 and how he may be fitted for it. 
 
 By to-morrow we will have ceased to 
 make apologies for vocational training. The 
 teaching of trades will have passed through 
 its experimental stages. We recognize 
 already that it is to the interest of the 
 State to give of its best not only " to him 
 who hath" the physique and mentality to 
 become a leader, but also to him who must 
 devote his life to the hewing of wood and the 
 drawing of water. The school will go into 
 whatever field education has a place. It will 
 teach the making of hats and shoes as well as 
 music and painting, medicine and law, 
 chemistry, and poetry, and history, and 
 philosophy. In France there is now a 
 national school of dramatic art, and those 
 who are competent to judge say that it is 
 doing a noble work. France now has a 
 drama and a dramatic art and an appre- 
 ciation of the right kind of drama; but what 
 have we? The course in printing given in 
 the Graduate School of Commerce at Har- 
 vard is a public asset; it will improve the 
 
The Boy of To-morrow 55 
 
 art of printing throughout the country. 
 Who then will undertake to draw a line and 
 say that education shall progress no further, 
 shall teach this but not that? To limit 
 education would result in a one-sided, un- 
 symmetrical state of art, of industry, of 
 science, of culture; it would result in a one- 
 sided man. 
 
 Of course we shall have to find names for 
 the various grades and divisions of our de- 
 veloped school system, but we shall come 
 to terms after a little while. On my part, 
 I see no reason why a school for experts in 
 carpentry may not be called a college of 
 carpentry. Why should not a degree in 
 carpentry be equivalent, for purposes of 
 educational administration, to a degree in 
 music or in law? For the training of an 
 expert in carpentry will be a liberal training; 
 he will not be a maker of shoe-trees, but an 
 educated, broad-minded expert in woodwork. 
 We shall have specialists, men able in their 
 professions, efficient in industry, men who 
 know a good deal about something, leaders 
 in progress. We shall not have men who 
 specialize in stagnation and narrowness; we 
 shall not have men who get lost when they 
 leave their own narrow little nook. We 
 
56 The School of To-morrow 
 
 shall have men doing things they know 
 something about; a specialist in chemistry 
 will work in a chemical laboratory and not 
 in a public school. 
 
 In college and in high school as everywhere 
 in our school system, we shall have teachers 
 who are specialists in teaching, not in phi- 
 losophy or astronomy or geology. The 
 teacher's specialty is teaching — always. Re- 
 search in physiology is one thing, teaching 
 physiology is quite another and a very dif- 
 ferent thing. The college student cannot 
 profit by contact with the specialist in geology. 
 Only when he has graduated from college 
 and has taken geology as his own specialty, 
 when he is himself ready to do more advanced 
 and more minute work, can he be safely 
 left to work by the side of the man who gives 
 all his attention to his subject. 
 
 We have already begun to differentiate 
 between teaching and research. We are 
 already sending some of our workers in highly 
 specialized branches of scientific research 
 to the Rockefeller and the Carnegie and the 
 Sage foundations and to the various scientific 
 bureaus of the National Government in 
 Washington to carry on their studies. We 
 shall have many more of these scientific 
 
The Boy of To-morrow 57 
 
 centres, and in the end, we may hope to have 
 clear demarcations between college teaching 
 and research. University work, special ad- 
 vanced courses in medicine and in law and 
 in the theory of education will be given to 
 all those who are preparing to be specialists 
 in these fields. They will be given by those 
 who are specialists in education and have 
 enough knowledge of these subjects to teach 
 those who are taking advanced and con- 
 centrated work in special lines. 
 
 True culture along with social efficiency 
 will be the ultimate aim of education. Great, 
 broad-minded educators will seek to impart 
 to every child of man a culture that makes 
 for manhood through giving an increased 
 sense of human kinship; that makes for 
 knowledge as broad as it is deep; that brings 
 feeling into concert with intellect; that 
 makes for a rich, full and well-mannered life. 
 Such culture will produce men who are big 
 of heart and clear of head — men who pray 
 not for palaces, but for the power to build 
 palaces, not for the removal of pain but for 
 the strength to rise above it. 
 
The Girl of To-morrow 
 
THE GIRL OF TO-MORROW 
 
 WHAT THE SCHOOL WILL DO FOR HER 
 
 The first prize in the World's Work educational 
 
 contest 
 
 BY BENJAMIN R. ANDREWS, PH. D. 
 
 SECRETARY OF THE SCHOOL OF HOUSEHOLD ARTS OF TEACHERS' COLLEGE, 
 COLUMBIA UNIVF.RSITY 
 
 The girl of yesterday we grown folks all 
 know. We went to school with her, we 
 played games with her, we went off to college 
 with her — the same college if our lot was 
 cast in a co-educational democracy. 
 
 The education of the girl of yesterday — 
 we all know that too! It was the educa- 
 tion of the boy of yesterday. It lay first 
 of all in the public school or, in favored com- 
 munities, in the kindergarten, where "gifts" 
 were expected to create in the child mind 
 a certain world- view dreamed by a German 
 philosopher, but where in reality social ac- 
 tivities and games first brought little bar- 
 barians to the yoke. And through this kinder- 
 garten porch the girl of yesterday went 
 
 61 
 
62 The School of To-morrow 
 
 into a graded place called a school — a 
 sort of temple of knowledge with many 
 great terraces, on each of which she lingered 
 a year; and there she mastered numerals 
 and letters and numbers and words, and 
 learned how these odd dead things made 
 books, readers and spellers, and more spellers 
 and readers, and geographies and histories 
 and grammars. Yet all this was for her 
 only a confusion of memorized symbols 
 and words, a veritable desert relieved by 
 occasional vivid teaching. Outside the 
 school it was that the girl of yesterday had 
 her real education — on the playground, 
 in the yard and garden at home, in the 
 house with the family group — wherever, 
 in fact, real interests and activities took 
 hold on life itself and shaped mind and 
 purpose. 
 
 From the graded school, the girl of yes- 
 teday went on to the classical high school. 
 How wistfully and fearfully she had looked 
 across the green to the Academy! And 
 when the Irish janitor — rest to his soul — 
 brought across one day the Academy skeleton 
 "that the eighth grade children might see 
 how they were made," the girl of yesterday 
 had wondered whether she must learn the 
 
The Girl of To-morrow 63 
 
 208 bones — or was it 206? — when she too 
 reached the high school yonder. In due time 
 she came there, and found it all, alas, a place 
 of bones, not only in physiology, but bones 
 in history — "name the presidents in order," 
 or "who were the nine muses?" and bones 
 in Latin — "do, dare, dedi, datum"; and often 
 only bones in literature — "give names and 
 dates of Scott's novels." Lucky that life 
 went on in social groups, in school and out, 
 and in the home! 
 
 Occasionally, the high school girl of yester- 
 day wondered what she would do when 
 school days were over, and of all professions 
 teaching alone seemed open to her. All 
 the world is a sea to the sailor, and to girls 
 just finishing the old-time school, teaching 
 seemed the only profession. 
 
 The old high school course — with its 
 algebra never applied in life, its analytical 
 study of literature, its stilted compositions, 
 its endless translations and paradigms — 
 employed the mind in innocent exercises. 
 That this had somewhat of useful discipline, 
 we will not deny, but it gave no practical 
 training for life. As the student grew to 
 maturity, her knowledge of the world as it 
 is, came through outside experiences, and 
 
64 The School of To-morrow 
 
 widened — if it did widen — more despite 
 the high school than by virtue of it. 
 
 Of the girls of yesterday who started in 
 the elementary school, one in ten received 
 a high school education, and less than one 
 in a hundred of those who finished high school 
 went on into college. To those who went to 
 college, education was offering at best only 
 a continuation of the literary curriculum of 
 the high school. Brave women in the last 
 generation had demanded women's colleges 
 and women's departments in universities, 
 but what courses they gained were largely 
 serving to perpetuate literary culture and 
 to prepare for teaching. Matthew Vassar's 
 fine aim, to train women to be self-supporting, 
 was buried at once under classical tradition. 
 Men's colleges for a generation have been 
 differentiating into groups of scientific and 
 professional schools — engineering with its 
 varied phases, law, medicine, agriculture, 
 commerce, journalism, and what not, each 
 offering a diversified preparation for a dis- 
 tinct vocation. All this time the woman's 
 college has stood by its general literary 
 and scientific courses and against vocational 
 specialization, until finally some one remarks 
 in passing that "in women's colleges alone 
 
The Girl of To-morrow 65 
 
 is the education of the gentleman held in its 
 proper esteem." 
 
 > The college girl of yesterday, the one in 
 a hundred who could go on to college, found 
 herself in a blind alley — literary culture 
 with its two outlooks, the life of the idle 
 gentlewoman, or the life of the teacher, and 
 then more literary culture. The woman of 
 to-day — the girl of yesterday — if she is 
 broad-minded and generous and serviceable, 
 owes her high qualities to the formative 
 social influences which have shaped her life, 
 rather than to her formal education. 
 
 y But the girl of to-morrow — what of her 
 education? You will not find it embodied 
 to-day in any one school, but here and there 
 you can get partial glimpses of the world to 
 be. Come into a certain elementary school 
 in Manhattan where the aim is preparation 
 for serviceable, happy living, not for pedantry. 
 Note the equipment : a large gymnasium with 
 apparatus suited to fixed exercises, with 
 plenty of baths, with ample space for folk 
 dances, pageants, drama — in short, with 
 opportunity for all kinds of activity except 
 swimming; there is a library and reading 
 room where little children work during school 
 hours, learning that books are tools to be 
 
66 The School oj To-morrow 
 
 used by all people in every practical under- 
 taking. Each class room is equipped, not 
 with fixed desks for parrot recitations to a 
 parrot teacher, but with ordinary work tables 
 and chairs suitable for working operations, 
 for conversation, discussion, and cooperation; 
 and there are special rooms besides — a 
 cooking room and dining room where little 
 girls learn the wonders of bread doughs and 
 soups, a shop room where the rougher, heavier 
 constructive work is carried on, a sewing 
 room for clothing projects, a club room 
 giving place for social activities, a garden 
 space on the roof in lieu of Nature's space 
 on the ground. Such is the building, and 
 within it one finds life, not barren schooling. 
 Can I say better than that each subject is 
 lived through, not learned — that one ac- 
 quires letters to read a loved story, and 
 numbers to count and control some matter 
 already of real concern; that one studies 
 history to understand the puzzle of the 
 Stars and Stripes and the devotion of the 
 veterans on Memorial day; and geography 
 to know why there is a valley here where 
 the school house stands, and to know where 
 these ships are bound that pass on the river. 
 The way of real education is the setting 
 
The Girl of To-morrow 67 
 
 of the child's mind to solve the problems 
 that life fixes; and this way my ideal ele- 
 mentary school has found. Not only in 
 method but in content of study does it reach 
 out into life's realities. The weakness of 
 the old school was that it worked in a vacuum; 
 the strength of the new school is that its 
 subject matter of instruction is not only 
 literary material and scientific results (as 
 in history and geography), but that all this 
 and everything in its curriculum is taught as 
 an interpretation of the work-a-day dynamic 
 world in which we live. The new school 
 will give to pupils at fourteen years of age 
 intelligence regarding the various fields of 
 work — professional practice, trade, com- 
 merce, or housekeeping — which are opening 
 up before them and will thus aid in that 
 most fundamental decision — the choice of 
 a vocation. Industrial and vocational in- 
 telligence (not specific vocational training 
 however) describes this new aim of the 
 elementary school. Through this period, 
 the training of both sexes will stand sub- 
 stantially alike, liberalizing, cultural, prob- 
 lem-solving, informational as regards the 
 world just ahead. 
 What now of the higher schools, where the 
 
68 The School of To-morrow 
 
 girl of to-morrow fits herself for the woman's 
 work of the day after? Come into a certain 
 great new technical high school in an 
 Ohio metropolis. It has for its principal 
 the graduate of an engineering college, and 
 it offers courses especially for boys and 
 courses especially for girls. Here the girl 
 who must soon make a livelihood may pre- 
 pare to be a designer in special fields, an 
 illustrator, a house manager, a private secre- 
 tary, a dressmaker, a milliner, an infant's 
 nurse, or perhaps a skilled cook — and she 
 is trained in such a way that she keeps a more 
 liberal outlook on life than the specialized 
 worker of to-day dreams of. Or go to Chi- 
 cago with its promising two-year vocational 
 high school for those who can tarry but two 
 years after grammar school before going to 
 work. Take notice of its system of coopera- 
 tion between school and shop and factory, 
 which successfully combines instruction and 
 practice. And this is but an indication of 
 a mighty revolution in education — the 
 girl shall be taught a definite vocation (out- 
 side of home work) as well as the boy. The 
 school shall prepare young people for prac- 
 tical life. The elementary school, although 
 it will not teach vocations, shall fit children 
 
The Girl of To-morrow 69 
 
 to make an intelligent choice. The high 
 school shall give them the training they need 
 for their elected careers; it shall offer courses 
 of varied length and purpose — two years 
 for those who stay only so long, four years 
 for those who remain longer. With voca- 
 tional training shall go some liberal culture, 
 so that, ultimately, every man shall have 
 a vocation and a free choice of avocations 
 at his command. 
 
 The girl of to-morrow who can postpone 
 her vocational choice shall find an opportunity 
 in the high school to continue her liberal 
 education; but for her benefit there shall be 
 highly specialized schools which, when she 
 has finished her preliminary training, will 
 give her scientific preparation for useful 
 work. A number of such schools are already 
 in existence. 
 
 Go to the splendid institutes in Brooklyn, 
 Philadelphia, Rochester, and Chicago, estab- 
 lished by far-seeing men of wealth to train 
 high school graduates for practical service, 
 a„nd canvass the training offered there to 
 the girl of to-morrow. Preparation for 
 household management, woman's traditional 
 field, is provided as a matter of course — 
 but note with what new implications and 
 
70 The School of To-morrow 
 
 applications. First, we find hundreds of 
 teachers of domestic science who may in- 
 crease the efficiency of private housekeeping 
 through that socializing instrument, the 
 public school, to the end that housework 
 may pass over into a science, as the poor 
 decrepit farming of the last generation has 
 become the agriculture of to-day. What of 
 the household when methods of dry farming, 
 irrigation, Burbanking, modern chemistry, 
 bacteriology, and mechanics shall be turned 
 loose within doors as well as out on the land? 
 But new opportunities in household arts 
 are also opening in every direction. In the 
 Rochester institution there is a course of 
 training in lunch-room management, in which 
 the young women are instructed in related 
 science, but especially in the practice of 
 their profession by daily responsibility in 
 conducting a lunch room for 200 students. 
 The graduates have been quickly absorbed 
 in Rochester by wise managers of banks, 
 department stores, and factories; one, 
 salaried at $1,200, directs her French chefs 
 and feeds the 300 employees of a depart- 
 ment store; another manages a lunch room 
 in a huge clothing factory, and, since her 
 advent, saloons across the street have gone 
 
The Girl of To-morrow 71 
 
 out of business. A similarly trained young 
 woman took hold of a lunch room in St. 
 Louis last fall, improved the service, and 
 turned a deficit into a $290 surplus the first 
 month. Schools, banks, mercantile and com- 
 mercial houses need the trained lunch-room 
 manager and are discovering their need and 
 how to fill it. It is only a step from this to 
 the commercial lunch room. The best lunch 
 rooms in Boston, and they are among the 
 largest too, are to-day conducted by a trained 
 woman, and they are cleaner than your own 
 kitchen. < Even the despised delicatessen 
 shop and the commercial bakery may yet 
 come into the hands of the trained woman, 
 who will give us there, on a grand social 
 scale, the safeguards to health which in the 
 past she provided for the private home. 
 Again these institutes are fitting women to 
 conduct dressmaking shops and millinery 
 shops as skilled business enterprises. Who 
 knows but that escape from the robber- 
 barons of fashion will come through the more 
 intelligent professional standards of those 
 who clothe us? All kinds of artistic achieve- 
 ment, in design, in illustration, and creative 
 work in all the special fields for which deft 
 fingers and the sensitive eye are essential, 
 
72 The School of To-morrow 
 
 as well as enterprise along commercial and 
 industrial lines, are other ventures which these 
 practical institutes are providing for the 
 young woman of to-morrow. 
 
 What the young man of to-morrow does, 
 the young woman of to-morrow may also 
 freely do if she will — and so we shall then 
 find her occasionally, as we find her now, in 
 the advanced professional fields of engineer- 
 ing, law, medicine, and the ministry. It is 
 well so, for absolute freedom of action is the 
 only possible basis for a wise choice of voca- 
 tions. The young women who go into higher 
 professional training will, however, fit them- 
 selves, as a general thing, for the fields of 
 service that belong distinctively to women. 
 
 But what about a professional, specialized 
 education for women, on a university level — 
 an education that corresponds to the train- 
 ing young men receive at schools of technol- 
 ogy? For answer, go to a certain pent-in 
 Manhattan street and enter the business- 
 like looking structure that stands there. In 
 this building seven hundred young women 
 are hard at work studying the household 
 arts. Make inquiries about them. One 
 is the director of a college dormitory, come 
 for special instruction in dietetics that 
 
The Girl of To-morrow 73 
 
 the 300 girls in her charge may enjoy nutri- 
 tious food while her expenditures still keep 
 within her budget allowance. Another 
 wishes to be a visiting dietitian, instructing 
 in tenement homes as to the best food for the 
 infant, the working man, and the aged. There 
 is a group of graduate nurses, already skilled 
 in their profession, fitting themselves for the 
 administration of hospitals, or for teaching 
 positions in nurses' training schools. There 
 is a nurse who is matriculated in "laundry 
 management " and will become the director 
 of a hospital laundry. Here are young 
 women preparing in house decoration or 
 interior decoration, others as costume de- 
 signers and illustrators, or as designers in 
 special industrial fields of unending variety. 
 Others of these young women of to-morrow 
 have entered for diplomas in household 
 administration and in dietetics; preparing, 
 some for general institutional management, 
 and others for the direction of the commissary 
 department of institutions, such as the school 
 and college dormitory, the asylum, the hos- 
 pital, and the orphanage — undertakings 
 that involve money, materials, and labor 
 in factory-like quantities and for which com- 
 pensation will be given according to the 
 
74 The School of To-morrow 
 
 responsibility involved. There are curricula 
 which prepare for the less ambitious but no 
 less important management of the private 
 home; and for a new field of special study, 
 that of nursery management, which promises 
 aid in the infant mortality campaign. Other 
 courses prepare for sanitary inspection of 
 markets, tenements, and food supplies, and 
 for various kinds of service in the municipal 
 housekeeping which now guards the private 
 home. Graduates of these institutes will 
 teach to all people the new science of right 
 living, and will make it the law of the land. 
 Here, then, is a technical school of colle- 
 giate rank for women, devoted to the develop- 
 ment upon a social scale of those household 
 activities which have long been women's 
 particular domain, and to the professional 
 training of women not only in the conduct 
 of the private house but also of the institution 
 and of related industrial undertakings. What 
 is being done in this building in Manhattan 
 is also under way in other university centres, 
 at Boston, Toronto, Chicago, and elsewhere. 
 In these collegiate schools of household 
 science and arts, which promise to be a feature 
 of American universities as common as schools 
 of engineering, the young woman of to- 
 
The Girl of To-morrow 75 
 
 morrow will find one of her most fascinating 
 fields of possible study. 
 
 And personal life and the private home 
 will not suffer in the education of the girl 
 of to-morrow. Some things seem fairly 
 certain. Every young woman (social para- 
 sites disregarded) will be taught some useful 
 livelihood which she will pursue at least 
 until marriage, in some cases after, and which 
 will be insurance if, after marriage, she is 
 again thrown upon her own resources; every 
 young woman will learn the elements of 
 household management in her public school 
 education, so that she may intelligently 
 direct a home, if it comes to her. The in- 
 dustries of the household will be increasingly 
 organized outside the home, and she will 
 bring to their direction her time-proved 
 standards of devotion, rendered more effec- 
 tive by scientific training and professional 
 preparation. With readjustment will come 
 opportunity for life as well as living, and 
 regard for liberal culture will accompany 
 industrial efficiency; this element will be 
 fostered in woman's education as well as in 
 man's, and to the girl of the future will be given 
 an education not only for efficient service but 
 for vigorous health and for liberal living. < 
 
The Girl of To-morrow 
 
THE GIRL OF TO-MORROW 
 
 WHAT THE SCHOOL WILL DO FOR HER 
 
 The article receiving the second prize in the World's 
 Work Educational Contest 
 
 BY EDITH HEDGES BAYLOR 
 
 Yesterday's little girl, neatly brushed 
 and crisply starched, walked primly off to 
 school for the first time. Her plump cheeks 
 burned as she thought of the untried way; 
 her heart beat fast with excitement, expec- 
 tancy, and the pride of her six years. She 
 hung her hat in the crowded coat room, where 
 it was overlapped on both sides by other 
 hats, and crept wide-eyed into the school, 
 that fortress of solemnity and oppressive 
 formalities. 
 
 Yesterday's child found the wooden seat 
 hard and uncompromising; to sit with her 
 arms folded behind her was torture; her feet 
 refused to remain side by side. Above all 
 she was uncomfortably warm, for the . day 
 was the hottest of the season. The whole 
 week was the hottest, yet sixty babies spent 
 
 79 
 
80 The School of To-morrow 
 
 their days from nine o'clock to twelve and 
 from two to four sweltering in a crowded room 
 working for the first time in their lives. 
 Most of them had been learning their letters 
 at home in their own happy way from blocks 
 or animal pictures — it had been fun, play. 
 Play! The word was a crime in the school- 
 room. Yesterday's child was a diminutive 
 adult, who had reached her eminence sud- 
 denly. She memorized all information, thereby 
 retarding the full development of her latent 
 powers of self-activity. The foundation 
 upon which the whole school fabric rested 
 was memory. No blessed phonetics or 
 constructive hand work led the way to 
 better insight. The child possessing the 
 most retentive memory kept at the head of 
 the class. If she stopped to think she was 
 lost. 
 
 To pass into a new reader from the mechan- 
 ically learned lessons of the last was an 
 event, as was also a new process in arithmetic. 
 
 Little Yesterday looked forward eagerly 
 to the mysteries of subtraction, though she 
 had no idea what the word meant. Alice in 
 Wonderland with her "Ambition, distraction, 
 uglification and derision," expresses the 
 anomaly. 
 
The Girl of To-morrow 81 
 
 George Madden Martin in her inimitable 
 "Emmy Lou" has put the subject in a nut- 
 shell. 
 
 " Yesterday the third section had said, 
 over and over, in chorus, 'One and one are 
 two, two and two are four/ etc., but to-day 
 they said, 'Two and one are three, two and 
 two are four.' Emmy Lou wondered, four 
 what? Which put her behind, so that when 
 she began again they were saying, 'Two and 
 four are six.' So now she knew, Four is 
 six. But what is six? Emmy Lou did not 
 know." 
 
 To Little Yesterday a river was a wavering 
 black line beautifying a map, a city was a dot, 
 and a state was an irregular section of a map, 
 peculiar in color and possessed of bounda- 
 ries. 
 
 Did she learn any music from the music 
 teacher who came one or two hours a week? 
 The drawing book, kept neatly on a shelf, 
 was an object of pride, but did it give the 
 child any idea of form and color? The music 
 teacher with his shaggy hair and odd ways 
 furnished much amusement and the drawing 
 lessons were fun, so perhaps the school 
 board had builded better than they knew. 
 
 At recess the children were turned loose 
 
82 The School of To-morrow 
 
 to do as they chose; some played too roughly, 
 some played too little, and others were left 
 out altogether. There was no organized 
 play, no guiding hand. A clanging bell 
 recalled them to the school-room, which with 
 the arrival of cold weather seemed less at- 
 tractive than ever for the heat radiated from 
 a corner stove and the only ventilation came 
 from open windows. The little ones near 
 the stove baked while those in the other 
 corners froze; all suffered from bad air, or 
 many caught cold. 
 
 The children sought diversion during school 
 hours by a frantic waving of the hand with, 
 "Please may I have a drink?" Then came 
 the lingering drink of water from a tin cup 
 used in turn by several hundred children. 
 Let us not forget the slate and the squawking 
 pencil, the bottle of soapy water ecstatically 
 shaken, and the gray rags, those successful 
 germ distributors, used for slates and general 
 desk-cleaning purposes. 
 
 Boys caused Yesterday to feel a distinct 
 form of terror. They were turbulent and 
 unexpected, even at the other side of the 
 room where they sat apart, the very fact 
 of their isolation leading them to feel a 
 responsibility of living up to their repu- 
 
The Girl of To-morrow 83 
 
 tation. One boy was so big and ugly that he 
 frightened Yesterday every time she looked 
 at him and she has never forgotten the day 
 when he was rattanned before the class. The 
 violence of the act was more of a shock to 
 the sensitive little girl than to the boy, who 
 was evidently accustomed to beatings at 
 home. 
 
 At another time Yesterday ran to her 
 mother with the startling information that 
 one of the boys was going to have his ears 
 boxed. What kind of a box could it be? 
 And how was it to be tied on? Yesterday 
 was conscientious; she felt it her duty to 
 keep in the first row and when, because of 
 an enforced absence from school or a slip 
 in some memory feat, she was moved down, 
 she cried bitterly, overcome with a sorrow 
 as poignant as the real griefs of after life. 
 Then there were pieces to be spoken, tortur- 
 ings of self-consciousness, except to the 
 children whose already unbearable smartness 
 was doubled. 
 
 The term was one long, nervous strain 
 for the small six-year-old; she became pale 
 and excitable, slept uneasily, and was ill 
 during the Christmas vacation. The doctor 
 said she must be kept out of school because 
 
84 The School of To-morrow 
 
 she needed the fresh air, and so lucky little 
 Yesterday shook out her prim braids as she 
 ran, laughing once more, into the world of 
 play. 
 
 Some of her companions survived the 
 school strain, either because they were of 
 more phlegmatic temperament or because 
 they had come from such wretched homes that 
 the school room with its stove seemed like 
 heaven. 
 
 During the school year measles, whoop- 
 ing cough, and diphtheria took their turns 
 with the children. It was a survival of the 
 toughest, not of the fittest. 
 
 Little Yesterday made up in three weeks 
 at home a half year's school work and entered 
 the second grade an older and a stronger child. 
 Her primary years, presided over by inex- 
 perienced teachers fresh from the normal 
 school, slipped by, and at last the great 
 dividing line between primary and the 
 grammar schools was reached. 
 
 Some of the children mysteriously dis- 
 appeared at this convenient stopping place, 
 but Yesterday went on. She had heard 
 repeatedly, "Wait until you get into Miss 
 Blake's room; she's awfully cross." 
 
 Obviously Miss Blake's every move was 
 
The Girl of To-morrow 85 
 
 interpreted as an evidence of crossness, and 
 so upon a basis of preconceived dislike the 
 unfortunate teacher struggled to interest 
 a room full of restless children, obliged to 
 sit in rigid, unnatural positions. If we have 
 sympathy for the child of the past we must 
 in all justice feel some for the teacher. When 
 she chanced to be a woman of originality she 
 thought out ways of encouraging it in her 
 pupils; she vitalized her subjects and en- 
 deavored to reach the individual. But her 
 day was sure to be short for she did not fit 
 in the machine. She wished for a pitcher 
 like that of old Baucis, in which the milk 
 bubbled up from within; the school system 
 demanded that the milk should be poured in. 
 Marks and examinations were "The be- 
 all and end-all." Yesterday would often 
 wake in the morning with a weight on her 
 chest, then suddenly she would remember 
 the impending examination in arithmetic. 
 She had studied all the previous afternoon 
 and evening and had slept with Franklin's 
 Written Arithmetic under her pillow. She 
 went to school wishing that she might change 
 places with every street laborer she met, 
 while rules and examples rushed confusedly 
 through her brain. The examination, 
 
S6 The School of To-morrow 
 
 whether she passed it or not, was in reality 
 no indication of her knowledge of the subject. 
 
 Edgar James Swift, in a recent article, 
 calls the examination, "A heritage from the 
 Middle Ages when knowledge of certain 
 definite and limited subjects was worshipped 
 with frantic fervor." 
 
 Rewards, won or lost, caused Yesterday 
 frequent pangs and many tears. Like the 
 marks and examinations, they established 
 a false standard. 
 
 Absence was a serious offence. Why? 
 Because a certain section of a certain lesson 
 in a book would be lost. Many a time 
 Yesterday went to school with a sore throat 
 rather than confess to it and be kept at home. 
 And frequently other children, less carefully 
 watched, remained in the school room with 
 well developed contagious diseases. 
 
 Three friends of Yesterday were thought 
 to be extremely dull. They battled 
 their way through several grades, always 
 depressed and ashamed of being near the 
 foot of the class. By some happy chance 
 it was finally discovered the one was deaf 
 and another near-sighted. The third con- 
 tinued "stupid" until one day in after years 
 when she startled the world by a brilliant 
 
The Girl of To-morrow 87 
 
 achievement. She had been the exceptional, 
 a typical child, too original to be restricted 
 by a narrow curriculum. 
 
 Yesterday was naturally tractable so that 
 conduct marks had no terrors for her, but 
 many of her companions must have thought 
 that school meant conduct marks. 
 
 Even good little Yesterday felt keen de- 
 light when she heard that a member of the 
 school committee had died, for she knew that 
 a holiday would follow. 
 
 The one-session bell pealed a joyful mes- 
 sage to her. 
 
 One day she met a companion on the street 
 and asked the meaning of a crowd in front 
 of the school building. "The school's on 
 fire and a good job, too. Hope teacher 
 burned," the friend replied, and to this 
 verdict Yesterday cheerfully assented. 
 
 At recess the girls, as in the primary 
 school, wandered about at will, the gregarious 
 tendency now well developed. There were 
 objectionable whispered discussions unpre- 
 vented by directed games or healthful ex- 
 ercise. 
 
 Annual class promotions preserved the 
 intactness of the school system. The bright 
 minds were levelled to the grade of the 
 
88 The School of To-morrow 
 
 mediocre, and the dull or actually defective 
 were prodded into places they could not fill. 
 
 No one human being could maintain a 
 careful and intelligent supervision of sixty 
 children. No teacher could keep in touch 
 with each girl or study her rapidly develop- 
 ing character, her dawning self-consciousness, 
 her idealization, which, undirected, often 
 became morbid. 
 
 The girl was the victim of three conflict- 
 ing forces: The educators, men whose purpose 
 was the preservation of the existing school 
 system; the home physician, who aimed to 
 establish the physical system of the girl 
 lest she become visually defective, anaemic, 
 nervous at a critical period of her develop- 
 ment; and the mother, whose love and am- 
 bition for her daughter were often at cross 
 purposes. 
 
 Little Yesterday outside the school room 
 led a happy, natural life; she had her chums 
 and her plays, she had her dancing school and 
 her music lessons. Many of her companions, 
 however, fared less well. Their home life 
 meant household drudgery and baby tending. 
 These tasks they undertook with no training 
 and no least assistance from the school. 
 
 Yesterday was graduated formally, ar- 
 
The Girl of To-morrow 89 
 
 rayed in fluffy white, her arms full of flowers. 
 She received her honors with a swelling heart 
 but deep down somewhere was a soreness, a 
 feeling of the injustice of things, because 
 some of the girls did not have white dresses 
 and many received no flowers. 
 
 When Yesterday entered the high school, 
 she felt that she had crossed over into a new 
 land, language and customs of which were 
 strange. At first she was lonely; for half 
 of her companions had dropped out either on 
 account of discouragement, or lack of in- 
 terest, or oftener because they had reached 
 the legal age for going to work in factories 
 or shops. 
 
 A pile of new books upon unfamiliar 
 subjects fired Yesterday with ambition; 
 she determined to make a valiant attack 
 but at the end of the first week her confidence 
 was shaken. Every period of every day had 
 found her in a different recitation room pre- 
 sided over by a different teacher, who 
 struggled to impart some information on 
 history, rhetoric, Latin, algebra, or zoology. 
 Just as Yesterday thought she could see how 
 she might understand some point in hand, a 
 bell would ring and the subject would be 
 dropped for several days possibly. The 
 
90 The School of To-morrow 
 
 inevitable result was confusion. The his- 
 tory was of one country, the literature of 
 another, the languages were unrelated to 
 either. 
 
 Poor little Yesterday had started with an 
 inborn love of poetry, but at the end of the 
 first [year in the High School, " Paradise 
 Lost" had become a mere conglomeration 
 of nouns and verbs, while " Gray's Elegy" 
 had degenerated into feet. 
 
 The spark of enthusiasm, of live interest 
 that Yesterday had felt was soon extinguished ; 
 she plodded on mechanically conforming 
 to the system, a satisfactory pupil because 
 she could adapt herself. Others rebelled 
 against restraint, or lost interest, dropping 
 out during the first year. 
 
 When the end of the four years had been 
 reached and Yesterday stood upon the 
 threshold of life, what equipment did she 
 have? She had acquired a smattering of 
 various subjects, a certain glibness; she auto- 
 matically conformed to established rules and 
 conditions — a doubtful good when balanced 
 against her loss of originality. She had little 
 initiative, she had no broad view of life as 
 a foundation to build upon, she had nothing 
 to link her with the real work of the world. 
 
The Girl of To-morrow 91 
 
 From the artificiality of her twelve years of 
 school life she now, with the others, entered 
 real life. 
 
 The girl wishing to enter the commercial 
 field sought specific training in a business 
 school. Her probable success or failure in 
 her business career and domestic life were 
 limited by the quality of her experience. 
 Business sense enabled her to give a surface 
 smoothness to the management of household 
 affairs but the real home atmosphere she 
 failed to establish. 
 
 She who had cherished through her school 
 life the purpose of becoming a teacher 
 attended the normal school for another 
 year and received her appointment to in- 
 struct the young. This occupation was 
 short lived as she soon reached her goal — 
 marriage, making an average success through 
 the excellence of her personal standards, 
 her adaptability, and her systematic 
 habits. 
 
 And if a girl wanted training for a social 
 life, she received no help whatever from 
 her years in high school. When her home 
 background was meagre and unorganized, 
 she was offered no chance to better her con- 
 ditions. She inevitably became the house- 
 
92 The School of To-morrow 
 
 hold drudge characterized by overwrought 
 nerves and understimulated mental powers. 
 
 Yesterday's career was for several years 
 in the social world then in a home of her 
 own, built on the model of her mother's 
 home. Her inheritance of artistic feeling, 
 the appreciation of good management, and 
 the high ideal of family life made her a true 
 helpmate without the cooperation of the 
 school. 
 
 The child of to-morrow begins life under 
 different circumstances. She is sound of 
 mind and body, and the training she receives 
 is of such a kind as to fire her with interest 
 in the great world of which her school world 
 forms a part. 
 
 In the kindergarten year she is disci- 
 plined and socialized by contact with others. 
 Through industry she approaches deftness 
 and achieves concentration. She delights 
 in the singing which vivifies everything from 
 the pussy willow which she has found to 
 the love binding the family together. She 
 sings lustily, gaining a sense of rhythm; her 
 perceptions of form and color are guided; 
 while in the games she learns the important 
 lesson of cooperation, she feels the zest of the 
 contest, she knows the meaning of fair play, 
 
The Girl of To-morrow 93 
 
 and becomes a tiny law-abiding and law- 
 loving citizen. 
 
 Froebel's three great principles of Unity, 
 Continuity, and Self-activity have weathered 
 the storm of sentimentality and have formed 
 the framework and inspiration of the whole 
 school structure. 
 
 At last little To-morrow is led from the 
 kindergarten into another room where she 
 is greeted by a smiling teacher and a group 
 of happy girls and boys. The room is bright 
 and homelike, pleasing in tone and decoration. 
 At the windows are flowers, thriving in the 
 pure air and even temperature. 
 
 To-morrow slips into one of the inviting 
 chairs placed at the low, round tables, and 
 joins in the singing. She is encouraged 
 to choose a song — one that tells of the 
 woods. Soon the children picture themselves 
 camping in the forest. They are Indians 
 in the time before the white man came. 
 What should they eat? What could they 
 wear? What would form their houses? 
 They are guided to think out primal needs, 
 to see how seed gathered from grasses is 
 made into porridge, the fibre of plants woven 
 into cloth, and how the branches of trees are 
 bound together to form tents. In this 
 
94 The School of To-morrow 
 
 study they perceive the necessity for tools 
 and the possible utilization of Nature's 
 implements. 
 
 The next step is a dramatization of the 
 scenes they have pictured. They plan 
 the stage setting and the costumes, doing 
 the work as far as possible themselves, thus 
 using and enlarging their conception of form 
 and color. In learning their parts they 
 take up the good use of words with their 
 relations to one another. Simultaneously 
 they absorb their first lessons in history. By 
 the time they have actually presented their 
 little play these children of a complex world 
 know what are the actual necessities of 
 life; they see how human beings transform 
 materials to suit their needs. Gradually 
 they become familiar with the nature of 
 materials used in every day life; textiles; 
 wood, iron, tin, brass; the tools made from 
 these ; the processes evolved in their practical 
 application; and the products resulting from 
 all this interaction. 
 
 The children vie with each other in doing 
 the school room caretaking, performing 
 little duties in getting ready for the day's 
 work, and in straightening up afterward. 
 To-morrow is proud when she is allowed to 
 
The Girl of To-morrow 95 
 
 help set the tables upon which the luncheon 
 cooked by the older girls is served. Later 
 on at home she demonstrates her new 
 accomplishment. 
 
 More than anything To-morrow enjoys 
 the walks out of doors in the park surround- 
 ing the school, and the nature study, which 
 continues through the cold weather in ample 
 conservatories. Then there are the games, 
 interesting games, from which To-morrow 
 learns more than poor little Yesterday had 
 ever been able to extract from books. 
 
 How the teacher of the old school would 
 have scoffed at the new way! She used to 
 complain that the children who came from 
 the kindergarten wished to play all the time. 
 Of course they did; it was the child nature 
 striving to express itself. But the old 
 educators thought, " These children must 
 work in our way, they must fit into the 
 system." Now the child is taught through 
 her own natural impulses, the system being 
 a result of the child's development. 
 
 Every teacher is a college graduate, the 
 product of years of deep study of psychology 
 and sociology. With but twelve to twenty 
 children in her class she has time to consider 
 the individual need with real insight and to 
 
96 The School of To-morrow 
 
 make of each well balanced group a working 
 unit. She has formulated with the other 
 teachers a definite plan for accomplishing 
 the work allotted to that particular school; 
 her own class has certain ground to cover, 
 but to her is entrusted the method of reach- 
 ing the desired end. There are no hard and 
 fast lines to make monotonous the carrying 
 out year after year of the underlying plan. 
 The teacher is broad, original, human. She 
 investigates the background of the pupils 
 and if a child comes to school hungry and 
 half clad, she finds out why. She knows the 
 mothers of the poor and helps them to work 
 out the home problems; she meets the mothers 
 of the well-to-do children and enlists their 
 assistance and interest in this uplifting work. 
 At last the teacher, the physician, and the 
 mother are working together. 
 
 A trained nurse cooperates with the 
 school physician in doing preventive work; 
 for the day of preventive treatment has 
 come and the gymnasium depletes the 
 hospital. 
 
 The cry of the old school system had 
 been, "We cannot afford to have so many 
 teachers nor can we afford to pay the salaries 
 of experts." How strange, too, in that day 
 
The Girl of To-morrow 97 
 
 of mad specialization when the expert was 
 demanded in every branch of national enter- 
 prise. Public opinion has found it a wiser 
 economy to humanize education. The cost 
 of more and better teachers is offset by honest 
 administration. While To-morrow's dynamic 
 power increases human wealth, Yesterday's 
 static virtues but conserved it. 
 
 One day little To-morrow runs eagerly 
 to the library to investigate the subject 
 of fire, for she has now grown old enough 
 to help cook the school luncheon, and fire 
 is of course the first thing to consider. The 
 librarian, who has been primed by the 
 teacher, guides To-morrow in her choice 
 of books so that she quickly becomes ab- 
 sorbed. She follows fire from the spark 
 generated by the twirling stick or struck 
 from flint and steel, on through the ages 
 of progression to the present day. When 
 she reaches school the next morning she 
 is bursting with information. There is a 
 general discussion in the class and the teacher 
 illustrates the subject so far as possible with 
 objects from the school museum to which 
 the children from time to time contribute 
 pieces of handiwork and collections of their 
 own making. The class is led on step by 
 
98 The School of To-morrow 
 
 step from the history to the actual cooking, 
 and around this subject as a nucleus the work 
 of a certain period of the school year is 
 grouped. Chemistry, physics, hygiene are 
 taken up with this laboratory work; mathe- 
 matics are built up from handling quantities, 
 weights and measures; physical geography 
 and the geography of locality are evolved 
 from the study of food stuffs; English comes 
 in the reading of stories relating to the 
 central study and expressing the activities 
 of various national interests; talks on the 
 subjects become grammar lessons and these 
 often terminate in the written theme. 
 
 Sometimes the class gives a little concert 
 for the children in a hospital and there 
 To-morrow's sympathies are aroused by a 
 cripple for whom she determines to make a 
 wrapper, sewing having now become the 
 central idea of the school work. To-morrow 
 plans the garment to be made and designs 
 the trimming. From this starting point she 
 is led on to an interest in making designs for 
 various sorts of fabric and her fingers learn 
 to be skilful. The work shops have become 
 busy places. 
 
 Several rooms of the school have been 
 fitted up as a model house and here the chil- 
 
The Girl of To-morrow 99 
 
 dren learn the principles of sanitation and 
 housekeeping. 
 
 To-morrow returns home one day with the 
 thrilling news that Mary Poor's baby has 
 spent the morning at the school. She 
 tells how the school nurse bathed, dressed 
 and fed the baby, putting it to sleep in a 
 little bed. She ends with the exclamation, 
 "We are all going to take care of our babies 
 just the same way!" 
 
 Ample time has come for such work with 
 the elimination of routine and of useless 
 book study. In small classes every moment 
 counts, there is no waste. Each child 
 progresses as fast as her development will 
 permit, regardless of regular promotions. No 
 grade lines suggest dropping out of school. 
 In addition to this it becomes evident even 
 to the poorest parent that the school has 
 discovered what the girl can do best and is 
 training her in the way of that aptitude, to 
 the end of making her a more efficient wage 
 earner and at the same time a more useful 
 factor in the home. 
 
 When To-morrow is thirteen she has 
 advanced from the elementary to the 
 secondary school in which her work goes 
 on without a break,, except that at this point 
 
ioo The School of To-morrow 
 
 she has to choose between a course leading 
 to college and one that leads to the making 
 of a livelihood. She is fortunately enabled 
 to make college her aim, and as she knows 
 from her work in the elementary school that 
 her natural inclination is toward scientific 
 study, the accent is placed upon science, 
 though the course is broad and well rounded. 
 Her physical welfare is considered first of 
 all and she is often in the gymnasium, swim- 
 ming in the pool, or taking part in competitive 
 athletics. Her practical training in house- 
 keeping continues in connection with chemis- 
 try, physics, and art work and she has made 
 great headway in botany, zoology and 
 geology. Her social instincts, which have 
 been unfolding for many years, are broadened 
 and deepened. 
 
 She has reached an age of confidence in 
 herself and so she finds joy in being original. 
 The opportunity is given her to face many 
 problems at issue, perhaps first the " Servant 
 question." She works out the proper train- 
 ing for the servant, the position she should 
 occupy, she even practically demonstrates 
 her theory by taking the part of a servant 
 for a group of classmates. Again she studies 
 the responsibility of the shop girl to the 
 
The Girl of To-morrow 101 
 
 employer, or, perhaps, the duties of one 
 member of a family to the others. 
 
 She is required to take one modern lan- 
 guage, besides English, and she may choose 
 Latin or Greek, but only as a philological 
 background. She looks to mathematics to 
 interpret by its symbolisms the numerical 
 values in her practical problems. 
 
 The whole school, girls and boys, rejoice 
 in music. There are groups doing orchestral 
 work, and there are great choruses. The 
 popular taste is thus cultivated and individual 
 genius is encouraged by the increased appre- 
 ciation of the mass. The art work is a study 
 of form for decoration, for better dress de- 
 signs, for beautifying homes and gardens, 
 for training ready illustrative ability as an 
 aid to written language. 
 
 The majority of To-morrow's companions 
 choose the preparation for earning a liveli- 
 hood and are enabled by the school to go 
 into some specific line of employment at the 
 end of each year. Their interrupted educa- 
 tion may be supplemented by night school 
 courses leading to the diploma. In the day 
 school they pursue work — physical, prac- 
 tical, scientific, literary, and social. When 
 they go directly into business from the 
 
102 The School of To-morrow 
 
 secondary school they give increasing satis- 
 faction because of their special training, 
 general information, and because of their 
 knowledge of workers' responsibilities. Mar- 
 riage for them is probable, due to their 
 associations, and successful by reason of 
 their school training in service. 
 
 To-morrow's college life is one of enrich- 
 ment and enlightenment. In addition to 
 science and literature she takes economic, 
 sociologic, psychologic studies; she does 
 observation work and makes researches; she 
 carries on the scientific investigation of 
 common things. Time is allotted for prac- 
 tical work in organizing and conducting 
 charities, in order to encourage and enlarge 
 To-morrow's cooperative ideas and plans. 
 That which is attained is not scholarship 
 as such, but the merciful and just inter- 
 pretation of human life. 
 
 Many vocations are open to the college 
 girl — literary, scientific, and artistic work, 
 secretarial, managerial, and professional. Her 
 efficiency is great and her standard is high. 
 Her opportunities for marriage are numerous 
 but her choice is deferred because her interest 
 in her work seems adequately to fill her life. 
 When she does marry the success of the step 
 
The Girl of To-morrow 103 
 
 is assured by her ability to choose wisely, 
 and by her liberal education, general culture, 
 and because of her thoroughly disciplined 
 mind and heart. 
 
 The girl who goes from college into social 
 life finds a multiplicity of opportunities for 
 influence and for philanthropic work. Her 
 marriage is definitely characterized by the 
 desire to serve, by fitness for companionship, 
 and for the responsibilities of motherhood. 
 
 To-morrow chooses teaching as her voca- 
 tion from a desire to impart and to direct 
 the developing body and mind. Success 
 is assured because of her broadened outlook 
 on life and because of the quality of her 
 personal experience, which inevitably leads 
 her into the van of progressive movements. 
 Her marriage is purposeful and successful, 
 for in her the mating instinct has not been 
 eradicated, neither has it been made the 
 object of life. She is a wholesome, joyous, 
 capable, sympathetic, helpful woman. 
 
 Yesterday and To-morrow, as affected 
 by the school of the old order and of the 
 new, vary essentially in the extent and 
 depth of their influence as women in the 
 home. Yesterday presided over her family 
 
104 The School of To-morrow 
 
 making it a little world of her own from 
 which she viewed the passing of people and 
 events as incidental to her life. To-morrow 
 with her family as a social group lives in 
 and for the larger world, feeling and under- 
 standing its throbbing interest from her 
 stronghold of soul satisfaction in her im- 
 mediate field of unselfish and constructive 
 service. Yesterday appreciated the public 
 need for the guiding help of capable women 
 in its economic and social problems, but her 
 absorbing household routine rarely allowed 
 her to contribute herself or her thought to 
 any active promotion of philanthropic work. 
 To-morrow grows up with the industrial 
 and social life of her day, has the view point 
 of a responsible and responsive member of 
 society, knows how so to economize her time 
 and strength that she largely controls her 
 home conditions, and can give her share 
 of service to the advancement of general 
 welfare. Society, school, and home — all are 
 both beneficiaries and benefactors in this 
 new order, because, by developing the poten- 
 tialities of the school-girl's human endow- 
 ment, they enable her to realize herself while 
 she is yet on the road to womanhood. 
 
Half Time at School and Half Time 
 at Work 
 
HALF TIME AT SCHOOL AND HALF 
 TIME AT WORK 
 
 COOPERATIVE EDUCATION, THE PLAN OF THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI, WHICH IS 
 WORKING WITH THE INDUSTRIAL PLANTS, 
 THE LIBRARIES, THE SCHOOLS, AND EVERY 
 OTHER ACTIVE AGENCY TO SERVE ALL THE 
 PEOPLE OF THE CITY 
 
 BY FRANK PARKER STOCKBRIDGE 
 
 A dozen or so clean-shaven young fellows 
 working in a Union Pacific section gang one 
 hot summer day in 1910 seemed to a curious 
 observer so much more like trained athletes 
 than they did like section hands that he was 
 impelled to ask: 
 
 "Are you fellows working for the railroad, 
 or are you in training for something?" 
 
 "Oh, this is our steady job," was the reply. 
 
 "Expect to stick to it long?" 
 
 "Only till college opens in the fall." 
 
 "Oh, I see — working your way through 
 college? " 
 
 "Well, not exactly that. You see, we're 
 from the University of Cincinnati and this 
 
 107 
 
108 The School of To-morrow 
 
 is part of our regular five-year course in 
 engineering. We're ' coop.' " 
 
 Among a score of big-muscled giants 
 working on the molding floor of a Cincinnati 
 foundry a lithe, determined-looking youth, 
 tamping sand in a flask, attracted the at- 
 tention of a visitor. 
 
 " Bright-looking fellow, that," he com- 
 mented to the superintendent. 
 
 "He ought to be. He's one of the 
 University students — a 'coop,'" was the 
 reply. 
 
 "Where's that bright apprentice who ex- 
 plained the working of this machine to me 
 last week?" a customer asked the manager 
 of a large Cincinnati machine-tool works. 
 
 "He isn't here this week — it's his week 
 in college. You see, he's a 'coop.'" 
 
 "What is a 'coop?'" I asked Dr. Charles 
 William Dabney, president of the University 
 of Cincinnati. "What kind of a university 
 is this, anyway, where your students spend 
 their time in track-ballasting, in iron-molding, 
 and in machine- tending? " 
 
 "Answering your last question first," 
 replied President Dabney, "this is a different 
 
Half Time at School and at Work 109 
 
 kind of a university. It is the only municipal 
 university in the world. We occupy the 
 same relation to the city of Cincinnati that 
 the great state universities do to their states. 
 We are trying to make a people's university, 
 just as the state universities are doing. But 
 the state universities cannot solve our muni- 
 cipal educational problems. We are trying 
 to solve them here, and the big problem we 
 are working on is how to connect everything 
 in Cincinnati with the University. 
 
 "We believe that every school should be 
 a part of the body politic and not a separate 
 thing. We have, therefore, established in- 
 timate relations with the public- school 
 system, the libraries, the art museums, 
 the hospitals, the charity organizations, 
 the natural history museums and the zo- 
 ological garden, the local colleges for training 
 ministers, and, most important of all, with 
 the business men and manufacturers of the 
 city. We believe in training our students 
 for the service of the city while they are 
 still students. For this reason, we put them 
 to work in the industries, in the University 
 Settlement, in the hospitals, and in the public 
 schools while they are still being educated." 
 
 I began to get a glimmer of what a "coop" 
 
no The School of To-morrow 
 
 might be. "Then you take these mechanical 
 apprentices in as students?" I suggested. 
 
 "It's the other way about," replied Dr. 
 Dabney. "The shops and the railroads take 
 our students in as apprentices. But that is 
 only one phase of the cooperative idea. Our 
 whole ideal is 'Cooperation in Service'; that 
 is, cooperation with all the existing institu- 
 tions and agencies in the city in the service 
 of all the people." 
 
 "And a 'coop' is, " I began. 
 
 "A 'coop,'" interrupted Dr. Dabney, 
 "is a student in the cooperative course in 
 our College of Engineering. That course 
 has probably attracted more attention than 
 any other that we have here because it is 
 the first instance of cooperation for education 
 between a university and the business of a 
 city. All the great industries were demand- 
 ing engineers of construction and all were 
 declaring that the college was not producing 
 them, even when an apprenticeship followed 
 the college course. But the college could 
 not provide great shops with up-to-the- 
 minute machinery for the training of en- 
 gineers, and it became evident that some sort 
 of cooperation with the real shops was 
 necessary. 
 
Half Time at School and at Work in 
 
 "While we were working on this problem 
 a young engineer dropped in with the answer. 
 He was Herman Schneider, a graduate of 
 Lehigh University, who had taught in his 
 alma mater for several years and then had 
 spent six years in steel construction work 
 and railroad engineering. He had a plan 
 for a new type of institution to train engineers. 
 We told him to go ahead, and he did, working 
 out all the details as he went along with a 
 skill only possible for a man who knew both 
 the college and the demands of industry. 
 He is Dean of our College of Engineering 
 now. He can tell you what they have there 
 better than I can." 
 
 "We have the hardest- working group of 
 college students in the world," said Dean 
 Schneider, in answer to my question. "They 
 are working eleven months in the year, ten 
 or twelve hours a day, for a five years' course, 
 half of the time in the hardest kind of manual 
 labor, and the principal trouble we have is 
 to keep them from over- working." 
 
 "You are developing a new type of college 
 student then?" I suggested. 
 
 "The type has developed itself," replied 
 Professor Schneider. "It is the result of 
 a selective process in picking our students. 
 
ii2 The School of To-morrow 
 
 In 1906, the first year of the cooperative 
 course, fifteen out of the sixty applicants 
 dropped out as soon as they learned that they 
 would have to soil their hands and get to 
 work at seven o'clock in the morning. Only 
 twenty-eight of the remaining forty-five 
 stuck through the preliminary summer shop 
 work which those who are enrolled have to 
 do before entering the University in the fall. 
 Now we have thousands of applicants every 
 year and we pick only those who give the 
 best evidence of willingness to work hard. 
 We paint the shop end of the course in broad, 
 black, sweaty strokes, and the boy who tackles 
 the first summer's work after that is likely 
 to have good stuff in him. If he hasn't, 
 the shop will uncover a ' yellow streak' before 
 the University suspects it." 
 
 "How do you keep the students in touch 
 with both the University and the shops, 
 and how does the University keep in touch 
 with what the students are doing in the 
 shops?" I asked. 
 
 "We group the students in each course, 
 mechanical, electrical, civil, or metallurgical 
 engineering in pairs," said Professor Schneider, 
 "and while one of the pair is in the shop, 
 the other is in the University attending 
 
Half Time at School and at Work 113 
 
 classes and doing laboratory work. The 
 University course is repeated the next week 
 for the students who were working the week 
 before. Then I have a staff of assistant 
 professors, whom we call ' coordinators/ 
 who are college graduates acquainted with 
 shop practice, who spend their mornings at 
 the University and their afternoons in the 
 shops. Their function is to make a direct 
 weekly coordination of the theory of the 
 University with the practice of the shops. 
 Figuratively speaking, the coordinators 
 take from the student apprentices the 
 blinders which would restrict their vision 
 except for the coordinator explanatory 
 work." 
 
 "What has been the effect on the Uni- 
 versity?" I inquired. 
 
 "It has made us inquire into the efficiency 
 of our teaching," said Professor Schneider. 
 "It has caused a complete reorganization 
 and reclassification of courses. We have a 
 progressive crowd of students to keep up 
 with. They come from their week in the 
 shop vigorous and eager for the class-room 
 and laboratory work. They want a reason 
 for everything and they seek the practiced 
 application of the academic theories. We are 
 
ii4 The School of To-morrow 
 
 learning as much about teaching as the stu- 
 dents are about engineering. " 
 
 President Dabney had expressed the same 
 idea a little differently. "It is the best 
 method I know," he said, "of pulling the 
 teacher down out of the clouds and making 
 him lay hold of the real facts of nature and 
 of life. It makes the teacher of economics 
 look into the actual conditions of labor when 
 the boys whom he is teaching are working 
 side by side with union men in the shops; 
 and it makes the teacher of mechanical 
 engineering keep up with the best shop 
 practice of the day when his students are 
 familiar with it in actual operation, and are 
 asking questions out of their working ex- 
 perience. These students push their teachers 
 harder than any students that I ever knew." 
 
 "How do the manufacturers take to the 
 idea of college students for apprentices?" 
 I asked Dean Schneider. 
 
 "They are eager to get them. When 
 we finish our new building for the College 
 of Engineering, which will give us more 
 teaching and laboratory facilities, we shall 
 have no trouble in placing in the shops many 
 more than the 176 students whom we have 
 now in the cooperative course. We have 
 
Half Time at School and at Work 115 
 
 applications literally by thousands from all 
 over the world. I received one not long ago 
 from the Gold Coast of Africa. We give 
 the preference to Cincinnati students, but 
 we have many boys from other places." 
 
 "Do the manufacturers pay the students 
 for their work? " 
 
 "The student receives the same pay as 
 any other apprentice — ten cents an hour — 
 when he starts in the shop. That is 
 increased every six months until, in the 
 last semester of his course, the student is 
 earning nineteen cents an hour. If he fails 
 to make good in the shop, he loses his job, 
 like any other apprentice, and this entails 
 being dropped from the University. If 
 he fails in his University work, he is dropped 
 and loses his job in the shop. But if he makes 
 good he can earn nearly $1,400 more than his 
 University expenses during the rive years of 
 the course. And when the student is 
 graduated he is ready to step into a posi- 
 tion as a superintendent of workmen. Our 
 civil engineering students who worked in 
 a section gang on the Union Pacific last 
 summer will go back there as section bosses 
 next summer. In the machine shop we have 
 had trouble keeping some of our students 
 
n6 The School of To-morrow 
 
 in the University because of the tempting 
 offers that have been made to them by manu- 
 facturers." 
 
 "What is going to be the ultimate effect 
 of this cooperative system on technical 
 education in general?" I hazarded. 
 
 "A radical change in much of the future 
 instruction in engineering colleges will be 
 one effect," he replied. "The term 'engi- 
 neering college' is too restrictive. What we 
 shall probably be, is a 'college of industrial 
 science.' There is just as much natural 
 science and just as much business science 
 needed for building a piano as for building 
 a dynamo. If a college of engineering were 
 to place in its curriculum a course in piano 
 building, a howl of derision would arise 
 throughout the educational world. But, 
 since our colleges are endowed for the benefit 
 of the public and not to make life's pathway 
 easier for the individual, it should be obvious 
 that to meet the requirements of an industrial 
 community the college of engineering must 
 broaden into a college of industrial science. 
 The need for this has been brought forcibly 
 to us by manufacturers in the so-called minor 
 industries, who have proven to us the great 
 dearth of well-trained men for their work. 
 
Half Time at School and at Work 117 
 
 "Another and bigger development will 
 be the growth, by the side of the College 
 of Industrial Science, of an Institute of In- 
 dustrial Research, to which the superin- 
 tendent of a shop may take his problem and 
 work side by side with a good research man 
 at its solution. If cooperative courses are 
 started at other institutions, as promises 
 to be the case, they will inevitably become 
 colleges of industrial science, with an in- 
 stitute for industrial research attached. It 
 is obvious that these institutes should be 
 under one central management, so that 
 several of them would not be working on the 
 same problem. There should be a central 
 office and library, to which all problems should 
 first be submitted. Here the available 
 knowledge relating to the problem would 
 be collated and the best research mind and 
 the best laboratory to handle it would be 
 selected. With the influence of such a central 
 bureau the use of a full-sized commercial 
 plant could be obtained if necessary for an 
 actual full-sized experiment. This would 
 mean a National Institute of Industrial 
 Research at the minimum cost. It would 
 result ultimately in an institute for indus- 
 trial research close to every manufacturing 
 
n8 The School of To-morrow 
 
 centre, with the best brains of the country 
 available for every local problem. As 
 planned at Cincinnati, the cooperative stu- 
 dents in their later years would assist 
 research men in problems closely allied to 
 their particular work." 
 
 This industrial cooperation is only one 
 of the points at which the University comes 
 into contact with the daily life of the people 
 of Cincinnati. There is cooperation be- 
 tween the University's College of Medicine 
 and the hospitals of the city. All the medical 
 and surgical work in seven of the largest 
 hospitals is done by the professors of the 
 college. There is cooperation between the 
 University and the city's charities and 
 philanthropies. There is direct cooperation 
 with the people through the external courses 
 in the branch libraries and public school 
 buildings, for which full University credit 
 is given. There is cooperation between 
 the University and the city bureaus in the 
 testing of materials, machinery, and methods 
 for doing various municipal work. And 
 there is cooperation between the University 
 and the public schools through the College 
 for Teachers. 
 
 In the College for Teachers the coopera- 
 
Half Time at School and at Work 119 
 
 tion with the Superintendent and Board 
 of Education consists not merely in educating 
 new teachers but in improving the old 
 teachers and in supplying expert advice for 
 all kinds of betterment in the city schools. 
 In 1910, 565 of the 1 100 public-school 
 teachers of Cincinnati were taking some 
 course in the University. The University 
 professor of secondary education is inspector 
 for the Superintendent of Schools on high- 
 school teaching and he examines the teachers 
 for the city high schools. The professor 
 of elementary education renders similar 
 administrative service. Every public school 
 in the city is an adjunct to the College for 
 Teachers and its students are trained in these 
 schools. 
 
 "This cooperation with the school system 
 is really the most fundamentally important 
 thing we are doing," declared President 
 Dabney, "so far as all the people of Cin- 
 cinnati are concerned." 
 
 Inspired by the success of the cooperative 
 idea in the work of the University, the people 
 of Cincinnati have extended it to the public- 
 school system. The first step in this direc- 
 tion was the establishment, in 1909, of the 
 Continuation School for machine-shop ap- 
 
120 The School of To-morrow 
 
 prentices, the first of its kind in America. 
 The experiment has proved so successful 
 that continuation schools for other classes 
 of young workers are being started, and, 
 under the enthusiastic direction of Dr. Frank- 
 lin B. Dyer, Superintendent of Schools, 
 the whole school system is being brought 
 into cooperative touch with the city's 
 activities. 
 
 One of the big factories had been main- 
 taining a school for apprentices at its own 
 expense. It agreed to turn over its school 
 plant and its instructor, Mr. J. Howard 
 Renshaw, to the public-school service, and 
 in September, 1909, the first Continuation 
 School for mechanics was opened in a rented 
 room. Eighteen manufacturers agreed to 
 send their apprentices for four hours a week 
 (and later increased the time to a full day), 
 paying the boys for their time. Two hundred 
 pupils were enrolled when the school opened. 
 There are three times that many now. With 
 a school equipment consisting of a number of 
 sets of blue-prints and a stack of machinery 
 catalogues, Mr. Renshaw set to work to 
 put his students, some high-school graduates, 
 some wholly uneducated, through a four 
 years' course. 
 
Half Time at School and at Work 121 
 
 The blue-prints served as textbooks for 
 teaching the scholars to read drawings; the 
 catalogues served every other text-book 
 purpose. Shop spelling was mastered from 
 them; the "parts lists" not only provided 
 exercises in reading and spelling but gave 
 the apprentices new ideas of the work they 
 were doing in the shops, where boys may 
 tend machines for years without gaining 
 any conception of the purpose of the article 
 which they are manufacturing. In mathe- 
 matics, ingenious methods of instructing the 
 boys and at the same time interesting them 
 have been devised. Addition of common 
 fractions occurs as an exercise with a scale 
 and the thumbnail; multiplication of frac- 
 tions is accomplished with the layout of a 
 machine drive in which the number of teeth 
 in the gears are used for the numerators 
 and denominators. Decimals are taught by 
 working out theoretical shop payrolls. The 
 geography of iron and coal, something of the 
 science of steel, and some popular natural 
 philosophy have been found to be assimilated 
 quite readily. Mr. Renshaw and his assis- 
 tants spend two half-days in the shops 
 every week, keeping in practical touch with 
 what the apprentices are doing and thus 
 
122 The School of To-morrow 
 
 coordinating the work of the Continuation 
 School to that of the factories. 
 
 "It is an intellectual plunge-bath once 
 a week for the boys," said Superintendent 
 Dyer. "They come into frequent and vital 
 contact with a teacher who is a live wire — 
 a man who knows their troubles and their 
 possibilities and who is the best man in all 
 the city to awaken their powers. They 
 become awakened, interested, quickened into 
 new ambition — probably forever different 
 in their attitude toward their work. We 
 hear about the conservation of our national 
 resources. What we are attempting is the 
 conservation of our greatest national asset, 
 the young workman." 
 
 So well has this first Continuation School 
 served the purpose for which it was estab- 
 lished that the Cincinnati Board of Educa- 
 tion has offered to open similar schools for 
 apprentices in any other industries whose 
 employers will send them, and has obtained 
 from the Ohio legislature a law making 
 attendance in such schools compulsory for 
 all boys and girls under sixteen. 
 
 As it brings the University, so the coopera- 
 tive idea brings the public-school system 
 of Cincinnati into touch with the life of the 
 
Half Time at School and at Work 123 
 
 city at many other points. There is coopera- 
 tion with the Odontological Society, resulting 
 in a free dental clinic in one of the school 
 buildings; cooperation with the Anti-Tuber- 
 culosis League in its educational work; 
 cooperation with the public library, and co- 
 operation with the people through the use 
 of the school buildings for mothers' clubs, 
 for improvement associations, and for neigh- 
 borhood societies. And the field of coopera- 
 tion is constantly being extended. 
 
 What the citizens of Cincinnati think of 
 the cooperative idea is best told by the manu- 
 facturers who have had the best opportunity 
 to judge of its value. I questioned many of 
 the 32 concerns that are cooperating with 
 the University in its engineering course and 
 many of the 21 establishments whose ap- 
 prentices attend the Continuation School, 
 and with hardly an exception they were loud 
 in their praises of the idea and of its practical 
 working. 
 
 "We have had occasion to employ a number 
 of young graduates in mechanical engineer- 
 ing from institutions giving the usual four 
 years' course," said Frederick A. Geier, 
 president of the Cincinnati Milling Machine 
 Company. "We now have twenty of the 
 
124 The School of To-morrow 
 
 cooperative students taking the mechanical 
 engineering course in the University. Judg- 
 ing from our own experience, we feel certain 
 that the graduates from the University of 
 Cincinnati will prove far more useful to us 
 than the average student that comes to us 
 from the other schools. The Cincinnati 
 boys have as much theoretical training as 
 they would get elsewhere, and they are also 
 in touch with the practical and commercial 
 side of the business. We have about forty 
 apprentices attending the Continuation 
 School and we have noticed a decided im- 
 provement in the efficiency of these boys. 
 The value of the Continuation School has 
 been so evident that the men requested a 
 class to be formed for them. This class is 
 in operation, and now the foremen of the 
 shops have asked for a class devoted to their 
 interests. I believe that the time has come 
 when attendance at continuation schools 
 should be made compulsory through the 
 youth's apprenticeship. " 
 
 "The cooperative engineering course is 
 a most pronounced success; so much so that 
 this company has requested several of the 
 students to give us the first opportunity 
 for their services when the course is over," 
 
Half Time at School and at Work 125 
 
 said Mr. William Lodge, president of the 
 Lodge & Shipley Company, a veteran of the 
 machine-tool industry. "We have eighteen 
 students from our establishment in the 
 Continuation School for machine-shop ap- 
 prentices, and the foremen, the superinten- 
 dent, and myself are delighted with the 
 results so far." 
 
 "We have in our works from twenty to 
 thirty young men who attend the Continua- 
 tion School one half-day a week. We also 
 have six young men who attend the Uni- 
 versity of Cincinnati every alternate week," 
 said Mr. J. B. Doan, general manager of the 
 American Tool Works Company. "We con- 
 sider both plans a thorough success, and it is 
 our belief that the Continuation School will 
 develop young men into better workmen, 
 to occupy positions as foremen and as super- 
 intendents, while the University course will 
 develop them for the higher branches of 
 engineering." 
 
 "The boys who are taking the coopera- 
 tive course in the University and the boys 
 who are attending the Continuation School 
 are forging their way upward through the 
 shop organization at a much more rapid 
 pace than are their less ambitious co-em- 
 
126 The School of To-morrow 
 
 ployees," said Mr. F. E. LeBlond of the 
 R. K. LeBlond Machine Tool Company. 
 
 So the testimony runs. Throughout the 
 city the enthusiasm inspired by President 
 Dabney, Dean Schneider, Dr. Dyer, and Mr. 
 Renshaw is spreading. The people are alive 
 to the new educational possibilities which 
 these cooperative experiments have opened 
 to the imagination. A new interest in 
 education has been developed, and, as one 
 observer puts it, " Cincinnati is becoming 
 one big schoolhouse.' , The fame of the co- 
 operative idea is traveling. Other engineer- 
 ing colleges are preparing to follow the ex- 
 ample of the University, and other cities are 
 adopting the Continuation School plan. 
 The citizens of Cincinnati are again quoting 
 with pride the comment of Charles Dickens, 
 written seventy years ago: 
 
 " Cincinnati is honorably famous for its 
 Tree schools, of which it has so many that 
 no person's child among its population can, by 
 any possibility, want the means of education." 
 
How to Choose a Public-School 
 Teacher 
 
HOW TO CHOOSE A PUBLIC-SCHOOL 
 TEACHER 
 
 BY WILLIAM McANDREW 
 
 (PRINCIPAL OF THE WASHINGTON IRVING HIGH SCHOOL, NEW YORK CITY) 
 
 If you want to choose a man, you will 
 need to make haste — for the annual reports 
 of the Commissioner of Education show that 
 the pedagogicus masculinus is disappearing 
 so rapidly that it will soon be extinct. 
 
 If you seek a female teacher, choose an 
 Irish girl. This kind stands the strain best. 
 If it had not been for the light-heartedness 
 of the Irish race its own heavy history would 
 have killed it. These merry young women, 
 in spite of the excessive formalism and system 
 that have encrusted American education, 
 are the best able to keep the bright side of 
 schooling turned upward. An Irish teacher 
 can't be imposed upon. Forty boys some- 
 times get the devil into each one of them, 
 all at once. The rules nowadays prevent 
 you from driving him out by muscle. The 
 Irish girl laughs at him. If any boy takes a 
 
 129 
 
130 The School of To-morrow 
 
 mean advantage of her, she can launch an 
 outburst of sarcasm, invective, and correc- 
 tion in perfect taste — and in a few moments 
 you will hear the whole company, teacher 
 and children, laughing together. Your 
 typical New England woman, with her in- 
 growing conscience, would be resentful all 
 the rest of the day. The Irish teacher counts 
 more on affection than on system. That's 
 what makes her children learn faster, for 
 teaching originated in a mother's love 
 for children. The instinctive, primordial, 
 atavistic love-essence in teaching seems 
 to beat scientific pedagogy every time. 
 If a lad likes his teacher, he'll like what- 
 ever she proposes — geography or pen- 
 manship. 
 
 Example of Irish affection: One day 
 I heard a great noise in the street. It was 
 a day of the first snowfall — one of those 
 soft, packable snows such as just naturally 
 forms itself into balls. A big, puffing police- 
 man dragged into the school office a boy who 
 had dented the officer's helmet and dignity. 
 The Preserver of the Peace demanded that 
 I send for the lad's parents or the youngster 
 would be haled to the station-house. Some 
 one told the Duffy girl (of the 6-B) that one 
 
How to Choose a Teacher 131 
 
 of her flock was held by the enemy. In 
 she came with flashing eyes. 
 
 "What are you doing with my boy?" 
 she demanded. "Give him to me!" Then 
 we had a pretty tableau, my lady with 
 one arm around a sobbing youngster's neck 
 and the other hand extended defiantly at 
 the tyranny of the law. 
 
 "I know you, Flannagan! You strut 
 around the post like a walking target. Every- 
 body itches to heave something at you. 
 Now you get out of here, and don't you dare 
 to touch a boy of mine again!" 
 
 Then he laughed and she laughed — and 
 that's the kind of Irish spirit that keeps 
 the systematic educators from killing the 
 schools entirely. A teacher needs plenty 
 of warmth to keep the blood from freezing 
 and plenty of humor to cool it with. 
 
 The State Superintendent of Michigan 
 schools said that you must choose pretty 
 women for teachers. The legislature there- 
 upon added three thousand dollars to his 
 yearly salary. Everybody has been urging 
 that the school-rooms be beautified. Good! 
 What more lovely school-room decoration 
 is there than a handsome woman? Beauty 
 is a radiant thing; it soothes, heals, inspires. 
 
132 The School of To-morrow 
 
 The vision of a lovely face lingers in the 
 memory like a song, like perfume, like witch- 
 ery. You can shut your eyes now and see 
 that fresh, handsome girl they put in charge 
 of your class in the home town back in 
 1 87 1. Her skin was clear, pink, and white, 
 and preached health and the next to godli- 
 ness. Her eyes were so bright, so kindly, 
 so deep, and so pure that instinctively you 
 knew what kind of a soul they were the 
 windows of. By some natural telegraphy 
 this girl's looks signalled to everybody that 
 her instincts, her hopes, and her affections 
 were healthy, hearty, and true. They 
 brought the conviction into your heart that 
 you were going to be a good boy. 
 
 It's a sort of fool thing to choose for a 
 companion to children a dowdy, sour-faced 
 female because she says, " Along those lines," 
 and "you may pass," and "on the part of 
 the pu-pill." It's rather unintelligent to 
 make impressionable children serve five 
 hours a day for a whole year in front of an 
 ugly woman who neglects her diet and her 
 exercise, who doesn't use her mirror or 
 understand the beauty of a smile. What is 
 the use of having children recite about the 
 grand effects produced by the ancient Greeks 
 
Bow to Choose a Teacher 133 
 
 in setting up marvelously beautiful statues 
 when the lady listening to this has neglected 
 walking and dressing to the extent that no 
 blood supply or modiste is preserving the 
 aesthetic lines of her figure? What's the 
 use of having drawing lessons in color and 
 form and ornament if the teacher wears a 
 shirtwaist like a crumpled paper bag? 
 
 There must be a logical basis for that 
 Michigan superintendent's contention. The 
 emotions mould the muscles. Your noble- 
 minded woman has a noble carriage. Her 
 attractive gowning is the outward expression 
 of her respect for her person, the temple of 
 her soul. The eyes and mouth and nostrils 
 are shaped by the smile or frown, by the 
 winsome voice or the snarl. I never knew a 
 good teacher who was not good looking. I 
 never knew a good teacher who did not 
 become a better one as soon as she paid more 
 attention to beauty. Teaching and " prink- 
 ing" have this in common — that they 
 are both for the benefit of some one else. 
 The better she looks, the happier she is — 
 the more able to radiate interest and inspira- 
 tion _ a n of which, the wise ones say, make 
 the active impulse of the teaching art. 
 The next particular to observe is whether 
 
134 The School of To-morrow 
 
 she talks much or moderately. In colleges 
 they try to teach by lecturing. This error 
 has seeped down into all grades of education, 
 so that a large number of teachers talk so 
 much that they prevent their children from 
 being educated, that is — to speak literally — 
 from being drawn out. If the candidate shows 
 evidence of saying a thing only once and 
 then of listening, engage her. 
 
 Lastly, find out where she is teaching. 
 Go and test her children to see whether they 
 have learned anything. Don't rely on any 
 official record about a teacher. Not one 
 report in a thousand is made after any 
 testing of the work that she has done. You 
 choose every other kind of worker on the 
 basis of the results of performance. But 
 no one keeps "the batting average" of a 
 teacher; no one records what her pupils can 
 do. The most that the official record will 
 show regarding a teacher is that she ought 
 to be able to teach. Whether her children 
 are taught or not — only a test of the chil- 
 dren can show that. 
 
Albany Vocational Schools 
 
ALBANY VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS 
 
 BY FRANK L. GLYNN 
 
 Albany, N. Y., has the distinction of 
 making the first uncompromising and suc- 
 cessful attempt to relate the public school 
 directly with the working world — the world 
 of production. 
 
 It is a novel sight which greets one on 
 entering this new sort of institution. You 
 may see the timekeeper reading his time- 
 board, hear the clank of the anvil, or 
 see a little girl hardly in her teens fitting 
 a dress on another for whom she is 
 making it. 
 
 First you enter the shop, where a mechanic 
 is teaching the secrets of the trade which it 
 took him nearly twenty years to master; you 
 see one boy who has so many hours to serve 
 as tool-clerk in the tool-room; another, as 
 timekeeper; another, as stock-keeper; while 
 another is foreman. The rest of the twenty 
 boys are working industriously at their 
 benches. 
 
 137 
 
138 The School of To-morrow 
 
 Here the work consists generally of wood- 
 working. In many cases last year students 
 took orders from the people of the city. The 
 customer would leave the specifications of 
 the product desired and the student would 
 design it, make his blue-print and bring 
 both the design and illustration, which he had 
 also drawn, to the customer for acceptance. 
 With these were the full estimates of costs, 
 materials, labor, etc. The boy, you see, 
 really did the work and really earned the 
 money for it. There are a number of boys of 
 fifteen who are earning nearly two dollars 
 a week while going to school. Sometimes 
 a boy is found who has developed into 
 a youthful contractor and has such an 
 amount of work on hand that he finds 
 it necessary to employ several others as 
 workmen for him at the rate of six cents per 
 hour. 
 
 Related with the shopwork and running 
 along hand in hand with it is the designing 
 or drafting department, where an experienced 
 draftsman teaches the student how to design 
 the products and make blue-prints of the 
 drawings. Here each boy is fitted with a 
 complete drawing outfit and is taught from 
 the viewpoint of a trade draftsman for one 
 
Albany Vocational Schools 139 
 
 hour each day; facts and theories supplement 
 the two hours spent daily in the shop. 
 
 This constitutes the work of one half- 
 day. The rest of the time is devoted to 
 regular school studies — "readin', 'ritin', 
 and 'rithmetic" — but all with special ref- 
 erence and application to the industrial 
 activities. 
 
 The mathematics, which is ordinarily 
 called arithmetic, goes by the name in this 
 new institution of " shop-mathematics," for 
 everything that is done in this department 
 must have special reference to the shop 
 work or drafting. It includes the principles 
 of arithmetic with some algebra and geom- 
 etry as is necessitated by the technical 
 applications. 
 
 In following this class to the English room, 
 we find them anxious and impatient to de- 
 scribe what has occurred in the shop pro- 
 duction, to discuss shop ethics, and to study 
 about the lives of such men as Maydole, 
 Disston, Ezra Cornell, and other leaders 
 of industrial production. 
 
 Their academic work is further extended 
 by a study of industrial, social, and political 
 history of the United States; they trace, 
 by means of geography, the production, 
 
140 The School of To-morrow 
 
 transportation, distribution and consump- 
 tion of the products used in the school and 
 the city; from civil government, where they 
 discover deviations from the well-trodden 
 path of tradition. They begin their lessons 
 in government with a study of the ward in 
 which they live, of the alderman who rep- 
 resents it, and they trace, in a constructive 
 and formative way, city, county, state and 
 national government. 
 
 At this time during your visit you ask: 
 ' 'Well, what provision is made for the girls? 
 Do they also make things in the shop, saw 
 wood, etc.?" 
 
 "No, they do not," is the reply, and you 
 look relieved. 
 
 "What is the nature of their work then?" 
 you inquire, and the reply is the opening 
 of the sewing-room door, where you see a 
 number of little ladies happy amidst a pro- 
 fusion of sewing machines, tapes, needles, 
 thimbles, cutting tables, and lingerie of 
 various sorts and kinds. 
 
 The students perhaps take turns showing 
 you about. One little girl is stencilling a 
 curtain — an order left by a visitor from 
 Bridgeport, Conn. You inquire what she 
 is making. She looks up with a smile, opens 
 
Albany Vocational Schools 
 
 141 
 
 her table drawer and brings forth a sheet 
 on which she first had to figure her estimated 
 cost, before remitting her "quotations" to 
 the buyer. 
 
 "Yes," is the answer to your question, 
 "this is part of the arithmetic for the girls." 
 
 You find on looking over the sheet that 
 she has been requested to submit samples 
 and quotations on several designs. 
 
 You note with interest: 
 
 Poppy design No. 1. 
 Designing 
 
 No. of hours 
 
 Pay per hour 
 
 Cost of labor 
 
 Selling price 
 Applying design 
 
 No. of hours 
 
 Pay per hour 
 
 Cost of labor . 
 
 Selling price 
 Goods 
 
 Cost 
 
 Selling price 
 Paints 
 
 Cost 
 
 Selling price 
 Hemming — plain 
 
 No. of hours 
 
 Pay per hour . 
 
 Cost of labor . 
 
 Selling price 
 Quotation — $4 prepaid 
 
 $.25 
 
 20 
 
 • 75 
 
 1. 20 
 
 1 .00 
 
 .40 
 
 • 25 
 
 1 . 20 
 
 1 . 10 
 
 .40 
 
 .07 
 
 28 
 
 28 
 
 $3-23 
 
 She explains that the selling of the de- 
 signing at a lower cost than estimated was 
 
142 The School of To-morrow 
 
 due to the fact that the customer permitted 
 her to use the same design over for other 
 orders, so that she figured that it would take 
 three orders to pay her for the effort. The 
 difference in the selling price and the actual 
 cost is due to the expressage which she found 
 by going to the express office. 
 
 As you pass on, you find one girl working 
 on an order for baby clothing which was left 
 by a woman in the city; another is doing 
 nurses' aprons; still another is making over- 
 alls for her father. Now you see a little 
 lass arise and hold a small skirt up to her waist 
 before the mirror, and here is a small Italian 
 girl, Sophie, who looks up and greets you in 
 a most maturely childish manner. Yes, to 
 be sure she likes the school, for has she not 
 given up a job in a factory where she earned 
 the enormous sum of two dollars and a half 
 a week — coining, as you truly think, her 
 young life's blood and happiness of childhood 
 into a pittance of base metal for the squan- 
 dering hand of a shiftless father. Your 
 sympathy is touched and your interest 
 awakened so that you tarry a moment longer. 
 
 "And what are you making?" you ask. 
 
 "Well," she replies, "you see, we are quite 
 poor and I have five little sisters younger 
 
Albany Vocational Schools 143 
 
 than myself. I have to take care of them 
 at home even though I am not working, and 
 so while in school I make their clothes." 
 
 The next stop is in the kitchen. Here 
 two dozen little maids clad in white caps 
 and aprons are engaged in preparing the 
 noonday lunch for the school. One little 
 lady is hustling about all over the place, 
 which is arranged as a real city flat. Now 
 she talks with this one, now with that, and 
 now with another. You wonder at the free- 
 dom, the responsibility, and the apparent 
 lack of discipline; were you to come here 
 at the same hour each day, you would find the 
 same orderly disorder. Kind visitor, you 
 are beginning to see that this is not a school 
 of " those good old days" — ask as many 
 questions as you like. 
 
 One pretty little maid looks up encourag- 
 ingly with a welcoming smile and you go 
 over to see what she is doing. She proudly 
 replies, "I'm working on an order for bread 
 that must be sent out this noon for dinner." 
 You feel the weight of her responsibility and 
 pass on to find another earning some money 
 baking a cake to fill another order. 
 
 Then you come to the wash tub where 
 a little one is rubbing and rubbing away at 
 
144 The School of To-morrow 
 
 some large piece of wearing apparel. You 
 stop to look at her and on inquiring find that 
 she is " washing coffee stains out of mother's 
 new dress. " Your attention is now attracted 
 by another little miss stirring a five-gallon 
 mixture; at this moment the first little girl 
 you noticed on your entering goes up to the 
 stove, speaks a word or two in an undertone 
 to the little mixer, who puts away her spoon 
 and draws the kettle to the back of the stove, 
 after which she opens the luncheon counter 
 and begins to place the dishes out. Inquiry 
 again informs you that the first little lady 
 who is so busy directing others, passing about 
 from one place to another, making notes 
 and calculations, measuring this and testing 
 that, is a most important personage. She, 
 in a very responsible and dignified manner, 
 informs you that she must have " things right 
 or they won't sell" — pointing to a bulletin- 
 board on which you read : 
 
 MENU 
 
 Cream of tomato soup — 2c 
 
 Orange and banana salad — 2 c 
 
 Boston baked beans — 2c Boston brown bread — 2c 
 
 Ham sandwiches — 2c Plain bread sandwiches — ic 
 
 Cocoa — 2c Coffee — 2c Milk — ic 
 
 Oranges — 2c Bananas — ic 
 
 "Did you say that you have charge of 
 this?" you ask. 
 
Albany Vocational Schools 145 
 
 "Yes, indeed," she replies and looks 
 around in a preoccupied manner. 
 
 "Well," you ask again, "does not your 
 teacher plan it for you?" 
 
 You have touched the spark that ignites 
 
 the fuse. 
 
 "No," she replies, "the teacher will not 
 tell us a thing unless we are making a mistake. 
 We have to do all the planning, marketing, 
 and distributing to the other girls who do 
 the cooking. Then," she continues after 
 replying to a question from one of her sub- 
 ordinates, "I have to report to the cashier 
 so that she can figure out her accounts and 
 know how much to charge for the various 
 articles." 
 
 You again venture a query, "And what 
 position do you hold, if I may ask." 
 
 Smiling at your apologetic manner, she 
 continues, "Why, I'm the assistant cashier. 
 Next week I'll be the cashier and another 
 girl will have my position." Then, begging 
 your pardon, she hastens off to where she 
 has just been summoned to look after the 
 taking of the brown bread and the baked 
 beans from the oven. 
 
 Just as you are about to leave, another 
 pleasant child comes up to you and invites 
 
146 The School of To-morrow 
 
 you to remain to luncheon. After that, 
 you go downstairs, where you find the cashier 
 at the teacher's desk making out her report 
 for the day; the afternoon session of school 
 has begun. You venture another inquiry 
 and find that she is making a report that goes 
 to the arithmetic teacher so as to provide 
 the girls' classes with arithmetic for the next 
 day's lesson. Then she further explains 
 with a troubled brow that she is having quite 
 a time to-day, as her "cash will not balance. " 
 You see that she is surrounded with lunch 
 tickets and small change taken at the daily 
 luncheon sale. She tells you how much 
 she has sold, how many tickets she has, 
 how much flour, butter, sugar, etc., was 
 reported to her as used that day, what 
 the market prices are, what her receipts 
 are, and then, showing you her report 
 card, asks you, with a sad tone in her voice, 
 "And how would you like to figure all 
 that out?" 
 
 "What becomes of the money you take 
 in?" you ask. 
 
 "We have to deposit that in the city 
 bank," and she adds with a business-like 
 manner, "at the end of each month we have 
 to make out a check to the Board of Educa- 
 
Albany Vocational Schools 147 
 
 tion showing how much of the cost of our 
 department we have covered." Before I 
 left her she told me that the Domestic Science 
 Department had entertained Mayor Mc- 
 Ewen and the Board of Education at 
 luncheon not long since. 
 
 This type of school work has been in 
 existence for some time in private and 
 philanthropic institutions; never before has 
 it been part of a public-school system. Any 
 boy or girl who has completed the sixth year 
 of the elementary work may be appointed 
 to this new school. At present the school 
 is filled, and as many children still wished 
 to enter, the Board of Education opened a new 
 school in another section of the city, which 
 also is now full. It is the purpose of the 
 city to so extend this vocational work, in 
 which the student has an opportunity to 
 "find himself," so that two years of addi- 
 tional training along the line of the chosen 
 vocation may be offered. 
 
 The initiative in this new movement in 
 education was taken nearly three years 
 ago by Commissioner Andrew S. Draper. 
 Through his efforts the legislature of the 
 state of New York made provision for assist- 
 ing cities to maintain these schools. 
 
148 The School of To-morrow 
 
 The development of the work since then 
 has been due in great part to Arthur D. 
 Dean, Chief of the Division of Trades 
 Schools. He has been endeavoring to solve 
 the problem of developing a system of 
 education, with a new and original theory 
 of philosophy and pedagogy, which will 
 offset such special training as will fit 
 800,000 boys and girls to enter industrial 
 and commercial vocations. His ideal is 
 to offer "such courses of instruction in the 
 public school system that any man or woman, 
 boy or girl, may, at any time, receive train- 
 ing in any vocation." 
 
 It is of interest to business men, who 
 deal with figures and percentages, that of 
 those beginning the work of the Vocational 
 School more than 80 per cent, of the original 
 students intended to leave school as soon 
 as they were fourteen years of age. At the 
 end of the first year only 5 per cent, had 
 done so. At the end of the second 
 year, corresponding to the eighth year 
 of school life, more than 50 per cent, of 
 those promoted to High School standing 
 returned for third -year work — a problem 
 which the Board of Estimate is at present 
 facing. 
 
Albany Vocational Schools 149 
 
 Letters have been received from contractors 
 and manufacturers about those boys who 
 have thus far been placed with them. One 
 man states that a boy did as well in the 
 beginning of his work as another apprentice 
 of from one to two years' standing who had 
 not had this training. A quotation from 
 another man in charge of a large apprentice 
 system nearby explains itself: 
 
 ". . . The average boy who comes 
 to us is l green' and months pass before we 
 have him in proper condition to hold 'his 
 own' with the other apprentices. With 
 your boys the awkwardness and shyness had 
 been eliminated and they 'made good' at 
 the start, which is a big item at a plant of 
 this size, where the production is on a piece- 
 work basis." 
 
 The present status of this work in the state 
 as passed upon by the Regents University 
 of the State of New York, November last, 
 is endorsed to such extent as to give advanced 
 standing to those who wish to enter the High 
 School. To students who complete the voca- 
 tional course of two years a junior trade- 
 school diploma will be awarded; to those who 
 complete a four years' vocational course 
 a senior trade-school diploma will be given; 
 
150 The School of To-morrow 
 
 and those who wish to continue two years 
 longer may have courses of liberalized trade 
 training and of highly specialized mathe- 
 matics and science. It will not be the fault 
 of the schools if their graduates are not fitted 
 for unlimited promotion. 
 
 During the early development of the 
 work much interest was aroused con- 
 cerning the attitude of organized labor. 
 Thomas D. Fitzgerald, local representative 
 of the Executive Council of the New York 
 Federation of Labor, became greatly in- 
 terested in the progress of the work and 
 much is due him for his hearty support and 
 encouragement. Through his efforts an 
 official investigation of the institution was 
 made in December, 1910, by the Executive 
 Council during its executive session in the 
 city. The members spent an entire after- 
 noon inspecting the workings of the various 
 departments, after which they endorsed 
 the work most highly as the only possible 
 way of replacing the old apprenticeship 
 system. 
 
 We have all seen the rapid strides made 
 in the conservation of materials and time, 
 in the development of by-products, which 
 resulted in an increased efficiency of machin- 
 
Albany Vocational Schools 151 
 
 ery, until now the captains of industry 
 are turning their attention to the " in- 
 creased efficiency of the workman" — which 
 is possible only through special education. 
 
 At present a boy may leave school at the 
 age of fourteen, but he cannot obtain employ- 
 ment in gainful occupations until he is sixteen. 
 During these two years he is adrift on the 
 community; he forgets what little he has 
 learned, and becomes, when he is old enough, 
 an unthinking "attache" of a machine; he 
 is an "operator" without even the rudi- 
 ments of the training necessary for the skilled 
 workman of to-day. Consequently, his 
 opportunity for advancement is barred and 
 he is inefficient for due promotion. 
 
 The purpose of this form of education 
 is to offer an opportunity to the "masses" 
 that will alleviate just such conditions, which 
 are on the eve of creating social havoc among 
 us. Let us give the boy and girl their rights 
 and provide them with such a heritage of 
 opportunity in education as it is pos- 
 sible for this generation to bestow upon 
 posterity. 
 
 Only a few years ago we saw the establish- 
 ment of the kindergarten, which provided 
 an easier transition for the child "from the 
 
152 The School of To-morrow 
 
 home to the school." Is it not as much the 
 duty of the state, the community, and the 
 school so to direct their energies as to return 
 that child "from the school to the home" in 
 such condition that he will be an efficient 
 asset to home support, a real producer in the 
 community, and consequently a morally 
 and economically valuable citizen? 
 
m 19 isii 
 
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