VOL. XI.

WASHINGTON, D. C., MAY, 1926

No. 9

IT

T IS understood that we have in mind in this discussion the first six grades of the school and are to suggest the desirable goals of instruction rather than the subject matter or curriculum content which should be employed. Nor do I believe that agreement can be reached as to means until educators have arrived at some working understanding of the ends. We are dealing with finalities, not with methods, materials, or workmen.

Recently my attention was attracted to this apothegm on the cover of a little magazine: "Education is our only political, industrial, and individual safety. Outside of the Ark of Education, all is deluge." I took up my pencil and wrote: "And every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after its kind has crept into the Ark of Education." Verily, we have taken every living thing into the schools and a good many dead things besides languages and fossils.

Social Adjustment a Recurrent Problem

Let us assume that education involves the process of discovering natural laws and analyzing human experience, and culminates in a proper application of this knowledge so that man may derive the maximum of social and individual welfare in his present environment. Let us assume likewise that social and individual welfare are consistent and correlative. Some one may arise to dispute these assumptions, particularly the latter. Undoubtedly, the progress of knowledge has

Portions of address before Department of Superintendence, Washington, D. C., February 22, 1926. 93674°-26-1

By JNO. J. TIGERT United States Commissioner of Education transformed life on this planet. Change will continue and social adjustment will be a recurring problem. But we must not forget that the educational process will never function without regard for the individual child. Emphasis upon individual needs should parallel increasing attention to social welfare as an educational objective.

Growth Along Lines of Racial Aptitudes

All instruction presupposes certain inherent presentiments, preparation, intuition, and capacity in those who are taught; we can only teach what the individual is capable of learning and, in a sense, what he already knows. This principle of education is likewise a social law. Nations and peoples grow only along the lines of their racial aptitudes and social tendencies. Try to drive an individual or a nation along other lines and you are confronted with retardation, incapacity for improvement, and often rebellion.

If we make these assumptions with reference to the definition and the nature of education, can we not say that we have enough knowledge, scientific and otherwise, regarding the boy and girl of to-day, the school of to-day, and our social problems of to-day, so postulate that there are a few general paths that elementary education should take and that there are certain objectives which require greater emphasis in the immediate future if we are to promote the welfare of the child and the nation more effectively? Perhaps we know enough to say that these few general pathways should converge upon a

I believe that there is general agreement that health is a fundamental objective in the elementary schools. I am aware that the scientific curriculum makers will say: "Nobody knows what health is or how it should be taught." Strictly speaking, that may be true, but in our present understanding of social problems, health, and health teaching do we not know enough to say that better health is something devoutly to be wished for, that it depends in large measure upon proper eating, drinking, sleeping, exercising, cleansing, breathing, protection from disease, correction of remediable defects, and certain other things upon which we are reasonably well agreed?

Establish Good Health Habits

Do we not know enough about health teaching at the present time to say that it is useless to attempt to teach the philosophy or principles of hygiene to children in the elementary schools, but that successful health teaching depends very largely upon the formation of proper health habits among children of this age, and good health habits can be formed if we have systematic physical examination, periodic weighing and measuring, daily inspections, regular and careful supervision of exercise and play, complete records, and so on through the program that our present experience suggests?

Furthermore, when we know that mental phenomena are somehow correlated with and organically conditioned upon health and bodily vigor, when we have reasonably accurate data with reference to the existence of physical defects among school children, when we know that one-third of the men examined in the late war were found to be physically unfit for any kind of military service and one-half unfit for unlimited service, and when we know that our Nation suffers an annual economic loss due to preventable disease and death among wage earners that is greater than our entire annual expenditure for all kinds of education, and when we have other information equally as significant with reference to social conditions, are we not safe in saying that our present knowledge of the conditions in the country of health and methods of teaching justify us in asserting that health should be made a fundamental objective in the philosophy of elementary education?

Can Proceed with Present Knowledge

I believe that we can answer all these questions very emphatically in the affirmative. We can then proceed practically in the light of present knowledge and needs, while the scientific analysis of health, methods of teaching, relation of mind and body, human experience, and other related matters may continue from time to time to shed new light upon the problems involved.

Again, I think that there will be general agreement that we have sufficient knowledge of the problems involved to say that elementary education should aim very definitely to implant the fundamentals upon which depend the use of written and spoken language and numbers, and to instill the rudiments which are essential to efficient functioning in a modern society and which are likewise the basis upon which a broad superstructure of culture may be erected in later years. By all this, I have in mind the mastery of the vehicles of expression and intercommunication, a general grasp of the history, customs, and habits of the peoples who have created our civilization, including a beginning of discrimination with regard to contributions of art, music, science, and industry. I use the word "mastery" deliberately and with the implication that, due to the multiplicity of purposes now in vogue in the school program or for some other reason, we are not now thoroughly teaching the fundamentals. I am convinced that we shall do better if we strive for a few things and do them well than if we attempt much and master little or nothing.

Curriculum Makers Have Banned Term "Culture"

I am aware that the curriculum makers sometimes allude with pity or scorn to those so naive as to suggest such general purposes as I mention here. Possibly, of all the terms descriptive of the goals of education which have been weighed and found wanting by the purveyors of scientific knowledge in the field of educational aims, the term "culture" has been banned with the greatest finality.

I make bold to assert that we have sufficient general agreement as to what culture means, sufficient knowledge about how culture is imparted, and more than sufficient knowledge of the dearth of culture in this country at the present time to justify us in saying that it is a fundamental purpose in the scheme of the eleThe fact that so many mentary school. people prefer "jazz" to music; the books of the hour, with their sordid appeal to sex and vulgarity, to literature; the trashy and salacious shows to drama, and similar predilections, indicate that we need a real invasion of culture.

Illiteracy May Have Some Compensation Illiteracy is such a serious tragedy that one hesitates to suggest that it could have any possible virtue, but a sampling of some of the popular literary pabulum that is now being swallowed by the American people would lead one to surmise that illiteracy may have some compensation and at least serves as a literary vaccination which renders one immune to mental pollution. It is recorded that the American people rejected as a free gift and our art galleries

would not provide wall space for Whistler's portrait of his mother, which now hangs in Luxembourg Gallery in Paris, and is said to be valued at more than a million dollars. It is not pleasant or provocative of patriotism to dwell upon these things, but they certainly point clearly to the need of a thorough injection of a broad and deep ground work of culture in the elementary school

Emphasis on Learning by Doing

A third general purpose of the elementary school should be efficiency in both personal and social matters. I realize

that the hair-splitting analysts may condemn this objective as being almost as indefinite and vague as culture. But the mighty emphasis which has been developed in recent years upon learning by doing is indicative that we sense the fact, however indistinct the concept may be at the present time, that we need to give the boy or girl of the elementary school a better preparation to meet practical situations. We see the need of more hard work and the skills of action.

Of course, there is nothing vocational implied and, while the major effort toward vocational diagnosis should be postponed to the junior high-school period, still, I believe that the elementary school has a distinct obligation in discovering and developing aptitudes and interests of a nonvocational character. It should at least begin to lay a foundation upon which vocational training may be later built. Likewise, economic efficiency (which is more than thrift), perseverance, industry, and the joy of effort belong here. Education is not simply the emancipation of the intellect, but it implies the liberation of the will, skill, and satisfaction in successful achievement. Consequently, our third objective supplements and correlates our second objective.

are

Efficiency and Culture not Antagonistic Efficiency and culture should not be antagonistic; they allies in our educational scheme. The "impractical scholar" has too long been a by-word in the world. One of the greatest scholars in a university I once attended tried to cut a plank to make a shelf. He wanted to shorten it two feet and went through two operations, cutting off one foot at each end. Good practical common sense and skill in action has sometimes been lost in scholarship. We are not inveighing against learning, but are pointing out that knowing much and doing well are not contradictory. In 1777, the Marquis de Lafayette, in a letter to a friend, wrote as follows: "I read; I study; I examine; I listen; I reflect; and out of all this I try to form an idea into which I put as much common sense as I can."

Higher living implies culture and also implies character. Character education