MAKING LIFE EDUCATIONAL

Mr. Herbert Quick in his story of “The Brown Mouse,” which is a plea for better rural schools, says: 

Let us cease thinking so much of agricultural education, and devote ourselves to educational agriculture.  So will the nation be made strong.

The life we live, even on the farm, is full of science and history, civics and economics, arithmetic and geography, poetry and art.  The modern school helps the pupil to find these things in his daily life and, having found them, to apply them to living for his profit and enjoyment.  For this reason it works largely through the “home project,” boys’ and girls’ clubs, gardening, and many other activities.

A recent writer has said,

What is the true end of American education?  Is it life or a living? ...  Education finds itself face to face with a bigger thing than life or the getting of a living.  It is face to face with a big enough thing to die for in France, a big enough thing to go to school for in America ...  Neither life nor the getting of a living, but living together, this must be the single public end of a common public education hereafter. [Footnote:  D. R. Sharp, “Patrons of Democracy,” in Atlantic monthly, November, 1919, p. 650.]

EDUCATION FOR LIVING TOGETHER

The more nearly the conditions of living in the school community correspond to the conditions of living in the community outside of school, the better the training afforded for living together.  In many schools the spirit and methods of community life prevail, even to the extent of school government in which the pupils participate.

Of this community pupils and teachers are members with certain common interests.  Cooperation is the keynote of the community life.  The realization of this cooperation is seen in the classrooms, in study halls, in the assembly room, in the corridors, on the playground.  It manifests itself in the method of preparing and conducting recitations; in the care of school property; in protecting the rights of younger children; in maintaining the sanitary conditions of the building and grounds; in the elimination of cases of “discipline” and of irregularity of attendance; in the preparation and conduct of opening exercises, school entertainments, and graduating exercises; in beautifying the school grounds; in the making of repairs and equipment for “our school”; in fact, in every aspect of the school life.

[Footnote:  “Civic Education in Elementary Schools,” p. 31, United States Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1915, No. 17.]

THE SCHOOL AS A COMMUNITY CENTER

The schoolhouse is becoming more and more the center of community life.  We have noticed how, in Randolph County, Indiana, the consolidated school building affords a meeting place for all sorts of community activities.  The school law of California provides that: