At one of the new schools in the south,
the ignorant child of the mountains at once acquires a knowledge of
measurement and elementary arithmetic by laying out a garden, of letters
by inscribing his name on a little signboard in order to identify his
patch--for the moment private property. And this principle is carried
through all the grades. In the Gary Schools and elsewhere the making of
things in the shops, the modelling of a Panama Canal, the inspection of
industries and governmental establishments, the designing, building, and
decoration of houses, the discussion and even dramatization of the books
read,--all are a logical and inevitable continuation of the abstract
knowledge of the schoolroom. The success of the direct application of
learning to industrial and professional life may also be observed in such
colleges as those at Cincinnati and Schenectady, where young men spend
half the time of the course in the shops of manufacturing, corporations,
often earning more than enough to pay their tuition.
Children are not only prepared for democratic citizenship by being
encouraged to think for themselves, but also to govern and discipline
themselves. On the moral side, under the authoritative system of lay
and religious training, character was acquired at the expense of mental
flexibility--the Puritan method; our problem today, which the new system
undertakes, is to produce character with open-mindedness--the kind of
character possessed by many great scientists.
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