A NEW DEMAND UPON PROFESSIONAL SCHOOLS

FOR TEACHERS

JESSE D. BURKS, PH.D.

Principal, Teachers Training School, Albany, N. Y.

1. It is a common experience for principals and teachers in elementary schools to be called upon by pupils and their parents for advice concerning the prospective careers of pupils. Whether or no a pupil shall continue in school or enter at once upon an apprenticeship in a trade or in a commercial pursuit; whether he shall plan to enter a high school and, if so, in what course; whether it would be advisable for the pupil to prepare for a professional career and, if so, for what profession-these are practical problems such as parents and their children are constantly facing. Recognizing their own inability to work out satisfactory solutions to such problems, many pupils, with or without the knowledge and support of their parents, turn with significant confidence to teacher or principal or superintendent for counsel or guidance.

Though teachers and school officers are not altogether loath to tender their good offices in such cases, it may be seriously doubted whether the advice given often has value other than advice of friendly interest. Excepting the cases where strong native tendencies in children leave little or no doubt as to the vocations for which they are fitted, there is apparently little basis upon which either parents or teachers may make reliable forecasts as to the probable success or failure of a given child in specific vocations. The individuals having native abilities most strongly marked are, of course, least in need of specific guidance in the choice of vocations. It is the great majority without welldefined or clearly recognizable tendencies who must have such guidance if we are to substitute for the present practice of purely fortuitous choice of vocations a more rational practice based upon the adaptation of the individual to his work.

The results of the present random selection of vocations are widespread and evident. Commercial failures, incompetent mechanics, disgruntled professional men, unsympathetic and mechanical teachers, prosaic poets, uninspired preachers, briefless lawyers, honest politicians, and dishonest bank clerks-these and similar evidences point to a deplorable maladjustment.

2. The present organization of elementary education is not designed, even in its later years, to make children aware of their special abilities. The elementary-school course is based upon two radically erroneous assumptions; the first, that the great majority of the pupils in the schools will finish the elementary grades; the second, that the needs of the pupils in the elementary grades are identical as to the so-called "fundamental" education extending through eight years of the school course.

Accurate data as to the dropping out of pupils in the elementary grades are not available, but it is a matter of common knowledge among teachers that pupils drop out with increasing frequency after the fifth school year. This tendency is commonly attributed to economic causes; and without doubt the desire of many parents to have their children begin to earn a livelihood does account for the dropping out of many children. If the facts were known, however, it could probably be shown that economic pressure is not one of the strongest influences in producing this tendency. There is undoubtedly, among parents and pupils, a widespread feeling, not without reasonable basis, that the latter years of the elementary-school course are not highly essential to the welfare of the children and that there is a greater economic advantage in several years of apprenticeship than a like number of years in the upper grades of the elementary schools.

An indication of the truth of this statement may be found in the fact that the organization of technical and commercial courses in high schools commonly has the effect of increasing registration and of raising the percentage of pupils continuing to the end of the outlined course in such schools. The influences that determine the dropping out of pupils in high schools are probably not very different from those operative in elementary schools.

The deliberate choice of a considerable proportion of the

pupils in elementary grades to leave school and enter upon some vocational pursuit, even when economic pressure is not unduly strong and parents advise against the discontinuance of school work, is evidence of a distinct psychological need that arises in the early period of adolescence. The indication is clear that pupils at this stage of their development require greater differentiation and specialization of training than the elementary school is providing. There is actual call for something that leads to a definite outcome in terms of the world's work, especially in terms of that part of it for which the powers and prospects of the individual pupil specially qualify him. There is an impulse, almost an instinct, among many pupils, to try their powers on "real" things; on things that mean much and count much in human affairs.

It is this impulse that gives much of the force possessed by the "manual-training movement." Even the manual training as commonly organized, however, fails to meet adequately the psychological demand for work that bears directly upon the problems of individual and social life. The subject is still too far away from the real social world in which vocations play so commanding a part. Manual training does not "help" in a way sufficiently direct and definite to meet the demands under consideration.

Not only are teachers and administrative officers unable, then, to give pupils trustworthy guidance in the matter of a choice of vocation, but the school is ill adapted, in its last few years, to the peculiar psychological needs of children whose powers are clearly differentiating and whose interests are potentially or actually of a strongly practical nature. There is an obvious call here for the reorganization of the last few years of elementary education in such a way as to provide more effectively for the needs of the various groups of children differing in native capacity, in social and industrial surroundings, in power of self-support, and, consequently, in prospective career.

The familiar objections to early specialization will readily come to mind in this connection. These objections were employed in the long since abandoned fight against the system of

election in college courses. They are still retained as stock arguments by the conservatives and reactionists in the field of secondary education. They will no doubt be similarly used by the opponents of optional courses in elementary education. The problem is really identical throughout the whole range of educational organization, and the final solution must inevitably conform to the fundamental facts involved. Briefly stated the question is: how may we provide for the most effective development of the capacities of a group of individuals who differ widely in moral and intellectual inheritance in cultural surroundings, in acquired taste and powers, in economic status, and in prospective career; are the interests of individuals and of society, under these conditions, best subserved by a single, undifferentiated, prescribed programme of studies or by a flexible system of optional courses designed to meet the specific needs of the different classes of individuals in the group?

If a completely social basis for education be accepted, it is difficult to see how this question can be answered other than in one way. The facts of genetic psychology and the facts of normal social life alike demand that adequate provision be made for special training whenever special aptitudes and special tastes come to be strongly enough marked to serve as the basis for separating individuals into distinct groups.

There is a prevailing notion that, in a democracy such as ours, equal educational opportunities must be offered to all children alike. This principle is indeed somewhat generally regarded as a fundamental corollary of democracy itself. When, however, we interpret "equal" educational opportunities to mean the "same" education for all, we are pushing the principle to an unwarrantable extreme. What to one child or group may be an educational opportunity of highest value, to another child or group may be no opportunity at all. It is not what is offered but what can be utilized in the way of education that is to be accounted genuine opportunity. "Completely rounded manhood," "a fundamental common-school education for all children," and similar statements of the aim of elementary education are superficially attractive to an uncritical audience; but they must be

relegated to the educational lumber-room along with a good many other worn-out traditions.

Our conventional distinction between elementary and secondary education is, in fact, without completely rational meaning. The practical distinction in organization may easily be explained historically, but it has little if any direct relation to existing social relations. It is difficult to find any tenable reason for an eight-year "elementary" course, planned for all children, to be followed by a four-year "secondary" course planned for all children who survive the so-called elementary course, and designed primarily to meet the requirements for admission to college. A rational distinction between elementary and secondary education would appear to be that secondary courses of instruction should be provided when children reach the secondary stage of development; that is, a stage of fairly distinct differentiation of interests and capacities. The elementary education, from this point of view, should be distinctly fundamental and social in character and should extend through the period when children are relatively unspecialized in their development. The facts previously discussed in this paper indicate that the point of division between elementary and secondary education belongs much earlier in the school course than it is now placed.

3. The mere organization of special courses and special schools designed to meet the specific needs of various groups of children will not, however, be of itself sufficient to assure us of a properly effective and democratic system of education. We must go farther and find a way to bring boys and girls to a definite consciousness of their specific abilities and thus make it possible for them to make rational choice among the courses open to them and, ultimately, of their respective vocations. Merely capricious choice of a course of instruction would certainly be as likely to result disastrously as capricious choice of a vocation. The undesirable results of capricious choice in both directions are to be avoided, if at all, by giving careful consideration to the influence of mental and moral traits upon success in various specific undertakings.

It is by no means certain, to be sure, that all of the persons at