SHORT ARTICLES

SANE METHODS OF CIVIC EDUCATION 1

OU who have undertaken so huge a task as the reformation of municipal citizenship must use tools, and you do well to Y examine those provided for you.

The sequence of your movement, as I have cursorily observed it, has interested me. First you met to exclaim, “HOW bad things are!” Then you inquired, “Jus t how bad are they?” A thorough examination of conditions in a scientific spirit led to a program of reform. Then came a consideration of civic teaching in college and secondary schools, that the leaders of the people might be prepared to make your reforms permanent. And finally, you look to the establishment of civic teaching in the elementary schools, knowing that good leadership is abortive if i t does not meet with good response from the common people. And the common people are the product of the common schools.

I stand before you representing that host of women who teach the elementary school ehildren. You must find out how to use us or your efforts will fail. I shall try to speak to you frankly, that you may learn our “teaching point,” and, I daresay, you will get thus quite as much by implication and unconscious self-revelation on my pa& as by intent.

We who must teach these children civic virtue know nothing of the civics which we must teach-that is obvious; we have never been inter- ested to learn it-nor of the child to whom we must teach it. No one knows the child’s mind. Your own child, in your own home, inheriting your family traits, is a mystery to you. Each little face hides a mystery from me, which I cannot decipher, and which the child has no language to reveal. So you must, take us, with our double ignorance, and teach us how to teach the child how to do his duty to the community-how to be a citizen.

Your difficulties are many. First, there are the difficulties that you meet in the schools. Your

children are taught chiefly by women. Hugo Mumsterberg has endeared himself to the women teachers of America by sneering a t the fact that we let the teaching of our children to the lowest bidder. It is true. And I think i t is he who has said also, ‘(Your children are instructed by half-educated women,” meaning apparently to convey contempt by both terms. Training for citizenship is in the hands of those who can never be citizens. No such condition has existed since decaying.Rome gave over the training of her citizens to Greek slaves.

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It is true.

1 Address at the Toronto meeting of the National Municipal League.

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It might be remedied were all the women teachers of boys to be replaced by men. But it is bootless t o attempt that, as the history of manual training shows. It did seem that there was the golden opportunity for the introduction of men teachers. But no; all over the country our boys are being taught the gentle art of whittling, and even furniture making, by girls. What the anomalous situation will be when agriculture becomes a regular branch of elementary instruction, one shudders to think.

Or the question might be solved by giving women teachers the vote and so thrustiGg upon them an incentive to concern in civic questions. But the quandary thus created is great. Sir Almroth Wright says that no woman is complete in the mental entirety even of a woman, until she has physiologically functioned as wife and mother, and the board of education in New York says that no woman who has thus functioned shall teach.

As t o the men in elementary education, they too constitute an element of weakness. For, however great the native brilliance or goodness of such a man, he is doubly handicapped. I n the first place he has lacked that valuable training which comes from competition with one’s peers. He has gravitated-or rather levitated-into positions of administrative power, not because of achievement, but because of sex. If among a group of twenty teachers there are two men, they need only do as well as, or nearly as well as, the average to be put into positions superior to all the women. And when they are thus placed they are subject to iduences that make civic courage hard to come by. It is true that our schools are generally less debauched by politics than is any other branch of city government, yet most superintendents and principals, especially in small places, find that they are safe to come no nearer to efforts a t civic reformation than attendance a t the regular Wednesday night prayer meeting.

Moreover, all the traditions of the schoolroom are opposed to the methods which are absolutely necessary to the profitable teaching of civics. All over the “enlightened” world, to use the latest geographic slang, teachers carry out the principles of their profession in so cramped a way that the spirit evaporates. (‘Go from the concrete to the abstract, from the simple to the complex. ‘Create interest by giving play to self- activity.” So they teach about dynamic geology by showing a neat hand-specimen of a metamorphic rock, and the evolutionary processes are illustrated by a half-tone engraving of a series of skeletons. When, therefore, a subject, which is but the systematization of social service, and which must be learned by untrammeled action and reaction of life on life, knocks a t the schoolroom door, the pedagogue takes fright.

Within the community outside of the schoolroom also there are grave impediments. The zealot who would further a cause is often its worst

I do not know how you can remedy this.

This is hard on the men.

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foe, and conservatism can throw a more bewildering dust to obscure an issue involving the welfare of children than in any other cause. It is the habit of both the zealot and the “throwback” to use the syllogism thus: “Our children are our precious jewels. This measure will hurt our children. Then they spend their strength on proving the major premise, which none disputes, omit any discussion of the minor premise, which is the crux of the question, and cry “Q. E. D.” This sort of hysteria is likely to cause schoo1 officials to be wary of the most innocent innovation, lest i t lead to their destruction. The fact that the newspaper demagogue, who denounces preparation for citizenship through the schools because i t takes time from the fundamental three R’s, cannot make his subjects and predicates agree does not invalidate his arguments in the minds of his readers.

This measure should not be carried. ”

But the necessity for civic teaching waxes. In the first place, the evil forces within the civic body have never

before been so well organized as now. The ward politician has ceased to be a plain brutal brigand, and has acquired intellectual polish. The cadet in New York is often a lettered person. If i t is the province of the secondary school to train young men for leadership, i t has fulfilled its purpose frequently to the disadvantage of the led.

Secondly, we have to-day a generally disseminated knowledge of genetics which keeps us conscious that if our young people do not function socially in childhood they will not be able so to function in maturity-that we can only prepare for life by living.

Also, with the foreshortening of both time and space due to modern invention, the unity of the social landscape has become apparent a s never before, and the development of civic consciousness has outstripped the ripening of the civic conscience, so that stimulation of new growth is obligatory.

Your task is to propagate this doctrine in the most effective way. I n the community you have the press, you have preaching, and you

have books. A well-organized department, indefatigable in supplying news to the papers, views to the magazines, and books to the publisher, is your costly duty. And to keep on talking so long as you can get reporters, t o make “copy” of you, and then to take to posters, processions, bombs, or other modern advertising devices, is your business, and will, doubtless, grow to be your pleasure. In assembling yourselves together in congresses and the like, as to-day, you advertise the cause, and you vitalize its espousers.

Within the schools you can propagate interest in the subject by inspir- ing i t in the teachers, and by legislation. If the legislation gets ahead of the interest, your cause is lost. The passing of laws, as has been done all over the United States, commanding the teaching of the injurious effects of alcohol and tobacco, has caused efficient teaching along those

All these you have used, and do use.

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lines only where i t has empowered teachers who are interested in such subjects to teach them. There is a law in New Jersey that self-protection against undue hazard shall be directly taught for thirty minutes in each month. A member of the citizens’ committee visiting a school asks the principal, “Have you carried out the law?” “Yes,” says he, and adds with a wink at the back of the departing visitor, “I’m sure it took thirty minutes to restore order when Sammy cracked his head against the fence, and I’m sure every pupil heard me tell him he was a heedless fellow and deserved what he got. Wasn’t that direct teaching?”

There is nothing so easy to get a s freak legislation of this sort, nothing so hard as to get legislative commands carried out by unsympathetic administrators, and nothing so dulling to the moral sense as to know a law and heed it not.

The education of the schools through the community and of the com- munity through the schools by a group of people representing the next phase of civic thought is a process fraught with dangers.

If pressure from outside is put upon a teacher, she is apt to resent it. Teachers are entirely too docile in obeying official commands, but quick to resent coercion from those without authority, particularly in matters of morals, manners, and ethics, which they regard as matters of personal liberty. I do not need to suggest t ha t co-operation with every friendly agency of righteousness is wise.

When I first, as a little girl, “went into history,” I wept over the battles as recounted in Good- rich’s “Pictorial History of the United States,” being moved to tears indiscriminately by Indian massacres of the whites or the sacking of Indian villages. Anon I became so hardened that I bore with equanimity the slaughter of my country’s enemies, and shed tears only for American or Union losses. But I never became reconciled to the awful tragedy involved in “Confused by the smoke of battle our men mistook their own forces for the enemy, and the field was covered with the dead shot by their allies. ” I n the battle of social forces this happens continually. Beware of it.

The socialist may not have a program identical with yours, but in this matter of educating the children to a broader comprehension of the term “ thy brother” and to habits of ready service of the common- wealth, he is one with you.

A late graduate of Smith tells me, “I am wild for something to do. I practise, and sew, and raise plants, and play bridge, and it doesn’t use up m y energy a t all. They put me on the town improvement, but all they do is to meet once in a fortnight and petition the council to remove the garbage. What I’d like to do is t o get together a gang of girls and remove that garbage my own self.” She too wants to serve. Her brother

Above all, do not mistake friend for foe.

Neither is the feminist necessarily seeking t o exploit her ego.

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knows how, but she has not yet found the way. The fact is, out of the matrix of the home, twin crystals have developed and the girl is just as ready as the boy to cease being an undifferentiated atom in an amorphous mass called the populace, and to awaken to consciousness as one indi- vidual in a collection of related units called the people. Use this emo- tion and this energy to further your cause. Do not fight i t because it does not bear your label.

As to devices: Get out, through a well-equipped committee, a general program by

all means, but I beg.of you make i t simple. The program published by one of your learned members and reported in your proceedings for 1909 overawed me. When I read i t I came near telegraphing that I could not come here to-day. And if it thus abashed a veteran, how, think you, will it affect little Miss Snooks, fresh from the Oswcgo normal school, note-book in hand, prepared to teach phonics, physical culture, art, literature, language, nature, and sex-hygiene, but as yet uninformed upon laboratory methods in elementary civics? Have mercy on us, and make the general program a skeleton program that we may fill i t out when we ourselves are fuller.

It is a good, though not a lucrative occupation. And the more written, the more read. The text-book addressed to the pupil endangers the style of teaching, prone always to degenerate into book work and lip service. The text-book written for teachers’ use, the publishers are loth to accept, since there is little profit in it. The text-book which your own society publishes will not be circulated, for you have not the agents to push it.

The general program should guide, and several text-books inspire the local study.

In Newark we have the local study in perhaps as perfected a form as can yet be found. It exemplifies the multiplicative power of one germ. We have in Newark a man. When I was supervisor in the grammar grades of the Newark schools, he suggested to me, “Couldn’t you have your children write some compo- sitions about Newark?” SO, in making out the course of study, I made one feature of Newark obligatory as a composition subject in each semes- ter-the hospitals of Newark; the schools of Newark; our firemen; a beautiful spot in Newark, and the like.

Then Mr. Dana got Mr. Urquhart, of the Newark Sunday Call, to write three pamphlets upon Newark’s history. It took two years to get them, and then the board of education took over the publication and made their study a part of the history course.

My composition subjects had sent teachers t o the library for infor- mation, so that Mr. Dana-who is the city librarian-had city statutes

Write text-books.

His name is John Cotton Dana.

That was the beginning.

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and condensed information upon certain subjects mimeographed and supplied to the teachers in sets of fifty sheets.

J. Wilmer Kennedy, assistant superintendent of schools, wrote and compiled this book-“A Study of Newark”- for the teachers’ use. And these pamphlets, amplifications of the mimeographed sheets, written mostly by the library staff, are supplied by the city in sets of forty or fifty for reading by the pupils, in connection with his book.

And so the local study has teen made well nigh complete. The culminating point i t is impossible to reach without referring once

more to the pre-eminent importance of having the right sort of teacher. All these devices-formal general program, text-book, local study-will be of no avail if in each class the spirit of citizenship be not found. What the child does in his tiny social sphere, in what spirit he does it, and what fruit of his effort he sees-these are the vital matters.

In the kindergarten class, when the teacher says, “What shall we do for Johnnie who is ill?” and some child says, “Send him our pictures,” and the scrap book of the day’s work is carried by a representative com- mittee chosen by the children, we have our elementary civics in living form. When Mrs. Smith complains that boys from the Dwight school have stolen her pears, and a t a mass meeting, presided over by the president of the eighth grade class, the thieves confess, give what they canlin restitution, are helped by public spirited neighbors possessing pennies, go out and buy a basket of fruit, and, led by the president, go in a body to say, “We are the sinners, but the school doesn’t stand for such doings, and we’ve come to apologize and ask’you to accept this fruit as a proof of our regret,” and when, coming back, they report, “She didn’t want to take it, but we made her,” then you have civic conscience in wholesome action.

The schools are full of just such happenings, unrecorded, their insti- gators unconscious of their real significance. Whether recognition of them would do good or harm is hard to determine. The modern ten- dency to evaluations makes us wish to see their sum in symbols.

This is a long road upon which we have entered. You have not planted a bed of pansies whose flowers you may wear in your buttonhole within a few weeks. You are engaged in sylviculture. And i t will doubtless be your children’s children who will sit under the shade of the trees that you in these years set out.

But we must not be impatient.

LOUISE CONNOLLY.‘

1Educational expert of the Free Public Library, Newark, Xew Jersey, and of the Newark Museum Association and secretary of the Moving Picture Commission of New Jersey.