Wheeling majority. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1907-192?, 1912-06-27
and Education
(5y j. G. scott.)
PART 2:-The Meaning of Education.

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given can be given during the three
cold winter months; equipment, being
so much simpler, can be largely made
and entirely housed by students as
part of the regular school work;
teachers should cost more, but fewer
will be needed, as book drill can be
banished and the work can be organ
J lied so that the older pupils may
direct the younger, leaving the teach
er free for superintendent only-for
direction, in Junior Cooperative
Commonwealth, will displace didac-
tics; the increased cost for skilled
directors may be largely neutralized
by the fact that they will live perman=
emily on the farm and get much of
their living therefrom; laboratory
equipment will be far less expensive,
as expensive research apparatus will
bel unnecessary, and more important,
cooperative study of science will dis
place the foolish, wasteful, individual
work" now generally upheld and this
viii require about one-tWentieth of
such apparatus.
Third, such a school will solve the
problem of withdrawal from school.
Withdrawal from school between -
and 10 years, in the ideal educative
period, is the most serious problem
now confronting orthodox educators.
The chief causes for withdrawal are,
first, to help support self or family;
second to satisfy the working and
earning fever; third, to escape the
school prison with it's lock step cur
riculum, prison discipline and pedan-
tic pedagogues. The industrial farm
should give pleasant, healthful work
at better wages than can be secured
outside, it will surely satisfy the
working fever, and it will replace pri-
son life with real, active social and
Il economic life in a normal, free So
ciety.
Fourth, science that Spencer truly
declared could alone prepare for COM
plete living, will in the industrial farm
school be functional in solving actual
lprobems in which the pupil is econo-
mcally and therefore vitality, interest
ed. Farm science, such as agricultur-
al chemistry, soil physics and soil fer
tility, and economic biology will re-:
place the research science that is now
so out of place in our secondary
schools.
| Fifth, that evanescent essence, the
moral sentiments and habits, the bug
bear of the non-functiOnaa school and
teacher, can be easily developed and
trained correctly where vital activities
are to be controlled or modified by
individuals and groups-for moral life
concerns itself with social action; the
varied activities in the actual social
and economic life of the Industrial
farm school activities furnish the
ideal environment to give ideals and
| secure habits of control.
Sixth, as President Hill has said,
1.-THE farmer makes his own art gal
lery," and with ever varying nature
the clouds, sky, birds, insects, waving
trees and grass and flowers, moving
water and changing landscape-all
z for a background, creates his own art
treasures as we'll. Here is the best
and cheapest art work for our boys
and girls. No person has been proper
" educated who does not feel a thrill
at "For Nature never did betray the
heart that loved her."
Seventh, where youth are living, In
; contrast to being shut up in order to
, study they will play as well as work,
and the school farm will be an ideal
play ground, as we as workshop and
art gallery and study laboratory. The
playground and park can be utilized
BY adults as well, and the whole
school can be a social center and
place of recreation for the entire COM
munity.
Eight since we only learn to do by
4 doing, preparation for citizenship, one
of the highest aims of education, can
best be given in an actual junior So
ciety, where problems, similar to those
in adult society, will arise and be
, solved by the junior citizen. Since all
such problems, Immediately or ulti-
mately, are concerned with industry
the industrial farm school. with its
complex Industrial activities and their
nterrelatons and necessary interde-
pendence- intact, with activities the
very core of all school work-will give
the widest range of problems and
furnish an almost ideal environment
For tho DEVELOPMENT of citizenship