East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current, 1913-07-15

CHICAGO, July 15.-American
schools under the present system of
education do not fill the place they
should in fitting boys and girls for
manhood and womanhood, according
to Professor w, ID. MacClntock, of the
University of Chicago Prof Mac
Clintock has long advocated radical
reforms in American schools which
j he believes will tend to make the
young graduates fitted to take up
their duties as citizens. Today he
gave to the United Press his ideas as
to the changes needed, as follows
The test of our school system is
whether itNprepares our young people
to take vital places in a real, social
world-a world of all the people, a
world of real not accidental needs
/ and service. III many ways our
schools are still unsocial. They do
not give the young people what is
needed to make them self-supporting
when they leave and go out into the
world. They do not give them the
things which society is glal to pay
them for.
I'm many ways our women are the
more "unsocial' of the two sexes, and
our schools for girls, of course with
some exceptions, especially fail to
train young women to be helpful men,
| bers of society, and the word society
is not used in the narrow, limited
sense. Girls are trained in cultivated,
but 'unsociar' seclusion. They are
taught to be members of false $50
ciety' on money they do not earn and
do not know how it is earned, on scale
which the world really cannot afford,
and with a social exclusiveness and
| snobbery which isolates them from
the vast majority of mankind.
"In order to be genuinely social, the
| individual must begin to make a re-
turn to society for what he or she
has so long been receiving. And this
return must be in some vital kind OF
service which society needs.
For a matter of twenty years on
the average young people of today are
! receivers" only; they have taken
! food. clothing, shelter, the experience
of others, leisure and play. But while
they have been receiving all this graf
is few of them have had it made plain
to them that they were like a build
| ing in the course of construction
which, when completed at the end of
twenty years, must be put to good
use. They can become social only by
enthusiastically giving back to So
ciety for the rest of their lives some
thing worth while. And this law of
return may be stated not as duty
self-sacrifice. a service, but as a
pleasure of the highest kind, and a
privilege OF all things most needed
! young people need to be taught that
no one ever gets something for moth
ing. The something received, must be
paid for some time.
again, We become social py learn,
ing to work. to know and respect la
Dor. Idleness is the greatest social
sin. The individual should be ex-
pertly capable of clothing, feeding,
sheltering and entertaining himself or
herself. and should receive no certi-
fication of graduation, no diploma,
until he can prove the ability to do so.
HE must know what his pleasure
and support cost in human labor and
no mature person should be allowed to
think the world owes him living or
that he is free to live on the labor of
others without making a return in
kind
Being social implies cooperation
the difficult art of working. not for
but with others. 1t is much easier
to work alone, to sacrifice oneself
Cooperation means respect for 9TH
ers, consideration, toleration, limiting
ones selfish tendencies. agreeing to
work in common, patience with faults
of others, refusal to have what others
have not unless it has bee nearned by
more work or as reward A social
person is one who is capable of rapid
and pleasant exchange of ideas. 1t
means meeting and parting with per-
sons of all classes and neither giving
nor receiving harm. Good breeding,
justice and a sense of humor are the
three essentials for this.
THE social realization is often best |
accomplished by working with others
for some higher ideal. 1t is difficult
to be social with ones immediate COM
petitor, but even two rivals can op-
crate together toward some common
good All modern communities offer |
higher social institutions in which the
individual selfishness and egotosm |
can be lost in the work for the good |