The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1922-07-04
TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL
Information Bureau
FREDERIC J. HASKIN. Director.
Washington, I'D. 9.
THE EDUCATION OF AMERICAN
WORKERS,

VILE OE- ANxEA11ANSSA&N
WORKERS.
New York City, June S0.-How to
become well educated tho poor is a
problem that has long puzzled many
Woodworking Americans. Now, at
last a satisfactory solution seems to
have been found in the workers uni
versities that are being established IN
so many industrial cities thruout the
country.
Already more than fifty of these
universities are N operation, as well
as innumerable study classes, where
working men and women may go in
their spare hours and receive an ex-
cellent education. They are financed
by the workers themselves. Some OF
them, such as the Amherst classes for
workers and the Trade Union College
of Boston. have a close utilization
with our big universities. Harvard,
Boston Tech, Wellesley and Tufts, for
example, have all been interested and
generous in their support of the Bos-
ton workers college, while the Am
taught by instructors from the Am
herst college faculty. All are under
the general supervision OF the work
ers' educational bureau of America.
whose headquarters is here in New
York.
AItho the Amherst experiment in
workers education is not typical of
most of thu ventures, the reason for
ut seemed to u.s." says the secre-
tary of the undertaking, that the re-
lations between American colleges and
the communities surrounding them
varied from armed neutrality to
actual hostility, and that this was I'M
fortunate for both community and
college; that American colleges
(nominally open to any one) were
available to very few whose family
incomes were not above the average,
and This larpPfV haCanSR
educational system is founded upon a
scheme of prerequisites making the
graduation from grammar and high
school almost essential if one is to
enter college. So that, once having
dropped cut, it is almost impossible to
go on again, even tho one is so eX-
ceptionally fortunate as to have the
funds and the leisure necessary.
1T seemed to us unfair that the
great mass of workers should auto
matically be disqualified because the
mechanical arrangements of our edu-
cationa1 system happened to be such
that it was impossible for them to
fulfill its requirements, and hence
that workers should practically be de-
barred from colleges and universities
supported by community funds or en-
dowed for the purpose OF giving edu-
cation to ail.''
Few College Graduates.
Only 2 per cent of all the millions
of adults in this country are college
graduates. The vast majority not
only cannot afford the money and
time required to go to college; they
cannot even afford to attend high
school The average citizen and voter
goes promptly to work as soon as he
has completed grammar school, If not
before, having acquired only the
barest smattering of an education and,
until recently, little chance of acquir-
ing any more.
The new workers colleges are spe-
cially designed to meet the needs of
this average citizen and worker. The
classes are usually held on two eve
nings week and on Saturdays and
Sundays in the most convenient place
which happens to be available. Some
are housed in high school buildings,
some in public halls and others in To-
cal trade union headquarters. The
workman pledges himself to attend
the classes thirty-six weeks a year
during a period of three years.
Special textbooks have been written
for his benefit by experts. They pre-
sent lucidly and elementariIy the
background of each subject in the
simplest language. They are manu-
factured and sold cheaply so that they
are within the reach of any worker.
Among the subjects treated are litera-
ture, science, sociology, history, poll
tics, labor and finance. The aim is
not to change a mans vocation or to
help him increase his earning capac-
n.y. bdL " PTONlu0 MIN Win
general educational background
which will enable him to use intelli-
gently the vote which he enjoys.
perhaps the greatest cause of mod
ern industrial unrest" declares Spen-
Ger Miller, Jr., secretary-treasurer of
the Workers Educational Bureau of
America, lies in the fact that in the
highly specialized modern industry a
worker does not get any creative salts
faction out of his work. A man NAV
be trained tn ia ha ,o1A
to the same piece of machinery as
soon as the law permits him to leave
schooI, and he may stay at that mo-
notonouS work for 80 years.
LAS a result he has no sense of his
relation to the industry of which he is
part and no sense of the Industrial
relation to society. He stores up re-
sentiment, naturally, because he has no
creative outlet whatever. He does not
share in the adventure and enterprise
of the organization for which he
works. This suppression of his crea-
tive impulse has been responsible for
the psychosis the laborer has de-
veloped- 1t is manifest turnout the in
dustrial world in dissatisfaction and
discomfort.
THE work of the bureau and of the
workers universities is to provide
these men with the cultural back
ground which will enable them to use
their creative energies The modern
industrial world suffers from an in
cubuS or the old 1eudal system, per-
haps not so much in America as in
Great Britain, but even to a great ex-
tent here Over there there is no free
land industry is highly centralized
and the workers are struggling under
an inheritance of old injustice.
{ Under the feudal system and the
early trade systems a man was ap-
prenticed to a certain work at an early
age and he was kept at it thruout his
life. In former times this man could
find a CeTatin creative SafiSfa CfiOT1 in
| his work because he had the entire
making of it. But with the develop