damental ideas concerning public education. They have reached safe and sane conclusions concerning the function of public schools and the purposes of training the young for future reliability and constant serviceableness. They have acquired realizations as to universality of education and as to conceptions of aim that are marvelous in their scope and startling as to their interpretations. They have planned and they have built, they have debated courses of training and they have legislated to contrive means to ends, but they have left the vital factor, the real element in the entire system, the essential initial consideration that conducts the service, to chance, indirection and accidental initiative. They have hesitated to attack the problem of the teacher and have depended upon the commission system as to control, and the supervisory system as to management, both admissions of incompleteness, lack of permanency and unsettled convictions as to the real value of the personnel, and the absolute necessity to depend upon talent, training and efficiency has been overlooked as the solution of all difficulties. In all proposed improvements, supervision is magnified, organization is amplified and system is glorified, as it seems to be accepted that these are the criteria that will secure success, and hence the tentative continues, the experimental dominates, and the elaboration of the temporary is the center of thought and of action. The final summary of all human effort in education must cventually be located in the individual teacher, the one consideration that cannot be omitted and that should not be neglected. Only as the teacher becomes a permanent factor in modern civilization, only as competency and efficiency are reached in this ultimate necessity for child welfare, can supervision be limited to leadership and to general management and the commission system of control reach such definite ends that public expenditure and public expectation become investments for public welfare and complements of human efficiency. Some Pioneer Problems Worked Out With Illiterates GARRY C. MYERS, CAPTAIN SANITARY CORPS, DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION, RECRUIT EDUCATIONAL CENTER, A CAMP UPTON, N. Y.* NY teacher of the primary grade would get a very interesting picture if she were to imagine the little learners of her class to be grown men learning similar lessons and thinking in similar ways. To the average school man it takes a little stretch of the imagination to get such a picture, but to the writer and his twenty-seven teachers it is a reality. Almost two thousand such adult learners are at the Recruit Educational Center, Camp Upton, where, instead of making a cross for their name and having their neighbors write and read their letters, they are learning to write their names and to correspond with their sweethearts and friends far away. One remarkable thing about adult illiterates is the speed with which they learn to read and write. Numerous men here who had been helpless with book and pen, have become able to write a letter home in two weeks and to read intelligently short, simple stories from Andersen. Contrary to the popular belief, the adult, if he has mediocre mental capacity, learns the fundamentals much more rapidly than does the child. Another striking point about the adult illiterates is their interest in imaginative appeal. They revel in the Arabian Nights Tales and the fancies of Andersen and the Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. These men warm up to the same kind of imaginary appeals to which the writer's babies at two and three listened with avidity. The man without literacy in any language, of which the Georgia boy in our school is typical, has almost nothing to talk about or think about. A few fancy fires enkindled seem to spread so as to set off considerable action in that man's mind. •Now Head Dept. Psychology, School of Education, Cleveland, Ohio. Of course our men are very fond of adventure and of narratives of human struggles, human sacrifices and human victories. Consequently the course of study constantly appeals through the lives of great men, especially great Americans. Thus it is easy to lead the learner to acquaintance with, and to belief in, and ultimate adoption of, the ideals of America. Every man interested in furthering the genuine ideals of America ought to hear the testimony the one-time Arab, or Turk, or Hungarian, or Dane, or any representation of the fifty different nationalities assembled in this school, on behalf of America and of what America has done for him. To hear such testimony is to be convinced that the Army has begun a work that is to be a most effectual missionary enterprise to counteract unrest and to help build firmly-lasting principles of Americanism, through its wellfounded school at Camp Upton, after which soon are to be established several other Recruit Educational Centers throughout the United States. Primarily the school was started to train recruits for the army, but it has far outgrown its pristine purposes. It has become a great American mission for America, wherein every man becomes an ardent preacher of the principles of our Republic. In this school the men are not preached to. Instead, they are the preachers. They read and write in their 29th lesson, for example, the following: Company B, R. E. C., Camp Upton, N. Y. My dear Nellie: I used to see you make beautiful things with the needle. You once made a centerpiece, and you worked at it for days and days. It did not mean much to me, but I remember how happy you always were when you showed it to the other girls. Now I understand it, Nellie. You put every stitch in it with your own hands, so that every stitch means something For the first time, the other day, I could understand it, when I learned what our flag means, for it means more than red and white and blue cloth. Every stitch, every thread means the lives of many American soldiers, just like us, who suffered, bled and died. They suffered and starved and bled and died not for themselves but for us, and for their country; and their country is our country. We are happy to be soldiers, ready to defend our country, which is the home of our fathers and our mothers, our sisters and our sweethearts. JACK ARNOLD. All these lessons,* most of which have been constructed by the writer, are designed to make a human appeal, to take advantage of the learner's suggestibility and of the principle that what is preached in earnestness to others is apt to be believed by the preacher. The aim therefore, by the writer of the course and of the teachers in the school, is to lead the learner to become unwittingly the teacher of those duties and ideals which it is desired he shall get. The writer is gathering abundant data to show the tremendous influence of suggestion on the learner and the possibilities to the teacher in this field. Moreover, these lessons constantly suggest to the man that he can learn, that he is making great progress in the school and on the drill field. Furthermore, when written verbatim, in paraphrase, or in any form of imitation to the home folk, these lessons serve as fine propaganda for the local workers in Americanization. One feature, above all others, in the administration of the school, will doubtless interest the progressive school man, namely, the classification of the learner, on the first day of school, on the basis of intelligence rating. Every man, before entering school, is given a standardized group intelligence test. Then, after his grade is determined on the basis of his literacy, he is assigned, to the class (section) within his grade on the basis of his intelligence rating. If there are, say, four classes of the first grade, and 100 men are to be assigned, with 25 to a grade, those 25 men with *These lessons, formerly used in mimeographed pages, have been illustrated and printed in large quantities by the War Department, Washington, D. C. the highest ratings (regardless of what those ratings are) will be counted off for the brightest class, those of the next highest ratings for the next brightest class, and so on. Then when the men of the brightest section are promoted they will pass to the brightest section of the second grade, and in like manner throughout the grades. The assumption, of course, is that the native capacity, the ability to learn, remains the same throughout the school life. Data available here indicates this assumption to be highly safe. However, there are a few cases whose learning progress does not correspond with their relative ranking. These are given individual psychological examinations by an expert psychologist and given other individual attention. On the whole this method of classification is so satisfactory, and the prophecy of the learner's speed of learning, on the basis of his group intelligence ratings is so certain, that the best class of a grade picked thereby is able to advance three or four times as rapidly as the lowest class. The scheme applied to the public school would be very simple. There are now available standardized group intelligence tests, one of which, at least, can be applied about as accurately to the child on entering school as to the eighth grade child. Furthermore, almost any school man can give and use the results of such a test for practical rough classification of children within a grade. On the first day of their school, the hundred children, say, entering the first grade could be examined all in a group within about twenty minutes and the papers could be scored by the teachers in about an hour more. Then, assuming there are to be four classes of 25 children each, the four classes can be counted off on the basis of relative rankings of the 100 children. Thereby, the brightest children, many of whom would never be found otherwise, would be thrown into an environment to stimulate them to do their best, and the slowest children would not be discouraged in attempting to keep pace with the brighter ones nor would they hinder the progress of the brighter children. Certainly the public school cannot long delay to apply what so successfully has been applied in the school for illiterate soldiers at the Recruit Educational Center, Camp Upton, N. Y. |