The new educational institutions have set themselves to meet the needs of the child and of the community. Their success depends upon their ability to understand these needs and to supply them.
The old-fashioned schoolmaster asked: "How can I compel?" His answer was the rod. The modern schoolmaster asks: "How can I direct?" His answer is a laboratory, open-minded, scientific method, and a host of varied courses designed to meet the needs of individual children and of individual communities.
Communities vary as greatly in their characteristics as do children. It is now certain that no formula will provide education for all children.
Each new study of community needs makes it more evident that no system will supply education for all communities. It is the business of the educator to study the individual child and the individual community, and then to provide an education that will assist both to grow normally and soundly in all of their parts.
V The Final Test of Education
The school is a servant, not a master. In that fact lies its greatness--the greatness of its opportunity and of its responsibility.
As an institution its object is service--assistance in growth.
Development is the goal of education. Virility, efficiency, citizenship, manhood, womanhood--these are its legitimate products. Its tools and formulas are such as will most effectively serve these ends. When the increase of knowledge leads to new methods and formulas which will prove more effective than the old ones, then the old ones must be laid aside, reverently, perhaps, but none the less firmly, and the new ones adopted.
Changes may not be made hastily and without due consideration; but when experiment has shown that the new device is more advantageous in furthering the objects of education than the old and tried formulas, a change is inevitable.
The first and last word on the subject is spoken when this question is asked and answered: "Does education exist for children, or do children exist for education?"
If children exist for education, then it is just that an objective educational standard should be created; it is fair that a hard and fast course of study be mapped out in conformity with that standard; it is right that educational machinery be constructed which automatically turns away from the schools any child who does not conform to the school system as it is. If children exist for education, they should either conform to its requirements, or else, if they will not or cannot conform, they should be mercilessly thrust aside.
If, on the other hand, education exists for children, then the primal consideration must be child needs. If any one child, or any group of children, has needs which are not met by existing educational institutions, then these institutions must be remodeled. If an adequate congenial education is a part of the birthright of every American child, then educational institutions must be reorganized and reshaped until they provide that birthright in the fullest possible measure.
Already the answer has been formulated. Already educators have recognized the potency of the saying: "The schools were made for the children, not the children for the schools." Hence it follows that no school system is so sacred, no method of teaching so venerable, no textbook so infallible, no machinery of administration so permanent, that it must not give way before the educational needs of childhood.
Concerning the educational problem of to-day, yesterday cannot speak with authority. Each age has its problems--problems which may be solved by that age, or handed on unsolved to the future. The past is dead. Only its voice--its advice and suggestion--serves as a guide or as a warning.
Of authority it should have not an atom.
The educational opportunities of to-day are without peer. The educational machinery, ready at hand, is being transformed to meet the newly understood needs of the child and of the community. The spirit of the new education is the spirit of service, the spirit of fair dealing, the spirit of growth for the individual and of advancement for society.
Here are individual needs. There are aligned the social obligations and requirements of the age. In so far as it lies within the power of the school, the children who leave its doors shall have their needs supplied, and shall be equipped to play their part as virile, efficient citizens in a greater community. Such is the spirit of the new education.