The fact that the problem is a novel one and that it is experimental does not make it futile. All education is experimental in adapting the individual to his changing environment.
During recent years our schools have had to consider the outside forces of the changing world. It was in 1881 that the first manual-training high school opened its doors under the hostile gaze of incredulity and disapproval. Since then our educational system has been bombarded with essays on the relation of education to life, on practical aspects of education, on vocational guidance, on trade schools, etc. We have only to look at the vastly differentiated courses of our colleges (some of which have lost all trace of the humanities), at the variegated courses in our high schools, at our remodeled elementary courses, to realize that in thirty years the whole attitude of the people towards our schools has undergone a vast change. These changes were regarded as revolutionary at first. But it is no more revolutionary to introduce the war into our schools than it was to introduce the laboratory study of sciences, or agricultural studies, or courses in millinery and home-making,--that is, if we understand the meaning of _war into the schools_.
It is not to be denied that the educational emphasis is different. The student who takes an agricultural course, and thus prepares himself to be a modern efficient farmer, is only indirectly doing work of service to the State. His aim is individual improvement, an advance which results in general benefit to the State; whereas a girl who does Red Cross work in school, or a boy who works in a war garden, benefits the individual through the larger service of collective responsibility in serving the nation directly.
We are not unmindful of the fact that war is a temporary condition, and we must not crowd out the fundamental studies to meet the needs of a temporary environment, however urgent the need may be. In carrying the war into our schools we must emphasize those permanent elements which are as necessary in war as in peace; we must use the war as an opportunity to develop service to the State,--service which may be vitalizing and ennobling, full of purposeful appreciation of collective responsibility.