Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/382

 368 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

It was the idea of the early advocates of the public schools that the child must be taught the three R's to enable him to perform intelligently his duties as a citizen. Slowly we have come to realize that the political life rests upon the industrial life, and that we cannot make the boy a worthy citizen unless we make him a self-supporting man, versatile, self-reliant ; equipped, so far as education can achieve this, for any change in the con- ditions of his occupation. We have still to recognize that this work for the boy cannot be done in the years from six to twelve, that it demands greater maturity in the boy, and more time for the teacher. We must draft our army of working boys back into the public school, offering them manual training in all the grades. This is the reverse of a class measure, for it presup- poses that the workingman's child is not going on in a rut. It aims to discern all the latent talent in all the children, not to drill a corporal's guard for a vanishing trade or one already overcrowded.

It has taken long time and hard work to make the schools as good and as general as they are now ; and the nation is more adequate to the task before it than it has ever been. We were never so rich in money and equipment ; there were never so many well and wisely trained teachers. It is only our ideals that are mean. Let us broaden them to embrace all the children and fit them for the whole of life.

FLORENCE KELLEY,

Chief Inspector Illinois Factories and Workshops CHICAGO.