sustaining democracy Charles B. Gilbert 1905

Charles B. Gilbert 1905

The business of the schools is to train democratic people; and every teacher in every line of work should endeavor to bring up the boys and the girls to the feeling that they must be democratic--that they stand equal in opportunity and in obligation with all other boys and girls who are growing up.

This may seem remote from this subject (manual training in schools); but it is not. If you have your manual training high school as distinct from manual training in high schools, then you have a lot of boys and girls put off by themselves. You deprive all the others of the educational value--of the training--which the manual training affords and then, having shut these off by themselves, the psychological tendency among teachers and pupils is to distinguish the mechanical from the high and aesthetic or social or more intellectual work; and the tendency is for all such schools (and I have watched it for years) to become more and more like trade schools, with the emphasis on the mechanical. The teachers inevitably drift that way; they need--you need--the counteracting influence in your own school of the teachers of Greek and Latin and history, literature and all the other things; otherwise they tend to become master mechanics--instructors in mechanics. That is a great danger to both teacher and pupil.

The boy and girl needs to be right along in the school side by side with the boy or girl fitting for college, in order to have the proper effect produced upon their minds, the proper social training; and social training is the great training of the schools after all.

Mr. Gilbert's point, passionately raised in the Eastern Manual Training Association's 1905 meeting is an important one. Democracy is severely injured by distinct divisions in economic and social class, and at one time, manual training in schools was understood to be a means through which democracy and democratic principles were sustained.