Patriotism through Education
NEWS AND COMMENT.
Carrying forward the recommendations of the Committee on Patriotic Education adopted at the Congress of Constructive Patriotism in Washington on January 29, 1917, it is proposed to organize a campaign of lectures on patriotic topics in order that the people of the United States may be generally informed of the cause of the war and the varied needs of the nation for defense and victory. Everyone who knows the gravity of our struggle, must feel that service in the field of patriotic education is as essential as in the battle ranks. The lecture system is being prepared, and it is hoped to enroll speakers for a country-wide campaign. A preliminary meeting for organization was held May 12th in the Engineering Societies Building, New York City, and further announcements will soon be ready. Professor Albert Bushnell Hart is chairman of the committee, and may be addressed at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
Plans for Iowa Child Welfare Station Announced.
With the $25,000 a year that was voted by the legislature for establishing a child welfare research station at Iowa City, the State University will finance investigations of parental care, of feeding, of disease prevention, of social conditions affecting child life, of the home as a factor in educating the child and forming character, and of methods of applying psychology to child development.
The undertaking will be the first effort made in a large way in Iowa for the good of the child who is well. Of the thousands of dollars spent for philanthropic purposes practically all go for the betterment of defectives. The child welfare work begins this summer. At first attention will be concentrated on some two or three lines of research, to be selected as soon as the staff is formed. A committee is now at work on preliminary steps toward forming the organization provided by law.
In some respects the work of the station will do for human life what animal husbandry experiment stations have long been doing for the care of animals. It will investigate the conditions in Iowa that produce ill-born children and those that produce well-born children.
By experiments the best methods’ of feeding children to produce health and efficiency will be worked out in the University hospital. The values of various foods, as well as their costs, will be determined.
Plans include an investigation of the causes of infant mortality, through which it is hoped that the public can be awakened to preventive measures of all kinds, not only in warding off disease but also in aiding the production of superior bodies and minds.
The station will seek figures regarding births and deaths of infants and the maiming, stunting, dwarfing, and reduction of vitality of those who survive. Sanitation, housing conditions, food supplies, and working conditions of mothers as affecting child welfare will be studied.
The child learns more during the first five years than in any other equal period of his life; and, at the age of five, the child’s character is well set. Little work has been done in devising scientific methods for mothers to use in educating children and moulding character during this telling period. To supply the need will be one of the aims of the station, under the direction of Dr C. E. Seashore, head of the department of psychology.
Already psychologists have found ways to analyze the fitness o chi dren for several vocations. They have learned how to diagnose and treat mental defects. Further applications of psychology will be sought.
Results of the research work will be announced from time to time in pamphlets, in newspaper and magazine articles, and in bulletins designed to assist mothers and fathers and others who have to do with the rearing of children. Preparedness and Good Health.
In the Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education for 1916 is a chapter (XIX) by Mr. Willard S. Small, Principal of the Eastern High School, Washington, D. C., which is of particular interest to patriotic educators. Once in a lifetime,” he says, “or it may be once in a century, the common mind of a nation is so aroused and unified as to make possible far-reaching educational reconstructions. … It has required the scourge of fear, born of the horrors of the great war, to make vivid and real the thing that everybody has known. The statistics of rejection of applicants for enlistment in the Army and Navy have been available for years and have been quite as significant heretofore as they are in 1916. … In interpreting these figures it must always be remembered that the physical standards for recriuts are very rigorous, and that most of the recruits in time of peace are young men who are temporarily out of employment, this second fact carrying the implication of a large admixture of physical incompetency. Allowing for these facts, however, the figures are sufficiently impressive. “In the year 1915 there were, in round numbers, 160,000 applicants for enlistment in the U. S. Army. Of these 117,000 were rejected upon preliminary examination, and 7000 of the remaining 43,000 were rejected upon detailed medical examination; 30,000, or about 20 per cent, were accepted. “The records of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, U. S. Navy Department, for the year ended December 31,1914, show that of the 72,410 applicants for original enlistment in the Navy and of 20,674 in the Marine Corps, 76 per cent of the former and 82.4 per cent of the latter were rejected for physical and mental disabilities; and that during the year ended December 31, 1915, there were 73,028 applicants for original enlistment in the Navy, and 21,676 in the Marine Corps, of whom 75.4 per cent were rejected by the Navy, and 83 per cent by the Marine Corps, for like causes.”
Mr. Small gives a table of the percentage of rejections for various causes, explaining that it “does not tell the story as completely as would be desirable: (1) The all other causes (ranging from 48 to 59 per cent) is entirely too large. This includes such causes as underheight and underweight, which do not necessarily connote physical inefficiency * (2) There is probably a disproportionate amount of rejection on account of visual and dental defect. Requirements in these respects are very rigid and such defects are easily detected. This qualification cuts both ways: (a) Individuals rejected for these defects may have other more serious defects that are unrecorded, (6) individuals having these defects in sufficient degree to warrant rejection may be absolutely sound in other respects and, hence, very efficient physically.”
“The really impressive thing revealed by these figures,” in Mr. Small’s opinion, is “the fact that a very large part of the disabilities recorded are of such nature that they might have been corrected or prevented in childhood by health supervision in the schools, adequate medico-physical examination, cor96 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC. rective follow-up work, proper exercise and instruction in personal hygiene, and hygienic environment. … It would be illuminating if the statistics could be compared with similar statistics for graduates of high schools. Unfortunately such statistics do not exist. Few school systems provide for continuous and detailed examinations during the elementary school years and fewer still in the high school years. The high school graduates ought to be a selected group, physically as well as mentally, but most persons who are familiar with the situation would hesitate to predict that more than 50 per cent of the boys graduating from the high schools would meet the Army and Navy standards. The condition of those who are eliminated before graduation and of the much greater number who never reach the high school is even less favorable.
“It is this formidable fact?that the educational organization has tolerated physical inefficiency, even if it is not a contributing cause?that the interest in preparedness is bringing acutely to the national consciousness. The realization of the folly and extravagance of such a lack of policy will become more vivid in the next two or three years.”
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