The Educational screen (c1922-c1956])

Page 294 The Educational Screen something in the article that is worthy of thought by all men and women in education. There is one strong factor — that of motivation — that dominates in the educational processes employed in the army and navy. Education depends on the motivating ability of the individual teacher and of the administrators responsible for the educational program. We attempt some things in school work that we have not been able to do, despite our efforts to motivate them. For instance, in teaching arithmetic, there is a tendency to give credit on two bases — first, the ability to get the right answer, second, to recognize a pupil's use of the right process, even if he does not get the right answer. But in navigation as it is taught in the navy, there is only one acceptable answer, the right answer. If we could get that motivation into our arithmetic teaching, the factor of self-preservation that has almost gone out of teaching in the American schools, we would come closer to teaching "the G. I. way". This factor has gone out with the passing of the woodshed. The Chairman: You mean, perhaps, when the boys failed to pass the woodshed? Hamilton: When we decided to turn the woodshed into a garage, a great motivation was removed from American education. I wish we could bring in that element of self-preservation. Another element that should be given more consideration is that of competition. Still another motivating factor in the G. I. way which we do not have in the schools, is the element of pay. If we could pay even only 50 cents an hour for every child in the school, we would have more effort put into education. I am not so sure that on the question of instruction they are able to do so much better in the armed forces than we do in the schools. Many of those instructors were formerly in the service of the schools, and after tlie war is won a great many will return to the schools. If our school administrators are smart they will take full advantage of the training these people have received while working in the armed forces. There is also the matter of improved apparatus. Projectors we are using now are superior to what we had at the beginning of the war. Aptitude tests are important. We do use them in our echools, to a certain extent. They are not fool-proof but they do constitute a scientific approach that should be carried over from the G. I. way to our educational institutions. We can teach the so-called "G. I. way", and I believe we are going to do it. Rather than criticize the writer of the article, we ought to be grateful for the stimulation he provided. And he did do that ! (Laughter) We should watch out that we do not become impervious to stimulation. Brooker: I am here as just another educator. For 13 years I taught school, starting in a one-room schoolhousc with 57 kids — and I got $25 a year extra for chopping the wood and firing the stove in the winter. My last teaching job was in a high school with 4,500 students. As educators we may be doing a good job, but I am not so much concerned with just having the right methods as I am with getting the right answer. I wonder if, as educators, we have not been too satisfied just with having the right methods, and this raises the question of whether educators recognize December 7th in their own field. Were, perhaps, the establishment of the CCC and of the NYA admissions of defeat in public education? The Army and Navy men could give some very disquieting figures about the illiteracy and educational level of certain groups of trainees who came to them fiom our schools. The Chairman: That seems to sound a different note.. Closer to that of the much abused absent author — let's hear from him for the last time. He was not nearly as gentle with the schoolmen as Supt. Hamilton was with him. He charges that "With American schools, education is a two-billion-ayear job. Often it's just passing tests and playing safe and under-paying teachers and not letting the school board catch you drinking beer". He claims the .\rmy can "teach unusually bright boys in one month all the important mathematics they get in the high school. The same is true of history and physics". He calls loudly for "something to breathe suspense and life into the cadaver of history teaching". He lauds the Army courses, where they have "no interest-killing drill on grammar, (nor) puzzling with lules on irregular verbs and past participles". He tells us that "The prewar liberal-arts-college education was a leisurely way of killing four good years of a young man's life" with the result that "in the end you have nothing but sleek, well-tubbed animals with money in their pockets and nothing in their heads". He makes the claim that "With movies you can teach the first grade biological subjects which otherwise must be held ofif until the tenth — until the children have tlie vocabulary to understand". He re peats that "Edison predicted twentyyears ago that teaching films would supplant textbooks", and, just so that the school film makers would not get too cocky, he admonishes : "Don't compare teaching films with the stillborn reels of your day ... as the y\rmy uses them they're full of slambang action and tremendous explosions and the crunch of the bone." And, this final compliment to the teacher — "It's tough on old Professor James, history 204, three credits, take a back seat and catch up on your sleep. It's tough, but there's enough evidence to hang him from the yard-arm of any school". That should be enough from the author. The school people have been far more charitable toward him, and more generous in their praise of the fine job done in the armed forces too. Those teachers in uniform have done a fine job, and we can all be proud of them. They have done the same fine job that they previously did in their civilian classrooms, only on a bigger scale and under the different conditions that have already been pointed out. Theirs has been the job of inculcating individual skills and attitudes on the greatest mass scale our land has ever seen. But we have on our panel another man who has been concerned with a mass education program to develop and clarify attitudes on a truly vast scale : Mr. Reagan, of the OWI. Reagan: H&ve we not really agreed that there is no such thing as the "G.I. way" ? There was a rush war job to do, and the Army and Navy proceeded to use the most effective way to do it — the visual way. Educators have long agreed that visual aids, well made and properly used, accelerate learning and help get improved results. There is nothing new or revolutionary here except the urgency of the situation. Yet, able as our educators are, there are some problems that have not yet been solved. One of them is illiteracy. We have three million adults in this country who cannot read or write. We liave four million between the ages of 19 and 37 who were not qualified to enter the armed forces. And what about the 85 to 90 million adults who admittedly know nothing about the meaning of reciprocal treaties, or the fifty percent of our adult population who do not know that we did not join the League of Nations? And what about the people who never vote? These are vital and pertinent problems that you and I have to face and solve in education, if we are to win this war and the peace that follows. Some one has figured out that only