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When Labor Goes To School
5vGenevieve M. Fox
WHEN LABOR GOES To SCHOOL
A Story of the Workers' Educational Movement
By GENEVIEVE M. Fox
Research Worker, Industrial Committee
National Board
Young Womens Christian Associations
New York
1920
Copyright 1920, by
The National Board of the Young Womens Christian Associations
of the United States of America
New York
FOREWORD
More and more thinking men and women are realiz- ing how largely shortages in people's lives are due to shortages in their education. A large percentage of the membership of the Young Women's Christian Association consists of women whose education has been cut short at an early age, and who are for this reason seriously handicapped not only in the business of earning a living, but also in the business of living. To enable these women to bridge over the gaps in their education is, therefore, becoming an increasingly important concern of this organization, especially now that women are assuming heavier responsibilities as citizens than they have ever shouldered before.
If this organization is to continue to be a pioneer in supplying to women supplementary opportunities for education, it must keep informed as to what efforts wage-earning men and women are making to educate themselves, and must be able to give intelligent infor- mation to those of its members who are seeking fur- ther opportunities for education.
It is the aim of this pamphlet to give an idea of the spirit and purposes of recent movements on the part of labor organizations and universities to educate their members ; what subjects they are most wanting to study and by what means, and in what spirit they are going about studying them. It is a subject which con- cerns not simply one group in the organization, but the entire membership, inasmuch as it deals with the efforts of hundreds of men and women to obtain fuller and more abundant lives.
FLORENCE SIMMS.
487365
"There can be no true democratic com- munity which has not adopted the ideal of education for all according to the needs of all." — ALBERT MANSBRIDGE, Contemporary Review.
WHEN LABOR GOES TO SCHOOL
A Class of Students Who Wouldn't Go Home
A class that refused to be dismissed after a two- hour session but adjourned to the sidewalk until they were accused of interfering with traffic and thereupon followed their teacher to the railway station and even took the train with him to his home ! No, this is not a pretty piece of fiction; it actually happened. But it happened not in the public school or in some big uni- versity, but in a school conducted by a group of work- ing men and working women. These men and women were going to school not because they had to, nor even because they expected to get a better job by so doing, but simply because they wanted the power and the fullness of life and the broadened vision that knowledge alone can give. They were not studying something someone else thought they ought to learn but were seeking to learn those things which they had found through experience that they needed.
This is only one instance of the many working men and women in this country and in other countries who are squeezing into seats designed for school children, or gathering in some vacant room of a public library or at the headquarters of some local trade union to study English or economics or international law or political economy or public speaking or anything else that they want to learn and can find a teacher to teach.
THE BEGINNINGS OF A WORKERS'
EDUCATIONAL MOVEMENT
IN ENGLAND
The urge for education of their own choosing, on the part of working men and women has been felt in England for several years. Among the very earliest expressions of this need are the classes of the Roch- dale Cooperative Society, that pioneer venture in con- sumers' cooperation which was started by some poor flannel weavers of the little town of Rochdale in 1844. From the first year this little band of cooperators gave two-and-one-half per cent of the profits of their co- operative store for education. In those days when there were no public libraries and reading rooms and when newspapers cost from eight to twelve cents, they opened libraries and reading rooms of their own and in order that all might enjoy the books and news- papers they established evening classes. Thus they were pioneers not only in cooperative selling but were also pioneers in bringing libraries, news-rooms and evening classes within the reach of wage-earning men and women.
To-day the British cooperative societies have study classes for men and women of all ages; summer schools ; literary and dramatic circles ; lectures on varied topics, and social entertainments. In addition to the classes which they themselves organize, cooperative
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societies have given money to help universities in their extension work and have encouraged their members to attend university extension courses. They are now working to establish a cooperative college for the special purpose of training men and women in the principles and management of cooperative enterprises.
The First Working Men's Colleges
It was in the 1840's also that the idea of a college for working men first found expression in England, a People's College being opened in Sheffield in 1842. In 1854 a Working Men's College was opened in London by a little group of far visioned men among whom were John Ruskin and Charles Kingsley. These men saw even then that industrialism and the high cost of an education tended to split society into two sections neither of which understood the other. The aim of this college was to bring together the men of the uni- versities and the men in trades and in industry that each might learn of the other, and to place a liberal education and the comradeship of college life within the reach of the workers at the lowest possible cost.
I Ruskin College
In 1899 two Americans, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Vroo- man, established Ruskin College at Oxford. The de- sire of its founders was to develop the leadership of the workers and to foster a spirit of cooperation rather than an over-pronounced desire for individual achieve- ment. They wished to emphasize the importance of
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high-minded, ambitious men remaining in the ranks of labor and raising its level rather than training them- selves to rise out of the labor movement into professions.
At Ruskin College men of all ages and all trades come together in classrooms and in dormitories each bringing a little different type of experience and each looking at life from a little different angle. Perhaps the interchange of experiences that results is even more valuable than is the regular classroom work. One year and two year courses are given supplemented by correspondence courses. Football teams, cricket teams, boxing matches, dramatic societies and a col- lege magazine are evidences that Ruskin students also get a taste of so-called "college life."
The management of the College is in the hands of a council made up of representatives of trade unions, co- operative societies and the universities. Any labor organization which supports one or more students at the college can elect from its members one represen- tative. The fees are very low and a large number of scholarships are given.
Since the ending of the war a number of changes have been made in the work of Ruskin College which will make it a more flexible means of education for the workers. One democratic change is the admission of women and another the introduction of short courses for those who cannot give an entire year or more to study.
It was probably the feeling of inflexibility in the college work that led to an organized protest on the part of a group of Ruskin College students in 1909
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who established a college of their own called the Cen- tral Labor College. It is now under control of some of the larger unions.
The Workers' Educational Association of
England
The Workers' Educational Association, formed in 1903, marked the beginning of a wide-spread move- ment for workers' education in England, a movement which was due directly to the efforts of the workers themselves and was an expression of what they knew they wanted. Beginning in 1903 as one little class in Birmingham with about thirty students, it has grown into a society which has over 170 branch societies and includes nearly 3,000 organizations ; trade unions, trade councils, working men's clubs, cooperative societies, universities, boards of education, teachers' associations and literary societies. Its members represent every variety of opinion on religious matters and every political party from Tory to Socialist. It is governed by a Central Council which includes Oxford graduates and tool-makers, unionists and non-union- ists, and both men and women. It brings together people of every kind of experience and unites them in the task of "making England an educated country in the best sense of the word." And this is the great strength of the Association, that it joins together into one great federation all the organizations and all the groups that are interested, and enables them to work together using the machinery for education that is ready at hand rather than setting up new machinery of their own.
This Association makes it possible for groups of workers all over England to get together and state what they need in the way of educational opportunities and either to go about securing them for themselves or to apply to a university or other educational au- thority, to supply the ways and means. They may form study circles, forums, short courses or lectures, or university tutorial classes, and study any subject which the members desire.
University Tutorial Classes
It is the tutorial classes which have attracted the most attention to the Workers' Educational Associa- tion, because they prove how intense is the desire of labor for higher education. These classes were started in 1907 by a determined group of working men and women in the little town of Rochdale, who pledged themselves to attend classes two hours in length for twenty-four evenings during each of three years, to write fortnightly essays and to do as much reading as possible outside of class. Fortified by these high resolves they knocked at the gates of Oxford University, or rather the local branch of the Workers' Educational Association knocked for them, and secured for a teacher of their class Mr. R. H. Tawney, now a fellow of Balliol College and a member of the Royal Coal Commission held in London in the spring of 1919.
The same year that the Rochdale class was formed, the workers in the Potteries of Longton got together a similar group also taught by Mr. Tawney. The Longton class is a good illustration of how quickly an idea can spread. At the end of the three-year period
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that the class was supposed to last, those who had joined it still wanted to go on studying and brought in new students. At the end of seven years the class was still in existence with several of its "charter members" still pursuing knowledge and many of them organizing and teaching other classes in more than twenty mining villages round about. The original thirty had grown to many hundred. Today every university and univer- sity college in England and Wales is taking part in this movement and it is being especially developed in Australia.
The tutorial class is conducted on a "fifty-fifty" plan. The teacher has half the two-hour class period to lecture, and the pupils have the other half for dis- cussion. A recent writer on the subject characterized the "lecture as one" and the "discussion as one thous- and." This is very likely a proportion which both teachers and pupils would agree Upon ; for it is in the discussion hour that theories are held up before the white light of practical experience and tested out. The texts for the last half of the period are often living documents in the subjects. Such a "living document" was the railwayman in a class which was discussing industrial accidents and the Workmen's Compensation Law. When the Oxford professor, who was teaching the class, had finished his lecture on the subject, this man rose from his chair, called attention to H:he wooden stump he wore in place of a leg and told how the Compensation Act had worked in his case. The result of a class conducted in this manner is a pooling of the experiences of a whole group of people and
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their joint thinking, the thirty pupils and the teacher all studying together.
Examples are many of the zeal of the students in these classes. In one of the early classes there was a working man with a large family who, in order to get a time for study when the house was quiet, would go to bed at seven, get up at midnight and work for two hours and then go back to bed again. Hard working men and women have been known to travel long dis- tances to attend a class, and absences except for sick- ness or some equally unavoidable reason were un- known. The master of Balliol College or Oxford University who examined the papers written in eight different tutorial classes to see if they were of univer- sity grade was amazed to find that 25 per cent of these essays written at odd moments after a long day's work were equal to essays written by regular honor students at Oxford.
A Working Women's College
On February 12th, 1920, a Working Women's Col- lege was opened near London under the direction of the Educational Committee of the Young Women's Christian Association of Great Britain. This college is the result of much thought on the part of the com- mittee, who felt the need of equal opportunities in education for working men and women since they share the same responsibility in industry, in politics and in the home.
This college offers to a group of about twenty women the opportunity to live together and study to-
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gether for at least a year in a beautiful house set down in a big garden in the country. The course of study includes comparative religion, social and indus- trial history, economics, literature, elementary hygiene, elementary psychology, singing, applied arts, and physical culture.
The instruction is built around the English system of a tutor in residence with a large number of fully qualified visiting lecturers from universities. The cost to the student is sixty pounds a year and several scholarships of forty pounds are offered. The initial heavy expense is covered by a guarantee fund raised by the committee.
The question, "What are you going to educate them for?" is answered thus by the committee: "We hope to educate our students for a fuller and wider life in whatever sphere they may be called upon to live, for except in this sense, education truly understood is not 'for' anything."
A New Source of Strength in English Life
With leaders of labor and thousands of men and women in the ranks of labor, who have been honor students at universities, England has reason to feel that she has a new source of strength welling up within her. She has the satisfaction of knowing that while the workers are demanding for themselves more power they are at the same time fitting themselves to use that power, not for the advancement of a few individuals or one or two little trades or crafts, but for the betterment of all society. Already the Work-
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ers* Educational Association has made itself felt as a force in the whole field of education. From the first it has sought not simply to get what its members wanted for themselves but has insisted upon the need of an educational system in England that should more nearly achieve the development of the gifts and char- acters of all for the common good. This Association had no small share in creating a public opinion that demanded the progressive education bill passed by Parliament in 1918. One of the most important pro- visions of this bill is the requirement that boys and girls must not only attend school regularly until they are fourteen years old, but that up to the time they are eighteen they must attend continuation school for at least eight hours a week, between the hours of 8 a. m. and 7 p. m.
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PEOPLE'S HIGH SCHOOLS IN DENMARK
The People's High Schools of Denmark are in some respects like the university tutorial classes in England, but they have grown out of a somewhat different soil and have their own peculiar characteristics.
These high schools are really boarding schools where young men and women from farms and from towns can come for short periods of study and inspiration. There is usually a winter term of five months for men and a three months' summer term for women. In some schools the winter courses are for both men and women. A few schools offer a two years' course. The tuition is extremely low and a large number of scholarships granted by the state enable the poorest student to enter.
The two men who brought about the founding of the first Danish high schools in the 1840's left a strong impression upon the whole movement. One was Bishop Grundtvig, who lived in the years between 1783 and 1872 when Denmark was passing through a period of spiritual, political and economic stagnation. It became his pas- sionate desire to awaken his countrymen to a newer life and he gradually came to the conviction that this desire could be fulfilled by the founding of schools "accessible to young people all over the land, where they may readily get leave and opportunity to become better acquainted not only with human nature and human life in general, but with themselves in particular, and where they can
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receive guidance in all civic relations and become well acquainted with their country's needs in all directions . . . thus will be opened a well of healing in the land, which will be sought by crowds from generation to generation."
The other leader in the folk high school movement was Kristcn Kold, the son of a poor shoemaker who lived between 1816 and 1870. Kold by birth and temperament was fitted for fully understanding the lives of working men and women, and at the same time, like Bishop Grundtvig, had the vision and the spiritual inspiration of the seer.
From the days when these two men taught the young men and women of Denmark to the present, the teachers have been men of exceptional high-mindedness and spiri- tual vision. The whole Danish folk school movement lays especial emphasis upon the teacher's message.
Of the seventy high schools that were existing in 1918, a little over half gave a purely cultural education ; history, literature, languages, mathematics, sociology, natural science and so forth. The remainder added technical subjects.
The awakening and enlightenment which the peasant youth of Denmark have received from the high schools is said to be the reason why there is not so great a dis- tance between the work of the few outstanding agricul- turalists and that of agriculture in general, and also the reason why the farmers of Denmark have worked together so successfully in cooperative undertakings.
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AN INTERNATIONAL PEOPLE'S COLLEGE
The fall of 1920 will witness the opening in Denmark of an International People's College which will bring together in a little community working men and working women from many countries, where they may live to- gether, study together and work together for com- mon ends.
The plan for such a college was inspired by the Danish Folk High Schools. Denmark has been chosen as the location because of the work of its high schools, because of its central position and its neutrality during the war, and because it is such a small state that it could not be suspected of using the college for political ends. A build- ing has already been secured for the college and funds are now being raised for endowments and scholarships.
Further information as to plans for this college may be secured from Mr. Richards, Students' Bureau, Ameri- can Scandinavian Foundation, 25 West 42nd Street.
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WORKERS' EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES
Within the last two or three years we have begun to hear of labor colleges and workers' universities in this country in our larger cities. It is becoming increasingly evident that wherever a group of wage-earning men and women have secured wages and hours that enable them to think of something besides the struggle for the mate- rial things of life, the desire to fill in the gaps in their education has become a compelling urge.
"Ten Nights in a Schoolroom"
"Ten Nights in a Schoolroom" and "Education in the Fourteen Points" were nick-names given to Boston's Labor College when it opened in April, 1919, offering fourteen courses of ten lessons each. This college holds its sessions not in an ivy-covered college hall, but in one of the city's high school buildings. Its students bear little resemblance to the college undergraduate who figures in the college novel or play and is famous in pro- portion to his ability to perform on the ukelele, dance at "Prom" and play football. They are working men and working women ; pressmen, stone cutters, cigar strippers, garment workers. They know what the world is like and what they are studying and why they are studying it.
But while Boston's Labor College lacks some of the
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distinguishing external marks of a college, no one can doubt its right to the name who has looked over its list of lecturers and has sampled the kind of thinking that goes on in its classes. In the opening term courses were given in English, economics, law, history of trade union- ism, government and science. On its staff of teachers were Professor Roscoe Pound, Dean of the Harvard Law School, Professor Harold Laski of Harvard, Pro- fessor Felix Frankfurter of Harvard, formerly chairman of the War Labor Policies Board, and other men equally well known for their contributions to education.
Much of the material given in a course on "Shop Com- mittees" by William Leavitt Stoddard has gone into his book of the same title, and the lectures by Professor Laski are now a part of his book on "Representative Govern- ment." It is a fairly safe guess that these two books will withstand criticism the better for having been tried out in part and having taken shape in a classroom of students who could test their theories by practical expe- rience. And a Harvard professor could hardly test his theories on a group more representative of the rank and file of the American people than were the students in the opening classes of the Labor College. There were middle-aged men and women and mere youngsters. There were representatives of the white, yellow and black races and of nearly every nationality, and there were workers in nearly every kind of trade or industry. In one small class there were Negroes, Chinese, Italians, Irish, Canadians and pure Yankees, who were stenog- raphers, stablemen, type setters, telephone operators, machinists, and carpenters.
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The Labor College an Experiment in Democracy
Never was there a more complete experiment in democracy in education than this labor college established by the Boston Central Labor Union. Its board of trus- tees is a Committee of Sixteen, which represents both teachers and pupils, eleven being members of the unions affiliated with the Central Labor Union and five chosen from the teaching body. This committee brings together representatives of stablemen's unions, milk wagon drivers' unions, painters' unions and nearly every kind of manual worker with Harvard professors and lawyers and writers. At its first commencement exercises last June the three chief speakers were Michael Murphy of the stablemen's union, Chairman of the Committee, Profes- sor Pound of Harvard, and the Governor of Massachu- setts. What better omen could there be for the coming of an era of better understanding and of cooperation?
The reasons for founding a labor college can best be summed up in the words of a Boston labor leader:
"There isn't a laboring man but wants education," he declared during the debate at the headquarters of the Central Labor Union when the founding of the college was under discussion. "We all of us had to work pretty young, most of us before we finished our schooling at the public schools. We couldn't go to college because it cost too much. The great state of Massachusetts does not provide free college education. It ought to, and organized labor has always been in favor of a state university. There doesn't seem to be much chance of getting one, and so it seems about time to start a uni- versity of our own. Let's show the state of Massachu-
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setts that labor is willing to sacrifice for its own educa- tion, and perhaps they will believe us when we say that labor wants education and is bound to have it."
A Worker's University in New York City Boston's Labor College is but one of many movements among industrial groups to secure for themselves an education. One of the pioneer groups to organize edu- cational work on a large scale is the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, which has established a Workers' University in New York City.
Evening classes are conducted by this union in a half dozen of the city's public schools. Following is a list of one week's activities:
19 classes in English — three times a week. 4 health lectures weekly.
(The lectures are given by prominent physi- cians and have an attendance of from 200 to 500.)
3 classes in literature or reading circles. 3 classes in gymnasium work. 1 moving picture center. 3 classes in public speaking.
A special class for business agents.
Lectures on the following subjects are also given regu- larly :
Social interpretation of literature. Evolution and the labor movement. Problems of reconstruction. Sociology and civilization. Labor legislation.
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Social problems.
Trade unionism.
Cooperation.
A thousand pupils an evening was the average attend- ance at the classes of this Workers' University last win- ter. Concerts, dramatics, dancing classes, and traveling libraries are some of the other activities carried on by this group. The same organization is conducting classes in Philadelphia and plans to extend its work to other cities.
"Art, Labor and Science"
The Amalgamated Clothing Workers and several other large unions with a total membership of over 250,000 have formed in New York City a United Labor Educa- tion Committee which has adopted the slogan, "Art, Labor and Science." Its executive board is made up of representatives of every labor organization which is a member of the committee and its budget is made up of contributions from every organization. In addition to electing a representative to the Executive Board, each union appoints an educational committtee of its own to cooperate with the Central Committee in arranging work which shall fit the needs of its own members in various sections of the city.
As one would expect from its motto, the purpose of the United Labor Education Committee is to enrich the lives of its members in a many-sided way by bringing to them not only the principles of science, the mechanics of language, etc., but also opportunities to know the best in literature and in art and to have recreation of a higher
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standard than the "tinsel joys" of our cities. In carrying out their ideals they have secured the help of a group of men and women, well known for their work in the fields of art and science, among them Professor Charles Beard, Professor James Harvey Robinson, Dr. Louis Harris, Josef Stransky, conductor of the New York Philhar- monic Orchestra, and many well-known actors and musi- cians. Any subject is taught for which there is a demand by twenty-five or more members, and for which a teacher can be found. In addition to the formal course of study, popular lectures are given in science, economics, biology, literature, and drama. Symphony concerts and special performances of opera and of worth-while plays are pro- vided by arrangement with managers at rates so low as to give every member a chance to enjoy them. The New York Philharmonic Orchestra is giving a special series of concerts for this group of men and women and special plans are on foot for the opening of a workmen's theatre by this committee some time in the near future.
"For Unity, Education and Spiritual Advancement" was the slogan of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of New York City in their recent campaign to raise money for a $600,000 building. Educational work is considered by the builders to be the most important of the uses to which this building will be put. The plans include twenty classrooms and a large library for students.
The Movement Grows
In Chicago the Women's Trade Union League and the Federation of Labor are cooperating in conducting classes in English, parliamentary law, practical citizenship, history of trade unions, public speaking, etc.
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Labor colleges, similar to Boston's Labor College, have been opened in Washington, D. C, and in Seattle, con- trolled in each case by a Central Labor Council and plans are being made by trade union leaders for opening such a college in Minneapolis.
In some cities consumers' cooperative societies, follow- ing the example of the British cooperators, are conduct- ing classes for their members. Certain political groups and certain private organizations in various cities are carrying on educational work similar to the workers' college in its aims and in its type of instruction. The New School of Social Research, recently founded in New York City as a sort of laboratory for the study of social problems which should be more flexible in its course of study than the average university, is giving a special course for those who wish to teach in labor colleges and has already supplied several teachers during the past season to the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union.
These various experiments in education by and for the people are all very much alike in their methods. They are managed by committees or councils which represent both pupils and teachers. The fees are so low as to keep no one out; the teachers are recruited from the public schools and from neighboring universities, more emphasis being placed on a high standard of work than on the building in which the work is done. Usually the cooperation of local school boards is secured in the use of school buildings. In most instances the course of study is determined wholly by the needs and desires of the students.
One of the things that labor men and women particu-
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larly want to learn is how to speak and write good Eng- lish. The man or woman who has left school at fourteen or the foreign-born who have at their command only the rough and colloquial English which they have picked up by chance, realize keenly that first of all they must learn to express themselves clearly and forcefully. They feel especially the need of supplementing their hard-won knowledge in the realm of industry and business by the understanding of economic principles and of industrial history. Not only do working men and women wish to be better fitted for their struggle with material things, but also to enrich their lives by increasing their power to enjoy the best of music, drama and art.
The Spirit of Labor College Students
At the opening of Washington's Trade Union College, one of the teaching staff of the college, who had been a public school teacher for several years, said that for the first time in her life teaching school was going to be what she had expected it would be when she started out on her career, teaching pupils who were interested and eager to learn instead of forcing knowledge upon unwill- ing victims.
The genuine hunger for an education; the stillness in which one can hear a pin drop that prevails during lec- tures ; and the avalanche of questions that follows during the discussion hour are constant sources of surprise and delight to teachers in trade union classes. A teacher in Boston's Labor College tells how one evening a pupil in his class left his seat during the lecture to get a drink of water from a faucet in the classroom. The indignation
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upon the faces of his fellow students at the slight dis- turbance was a stinging rebuke, and at the end of the class one of the students apologized to the teacher for the incident and told him he could be sure that it would never happen again. "Never have I seen more earnest and conscientious attention to business in any classroom," is the comment of one teacher in a labor college.
When H. G. Wells was in this country a few years ago, he is reported as having remarked that the American college student seemed to have the impression that the world's thinking had all been done by a few great men many years ago, and that it was the business of the present-day student merely to collect the souvenirs. No one could hear the questions and discussions in one of these groups without realizing that the labor college stu- dent has no such idea of education. He is very much aware that the great thinkers of the past are but chal- lenges to him to go on blazing the trail where they left off.
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HOW LABOR COLLEGES HAVE COME ABOUT
As a spontaneous expression of the educational needs of a large part of the population the Workers' Educa- tional Movement is worth careful study. It has come into existence because working men and working women are realizing that if they are to shoulder the heavier responsibilities that they are asking for and if they are to develop a sane and efficient leadership and if they are to enter upon the fuller and more abundant life they are seeking, they must go to school. They are realizing that not higher wages nor shorter hours but a knowledge of the truth will make them free.
This urge for a higher education on the part of labor has by no means developed over night. It is but the expression of a long felt shortage in our whole educa- tional system. The boys and girls of the early nineteenth century used to work on the farm or in the home during the spring and summer months when work was heavy and go to school during the winter when there was little work to be done. Sometimes when obliged to leave school altogether they would study at odd times with the min- ister of their church or a leading lawyer in their town and would often fit themselves for professions in this way. But with the coming of a great industrial era, the boundary line between school days and work days became very sharply marked. One had a certain number of years
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of all school and no work and then this period suddenly came to an end and gave place to a period of all work and no school. If a boy left school and went into a factory or business house at the age of fourteen or fif- teen, the chances were that he would go through life with only a grammar school education. The situation in edu- cation was very much as the food situation would be if the only people who could get a dinner were those who could afford the time and money to go to an expensive restaurant and get a many course table d'hote meal.
THE NEED OF EDUCATIONAL LUNCH COUNTERS
It soon became apparent that there was need of edu- cational lunch counters and lunch wagons if the require- ments of a whole community were to be met. Gradually, school boards and college trustees and the public in gen- eral are realizing that education should not be a matter of a few years but of a lifetime, that it should meet the needs of men and women of all ages and all types of experience, that it should be served at lunch counter hours and prices instead of simply as a great banquet, and that it should be brought to people instead of forcing people to come to it.
Within the last fifteen or twenty years there have been many attempts to make education more elastic and more democratic. The public schools have opened evening high schools, the universities have conducted extension courses, the Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. and other organizations have held evening classes ; but almost every form of extension education fails of being completely
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democratic, in that, while it is education for the people, it is not education by the people; it is something pre- scribed by one group for another group. The evening high school, while it makes it possible for boys and girls to take the prescribed high school course or in many instances to train themselves for special vocations, at hours which do not interfere with their earning a living, does not take into consideration the man or woman who neither wishes to pursue the regular high school course or to study for some special trade, but simply desires to enrich his life. Several of our large universities through their extension work are making definite progress toward becoming people's universities by finding out what people all over the state are needing and wanting to learn, whether they be engaged in agriculture, in home making, in industry, in business or in professions, and then put- ting the means of securing an education within their reach through special short-term courses, through corre- spondence courses, through traveling libraries, traveling lecturers and people's forums. However, many university extension courses fall short of attaining their purpose by charging fees that are so high that few wage-earners can afford them. But university extension courses, even- ing classes, civic forums and church forums have all helped to develop a democratic ideal of education.
POSSIBILITIES OF THE MOVEMENT
If the experiments in workers' education which are now being tried in this country can meet with the friendly cooperation of educators and educational agencies, the movement can prove to be a tremendous source of
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strength and saneness in American life. It can break down the high barriers that divide the so-called "brain workers" and "hand workers" into two separate camps, although their interests are identical. It can clear away some of the fog banks that are befuddling much of our thinking today by bringing into the studies of professors, writers, editors, law makers, etc., glimpses of life as it is being lived in the workshop, in the foundry, under the earth, in mines and in subway construction, in the holds of ships, and high up on the steel skeletons of sky- scrapers, and by bringing to those under the heaviest fire in the army of industry the kind of scientific knowledge that shall make them see clearly and choose wisely.
Too long have men sat apart from life and dispensed knowledge as remote in its bearing upon the future lives of their pupils as the tree-shaded serenity of a college campus is remote from the rush and roar of industry and commerce. Too long have men made fine plans for salva- tion of the so-called "masses" with little, if any, first-hand knowledge of the lives of the men and women who make up those "masses"; and too long have the men and women in the ranks of labor failed to realize their com- mon interests with the "highbrows," as they have been wont to class all who did not do manual work.
The movement for workers' education is more than a movement for the improvement of one particular class. It can be a mighty force in bringing together groups of men and women who are groping for the same goal of a more abundant life, but for the darkness cannot see that it is the" same goal.
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