The Utah Program

The Utah Program

By Dr. C. A. Prosser, Director The William Hood Dunwoody Industrial Institute, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Introduction by Francis W Kirkham, Utah State Director of Vocational .

Education

Introduction

For many years prior to the enactment of the Federal Smith-Hughes Act for Vocational Education, Dr. Charles A. Prosser, now Director of the William Hood Dunwoody Industrial Institute, was president of the National Society for Vocational Education. In this position he was largely responsible for the enactment of the national law and has been recognized for many years in the United States as a pioneer and leader of vocational education. He was appointed Federal Director for Vocational Education with the enactment of the Federal law and in this position has been largely responsible for the organization of vocational education throughout the United States. Upon the Federal Board was also placed the responsibility for the vocational training of disabled soldiers and marines, which work was organized by Dr. Prosser. He has shown keen interest in Utah's vocational program as it has developed in our state. In December of last year, in an address before the Utah Educational Association, he made an analysts of the possibilities of our state program and what it meant to Utah and the nation. Later at the National Conference of Vocational Education at Chicago at the earnest request of the writer, he promised to prepare for publication his estimate of Utah's vocational program. This promise has been embodied in the paper that follows:

The Utah Program At the last session of its legislature the State of Utah inaugurated what I regard as a model, compulsory, part-time education law. Under the wise leadership of its state department and with the co-operation of the school men of the state, the bare text of this law has been made into a comprehensive program for the conservation of children, not equalled on this continent. In this way Utah has not only taken a foremost

LEO J. MUIR, SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION OF UTAH

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place in the galaxy of states but has made a distinct and lasting contribution to citizenship, efficiency, prosperity, and civilization. Utah's year-round plan, authorized by law, is perhaps best stated in the bulletin published by the Utah Educational Campaign Committee. This plan requires of all boys and girls up to eighteen years of age these things:

Yearly Registration. Thirty weeks of school. (Pupils above sixteen years of age and those who have completed the eighth grade may be excused to enter employment, provided they attend school 144 hours a year.) Enrollment for twelve months in at least one subject which combines class-room instruction with supervised direction of some out-of-school activity. For example, class instruction may be combined with prac- tical work in such classes as agriculture, home making, community civics, personal hygiene and physical education. Participation by the pupil in out-of-school organizations that make for citizenship such as boy scouts, camp fire girls, mutual improvement associations, Sunday schools, glee clubs, town bands, orchestras^ choirs, and thrift campaigns. Supervision _of the pupil at work in order that he may have a square deal and an opportunity to find the work for which he is best adapted. Guidance of the pupil in habits of health, thrift, civic service, and in play and recreation.

Every child in school or at work under supervision. The social significance of this program has impressed me deeply, for I see in it more than the mere passage of a law, more than a forward step in the extension of school service, more than the enthusiastic co-operation of educational and social workers and the citizenship of the state which promises so much for the success of the venture. It is the social and economic significance of the thing that has been done which has been borne in upon me and to which I desire to call attention here, for to me the Utah program means all these things I. A far-seeing investment for the future of Utah. The program will cost money, for it is an investment in education with deferred dividends certain to be realized. Children are to be kept in school for a longer time. This means greater self- denial in the home and larger appropriations from the public treasury for a widened and enriched program. Dividends are sure to return in a happier child life, in the growth and de- velopment of the latent interest and talent of the youth of the state, in a more intelligent and loyal citizenship, in eco- nomic efficiency and prosperity; in short, in a better people and a better state. It is eminently fitting that the State of Utah should reach high-water mark in such an investment for the fu- ture. The state itself is the result of such faith and such

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self-denial, for Utah is known to be the land of thrift, the land of hnrd toil and earnest saving. When the first settlers came into the state there con Id not have been a very promising vista before the eyes of the pioneers of this region. There must have been dream and vision, hope and faith, together with a willingness to sacrifice; else they would not have settled here to begin the long struggle with nature necessary before Utah could reap the harvest of its present and future prosperity. The whole story of this state with its waste places and its riches, its railroads and its irrigation projects, its toil and its thrift, is the story of a confidence in investment made today, certain to reap through the years deferred dividends such as Utah is even now enjoying. Utah has made an investment in a better citizenship for tomorrow, confident the dividends are sure in terms of greater efficiency and better wage earning, more productive- ness, and a more reliable, more progressive, and more suc- cessful citizenship. 2. The continuity of education is recognized in the law. Some- times schoolmasters come to believe that the only educa- tion is that given in classes. They fail to realize that most of our education is not received at the schoolhouse at all. The larger portion of our training for life we get from our work, our contact with people, our solution of our personal — problems, and our voluntary effort in short, out of our ex- perience with the realities of life. It takes the school to set our feet right in the pursuit of knowledge. The people, however, who have all through the years minimized the dignity of labor have caused thou- sands of boys and girls to drift into what were regarded as being more dignified callings. Now we are beginning to realize that the touchstone of well organized, systematic toil, coupled with training that brings larger skill and knowledge and a pride in workman- ship is just as educative as anything that ever came out of a Greek grammar or a piece of English literature. The Utah law, as I understand it, sets up a scheme of employment so regulated as to make the experience gained truly educational. 3. Co-operation with the vocation. Under the Utah plan it is proposed that when the youth goes to work his employ- ment shall be made educative. This is to be accomplished in part by part-time instruction carried on by the schools, so that the youth may both earn and learn. Sometimes this part-time instruction will extend his general education; some- times it will extend vocational knowledge and skill. Is it too much to hope that employers also will be led by this method to take a larger interest and responsibility,

THE UTAH PROGRAM 839 I

for the future of their young workers and will so order the career of the adolescent as to provide for his proper instruc- tion and to open opportunities for promotion which will insure a sufficient career for the deserving wage worker? The time has passed in the history of this world when the school could say, "Everybody make way for me, and I will do it all." Life is at least as educative as books. To meet the widely growing needs of all we must call upon par- ents and employers, upon shop and home, upon the whole round of social and religious and economic facilities of the state and the community for the proper training of the youth of the commonwealth.

4. Widening of educational activities. Under the program which

 has been worked out for Utah in conformity to the law the
 state has recognized as belonging to the school not only edu-
 cational activities of the traditional kind but health activities,
 vocational activities, social and moral activities as well. In
 this way we are setting up in practical fashion all such goals
 as the sound mind in the sound body, applied knowledge
 with immediate value, training for citizenship as well as foi
 culture and for labor, clean living and clean thinking as
 ultimate ends of all training.

5. Recognition of other educational agencies. The Utah pro-
   

   gram recognizes that the school by itself has a very limited lot of facilities to offer and that it cannot so organize itself as to give the practice in civic affairs which the youth of our country most needs for the future and without which they will never develop the habit of serving others, of look- ing at things from the standpoint of the good of others and of the welfare of the country. Consequently the Utah pro- gram is marvelously flexible, for it recognizes the Boy Scouts and the Junior League and the Boys and Girls' Corn Club and all the activities of the commonwealth in which our youth participate. Time spent in them is recognized and credited at the school. The time honored educational system says to these new activities, "You are part and parcel of our machinery. Both of us will be missing a great chance if we do not get together in our common program for training the youth." What possibilities of co-operation and infinite development lie in the wake of this idea!
6. Theory and practice. After all, you do not acquire effective power to do anything, you do not acquire skill or insight, until you combine together practice and thinking about prac- tice, doing and thinking about doing. Just in proportion as you are able to do these things together do you get effective training in anything. The weakness of our school today is

840 IMPROVEMENT ERA

the fact that all along the line it is organized knowledge with deferred value upon which we cannot realize because it is gone when it is needed. ^The new program for Utah is applied knowledge with immediate value. Lessons in honesty, fair dealing, justice, and co-operation are to be worked out in the social agencies of which the youth is a part and in which he participates earnestly and joyfully outside of school hours. Vocational studies are to enrich the curriculum of the regular school, and the state is to follow the worker to the job in order that he may receive the civic and vocational instruction which will both interpret his work and make him a better citizen. 7. The right of the state to regulate and control not only the education but the employment of children. The state de- termines when the youth is to go to work and the state re- quires further attendance upon training. But this is but the entering wedge in a widening program for making his vocational experience as a wage worker as truly educative as the work of the school. 8. The conservation of childhood. Conservation is the cry of our age. It began with raw materials. It was extended to animals. Society is now deliberately and consciously plan- ning for its own future by conserving its youth. This takes many forms: the protection of maternity, the safe-guarding of the milk supply, the clearing of the breathing space, the enforcing of sanitary conditions, provisions for better ele- mentary and secondary schools, the abolishment of the sa- loon, the establishment of moral safe-guards and regula- tions, the health program in education, the establishment of vocational training, and the part-time instruction of the young wage earner. All these are but phases of the program for the conservation of the childhood of the nation. It costs money to conserve, but conservation, after all, is the forgoing of rewards today for the sake of deferred rewards and dividends in the future. Every investment in a better childhood is conservation that costs money. Such a program costs money not only for the machinery of conservation itself but it costs money in the deferred wage earning of the youth. To compel children to stay in school until they are sixteen years of age costs the common- wealth money ; it costs the economic forces of the states money. To compel the youth to give 4 hours out of his week for further training may cost money also, although this is doubtful, since all experience seems to show that the awak- ened interest of the children causes them to produce more and better things in the remaining hours than they did in the full week under the old scheme.

THE UTAH PROGRAM 841

On the whole, conservation, however, is the forgoing of society's rewards From its youth today in order to produce a better youth for the future. It is a saving in the adolescent years in order to promote and prolong the efficiency of men tomorrow. The Utah program of conservation of child- hood will cost money, but it will be worth all that it may cost and infinitely more than it will cost. 9. The accomplishment of the program. It is going to be a difficult thing to achieve the Utah program, splendid as it is. Many are of the opinion that the state is over-legislated. There seems to be no other way, however, to accomplish things in America but to over-legislate. America never pre- pares to do anything. We do something and take the con- sequences. About all the laws that are of forward movement in education have been put over in a time of misgiving by daring spirits with vision, who said, "Get it on the statute books, and by the eternal gods, we will work out the prob- lem some way." This daring and inspiring program of the desert state can only be accomplished in proportion as public sentiment can be led to see its opportunities. You must carry with you the farmers and the employers and the social workers and the wage workers of the state as well as the schoolmasters. You must awaken the pride of the State of Utah in what it has achieved and in the opportunities that lie before it as a pacemaker in American educational affairs. That program cannot be accomplished with a cheap type of teacher. It calls for inspired leadership and effective teaching. There will be need of teachers able to correlate school room work and outside activities. How is this program to be accomplished with the salaries paid in Utah and in other states? Side by side with this forward step in compulsory education there is need of legislation which will grant better salaries to fit teachers already in the service, drive out those who are unfit, attract others who are more fit, and enable the state to set up increasingly high standards of efficiency. If through this program you can teach the dignity of labor the struggle is won. You have brought the importance and the glory of toil to the schoolhouse as a part of your educational machinery. I hope that in the end no misguided youth in the state will be choosing a white-collared job merely because it is a white-collared job. When we honor the mechanic and the artisan as well as the doctor and the lawyer, the workshop will become the altar of fraternity and equality. I sometimes like to think of the forty-eight states vying with each other in all good works. I remember when Massa-

842 IMPROVEMENT ER/.

chusetts was the leader, but "Westward the star of empire takes its way." The State of Utah faces the country and says, "This is our contribution to civilization, the setting up of the most forward looking program yet offered for the continued education of the school boy and girl until they have reached the age of eighteen." You have given new significance to John Fisk's period of infancy, for you have taken the position that the period up to eighteen years of age is necessary for the proper adjustment of the American youth to the demands of Twentieth Century life and labor. Napoleon at the end of his Egyptian campaign said to his soldiers as they stood beneath the shadow of the pyramids, "Twenty centuries are looking down on you." There is a sense in which forty centuries are looking down on the Utah educational program. Forty centuries look down upon this last forward step in the conservation of the adolescent boy and girl to the end that they may play their part better as citizens and as workers in the next generation.

Evening

Cease, song of the hammer and forge, The sun is aslant in the drowsy West, And evening is calling the worker home To his haven of love and rest. Come, sturdy son of the soil, It is time to rest while the robin sings, Stop your mowing and haste to your cot in the dell, And wait for the peace that the night wind brings. And you of the office crowd, Don't labor the long night through; Come out of your den, come out and be free, The Mocking bird's calling for you. Workers, you've given the day of your strength, Of the best of your muscle and brain, Come away from your toil and tarry awhile, On the morrow you'll take up the strain. Just linger an hour in evening's calm, And breathe your thanks for the day; You can never fail if you do your best, For God watches over the way.

Cease, song of the hammer and forge, Rest, weary makers of cheer, Sing, feathered songsters of meadow and hill, The evening vacation is here. Ezra J. Poulsen.