The History Of Education, Ellwood P. Cubberley [motivational novels .TXT] 📗

and harvesting. With the introduction of the factory system, men, women, and children were used to operate machinery, children being apprenticed to the mills at about eight years of age and working ten to twelve hours a day. This soon worked the life out of human beings, and in consequence sickness, wretchedness, juvenile delinquency, ignorance, drunkenness, pauperism, and crime increased greatly as cities grew and the factory system drew thousands from the farms to the towns. When Queen Victoria came to the throne (1837) one person in twelve in England was a pauper, and the lot of the poor was wretched in the extreme. In cities they lived in cellars and basements and hovels. There was practically no sanitation or drainage. Streets and alleys were filthy. Graveyards were commonly located in the heart of a town. A pure water-supply through water-mains was unknown. Pumps and water-carriers supplied nearly all the needs. There was in consequence much sickness, and such diseases as typhoid and malaria ran rampant.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 219. THRESHING WHEAT A CENTURY AGO

(After a woodcut by Jacque, in L’Illustration)]

 

CHANGE IN LIVING CONDITIONS TO-DAY. In a century all has been changed.

Steam and electricity and sanitary science have transformed the world; the railway, steamship, telegraph, cable, and printing-press have made the world one. The output of the factory system has transformed living and labor conditions, even to the remote corners of the world; sanitary science and sanitary legislation have changed the primitive conditions of the home and made of it a clean and comfortable modern abode; men and women have been freed from an almost incalculable amount of drudgery and toil, and the human effort and time saved may now be devoted to other types of work or to enjoyment and learning. Thousands who once were needed for menial toil on farm or in shop and home are now freed for employment in satisfying new wants and new pleasures that mankind has come to know, [19] or may devote their time and energies to forms of service that advance the welfare of mankind or minister to the needs of the human spirit.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 220. A CITY WATER-SUPPLY ABOUT 1830

(After a lithograph by Bellange)]

 

Labor-saving devices and the applications of scientific work have touched all phases of life and labor of men and women, and under modern methods of transportation go everywhere. The American self-binding reaper is found in the grain-fields of Russia and the Argentine; one may buy cans of kerosene and tinned meats and vegetables almost anywhere in the world today; sewing machines and phonographs add to the comfort and pleasure of the African native and the dweller on the Yukon; “milady” in Siam uses cosmetics manufactured for the devotees of fashion in Paris; the Sultan of Sulu wears an elegant American wrist-watch; the Dahomeny tribesman has a safety razor, and a mirror of French plate; the Persian dandy wears shoes and haberdashery made in the United States; old Chinamen up the Yellow River Valley read their Confucius by the light of an Edison Mazda; the steam train wends its way up from Jaffa to Jerusalem; the gasoline power boat chugs its course up the Nile the Pharaohs sailed; and modern surgical methods and instruments are used in the hospitals of Manila and Singapore, Cairo and Cape Town. A rupee spent for thread at Calcutta starts the spindles going in Manchester; a new calico dress for a Mandalay belle helps the cotton-print mills of Leeds; a new carving set for a Fiji Islander means more labor for some cutlery works in Sheffield; a half-dollar for a new undershirt in Panama means increased work for a cotton mill in New England; a new blanket called for against the winter’s cold of Siberia moves the looms of some Rhode Island town; a dime spent for a box of matches in Alaska means added labor and profit for a match factory in California; a new bath tub in Paraguay spells increased output for a factory at Milan or Turin; and the Christmas wishes of the children in Brazil give work to the toy factories of N�remberg.

 

Trains and huge steamers move today along the great trade routes of the modern world, exchanging both the people and their products. The holds of the ships are filled with coal and grain and manufactured implements and commodities of every description, while their steerage space is crowded with modern Marco Polos and Magellans going forth to see the world. The Hindoo walks the streets of Cape Town, London, Sydney, New York, San Francisco, and Valparaiso; the Russian Jew is found in all the Old and New World cities; the Englishman and the American travel everywhere; the Japanese are fringing the Pacific with their laboring classes; toiling Italians and Greeks are found all over the world; peasants from the Balkans gather the prune and orange crops of California; the moujic from the Russian Caucasus tills the wheat-fields of the Dakotas; while the Irish, Scandinavians, and Teutons form the political, farming, and commercial classes in many far-distant lands. In the recent World War Serbs from Montana and Colorado fought side by side with Serbs from Belgrade and Nisch; Greeks from New York and San Francisco helped their brothers from Athens drive the Bulgars back up the Vardar Valley; Italians from New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro helped their kinsmen from the valley of the Po hold back the Hun from the Venetian plain; Chinese from the valleys of the Tong-long and the Yang-tse-Kiang backed up the Allied armies by tilling the fields of France; and Algerian and Senegalese natives helped the French hold back the Teutonic hordes from the ravishment of Paris. So completely has the old isolation been broken down!

So completely is the world in flux! So small has the world become!

 

[Illustration: FIG. 221. THE GREAT TRADE ROUTES OF THE MODERN WORLD

Broken lines, on land, indicate gaps soon to be closed. Compare this with the maps on pages 161 and 258, and note the progress in discovery and intercommunication. Ships and trains are constantly passing over these routes, bearing both freight and peoples.]

 

It was almost a century from the time instruction in Greek was revived in Florence (1396) until Linacre first lectured on Greek at Oxford (c. 1492); six months after the X-ray was perfected in Germany it was in use in the hospitals of San Francisco. In the Middle Ages thousands might have died of starvation in Persia or Egypt, a famous city in Asia Minor might have been destroyed by an earthquake and many people killed, or war might have raged for years in the Orient without a citizen of western Europe knowing of it all his life. Today any important event anywhere within the range of the telegraph or the cable would be reported in tomorrow morning’s paper, and carefully described and illustrated in the magazines at an early date.

Man is no longer a citizen of a town or a state, but of a nation and of the world. How intelligently he can use this larger citizenship depends today largely upon the character and the extent of the education he has received.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 222. AN EXAMPLE OF THE SHIFTING OF OCCUPATIONS.

Sawing boards by hand, before the introduction of steam power.]

 

EFFECT OF THESE CHANGES ON THE LABORING-CLASSES. At first the effect of the introduction of factory-made goods and labor-saving devices was to upset the old established institutions. Trades practiced by the guilds since the Middle Ages were destroyed, because factories could turn out goods faster and cheaper than guild workmen could make them. The age-old apprenticeship system began to break down. Everywhere people were thrown out of employment, and a vast shifting of occupations took place. There was much discontent, and laborers began to unite, where allowed to do so, [20] with a view to improving their economic and political condition by concerted action. The political revolutions of 1848 throughout Europe were in part a manifestation of this discontent, and the right to organize was everywhere demanded and in time generally obtained. Among the planks in their platform were equality of all before the law; the limitation of child and woman labor; better working conditions and wages; the provision of schools for their children at public expense; and the extension of the right of suffrage.

 

Despite certain unfortunate results following the change from age-old working conditions, the century of transition has seen the laboring man making gains unknown before in history, and the peasant has seen the abolition of serfdom [21] and feudal dues. Homes have gained tremendously.

The drudgery and wasteful toil have been greatly mitigated. To-day there is a standard of comfort and sanitation, even for those in the humblest circumstances, beyond all previous conceptions. The poorest workman to-day can enjoy in his home lighting undreamed of in the days of tallow candles; warmth beyond the power of the old smoky soft-coal grate; food of a variety and quality his ancestors never knew; kitchen conveniences and an ease in kitchen work wholly unknown until recently; and sanitary conveniences and conditions beyond the reach of the wealthiest half a century ago. The caste system in industry has been broken down, and men and their children may now choose their occupations freely, [22] and move about at will. Wages have greatly increased, both actually and relatively to the greatly improved standard of living. The work of women and children is easier, and all work for shorter hours. Child labor is fast being eliminated in all progressive nations. In consequence of all these changes for the better, people to-day have a leisure for reading and thinking and personal enjoyment entirely unknown before the middle of the nineteenth century, and governments everywhere have found it both desirable and necessary to provide means for the utilization of this leisure and the gratification of the new desires. Along with these changes has gone the development of the greatest single agent for spreading liberalizing ideas —the modern newspaper—“the most inveterate enemy of absolutism and reaction.” Despite censorships, suppressions, and confiscations, the press has by now established its freedom in all enlightened lands, and the cylinder press, the telegraph, and the cable have become “indispensable adjuncts to the development of that power which every absolutist has come to dread, and with which every prime minister must daily reckon.”

 

III. EFFECT OF THESE CHANGES ON EDUCATION

 

GENERAL RESULT OF THESE CHANGES. The general result of the vast and far-reaching changes which we have just described is that the intellectual and political horizon of the working classes has been tremendously broadened; the home has been completely altered; children now have much leisure and do little labor; and the common man at last is rapidly coming into his own. Still more, the common man seems destined to be the dominant force in government in the future. To this end he and his children must be educated, his wife and children cared for, his home protected, and governments must do for him the things which satisfy his needs and advance his welfare. The days of the rule of a small intellectual class and of government in the interests of such a class have largely passed, and the political equality which the Athenian Greeks first in the western world gave to the “citizens” of little Athens, the Industrial Revolution has forced modern and enlightened governments to give to all their people. In consequence, real democracy in government, education, justice, and social welfare is now in process of being attained generally, for the first time in the history of the world.

 

The effect of all these changes in the mode of living of peoples is written large on the national life. The political and industrial revolutions which have marked the ushering-in of the modern age have been far-reaching in their consequences. The old home life and home industries of an earlier