George Corneliussen
Quote: " In our time, most fortunately for human welfare, the underlying motive of public education has begun to receive the attention it deserves from those who administer our schools. Education, as we now generally recognize, has assumed the task of socializing human nature that the interests of society may be preserved and if possible advanced.
Education is necessarily concerned with social problems that hamper the group life it attempts to serve. These problems are also, when analyzed, individual problems since they are all created by the behavior of persons who for one reason or another have failed to attain good social adjustment and therefore make up the load that better adjusted citizens are obliged to carry.
Teachers are beginning to see their school problem against the background of the larger social situation. They seek a definite understanding of the social problems that now vex society and hamper the good development of young life. They especially need to realize that there can be no divorcement between the life of the school and that of the community since they are in constant reciprocal relation. The very existence of present social problems is a challenge to education since faulty education is mostly responsible for them and their decrease can come only as a result of a more wholesome and efficient use of opportunity the schools provide to direct social progress." End Quote.
Wouldn't you love to open your morning paper or visit your favorite Web site one morning to see this observation being presented by a respected professional ? The fact is you could have if you were alive in 1925 and had a copy of " Social Problems And Education", written by "Ernest R. Groves".
Ernest R. Groves was born in 1877 and died in 1946 at the age of 69. "As an author, he published more than twenty books and 200 articles and became one of the leading and most respected family life educators in this country" ( from Groves' biography ). Of the twenty books he wrote, "Social Problems And Education" is the only one I have ever read.
This book provides some very interesting insight into just how similar the era in which it was written was to our present-day society. It was Professor Groves' claim that all the answers to all the social dilemmas of 1925 could only be found through better education of the masses. His book covered topics as diverse as: Juvenile Delinquency, Crime And Penal Reform, Mental Disease, Modern Conditions Influencing Family Life, Divorce And Family Responsibility, The Unmarried Mother, Immigration, Race Friction, Social Unrest, as well as other topics.
Again, if you didn't know better, you would think this book was written to address the problems of our generation, not that of our great-grandfathers and grandmothers. Here are some quotes taken directly from the book on various subjects:
Juvenile Delinquency: " Education is one of our most effective means of preventing and treating delinquency. As the home loses its influence or refuses to perform its functions, to that extent the significance of the school increases. Although intelligence by itself does not make delinquency impossible, the wholesome training of the mind contributes to normal conduct in the same way that proper development of the body makes good adjustment easier than it is for one who suffers ill health. A good school by its ordinary social influences upon the pupil becomes a powerful agent against deliquency."
Crime And Penal Reform: " Society in its task of preventing crime must largely salvage the potential criminal by turning his impulses, when first they show tendency toward unsocial conduct, into safe and even useful expressions. It follows that the decrease of crime depends upon a reform of society itself more than it does upon the proper treatment of the individual who has been placed under the custody of the law."
The Unmarried Mother : Groves ends this chapter with an interesting observation. He talks of society's growing tendency to hold the fathers of children born out of wedlock financially responsible for the children they helped bring into the world. This quote, written 81 years ago, could have been written today. " In practical experience it has been difficult to collect any considerable sum of money from most fathers who admit their responsibility for illegitimate children, and so the social worker has usually been satisified with a judgement from the court calling for a weekly payment. It is no uncommon thing for the father to attempt to get rid of this obligation after a few weeks. Frequently he disappears and occasionaly goes to another state in order to escape from the jurisdiction of the court."
Immigration: " Whether our previous policy with reference to immigration will in the long run prove to have been wise or foolish is a matter only time can determine, but there is a rather general conviction among students of American immigration that from now on our policy must be more stringent. This control of the immigration movement is the more necessary because of the increasing opportunitiy, open to those who in various ways profit from immigration, to stimulate artificially the movement of European people to this country. Not only are the capitalistic employers anxious to have cheap labor for industry, but the steamship companies found a large part of their profits in the past in the hordes of people they have transported to our shores."
Race Friction: " It will not be difficult for race prejudice to be stimulated in both blacks and whites by irresponsible and exploiting leadership. An increase of friction can only retard the normal adjustment of the two peoples in their racial relationships. Education in its wide sense, including moral discipline and every element that tends toward personal development and equipment for gaining a livelihood, will help to bring about a happier situation between whites and negros. It is ignorance, undeveloped capacity, undisciplined passions and race hatreds, whether in blacks or whites, that are at the bottom of our so-called race problem."
Social Unrest: " The philosophy that all men and women need for social well-being is more things and more time for their enjoyment, the theory of the fat belly, has already shaken civilization and given people fair warning that human nature can not be made socially sane by mere prosperity even if it is distributed so that no man has more than his neighbor."
Professor Groves goes on to talk of many other things that mirror what we talk about in our own world some 81 years later. For example, in one paragraph he talks in length about "press agents" or as we would call them today "spin doctors". Quote: " The press agent is a paid attorney in the field of publicity. He is a skillful advocate who prepares material which will have news value and at the same time will influence the reading public favorably toward his employer. "
The world Groves writes about is so like ours today, that you have to wonder if it actually was just like our world today. Maybe after the 1920's, our society solved many of its problems; but as the generation that solved those problems passed from the scene, maybe the solutions they found for those problems passed with them, leaving us with yet another case of " Deja Vu all over again ".
If you ever get a chance to read this book, I strongly suggest you do.
Ernest R. Groves Link :
http://www.lib.ndsu.nodak.edu/ndirs/collections/manuscripts/education/Groves/biography.html
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Comments: 34
Good article. I had read Groves' quote, feeling that it was very much in the present. That is your point, certainly.
I remember similar arguments from when I was in elementary school.
This is a timeless article and the information bears repeating, time and time again.
Until we get it right.
Groves work is a great example of how society must help preserve itself. Although his work is admired in the acedemic world, the general population knows nothing of it.
The more I read this book the more my impressions of the past change.
Education has, in 81 years, transformed itself from being an engine of social reform into an engine of social dysfunction. The public education system feeds the cycle of poverty by reinforcing "the soft racism of lower expectations"
Just last week, The Department of Education released a study purporting to show that private and public schools perform at near equal levels. When one digs into the report what one finds is that private schools performed better across the board but this advantage is whitewashed away by the use of linear hierarchical modeling (LHM).
Essentially what LHM does is declare that demography is destiny and equate poor performance not with factors within education but with the racial, gender and income variables of the students.
Put simply, and brutally, a class containing my three nieces who have a wonderful and intelligent African-American father, is given a statistical performance advantage because of their "blackness". Their class is not expected to perform as well as others, because of them.
Rather than looking at things like staff turnover as a result of the churning of underpaid, inexperienced, young teachers through inner-city schools because of the seniority system, the educational system blames the demographics of the children themselves.
Rather than analyzing discipline policies, truancy policies, the mainstreaming of children with behavior problems, the education system looks at "blackness" as the root of its failure.
Thanks for this, George.
You make good points. 81 years ago, people like Groves were saying that we need to treat all students equally. Today, the system says that the only way to treat them all equally is to call them all different.
At least we used to think straight.
When the "interests" became the transmissions of political view instead of the transmission of the ABILITY to learn, process, and USE information for oneself things like what Greg is speaking to here above became not only possible but desirable TO the system, for the preservation of the system.
It's hard to believe that there once was a time when our society came first and our political system came second, but there was.
We, the people, must have taken our eye off the ball and as they say " When the cats away the mice will play".
thanks for bringing up this subject and Dr. Grove.
It's just too bad the graduates can't make change.
I think you and I agree pretty closely.
Thank you for adding some great insight to this conversation.
You get the feeling from Groves writngs that he didn't see graduation as an end to education. Quite the opposite, he talks about school as a launching pad for lifelong education.
Combat with dreams, aspirations, and instilling the belief the world can be a better place. Inner city ecology projects being the number one best choice: extreme planet makeover!
Except we're the deja vu this time around.
I know how suirrely I get when I don't have something challenging and productive to do, no amount of money can replace having a good project going.
Folk schools and life long learning has met with limited success in the US. Some folk schools were established in the Appalachian mountains in the early part of the 20th Century which mostly died out by the 40's.
John Dewey was the figurehead of educational philosophy throughout the 20th Century and still is. What I could never understand was why they bothered to teach these wonderful concepts and then go on to never letting us put them into practice in teaching! The bean counters took over, the testers came in and the whole mess melted down.
I would hope that education is controlled by bean-counters and testers. While we can all rhapsodize on the great teachers who instilled our lives with the music of dead-poets, we have to be cognizant that there are millions of kids exposed to the discordant noise of dead-head teachers and we need a system to measure which ones are effective and which ones are not.
In order to manage anything, you must measure. In order to manage any institution, you must count beans.
Again, thank you for this added insight into the topic at hand. When I graduated from high school in 1968, the telltale signs of our country losing interest in self-motivated learning were beginning to appear.
The bean couters were brought in after the damage was already done. They did not cause the loss of interest in lifelong education. Sadly, that was caused by my generation and the generations that followed wanting "Everything now !"
The bean counters just moved in when the opportunity to move in was created by a non-involved public.
The book Groves wrote is not about "teachers" it is "teaching" and the value of education to the society it is part of.
Carol makes a good argument from the vantage point of experience.
We should not give schools a blank check, but neither should we come up with a budget first and only teach until it runs out.
Bean counters and testers do not equal community involvement, simply because they have no personal stake in the outcome.
I do admire your thoughtful articles. Education of the "masses" is one of my pet topics. I have not posted anything on the subject, but I sure understand this article.
What a good man this was.
You should publish an article on the subject, the more voices the better.
In the decades of the 30's and 40's there was more emphasis placed on education being a mantainence program for society. But, beginning in the 50's, education began to change into a boot camp for private business.
Now, we find ourselves in a void when it comes to using our educational system as a way to build future jobs, and we have totally forgotten how to use education as a way to maintain our society.
As a result we, as a nation, aren't quite sure what our educational system is supposed to be or why it is there.
This is a testimony of how educational observations continue to recycle.
Very well done. Thanks
It's strange how nothing really is new, it seems like it's all been here before in one form or another.
Your revision made improvements that made reading it much easier and comprehensible. Excellent form and structure for readers who have difficulty reading large blocks of text. You are very sensitive to your readers' learning needs.
Thank you.