Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 90, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 April 1918 — Characteristic Shortcomings of Our Schools Brought Out by the Great War [ARTICLE]

Characteristic Shortcomings of Our Schools Brought Out by the Great War

By DR. WILLIAM T. FOSTER.

President of Reed College. Portland, Ore.

The war has brought out in sharp relief the characteristic shortcomings of the schools of the United States. Our people, as a whole, are prone to contentment with mediocrity and avoidance of the discipline of prompt, thorough and exact achievement. In these respects the schools of the United States reflect the people. Our schools, as a rule, do not make necessary the prompt and complete performance of duty. They do not cultivate the habit of “being there.” As challenges to the powers of the majority of the girls and boys of the United States they are absurdly inadequate. The high-school diploma is no guaranty to the employer or to the college that the graduate has ever been required to do his best at anything. In this respect a college is no better. Indeed, it may stand for four years of irresponsible and headlong pursuit of the joys of college life, during which the youth has formed the habit of “getting by” with a minimum of effort. Thousands of boys in our training camps are experiencing for the first time the necessity of performing assigned tasks promptly and exactly day in and day out. Thus they are having the benefits, for the first time, of a discipline from which there is no escape. All of them know it, and most of them enjoy it.