Official proceedings of the annual meeting: 1923

CHILD LABOR AND EDUCATION-LOVEJOY

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that the education of the whole child should be the goal, not merely the pouring into
his mind of certain lessons drawn from abstract fields, but the linking of his whole being
to life and its problems; (c) that the whole atmosphere of the school should be inspiring
for children need enthusiasm, and the studied methods by which this is crushed in many
localities are perhaps quite as responsible for the breaking away of childhood from what
would ultimately result in substantial development as are the attractions on the outside
that tend to pull the child away; (d) that education should be American, and by this
we are not urging that our children should be taught to talk like the king of England or
look like the Pilgrim fathers; we are urging that old-fashioned principle of Americanism, so feared by a multitude of our modern 20-proof Americans, but so precious to men
of the type of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison-the right to freedom. We
should not only have the courage to think for ourselves, but we should grant to children
the right to think for themselves; (e) that we recognize the importance of an instructed
public. Obviously the race is still too ignorant, Americans with the rest. And there
is real point in the argument that children should be taught to do something useful so
that in later life they will not be devoid of a method by which to maintain themselves
and to care for those who will later become dependent on them. We do not belittle
this claim. But it should be borne in mind that the teaching of the child to do his own
thinking, to use the facilities of what we rightfully call our system of English education, to learn to use the tools of expression-the ability to read, to write, to communicate
with past ages and with our contemporaries-are also of prime importance. On the
other hand, we should like to see the entire curriculum for all the children of school age
shot through and through with vocational significance, not primarily for the purpose of
teaching these children how to earn money by engaging in one or another vocation,
but for the main purpose of giving them an appreciation of the methods by which the
human race has maintained itself on the earth in past ages and is likely to take its next
steps forward. To learn to think, to develop vision, to develop social appreciationthese are the greatest tasks before the educational forces of our country, and these,
curiously enough, are the tasks most likely to stimulate a spirit of co-operation on the
part of the children themselves and win multitudes of those we have neither been able
to drive or frighten.
Third, granting all these improvements in our educational system which we have
urged, the question still remains how to connect the two, how to relate the American
school to our army of child laborers. We simply urge that education shall be democratic. By this we mean that it shall be available to every child within our boundaries.
Such a statement sounds terribly obvious! But it lives thus far only in theory. The
oft-repeated assurance that a liberal education is available for every child is not only
a stupid distortion of the facts but is a flagrant insult to multitudes of ignorant children
who have no way of combating its insidious counsels or are unconscious of the actual
facts. There are multitudes of children in this country who have no available opportunity to participate in the advantages offered by our school system.
Education must be undertaken as a national enterprise. The theory that our
government has no right to intervene in the interest of an enlightened citizenry is as
unsound as an objection to a state compulsory school-attendance law.
If a local community has the right to invade a private home to compel children to
go to school; if a county has the right thus to invade a community, and if a state has
the right to thus invade a county, then the government of the United States has a