Learning to Work

It is proposed, That some persons of leisure and public spirit, apply for a charter, by which they may be incorporated, with power to erect an Academy for the education of youth. . . . As to their studies, it . . is proposed that they learn those things that are likely to be most useful and most ornamental.

Benjamin Franklin thus introduced the heart of his famed Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania (1749), which led toward the supplanting of Colonial Latin grammar schools by academies. Franklin proposed that youths be taught less Latin, more handwriting, reading, geography, gardening, history of commerce--and he prophetically added: "And this, with the accounts in other history of the prodigious force and effect of engines and machines used in war, will naturally introduce a desire to be instructed in mechanics. . . ."

Last week a committee of ten distinguished U. S. educators, appointed by the American Youth Commission to chart a new curriculum for U. S. high schools, repeated history by echoing Ben Franklin's proposals. The committee's report, What the High Schools Ought to Teach, was described by A. Y. C.'s Director Floyd W. Reeves as "one of the most important contributions to secondary education of this generation."

The committee (chairman: Pittsburgh's Superintendent Ben G. Graham) found modern high schools busy preparing U S. youth for white-collar careers, succeeding only in making youth "grossly unprepared" for life.

The committee proposed that high schools teach youth how to read, be good citizens, wives, husbands, keep their health, solve their personal and family problems. Above all, said the committee, U. S. youth needs to be taught how to work. "The ability to work steadily for eight hours," it observed, "is not a natural possession; it has to be acquired."

Suggestions:

> Let every pupil be taught to work with his hands: e.g., in a school shop or homemaking laboratory.

> Let schools sponsor community work projects: e.g., cleanup campaigns.

> Let schools and private employers collaborate in cooperative education, whereby pupils work part time for wages.

> Let schools stimulate young people's inventiveness to make jobs: e.g., 4-H Club projects.

Said the committee: "Several very vigorous efforts have been made by social reformers to convince the American people that a system of publicly useful work corresponding to army service in Europe, but of a distinctly non-military type, would be advantageous in this country. If all young persons were mobilized to do service for the country for a reasonable period during adolescence, a long step would be taken in the direction of solving some of the most urgent youth problems of the present time."

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