Ruskin's religious sentiments. The statesman had been speaking of the part that things of the spirit play in the life of the nation: "Factories and railroads are good up to a given point, but courage and endurance, love of wife and child, love of home and country, love of lover for sweetheart, love of beauty in man's work and nature, love of emulation and daring and lofty endeavor, the homely workaday virtues and heroic virtues, these are better still, and if they are lacking no piled up riches, no roaring, clamoring industrialism, no feverish and many-sided activity shall avail within the individual or the nation. "I do not undervalue these things of a nation's body; I only desire that they shall not make us forget that beside the nation's body there is also the nation's soul." Desire I would I were a vagabond at springtime of the year, Brown of the road, blue of the sky, Wind from the west, white cloud flitting by, A gypsy life is the life for me! And if I were a vagabond at springtime of the year, Oh, best of all I'd like the hour when twilight time draws near, Sunset of flame, fires burning low, OLGA ACHTENHAGEN 316 E. Lawrence St., Appleton, Wis. Marks to the Right of Them, Marks to the Left, etc. RUSSELL BURKHARD, PRINCIPAL, ARMORY STREET JUNIOR HIGH AND ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, SPRINGFIELD, MASS. M ADAM, you are still connected." "Oh, is dees you, Meestair Breensible?" "Vell, I vanna esk wassamatta vit my Anna? She got only a 'E' by her histree. Vat's it da matta?" You give up the receiver with a sigh, after urging the parent to come in after school and discuss it with Anna's teacher. And undoubtedly this sketch or something like it, occurs in many offices dozens of times a year. By and large, nearly every one connected with the school has been talking marks, marks, marks, far more than they have need. Society has tended to build itself a school structure with marks for bricks and marks for mortar. This prominence upon the numerical value of a course of study has placed a terrific responsibility upon the teacher's shoulders, and perhaps unfairly so. Think of the thousand and one factors to which youngsters respond, and note how few of these are or can be utilized in rendering such a close decision in history, let us say, as D for 72% or C for 73%. Scaled down a few more points in some school systems, the decision rests between the Scarlet Letter "E" for 59% or D for 60%. This brilliantly marked "E," by the way, rarely fails to arouse parental ire, and the ire in turn infallibly clogs school machinery. Solomon actually would have been hard put in rendering judgment for such an array of decisions. And what great good does this report card business accomplish? Many, too many, school systems undergo this peri Marks to the Right of Them, Marks to the Left of Them 495 odical, irritating, lengthy clerical job several times annually without much in the way of achievement. It might be in order to ask, "Just what is the function of a report card?" Should it attempt to render specific, accurate judgments about transitory, fluctuating skills in varied subject matter? Or shall it attempt to analyze the pupil's difficulties and aptitudes, for the sake of guidance and also be a measure of achievement? Should not the contact of teacher with pupil be fruitful of some diagnostic material helpful to the parent? Below are listed two types of reports: excellently Your child...... is doing the work of grade.. poorly satisfactorily School Influence in Industrial Management A. W. FORBES, (FORBES & MEYERS, ELECTRICAL M MANUFACTURERS), WORCESTER, MASS. ANY people imagine that a manager runs his factory according to his own ideas, or at least that he only yields to the owners or to the board of directors. He is often dictatorial in asserting the importance of using his methods. But such asserting does not mean that the methods are his. It may only mean that they are the methods he has been forced to use by circumstances over which he has no control. It is my opinion that the schools exert a more powerful influence over factory management than the managers themselves, and this is one of the reasons why I am so much interested in education. For example, when I started in business I had very definite ideas of factory management, gained through experience as an employee and otherwise. I still think that many of these ideas are right, that they are better management than the methods that I am now using. But I have been unable to put them into practice. Now when outsiders tell me, as they often do, that I should use the methods which I have found impossible to use, I am more intolerant with them than with advocates of impractical untried ideas. If the factory manager cannot control his methods, who does? Influences are at work from all sides, but one of the most powerful influences, and the only one that I will consider here, is the influence of the schools. And of the many and varied effects of school influence, I am only selecting a few of the most important. 1. Office work connected with the ordinary factory has shown a tremendous increase. The fact of the increase is evident to all observers. The share of the school in bringing it about is direct. A boy of ten or twelve has little use for an office. He likes machines, and likes to make things, particularly on power machinery. Formerly capable boys entered the factories at this age, and advanced to the more intellectual sides of the business. But it is hard to get a boy with such a start into the more confining and less interesting office job, except for the higher executive positions. He did the intellectual work just the same. But he did it in the shop. When boys continue till they are fifteen in the usual school and social atmosphere, they change their early interests. This is very apparent when school boys visit the shop. It is the boys of twelve or under who show the most active interest. The boy who stays in school till he is eighteen has usually been won to the idea of a white collar job with its greater social prestige. At least those who have not been so won, are not often boys with enough ability to make good in either shop or office. The school, by keeping boys out of work till they are sixteen or eighteen, is reducing the supply of capable young men for the shop and is furnishing an excess supply for the office. The result is that the factory manager can hire equal ability more cheaply if he places it in the office. To use this cheap labor he transfers to the office work that was formerly done in the shop. Consider tool making. Formerly the tool maker was given a problem of manufacture. He decided how the thing was to be made, what kind of tools were needed to make it, and then, with or without assistants, he made the tools. He was a shop man, but he was a responsible man in planning the work of the organization. Today most of the planning has been transferred to the office, and in some cases there is more cost connected with the office work on a set of tools than there is with the shop work. Drafting is another example. Any good machinist can do ordinary factory drafting without instructions. Laying out the work on paper is easier than on steel, and errors are more |