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The Director of the Education Division of the FERA outlines the plans and hopes of the Administration in its comprehensive program of adult education.
--The Editor.
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LAST Fall under the Federal Emergency Relief Administration some 40,000 teachers eligible for relief were employed in an educational program involving various phases of adult education and nursery schools. The primary purpose of this program is relief for unemployed teachers. It is an outstanding this administration relief, insofar as possible, has been in the form of work and not in the form of a dole. On the whole, those on relief have been assigned work in line with their training and ability. Wherever there is work relief on a large scale there must be work provided for teachers. The Emergency Educational Program is essentially a part of the work relief program. Not only have these Federal Emergency Relief Administration teachers received material assistance, but they have provided mental relief in the form of new interests and new purposes for millions of other needy persons whose morale was rapidly being undermined by the stress and strain of the economic depression.
In authorizing the Emergency Educational program, care has been exercised not to overlap or partially subsidize the regular public school programs. However, there was one exception to this last year; permission was granted to communities under 2,500, where rural elementary schools had exhausted their State and local funds, to employ and pay teachers from relief funds during the normal school term. Approximately 12 1/10 per cent of the expenditure made in the emergency program last fall and winter was for this purpose. By February the situation in rural schools had become so acute that a new authorization was made to broaden the former one and take care of communities up to 5,000 population and include high school grades as well as elementary grades. Under this separate authorization, from the first of February to the end of June approximately $14,500 was expended in some 33 States. With the exception of the rural schools the projects approved by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration have been those not normally conducted as an integral part of the regular public school system. It is important not to use unemployed teachers in ways that will throw employed teachers out of work.
The Emergency Educational Program is a State and not a Federal program. The Federal Government allocates $2,400,000 each month to the various States, but each State administers its program according to its own State plan. The programs have been developed jointly by the State and local relief Administrations on one hand, and the State and local Departments of Education on the other. In administering the Emergency Educational Program last fall and winter the existing facilities of the State Departments of Education were utilized without any outside assistance. However, this spring special supervisors were provided for the Emergency Educational Program. Federal grants are made each month to provide for the salary and travel of these supervisors.
Each State has developed various phases of the educational program to meet its own special needs. The Emergency Educational Program includes the following five projects: Literacy classes, general adult education, vocational training, vocational rehabilitation, and nursery schools.
Last fall and winter a definite emphasis was placed on reducing the proportion of illiteracy existing in certain of the States. From October to June 10 1/2 per cent of the funds expended was on this one activity. It is estimated that today there are in the United States approximately 12,000,000 adults who are not able to read and write sufficiently well, to read a newspaper with understanding, or write an intelligent letter. Experience has shown that State and local Departments of Education are capable of so organizing their programs that these people can be reached in large numbers.
Hundreds of letters are received daily by Federal and State offices expressing the heartfelt appreciation of those who through the Emergency Educational Program have learned to read books and periodicals and correspond with members of their families who have moved to distant places. It is hoped that in the future educational opportunities may be offered to millions of these fact that during adult illiterates and near illiterates so that they may take their proper places as citizens in this democracy.
The largest phase of the educational program has consisted of offering both to unemployed and other adults every possible type of general education in which they might be interested. Through the workers' education program men and women in industry, business, commerce, domestic science, and other occupations have been given an opportunity to train themselves in clear thinking with the study of those questions related to their daily lives as workers and as citizens. Through parent education there has been an opportunity for parents studying under qualified leadership to increase their understanding of child growth, of parent-child relationships, of family life, and of family-community relationships, and to improve their ability to perform their parts in these relationships with confidence and satisfaction. There have been many other types of general adult education such as vocational hobby, and handicraft classes organized to make worthwhile use of leisure time, and special classes given through extension centers or by correspondence to high school graduates living at home who have been financially unable to attend college. Last year from October to June 48 8/10 per cent of the funds expended was devoted to these general adult education classes.
During the same length of time 13 per cent of the total funds expended in the Emergency Educational Program was used in providing vocational training. This covered four principal fields of work: trade and industrial, home economics, agricultural, and commercial education. The largest percentage of vocational teachers employed was for commercial classes. It should be noted that students in vocational classes must be unemployed adults who need further training in order to become employable. In the field of home economics groups of women from families on relief or near relief may be given instruction in such subjects as: preparation of foods, minimum cost diets, alteration, remodeling, and construction of clothing, home beautification, renovation of household furnishings, care and repair of equipment, and construction of simple home-made furniture. In trade and industrial education, classes may be organized to enable workers to maintain their trade skills at employment levels of performance, to enlarge their fields of operation, and to give training in newly-developing fields of work where local conditions are such as to permit some reasonable chance of employment. In commercial education those receiving instruction must not only be unemployed, but those in short-hand, typing, bookkeeping, and accounting. classes must also be on relief. This last restriction was imposed due to the fact that the field is tremendously overcrowded. High schools and commercial houses are grinding out thousands every year and it is socially undesirable to enlarge a program that can, as a whole, lead only to bitter disappointment. Last year 4 4/10 per cent of the total expenditure of the Emergency Educational Program was for the rehabilitation of disabled adults who could be made self-supporting. This rehabilitation service was designed to aid those not served under the regular programs in the States. A recent policy restricts rehabilitation to those on relief.
Emergency nursery schools are designed for children primarily from two to four years of age from underprivileged, dependent and neglected families and homes. These nursery schools are in essence an extension downward of the public schools and an extension outward to include such aspects of the child's development as health, physical growth and nutrition, play, social life, and mental hygiene. They provide an all day program including lunch and nap. They become centers for medical and dental care and for the education of parents in essentials of child growth and guidance. Approximately 12 2/10 per cent of the funds expended last year was for emergency nursery schools.
Increasingly education is being extended to all classes and to all ages of people. In segregating the young from the old and concentrating upon the young, we have in the past ignored the facts that instruction through all the ages has been from parents to children and not from children to parents. It is difficult to educate children past their parents and their communities. By putting the major emphasis on the education of the child and not continuing the education of men and women up to their capacities we have lost untold values. Nature fixes the limits of one's mental capacity, or what might be called vertical growth, but interest, purpose, opportunity, self-discipline determine how far one will develop horizontally. The problem of stimulating individuals to the maximum breadth of achievement is a new challenge to education. In the report of the American Library Association's Commission on Libraries in Adult Education we find the following: "Adult education is based on a recognition of the great truth that education is a life-long process and that the university graduate as well as the man of little schooling is in constant need of further training, inspiration, and mental growth; that the training obtained in school and college is necessarily limited to fundamentals, and the real development of the individual lies in the independent effort of later years. Essentially adult education is a spiritual ideal taking form in a practical purpose. It is based on the inherent urge forward which distinguishes the human spirit. It must be voluntary. The greatest teacher may not enter uninvited nor may he come as a taskmaster. It finds its truest and highest level when the hunger for knowledge and expansion wakens in the hearts of men and women."
