While I myself was present at the gymnasium to
explain that it was nobler to drill in imitation of removing
disease-breeding filth than to drill in simulation of warfare;
while I distractedly readapted tales of chivalry to this modern
rescuing of the endangered and distressed, the new drill went
forward in some sort of fashion, but so surely as I withdrew, the
drillmaster would complain that our troops would first grow
self-conscious, then demoralized, and finally flatly refuse to go
on. Throughout the years since the failure of this Quixotic
experiment, I occasionally find one of these sewer spades in a
Hull-House storeroom, too truncated to be used for its original
purpose and too prosaic to serve the purpose for which it was
bought. I can only look at it in the forlorn hope that it may
foreshadow that piping time when the weapons of warfare shall be
turned into the implements of civic salvation.
Before closing this chapter on Socialized Education, it is only
fair to speak of the education accruing to the Hull-House
residents themselves during their years of living in what at least
purports to be a center for social and educational activity.
While a certain number of the residents are primarily interested
in charitable administration and the amelioration which can be
suggested only by those who know actual conditions, there are
other residents identified with the House from its earlier years
to whom the groups of immigrants make the historic appeal, and who
use, not only their linguistic ability, but all the resource they
can command of travel and reading to qualify themselves for
intelligent living in the immigrant quarter of the city.
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