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The Disabled Soldier

Creator: Douglas C. McMurtrie (author)
Date: 1919
Publisher: The Macmillan Company, New York
Source: Available at selected libraries
Figures From This Artifact: Figure 2  Figure 3  Figure 4  Figure 5  Figure 6  Figure 7  Figure 8  Figure 9  Figure 10  Figure 11  Figure 12  Figure 13  Figure 14  Figure 15  Figure 16  Figure 17  Figure 18  Figure 19  Figure 20  Figure 21  Figure 22  Figure 23  Figure 24  Figure 25  Figure 26

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There is another reason why the agriculturist should stay on the farm: that the nation may profit by the continued labor of a food producer which it cannot afford to lose. In France there has been a country-wide propaganda to this end, and posters and booklets have set forth the exhortation: "Agriculteurs, ne changez pas de metier." The movement from the farm to the factory is already too pronounced, and in the European countries the farm workers have seen it was they that were sent first to the trenches, while many of the industrial employees were kept at home in the munition plants. Determined efforts have been made to counteract the trend, and great ingenuity has been addressed to the solution of difficulties in the path of the disabled farmer.

228  

There still remains to be considered the man without real occupational experience. A soldier of one type may have held in the two years prior to his enlistment ten different jobs -- all makeshift in character and all ill paid. He may have left school at fourteen and been under the necessity of going to work to help support the family. In such an instance he would never have had a chance at a skilled trade. Now that he has gone abroad and been injured in his country's service, is this man to be denied the chance he missed earlier in life? It should be the pride of the community to give it to him.

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Representative of another type is the young man who may have gone into the army direct from high school. In the American forces, so largely made up of youngsters, cases of this kind will be numerous. When this youth graduates from military service, a disabled veteran, he should be provided with the same vocational advantages as he might have availed himself of had not the war rudely interrupted his educational career.

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With both these types there is no past experience to serve as an occupational determinant for the future. Choice is therefore free, and the usual principles of vocational guidance will apply.

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For the man with superior mental qualifications little assistance in readaptation is necessary. He will find a way to keep on with his work. Professional men can, in spite of even serious handicaps, continue in their own line. Disability does not mean as much to the head worker -- architect, chemist, statistician, or designer, as it does to the manual worker -- machinist, textile worker, stone mason, or shoemaker.

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Most of the men of mental qualifications who will profit by re-educational provision by the national authorities, are the younger soldiers who can take up or continue courses at universities or professional schools. The range of training should not be limited to the trades; the educational opportunity should only be conditioned by the talents and possibilities of the pupil. In Canada numbers of men have been sent to college with their living expenses and tuition paid by the government, and the same situation will doubtless ensue here to as great if not a greater degree.

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And finally, there is the man without enough mentality to make possible his training in a skilled trade. After it is clear that nothing can be done for him vocationally, he may, as a last resource, be equipped with as effective mechanical aids as possible to offset the handicap of his disability, and returned to manual labor. If foreign-speaking his chances may be improved by teaching him to speak English. Luckily, however, cases of this character will be few among men of our own forces, by reason of the high standards of admission to and retention in the army. A densely stupid man would never get as far as the front line overseas.

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The courses of training must be intensive and practical rather than theoretical. Every feature of instruction must be evaluated according to whether it affords direct assistance to the man's earning a living. A mistake that has often been made especially by universities and other institutions of higher learning is to give the disabled soldiers the elementary first-year schedule of a regular four-year course. This gives them a little of everything and complete familiarity with almost nothing. What must rather be done is to pick the essential and practical features out of the whole four-year program and condense them into the compass of a short course.

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In place of grinding for a final examination upon which academic rating may be established, it is better to devote the last one or two months of training to practical work in the field for which the training prepares. When the students' association at Calgary, Canada -- made up of the returned soldiers being trained at the Institute of Technology and Art -- were asked for suggestions regarding how the instruction might be improved, they answered that their chief concern was that they should know when they went out to a job just what was expected of them. The apprehension was that they might be made ridiculous and show up as inexperienced in comparison with other workmen who might be hired for the position. To eliminate this possibility the men are put, before graduation, at actual work of the same character as will be required by their first employer. For example, the men training as operators of gasoline tractors are set to plowing virgin prairie and doing other miscellaneous farm work, all under helpful supervision by their instructors. They go out, therefore, not as novices but as full-fledged workers.

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