THE SCHOOL AS A SOCIAL SETTLEMENT
Schools all over the country are finding that the most direct way of
vitalizing their work is through closer relations with local interests
and occupations. That period of American school history which was
devoted to building up uniformity of subject-matter, method, and
administration, was obliged to neglect everything characteristic of
the local environment, for attention to that meant deviation from
uniformity. Things remote in time and space, and things of an abstract
nature, are most readily reduced to uniformity and doled out in doses
to children in a mass. Unfortunately the consequences were too often
that in aiming to hit all children by exactly the same educational
ammunition, none of them were really deeply touched. Efforts to bring
the work into vital connection with pupils’ experiences necessarily
began to vary school materials to meet the special needs and definite
features of local life.
This closer contact with immediate neighborhood conditions not only
enriches school work and strengthens motive force in the pupils,
but it increases the service rendered to the community. No school
can make use of the activities of the neighborhood for purposes of
instruction without this use influencing, in turn, the people of the
neighborhood. Pupils, for example, who learn civics by making local
surveys and working for local improvements, are certain to influence
the life of the locality, while lessons in civics learned from the
purely general statements of a text-book are much less likely to have
either applicability or application. In turn, the community perceives
the local efficiency of the schools. It realizes that the service
rendered to welfare is not remote, to appear when the pupils become
adults, but a part of the regular, daily course of education. The
statement that the schools exist for a democratic purpose, for the good
of citizenship, becomes an obvious fact and not a formula. A community
which perceives what a strong factor its school is in civic activities,
is quick to give support and assistance in return, either by extending
the use of its own facilities (as happens in Gary) or by the direct
assistance of labor, money, or material when these are needed.
The supervising principal of public school No. 26 in Indianapolis
is trying an experiment unlike any other known to us in an effort to
make his plant a true school; that is, a place where the children
of his neighborhood shall become healthy, happy, and competent both
economically and socially, and where the connection of instruction
with the life of the community shall be directly recognized both by
children and parents. Mr. Valentine’s school is located in the poor,
crowded colored district of the city and has only colored pupils. It
is not an attempt to solve the “race question” nor yet an experiment
suited only to colored people. There is nothing in the school not
entirely practical in any district where the children come from
homes with limited resources and meager surroundings. A visitor when
leaving this school can not fail to wish that such ventures might
be started in all our great cities,--indeed in any community where
people need to be aroused to a sense of their needs, including the
fact that if they are to contribute to the best interests of the
community, they must be taught how to earn a living, and how to use
their resources for themselves and their neighbors both in leisure
time and in working hours. Mr. Valentine’s school is a school for
colored children only in the sense that the work has been arranged
in relation to the conditions in the neighborhood; these modify the
needs of the particular children who are the pupils. Yet the success
of the experiment would mean a real step forward in solving the “race
question” and peculiar problems of any immigrant district as well.
Mr. Valentine is not interested in illustrating any theories on these
points, but in making up for gaps in the home life of the pupils;
giving them opportunities to prepare for a better future; in supplying
plenty of healthy occupation and recreation; and in seeing to it that
their school work reacts at once to improve neighborhood conditions.
Mr. Valentine’s school is really a social settlement for the
neighborhood, but it has a decided advantage over the average
settlement, for it comes in contact with all the children living within
its district for a number of hours each day, while most settlements
reach the children for only a few scattered hours each week. The school
has a larger influence than most settlements because it is a public
institution for which the people who use it are paying their share;
they feel that their relation to it is a business one, not a matter of
philanthropy. Because of this businesslike relation the school is able
really to teach the doctrines of social welfare. In any settlement
the work is always handicapped by the fact that the people who make
use of it feel that they are receiving something for which they do not
pay, that something is being done for them by people who are better off
financially than they are. But giving a community facilities that it
lacks for special classes and recreation through the public school of
the district put the work on a different basis. The school is really
the property of the people of the district; they feel that they are
more or less responsible for what is done there. Any wider activities
that a school may undertake are to a certain extent the work of the
people themselves; they are simply making use of the school plant for
their own needs.
The neighborhood around Mr. Valentine’s school is one of the poorest
in Indianapolis, and once had a bad reputation for lawlessness and
disorder as well. The school had struggled along for years with little
or no support from the community as a whole or from individual parents.
The per cent. of truancy was high, and a large number of cases were
sent to the juvenile court each year. The children took no interest
in their work as a whole, and cases of extreme disorder were not
infrequent; one pupil tried to revenge himself on his teacher for
a merited punishment with a butcher’s knife, in another case it was
necessary to arrest a boy’s father as a lesson to the neighborhood.
Besides this attitude of hostility and of unwilling attendance, the
school had to contend with immoral surroundings which finally made
it necessary to do something to isolate the school building from
neighboring houses. Finally the school board bought the tract of land
and wooden tenements around the school building. It was at first
proposed to tear down the old buildings, but the authorities were
persuaded to turn them over to the school for its use. The school now
found itself the possessor of a large playground and of three frame
tenements in the worst possible condition, the board having stipulated
that this added property should mean no further expense to the city
after its purchase and the cleaning up of the grounds. It was decided
to use the buildings for social and industrial purposes. One of them
was fitted up by the pupils and neighbors interested as a manual
training building. In this there is a carpenter shop, a sewing room,
and a room for the class in shoemaking. Each grade devotes a regular
number of hours a week to hand work, and has an opportunity to join
other industrial classes after school. The immediate practical appeal
of the work is never lost sight of, and the work is arranged to fit the
needs of the individual pupil.
The carpenter shop is open all day, and there are classes for the girls
as well as for the boys. Pupils are at liberty to go into the shop
and work whenever they have any free time. The work is not confined
to exercises to train the child in the use of tools, but each pupil
makes something that he needs or wants, something that will be of real
use to him. Processes and control of tools are taught the pupil by
means of the piece of work he is doing. This is the keynote to all the
industrial work done in the school. The more remote end of teaching the
child processes which will be useful to him later is not lost sight
of, but material is always used which has some immediate value to the
child or to the school. The boys have learned carpentry work by making
things that were needed in the school building--tables, cupboards,
and bookcases--and by doing some of the repairing on the building.
The girls have learned to sew by making clothes for themselves, for
their brothers and sisters, and by making curtains and linen for the
school. They have learned to cook by making soup for hot lunches for
the school and the neighbors, and by cooking a whole meal for their
own class. Besides the cooking and sewing department for the girls,
there is a class in millinery and in crocheting. These two classes are
conducted from the commercial point of view, to teach the girls to do
something that will enable them to earn some money. In the millinery
class the pupils start by making and trimming hats for themselves, so
that they learn the different processes in the trade. The girls in the
class who show the most skill are then allowed to take orders from
friends and neighbors and trim or make hats for them. Besides the cost
of the material the buyer pays a very small sum for the work, and this
goes into the school treasury. The millinery class has done quite a
business in the neighborhood, and turned out some very successful hats.
Crocheting is taught as a trade, and any girl who wishes to make some
money has an opportunity to learn how to make lace, table doilies, and
all sorts of crocheted articles, like hoods, etc., which will sell. As
the girls are learning, they are working on something which they can
use for themselves or in their homes.
The work for the boys is arranged in the same way. Besides the
carpenter work and the repairing there is a boys’ cooking class, a
shoe-repairing department, and a tailoring shop. The cooking class
is even more popular with the boys than with the girls. In the
shoe-repairing shop, which holds classes after school hours, the boys
learn to mend their own shoes. A professional cobbler is the teacher,
and the mending must be neatly done. The boys begin work on their own
old shoes and as they progress in skill, are allowed to bring shoes
from home to be repaired, or to mend for the girls and for the younger
boys in the school, who, however, pay a small sum for the work. The
tailoring department is run on the same plan, to teach habits of
personal neatness and of industry through giving the pupils work that
results in neatness and gives some manual skill and control of tools.
The class is taught by a tailor, and the boys learn to patch and mend
their own clothes, as well as to sponge and press them. Attendance is
entirely voluntary, and the class meets after the regular school work
is over. Knowing how to keep themselves tidy has resulted in a very
marked improvement in the appearance and habits of the boys in the
class, and has had an influence not only on the whole school, but on
the neighborhood as well. The boys no longer resent the attempts of
the teachers to influence them towards cleanliness and neatness, for
they have become conscious of the advantages of these habits.
The cooking and domestic science classes are taught in one of the
tenements turned over to the school without having been repaired,
although the cooking equipment was supplied by the city. All the other
work on the building--cleaning, painting, repairing, furnishing, and
decorating--was done and paid for by the pupils of the school with
help from the neighborhood clubs that use the building. There is a
large cooking room, a demonstration dining and sitting room, and two
bedrooms. The girls not only learn to cook real meals, but they learn
how to serve them, and then how to take care of the demonstration
house. The domestic science classes include lessons in buying, the
comparative costs and values of food, something of food chemistry and
values, and large quantity cooking. This work is done in connection
with the soup kitchen. A group of girls have charge of the kitchen
long enough to really learn about the work. They plan the menu and
do the buying, cooking and serving of the soup, selling it for three
cents a bowl to the pupils of the school and to neighbors. They keep
all the accounts and not only have to make all their expenses, but
are expected to make some profit for the use of the school as well.
They have made enough profit in one year to furnish most of the
demonstration house. Aside from teaching how to do housework thoroughly
and easily, the purpose of the house is to furnish an example of what
can be done to make one of the regular frame tenements of the district
comfortable and attractive, without more expense than most of the
people now put into their homes. The house is very simply furnished,
with cheap and strong things, in plain colors that are easily kept
clean; the painting and papering was done by the pupils. The sewing
class has made all the curtains and linen for the house, and made
furniture by covering boxes, etc. Besides the class work that goes on
in the building, the rooms are also used as a social center for the
girls of the school.
The third building left standing on the ground purchased by the school
authorities has been turned into a boys’ club house. There is a
gymnasium, two club rooms, and a shower bath room. This house was in
exceedingly bad condition when it became part of the school property,
and there was no money and not much lumber available to repair it. But
the boys of the school wanted the club house, and were not discouraged
because it was not given to them all finished. They started out, as
they had done in the manual training and domestic science buildings,
to do the work themselves. Under the direction of the manual training
teacher, they pulled off old paper and broken plaster, tore up uneven
floors and took out partitions. Then they laid floors, put in woodwork
and painted it, rehung doors, mended windows, and made furniture and
gymnastic apparatus. When there was a job they could not do, such
as the plastering and plumbing, they went among their friends and
asked for money or help in work. Plumbers and plasterers who lived
near the school came in and gave their time and work to help the boys
get their building in order, and other friends gave enough money to
finish the work. Men in the neighborhood dug a long ditch through the
school grounds for sewerage connections. Gradually they are adding to
the gymnasium apparatus and to the simple bathing facilities, while
cleaning and keeping up the painting continue to supply opportunities
for useful work.
As already indicated, the reflex effect upon homes in the vicinity
has been marked. The school board had intended to wreck the three
tenement houses when they bought the land; but Mr. Valentine saw the
opportunity to give the community something which they needed, and at
the same time to arouse a spirit of coöperation and interest among
both parents and pupils in place of the old spirit of distrust and
antagonism, when he persuaded the board to turn the buildings over to
the school. He told the pupils what could be done with them and asked
for their help in doing it. He got a hearty response at once, and so
went out into the district with the children and told their parents
what he proposed to do and asked for help. He got the same generous
response for the first building, the manual training shops, as for the
boys’ club. Besides the time and material which the skilled workers
of the community have contributed, the community has given $350 in
cash, no small sum for people as poor as they are. The value of the
work being done in these buildings and of the training the boys have
had in making them over, is proved by the fact that the community and
the boys themselves wanted the work badly enough to pay for getting
it in money and work. While it has undoubtedly been a struggle for
the school and the district to contribute so much, the benefit to the
school and to the community has been greater just because of these
sacrifices and struggles. The work has made over the relations between
the school and the pupils. The children like to go to school now, where
before they had to be forced to go with threats of the truant officer,
and their behavior is better when they get to school. The children’s
parents have changed their attitude in the same way. They not only see
that the children go to school, but they want them to go because they
appreciate that the school is giving them things they need to make them
self-supporting; but they also see that they have their own share to do
if the work is to be successful. The school has been the cause of the
growth of community spirit in increased civic and social activities of
the district. With improved attendance and discipline, the number of
cases sent to the juvenile court has decreased one-half in proportion
to the number of pupils in school. Meanwhile the educational value of
the work done has undoubtedly been greater than that of work done in
disconnected shops and kitchens.
[Illustration: (1) The boys like cooking more than the girls do.]
[Illustration: (2) Mending their own shoes, to learn cobbling.
(Public School 26, Indianapolis.)]
The school is also carrying on definite work to arouse the pupils to
a sense of responsibility for their community and neighbors. Giving
the pupils as much liberty and responsibility as possible around
the school buildings is an important factor. Each pupil in the higher
grades is given some small child in one of the lower grades to look
out for. On the playground they see to it that the charge has a
fair chance to play, and that he behaves himself; they see that the
little boy or girl comes to school clean and tidy, if necessary doing
the washing or mending themselves. This work has proved especially
successful in doing away with bullying and in arousing personal pride
and a sense of responsibility in the older children; the younger ones
are better looked after than before and have many opportunities to
learn things from the older and more advanced pupils. The older pupils
are also encouraged in every way to help in carrying on the outside
activities of the school. They make calls and write notes to keep
up the attendance at the night school; they see to the order of the
principal’s office and keep the boys’ club house in order. All the
teachers of the school are agreed upon a policy of frank discussion of
the poverty of the district, and of urging the pupils to earn money to
help their parents by becoming as nearly self-supporting as possible.
Each grade keeps track of what its members earn and how they earn it,
and the grade with the largest sum to its credit feels that it has
accomplished something worth while during the year.
There is a savings bank in the school to teach the children habits
of thrift and economy; here a pupil may deposit any sum from a penny
up. The pupil receives a bank book in which stamps are pasted for his
deposits, the money being kept in a city savings bank. The school also
has a branch library, and the pupils are taught how to use it. Part of
the playground has been made into a school garden, and here every pupil
in the higher grades has a garden plot, also instruction which enables
him to grow successfully some of the commoner fruits and flowers. This
work is made very practical; the children have the sort of garden that
would be useful and ornamental if it were in their own back yard. The
school carries on a neighborhood campaign for home gardens, and the
pupils with school gardens do much of this work, telling the people
who want gardens what to plant, and giving them practical help with
their plot until it is well established. In all these ways the teachers
are trying to make ambitious, responsible citizens out of the student
body. Inside the school pupils are taught higher standards of living
than prevail in their homes, and they are taught as well trades and
processes which will at least give them a start towards prosperity,
and then, too, they are aroused to a feeling of responsibility for the
welfare of the whole community.
All these things are done as part of the regular work of the school,
and to a large extent during regular school hours. But there are many
other activities which, while not contributing so directly to the
education of the children, are important for the general welfare of
the whole community. There is a night school for the adults of the
neighborhood who want to go on learning, the shops being used as well
as the schoolrooms. A group of people especially interested in the
school have formed a club to promote the interest of the night school,
and to see that the men of the community understand the opportunities
it offers for them to perfect themselves in a trade or in their
knowledge and use of English. This club is made up of men who live near
the school and who are sufficiently alive to the needs of the school
and the community to work very hard to let all the district know what
the school is already doing for its welfare and what it can do as the
people come to demand more and more from it. Besides keeping up the
attendance at the night school, the club has done much for the general
welfare of the school, like helping raise money for remodeling the
buildings and giving an expensive phonograph to the school. The success
of the school as a social center and the need for such a center are
realized when we remember that this club is made up of men who live in
the district, whose children are using the school, and who are perhaps
themselves going to the night school.
There is also a vacation school during the summer time for the children
of the neighborhood, with some classroom work and a great deal of
time spent on the playground and in the workshops. The school has an
active alumni association which uses the school building for social
purposes and keeps track of the pupils that leave. A parents’ club
has been started as an aid in gaining the coöperation of the pupils’
parents in the work of the school and as a means of finding out the
real needs of the neighborhood. The parents are brought in even closer
contact with the school through the series of teas given by the grades
for their parents during the year. Each grade serves tea once a year
in the domestic science house for the mothers of its pupils. The
children do the work for the teas as part of their domestic science
work, and write the invitations in their English class. The teachers
use these teas as an opportunity for visiting the children’s homes and
getting acquainted with their mothers. The teacher who knows the home
conditions of each child is much better able to adjust the work to the
child, being aware of his weak and strong points. To poverty-stricken,
overworked mothers these social gatherings come as a real event.
The pupils of the school are given social as well as educational
opportunities through their school life. The boys’ club house is opened
nearly every night to local boys’ clubs, some of them being school
organizations and some independent ones. There are rooms for the boys
to hold meetings and to play games, and a well-equipped gymnasium. The
teachers of the school take turns supervising these evening gatherings.
The attendance is large for the size of the building. Giving the
boys a place for wholesome activities has done much to break up the
habits of street loafing and the gangs which were so common in the
district. The girls of the school use the domestic science house for
social purposes. Two chapters of the Camp Fire girls hold regular
meetings in the building and get help and advice from the teachers.
Each domestic science class aims to teach the girls how to live a
comfortable and self-respecting life, as well as how to do housework,
and so becomes a social center of its own. The girls learn to cook and
serve good cheap meals, and then they sit down together and eat what
they have cooked. They talk over their individual problems with the
teacher and with each other, and give each other much practical help.
The domestic science teacher helps the girls who have some skill find
work to do after school hours so that they can help their families by
helping themselves; she helps the pupils find steady work as they leave
school and then keeps track of them, encouraging them to go on fitting
themselves for better work.
The success of the settlement work the school has done points strongly
to the fact that the schoolhouse is the natural and logical social
center in a neighborhood, the teachers coming into closer and more
natural contact with both children and parents than is possible in the
case of other district workers.
There are large economies combining the school and the settlement in
districts where the social and economic standards of living are so
low that the people are not especially successful citizens. Both the
school and settlement facilities are enlarged by using the same group
of buildings for both purposes. The settlement has the use of better
and larger shops and classrooms than most settlements can command, and
the school uses the social rooms and activities to become itself a
community. The school comes in contact with almost all the families in
a district so that community action is much easier to establish. But
even more important than these economies are the far-reaching results
which come from the fact that the school settlement is a democratic
community, really reflecting the conditions of the community.
In using the school plant for any activities, whether simply for the
usual eight classes or to supply the community with all sorts of
opportunities, as the Gary schools are doing and as Mr. Valentine’s
school is doing, the people of the community feel that they are using
for their own ends public facilities which have been paid for by their
taxes. They want to see real, tangible results in the way of more
prosperous and efficient families and better civic conditions, coming
from the increased plant in the district school. Because the schools
are public institutions in fact as well as in name, people know whether
the schools are really meeting their needs and they are willing
to work to see that they do. The school settlement reaps all the
advantages of working for definite ends and of having the businesslike
cooperation of the community as a body. In spite of the fact that the
work of Mr. Valentine’s school has been hampered by lack of funds, and
that some of the special things done are suited to one particular local
population, the changes which have taken place in the neighborhood in
the relation between the school and the parents, and in the spirit of
the pupils in their school attitude, show what a public school may
mean to its neighborhood when it ceases to be an isolated academic
institution.
The Gary schools and Mr. Valentine’s school have effected an entire
reorganization in order to meet the particular needs of the children of
the community, physically, intellectually, and socially. Both schools
are looking towards a larger social ideal; towards a community where
the citizens will be prosperous and independent, where there will be
no poverty-ridden population unable to produce good citizens. While
changes in social conditions must take place before this can happen,
these schools believe that such an education as they provide is one
of the natural ways and perhaps the surest way of helping along the
changes. Teaching people from the time they are children to think
clearly and to take care of themselves is one of the best safeguards
against exploitation.
A great many schools are doing some of the same sort of work, using the
activities of the community as a means of enriching the curriculum,
and using the school plant for a neighborhood center. The civic clubs
of the Chicago public schools, which have already been described, are
aiming at the same thing: the better equipment of pupils for their
life in the community with the hope of improving the community itself.
The Cottage School at Riverside, Illinois, where pupils all come from
well-to-do American families, has found a similar club valuable for the
pupils and of real use to the town. The school organized by the pupils
into a civic league has made itself responsible for the conditions of
the streets in certain portions of the town, and is not only cleaning
up but trying to get the rest of the town interested in the problem.
Mock elections and “self-governments” based upon political organization
are examples of attempts of education to meet the need for training
in good citizenship. Using the school plant as a social center is
recognition of the need for social change and of the community’s
responsibility to help effect it.
The attempt to make this enlarged use of the school plant is not
so much in order to train young people so that they can assume the
burden of improvement for themselves as to give the neighborhood some
immediate opportunities which it lacks for recreation, intercourse
and improvement. The school plant is the natural and convenient place
for such undertakings. Every community has the right to expect and
demand that schools supported at public expense for public ends shall
serve community uses as widely as possible. As attempts in socializing
education have met with such success and such enthusiasm among the
children that their value as educational tools is established, so
giving the people of the community a real share in activities centered
in school buildings and employing school equipment, is one of the
surest ways of giving them a more intelligent public spirit and a
greater interest in the right education of the youth of the land.