others--is partly a habit. Careful watching by parent and teacher
is needed to establish this consideration as a permanent attitude
of mind. It is with much pleasure that I note that many of the
home credit cards bear the items, "Cheerfulness," "Kindness,"
"Politeness," "Keeping temper," "Doing before told," "Care of
language," "Courtesy to parents," and the like. And it is with very
great pleasure that I receive letters from parents and teachers
saying that the attitude of the children in these things is becoming
a habit.
[Illustration: ALGONA, WASHINGTON, GIRL, AGED 12, EARNING HOME
CREDITS
Elizabeth G---- and her mother have a small blackboard in the
kitchen and here they keep a record of all the work Elizabeth does]
Neatness and personal care are habits that mean much to any one.
Some grown people cannot help being neat. Others apparently cannot
be neat no matter how much they try. Something is always wrong. It
is a habit formed when young, perhaps before the age of twenty. In
Mr. O'Reilly's list he included sleeping with window boards in,
bathing, caring for the nails, brushing the hair, cleaning the
teeth, and going to bed by nine o'clock. Personal care has been
given a place on the Portland home credit record[2] which is now
used in some of the schools. Algona, a home credit school about
twenty miles from Seattle, uses the Portland personal care section,
including bathing, brushing teeth, sleeping with open windows, going
to bed before nine o'clock, and attending church or Sunday school.
In looking over the first home credit slips that came in, the Algona
principal found that Nettie, a girl of thirteen, had earned just 7
per cent out of the 100 per cent given for a perfect record in the
personal division. She had earned more than the required two hundred
and ten minutes for the week in the regular work department at a
hard round of preparing meals, washing dishes, sweeping, feeding
the poultry, scrubbing, and so forth. But Nettie had slept with her
window closed, had not brushed her teeth, had not taken a bath,
nor had she been in bed at the required hour. Nettie was obviously
unhappy over the grade her card received in comparison with the
grades of her schoolmates. Before the next report day she had in
some way secured a toothbrush, that effective means of promoting
civilization, and had made sufficient improvement in her personal
care to secure 65 per cent. Her grade for the third week was 72 per
cent, and for the fourth, 93 per cent. Her fourth week's report
showed a hot bath, toothbrushing twice a day, window open every
night, and that she was in bed before nine every night but two.
What her reform will mean to the entire family it is interesting to
conjecture.
[2] For the Portland Home Credit Record card, see p. 120 _ff._
"Be careful about that voice, Ella," directed a teacher. Ella arose
at her place, a thin, stooping girl of about thirteen. She read her
passage of the lesson in a voice scarcely audible to the visitor
across the room. A few minutes later the visitor was looking over
some home credit report slips. "Here is a girl who did not sleep
with her windows open," she said. The teacher took the blank,
studied it a minute, then replied, "This is the first time that
child has brought in a home credit slip. Do you recall my reminding
a little girl about her voice? That is the girl, and this card may
explain her voice quality."
All the pupils except two in a little Washington town learned to
sleep with their windows open. Upon inquiry it was found that one
girl could not open her window, as it was made for admitting light
only, being built solidly into the wall. In the case of the other
child, the parents absolutely refused to endanger their daughter's
health by letting her breathe night air, no matter how many faddists
insisted that it was necessary!
Some members of a church were discussing the problem of the spirit
of incipient immorality that they felt was prevalent among children
in the neighborhood. A home credit teacher showed the speakers a
number of the first report cards she had received, which disclosed
the fact that very few of the pupils under her care were ever in bed
before nine o'clock. A few months later she took occasion to display
again her pupils' home credit cards and with pride pointed out that
almost every child was going to bed early, before nine o'clock. "It
had grown to be a habit with the children to be up late," she said.
"The immorality talked of was not yet in actual existence among
the children, but through their outside evening associates was
gradually working itself in. The children had only to be reminded in
a substantial way that it was not only desirable for them physically
to retire early, but that they were to receive recognition in their
school standing for so doing, and they at once happily complied."
VII
THAT OTHER TEACHER AND THAT TEACHER'S LABORATORY
We are just beginning to discover that the rural school has
a fine laboratory for practical educational purposes, in the
neighborhood environment of the school. With the development of
scientific agriculture and domestic arts in many of our modern
country homes this laboratory is constantly improving.
_Kansas State Agricultural College Bulletin, 1914._
There is a general idea among teachers that parents will not
coöperate with them. This, I believe, is founded upon the assumption
that because they cannot, as a usual thing, coöperate in textbook
work they will not coöperate in other things. But both parents
and teachers want the same results accomplished. If these are to
be attained it means partnership work, the parent and that other
parent, the teacher, working together; or one might say, the
teacher, and that other teacher, the parent, working together.
I have been surprised to find to what extent parents will coöperate
with teachers if given a chance. Mrs. Brown goes to the schoolhouse
on a bleak afternoon. She is greeted warmly by the teacher, Miss
Smith, and given an arithmetic text to follow while the class
recites. The lesson is on decimal fractions. Now, Mrs. Brown didn't
have decimal fractions during her school days, so the recitation is
quite meaningless to her. She is glad when the class is over, and
does not find time to visit school again that term. But if she is
asked to prepare a luncheon for the picnic at the close of the year,
or asked to assist in any social function at the schoolhouse, she
spends her time for the school, and is glad to do it.
In Eugene, Oregon, several years ago I found that the women of the
city were enthusiastic in aiding the schools. Thirty-two women gave
up Monday afternoon to teaching the girls sewing, while the boys had
military drill. At a social center meeting at Hover, Washington,
the suggestion was made that it would be well if one of the mothers
would come to the school building occasionally to help the girls
with their sewing, as the eighth-grade pupils would have to take an
examination in the subject in May. So many mothers volunteered to
undertake the task that a schedule was made out whereby a sewing
period could be had every afternoon, and no mother be on duty
oftener than every two weeks.
At Myrtle Creek, Oregon, domestic art work is carried on in this
way: the teacher gives instructions in the work that is to be done;
in cooking, for instance, recipes are given, talked over, and
written down. The girls then go home, and actually do the work, and
make a report to the teacher. They must have the signatures of their
mothers for all the work they do. This is managed with a home credit
report card.
Mrs. E. H. Belknap, a progressive rural teacher near Jefferson,
Oregon, said in a recent letter: "We learn how a cow can be fed and
cared for, so as to produce the greatest amount of butter fat. That
is well, but we regard it of far more value for the boy to go home,
apply the knowledge learned, and produce the butter fat. He is now
worth something to the world, and able to turn his education into
dollars and cents at any time. The girl takes the book, and reads
how to make butter. She goes home, tends the milk, churns, and makes
the butter, learns how really to do the work. She has called the
attention of the entire family to the amount and quality of her
butter obtained from proper feeding and handling of the cow by the
boy."
And yet it is said that nothing can be done in the small school in
domestic science because there is no equipment. In every home there
is ideal equipment if we mean the equipment the children are to use.
If we are preparing for life, why not use the equipment we must
use in life? Best of all, in using the home laboratory there is an
immediate purpose. None of us can get much out of an exercise when
it is done just for an exercise. There is the dinner to be cooked,
the bed to be made, the ironing to be done; somebody must do it.
And the dinner, the bed, and the ironing are to be put to the test
by some one who sees real values. There is no doubt that one of the
things schools most lack is purpose.
It might be said that to stimulate a child to want to do things
is only half the problem. "If children do things without expert
instruction they may do them wrong, and thus get a faulty habit."
But I think more than half of the problem is solved when we create
the desire to do a thing. The greatest fault of present-day
education is that we constantly try to teach a child how to do a
thing without his desiring to do it, or even knowing the reason
for doing it. On the other hand, I once knew a country girl who
had never seen a domestic science equipment, and who lived in a
community where there was no one housekeeper especially noted;
yet with her strong desire to be a fine housekeeper she learned
something good from each neighbor, and for excellent results, and
for economy of time and material, her daily practice would put the
average domestic science teacher to disadvantage. However I am not
arguing that domestic science should not be taught at school; I
certainly believe it should. But I do claim that it is worth while,
and is absolutely necessary, first to create the desire to _do_ the
things that are to be _taught_. To do things without a purpose is
like trying to eat without an appetite.
A pamphlet published by the Kansas State Agricultural College on
"School Credit for Home Work: The Laboratory of the Rural School,"
makes these practical points:--
Could there possibly be a more favorable condition for teaching
Domestic Arts than in the rural school from which the girl
goes every evening to a busy home where she is needed to take
part in the actual work of housekeeping? It is here that the
girl has a chance to put into actual practice the things she
has learned at school. Here the home has the chance to realize
immediately upon the investment it is making in the education of
the girl. If sanitation, ventilation, sweeping and dusting, care
of the sick, preparation of foods, care of milk, water supply
and uses, bathing, care of health, sewing, proper clothing,
etc., are taught in our schools, and if the laboratories are
in the immediate neighborhood, and the girls and boys must go
into them to stay overnight, they should be used. Likewise, the
vegetable gardens at the homes should be made the experimental
plots for the school, after the best seeds have been selected,
best methods of preparing, fertilizing, and planting the soil,
best-known methods of cultivation and maturing the crops, have
been taught. The actual experimental work should be carried out
in the home gardens by the boys and girls. Proper records can be
kept, and the boys and girls will be anxious to get back into
school, after the out-of-doors summer experiments, to compare
reports, and renew another phase of their educational work.
In agriculture the fields, stock, buildings, etc., about the
schoolhouse should be studied and used. These are the real
agricultural laboratory. The real problems of actual farming are
present, and the methods of work and the ways of handling the
fields and the stock are the available resources of the school
as a part of its actual laboratory. In this connection study
the dairy cows, the feeding of cattle, hogs, and horses, types
and breeds of farm horses, cattle, hogs, and sheep. In every
community there are many opportunities for type studies--such as
fields of alfalfa or wheat or corn; a dairy herd; valuable and
well-bred horses; beef cattle; hogs or sheep; a silo, or types
of farm machinery, and farm buildings.
It is natural for a child to want to assume home responsibilities,
but there are many things that interfere unless a special effort
is made. The school itself has been a great offender in weaning
children from their homes and from natural living. This, of course,
is not strange when we consider that the school started out to make
lawyers and ministers, and not home-makers. Yet one of the great
needs of the time is to make people home-loving, and to have those
wholesome habits that come from sharing home responsibilities.
Anything is worth while that will make the child once taste the joy
of doing a useful thing well.
VIII
STELLA AND SADIE
Through ignorance ye did it.--Acts III, 17.
"Let the school go on just as it has. What business is it of the
school to meddle with the home work? Of course most children do
certain chores at home, but why confuse the work of the home with
the work of the school?"
Have you heard this speech? I have heard it several times. Does
justice demand that we know what pupils do outside of school? Must
the teacher know home conditions in order to teach efficiently? I
have in mind a true story that answers these questions and shows
the injustice of teaching children when one knows little or nothing
of their home life. I am sure most teachers have had similar
experiences.
In a certain schoolroom in a certain town I noticed one day two
girls in the same class sitting near each other. The contrast
between them was so great that I became interested in them, and
found out something of their history and circumstances. Stella, the
younger one, eleven years old, was a perfect picture of rosy health.
Her brown hair was beautiful and most becomingly arranged. Many
women would have been delighted to wear such furs as she put on at
the noon recess. Well dressed and well nourished, she had the look
of one much loved at school and at home, one to whom life was all
happiness.
Stella is the only child of wealthy and doting parents. If we
should follow her home we should find a well-kept modern house,
and we should see that the mother who greets her at the door is
just such a mother as we should expect for such a girl. While the
evening meal is being prepared, her mother sits beside her at the
piano, and helps with her practice, and when the father comes in,
the three sing together until dinner is announced. After dinner
her mother helps her with her Least Common Multiple and Greatest
Common Divisor. They all discuss her composition and then her mother
asks her to read aloud, and reads to her. Promptly at nine o'clock
she goes to bed in just the kind of room a little girl loves. The
windows are opened to the proper width, the heat is turned off, she
is kissed good-night, and is told, "Mother loves you, and Father
will come in and kiss you when he comes home."
In the morning at seven o'clock she is called by a very gentle
voice, and told it is time for Mother's angel to leave her dreams.
Her mother helps her dress, and brushes and braids her hair. "What
will Father's sweetheart have for breakfast this morning?" She will
have grape-fruit and a poached egg on toast. After some fitting
by the seamstress for a new dress to be added to her already full
wardrobe, she is thoroughly inspected and is ready for school. She
is given some flowers for the teacher, and is accompanied part way
by her mother. She is early at school, her teacher kisses her, pats
her cheeks, and Stella is ready for the lessons, the lessons her
mother helped her with the evening before. There she is, happy,
radiant!
Now let us go home with the other girl. Sadie is thirteen, but she
looks much older notwithstanding her frail little figure. Did I say
home? Be the judge. A few years ago her father and her aunt ran away
together, leaving the mother with Sadie and two younger children.
The broken-spirited mother died after the desertion, and the father
and aunt returned, were married, and took possession of the house
and the three children. They now have a baby a year old. The family
live in a tumbledown house at the edge of the city. On entering the
house Sadie receives no greeting from her stepmother-aunt, who is
sitting by a dirty window reading. The child knows what work there
is to do, and goes at it sullenly. After the meal, at which she
scarcely has time to sit down, she has to do up the work, and then
is sent on an errand. When she returns it is nine o'clock and she is
hardly able to keep her eyes open. The Least Common Multiple and the
Greatest Common Divisor are like Greek to her. After she has tried
to study a few minutes, her stepmother disturbs her by throwing
her brother's stockings into her lap to be mended. When this task
is completed, and the potatoes are peeled for breakfast, she goes
upstairs. She tenderly draws the covers about her sleeping brother
and creeps into bed beside her little sister. Though she is very
weary, her starved soul is comforted as she cuddles and kisses her
sister before she drops to sleep.
In the night she awakens, and thinking Harry is again uncovered she
slips over to his bed, like a little mother, and again adjusts the
bedclothes. The baby awakens at five o'clock, and Sadie is called
and told to make a fire and warm the milk. She then gets breakfast,
does the kitchen work, spreads up the beds, sews a button on her
brother's coat, braids her sister's hair, and is late at school.
She came in a few minutes late the morning I visited her room.
The class was trying to make a record for punctuality, and had
tied another room for first place until this morning when Sadie's
lateness set them behind. The teacher was provoked and reproved
Sadie. The pupils showed their scorn in many ways and said she
was the cause of all but three of the tardy marks of the term.
The teacher knew that the principal would ask her why she did not
improve her tardy record. The pupils knew that their chances for a
half-holiday were spoiled as long as "that Sadie Johnson" was in the
room.
This morning especially the teacher wished to make a good showing
because she wanted a place in a larger city and hoped that I would
recommend her. Arithmetic was the first thing on the program. The
principal had boasted of the work of his school in arithmetic. The
work went beautifully, for Stella led off with a perfect recitation.
The pride of the whole class was evident, the teacher was hopeful.
But wanting to see the work of all the pupils, I asked several
questions, and at last called upon Sadie. She didn't know, she stood
abashed, and showed absolute lack of understanding of the subject.
The principal was provoked. The teacher was plainly humiliated,
and said in a tone that was low, but loud enough for Sadie and
several of the children to hear, "The girl is not only lazy, but
feeble-minded."
So it was the whole term. Sadie was tortured each school day,
condemned by the most powerful court in the world, her companions,
led by her teacher. And the reason was that the teacher was teaching
only the six-hour-a-day girl. One does not have to go to Turkey
to see examples of injustice and cruelty. But let us not be too
critical of the teacher. She is tender-hearted and sympathetic. She
weeps over the heroines in books, and has latent longings to be of
service in the world. In this case she did not know the conditions
that made Sadie stupid. If she had been interested in the children's
out-of-school work, and had had them tell her about it, she would
have known that the frail little unkempt girl was compelled to do
a woman's work at home besides trying to get her lessons. Then she
would have seen the tragedy in the child's appealing glance and
have understood her. Some people go through life without finding
an opportunity to do justice, such as was this teacher's. In
ministering to the soul-hunger of this little girl she might have
given the service that she had dreamed of giving. It would have been
the kind of service that is its own reward.
IX
A STORY AND LETTERS FROM TEACHERS
A STORY FROM NEBRASKA, BY MRS. SARAH J. HOAGLAND
One spring found me in Nebraska teaching a school of German and
Bohemian children, only two of whom spoke English. I boarded with a
German family who lived about a mile from the school. In our walks
to and from school I taught the children English. They and their
father were born in Nebraska, but at first none of them could speak
English so that I could understand it, although I understood some of
their German.
The oldest boy--ten years old--lanky, with awkward gait, and fair,
straight-standing hair, had a dogged, sullen look. It was a "home"
look, especially when the father was around, but it left when he was
trying to tell about birds or other interesting things. His telling
me that he intended to work in town as soon as possible gave me a
peep into his heart as regarded home. It was not a happy home. The
father often drank, and at such times he was harsh and cruel. The
mother was meek and subdued. She never had known how to do good
housekeeping. She told me that when a girl in Germany, being large
and strong, she had had to work in the fields instead of learning
housework.
The farm was run down; the house was bare and unhomelike. The
father's voice was often raised in upbraiding in "Low Dutch." He
often had the children rounded up for punishment for starting fires
or other mischief. The seven-year-old boy was more efficient, either
in the home or out, than the ten-year-old boy. I noticed that he had
a better head and intelligence. His efficiency was due to this, not
to any better training.
The mother often cried over the brutality of the father to the
oldest boy. I determined to study the situation, and I found a
remedy. I learned that the father could do practically nothing in
arithmetic. He had attended school for his confirmation--a little
reading in German being the only apparent result. So I taught the
boy arithmetic, and after I had worked with him two hours every
night for several months, he could do addition better than his
father. It was wonderful to see the pride and dawning respect on
the father's face as the boy figured correctly the weight of many
wagon-loads of grain lately taken to the elevator. I knew then that
the unreasonable whipping would tend to stop. I seldom see a father
unreasonable with a boy he can be proud of at school. So the sky was
clear for a time.
But when the press of spring work came on and the father found
he could not afford to employ help, he grew moody and was even
savage again. He drank, and at times I was afraid of him myself.
But I liked the mother. I knew she needed the board money for the
children, and I wanted to see the case of the boy to a finish. So
I stayed on. The lovely outdoor surroundings, too, made me want to
stay. The orchard was beautiful--the finest in the neighborhood.
The birds sang in a large maple at my window. This was a treat to a
flat-dweller. Since then I have ever loved the country.
I often asked the mother what the father was saying to the oldest
boy. I knew as far as the boy was concerned I could help the matter
by influencing him. She said that the father was complaining that
the boy was worthless as a worker. For one thing, he had milked and
left the milk in the barnyard in order to play. The complaints kept
pouring in on the patient mother. The father was working early and
late to get abreast of the season's work. He forgot what sleep was,
and grew thin and haggard and more and more savage.