TEACHERS 308
Increasing demand for professional training. American normal schools.
American demands on secondary-school teachers. German training of
secondary-school teachers. New courses in colleges and universities
for secondary-school teachers. The requirements of a standardizing
association. The California requirements the most advanced in the
United States. Continuation training of school officers. Specialized
training for administration. Contributions to the science of
education. Exercises and readings.
APPENDIX 321
INDEX 327
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURE PAGE
1. Average number of high-school units in the approved schools
of the various states of the North Central Association 6
2A. Pauses made in silent reading 8
2B. Pauses made in oral reading 9
3. Diagram showing the organization of German schools and
American schools 18
4. Proportion of public money spent for public schools and
other items 50
5. Distribution in the various grades of each thousand dollars
expended for instruction 59
6. Floor plan of a typical school building of the old style 79
7. Floor plan of a well-arranged one-teacher rural school of
minimum cost 80
8. An old and a new rural school 81
9A. Ground plan of Alabama School 83
9B. Exterior of Alabama School 83
10A. Ground plan of Empire School 84
10B. Exterior of Empire School 84
11. Record of nonpromotions and failures in Cleveland, 1914 103
12. Enrollment in private vocational schools and in public high
schools of Chicago 133
13. Individual differences in the number of lines read in a minute
by pupils in the fifth grades of two schools 181
14. Average quality and average speed of handwriting of pupils
of the four upper grades in ten schools 218
15. Speed and quality of handwriting 223
16. Distribution of grades in various Harvard classes 263
LIST OF TABLES
TABLE PAGE
I. Expenditures for public elementary and secondary schools
compared for a period of years, including also a comparison
of population for the same periods 48
II. Per cent of total governmental cost payments devoted to
various city departments 51
III. Cost per pupil in elementary schools and high schools in
selected cities 55
IV. Cost, per thousand student hours, of instruction in high
schools in the various subjects of the curriculum 57
V. The portion of each thousand dollars spent for instruction
in each subject in each of the first six elementary grades 58
VI. Percentages of failures in the chief subjects of instruction in
the five high schools of Denver in June, 1915 107
THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF EDUCATION
CHAPTER I
EXTENDING THE PUPIL’S VIEW OF THE SCHOOL
THE PUPIL’S VIEW LIMITED
Most people think of school matters from the pupil’s point of view.
When they learned arithmetic and grammar, or later when they studied
algebra and Latin, each course was presented to them as though it were
a perfect system. The teacher did not confide in them that arithmetic
probably ought to be revised by the omission of many of its topics,
that formal grammar is a very doubtful subject, and that both algebra
and Latin are on the point of losing their places as required subjects.
The pupil sees the front of the school scenery; the machinery behind is
known only to those who conduct the performance.
It would be possible to multiply indefinitely examples which show that
the pupil’s view of the school is very limited. What pupil understands
the duties of the principal or the superintendent, or of the still more
remote and mysterious board of education? Where does the daily program
come from? Who decides about textbooks? Why are school buildings
commonly planned with large study-rooms? Most of these questions
are never thought of by pupils. Everything in school life seems to
have a kind of inevitableness which raises it above question or even
consideration.
CONSERVATISM IN THE COMMUNITY AS A NATURAL CONSEQUENCE
The narrowness of the pupil’s view would have less serious consequences
if it were not for the fact that the pupil becomes in mature life a
member of a board of education or adopts teaching as his profession.
Then trouble results, because there is machinery which must be kept
running if schools are to be efficient, and this machinery suffers if
intrusted to the hands of those who do not understand its complexities.
One school superintendent, who encountered vigorous opposition to the
introduction of changes in the course of study, wrote as follows:
The average American citizen whose schooling was limited to the
primary and grammar grades looks with reverence upon the subjects
there taught, and refuses to concur in a change of the course of study
for the elementary school. Associated with the average citizen is a
heavy percentage of the teaching faculty of both elementary and high
schools throughout the country.[1]
Another superintendent, who was more successful in bringing about
reforms, makes this statement:
People are more conservative in their attitude towards educational
innovations than toward new adjustments to meet the demands of
changing modern life in any other field of activity. Each adult is
inclined to overvalue the particular type of training he received and
to regard with suspicion any change which will tend to discredit this
sort of training received at such an expenditure of time and money.
The schools are, therefore, the last institution to respond to the
changing demands of modern life.[2]
DEMAND FOR A BROAD SCIENTIFIC STUDY
If schools are to be progressive and efficient, they must be studied
very much more broadly and comprehensively than they can be from the
pupil’s point of view. The suggestion naturally arises that this
broader study is a part of the professional duty of the teacher. So
it is; but it will not be enough merely to exhibit the intricacies of
education to teachers. The whole community must be shown by scientific
methods that the school is a complex social institution, and that its
conduct, like the conduct of every other social institution, requires
constant study and expert supervision. In this movement of opening the
eyes of the community to the needs and nature of education, the school
officers must be leaders; but their methods must be impersonal and
exact.
BEGINNINGS OF THE SCIENCE OF EDUCATION
During recent years the demand for a thorough and comprehensive
study of schools by scientific methods has led to a number of
investigations which can be offered as an optimistic beginning of a
science of education. It would, indeed, be far beyond the truth to
assert that science has settled all the problems of teaching and of
school organization. There is, however, a very respectable body of
fact which has been clearly enough defined so that it can in no wise
be set aside. In certain details the requirements of a scientifically
valid educational scheme are known and can be described. The method
of studying schools can safely be said to be established. It is the
work of the future to take up, now this problem, now that, and by
progressive stages to work out a complete science of school management
and classroom organization.
It will be the purpose of subsequent chapters to define fully certain
of the leading problems with which the science of education deals. The
remainder of this chapter will be devoted to a brief statement of
certain typical studies, which will make more concrete and definite
the contention that the pupil’s view of schools is narrow and that the
teacher’s view must be extended, as must also that of the community at
large, if educational conditions are to be improved.
EFFECTIVENESS OF STUDIES OF RETARDATION
First, we may refer to investigations which have been made of the rate
of promotion of pupils through the grades.
Whenever a pupil fails to complete the work of a grade in the appointed
time, it is evident that there is some kind of maladjustment. The
pupil may be incompetent to do the work required of him because he is
mentally deficient. On the other hand, it may be that the work is ill
chosen and in need of revision. The following statement from one of
the leading students of education in the United States describes with
clearness the problem and the progress made in meeting it.
Just ten years ago the distinguished superintendent of schools of New
York called attention to the fact that 39 per cent of the children in
the schools of that city were above the normal ages for their grades.
This aroused widespread investigation, which showed that similar
conditions obtained in other cities throughout the country. Soon
studies of this phase of educational efficiency showed that the same
conditions which resulted in our schools being crowded with retarded
children also prevented a large proportion of these children from ever
completing the elementary grades.
About seven years ago this became one of the most widely studied
problems of educational administration, and in the past four it has
been one of the prominent parts of the school surveys. During the
entire period hundreds of superintendents throughout the country have
been readjusting their schools to better the conditions disclosed.
In these seven years the number of children graduating each year from
the elementary schools of America has doubled. The number now is
three quarters of a million greater annually than it was then. The
only great organized industry in America that has increased the output
of its finished product as rapidly as the public schools during the
past seven years is the automobile industry.
It is probable that no other one thing so fundamentally important to
the future of America as this accomplishment of our public schools
has taken place in recent years. There is every evidence that this
is the direct result of applying measurements to education. If the
school survey movement now under way can produce other results at all
comparable with this one, we need have no fear for the outcome.[3]
The quotation does not tell us how the reform has been worked out.
That is a long story. In some cities better teachers were needed and
have been employed. In a great number of cases the course of study
has been revised. Sometimes smaller classes have been provided. So on
through a long list of details, one might enumerate the reforms which
have resulted from a careful study of the one fact that pupils in the
schools were older than they normally should be.
A STUDY OF HIGH-SCHOOL COURSES
A second type of study can be borrowed from the reports of the North
Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. This Association
has as its practical purpose the inspection of the secondary schools
and colleges of the northern states from Ohio to Colorado. The
inspectors of high schools in seventeen states brought together in the
report of 1916 a number of exact statistics regarding 1128 approved
schools.[4] One set of these facts may be selected for special comment.
[Illustration: FIG. 1. Average number of high-school units in the
approved schools of the various states of the North Central Association
The full-drawn lines are proportional in length to the number of units
offered in academic subjects; the dotted lines, to technical subjects]
The number of units, or courses, offered in high schools has increased
rapidly in recent years. Especially marked is the addition to the
school program of technical subjects, such as home economics, manual
training, and commercial courses. The report here under discussion
states that in all the approved schools of the association there is an
average of 21.13 academic units, that is, units in such subjects as
languages, history, mathematics, science, and English; and an average
of 9.41 units in technical or vocational subjects.
When we examine the individual states, we find that Minnesota, which
has a large state fund, much progressive legislation on high schools,
and a vigorous state department of education, shows averages of 23.87
academic units and 12.65 units of vocational subjects. South Dakota,
where the school system is new and economic conditions are much less
favorable, has averages of 17.62 academic units and 6.46 vocational
units. The more striking differences are those which arise not
from economic conditions but from clearly indicated differences in
educational policy. Ohio has an average of 22.24 academic units, which
is high, and an average of only 7.26 vocational units, which is low. On
the other hand, Kansas has 22.9 academic units, or just about the same
as Ohio, and 10.13 units in vocational subjects.
Finally, if we carry the comparison into still further detail by
examining the schools in a single state, we find in Ohio one city
with a high school of 870 students offering 18 academic units and 5
vocational units, while in another city, where the student body numbers
710 students, the school offers 24 academic units and 22 vocational
units.
The comparisons are illuminating in several respects. It is probable
that most communities are ignorant of the fact that their own high
schools differ from others. The publication of definite facts with
regard to the practices of schools would stimulate wholesome thinking
on school problems. The whole life of a school depends in very large
measure on the course of study. When there are such wide divergences
as are here indicated, there is clear evidence of differences in
educational policies in different states and communities. At the
present time the accepted policies are often the products of tradition
or accident. They should be made subjects of careful study and either
confirmed or revised.
[Illustration: FIG. 2 A. Pauses made in silent reading
The vertical lines, Figs. 2 A, 2 B, show where the eyes of an adult
reader paused during the reading. The numbers above the vertical lines
in the two figures indicate the order of the fixations]
AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF A FUNDAMENTAL SUBJECT
As a third type of scientific study we may take certain recent
laboratory investigations of reading. Reading is the most important
subject taught in the schools; yet there are the widest differences
in the results secured with different pupils. It is the duty of the
schools to find out what constitutes the difference between good
readers and bad readers, in order that both classes may be improved.
[Illustration: FIG. 2 B. Pauses made in oral reading
The numbers below the vertical lines, Figs. 2 A, 2 B, indicate the
duration of each pause in fiftieths of a second. (To reduce these
figures to the unit adopted in the text multiply by twenty)]
The method of these studies consists in photographing the reader’s eyes
as they travel along printed lines. The number and length of the pauses
are thus determined. It is found in general that competent readers see
more at a glance than do poor readers. Furthermore, it is found that
different types of reading are radically different; thus there is a
marked difference between oral and silent reading. The importance of
distinguishing these two types of reading lies in the fact that most
of the teaching of reading in the elementary schools is by means of the
oral method. Most of the demands of later life, and all of the demands
made upon pupils when they study textbooks in geography and history and
the other subjects of the school course, call for ability in silent
reading. The results of investigations can be briefly stated in the
following averages: the average numbers of pauses per line in oral
reading for adults, high-school pupils, and elementary-school pupils,
reading passages of different grades of difficulty, are 8.2, 8.6, and
8.1, while the corresponding averages for silent reading are 6.5, 7,
and 6.3. These figures mean that the eye makes more pauses along a
printed line when the reader is reading orally than when he is reading
silently. Oral reading is therefore a more laborious, difficult form
of reading. Furthermore, the time spent in each pause is greater in
oral reading. The averages in thousandths of a second for oral reading
for the three classes of readers are 380.8, 372.9, 398, while the
corresponding figures for silent reading are 308.2, 311.1, and 314.[5]
These figures show that oral reading is slow as well as laborious.
It would require more discussion than is appropriate at this point to
bring out the full meaning of such facts as these. Enough appears on
the surface of the results, however, to make it quite evident that the
school ought not to emphasize oral reading in the upper grades as it
does to-day. The daily oral-reading drill in the seventh and eighth
grades imposes on the pupils a slow, clumsy form of reading at a time
when they ought to be cultivating the power of rapid silent reading.
It is by means of investigations of this kind that each of the subjects
of instruction is being examined, and as a result schoolwork is
increasingly developing effective methods of cultivating children’s
intellectual powers. The work of analyzing each of the subjects will
be slow and will require the coöperation of many investigators, but in
several subjects, especially in the elementary schools, an encouraging
beginning has been made.
A STUDY OF THE RELATION OF EDUCATION TO GENERAL SOCIAL LIFE
A fourth and final example can be borrowed from studies made in the
city of Minneapolis of the opportunities for trade training in that
city, of the number of workmen needed in each of the trades, and of the
kind of preparation required for efficiency in each branch of labor.
An industrial and educational survey of the community was undertaken
for the specific purpose of adapting educational organization to the
practical needs of the community.[6] Such a study recognizes the fact
that the school is but one among many social institutions and that the
school must find its proper place in community life through a thorough
scientific study of other more general social activities.
THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS
Here, again, it is by no means asserted that the solution of the
problem of training workers for the industries has been found. It can,
however, be stated with complete assurance that both the school and
the community will proceed with greater intelligence if the facts are
carefully canvassed in advance.
The spirit of patient, detailed scientific study is more and more
dominating the schools. There are some who, impatient at the
labor involved in such studies, would rush forward to radical
experimentation. Fortunately, even such rash reformers are becoming
convinced that they need to keep records of their results in order to
prove the success of the changes which they have made. As a result,
they too are taking on some of the forms of science, though they do not
adopt the full program of patient study of conditions.
The result of a scientific movement such as is under way in education
will be the cultivation of a broader conception than was ever possible
from any individual point of view. The pupil’s view is narrow because
he comes in contact with the school only at the point of application of
educational methods to his own life. The scientific view of education
is broad because it places the school in its proper relations to other
social activities, because it defines the relation of the pupils and
teachers to one another and to the material used for instruction, and
because it opens up all the results of school work to full inspection
and evaluation. This broad scientific view is the one which the teacher
and the community at large should adopt.
EXERCISES AND READINGS
In every school certain changes are introduced from time to time in
spite of the conservatism of the community. Let the student find
examples of (1) new courses of study, (2) new methods of appointing
or promoting teachers, or (3) new forms of organization, such as
the junior high school or departmental teaching. After discovering
innovations, let him find how they were brought about.
What are the usual forms of school records and reports known to the
student? How could records be made of more value? Suggest methods of
presenting the facts of daily attendance so that they can be readily
interpreted by a community. What are some of the interpretations that
ought to be put on failures and nonpromotions in different kinds of
cases? Is repetition of a course desirable for a pupil who has failed?
Are failures more common in required courses than in elective courses?
When a required course is described as essential to the education of
everyone, what is meant?
Let the student test his own rates of reading. How should a college
class differ from a high-school class in ability to read? Go to a
library or study-room and watch the people read. Report the differences
between individuals.
The readings which are most stimulating to students who have never
faced the problems of school organization are those which call in
question present school practices.
DEWEY, JOHN. The School and Society. The University of Chicago Press.
This is one of the most stimulating demands for a reorganization of
the school which has ever been written.
ROUSSEAU, JEAN JACQUES. Émile. D. Appleton and Company. This is a book
of great historical significance. It is an indictment of formalism in
education and a vigorous advocacy of naturalism.
SPENCER, HERBERT. Essays on Education. D. Appleton and Company. This
is a demand for a thorough reform of the school curriculum. It is now
nearly sixty years old, but it is modern in its spirit.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Report of Mrs. Ella Flagg Young, Superintendent of Schools of the
City of Chicago, for the Year Ending June 30, 1915, published as a part
of the Sixty-first Annual Report of the Board of Education, p. 25.
[2] Special Report of the Boise Public Schools, by Superintendent C. S.
Meek, June, 1915, p. 57.
[3] Leonard P. Ayres, “School Surveys,” _School and Society_, Vol. I,
No. 17, April 24, 1915, pp. 580-581.
[4] Proceedings of the Twenty-first Annual Meeting of the North Central
Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, Chicago, 1916, pp.
97-121.
[5] William A. Schmidt, An Experimental Study in the Psychology of
Reading (Supplementary Educational Monograph of the _School Review_ and
the _Elementary School Journal_, Vol. I, No. 2), p. 43.
[6] Report of the Minneapolis Survey for Vocational Education,
_Bulletin No. 21_ of the National Society for the Promotion of
Industrial Education, 1916.
CHAPTER II
SCHOOLS OF OTHER COUNTRIES AND OF OTHER TIMES
THE COMPARATIVE AND HISTORICAL METHODS
The scientific methods of studying school problems, which were
illustrated in the last chapter, can be supported and supplemented
by a comparison of the schools of the present with the institutions
of earlier times, and by a comparison of the schools of different
countries with one another. Such comparisons seldom serve as an
adequate basis for the reorganization of school practices, because
the conditions in one generation and in one country are so unlike
those of others that direct transfer of methods of procedure is
dangerous. Comparison serves, however, to set in clear perspective the
characteristics which distinguish each situation from every other. If
an American wishes to see the school system with which he is familiar
from a new point of view, the comparative method furnishes a kind of
outside station from which he may look back and see facts which were by
no means clear in their meaning when viewed from near at hand.
THE AMERICAN TEXTBOOK METHOD OF TEACHING
One very impressive difference between the schools of the United
States and the schools of Europe is to be found in the fact that
class exercises in our schools are commonly based on assignments in
textbooks, while in Europe the chief method of instruction is oral
exposition by the teacher. The word “recitation,” which is often
employed in describing a classroom exercise, is an American term.
It originated at the period when devotion to the textbook was even
greater than it is now,—when the pupil was expected to repeat verbatim
the passage from the text. In British books on education the word
“recitation” appears only when referring to American practices, and
usually takes the form “the American recitation.” In the German
educational vocabulary the word has no equivalent.
The unique American method of reciting lessons learned out of a book
can be contrasted with the European method by taking a concrete case.
If one goes into a geography class in a German school, one finds in
the hands of the pupils no book, except that in the schools for the
richer classes there may be an atlas; commonly the wall map serves.
The teacher lectures on some section of the country, and follows
the lecture by questions which the pupils answer. The advantages of
the European method are that the pupils become trained, attentive
listeners, and are able in answering questions to talk coherently
for long periods, imitating the continuous discourse of the teacher.
The disadvantages are that the information supplied is limited by
the individual teacher’s training, and the pupils cultivate little
or no independence in the collection and sifting of information. The
influence of the teacher is always dominant—often oppressively so.
INDEPENDENCE OF THOUGHT BASED ON READING
The contrast here pointed out is one of fundamental importance. It can
be adequately understood by a study of the history of American schools.
When the colonists came to New England they were bent on securing
for every individual independent personal contact with the truth.
They had left their European homes because there dominating authority
always stood between the individual and the sources of truth. One of
the first acts of the colonists, therefore, was to provide for the
training of every boy and girl in that power which would make him or
her independent, especially in religion. The early legislation shows
unequivocally this motive. Thus in 1650 Connecticut passed a law which
had a preamble very much like that of the Massachusetts law of 1647.
The preamble is as follows:
It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men
from a knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times, keeping them
in an unknown tongue, so in these latter times, by persuading them
from the use of tongues, so that at least, the true sense and meaning
of the original might be clouded by false glosses of saint-seeming
deceivers; and that learning may not be buried in the grave of our
forefathers [the court decreed that whenever a township increased
to fifty householders they should employ someone] to teach all such
children as shall resort to him, to write and read.
So strictly did the early schools devote themselves to reading that
arithmetic and, in some cases, even writing were neglected in the
exclusive cultivation of the one art of reading. Later generations
of American teachers and pupils have experienced a great expansion
of the content of the course of study, but the method of instruction
has always been predominantly the reading method. The large number of
supplementary readers used in history, in geography, and in nature
study keep up the traditions of a school which was from the first a
reading school.
The social consequences of this emphasis on reading can be seen in the
fact that public opinion in America is controlled largely by an appeal
to the people through reading matter. The importance of this kind of
public opinion can hardly be overemphasized. In a democracy there must
be ability to form independent opinions, and this is possible only
where there is the widest training in reading.
EUROPEAN SCHOOLS CASTE SCHOOLS, AMERICAN SCHOOLS TRULY PUBLIC
A second characteristic of the school system of the United States
which distinguishes it from the systems of Europe is described by the
phrase, coined in England, “the educational ladder.” There is no limit
in the American system to the possibility offered the individual pupil
of going on to higher institutions. The boy or girl who has completed
the elementary course can go on to the high school and from the high
school to the college and university. This is not true anywhere in
Europe. There the school systems are sharply divided into two wholly
different and distinct lines of advancement. The children of the
common people go to one school; the children of the aristocracy and
richer classes go to a different school. The school for the common
people is limited in time and opportunity, and does not lead into the
universities. Thus the _Volksschule_ of Germany, which gave instruction
before the war to 92 per cent of the total school population, is an
eight-year school, teaching only the common branches. The pupil who
enters the _Volksschule_ cannot look forward to entering any one of the
professions or any civil-service position. He cannot be transferred
from the upper grades of this common school into the secondary
school. The common school of Germany is a social instrument for the
perpetuation of a caste system. The common people know their place
because they learn it when they enter school.
[Illustration: FIG. 3. Diagram showing the organization of German
schools and American schools
The subdivisions of the lines indicate a year in each case. Certain of
the important items of the curriculum are set down under the years in
which they are first introduced]
The European school for the aristocracy, on the other hand, is
organized from its earliest years with a view to preparing its pupils
for the higher callings. It is difficult for the American to understand
how distinct this school is from the common school. The term “secondary
school” is sometimes applied in educational writings to both the high
school of the United States and the aristocratic schools of Europe.
But the secondary school of Europe is entirely different from our high
school. It takes little children in the lower grades and carries them
through. Thus the German _Gymnasium_ takes boys of the age of six.
These are received into what is called a _Vorschule_, or preliminary
school. After three years in the preliminary school the pupil begins
his nine-year course in preparation for the university. In some of
the states of the German Empire the pupil may be transferred into the
_Gymnasium_ from the earliest grades of the common school, but from
this point on there is no commerce whatsoever, in teaching staff, in
course of study, or in pupil constituency, between the common school
and the school of the aristocracy. The division in France is quite as
strict. In England transfer in the later years of the common-school
course can be made, but only on the basis of examinations.
The social consequences of such a division within the school system
need no detailed exposition. The hard-and-fast lines of caste are drawn
very deep in any country where the boys and girls are marked from the
beginning of their training by separation in opportunity.
INFLUENCE OF EUROPEAN SCHOOLS ON THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM OF THIS COUNTRY
It is not enough that we should see this contrast, however; we must
learn its fuller meaning by looking into the history of our own school
system. The fact is that we have not broken entirely away from the
traditions of Europe. Our elementary school was borrowed directly from
the _Volksschule_ of Germany, and many of the readjustments which we
are making to-day are nothing less than efforts to shake ourselves free
from that disjointed scheme of education.
The time of this borrowing of the German _Volksschule_ is clearly
marked in our history. In the first three decades of the nineteenth
century American schools were at a low level of development. A vivid
picture of conditions in 1801 can be given by quoting from one of the
earliest school reports that we have. The superintendent of the city of
Taunton, Massachusetts, in a recent report reproduced this interesting
historical document, of which we may quote certain sections in order to
show the kind of school organization which prevailed at that date.
REPORT OF THE VISITING COMMITTEE OF TAUNTON IN 1801
The committee chosen by the town to inspect the schools beg leave to
report their situation and examination....
January 6th, 1801. Your committee visited a school kept in Rueben
Richmond’s house instructed by Mrs. Nabby Williams of 32 scholars.
This school appeared in an uncultivated state the greater part of the
scholars.
On the 26 of Feb., visited Mrs. Nabby Williams’ school the second time
and found that the scholars had made great proficiency in reading,
spelling, writing and some in the grammar of the English language.
Nov. 10th, the committee visited and examined two Schools just opened;
one kept in a school house, near Baylies works, of the number of 40
scholars, instructed by Mr. Philip Lee. This School we found to have
made but small proficiency in reading, spelling and writing, and to
be kept only six or seven weeks; upon inquiry why it should be taught
no longer, we were informed that the ratio of school money for this
School was and had been usually expended in paying the Master both
for his service and board, and in purchasing the fire wood which is
contrary to the usual custom of the town.
The other School, visited the same day, was kept near John Reed’s
consisting of the number of between 30 and 40 Scholars instructed by
Mr. William Reed; This School, being formed into regular classes,
appeared to have made a good and pleasing proficiency in reading,
spelling, writing, some in arithmetic and others in the Grammar of the
English language. This School’s share of school money is expended
to pay the Master for his service only, so that the School will be
continued three months.
On the 8th day of December they visited a School kept in a School
house near Seth Hodges, in number 30 Scholars instructed by Mr. John
Dunbar. This School appeared in a good way of learning, and to be kept
four months.
* * * * *
On the 22nd of December your Committee visited two more Schools just
opened, one in a School house near Samuel Pett’s of the number of 40
scholars instructed by Mr. Rufus Dean, and to be kept three months.
This School appeared to be in a promising way of learning in reading
spelling and writing and to be regularly taught.
The other School is kept in the home of Mr. Paul Chase and taught by
Mr. Nicolas Stephens, consisting of 30 Scholars, and appears quite
in a good way of learning especially in Spelling for scarcely a word
passed a scholar misspelled, in writing some did very well and others
in arithmetic appeared attentive.
January 8th, 1801 visited two Schools for the first time, one in the
home of Mr. William Hodges of the number of 37 Scholars, instructed by
Mr. Lovet Tisdale, the other in the home of Mr. Daniel Burt, of the
number of 25 Scholars, instructed by Mr. Benjamin Tubbs. These Schools
appeared in good order and attentive to their learning.
* * * * *
Feby. 26th, visited Mr. Dean’s School 2 times, the Scholars were
crowded into a small room, the air was exceedingly noxious. Many
children were obliged to tarry at home for want of room and though the
school was kept only a few weeks they were deprived of its advantages.
A want of books was the complaint. The committee were anxiously
desirous that this evil might have a remedy and were of opinion it may
be easily done. The Scholars appeared to increase in knowledge & claim
our approbation.
March 5th, visited two schools, one kept at Mr. Aaron Pratt’s of the
number of 30 scholars instructed by Mr. Philip Drown. This school
appeared quite unimproved and uncultivated in reading and spelling,
some of them did better in writing. This uncultivated state did not
appear to be from a fault in the children but, as your committee
were informed, from the disadvantage of having had masters illegally
qualified for their instruction; of which class is their present
master unauthorized by law.[7]
The situation here described was typical of all the settled towns. How
much worse it was in sparsely settled districts one can easily imagine.
Briefly put, one can say that up to 1830 schools throughout the country
held short sessions in the middle of the winter when the pupils were
otherwise unoccupied with home demands. There was no supervision except
by visiting committees, no course of study, little or no material
equipment, and small outlook for a higher education.
ADOPTION OF THE GERMAN MODEL
During the decade 1830-1840 there was an effort, especially in
Massachusetts under the leadership of Horace Mann and in Michigan
under John Pierce, to improve the common schools. In an illuminating
historical treatise on this subject Mr. F. F. Bunker has reproduced
some of the evidences that the changes made at that time in the schools
of America were largely influenced by German models. The following
quotations indicate how the movement began:
Charles Brooks, a man whose influence in Massachusetts was great, and
who may be said to have prepared the way for the work of Horace Mann,
did very much to disseminate knowledge respecting the Prussian system.
He was primarily interested in establishing a normal school after the
Prussian model, yet, during the campaign which he carried on for this
purpose between the years 1835 and 1838 he did not limit himself to
the consideration of the normal school alone, but sought to acquaint
the people with the details of the German system of elementary
education as well. His account of the return trip from England, which
he made in company with Dr. H. Julius, of Hamburg, indicates the
esteem in which he held the Prussian system:
A passage of 41 days from Liverpool to New York (with Dr. Julius)
gave me time to ask all manner of questions concerning the noble,
philosophical, and practical system of Prussian elementary education.
He explained it like a sound scholar and a pious Christian. If you
will allow the phrase, I fell in love with the Prussian system, and it
seemed to possess me like a missionary angel.
* * * * *
Just at the time that Charles Brooks was laboring so diligently to
incorporate in the Massachusetts system the results of Prussian
experience, another man, John D. Pierce, in Michigan, also an
enthusiastic believer in the preëminence of the Prussian organization,
was laying the foundation for an educational system in his own State
and building into it the best features of Prussian practice. It was
mainly because of his suggestions to the chairman of the committee
on education in the convention that framed the State government in
1835 that the article in the constitution respecting education was
framed and provision made for the office of superintendent of public
instruction. Mr. Pierce was appointed to the superintendency in 1836
and at once began the work of preparing a plan for a complete school
system.
Before framing his recommendations, which were submitted in 1837 and
which were approved for the most part, he visited the schools of
New England, New York, and New Jersey. Prior to this, however, he
had learned of the Prussian system through an English translation
of Cousin’s report. This report of Cousin’s was first made known to
the English-speaking people by Sir William Hamilton, who, in the
Edinburgh Review, July, 1833, commended the report highly and quoted at
considerable length therefrom. The next year (1834) that part of the
report which treated of Prussian practice was translated into English
by Mrs. Sarah Austin and appeared in London. A New York edition of the
same translation was issued in 1835 and widely distributed. It was a
copy of this edition which, falling into Mr. Pierce’s hands, profoundly
influenced him in framing the system he later submitted to the Michigan
Legislature. In describing his entrance into public life Mr. Pierce
speaks of this circumstance:
About this time (1835) Cousin’s report of the Prussian system, made to
the French minister of public instruction, came into my hands and it
was read with much interest. Sitting one pleasant afternoon upon a log
on the hill north of where the courthouse at Marshall now stands, Gen.
Crary (chairman of the convention committee on education) and myself
discussed for a long time the fundamental principles which were deemed
important for the convention to adopt in laying the foundations of
our State. The subject of education was a theme of special interest.
It was agreed, if possible, that it should make a distinct branch of
the government, and that the constitution ought to provide for an
officer who should have this whole matter in charge and thus keep its
importance perpetually before the public mind.
Mr. Pierce’s indebtedness to Prussia for many of the ideas which he
worked out in the system which he organized is thus set forth by a
later superintendent of the Michigan system, Francis W. Shearman, who,
writing in 1852, said:
The system of public instruction which was intended to be established
by the framers of the constitution (Michigan), the conception of
the office, its province, its powers, and duties were derived from
Prussia.[8]...
RESULTS OF THE ADOPTION OF THE GERMAN EXAMPLE.
It is a striking fact that all this borrowing had to do with the common
school. Nor was it inappropriate at that period that emphasis should
be on the school for the common people. In the young states there was
relatively little higher education, and the need was great for an
improvement of the common schools.
The consequences of this borrowing were momentous for our history.
There are two characteristics which our American schools of elementary
grade took on in imitation of the German model, which characteristics
have determined in large measure their subsequent development down
to the present. In the first place, the German common school was
strictly a vernacular school, and, in the second place, it dealt
only with rudimentary subjects. The _Gymnasium_, or the school for
the aristocracy, was not a vernacular school. Latin and Greek and
modern foreign languages were taught in even the lower grades of
the _Gymnasium_. Furthermore, the _Gymnasium_ alone taught such
“higher” subjects as the higher mathematics, while the common school
confined itself exclusively to arithmetic as the rudimentary branch of
mathematics. In point of time the German _Volksschule_, as noted above,
conducted a course eight years in length. The pupils completed this
course at fourteen years of age, when they were confirmed in the Church.
The common school was the institution which America borrowed in
1830-1840. The common school was set up in the United States as
an eight-year school devoted exclusively to the vernacular and to
rudimentary subjects. But the American system developed. The length of
the school year increased, and the number of pupils who are ambitious
to go on into the higher schools has enormously increased. In 1917 we
were told by the Commissioner of Education of the United States that
more than 1,300,000 of the young people in this country were in the
high schools. Even now, however, the eight-year vernacular rudimentary
school of Germany has its stamp on our American life. As a rule our
American schools do not permit a pupil to study foreign languages in
the lower school, even when we know that he is going on to high school.
The general exclusion of languages is due to the tradition that the
elementary school is a vernacular school, not to inability on the
part of pupils to learn languages. We will not permit algebra to be
taught in the elementary school, because algebra is not a rudimentary
subject. To be sure, we have had a hard time trying to keep arithmetic
in its position of exclusive domination of the elementary course. We
have grafted into the arithmetic all kinds of economic information
about insurance and banks and foreign exchange. We have exercised our
ingenuity to the limit in inventing examples of a complicated sort in
order to keep the pupils in the upper grades at work in arithmetic.
But through it all we have been kept from a rational development by
adherence to the tradition of the German common school,—the tradition
which treats higher subjects as the exclusive property of the
aristocracy.
THE REORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN SCHOOLS
The day of reform is, however, at hand. Social pressure has gradually
been making it evident to all that in America the elementary school
cannot be a caste school. The people are demanding that pupils who are
to have only a limited schooling be admitted to some of the higher
subjects. Furthermore, there are enough pupils who go on into the high
school to make it evident that the American scheme should be organized
not with a view to distinguishing between the elementary school and the
high school, but with a view to combining the two into a continuous
institution.
Within the last five years there has spread rapidly a movement known as
the junior-high-school movement, or the intermediate-school movement.
This is essentially a reform of the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades,
and consists, first of all, in the introduction into the course of
study of material which formerly belonged to the high school. In
the second place, this movement recognizes the maturity of pupils
in a variety of ways. It adopts a form of discipline which throws
responsibility on them. It departmentalizes the teaching and offers
electives, thus securing the advantages of specialization. The movement
promises to reorganize our whole school system in such a way as to
give us a new kind of national education. America has at the present
moment a closer approximation to a continuous educational ladder than
any other country, but the ladder needs a little splicing. With the
present enthusiasm for national development the splicing is likely to
be facilitated.
ORIGIN OF THE HIGH SCHOOL
The foregoing statements extracted from the history of the elementary
school may be supplemented by references to the history of the high
school. The first schools of secondary grade in this country were
patterned after the classical secondary schools of England. The
Boston Latin School and the Hopkins Grammar School of New Haven are
examples of early foundations of the kind in question. These schools
were vestibules to the colleges, and the boys who attended them—for
they were schools for boys—were looking forward to one of the learned
professions, usually, in the early days, to the clergy.
The Latin school charged tuition, as do all the European secondary
schools to-day. It was an exclusive school. It was not a part of the
popular movement toward general education. In an important sense it
was a vocational school and illustrates the general fact of history
that higher schools always had a vocational motive back of their
organization, whereas the people’s schools of elementary grade were
at first always missionary enterprises intended to spread religious
training rather than vocational training.
Parallel with the Latin school and growing out of an entirely different
motive was another institution which was very much more genuinely
American in its character. This was the academy. The academy was often
a boarding school to which boys and girls alike went for an extension
of their education. Later the village in which the academy was situated
took it over or made arrangements to pay for all the pupils, and it
became a free academy.
There were some other experiments in the extension of school
opportunities. In New England, the oldest and economically most forward
section of the country, a ninth grade was added to the elementary
school. There are to-day in Maine, and to some extent in other New
England states, elementary schools with a nine-year course. But the
ninth grade never succeeded. It was cramped by the German definition of
the elementary school as a vernacular and rudimentary school. To try to
spend nine years rather than eight on the three R’s was not productive.
The academy, on the other hand, knew no limits of this kind. It reveled
in such subjects as French and music and literature and history.
At last the Latin school and the academy fused in the American
high school, and the high school took its place at the end of the
elementary-school course. The influence of the academy in determining
this form of organization was very great, for the academy was from the
first connected with the elementary school, while the Latin school was
in its early days an institution quite separate from the common school
both in its organization and purpose.
EDUCATION OF GIRLS
These sketches of school history could be supplemented by other
discussions. Perhaps it will be well to comment briefly on the unique
American attitude toward the education of girls. In Europe girls have
only very recently been given opportunities of higher education, and
even now the opportunity is limited to the few. We have undoubtedly
made the mistake in this country, in our enthusiasm for equality of
opportunity, of administering to girls a course of study originally
designed for their brothers. In due time we shall learn how to give to
girls an education suited to their needs, but there can never be any
question among us about the wisdom of a higher education for women.
HIGHER EDUCATION FREE
It has also been noted incidentally that with us all education is
free. This has not been attained without much discussion and much
legislation. We shall later have an opportunity to treat more at
length the fiscal policies of American schools. At this point it is
enough to note that American schools are what they are because they are
free.
An interesting contrast can be drawn here between the practice in
England and in the United States. In England vast sums of money make a
free education accessible to certain selected individuals. The higher
schools are not free to all comers, as ours are, but a bright boy—it is
usually only the boy—who can pass a competitive examination is given
a stipend, which provides his tuition and often enough more to get
books and, if necessary, pay for transportation. The English theory is
that it is the duty of the public to pay for selected boys, but not
for boys in general. To the American it seems a little hazardous to
select the leaders of the nation by competitive examinations given to
eleven-year-old boys. On the other hand, the English think of our plan
as wasteful because we postpone selection longer than they think we
should. The contrast here pointed out is enough to draw our attention
to the unique attitude of American schools, which are free to all
and in this sense far more democratic than the higher schools of any
European country.
AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS SECULAR
Finally, we may point out that our schools are secular. Some of our own
fellow countrymen do not believe in secular schools. We are familiar
with the practice of organizing parochial schools. France and England
have in recent years purchased secularization of their schools after
long and bitter controversy. Germany gives instruction in religion as
an important part of every course of study. In some sections of Germany
the distinction between religious beliefs is carried into the school
organization in such a way that one finds public schools set aside for
the children of this and that sect. In all schools the pupil has a
right to instruction in his own particular type of religion.
In the United States the complete democratization of the schools
has been possible because differences in religion have been rigidly
excluded. There is a common body of knowledge which can be administered
in public schools without involving religion. The decision for such
a separation was made long ago in this country and is one of the
characteristic facts in our school system as well as in our general
civic life.
THE SCHOOL SYSTEM AND ITS DOMINATION OF THE TEACHER
The facts outlined in this chapter ought to create in the mind of the
reader a vivid notion of what is meant by the words “school system.”
The schools of America or any other country have a kind of colossal
personality. The teacher who teaches a fifth grade or a sixth grade or
a high-school class does not determine the character of the education
given at these points in the system. To be sure, the teacher can do his
or her work effectively or inefficiently. The special methods employed
may be well or ill adapted to their ends. But above and beyond the
individual teacher is the system which controls the pupil’s progress
in many subtle ways and determines all the main lines of his training.
The teacher who would succeed must understand this larger influence.
Especially is it necessary that the teacher who aims to contribute to
the rational development of the system through the scientific study of
detailed problems become acquainted with the present characteristics
of the system and comprehend something of the conditions which have
produced these characteristics.
EXERCISES AND READINGS
Among textbooks there are such striking differences that the student
will be able after even a superficial analysis to see that their
authors had very different ideas about the use of texts. Find a
textbook which is intended to give the pupil a start in a study
rather than a complete discussion of the subject. Find a text which
is intended to be learned rather than merely read. What parts of a
textbook are addressed to the teacher and constitute teaching devices
rather than material for students?
Contrast the ways in which different teachers use textbooks. Are there
teachers who neglect the book very largely? When should a teacher
lecture? Find specific examples of lessons which can best be taught (1)
by questions and answers, (2) by written work, and (3) by lectures.
With regard to a given high school it is important to find out when it
was established. What was its first course of study?
With regard to courses for girls, it is interesting to inquire how far
classes in an elective system are chosen by boys and how far by girls.
Why are conditions as they are?
The foregoing questions are asked on the assumption that the contrasts
presented in the chapter are of value only when they make students
keenly aware of the facts in their own environment. The facts of
history are valuable chiefly because of the light they throw on the
present.
BROWN, E. E. Making of our Middle Schools. Longmans, Green, & Co. This
is the only history of American secondary schools.
BUNKER, F. F. “Reorganization of the Public School System,” in
_Bulletin No. 8_, United States Bureau of Education, 1916. This shows
how our present school system was organized.
FARRINGTON, F. E. French Secondary Schools. Longmans, Green, & Co.
FARRINGTON, F. E. The Public Primary School System of France. Teachers
College.
JUDD, C. H. “The Training of Teachers in England, Scotland, and
Germany,” in _Bulletin No. 35_, United States Bureau of Education,
1914.
MONROE, W. S. “Development of Arithmetic as a School Subject,” in
_Bulletin No. 10_, United States Bureau of Education, 1917. This
bulletin tells of the origin of the present methods of teaching
arithmetic.
PARKER, S. C. The History of Modern Elementary Education. Ginn and
Company. This is a very good summary of the facts regarding the
development of American schools.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Reprinted in the Report of the School Committee of the City of
Taunton, Massachusetts, for the Year Ending December 31, 1915, pp.
68-73.
[8] Frank Forest Bunker, “Reorganization of the Public School System,”
in _Bulletin No. 8_, United States Bureau of Education, 1916, pp.
21-23.
CHAPTER III
EDUCATION AS A PUBLIC NECESSITY
THE PRIMITIVE ATTITUDE ONE OF NEGLECT
One does not have to go far from the door of any educational
institution to find people who look on reading and writing—to
say nothing of higher forms of education—as luxuries rather than
necessities. There is the parent who is willing to take his child out
of school for the sake of the wage which the child can earn. There
is the negligent parent, often himself illiterate, who is utterly
unconcerned about the education of his sons and daughters. Another kind
of example appears in the boy or girl who goes out into the trades
after a limited schooling and fails to keep up the type of intellectual
activity which was cultivated in the school. Many a child who has been
taught through years of instruction how to read makes very little use
of his training in mature life.
An appeal to the history of civilization reveals the fact that there
was a time when the opinion prevailed that education was unnecessary
for the common man. The earliest schools were for the aristocracy
and for the professional classes. Schools for all the people are of
comparatively recent date.
COMPULSORY EDUCATION
In striking contrast with this attitude of neglect and indifference
is the fact that to-day there are laws in all the civilized countries
of the world compelling children of every social grade to attend
school. Society as a whole does not share the slight esteem of reading
exhibited by the man who takes his child out of school. Indeed, society
has gone so far as to set aside that man’s judgment and to assume
control of the child to the extent of insisting that the rudiments of
an education shall be made universal.
Society still leaves it to the individual to decide whether he is to
study higher branches. One may take algebra or not as one elects, but
not so with arithmetic. The common interests of our common life dictate
that everyone shall be able to count and to make accurate numerical
statements. People must know some arithmetic; they must be able to
read, or they are a menace to public comfort and safety.
COMPULSION OF COMMUNITIES
The full acknowledgment of the fact that education is a public
necessity has developed gradually. History shows us the steps by which
this fact has been recognized in legislative action. The first step
was the adoption of laws requiring communities to provide schools. We
may put the matter in terms of contemporary conditions by referring to
communities which would to-day be backward in this matter if it were
not for state control. Thus there are sparsely settled districts or
poor districts which cannot afford good schools, or, indeed, any kind
of a school. The state is vitally interested in seeing to it that the
untoward conditions in these regions do not deprive the children of an
education. In the later years of their lives the children from these
districts will surely scatter to other parts of the state. They will be
less productive than they would have been if they had been educated. It
is much more economical for the state as a whole to take a hand in the
training of the children than to have to support even a small number of
dependent adults during the unproductive period of later life when the
consequences of poor schooling appear.
In some cases the delinquency of a community is due not to economic
stress but to shortsighted frugality. Here again the higher authority
of the larger community must take control and force the backward group
to give the children such training as will bring them to reasonable
productivity.
The earliest legislation on this matter is of the type which was quoted
in the last chapter, where reference was made to the Connecticut law of
1650. Such legislation was addressed to the community and enjoined on
it the obligation to provide schools.
LATER STAGES OF COMPULSORY LEGISLATION
Such compulsion of the community was followed, but at a much later
date, by legislation compelling the child to attend school; and finally
the period was reached in the midst of which we live to-day, when the
state is taking a hand in the supervision of schools for the purpose of
insuring as high and as uniform a grade of education as it can afford.
AMERICAN EDUCATION TO 1850
The first period of our national life, during which we were very
gradually evolving the conception of a need for public education and
were setting up the requirement of schools in every community, extended
down to the decade before the Civil War. Professor Cubberley has given
a very illuminating description of this period, from which we may quote
the following extracts:
During the early decades of the nineteenth century, schools and the
means of education made little progress. There were among the founders
of our states certain far-seeing men who wished for general public
education, but it was well along toward the middle of the century
before these men represented more than a hopeful minority in most of
our states, and in the South little was done until after the Civil
War....
To be illiterate was no reproach, and it was possible to follow many
pursuits successfully without having received any other education than
the education of daily work and experience. A large proportion of the
people felt that those who desired an education should pay for it. As
the Rhode Island farmer expressed it to Henry Barnard in 1844, it would
be as sensible to propose to take his plough away from him to plough
his neighbor’s field as to take his money to educate his neighbor’s
child. Others felt that at most free education should be extended only
to the children of the poor, and for the rudiments of learning only.
Still others felt that all forms of education would be conducted best
if turned over to the various religious and educational societies
of the time. A system of public instruction maintained by general
taxation, such as we to-day enjoy, would not only have been declared
unnecessary, but would have been stoutly resisted as well. The best
schools, and often the only schools, were private schools supported by
the tuition fees of those who could afford to use them, and most of
these were more or less directly under church control.
Not until after the beginning of the nineteenth century was education
regarded at all as a legitimate public function....
The different humanitarian movements which arose after 1820, and which,
among other things, demanded public tax-supported schools for all, had
not as yet made themselves felt. The people were poor, and indifferent
as to education.
Gradually, and only after great effort, this condition of apathy and
indifference was changed to one of active interest, though the change
took place but slowly, and differed in point of time in different parts
of the country. The Lancastrian system of monitorial instruction (by
which a single teacher with the assistance of his best students, called
monitors, taught hundreds of pupils), introduced into this country
from England about 1806, for the first time made an elementary school
training for all seem possible, from a financial point of view....
The idea that free education was a right, and that universal education
was a necessity, began to be urged and to find acceptance. The land
grants of Congress to the new states for the benefit of common schools
greatly stimulated the movement. The published reports of those who had
visited Pestalozzi’s school in Switzerland, and had examined the new
state school system in Prussia, were extensively read. The moral and
economic advantages of schools were set forth at length in resolutions,
speeches, pamphlets, magazines, and books.
* * * * *
Just when this change took place cannot be definitely stated. Roughly
speaking, it began about 1825 and was accomplished by 1850 in the
Northern states. It was a gradual change rather than a sudden one,
though rapid advances were at times made. The movement everywhere was
greatly stimulated by the educational revival inaugurated by Horace
Mann in Massachusetts in 1837. In the Southern states, with one or two
exceptions, little was accomplished until after the Civil War and the
Reconstruction Period were over. Almost everywhere it took place only
after prolonged agitation, and ofttimes only after a bitter struggle.
The indifference of legislatures, the unwillingness of taxpayers to
assume the burdens of general taxation, the small sense of local
responsibility, the satisfaction with existing conditions, the old
aristocratic conception of education, the pauper and charity-school
idea, and frequently the opposition of denominational and private
schools,—all of these had to be met and overcome. The referendum was
tried in a number of states, and sometimes more than once; in others,
the question of free schools became a vital political issue....
By 1850, the principle of tax-supported schools had been generally
accepted in all of the Northern states, and the beginnings of free
schools made in some of the Southern states. Six state normal schools
had been established, a number of states had provided for State
Superintendents of Common Schools and for ex-officio State Boards
of Education, and the movement for state control of education had
begun. It may be said that it had not become a settled conviction
with a majority of the people that the provision of some form of
free education was a duty of the state, and that such education
contributed in a general way, though just how was not at that time
clear, to the moral uplift of the people, to a higher civic virtue,
and to increased economic returns to the state. A new conception of
free public education as a birthright of the child on the one hand,
and as an exercise of the state’s inherent right to self-preservation
and improvement on the other, had taken the place of the earlier
conception of schools as merely a coöperative effort, based on economy,
and for the instruction of youth merely in the rudiments of learning.[9]
COMPULSORY ATTENDANCE
The second stage in the development of a public educational system
was reached when the states began to see that children must be
compelled to go to school. In 1852 Massachusetts passed the first
compulsory-education law. In 1864 the District of Columbia followed.
In 1867 came Vermont; in 1871, New Hampshire, Michigan, and
Washington.[10] From that time on the other states have been enacting
such laws. The Southern states, which before the Civil War had
practically no public-school system and after the war were economically
depressed, were the last to pass compulsory-attendance acts.
Without attempting to deal with the remoter historical development of
such legislation, it is possible to show by reference to contemporary
reports the difficulties in securing and enforcing such laws. Two
quotations from the reports of the Commissioner of Education of the
United States indicate the present conditions with regard to compulsory
attendance. The report of 1915 makes the following statement:
The year 1915 was a notable year for the cause of compulsory school
attendance. Four States—South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, and
Texas—which did not have laws on the subject, enacted laws at the last
sessions of their legislatures. This new extension of the compulsory
attendance area carries required attendance at school into the section
where it has hitherto met the most stubborn resistance; the area now
practically includes the entire United States, Georgia and Mississippi
alone remaining without laws on the subject.[11]
The report of 1916 supplements this statement as follows:
Efforts were made to secure the enactment of attendance laws in both
of these States [Georgia and Mississippi] in 1916, and in the former
the effort was successful. The new law of Georgia, in brief, requires
the attendance of every child between 8 and 14 years of age for four
months each year. Exemptions from this requirement apply to those
who have completed the fourth grade of school work; those upon whom
needy members of the family are dependent for support; those whose
parents or guardians are unable to provide the necessary books and
clothing, unless the same are otherwise provided; those whose services
are needed for farm emergencies; those who are mentally or physically
incapable; and those who reside more than 3 miles from school. Boards
of education of counties and of cities and towns are intrusted with
the enforcement of the law in their respective jurisdictions.[12]
OBSTACLES TO ENFORCEMENT OF COMPULSORY ATTENDANCE
The enactment of laws is only one step in securing attendance.
Especially is there difficulty where local authorities are intrusted
with the enforcement of the laws. The records of school operations
in the Northern states show that compulsory education was not really
enforced until in the ’80’s and later. The sort of difficulty
encountered is clearly illustrated by a clipping from the _Statesman_,
a daily paper of Austin, Texas, which sets forth the situation late in
1916 under the Texas law, which was then just beginning to be effective.
The compulsory school attendance law will be effective during the
coming year. The compulsory term of the first year of the law’s
operation will be three months, or 60 school days, and the board of
trustees of each school has the authority to specify the months
during which attendance shall be compulsory. The Austin City School
Board has ruled that the compulsory term shall begin January 1.
The matter of providing truant officers has not yet been dealt with,
either by the City School Board or by the County Board of Education.
The law provides $2 a day as remuneration to the truant officer for
the time actually served by him. The City Superintendent believes that
the logical procedure for the city will be to secure the services of
the county probation officer, provided it is found practicable for him
to take on the additional duties.
The County Board of Education meets next Monday and will probably
discuss this matter. It cannot act, however, except on the petition
of fifty citizens. In case no such petition is presented, the County
Superintendent says that it will devolve on each school principal to
report to the County Superintendent those children who are not in
school, and she can call on any peace officer to execute the law. It
is not thought likely that the probation officer will find it possible
to act as truant officer for the county.
The reason why the beginning of the compulsory period was placed
so late as January 1 is that many of the children likely to be
affected—largely Mexicans and negroes—will be needed in the cotton
patch during the fall. Also in the city, many poor boys and girls will
be able to earn something during the Christmas holidays. There are
serious objections to the plan, however, since the child who enters
school so late in the session will be at a serious disadvantage, and
the extra attention he will demand of the teacher will work a hardship
on the other pupils. Moreover, in the city the school session is
divided into two equal periods, the first of which ends only a month
after the child is required to begin attendance. This will involve
serious difficulties.
The compulsory attendance law applies to children eight to fourteen
years of age, with certain exceptions. The compulsory term the second
year will be eighty days, the third year 100 days.
Defective children are exempted; also rural children more than 2½
miles from a school, and on the written statement of a parent that
the services of her child of twelve years or more who has reached the
fourth grade are needed for the mother’s support, such a child may be
exempted.
Even a casual reading of this quotation calls attention to the fact
that there is the keenest competition between employment and education.
The modern industrial system finds children profitable for certain
purposes and uses them. If society is to enforce its judgment that
these children ought to be in school, that judgment will have to
express itself in mandatory terms. The federal government has recently
taken a hand in the matter. It is difficult or impossible in some
states to get suitable legislation against the exploitation of child
labor by unprincipled employers. State legislatures have too often
shown themselves subservient to the dictates of such employers. In 1916
the Congress of the United States passed a law restricting child labor
in all trades which produce commodities intended for use in interstate
commerce. This federal law is another expression of the judgment of
civilization that childhood is a period which should be devoted to
education.
It is also shown in the Texas quotation that the machinery for keeping
account of children is complicated. The ordinary school authorities
cannot deal with the matter without adding attendance officers to their
staff. These officers must be supplied with adequate information.
This in turn calls for a special school census, because the ordinary
national enumeration and even the state and city enumerations are not
frequent nor complete enough. One of the most progressive of the New
England states has recently adopted legislation looking to the creation
of a more adequate system of records. This new law is described in the
Commissioner’s Report of 1916 as follows:
In order to facilitate the enforcement of its attendance law,
Massachusetts provided in 1916 for the registration of minors. City
and town school committees are required under the new law to ascertain
the name, age, and other essential facts respecting every child
between 5 and 7, between 7 and 14, and between 14 and 16 years of age,
and respecting minors over 16 years of age who cannot read and write.
A card giving these data must be kept for every child or minor. The
attendance officer is required to examine these cards and see that
children attend school as required by law. Supervisory officers of
private schools must within 30 days report the enrollment of children
of compulsory attendance age, and when any child withdraws from school
must report the same within 10 days.[13]
NEWER LEGISLATION RECOGNIZING COMPLEXITY OF PROBLEMS OF ATTENDANCE
Definitions of the period of compulsory attendance are usually based on
the number of grades in the elementary school. Laws commonly specify
the age of beginning as six and fix the age of fourteen as the upper
limit. Sometimes the age of beginning is higher. For example, the
1915 law in South Carolina is thus described by the Commissioner of
Education:
The 1915 act of South Carolina is a local option law. Upon petition
of a majority of the qualified electors of a district or “aggregation
of districts,” the county board of education is required to declare
the law in effect in such district or districts, or, on petition of
one-fourth of the electors, an election must be held to determine the
matter. All children between the ages of 8 and 14 who are physically
able and who reside within 2½ miles of school are required to attend
for the full term, or at least for four months. Children between the
ages of 14 and 16 are required to attend unless lawfully employed or
if they can not read and write simple English sentences.[14]
The provisions of this law show how complicated is the social situation
with which the community deals in its compulsory laws. The assumption
that it is simple to define the necessary schooling for a future
citizen is easily refuted by a little consideration.
In the first place, pupils do not go through the elementary schools
without interruption; hence the mere specifying of a given age such as
fourteen is not enough. Non-promotion, or the removal of the family to
another town, or some misfortune such as sickness may delay the pupil
so that he reaches the age of fourteen in one of the lower grades.
Intelligent legislation is, accordingly, taking this into account.
In some states it is required that the child shall finish a certain
grade,—usually the sixth,—otherwise he must go to school until he is
sixteen. Or, as in South Carolina, he must stay in school until he has
acquired the ability to read and write.
In this connection a complication in legislation may be pointed out
which is of profound social significance. The definition of adulthood
which is given in labor legislation has usually set the age at which
a boy may be regularly employed, at sixteen, while the education
law of the same state often requires school attendance only up to
fourteen. The result is that the youth between fourteen and sixteen
has been sadly at sea. He has not had the judgment to stay in school
after he was freed by the compulsory-education law, and he has not
had the opportunity to enter on regular employment. He has therefore
drifted about, working at odd jobs and learning the bad habits of the
unproductively employed.
SUPERVISION A NECESSARY COROLLARY TO COMPULSION
Such considerations as these lead to a clear understanding of the
reasons why the state is undertaking in increasing degree the
supervision of the details of school work. It is not enough that
communities should open schools or that pupils should be compelled
to attend; the quality of education must be such as to justify the
expenditure of public money and the investment of the pupils’ time and
energy in the business of schooling.
Compulsory education implies obligations both on the side of the pupil
and on the side of the community. It would manifestly be inequitable
to compel children to go to school if the community failed to provide
suitable, safe, and sanitary buildings. Because local wisdom in such
matters is often limited, and local judgment biased by considerations
of expense, the state has dealt with the matter both through general
legislation and through vigorous inspection.
In like fashion it would evidently be indefensible to require pupils to
go to school and use inferior textbooks or be instructed by unqualified
teachers. Here again the larger community has found it necessary to
take a hand. State adoption of textbooks is not uncommon, and state
certification of teachers is becoming universal.
More important, perhaps, than anything else is the choice of the
subject-matter of instruction. To the ordinary man, as indicated in an
earlier chapter, subject-matter seems to choose itself; but it does
not. Nor can the local community be expected to know the larger needs
of its children. A very striking example of this is furnished by the
fact that the federal government has recently set aside vast sums of
money for the purpose of subsidizing and directing agricultural and
industrial education. The theory back of this action is that even the
states, and more certainly cities and towns, are unable to deal with
the problems of adequate training for practical life. The largest unit,
namely, the whole country, is so much concerned with the efficiency of
its citizens in industrial matters that it has undertaken to subsidize
and supervise this phase of education.
Such examples make clear the principle under which state laws define
the minimum course of study and under which state departments of
education are erected to supervise the administration of the course of
study. They make clear also the justification for the statement that
the control of education ought to be increasingly centralized.
HIGHER EDUCATION AND PUBLIC CONTROL
There is one aspect of the educational demands of a community which
is usually thought of as lying entirely outside the scope of the
compulsory-education law. It is ordinarily thought that higher
education is a purely individual matter. In the older parts of the
country the state has been slow to provide higher schools. Colleges
have often been provided for by denominational organizations or by
purely private endowments. Even in the field of higher education,
however, it is becoming evident that public interests are involved.
In medicine, in law, and in training of teachers, the state has been
obliged to assume increasingly supervisory powers, and of late the
financial provision for such education has been more and more accepted
as a public obligation. The result of this evolution is the broader
provision out of the public purse for all kinds and all stages of
education.
PUBLIC CONTROL ADEQUATE ONLY WHEN DIRECTED BY SCIENCE
Enough has been said to show that much is involved in the establishment
of a public-school system. The problems which arise in the teaching
of pupils are intricate; but when one thinks of education as a public
necessity, to be purchased with public funds and to be administered in
the interests of the broader community, one sees new justification for
the demand that all school problems be managed with wisdom. This demand
can be met only when school problems are made subjects of exhaustive
scientific study.
FISCAL PROBLEM TYPICAL
The subsequent chapters will take up briefly the problems involved
in organizing a school system. The first and most general problem is
one of securing funds for the maintenance of the schools. It will be
well to reiterate the statement with which the first chapter began.
The pupil seldom thinks of costs. The teacher usually overlooks the
fact that the community is interested in what schools cost. Yet funds
are a prime necessity in organizing a public-school system. We turn,
accordingly, to fiscal problems as among the first and most concrete
examples of educational problems which must be studied by one who would
be intelligent about the school system.
EXERCISES AND READINGS
Whose duty is it to enforce school attendance in the community in which
you live? When was the last school census taken? What is the ordinary
ratio of school population to the total population? What percentage
of children of high-school age are in high school? What percentage
of eighth-grade pupils go on to high school? What percentage of
high-school graduates go to college?
The ordinary reader will perhaps find it difficult to get answers
to these questions. He should make himself a student of the reports
of the Commissioner of Education of the United States and of the
superintendent of schools in some city which publishes an annual report.
From some school record find out what percentage of enrolled pupils
attend school regularly.
If there is a school nurse or a school physician, find out what time in
the year is most likely to exhibit small attendance. Verify the finding
from the school record.
What substitutes for attendance on public schools are permitted? How
many children in the town attend schools other than public schools, and
why?
AYRES, L. P. Child Accounting in the Public Schools. Survey Committee
of the Cleveland Foundation. (Copies may be secured from the Russell
Sage Foundation.) This is one of the volumes of the Cleveland survey
and is the only brief statement of the whole matter that there is.
Reports of the Commissioner of Education should be studied as
suggested above.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] Ellwood P. Cubberley, “Changing Conceptions of Education,”
Riverside Educational Monograph, pp. 27-35. Houghton Mifflin Company,
1909.
[10] Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1888-1889, p. 471.
[11] Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1915, Vol. I, p. 12.
[12] Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1916, Vol. I, p. 24.
[13] Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1916, Vol. I, p. 25.
[14] Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1915, Vol. I, pp.
12-13.
CHAPTER IV
INVESTING PUBLIC MONEY IN A NEW GENERATION
THE COST OF EDUCATING AN INDIVIDUAL
We all know something about how much the family invests in its sons
and daughters. The provision made by the father for his children is
recognized as an expression of the parent’s willingness to give to the
second generation as good a start in life as the family can afford.
We are less likely to realize the extent to which the community is
drawing on its material resources for a similar purpose. The city of
Chicago—to choose a single example—gives to each boy or girl who goes
through elementary school and high school an aggregate of six hundred
and thirty dollars. If a child were notified to go to the city hall
when he is eighteen years of age and receive this sum of money, we
should recognize what it means for a community to pay for the education
of its new generation. We should understand that the children of a city
are its wards. When the matter is obscured by the complexities of the
social machinery through which this bonus is distributed, we lose sight
of the magnitude and directness of public expenditures for education.
The example of Chicago can be pursued even further. The sum stated
above is too small, for it is based on the annual expenditures for
conducting the schools; it does not include the large outlay for school
buildings and for real estate which the city is called upon to make in
order to provide rooms in which the education may be given. Nor do the
figures cover irregularities. If the pupil does not get through each
year’s work in regular order, the city is often called upon to provide
more than the normal number of years of training.
One further item is to be added to the calculations above given,
in the case of those who go to the city normal college. For these
teachers-in-training the city pays an additional two hundred and
twenty-eight dollars a year, raising the aggregate expended on such
a student to nearly eleven hundred dollars.[15] Such students are
typical of a vast number of young people who are attending at public
expense state normal schools, state universities, and public technical
schools. Indeed, even where students attend endowed institutions and
pay tuition, the actual cost of their education is commonly borne in
very large measure by the community, which in the last analysis is the
source of the endowment.
TOTAL SCHOOL EXPENDITURES IN THE UNITED STATES
Another method of presenting the facts is to deal with totals. The
figures which represent the expenditure for public education in the
United States are so large that the individual who reads them usually
passes them over with little comprehension unless he is given some
background for comparison. Perhaps this background can be furnished
by recalling the statement quoted in the last chapter, where it was
pointed out that a century ago there was practically no conception
of the principle of free public schools. Schools were supported in
large measure by charity or by tuition. Most communities provided
only a very short term and collected a rate bill, or personal tuition,
from the pupils to supplement the small fund secured from taxation.
During the quarter of a century before 1850 there was a widespread
movement in the Northern states which gradually secured in the face of
much opposition full public support for schools. Rate bills did not
disappear entirely until 1871, the last state to abolish them being
New Jersey, but at that date the principle of support through general
taxation was completely established.
In 1870, as we are told by the Commissioner of Education, the total
expenditures for public elementary and secondary schools had reached
sixty-three million dollars.[16] Nineteen years later, when the
population had increased about 60 per cent, expenditures had more
than doubled, reaching one hundred and forty millions. Since that
time expenditures have increased by leaps and bounds, far surpassing
increases in population, as indicated by the following table:
TABLE I. EXPENDITURES FOR PUBLIC ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS
COMPARED FOR A PERIOD OF YEARS, INCLUDING ALSO A COMPARISON OF
POPULATION FOR THE SAME PERIODS
======================================================================
| 1889-1890 | 1899-1900 | 1909-1910 | 1914
————————————————-+————————————+————————————+————————————+————————————-
Population[16] | 62,622,250| 75,602,515| 91,972,266| 98,741,324
Expenditures[17] |$140,506,715|$214,964,618|$426,250,434|$555,077,146
Expenditure per | | | |
capita of | | | |
population | $2.24 | $2.84 | $4.64 | $5.62
Expenditure per | | | |
pupil in average| | | |
attendance | $17.23 | $20.21 | $33.23 | $39.04
======================================================================
These gross figures indicate a growth in schools that has never been
paralleled in the history of any country. The doubling of expenditures
between 1900 and 1910 is due in part to the rapid evolution of high
schools. Elementary schools, however, have shared in the development.
Teachers are more highly trained than ever before, new courses have
been added to the curriculum, and better hygienic conditions have been
provided in school buildings. There can be no mistaking the evidence
that American communities are willing to support schools in a program
of expansion and improvement.
COST A DETERMINING CONSIDERATION IN SCHOOL ORGANIZATION
An adequate comprehension of the meaning of the statistics of
educational costs will make it impossible for the teacher of Latin to
sit apart and say that it is not his duty to think of the community.
The teacher of science cannot ask for unlimited equipment for
laboratory exercises; the teacher of music or arithmetic cannot say
that he is interested merely in spiritual and intellectual affairs and
that he has no reason to consider material matters. The impressive
fact is that a great public trust has been committed to the hands of
teachers. The community has erected schoolhouses and taxed itself to
the point where school expenditures have come to be looked upon as a
serious burden in many a section of the country. It is a professional
obligation resting on the teacher, be he of high or low degree, to
think of his relation to this matter of public expenditures. The public
is likely to become more and more insistent in the demand that public
expenditures be absolutely purged of waste of any kind, either the
waste that arises from extravagance or the waste that results from
inefficiency.
[Illustration: FIG. 4. Proportion of public money spent for public
schools and other items]
RELATION OF SCHOOL EXPENDITURES TO OTHER PUBLIC EXPENSES
There is still another way in which the facts regarding the magnitude
of the public investment in education can be formulated. In 1913 the
Bureau of Census secured figures to show what proportions of the total
funds spent by cities are devoted to various departments, such as
general government, police, fire, and so on. For the larger cities it
appears that about one quarter of the public revenues go to maintaining
schools; in cities of smaller size the fraction is larger, reaching
in some cases nearly one half. For purposes of our present study a
few examples will suffice. These are given in Table II. Two cases are
exhibited in Fig. 4.
TABLE II. PER CENT OF TOTAL GOVERNMENTAL COST PAYMENTS DEVOTED TO
VARIOUS CITY DEPARTMENTS[18]
=========================================================================
|GENERAL| | | | | | | |OTHER
|GOVERN-|POLICE| FIRE|HEALTH|SANITA-|HIGH- |CHARI-|SCHOOLS|SMALL
|MENT | | | | TION | WAYS | TIES | |ITEMS
—————————+——————-+——————+————-+——————+——————-+——————+——————+——————-+————
New York | 13.6 | 12.1 | 7.0 | 2.3 | 8.0 | 7.8 | 8.7 | 27.9 | 12.4
Chicago | 15.3 | 15.8 | 7.9 | 1.3 | 8.8 | 6.6 | 6.4 | 24.6 | 13.4
Phila-
delphia | 13.8 | 15.0 | 5.1 | 1.8 | 7.1 | 14.6 | 10.4 | 21.6 | 10.4
St. Louis| 12.4 | 15.5 | 8.2 | 1.1 | 10.2 | 13.0 | 6.6 | 25.3 | 7.8
Boston | 10.8 | 11.4 | 8.1 | 2.9 | 9.3 | 10.5 | 8.3 | 24.6 | 14.3
| | | | | | | | |
Albany | 12.3 | 13.3 |14.1 | 1.4 | 7.6 | 9.3 | 3.0 | 27.9 | 11.1
Dayton | 7.6 | 10.1 | 9.9 | 1.5 | 10.5 | 18.4 | 4.1 | 33.4 | 4.6
Des
Moines | 6.1 | 6.1 |15.0 | 0.8 | 4.6 | 9.7 | 0.3 | 46.5 | 10.9
Grand
Rapids | 9.4 | 9.4 |14.0 | 3.0 | 6.8 | 6.5 | 1.9 | 42.3 | 6.9
Richmond | 9.7 | 10.8 |10.6 | 2.9 | 12.7 | 21.6 | 4.7 | 21.0 | 6.1
=========================================================================
These figures show why it is that the business man and the taxpayer are
addicted to criticisms of school expenditures. It is difficult for the
ordinary citizen to get this great expenditure of public money out
of the center of his vision. He can, perhaps, be interested by some
enthusiast in the introduction of domestic science or civics or some
other new course of study; he may even become convinced of the need of
improvements in the equipment of school buildings; but sooner or later,
when the enthusiast has ceased to speak, the persistent fact that it
costs a great share of the revenue of the city to conduct the schools
will reassert itself as a dominant item in his thinking.
URGENT DEMANDS FOR ECONOMY AND EFFICIENCY
In not a few cases the problem of financing schools has in recent years
become especially acute. Communities are in many cases at the limit
now permitted by state laws controlling the levying of taxes. The
maintenance of schools even at their present level is very difficult,
and all the time there is the urgent push within the system for
enlargements and improvements. Other communities which see the rapid
increase in school expenditures, even while they are willing to tax
themselves more for schools, are asking for clear evidence that school
work is being done efficiently.
Such an attitude appears, for example, in a resolution passed by the
citizens of Portland, Oregon, at a regular annual meeting of the voters
held December 27, 1912:
Whereas, the average daily attendance at the public schools of
this district has increased from 10,387 in 1902 to 23,712 in 1912,
and the annual disbursements have increased during the same period
from $420,879.61 to $2,490,477.28; and whereas, it is of the utmost
importance that the public schools should be kept at the highest point
of efficiency.
It is hereby declared to be the sense of this meeting that a full
and complete survey be made of the public school system of this
district.[19]
Many other examples could be given of school inquiries which have grown
out of the demand for either better administration of finances or more
efficient training. In 1910 the Board of Estimate and Apportionment of
New York ordered a survey of the schools of that city because the Board
did not believe itself to be in possession of adequate information on
which to base appropriations for education and because, to use the
words of the resolution,
It is the sense of this Board that efficient and progressive
administration of the schools ... is indispensable to the welfare
and progress of the city and that generous appropriations ... are
desirable in so far as assurance and evidence can be given that such
appropriations will be expended for purposes and in a manner to
promote the efficiency and welfare of the schools and to increase the
value and effect of the instruction given therein.[20]
Such quotations show the intimate relation between finance and
teaching, between the attitude of the community toward expenditures and
the modern demand for a scientifically conducted school system.
EXPENDITURES IN RELATION TO WEALTH
Returning to the detailed study of school finance, it may be laid
down as a fundamental principle that in general school expenditures
are related to the ability of a community to pay taxes. Taking for
purposes of illustration the three largest cities, we find that they
have different degrees of wealth. New York City has an average wealth
of $1765.28 per inhabitant; Chicago has only $1604.20; Philadelphia,
$953.65. Evidently the capacity of these cities for supporting schools
is very different. The differences in wealth correspond roughly to
the varying scale of expenditures for elementary schools in these
three cities. New York expends $45.67 per pupil; Chicago, $37.58; and
Philadelphia, $32.22. The less wealthy cities commonly spend less on
schools.
There is a certain equity in the variation in expenditures above noted.
But there are conditions under which the variations in wealth are so
great that if expenditure depended on the ability of a community to pay
for schools, the children would suffer. In such cases the state must
take a share of the costs and must, in the interests of the general
community, pay for better schools than the city or district can itself
afford.
If one thinks of a mining town, for example, where the population is
made up entirely of laborers with large families and where the homes
are crowded together in a small area, it will be recognized at once
that the ability to support schools is very different from that of
a well-to-do manufacturing city or of a sparsely settled, fertile
farming region where the children are few and the taxable wealth is
comparatively great. In the case of the mining town the state must
step in to equalize in some degree the educational opportunities of
the children. It is not to the advantage of the state as a whole that
the many children of that town should be seriously limited in their
schooling, because they will in due time scatter to other communities,
and the safety and progress of these other communities require that
there shall be adequate educational opportunities in the mining town.
This one example is enough to suggest the problems which arise in
the study of support for schools. The sources of these funds and the
equitable distribution of state school taxes constitute one of the
large problems of public finance and call for careful scientific study.
Such questions as the following arise and must be answered: Shall
state grants be determined by the pupil enrollment, by the average
attendance, by the aggregate attendance, or by the number of teachers
employed?
COSTS OF DIFFERENT LEVELS OF EDUCATION
Turning to details of expenditure, we find a new set of problems.
Perhaps the most impressive fact is that there is a wide discrepancy
in every city between the average expenditures per pupil in elementary
schools and high schools. Again, we may select as typical the facts
for the cities referred to in an earlier table. These average figures
are less striking than some which could be cited. In Los Angeles,
California, the cost per pupil in the high school, at the same date as
that for which the figures in Table III were compiled, was $285.67 as
contrasted with the cost of $59.41 per elementary pupil.
TABLE III. COST PER PUPIL IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS AND HIGH SCHOOLS IN
SELECTED CITIES[21]
============================================
| ELEMENTARY |
| SCHOOL | HIGH SCHOOL
——————————————+——————————————+——————————————
New York | $45.67 | $105.86
Chicago | 37.58 | 85.15
Philadelphia | 32.22 | 87.10
St. Louis | 37.21 | 113.72
Boston | 44.81 | 82.77
| |
Albany | 35.69 | 70.56
Dayton | 29.85 | 63.77
Des Moines | 33.66 | 51.17
Grand Rapids | 40.45 | 87.36
Richmond | 22.24 | 56.73
============================================
It requires very little consideration to explain why there is a
difference between these two types of expenditures. High-school classes
are often small, teachers receive higher salaries, and equipment is
more expensive. It requires much more consideration to justify the
difference. There are some who hold that the elementary school is being
sacrificed to the high school. Indeed, there are some people so extreme
in their views that they would make all high schools tuition schools.
They hold that Boston is in expenditures much less open to criticism
than St. Louis. In St. Louis, on the other hand, it is pointed out that
a most elaborate scheme of high schools has been organized with a view
to providing every high-school student in every section of the city
with the broadest possible opportunities. By way of further answer to
the critics of the high school, it is asserted that the community gets
back in public service from the student who has taken higher courses
more than such courses cost. Certain it is, as the figures in Table
III show, that cities are making expenditures on a most generous scale
for the maintenance of high schools; and the total amount of this
expenditure is greater than the table indicates because there are large
initial appropriations for school buildings which are not taken into
account in these statements of current expenses.
COSTS OF DIFFERENT SUBJECTS OF INSTRUCTION
Pursuing the matter further, we find that there are the widest
discrepancies in costs due to differences in the subjects taught, to
differences in the number of pupils assembled in class, and to other
less conspicuous differences.
In order to bring out the differences between subjects in the same
school, Professor Bobbitt has calculated the cost, per thousand student
hours, of instruction in twenty-five medium-sized high schools, and
presents in Table IV the median[22] cost of each subject.
TABLE IV. COST, PER THOUSAND STUDENT HOURS, OF INSTRUCTION IN HIGH
SCHOOLS IN THE VARIOUS SUBJECTS OF THE CURRICULUM[23]
====================================
SUBJECTS | MEDIAN COST
——————————————————————+————————————-
Shopwork | $93
Normal training | 92
Latin | 71
|
Commercial | 69
Modern languages | 63
History | 62
|
Household occupations | 61
Science | 60
Mathematics | 59
|
English | 51
Agriculture | 48
Music | 23
====================================
Translating this table into the form of a series of questions which
school authorities and communities must face, we may ask: Is it
desirable that shopwork be supplied in a school when it costs nearly
twice as much as English? Is Latin enough better than modern languages
to justify its retention in the program of a school when it costs eight
dollars more per unit of instruction?
Like series of facts for the elementary schools can be borrowed from
an unpublished study by Mr. G. Lee Fleming of Hibbing, Minnesota, and
are reproduced in Table V. Certain selected facts are also exhibited
in Fig. 5. The table shows that reading absorbs nearly two thirds of
the expenditures of the first grade, while in the third grade the same
subject gets a little less than one third of the expenditures, and in
the sixth grade about one sixth. Opening exercises require about the
same expenditure in all grades. Geography comes into prominence first
in the fourth grade. A study of the table will show that financial
statements of this type are indexes of academic organization.
TABLE V. THE PORTION OF EACH THOUSAND DOLLARS SPENT FOR INSTRUCTION IN
EACH SUBJECT IN EACH OF THE FIRST SIX ELEMENTARY GRADES[24]
=====================================================================
SUBJECTS | First |Second | Third |Fourth | Fifth | Sixth | AVERAGE
| Grade | Grade | Grade | Grade | Grade | Grade |
————————————+——————-+——————-+——————-+——————-+——————-+——————-+————————
Reading | $611 | $407 | $307 | $240 | $150 | $156 | $312
Arithmetic | 5 | 101 | 176 | 187 | 181 | 190 | 140
Language | 95 | 110 | 126 | 130 | 178 | 105 | 124
Music | 86 | 90 | 84 | 67 | 58 | 67 | 75
Spelling | 3 | 92 | 90 | 93 | 80 | 71 | 71
Geography | — | — | 9 | 102 | 124 | 152 | 64
Writing | 49 | 68 | 61 | 61 | 52 | 59 | 58
Drawing | 60 | 80 | 55 | 66 | 32 | 42 | 56
Manual arts | — | — | 23 | 9 | 60 | 76 | 28
Opening | | | | | | |
exercises | 34 | 21 | 23 | 21 | 24 | 25 | 25
Physical | | | | | | |
culture | 11 | — | 15 | 14 | 40 | 39 | 20
Folk dancing| 11 | 22 | 25 | — | — | — | 10
Hygiene | — | 3 | 6 | 10 | 11 | 13 | 7
Construction| | | | | | |
work | 28 | — | — | — | — | — | 5
History | — | — | — | — | 10 | 5 | 2
Handwork | 4 | 6 | — | — | — | — | 2
Sense | | | | | | |
training | 3 | — | — | — | — | — | 1
————————————+——————-+——————-+——————-+——————-+——————-+——————-+————————
Total | $1000 | $1000 | $1000 | $1000 | $1000 | $1000 | $1000
=====================================================================
COSTS OF CLASSES OF DIFFERENT SIZES
A second determinant of costs is the size of the class. One of the
simplest ways of reducing expenses is to give a single teacher a large
number of pupils to care for. In 1916 the superintendent of schools in
St. Louis calculated that the reduction of elementary classes in the
schools of that city by an average of one pupil per class would cost
the city $65,000 per year. Los Angeles and Indianapolis have small
elementary classes, the averages being 23.7 and 24.7 members per class
respectively. The cost of elementary instruction is very high, being
$59.41 and $50.45 respectively. St. Louis and Chicago have much lower
costs, namely, $37.21 and $37.58 respectively. These low costs are
secured in a very large measure by grouping children in large classes
of 37.6 and 40.3 average membership per class.
[Illustration: FIG. 5. Distribution in the various grades of each
thousand dollars expended for instruction
The relative expenditure in six grades of the schools of Hibbing,
Minnesota, for four of the chief school subjects is shown by the height
of the columns]
SALARIES
Teachers’ salaries differ in different cities and affect the problems
of cost; the number of hours that teachers teach is another cause of
variation.
BOOKS AND SUPPLIES
Certain cities supply the pupils with books and materials, while other
cities require the children to bring their supplies from home. In the
long run, the cost falls on the community in either case, but it is
differently distributed. In the first case, the taxpayers pay for the
supplies as they do for school buildings, each taxpayer contributing
according to the assessed value of his property. In the second case,
parents pay for supplies according to the number of their children and
without regard to their property.
In regard to general supplies, there are also differences in policy.
Some cities are lavish in furnishing maps and reference books and
specimens for nature study, while others are very economical in these
respects, sometimes justifying their policy by saying that they put
all they can afford to expend into teachers’ salaries. The question
is thus raised: How far is it legitimate to spend money in providing
material equipment, and how far should it be devoted to the payment of
high-salaried teachers? Is it well, for example, to ask a teacher of
good training in geography to instruct a class without any wall maps?
Is it economical to ask a teacher of history to conduct his classes
without books of reference? Or, comparing various kinds of material
equipment with each other, one may ask whether it is more essential
to spend money on well-lighted, well-ventilated rooms that are barren
of apparatus or to put up with old buildings and purchase laboratory
equipment.
THE MEANING OF FINANCIAL ORGANIZATION AND EDUCATIONAL ACCOUNTING
One reason why it is important that questions like those in the
foregoing paragraphs be explicitly formulated is that many citizens
think of school finance as wholly distinct from school organization.
Very often members of the board of education will disclaim any
knowledge of the course of study or of the qualifications of teachers
and say that it is their sole duty to supervise expenditures.
Consideration of the real problems of school finance soon brings to
the surface the fact that financial expenditures are merely means to
the end of supplying adequate opportunity for all the children who are
required by legislation to attend schools. School finance is one aspect
of school organization.
In recent years there has been a movement in the direction of better
accounting systems which are designed to reveal the needs of the
schools and the ways in which these needs are being met. The financial
records of progressive school systems, instead of throwing together
expenditures in general accounts, are keeping items of supervision
distinct from items of teaching. Costs of supplies of various kinds
are kept apart. Thus, janitors’ supplies are kept separate from crayon
and other educational supplies. The cost of coal is used as a means of
checking the efficiency of janitors.
The Bureau of Education of the United States has prepared bookkeeping
forms, and a number of school systems are keeping uniform records of
expenditures. This will greatly facilitate comparisons and scientific
studies in the future and will help to make school finance more than a
mere haphazard distribution of public money.
EXERCISES AND READINGS
What would it cost to supply all the members of a college class with
free textbooks? Would it be equally just to supply a college class with
notebooks? with writing paper?
Why is a laboratory fee charged in certain courses? Is a laboratory fee
just in a class in physics? in chemistry? in drawing?
In case a boy is going to become a plumber, is the public under any
obligation to train him so that he will become an expert? How about
a doctor? What steps does the public take to insure efficiency in
teachers? in railroad engineers? in mail clerks?
What are the state laws with regard to the amount of tax that may be
levied for schools? Are upper limits really necessary?
A certain town is about to build a new schoolhouse. The building will
cost in the aggregate about $30,000. If the building is provided with
a sightly lawn in front and with an ornamental pattern in the brick,
it will cost $400 more than if it is perfectly plain and the yard is
made of gravel. If the corridor is made sixteen feet wide rather than
twelve, the cost will be $400 greater. Shall the two expenditures be
made or not?
CLARK, E. Financing the Public Schools. The Survey Committee of the
Cleveland Foundation. (Copies may be secured from the Russell Sage
Foundation.) This is a volume of the Cleveland survey.
CUBBERLEY, E. P. Public School Administration. Houghton Mifflin
Company. This deals with the problems of public-school organization,
including the general principles of finance.
RUGG, H. O. Report on the finances of the school system of Grand
Rapids in the “School Survey, Grand Rapids, Michigan.” Board of
Education, Grand Rapids.
RUGG, H. O. Report on the finances of the school system of St. Louis
in the “School Survey, St. Louis, Missouri.” Board of Education, St.
Louis.
FOOTNOTES:
[15]
Average cost per pupil of maintaining elementary
schools for 1914-1915 $37.58
Average cost per pupil of maintaining high schools
for 1914-1915 $82.36
Average cost per pupil of maintaining Chicago
Normal College for 1914-1915 $228.84
Report of the Superintendent of Schools for the Year Ending June 30,
1915, in the Sixty-first Annual Report of the Board of Education of the
City of Chicago, p. 196.
[16] Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1916, Vol. II, p. 20.
[17] Ibid. p. 19.
[18] _Bulletin No. 126_, Table II, United States Bureau of Census, 1913.
[19] Quoted in fuller detail on pages 426 et seq. of the “Portland
Survey,” by Ellwood P. Cubberley. Published by the World Book Company,
1915.