PROGRESSIVE NOTES IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION
I The Kindergarten
No single chapter can contain all of the progressive notes that are
being sounded in American Elementary Education; yet it is possible,
after some arbitrary picking and choosing, to describe a number of the
most typical and most successful educational innovations. At the bottom
of most up-to-date elementary school systems is the kindergarten. Not so
often as it might be, but still frequently, the child begins school work
there. The games, the songs, the children's sports of these kindergarten
years, make a joyous entry-way into the grades. In Gary the kindergarten
child sees life. The flowers, leaves, grasses, lichens, fruits,
butterflies, moths, and birds are usually brought to the classroom. The
Gary children go on expeditions to explore nature's wonderland, besides
making excursions to squares, parks, and to the open country. The
kindergartners of Cincinnati plant tulip bulbs in the city parks, and
visit farms in order to have a chance to meet the farm animals. Singing,
visiting, playing, shaping, building, the kindergarten child sees life
on many sides. Perhaps, finally, other cities following the lead of
Cincinnati will introduce the kindergarten spirit and kindergarten
activities into the lower grades where they will clarify an atmosphere,
fetid and dank with concepts which to the six-year-old are meaningless
abstractions.
II Translating the Three R's
At best the kindergarten reaches but a few. Even in cities which boast
of a system of organized kindergartens, only a small portion of the
children attend them. On the other hand, since practically all school
children enter the grades, it is on them that an inquiry into elementary
education must be focused.
The time has passed when reading, writing, and arithmetic made up the
entirety of a satisfactory elementary education. Like the kindergarten,
the elementary school must touch life; like the kindergarten, it must
provide for child needs. Everywhere schools are turning from the old
methods of teaching spelling, multiplication, and syntax to the new
methods of teaching children,--yes, and teaching them those things which
they need, irrespective of name. Three R's no longer suffice. The child
requires training from the Alpha to the Omega of life.
Compare, for example, the old method of teaching geography with the new.
Under the abandoned system, the child began with capes, peninsulas,
continents, meridians, trade routes, rivers, boundaries and products.
Under the new system, he begins with the town in which he lives. Each
schoolroom in Newark, for example, is provided with a large map of the
city. In addition to these complete maps, each child is given a series
of small maps, each of which centers about a familiar square, store, or
public building. Then, from this simple beginning, the child fills in
the surrounding streets and buildings. Newark geography begins in the
third grade with a description of the school yard and the surroundings
of the school lot. After all, what more simple geography could be
conceived than the geography that you already know. Borneo and
Beloochistan are abstractions except to the most traveled, but what
child has not noted the red bricks and ugly iron fences surrounding his
own school yard? Charity and geography both begin logically at home.
When in the later Newark grades the children are taught about Europe and
Australasia, they are taught on a background of the geography of yards,
alleys, squares, streets and playgrounds with which they are familiar.
Geography thus concretely presented, becomes comprehensible to even the
dullest mind.
III Playing at Mathematics
The passing system of elementary mathematics took the innocents through
addition, subtraction and the abatis of multiplication tables, until
every child was fully convinced that
Multiplication is vexation,
Division's twice as bad,
The rule of three perplexes me,
And practice drives one mad.
To-day arithmetic begins with life. The teachers at Gary organize games
in which the children are divided into two sides. Some of the children
play the game, while others keep score. Unconsciously, under the stress
of the most gripping of impulses--the desire to win--these little
scorekeepers learn addition. As they advance in the work, they take up
practical problems--measure the room for flooring and measure the school
pavement for cementing. At school No. 4, in Indianapolis, one of the
teachers wanted a cold-frame and a hot-bed for use in connection with
her nature work. The class in mathematics made the measurements; the
drawing class provided the plans; the boys in the seventh and eighth
grades dug the pit and constructed the beds.
The higher grade mathematics work in Indianapolis is extremely concrete.
Prices and descriptions of materials are supplied, and the children are
asked to compute given problems involving the buying of meats,
groceries, and other household articles; the cost of heating and
lighting the home; the cost of home furnishing; the construction of
buildings; cost-keeping in various factories; the management of the city
hospital; the taxation of Indianapolis; the estimation and construction
of pavement; and, generally, the mathematical problems involved in the
conduct of public and private business.
Mathematics is alive when it is joined to the problem of life. Well
taught, it becomes a part of the real experiences of childhood and
furnishes a foundation for the knowledge of later life.
IV A Model English Lesson
Of all subjects taught in the schools, English is the most practical,
because it is most used in life. We buy with it, sell with it, converse
with it, write with it, adore with it, and protest with it. English is
the open sesame of life in English-speaking countries. In some classes
the English period would be fascinating even for adults.
What experience could be more delightful than a visit to a third or
fourth grade room in which the children were writing original poems,
fables and stories! The monotony of routine English work was completely
broken down; the children were enthusiastic,--enthusiastic to such a
degree that they had all written poetry.
Just before Halloween the teacher had distributed pictures of a witch on
a broomstick, with a cat at her side, riding toward the moon. Each
child was called upon for an original poem on this picture. One boy of
eight wrote:--
There was an old witch
Who flew up in the sky,
To visit the moon
That was shining so high.
Another child improved somewhat upon the versification--
The witch's cat was as black as her hat,
As black as her hat was he.
He had yellow eyes which looked very wise
As he sailed high over the trees.
How many of you mature men and women could have done a better piece of
work than Dorothy Hall, nine and a half years old?
THE MOONLIGHT PEOPLE
When the stars are twinkling,
And the ground with snow is white,
And we are just awaking
For to see the morning light;
Little moonlight people
Are dancing here and there
O'er a snow white carpet,
Dancing everywhere.
This same class of little people, after learning Riley's "Pixie People,"
were asked to write down what they believed were the circumstances under
which Riley composed the poem. Their reasons varied all the way from a
dream of butterflies, to cornfields.
Seventh and eighth grade children in this same city (Newton, Mass.)
write books, the titles of which are selected by the children with the
approval of the teacher. "A Boy's Life in New York," "Fairy Stories,"
"A Book About Airships," "A Story of Boarding School Life," are a few of
the titles. Having chosen his title, the child outlines the work and
then begins on it, writing it week by week, illustrating the text with
drawings, illuminating and decorating the margins with water colors,
painting a tasty cover, and at last, as the product of a year's work in
English, taking home a book written, hand printed, hand illumined,
covered and bound by the author. Could you recognize in this fascinating
task the dreaded English composition and spelling of your childhood
days?
One eighth grade lad, who had always made a rather poor showing in
school, decided to write his book on birds. As he worked into the
subject it gradually got hold of him. In the early spring he found
himself, at half past four, morning after morning, out in the squares,
the parks and the fields, watching for the birds. He became absorbed in
writing his book, but at the same time the teachers of other subjects
found him taking additional interest in them. The whole tone of his
school work improved; and when, in May, he delivered an illustrated
lecture, before one of the teachers' meetings, on the birds of Newton,
he was triumphant. In less than a year he had vitalized his whole being
with an interest in one study.
"In his talk to the teachers," said Superintendent Spalding, "he showed
a deeper knowledge of the subject than most of the teachers present
possessed."
Those who remember with a shiver of dread the syntax, parsing, sentence
diagramming, paragraph dissecting, machine composition construction of
the grammar grades, should have stepped with me into the class of an
Indianapolis teacher of seventh grade English. The teacher sat in the
back of the room. The class bent forward, attentively listening while a
roughly clad, uncouth boy, slipshod in attitude, stumbled through the
broken periods of his ungrammatical sentences.
"And Esau went out after a venison," he was saying, "and Jacob's mother
cooked up some goat's meat till it smelled like a venison. And then
Jacob, he took the venison--I mean the goat's meat to Isaac, and Isaac
couldn't tell it wasn't Esau because"--so the story continued for two or
three minutes. When it was ended, the boy stood looking gloomily at the
class.
"Well, class?" queried Miss Howes, "has any one any criticism to make?"
Instantly, three-quarters of the class was on its feet.
"Well, Edward."
Edward, a manly fellow, spoke quietly to the boy who had told the story.
"Paul, you don't talk quite loud enough. Then you should raise and lower
your voice more."
Several of the class (having intended to make the same criticism) sat
down with Edward. The teacher turned.
"Yes, Mary."
"Paul, your grammar wasn't very good. You didn't make periods."
One by one, in a spirit of kindly helpfulness, criticisms were made.
When the children had finished, Miss Howes said:
"Paul, you did very well. This is your first time in this class, isn't
it?"
"Yes'm."
"Yes, Paul, you did very well; but, Paul"--and with care and precision
she outlined his mistakes, suggesting in each case ways of avoiding them
in the future.
Throughout the grades in Indianapolis the children have some oral
English work every day. When they reach the seventh and eighth years
this oral work takes on quite pretentious forms. Beginning with Aesop's
Fables, the children tell fairy tales, Bible stories, Greek legends,
Norse legends, animal stories, and any other stories that the teacher
thinks appropriate. Each child may select in the particular group of
stories whatever topic seems most interesting.
Each day has its written English work, too. On Monday, letters are
written and criticized; Tuesday is composition day; on Wednesday each
scholar writes a description of the day in a Season Journal; Thursday is
set aside for the revision and correction of compositions; and on
Friday, the letters for the following Monday are written. Wherever
possible, the subjects for written work are selected with reference to
the other studies which the child is taking.
V An Original Fairy Story
The work is arranged primarily to arouse interest. At Halloween, the
theme is timely, and one girl, Dorothy Morrison, selects as her title,
"How the Witch got the Black Cat for her Prisoner." Read this charming
fairy tale--an original piece of work by a girl of twelve:
"Years ago, when the witch rode her broomstick, no snarling
black cat accompanied her on her midnight rides. That wicked
person was always planning and plotting how to get some nice
young girl to go with her.
"At this time there lived a beautiful fairy, who was condemned
to death by a cruel magician, who had no reason to do so. This
good fairy, Eilene, finally decided to take the shape of a bird
and to fly through the tiny window of her prison to her old
friend, Mr. Moon.
"She did so, and when she arrived at her friend's home she
assumed the form of a fairy and entreated him to keep her safe
from the cruel clutches of the magician.
"He promised to do his best.
"The next Halloween, the witch, Crono, rode up to the moon and
on spying Eilene she exclaimed, 'Aha, just what I have been
looking for--a nice young maiden.'
"Eilene became frightened at first and clutched the moon's hand.
Just then Crono grabbed at her, but she was too quick for her,
for she changed herself into a bird and flew out of the reaches
of the witch.
"Shaking her fist at the girl she muttered, 'I will get you
yet.'
"Then the witch returned to her caldron and Eilene returned to
the moon. Mr. Moon then advised her to be careful for Crono
wanted her for her prisoner. She did not heed this because she
thought that she could outwit Crono with all her fairy power,
but she was mistaken, for Crono had more power than she. One
day, while sitting at the moon's knee, listening to the story of
how he got up in the sky, Eilene's hands and feet were tied, and
before Mr. Moon could help her, what little power that fat
personage possessed was taken from him.
"Crono transformed Eilene into a snarling black cat which now
always accompanies her on her Halloween rides when she tells the
grinning Jack-o'-Lanterns of how she captured Eilene.
"Because Mr. Moon loved Eilene so well, Crono gave him a picture
of the fairy, which he always keeps near him, and even to this
day, if we look up at the moon, we can see the picture of
Eilene. So let us remember that, although the black cat does
appear fierce, she is really good at heart."
VI The Crow and the Scarecrow
When corn was sprouting, "Crows and Scarecrows" was announced as a
topic, and one Irish lad, giving rein to his imagination, wrote:--
THE CROW AND THE SCARECROW
"Having a story to write concerning a crow, I decided to go to
the zoological gardens and seek an interview with one of the
species. Accordingly I went, and after passing numerous cages
containing all kinds of animals, I arrived at the bird cages.
Here in one cage all by himself I met Mr. Crow. He was a big
bird with coal-black feathers that glistened in the sunlight.
"I made a bow, explained my errand and asked for a story. He
cocked his head to one side, looked steadily for a few seconds
and then actually winked at me. 'Well, young man,' he said in a
throaty voice, 'you have certainly come to the right place. But
as it is near my lunch time I must be brief.
"'In the first place, I was the leader of as wild and
mischievous a band of crows as you ever heard tell of. There was
one particular farm in our territory we loved to visit. The
owner's name was Silas Whimple and he was the grouchiest, most
miserly man in the county. He lived alone and what part of the
ground that was tilled, he did it himself. As much to tease as
to eat, we would pay him an occasional flying visit, digging up
his newly planted seeds, nibbling at the young green shoots, or,
later on, scratching up his potatoes. All his shouting and
screaming did not scare us a bit. One day one of my companions
came winging with the news that Silas had a farm hand. I laughed
and said, "If there is another man on the farm then Silas
Whimple must be dead." Off we flew to investigate. Sure enough,
out in a patch of potatoes was a man. Watching him quite a
while, I saw he did not move or make a noise as Silas would. He
just stood still. I came down to take a closer look, when who
should come to the doorway but Silas himself. He was laughing
and shouting, "Now I have something to keep you away. The
scarecrow shall keep you from bothering me any more." He laughed
and laughed, but I watched my chance and flew behind this being
and scratched off his cap. Then the story was out. It was only a
straw man. I went back to my companions and explained, and
before evening we had picked the scarecrow to pieces. Next day I
was unfortunate enough to put my foot in a wire trap and then
they sent me up here for life.'
"At this moment his keeper came up with something to eat, so I
bade him good-bye and left."
English, in these classes, is so alive with interest that the children
write with ardor and read eagerly the literature which, improperly
handled, they learn so soon to despise.
The time-honored studies of the old curriculum may be charged with
interest if they are linked to life. The most irksome task has its
pleasant aspects. Even the three R's may be translated into current
thought.
VII School and Home
Even more significant for the future is the work which is being done in
a few cities to train girls for their chief work in life--homemaking.
The home schools at Indianapolis and Providence are, perhaps, typical.
The Indianapolis School Board bought a number of wretched homes near one
school in a crowded district. The boys in the school renovated the
homes, converting one into a rug shop, another into a mop factory, and
still a third into a shoe-shop. In these shops the children of the
school did their trade work. Another house was made into a model
home--(model for that quarter)--in which the domestic science department
was located. Of this home the girls took entire charge, living in it by
the day. There they were taught, by practical experience, the art of
homemaking.
The home school of Providence, Rhode Island, under the direction of Mrs.
Ada Wilson Trowbridge, has received nation-wide recognition. Six hundred
dollars, appropriated by the Board of Education, renovated and furnished
the flat on Willard Avenue in which the school is held.
The girls who elect to take work in the home school--the work is wholly
elective--may come on Monday and Tuesday, or on Wednesday and Thursday.
The hours are 4 to 6, or 7:30 to 9:30. On Friday, anyone comes who cares
to. The day pupils are from the grammar schools and the evening pupils
come from the factories and shops. Seventy-five names on the waiting
list of day classes indicate the popularity of the school.
"We try to keep the school like the homes from which these girls come,"
explained Mrs. Trowbridge, as she showed her tastefully arranged
apartment. "The girls in the Technical High School worked out the color
schemes, selected the patterns and bought the materials. We tried to get
things which were good looking and durable."
The three kinds of work, (1) Cooking, (2) Housekeeping, and (3) Sewing,
are carried on in rotation, a girl spending one entire afternoon at
cooking, the next at sewing and a third at housework. Thus each girl
does an afternoon's job in each subject. The cooking class studies
successively "breakfast," "lunch" and "dinner," in each case preparing
menus and cooking the food. A meal is served nearly every day. The
service falls to the housekeeping class, which is also responsible for
cleaning up, tending the furnace, washing, ironing and the like.
Included in this part of the work are a number of thorough discussions
of personal hygiene and home sanitation. To the sewing class, the girls
bring their home sewing problems. Certain classes darn stockings while a
teacher reads to them. Some girls make underclothing and dresses. The
beginners hem table cloths, napkins, towels, dustcloths, etc., for the
school. The classes are small (ten to fifteen) making individual work
possible.
"No, no," protested Mrs. Trowbridge, "we have no course of study, or
else, if you please, there are as many courses as there are girls. Each
girl has her problems and we aim to meet them."
The backyard, utilized as a garden, furnishes vegetables which the girls
cook and can. These vegetables, together with canned fruits, jellies,
jams and pickles, which the girls put up, give the school such an
excellent source of revenue that last year it turned over $15 to the
Superintendent of Schools.
The crowning work of the school was done in a bare upstairs room which
the girls papered and painted themselves. "Two of them have since done
the same thing with rooms at home," declared Mrs. Trowbridge, happily.
"Isn't that good for a start?"
The home school stays close to home problems, dealing with the facts of
life as the girls who come to school see them. It would hardly be fair
to expect more of any school.
VIII Breaking New Ground
The regular work of the public school has been supplemented, of late
years, by a number of significant innovations, of which the most
far-reaching is, perhaps, a medical inspection of schools which involves
a thorough physical examination of all school children by experts. By
this scheme, the defect of the individual child is corrected, and the
danger of widespread contagion or infection in the schoolroom is reduced
to a minimum.
Following these physical examinations, the children who are clearly
sub-normal are placed in special classes or special schools, where,
under the direction of specially fitted teachers, they do any mental
work for which they are fitted, in the interims of time between manual
activities. Weaving, woodworking, folding and similar employments hold
the attention of sub-normal children where intellectual work will not.
The special school, freed from the throttling grip of an iron-clad
course of study, studies the need of each child, and makes a course of
study to fit the need. Although the special school has been used for
incorrigibles, its real value rests in its care of the defective child.
Anaemic children and those who show a tubercular tendency are treated in
open air schools. In Springfield a special school was constructed. In
Providence an old building was employed. In all cases, however, the
windows are notable by their absence. The school supplies caps and army
blankets, a milk lunch in the middle of the forenoon and the afternoon,
and a plain, wholesome dinner at noon. A few months of such treatment
works wonders with most of the children. It seems only fair that the
sick school child should be treated to fresh air and full nutrition,
even though the well child is not so favored.
The open air school has borne fruit, however, in the establishment of
numerous open-window classes. Against these classes, there seems to be
only one complaint. The children are too lively. Fancy! They get a
supply of oxygen sufficient to stimulate them into life during school
hours. How tragic this must seem to the teacher who is in the habit of
calming the troubled spirits of her class by a generous administration
of closed windows and carbon dioxide.
A few cities are attempting to relieve underfeeding by the provision of
wholesome school lunches at cost. Buffalo leads in the work, with
Chicago, Philadelphia and a number of other cities trailing behind. When
you remember that the Chicago School Board reported that in the Chicago
schools there were "five thousand children who were habitually hungry,"
while "ten thousand others do not have sufficient nourishing food," you
will perhaps agree that the time has come for some action.
Among the liveliest educational movements of the day is that of
providing school children with a legitimate occupation and a convenient
place to be occupied outside of school hours. Chicago, with an unequaled
system of playgrounds, and Philadelphia, with a department devoted to
school gardens, are leaders in two fields which promise great things for
the future welfare of American city school children.
IX The School and the Community
Not content with doing those needful things involved in the education of
children of school age, the school is reaching far out into the
community. Night schools came first, as a means of education for those
who could not attend school during the daytime. Every progressive city
and town has a night school now, and the scholars who come after working
hours use the same expensive equipment that is furnished to the regular
classes. Machines, cooking apparatus, maps and blackboard all do double
duty. In the foreign quarters, particularly, the night schools attract a
large following of adults, eager to learn the language and ways of the
new land. Though many a one falls asleep over the tasks, who shall say
that the spirit is not willing?
Public lectures are being used more and more as a means of public
education. There is scarcely an up-to-date city that has not some public
lectures connected with its school or library system, while in a center
like New York, the Board of Education has established an elaborate
organization for the delivery of lectures in public school buildings
throughout the city. The lecture topics--widely advertised through the
schools and elsewhere--cover every field of thought.
Perhaps the whole movement of the schools to influence the community may
be summed up in the phrase, "A wider use of the school plant." Why
should not the schools be open, as they are in Gary, day and evening,
too? Why should the mothers and fathers not be organized into "Home and
School Leagues," meeting in the schools as they do on a large scale in
Philadelphia? Why should not the social sentiment of a community be
crystallized around its schoolhouse, as it has been in Rochester? Is it
better to have the children playing in the street in the summer time, or
in the school yards and playgrounds, as they do in Minneapolis and St.
Paul?
The billion dollars invested in the school plant must be made to yield a
return in broader social service with each succeeding year.
X New Keys for Old Locks
Nor have progressive educators been satisfied to change the methods of
teaching old subjects. More important still, they have introduced new
courses which aim to open larger fields for child experience. Hygiene,
nature study, civics, manual training and domestic science have all been
called upon to enrich the elementary school curriculum.
The nineteenth century physiology--names of muscles and bones, symptoms
of diseases and the like--has been replaced in the twentieth century
schools by a physiology which aims to teach that the body is worth
caring for and developing into something of which every boy and girl may
be proud. Beginning with nature study and elementary science, the
hygiene course in Indianapolis emphasizes, first, the care of the body
and then, in the seventh and eighth grades, public health, private and
public sanitation, etc. From nature and her doings, the child is led to
see the application of the laws of physiology and hygiene to the life of
the individual and of the community.
Nature study, elementary science, horticulture and school gardens have
taken their place, on a small scale, in all progressive educational
systems. There is an education in watching things grow; an education in
the sequence and significance of the seasons, which brick and cement
pavements can never afford.
Scattered attempts are being made to teach children the relation between
individual and community life. All of the seventh and eighth grade
children in Indianapolis visit the city bureaus--water, light, health,
fire and police. Trips to factories teach them the relation between
industry and the individual life, while social concepts are developed by
newspaper and magazine reading, book reading and class discussions of
the articles and books which are read. At election time they discuss
politics; they take up strikes and labor troubles; woman suffrage is
occasionally touched upon; and they are even asked to suggest methods of
making a given wage cover family needs.
The widespread introduction of domestic science and elementary manual
training renders any special discussion of them unnecessary. In some
instances, however, they are developed to a high degree. In Gary,
Indianapolis and Cincinnati, seventh and eighth grade girls make their
own garments, cook and serve meals to teachers or to other classes;
while in the advanced grades the boys make furniture, sleds, derricks,
bridges and telegraph instruments. Chair caning, weaving and clay
modeling are also widely used in the hand work of both boys and girls.
Fitchburg, Mass., has developed a Practical Arts School, paralleling the
seventh and eighth grades in the grammar school. The school includes a
Commercial Course, a Practical Arts Course, a Household Arts Course and
a Literary Course. The regular literature, composition, spelling,
mathematics, geography, history and science of the seventh and eighth
grades is supplemented by social dancing, physical training and music in
all of these courses; and in addition for the Commercial Course by
typewriting, shorthand, bookkeeping, business arithmetic and designing;
for the Practical Arts Course, by drawing, designing, printing, making
and repairing; for the Household Arts Course, by cooking, sewing,
homekeeping and household arts; and for the Literary Course, by
half-time in modern language and the other half in manual training and
household arts.
At the end of the sixth year (at about twelve years of age) children in
Fitchburg may elect to take this school of Practical Arts instead of the
regular grammar school course. The results of this election are
extraordinary. The practical course was planned for the children who
expected to leave school at fourteen, or at the end of the eighth grade.
Curiously enough, all types of children have flocked into it. Sons of
doctors, lawyers and well-to-do business men; boys and girls preparing
for college, and children who must stop school in a year or two are all
clamoring for admission. In spite of the fact that pupils are kept in
these schools six hours a day instead of five, as in the other schools,
the attendance at the end of two years has outrun the accommodations.
The children who leave this applied work and enter the high school are
apparently not a whit less able to do the high school work than those
children who have come up through the regular grades.
The new education is broader than the old, because it accepts and adopts
any study which seems likely to meet the needs or wants of any class of
children or of any individual child. The storehouse of the mind is
to-day unlocked with educational keys of which educators in past
generations scarcely dreamed.
XI School and Shop
For the present, at least, there are a great number of children who must
leave school at fourteen, whether they have completed the grammar grades
or not. With them, the problem of education shapes itself into this
question: "Shall they be well or badly prepared for their work?" The
boys enter the shops and mills; the girls marry and make homes. Are they
to be efficient workers and housekeepers? The answer rests largely with
the schools.
Ohio has provided, for the solution of the problem, a continuation
school law, modeled on the more extensive plans of the German
Continuation School system. The law reads: "In case the board of
education of any school district establishes part-time day schools for
the instruction of youths over fourteen years of age who are engaged in
regular employment, such board of education is authorized to require all
youths who have not satisfactorily completed the eighth grade of the
elementary schools to continue their schooling until they are sixteen
years of age; provided, however, that such youths, if they have been
granted Age and Schooling Certificates and are regularly employed, shall
be required to attend school not to exceed eight hours a week between
the hours of 8:00 A. M. to 5:00 P. M. during the school term."
Cleveland and Cincinnati, acting under this authority, have established
continuation schools. In Cleveland they are voluntary; in Cincinnati
they are compulsory. In both cities, children between fourteen and
sixteen may attend school, during factory time, for four hours each
week.
Little enough, you protest. Yes, but it is a beginning.
The child in such a continuation school may choose between academic
work, art, drawing and designing, shop-work, millinery, dressmaking and
domestic science. In some cases a continuation course is possible. Thus
far the system has worked admirably.
Equally significant are the Massachusetts Vocational Schools, which are
intended to provide a technical training for the boys who wish to pass
directly from the grammar school into industry.
Under the Massachusetts law, the state pays half of the running expenses
of any vocational school which is organized with the approval of the
State Director of Vocational Training. The Springfield school, under
the supervision of E. E. MacNary, is housed on one floor of a factory
building. The boys may not come at an earlier age than fourteen and Mr.
MacNary insists, where possible, that they complete the regular seventh
grade work before coming to him. His school, which includes pattern
making, cabinet work, carpentry and machine shop work, is run on the
"job" plan. That is, a boy is assigned to a job such as making a
head-stock for a lathe. The boy makes his drawings, writes his
specifications, orders his material and tools, estimates the cost of the
job, makes the head-stock and then figures up his actual costs and
compares them with the estimated cost. Not until he has gone through all
of the operations, may he turn to a new piece of work.
"We tried the half-day and half-day in shop plan," Mr. MacNary explains,
"but it was not a success. It disturbed the boys too much. So we hit on
the plan of letting each boy divide his time as he needed to. When he
has drawing and estimating to do, he does that and when the time for
lathe work comes, he turns to that. It breaks up any system in your
school, but it gives the best chance to the individual boy."
One day a week all of the boys meet the teachers in conference to
discuss their work and to make and receive general suggestions.
The boys who come to Mr. MacNary's school are boys who would probably
leave the regular school at fourteen. Many boys come because they are
discouraged with the grade work, and of these "grade failures," many
succeed admirably in the new school. During the two years of this
shop-work, the boys get a training which enables them to take and hold
good positions in the trades. As one foreman said, "A boy gets more
training in the two years of that school than he gets in three years of
any shop."
These are but an index of the myriad of attempts which cities are making
to bring school and shop together, to train for usefulness, to start
boys in life.
XII Half a Chance to Study
There are other ways in which the school may help. For example, in the
case of homework. On the one hand, homework for the sake of homework may
be eliminated. On the other hand, children may be given half a chance to
read and study.
One day in a squalid back street I glanced through the window of a
corner house. The front of the house was a grocery store. The room into
which I happened to look was a general dwelling room. On one side stood
the kitchen stove; the floor was littered with children and rubbish, and
just under the window a child sat, her book before her on the
supper-covered dining table, doing multiplication examples--her
homework. The well-to-do child, less than ten squares away, who bent
over her problems in a quiet room, could scarcely appreciate the
difficulties attached to homework, when the family lives in three rooms
and does everything possible to reduce the bill for kerosene.
There is just one place in every neighborhood where the child can find
light, air and quiet--that place is the school. Why then should the
school not be open for the child? "Why, indeed," asked the schoolmen of
Newark, N. J. Passing from thought to deed, they opened schools in the
crowded neighborhoods four nights a week from 7 to 9.
Into these evening study classes, in charge of advisory teachers, any
child might come at all. The city librarian, generous in co-operation,
lent library books in batches of forty, for two months at a time.
Evening after evening, the boys and girls assemble and with text-books
or library books, do those things in the school which are impossible in
the home. For what other purpose should the school exist?
XIII Thwarting Satan in the Summer Time
Another project, equally effective, involves the opening of schools
during the summer time. The farmer needed his boy for the harvest, so
summer vacations became the established rule, but the city street needs
neither the boy nor the girl at any time of the year. Idleness and
mischief link hands with street children and dance away toward
delinquency. Then why not have school in the summer time? Why not?
The answer takes the form of vacation schools. In most cases the work of
the vacation school is designed primarily to interest the child. Games,
stories, gardening, manual work of various sorts, excursions and similar
devices are relied upon to maintain interest.
A few cities, like Indianapolis, Worcester and Gary, on the other hand,
have established vacation schools in which children may make up back
work, or pursue studies in which they are especially interested.
As a means of bringing below-grade children up to the standard of
affording an opportunity for the able children to advance more rapidly
in school, and, in general, as a means of keeping city children usefully
occupied during the summer months, the vacation school has won its
place.
Newark, making an even more radical departure from tradition, runs some
schools twelve months in the year. Edgar G. Pitkin, principal of a
school in an immigrant district, first put the idea into practice. At
the end of the regular session in June, he announced to his children
that school would start again on the following Monday. Fearfully he
approached the building. The streets about the school seemed unusually
deserted that Monday morning. Suppose no one should be there! When the
gong sounded, however, more than seven-tenths of the two thousand
children belonging in the school were in their places. The attendance
that summer was ninety-two per cent, and the promotion ninety-five per
cent. During the three summer months there were exactly two cases of
discipline.
"You see what happened," Mr. Pitkin explained. "All of the bright
ambitious children came back and the loafers stayed away. From that
picked crowd nothing but good work could be expected. There was no
attendance officer on duty, but the children were regular. Order was so
good that on hot days we put up the sashes between rooms, and on the
second floor, where four class-rooms were thrown into one, four classes
worked industriously under four teachers without the least friction."
This school has been organized on a year schedule. If the children come
four terms each year instead of three, they will reduce the time between
the first and eighth grades by one-third, which means a saving to them
and to the school. Since it is the able children who come, the twelve
months' school affords them an opportunity to go quickly through work on
which the slower classmates must hold a more moderate pace.
XIV Sending the Whole Child to School
It is a long step from the school of--
Reading, and writing and 'rithmetic,
Taught to the tune of the hickory stick,
to the school which aims at the education of the whole child; yet that
step has been attempted in Gary, Indiana. There, perhaps more
consistently than anywhere else in the United States, the school
authorities are providing for the whole child in their schools. Many
schools have manual training and domestic science; many schools have
school gardens and playgrounds; many schools have nature work in the
parks and squares; but in no school that I have visited did I find a
more conscious effort to unite mental and physical, hand and head, and
vocation and recreation, in one complete system.
This result, which to some may sound unbelievably like the impossible,
is accomplished first, by engaging experts to teach such special
subjects as botany and physical training; second, by abolishing grade
promotions and permitting each child to advance in his subject when he
is ready to do so; third, by keeping the school open morning, afternoon
and evening during practically the entire year; fourth, by making the
work of interest to each individual child. Perhaps this matter of
interest sums up better than any other the spirit of the Gary schools.
The system aims to make the school so attractive that children will
prefer to be there rather than to be anywhere else.
How is this done? Take the case of John Frena, who occupies a place of
no particular distinction in the fifth year of the Gary schools. John's
school day (from 8:30 A. M. to 4:00 P. M.) is divided equally between
regular work (reading, writing, geography, etc.) and special work (play,
nature study, manual training and the like). A day of John's school life
reads like this:
_First period_--Playground, games, sports and gymnastics, under
the direction of an expert.
_Second period_--Nature study, elementary science and physical
geography.
_Third and fourth periods_--Reading, writing, spelling and
language.
_Lunch hour._
_Fifth period_--Playground (as before).
_Sixth period_--Drawing and manual training.
_Seventh and eighth periods_--History, political geography and
arithmetic.
During his school day, John has played, used his head and his hands, and
alternated the work in such a way that no one part of it ever became
irksome.
Next week, music and literature will be substituted on John's program
for drawing; the following week manual training will replace one period
of play. The four special subjects (drawing and manual training, music
and literature, nature study and science, and plays and games) rotate
regularly. Each day, however, includes four periods of this special work
and four periods of regular work.
Such a plan sounds complicated. In reality, it is very easy. The
gymnasium teacher stays in the gymnasium, the drawing teacher in the
drawing room. In the regular work, there are forty children in each
class. For science and manual training these classes split in two. At
the end of each period, or of each two periods, depending on the
subject, the children pass from one room to another. While this system
brings them under several teachers each day, it enables them to take a
subject like art with one teacher for twelve years.
Meanwhile our little friend John has shown himself bright in language,
but slow in arithmetic. Immediately he is advanced in language, and
perhaps placed in a lower arithmetic class. He may even be transferred
to another teacher for special arithmetic work. The system permits this
flexibility because it allows each teacher, an expert in her own field,
to shape her work to suit her pupils.
Better still, if John cannot master his arithmetic in the regular
classes, he may attend voluntary classes on Saturday, at night, or
during the summer months. The schools afford him every chance to keep up
in every subject, and if he cannot make his way in this subject or in
that, he works in the fields which are open to him, doing what he can to
make his course a success.
John, in the schools of Gary, is John Frena, with all of John Frena's
limitations and possibilities. The Gary school seeks to bridge the
limitations, expand the possibilities, and give John Frena a thousand
and one reasons for believing that if there is any place in the world
where he can grow into a complete man, that place is the Gary school.
XV Smashing the School Machine
One of the oft-repeated complaints against the old education arose from
the iron-clad system of promotion which once in each year, with
automatic precision, separated the sheep from the goats, saying to the
sheep, "go higher," and to the goats, "repeat the grade."
For the sheep, the system worked fairly well, at least that once; but
for the goats, it was a tragedy. The child who had failed in one out of
six branches, side by side with the child failing in six out of six,
repeated the year.
The new education affords several remedies for this situation. Of these
the most generally known is promotion twice yearly. While this affords
considerable relief, it is greatly improved upon in Springfield, Mass.,
by the division of each grade into three divisions--advanced, normal
and backward. These divisions the teacher handles separately so that
when promotion time comes the children who have shown special aptitude
are prepared to go into the next grade. Meantime the children have been
constantly changing from one division in the class to another.
Perhaps the most generally practicable plan for relieving the mechanical
features of promotion is found in Indianapolis, and even more intensely
in Gary, where children are promoted by subjects rather than by grades.
In Indianapolis, the child entering the sixth grade, takes all English
with one teacher from that time until the end of the eighth grade. If
the child is strong in English, he advances rapidly. If he is weak in
English, the teacher gives him special attention. Learning each pupil's
capabilities in her particular branch, the teacher is able to give the
individual child, over a series of years, the help which his special
case requires.
In Gary the departmental idea is carried through the entire school
system. In the Emerson School, for instance, children may take eighth
grade work in English and high school work in nature study or history.
The departmental work is strengthened in Gary, in Indianapolis, and in a
number of other cities, by afternoon work, Saturday classes and vacation
schools. Here, a child interested in any phase of the school work or
desiring to make up work in which he is deficient, may spend his spare
time to his heart's content.
An even greater individuation of children exists in Fitchburg and
Newton, Mass., and in Providence, R. I. Children from the country and
foreign children who have difficulty with their English, together with
any other children who do not fit into any grade, are placed in an
ungraded class. A typical ungraded class of fifty pupils contained
Germans, Russians, Greeks, French, Italians and Polish children, who
were unable to speak English on entering the school. The ages of these
children varied from eight to fifteen. As soon as the ungraded children
appear to be fitted for any special grade, they are transferred.
This ungraded work is supplemented by "floating teachers," who are
located in each school for the purpose of dealing with special cases.
The case of any child who, for this reason or that, cannot keep up with
the work in a particular subject, is handed over to these teachers. Thus
individual attention is secured in individual cases.
XVI All Hands Around for An Elementary School
These progressive educational steps are not isolated instances of
success in new lines, nor are they incompatible with good work. They may
be welded into a unified system, aglow with the real interests of real
life. It is possible to correlate the old standard courses and the new
fields in such a way that the child will gain in interest and in life
experience.
Nowhere is this possibility better illustrated than in the elementary
schools of Indianapolis. Take as an example School No. 52, which is
located in an average district. The children, neither very rich nor very
poor, possess the advantages and disadvantages of that great mass known
as "common people."
The children in grades one to three, inclusive, in addition to studying
the three R's, spend thirty minutes each day learning to measure, fold,
cut and weave paper. In grades four and five, an hour and a half per
week is devoted to simple weaving, knife-work, raffia work, sewing and
basketry. Grade six has four and a half hours of similar work each week,
while in grades seven and eight, the pupils are occupied for one-third
of their entire school time in art work, book-binding, pottery work,
weaving (blankets and rugs), chair caning, cooking, sewing and printing.
"But how is it possible?" queries the defender of the old system. "How
can the necessary subjects be taught in two-thirds of the time now
devoted to them? Are we not already crowded to death?"
Yes, crowded with dead work, the proof of which lies in the fact that
the children who devote a third of the time to apply their knowledge get
as good or better marks in the academic work than the three-thirds
children. That, however, is not the really important point. This course
of study is valuable because it gives a rounded, unified training.
This is how the course is organized. The school life is a unit, into
which each department fits and in which it works. The spelling lesson is
covered in the classroom and set in type in the print shop. The grammar
lesson consists in revising compositions with regulation proofreaders'
corrections. The art department designs clothes which are made in the
sewing classes. The drawing room furnishes plans for the wood and iron
work and designs for basketry and pottery. In the English classes, the
problems of caning and weaving are written and discussed. The
mathematical problems are problems of the school. Children in the
sixth year keep careful accounts of personal receipts and
expenditures--accounts which are balanced semi-weekly. The boy in one
woodworking class makes out an order for materials. A boy in another
class makes the necessary computations and fills the order. All costs of
dressmaking and cooking materials are carefully kept and dealt with as
arithmetic problems. For the older boys, shop-cards are kept, showing
the amount and price of materials used and the time devoted to a given
operation. These again form a basis for mathematical work. The whole is
knit together in a civics class, which deals with the industrial,
political and social questions, in their relations to the child and to
the community.
Best of all, the things which the children talk and figure about, plan
and make, have value. The seventh and eighth year girls make clothes
which they are proud to show and wear; they cook lunch for which some of
the teachers pay a cost price. The baskets are taken home. Eighty chairs
are caned by the children each year. The bindery binds magazines, songs
and special literature. The boys make sleds and carts, hall stands,
umbrella racks, center tables and stools. They make cupboards and
shelves for the school, quilting-frames on which the girls do patchwork.
Rags are woven into rag carpets and sold. The print shop prints all of
the stationery for the school. Each can of preserves, in the ample stock
put up by the girls, is labeled thus:
"PRESERVED PEACHES"
with labels printed by the boys.
June, 1912, witnessed a triumph for the entire school. The children in
the upper class had taken up the study of book-making. They even went to
a bindery and saw a book bound and lettered. Then, to show what they had
learned, they composed, set up and printed--
A BOOK
ABOUT BOOKS
by
June 8 A Class.
This book of twenty-eight pages, tastefully covered and decorated,
contained three half-tone cuts which the children paid for by means of
entertainments; an essay by Hazel Almas on "The History of Books," one
by Adele Wise on "The Printing of a Book," and one by Ruth Kingelman on
"The Art of Bookbinding"; the program of the commencement exercises, and
a collection of poems and wise sayings.
The children went further and invited Mr. Charles Bookwalter, the owner
of the bookbindery where they had learned their lesson, to come and talk
to them on Commencement Day. He came, made a splendid address and went
away filled with wonder before these achievements of fourteen-year-old
grammar school children.
Each grade has a special subject of study. This year the boys in the
Eighth A are studying saws; the boys in Eighth B, lumbering; the girls
in Eighth A are investigating wool and silk; while in Eighth B the girls
are studying cotton and flax. This "study" means much. Not only do the
children discuss the topics, write about them, read books on them, and
do problems concerning them, but they visit the factories and study the
processes from beginning to end.
When the problem of pins came up, the teacher desired several copies of
a description of pin-making, so she asked the class to write out a
letter to the manufacturers. The class, left to select, decided to send
this letter:
SCHOOL NO. 52,
Indianapolis, Ind., Oct. 11, 1912.
AMERICAN PIN COMPANY,
Waterbury, Conn.
_Dear Sirs_: On seeing the pamphlet on pins you have been kind
enough to send us, I have decided to write and ask you if you
would kindly send us about twenty of your pamphlets on the
making of pins.
We are in the eighth grade, and expect to go out into the world
in January, and your process of making pins will be spread
abroad to the whole world.
We are very anxious to know more about the making of pins, and
we are very much interested in your process.
Yours sincerely,
RUTH HARRISON.
Need I say that the American Pin Company sent immediately twenty
duplicates of the desired pamphlet?
The work in this school where thought and activity go hand in hand, is
done by the regular grade teachers--done, and done well. They are as
enthusiastic as the pupils. Four years' trial has convinced them. On the
day that I visited the school, I walked into a classroom where twenty
girls were busy sewing. The order was perfect. Every one was busy. The
teacher was nowhere in evidence.
"That teacher," explained the principal to me later, "is off at a
teachers' meeting. She left these girls on their honor to work. You see
the result."
I saw and marveled. Yet why marvel? Was not this a typical product of
the system which knits thought and activity into such a harmonious,
fascinating whole as the most fortunate adults find in later life? Out
of such a school may we not well develop harmony and keen life? Never
yet have men gathered grapes from thistles, but often and often have
they plucked from fig trees the figs which they craved and sought.
XVII From a Blazed Trail to a Paved Highway
Pages might be filled with descriptions of similar successes, yet I
think that my point is already sufficiently established. How can we
disagree regarding so plain a matter? The path of educational progress
has led away from the three R's along a trail, blazed at first by a few
men and women who dreamed and stepped forward hesitatingly. Often they
retraced their steps, discouraged, and gave over the little they had
gained. By degrees, however, the trail was blazed. The way became
clearer. After all it was possible to connect education with life.
Slowly the light of this truth dawned upon men's minds. Gradually the
way opened before them. One by one they trod the path, bridging the
worst defiles, straightening the road, cutting out the thickets and
filling in the morasses, until at last, behold the way, explored by
hesitating, derided pioneers, no longer a trail, but a broad highway.
Others have gone--their name is legion--and have succeeded. The three
R's are but the beginning of an adequate elementary curriculum. You, in
your own city, with your own teachers, can vitalize your elementary
schools. You can teach the children to use their heads and hands
together, and thus show them the way to a deeper interest in your
schools, and a larger outlook on their work in life.