KEEPING THE HIGH SCHOOL IN STEP WITH LIFE
I The Responsibility of the High School
"Every pupil of high school maturity should be in high school atmosphere
whether he has completed the work of the grammar grades or not," insists
Dr. F. E. Spaulding. "Perhaps the high school course of study is not
adapted to the needs of such children. Well, so much the worse for the
course of study. The sooner the high school suits its work to the needs
of fourteen and fifteen-year-old boys and girls, the sooner it will be
filling its true place in the community." Such opinions, voiced in this
case by a man whose national reputation is founded on his splendid work
as superintendent of the school system of Newton Mass., bespeak the
attitude of the most progressive American high schools.
The high school is not a training ground for colleges, nor is it a
repository of classical lore. As an advanced school it differs no more
from the elementary school than the six cylinder automobile differs from
the four cylinder car. Though its work is more complex, like the
elementary school it exists for the sole purpose of helping children to
live wholesome, efficient lives.
II An Experiment in Futures
Children who get stranded in the seventh or eighth grades may have
failed in one subject or in several. Over age and out of place, they
lose interest, become discouraged and at fourteen drop out of school to
work or to idle. In Newton, as in every other town, there were a number
of just such children whom Mr. Spaulding decided to get into the high
school.
"There they will be among children of their own age," he explained.
"They may take a new line of work and acquire a real interest."
"But they will fail in their high school work as they have failed in
their grade work," protested the doubters.
Mr. Spaulding, smiling his quiet, genial smile, tried his experiment all
the same. From the seventh and eighth grades of the Newton schools he
picked the boys and girls who were fifteen or more at their next
birthdays. These pupils, seventy in all--forty girls and thirty
boys--were transferred, without examination, into the high school.
"These youngsters were going to drop out of school for good in one year,
or two at the outside," explained Mr. Spaulding, "so I made up my mind
that during that year at least they should have some high school
training. They went to the regular high school teachers for their
hand-work; but for their studies, I put them in charge of three capable
grade teachers, who were responsible for seeing that each child was
making good. I put it to the grade teachers this way: 'Here are a lot of
children who have got the failure habit by failing all through their
school course. Unless we want to send them out of our school to make
similar failures in life, we must teach them to succeed. Take each child
on his own merits, give him work that he can do and let him learn
success.'
"We gave these boys and girls twenty hours a week of technical work
(drawing, designing, shop-work, cooking and sewing) and ten hours a
week of academic work (English, mathematics, civics and hygiene). Shop
costs, buying of materials and simple accounting covered their
mathematics. Those were the things which would probably be most needful
in life. The boys got deeply interested in civics, and we let them go as
far and as fast as they pleased. With the girls we discussed hygiene,
dressing and a lot of other things in which they were interested.
"When those children entered the school they were boisterous and rough.
The girls dressed gaudily, reveling in cheap finery. By Christmas, to
all appearances, their classes differed in no way from the other high
school classes. They all brushed their hair. The boys were neater and
the girls were becomingly dressed.["]
Most of the seventy children stayed through the year. Twenty-seven of
the forty girls and seventeen of the thirty boys entered the regular
high school course the next fall. They were thus put into competition
with their former seventh and eighth grade comrades, although they had
had only two-fifths as much academic work as the regular eighth grade
pupils. There was the test.
Could these derelicts, after one year of special care, take their places
in the regular freshman high school work? After the end of the first
quarter, a study made of the 800 children in the high school showed that
on the average there were fifty-four hundredths of one failure for each
scholar. Among the twenty-seven girls from the special classes, however,
there was but seventeen-hundredths of a failure for each girl, or
one-third as many failures as in the whole school. The boys made an even
better showing. Of the entire seventeen, only one boy failed, and in
only one subject.
III The Success Habit
"We had given them something they liked and could do," Mr. Spaulding
concluded. "They succeeded a few times, got the success habit, learned
to like school, went into the regular high school course and succeeded
there."
As an illustration of the way in which the new plan works, take the case
of James Rawley. James was in a serious predicament. Time after time the
court had overlooked his truancy and misdoings, but James had taken the
pitcher once too often to the well, and the open doors of the State
Reform School stared him grimly in the face.
"It will be best for him in the long run," commented the judge. "Each
month of this wild life makes him a little less fit to keep his place in
the community. He has had his last chance."
Yet there was one ray of hope, for James lived in and out of Boston, a
city located near the Newton Technical High School. This fact led
James's custodians to propose to the judge that he give James one more
trial, this time in the Newton Technical High School. The judge, also of
the initiated, agreed to the suggestion, and James, a dismal eighth
grade failure, entered the Newton Technical High School in one of the
special transfer classes.
Just a word about James. He began life badly. His mother died when he
was young; and his father, a rather indifferent man, boarded the boy out
during his early years with an aunt, who first spoiled him through
indulgence, and then, inconsistently enough, hated him because he was
spoiled. Growing up in this uncongenial atmosphere, James became
entirely uncontrollable. He was disagreeable in the extreme, wild and
unmanageable.
The people with whom James was boarding grew tired of his continued
truancy and he was placed on a farm near Boston. There, too, he was
discontented, dissatisfied and disobedient. Time after time he ran away
to Boston. He went on from bad to worse, falling in with vagrants,
learning their talk and their ways, acquiring a love for wandering and a
distaste for regularity and direction. Taken into custody by the
Juvenile Court, and placed on probation with a family outside of Boston,
James again ran away to mingle with a crowd of his old associates in
Boston. It was at this point that the court decided to send him to the
Reform School. It was likewise at this time that some friendly people
took him in charge, found him a home in Newton, and started his life
anew in the Newton Technical High School, which James entered with a
special transfer class. Promoted to the regular freshman class on trial,
James has renewed his interest in education and bids fair to make his
way through the high school.
James is doing well in the Newton Technical High School. Though he does
not like all of the regular high school work, he has a full course, and
is working at it persistently. Heretofore school has never appealed to
him--in fact, he hated it cordially--but the school at Newton offered
him such a variety of subjects that he was able to find some which were
attractive. Since then he has been working on those subjects.
There are many cities in which every school door would have been closed
to James, because he did not fit into the school system, but the
superintendent of the Newton schools believes in making the school fit
the needs of the boy. A fantastic theory? Well, perhaps a trifle, from
one viewpoint; nevertheless, it is the soul of education.
IV The Help-Out Spirit
As a result of this special promotion policy, there are practically no
over-age pupils in the grammar schools of Newton. Instead of square pegs
in round holes, the Newton High School can boast of sixty or seventy
children who come, each year, in search of a new opening for which they
are technically not ready, but into which they may grow. After coming to
the high school, two-thirds of them find an incentive sufficient to lead
them to continue with an education of which they had already wearied.
The Newton High School, recognizing its obligation to serve the people,
strains every nerve to enable boys and girls to take high school work.
The printing teacher pointed to his class of twenty.
"Only three of them do not work on Saturdays and after school. They
couldn't come here if they didn't work. Hiney, there, was in a bakeshop
all day at three and a half a week. We got him a job afternoons and
Saturdays that pays him three dollars. That tall fellow will send
himself through high school on the six dollars a week that he gets from
a drug store where he works outside of school hours."
"We aim," added Mr. Spaulding, "to do everything in our power to make it
possible for the boys to come here. If their parents cannot afford to
send them, we find work for them to do outside of school hours."
That is virile work, is it not? And the result? During the past eight
years the number of pupils in the Newton schools who are over fourteen
has increased three times as fast as the number of pupils who are under
fourteen. The school authorities have searched the highways and byways
of the educational world until one-quarter of the school children of
Newton are in the high schools.
V Joining Hands with the Elementary Schools
The same result which is attained informally at Newton is accomplished
more formally by the organization of the junior high schools which have
sprung up in Berkeley and Los Angeles, California; Evansville, Indiana;
Dayton, Ohio, and a number of other progressive educational centers. The
child's school life under this plan is divided into three parts--the
elementary grades (years one to six), the junior high school (years
seven to nine) and the high school proper (years ten to twelve). The
break, if break there must be, between the elementary and the high
school, thus comes at age twelve and at age fifteen, instead of, as
formerly, coming at age fourteen, when the temptation to leave school is
so strong. Then, too, the sharp transition from work by grades to work
by departments is made easier because the junior high school combines
the two, leading the pupil gradually over from the grade method to the
department method.
Though the junior high school has so great a popularity, its work is
eclipsed by the still more revolutionary program of those educators who
advocate the complete abolition of any line between the elementary and
the high school, and the establishment of a public school of twelve
school years. This plan, coupled with promotion by subjects rather than
by grades, replaces the machine method of promotion and the gap between
elementary and high schools by an easy, natural progression adaptable to
the needs of any student, from the end of the kindergarten to the
beginning of the university.
Superintendent Wirt of Gary, Indiana, has established such a
twelve-year course in the Emerson School. The grades, numbered from one
to twelve, are so arranged that a girl may take half of her subjects in
school year eight (last grammar grade) and the other half in school year
nine (first high school grade). In order to make the harmony more
complete, Mr. Wirt places the elementary rooms, containing the second
grade pupils, next door to the rooms which shelter high school seniors.
On this side of the hall is a kindergarten; directly across from it is a
class in high school geometry.
The same plan, on a larger scale, has been adopted by I. B. Gilbert,
principal of the Union High School, Grand Rapids, Michigan, which houses
twelve hundred students.
"We have obliterated the sharp line of distinction between the grades,"
declared Mr. Gilbert. "The school, which is a new one, has a very
complete equipment--physical, chemical, and biological laboratories, two
cooking rooms, dressmaking and millinery rooms, an art department, a
woodworking shop, a forge room and a machine shop; the print shop,
though not yet installed, is to be put in this year. By bringing
children of all grades to the school, we place at the disposal of grade
pupils apparatus ordinarily reserved for high school pupils only. At the
same time, our equipment is in constant use and the cost of establishing
a separate industrial department or school for the grades is eliminated.
"These are merely the surface advantages, however. The real gain to the
students is in other and most significant directions. First, the
abolishing of rigid grading allows each child to follow his own bent. At
the beginning of the adolescent period, when the old interests begin to
lag, some new ideas must be furnished if the child is to be kept in
school. We provide that new stimulus by beginning departmental work
with the seventh year (at twelve or thirteen). Then, if the child shows
any particular preference for any line of work, he may pursue it. From
the seventh grade up, promotion is by subjects entirely, and not by
grades. If a student elects art, she may follow up her art work for the
next six years; similarly, a boy may follow shop-work, or a girl
domestic science or millinery. In order to fit the school more quickly
to the pupils' need, we make a division at the beginning of the eighth
grade of those pupils desiring to take academic work and those desiring
to take industrial work in the high school. The latter group does extra
sewing or shop-work twice each week.
"Again, we take all over-age and over-size pupils from the schools in
this section of the city, and by placing them in ungraded classes,
permit them to take the work which they can do. Here is a boy who cannot
master grammar. That is no reason why he should not design jewelry, so
we give him fourth year language, and take him into the tenth year class
in jewelry design. Yes, and he makes good, doing excellent craft work
and gradually pulling up in his language. By this means we make our
twelve grade school fit the needs of any and every pupil who may come to
it.
"We have a natural educational progress for twelve years," concluded Mr.
Gilbert. "There is no break anywhere. Instead of making it hard to step
from grade eight to grade nine, we interrelate them so intimately that
the student scarcely feels the change from one to the other. The result?
Last June there were 152 pupils in our eighth grade. Of that number 118,
or more than three-quarters of them reported in the ninth grade this
fall. We have cancelled the invitation to quit school at the end of the
eighth grade and our children stay with us."
VI The Abolition of "Mass Play"
Thus the dark narrow passage-way from the elementary to the higher
schools is being widened, lighted, paved and sign-posted. In some school
systems it has disappeared altogether, leaving the promotion from the
eighth year to the first year high school as easy as the step from the
seventh to the eighth grade. After the children have reached the high
school, however, the task is only begun. First they must be
individualized, second socialized, and third taught.
"The trouble with the girls," complained Wm. McAndrew, in discussing his
four thousand Washington Irvingites, "is that they have always been
taught mass play. Take singing, for instance. A class started off will
sing beautifully all together, but get one girl on her feet and she is
afraid to utter a note. The grade instruction has taught them group
acting and group thinking. I step into a class of Freshmen with a 'Good
morning, girls'.
"'Good morning,' they chorus.
"'Are you glad to see me, girls?'
"'Yes sir,' again in chorus.
"'Do you wished I was hanged?'
"'Yes sir,' generally,--
"'Oh, no sir,' cries one girl who has begun to cerebrate. The idea
catches all over the class, and again the chorus comes,--
"'Oh, no sir, no sir.'
"So it goes. The bright girl takes her cue from the teacher and the
class takes the cue from the bright girl. They must be taught to think
and do for themselves."
Everyone interested in school children should visit the Washington
Irving School (New York) and watch the truly wonderful McAndrew system
of individualization. In the office, you are cordially greeted. You wish
to see the school? By all means! But no teacher is detailed to serve
you. Instead, a messenger goes in search of the Reception Committee. Two
of the school girls, after a formal introduction, start your tour of
inspection, if you are fortunate enough to be there at nine, with a
visit to one of the assembly rooms, where, in groups of three or four
hundred, the girls enjoy three-quarters of an hour each morning. The
word "enjoy" is used advisedly, for, unlike the ordinary assembly, this
one is conducted entirely by the girls.
Each morning a different chairman and secretary is selected, so that in
the course of the year every girl has had her turn. The chairman, after
calling the meeting to order and appointing two critics for the day,
reads her own scripture selection, and then calls upon some girl to lead
the salute to the flag. The minutes of the previous day's meeting are
then read, discussed and accepted. After fifteen minutes of
singing--singing of everything from "Faust" to "Rags"--the chairman
calls on the two critics for their criticism of the conduct of that
day's meeting. Some special event is then in order. On one Monday in
December Miss Sage, head of the Biology Department, described the
Biological Laboratory in the new school building. After she had
finished, the chairman rose.
"Will anyone volunteer to tell in a few words the principal points which
Miss Sage made?"
Three girls were promptly on their feet, giving, in clear, collected
language, an analysis of the talk.
After you, as a guest, have been conducted to the platform, introduced
to the chairman, and given a seat of honor, the chairman turns to the
assembly, with the announcement,--
"Girls, I wish to introduce to you our guest of this morning."
Instantly the whole assembly rises, singing blithely, "Good morning,
honored guest, we the girls of the Washington Irving High School are
glad to welcome you."
The proceedings having come to an end, the chairman declares the meeting
adjourned and you look about, realizing with a start that the
girls--freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors--have spent
three-quarters of an hour in charge of themselves, and have done it with
interest, and with striking efficiency. Continuing your journey, you
find the process of individualization everywhere present. Here a girl is
in front of a class, directing the calisthenics which precede each class
hour. There a girl is standing at the front of the room, leading singing
or quizzing in geometry.
"Yes, it was a wrench," Mr. McAndrew admits. "You see, the teachers
hated to give up. They had been despots during all of their teaching
lives, and the idea of handing the discipline and a lot of the
responsibility of the school over to the girls hurt them dreadfully, but
they have tried it and found that it works."
VII Experimental Democracy
The high school pupil, after discovering himself, must next determine
his relation to the community. It is one thing to break down what Mr.
McAndrew calls the W. I. (Wooden Indian) attitude. It is quite another
to relate pupils to the community in which they live. Yet this, too, can
be done. The school is a society--incomplete in certain respects, yet in
its broad outline similar to the city and the state. The social work of
the school consists in showing the citizens of the school-community how
to enjoy the privileges and act up to the responsibilities of
citizenship. The Emerson School at Gary and the Union High School at
Grand Rapids, organized into complete schools from the first grade to
the end of the high school, are miniature working models of the
composite world in which all of the children will live.
Particularly effective work has been done on the social side of high
school organization at the William Penn High School (Philadelphia),
where Mr. Lewis has turned the conduct of student affairs over to a
Student Government Association, directed by a Board of Governors of
eighteen, on which the faculty, represented by five members, holds an
advisory position only. The Association gives some annual event, like a
May day fete, in which all of the girls take part. It assumes charge of
the corridors, elevators, and lunch rooms; grants charters to clubs and
student societies, and assumes a general direction of student affairs.
"It really doesn't take much time," Irene Litchman, the first term
(1912-13) President, explained. "We like it and we're proud to do it. We
used to have teachers everywhere taking charge of things. Now we do it
all ourselves." True enough, Madame President, and it is well done, as
any casual observer may see. Similar testimony is to be had from the
sick girls who have received letters and flowers, from the children
whose Christmas has been brightened by Association-dressed dolls, and
from the girls whose misunderstandings with members of the faculty have
been settled by the Student Association.
Each class in the Washington Irving High School (New York) gives one
reception a term to one of the other classes. In addition, an annual
reception and play are given by the entire school. The plays for these
occasions are written, costumed and staged by the students. Last year
the reception was given to Mrs. Dix, wife of the Governor of New York,
and the play "Rip Van Winkle" was acted by eighteen hundred girls. Such
organizations and activities lead high school students to feel social
relationships, and to assume responsibilities as members of the social
group.
VIII Breaching the Chinese Wall of High School Classicism
A high school education is included, by progressive communities, in the
birthright of every child. Since only a small part of these children are
preparing for college, the school must offer more than the traditional
high school course. The principal of a great Western high school which
housed nearly two thousand children, pointed to one room in which a tiny
class bent over their books. "That is probably the last class in Greek
that we shall ever have in the school," he said. "They are sophomores.
Only two freshmen elected Greek this fall, and we decided not to form
the class." Time was when Greek was one of the pillars of the high
school course of study. In this particular school, splendidly equipped
laboratories, sewing rooms, and shops have claimed the children. The
classics are still popular with a small minority, but the vast majority
come to learn some lesson which will direct their steps along the
pathway of life.
Everywhere the technical high school courses are gaining by leaps and
bounds. The William Penn High School (Philadelphia), established in
1909, is to-day enrolling four-fifths of the girls who enter
Philadelphia high schools. In some cities, technical work and classical
work are done in the same building; in other cities, they are sheltered
separately, but everywhere the high school is opening its doors to that
great group of school children who, at seventeen or eighteen, must and
will enter the arena of life.
The technical high school has not gained its prestige easily, however.
The bitter contests between the old and the new are well portrayed by
one dramatic episode from the history of the Los Angeles High School.
Mr. John H. Francis, now superintendent of the schools of Los Angeles,
was head of the Commercial Department in the Los Angeles High School.
Despite opposition and ridicule the department grew until it finally
emerged as a full-fledged technical high school, claiming a building of
its own,--a building which Mr. Francis insisted should contain
accommodations for two thousand students. The authorities
protested,--"Two thousand technical students? Why, Los Angeles is not a
metropolis." Mr. Francis gained his point, however, and the building was
erected to accommodate two thousand children. When the time for opening
arrived it was discovered, to the astonishment of the doubters, that
more students wanted to come into the school than the school would hold.
When Mr. Francis announced that students up to two thousand would be
admitted in order of application, excitement in school circles ran high,
and on the day before Registration Day a line began to form which grew
in length as the day wore on, until by nightfall it extended for squares
from the school. All that night the boys and girls camped in their
places, waiting for the morning which would bring an opportunity to
attend the technical high school.
Though less dramatic in form, the rush toward technical high school
courses is equally significant. It is not that the old high school has
lost, but that the new high school is drawing in thousands of boys and
girls who, from lack of interest in classical education, would have gone
directly from the grammar school into the mill or the office.
IX An Up-to-Date High School
The modern high school is housed in a building which contains, in
addition to the regular class rooms, gymnasiums, a swimming tank,
physics, and chemical laboratories; cooking, sewing, and millinery
rooms; wood-working, forge, and machine shops; drawing rooms; a music
room; a room devoted to arts and crafts; and an assembly room. This
arrangement of rooms presupposes Mr. Gilbert's plan of making the high
school, like the community, an aggregation of every sort of people,
doing every sort of work.
Physical training in the high school has not yet come into its own,
though it is on the road to recognition. All of the newer high schools
have gymnasiums, but the children do not use them for more than thirty,
forty, or fifty minutes a week. Sometimes the work is optional. The West
Technical of Cleveland, with its outdoor basket ball court, its athletic
grounds and grandstand, in addition to the indoor gymnasium, offers a
good example of effective preparation for physical training. William D.
Lewis of the William Penn High School sends all students who have
physical defects to the gymnasium three, four, or even five times a
week, until the defects are corrected. These exceptions merely serve to
emphasize the fact that we have not yet learned that high school
children have bodies which are as much in need of development and
training as the minds which the bodies support.
Several real attempts are being made to teach high school boys and girls
to care for their bodies, as they would for any other precious thing.
Hygiene is taught, positively,--the old time "don'ts" being replaced by
a series of "do's." In many schools, careful efforts are being made to
give a sound sex education. The program at William Penn, in addition to
the earlier work in biology and in personal and community hygiene,
includes a senior course, extending through the year, in Domestic
Sanitation and Eugenics. The course, given by the women in charge of
Physical Training, deals frankly with the domestic and personal problems
which the girls must face. The time is ripe for other schools to fall in
line behind these much-needed pioneers.
The course of study in the modern high school is a broad one. Latin may
always be taken, and sometimes there is Greek. French, German and
Spanish, Mathematics, History, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Civics
are almost universally offered on the cultural side of the curriculum.
In addition, girls may take dress designing, sewing, millinery and home
economics; boys may take wood-working, forge work, machine-tool work,
electricity, printing, and house designing; and both boys and girls have
an opportunity to elect art, arts and crafts work and music.
In some schools the combination of subjects group themselves into
definite courses, as in the Newton High School, which offers,--
The Classical Course.
The Scientific Course.
The General Course.
The Technical Course.
The Technology-College Course.
The Extra Technical Course.
The Fine Arts Course.
The Business Course.
Other schools, like the Indianapolis Manual Training School, permit the
pupil, with the advice of the principal, to make his own combination of
subjects. Whether prepared by the school or by the pupil, however, the
courses lead to college, to normal schools, to advanced technical
schools, or to some definite vocation. On one subject, progressive high
schools are in absolute agreement,--the course of study must furnish
both culture and technical training in a form which meets the needs of
high school children.
X From School to Shop and Back Again
The tendency toward vocational training finds its extreme expression in
the so-called Industrial Co-operative Course in which boys and girls
spend part of their time in school and part in the factory. Note this
legal document. "The party of the second part agrees to place, as far as
possible, the facilities of his establishment at the disposal of the
School Committee for general educational purposes along industrial
lines." In these words, the individual manufacturers of Providence,
Rhode Island, who are co-operating with the school board for the
establishment of the industrial co-operative course in the Technical
High School, place their mills and factories at the disposal of the
school authorities. The plan instituted at the suggestion of the
manufacturers themselves has won the approval of all parties during the
two years of its operation.
The Providence experiment differs from those of Cincinnati and
Fitchburg, Mass., in two respects,--in the first place, the school
authorities have a written contract with the manufacturers. In the
second place, they may decide what the character of the shop-work shall
be. The boy who elects to take the industrial co-operative course in
Providence spends ten weeks in a shop at the end of his freshman year.
Apprenticeship papers are signed, the boy gives a bond, which is
forfeited if he drops the course without a satisfactory reason, and for
three years he spends 29 weeks in the shop and 20 weeks in school,
alternating, one week in the shop, the next in the school. For their
shop-work the boys receive ten cents, twelve cents, and fourteen cents
an hour during the first, second, and third years, respectively. Though
this wage is not high, it is sufficient to enable the boys to earn
enough during the year ($175 to $250) to pay for their keep at home
during their high school course.
At the present time sixty-two Providence boys are working part time in
machine shops, in drafting rooms, in machine tool construction, in
pattern making and in jewelry making. In order to keep the scheme
elastic, the school offers to form a class in any trade for which
sixteen or more boys will apply.
The part-time course is primarily educational and secondarily
vocational. Since it may determine the character of the shop-work, the
school is in a position to insure its educational value. Again, the
academic training is still received in the school, while the technical
work, heretofore done in school rooms, is carried on in the fields of
real industry. As a supplement of the old time system of apprenticeship,
the part-time school is an undoubted success, because it adds to shop
apprentice work all of the essential elements of a high school
education.
XI Fitting the High School Graduate Into Life
The high school has not done its full duty when it has educated the
child,--it must go a step farther and educate him for something; then it
must go a step beyond that and help him to find himself in his chosen
profession. This vocational guidance which is filling so large a place
in public discussions, may mean guidance to a job or it may include
guidance in the job. In either case children must be led to decide upon
the kind of work for which they are fitted before they leave the school.
Jesse B. Davis, Principal of the Central High School at Grand Rapids,
furnishes a brilliant example of this vocational directing. Mr. Davis
begins his work through the theme writing and oral composition of the
seventh and eighth grades. The purpose of the pupils' reading and
discussion is to arouse their vocational ambition and to lead them to
appreciate the value of further education and training for life. This
study upon the part of the pupil is supplemented by talks given by Mr.
Davis, prominent business and professional men and high school boys who
have come back to finish their education after a few years of battle
with the world.
The high school classes in English are small--never more than
twenty-five, and the work is so arranged that the teacher may get a good
idea of the capability of each student. To facilitate this, the English
Department has prepared a series of essay subjects in the writing of
which the pupil gives the teacher a very definite idea of himself.
Beginning with "My Three Wishes;" the pupil next writes a story about
his ancestry; an essay on "My Church," which explains his belief; an
essay on "The Part I'd Like to Play in High School;" a study of "My Best
Friend," and finally an essay on "The Work of My Early School Days,"
which shows the pupil's likes and dislikes. In addition to this, the
teacher notes any physical defects--eyesight, hearing, and the
like--which might incapacitate the pupil for particular vocations. This
data, together with reports from all departments on neatness,
sincerity, ambition and other qualities is filed in the office.
During the second term of the freshman year papers are written on
approved biographies, dealing in each case with the qualities,
opportunities and education of the great one. These essays, read in
class, form the basis for a compilation of the elements necessary for
success in life.
The work of the sophomore year begins with the preparation of a class
list of professions, semi-professions and trades,--a list which is
checked with the permanent list kept by the department. Succeeding
classes thus discover the breadth of the vocational field, besides
adding to the knowledge accumulated by their predecessors.
After completing this list, the pupils write a letter to the teacher,
choosing a vocation and assigning reasons for the choice. When the pupil
cannot decide, the teacher assigns the vocation apparently best suited
to the pupil's capacity. An essay on his vocation is then prepared by
each pupil, showing first, what kind of activity and what
responsibilities the vocation involves; second, its social, intellectual
and financial advantages; third, the corresponding disadvantages;
fourth, the qualifications and traits necessary to success in the
vocation; and fifth, the reasons for choosing the vocation. Then, under
the advice of the teacher, the pupil writes to some man well known in
the profession of his choice--some lawyer, mining engineer, doctor or
contractor--explaining what he is doing, and asking for advice. The
generous responses given by men in all walks of life do much to confirm
the pupil in his faith, or to make him see that his choice is an unwise
one.
At the beginning of the junior year those pupils preparing for college
send for the catalogues of the colleges which stand highest in the line
of work in which they are interested, and write an essay, giving the
comparative value of the courses offered by the various institutions. By
this means judgment takes the place of sentiment in the selection of a
college. While the college preparatory pupils are engaged in writing on
their college courses, pupils who are going directly from the high
school into business write an elaborate essay on the kind of preparation
necessary for their vocation, the qualities requisite for success in it,
and the best place and means of entering it. Studies of the proper
relations between employer and employed occupy the second half of the
junior year.
The work of the senior year deals, in the first half, with the relation
between a citizen and his city; the second half, with the relation
between a citizen and the state. The pupil has thus passed from the
narrower to the broader aspects of his work in life.
The effectiveness of the work is enhanced by the organization of the
high school boys into a Junior Association of Commerce (in an exact
imitation of the Grand Rapids Association of Commerce), which meets in
the rooms of the latter on Saturday morning; transacts business; listens
to an address by a specialist, and then visits his works, if he is
engaged in a local industry. On the Saturday before Thanksgiving (1912),
for example, Mr. VanWallen, of the VanWallen Tannery Co., gave the boys
a talk on the tanning industry, then took them through his tannery,
where they saw the processes of manufacture. The business men of Grand
Rapids, who are highly pleased with this practical turn in education,
co-operate heartily in every way. The boys are urged, during the summer
months, to take a position in the work which they have chosen, start at
the bottom and find out whether their beliefs regarding the industry
are true. Then, too, the Free Library makes a point of collecting books
and articles on various professions and vocations, and placing them
prominently before the students. The English Department (with five
periods a week) does other work, but none so vital to the pupils' lives
as this of directing them in the thing which they hope to do when they
leave school.
The school may do more than direct the pupils in the choice of their
occupations, by actually securing positions for them. The head of the
Commercial Department in the Newton (Massachusetts) High School has a
card for every student, giving on one side a record of class work for
four years, and on the other side a statement of positions and pay of
the graduate. New pupils are placed; old pupils are offered better
opportunities. Employers are interviewed in attempts to have them
promote graduates. Through this system, Mr. Maxim keeps in constant
touch with the labor market and with graduates of his school.
Certainly the high school must prepare students for life. Whether, in
addition, it shall constitute itself a Public Employment Bureau, finding
positions for students, keeping in touch with their careers, and
assisting in their advancement, is a matter yet to be determined.
XII The High School as a Public Servant
Will the high school retain its present form? Probably not. If the
Berkeley-Los Angeles plan prevails, there will be three steps in the
public schools,--from elementary to junior high, to high school. If the
Gary plan wins, there will be twelve years of schooling, following one
another as consecutively as day follows night. Whether the Los Angeles
or the Gary plan is adopted, one thing seems reasonably certain,--the
high school will keep in close touch with life.
The high school is securing a surer grip on the world with each passing
day. It is reaching out toward the grades, calling the pupils to come;
it is reaching out into the world, making places there for them to
occupy. The modern high school has ceased to be an adjunct to the
college. Instead, it is a distinctive unit in educational life, taking
boys and girls between the ages of fourteen and nineteen and relating
them to the world in which they must live.
The era of the high school course is being succeeded by the era of the
high school boy and the high school girl. First, last, now and always,
the boys and girls, not the course, deserve primary consideration.
Whatever their needs, the high school must supply them if it is to
become a public servant, responsible for training children of high
school age in the noble art of living.