THE OYLER SCHOOL OF CINCINNATI
I An Experiment in Social Education
On the west side of Cincinnati, separated from the main part of the town
by railroad yards, waste land and stagnant water, surrounded by
factories and a myriad of little homes, stands the Oyler School. "Can
any good thing come out of Nazareth?" queried a doubter. Answers, in
bell tones, the philosopher, "If a man can build a better house or make
a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he fix his home in the
woods, the world will find a path to his door." Because Oyler has built
a better school in a better community the world sits at Oyler's feet to
learn of its experiment in social education.
The first time that I went to the Oyler School I encountered a Committee
of Manufacturers. A Committee of Manufacturers in a public school during
business hours! These men had met to talk with the school principal over
the location of a library, which the entire community had worked to
secure. When the time came to go before the Park Board over in the
center of the city, to secure a playground near the Oyler School, the
local bank furnished automobiles, and dozens of business men, leaving
their offices, took the opportunity to endorse the work of the school,
and to second its demands that play space be given to West End children.
The manufacturers have become interested because in less than a decade
the Oyler School has changed the face of the community, creating
harmony out of discord, and order out of chaos.
The struggle of Oyler is the story of a man, a delivered message, a
thriving, enthusiastic school and a reborn neighborhood. Many years
ago--about twenty to be exact--a young man named Voorhes was made first
assistant in a West End school. Like other young men who go into school
work he applied himself earnestly to his tasks, but unlike most of them
he did some hard thinking at the same time. Among other things he
thought about the relation between the school and the community,
wondering why the two were so completely divorced from one another. Then
the problem was focused on one concrete example--a boy named John,
nearly sixteen years old, who had succeeded in getting only as far as
the eighth grade. John, who had never taken kindly to language or
grammar, began thinking pretty seriously toward the end of his last year
in the grammar school. He tried, he struggled, but the syntax was too
much for him. After all, it was not his fault, and he complained
bitterly against a punishment in the form of "leaving down" for
something which he could not help. His training was so inadequate that
he was entirely unable to pass the high school examinations which, in
those days, were like the laws of the Medes and the Persians.
"I am safe in saying that he did not know the difference between a verb
and a preposition," said Mr. Voorhes, "but during the grammar lesson he
could make a drawing of the face of the teacher that was in no sense a
caricature. This phase of his ability gave me a cue to what might be
done for him. Knowing both the superintendent and the principal of the
Technical School, I talked the situation over with them, begging them,
with all the persuasive power at my command, to take the boy,
forgetting his shortcomings, and magnifying his peculiar talents, which
I felt sure were considerable along mechanical lines. They acceded to my
request, giving John a place in the school, to which he walked three
miles back and forth daily for three years. For many years John has been
superintendent of the lighting plant of a large city, and his experience
has always stood out before me as a terrible rebuke to the then dominant
educational regime, which could offer John nothing but a sneer. These
facts took such a vital hold on me, seeming to reinforce so fully the
thought that the industrial abilities which I had acquired back on the
farm proved of incalculable value to me, that the resolution to promote
industrial education became a fixed part of my educational creed. The
memory of that lesson in educational equity kept the need for industrial
training constantly in my mind, till I had opportunity to give it
expression in the Oyler School."
John bespoke the needs of the community by which Oyler was surrounded.
It was so different from other communities. There were the ugly
straggling factory buildings, the miserable homes, their squalid
tenants, and worst of all there were the rough, boisterous, over-age,
uninterested, incorrigible boys and girls, who flitted from school to
home, to street, to jail, and then, gripped by the infirm hand of the
law, in the form of a Juvenile Court probation officer, or a truant
officer, they came back to school unwillingly enough to begin the cycle
all over again.
"As for discipline," remarked one of the city school officials, "the
school hadn't known it for years, the probation officer couldn't keep
the children in school and the Juvenile Court couldn't keep them out of
jail. Even the majesty of the law is lost on children, you know." The
children taunted the police; the police hated the children; the home
repelled; the factory called, grimly; child labor flourished, and the
school despaired.
II An Appeal for Applied Education
Such were the conditions when Mr. Voorhes became school principal.
Grinding factories, wretched homes, parental ignorance, social neglect,
educational impotence--few men could enter such a field of battle with a
light heart, but Mr. Voorhes did.
What, think you, was his first move? He addressed to the heads of all of
the factories in the neighborhood a letter, suggesting the establishment
of a manual training department in connection with the grade work of the
Oyler School. "As I become more and more familiar with existing
conditions in our school district," he wrote, "I am convinced that a
Manual Training Department would be of vital importance to the school
and to the general welfare of the community. Such departments are being
looked upon to-day as necessary adjuncts to modern school equipment.
"Our school is being drained constantly of its life force by the
adjacent factory demands, and if we could send pupils forth with trained
hands as well as trained minds they could render a much more useful
service, which, in time, would not only show itself in more profitable
returns to employers, but must also tend toward a higher standard of
culture in the neighborhood, and a longer continuance in school by our
pupils.
"I know of no other section of the city where the actual need should
make a stronger appeal for support than here. Anything you may do will
be greatly appreciated."
"You can imagine my surprise," says Mr. Voorhes, "when during the next
few days my mail brought me a hearty response of checks and pledges
amounting to nearly a thousand dollars." Manual training was assured!
No! Not yet. The Board of Education reached the conclusion that manual
training in the grades was undesirable. "With the exception of $85 which
I was told to use as I saw fit the checks and pledges were alike
returned to the donors. That $85 gave a piano to our kindergarten."
That failure back in 1903 was the seed-ground of later success. The
community was interested to the extent of a thousand dollars at least.
The manufacturers were not only interested in education, but were
willing to support it financially. There was a change of administration.
Mr. F. B. Dyer became Superintendent of Schools and at once met the
situation by establishing a manual training center in the Oyler School.
III Solving a Local Problem
The end was not yet, however. The truant officers and the Juvenile Court
were still busy keeping Oyler children out of mischief and in school.
The conventional type of manual training--one period per week in the
sixth, seventh and eighth grades--was not holding the pupils.
"The children were not getting enough manual work to establish either
habit or efficiency," Mr. Voorhes comments, "besides, this work reached
only to the sixth grade. At this time there were in the school fifty
boys and girls below the fifth grade who were from two to five years
behind their normal classes. That is to say, they were--most of them--of
that unfortunate class that has seen more trouble in a few years than
most of us see in a lifetime. I was constantly asking myself: 'Where do
these folks come in?' 'What is our school doing to help their function
in life?' 'Are we really of any assistance to them after all?' 'Is it
worth their while to come to our school?' My sympathy for the pupils was
constantly growing, and I went at last in desperation to the
superintendent with a plan for a revolution in the organization of my
school, a revolution that I was sure would meet the needs of the
community and one upon which I was willing to stake my reputation if I
had any."
At this point it is worth remembering, parenthetically, that Cincinnati
school men have a habit of going about their school problems in very
much that spirit, beginning by sizing up the needs of the community,
continuing by becoming imbued with an idea of the community needs and
ending by presenting this idea to the school authorities and
getting--within bounds--carte blanche to make their schools serve the
locality in which they are situated.
This was Mr. Voorhes's experience. He was told to go ahead and make
good--a permission of which he availed himself in an astoundingly short
space of time by introducing a system of applied education, aimed to
meet the needs of the children who attended the Oyler School.
"There is a peculiar situation," said Mr. Dyer, "and it needs peculiar
handling. You have only one problem to solve--that of the west end. Go
ahead!" Mr. Voorhes did go ahead with a plan under which all children in
the sixth and seventh grades were given three periods a week in
laboratories and shops. Subnormal pupils in the third, fourth and fifth
grades were to have four and one-half hours (one school day) for applied
work each week. In order to give special help to backward pupils they
were sent in small groups to the seventh and eighth grade teachers while
their classes were doing applied work. Below-grade children go to the
eighth grade teacher for special work in arithmetic and geography, and
the seventh grade teacher for English and history. In this way the
backward children from the lower grades have special training by the
best equipped teachers in the school.
The eighth grade pupils give one-fifth of their time to applied work.
During the year the boys have, in addition to the shop-work, twenty
lessons in preparing and cooking plain, substantial meals. To make this
"siss" work palatable to the sterner sex much of it takes the form of
instruction in camp life--cooking in tin cans and other handy home-made
devices. In a community where boys have always been trained to regard
home work as menial, but where the absence of servants makes a "lift"
from the husband or brother such a Godsend to the wife at odd times, the
value of giving grade boys a taste for cooking can hardly be
over-estimated.
The boys also receive twenty lessons in the simpler forms of
sewing--darning, hemming, sewing on buttons. At the same time the girls
are taught the use of simple tools.
IV Domestic Science Which Domesticates
Beginning with the second grade the girls have domestic science while
the boys are at manual training. This domestic science has a truer ring
to it than most of the teaching which passes under that name. The
children at Oyler have a peculiar need for domestic science, because in
many of the homes mother works out, and even when she is not away her
knowledge of domestic arts is so rudimentary that she can impart little
to her daughters. So it comes about that the Oyler School seeks to teach
the girls all that they would have under intelligent direction in a
normal home.
Once each week they cook and once they sew, devoting from one-eighth to
one-fifth of their entire time to these activities. By way of
preparation for both cooking and sewing they are carefully trained in
buying. They must make the dollar go a long way--buying in season the
things cheapest at that time and preparing them in a way to yield the
maximum of return. For example, they are called upon in January to buy a
50 cent dinner for six persons. Laura Wickersham's cost list is:
Soup meat $0.20
Can of tomatoes .10
Spaghetti .05
Cheese .05
Bread .05
Butter, etc. .08
----
$0.53
Gus Potts, a mere boy, makes this suggestion:
Meat $0.20
Potatoes .05
Cabbage .05
Bread .05
Milk .04
Butter .05
Coffee .05
----
$0.49
In their cooking laboratory they learn to cook simple foods, one thing
at a time, until they reach the upper grades, where they must prepare
entire meals on limited allowances.
The sewing is equally practical. The girls learn to patch, darn, hem and
make underclothing and dresses. Then, going into homes where no
intelligent needlework has ever been done--where frequently a darning
needle is unknown--they teach the mother and older sisters how to sew,
until whole families, under the influence of one school child, improve
their wardrobe and reduce their cost for clothing. Certain sewing days
in school, called darning days, are sacred to the renovation of worn-out
garments which the girls bring from home.
The Oyler system may not turn out artists in dress design--it has no
such aim. The children who come to its class-rooms are ignorant of the
simplest devices known to civilization for the making of comfortable
homes. The domestic science courses are organized to take care of their
children by teaching them to be intelligent home-makers.
V Making Commercial Products in the Grades
No less practical is the work of the boys in the shops, since the great
majority of them will enter factories. The shop-work is designed to
familiarize them with the ideas underlying shop practice. Instead of
making useless joints and surfaces the boys turn out finished,
marketable products. The eighth grade boys, with the aid of the
instructor, have built a drill-press from the scraps of machinery which
were found lying about. Now they are at work on an engine. Elaborate
products you will say, for eighth grade boys, yet these boys are likely
interested, they do their task with zest, and linger about the shop
after school hours are over--anxious to complete the jobs which the
day's work has begun.
Boys in grades two to six made three dozen hammer handles for use in the
high school machine shops. Of forty-two pieces of rough stock there were
produced thirty-six handles, a record which some commercial shops might
envy. These same boys made a book and magazine rack, of rather elaborate
design, and an umbrella rack for each of the schools in Cincinnati.
These racks, displayed in the offices of the various principals, would
stand comparison with a high grade factory product. The boys are now
engaged in making a desk book-rack (a scroll saw exercise) for every
school teacher in Cincinnati. When they have finished there will be more
than a thousand.
Besides these routine class exercises the Oyler boys are privileged to
make anything which appeals to them and for which they can supply the
material. The school machines are theirs, subject to their use at any
time. Taking advantage of this, the boys sharpen the home knives and
hatchets, make axe handles, umbrella racks, hall stands, stools, sleds,
cane chairs, and repair or make any product which fancy or home
necessity may dictate.
VI A Real Interest in School
Let no one infer that the academic branches are neglected at Oyler. Far
from it, they are taught with consummate skill by a corps of teachers
who enjoy the work because they find the children interested. Strange to
relate, an interest in school came in at the front door with Mr.
Voorhes' new plan for applied education. The wild boys and dishevelled
girls of the West End, who had erstwhile hated school, came now to
participate in school activities with an interest seldom surpassed in
public or private schools.
"You see," Mr. Voorhes remarked, "a day a week in the shop or
laboratories is just about enough to keep down the high spirits of the
older ones, and at the same time give them an applied education of which
they feel the value. That one day of practical work did the trick. It
made the other four days of academic work taste just as good as pie."
Mr. Voorhes' plan arrived. It won the interest of the children and later
with the assistance of the Mothers' Club and the kindergarten it won the
sympathy of the community.
VII The Mothers' Club
Like all of the other school centers in Cincinnati, Oyler has a
kindergarten and a Mothers' Club, around which the change in community
feeling has centered, until Mr. Voorhes describes them as "the most
important influence that ever came into our school." Yet the
kindergarten here, as elsewhere, has had a life and death grapple for
existence. In the West End, dominated by its conservative, German
atmosphere, the pleas for kindergartens fell on deaf ears. At last,
after much preparation, a meeting of mothers and children was held for
the purpose of forming an organization; at the meeting there were
thirteen children and five mothers, and all antagonistic, or at best
suspicious.
"I went around and played with every one of those children," said Mr.
Voorhes, "talking to the mothers, and trying to persuade them that this
was not failure, but merely the forerunner of success. The next day I
went into every grade, saying to the children:
"'What was the matter? Mother did not come to the Mothers' Meeting
yesterday.'
"'Oh, she couldn't leave the baby.'
"'Leave the baby! Why, of course not. No one expected her to leave the
baby. Tell her to come and bring the baby along.'"
So another meeting was held, and another to which the babies were
brought--some women bringing as many as three, who were too young to go
to school. At one Mothers' Meeting, after the club had been well
organized, there were twenty women, listening, discussing and nursing
babies, all at once.
If the beginnings of the experiment were discouraging the results have
more than offset the original disappointment. At the last meeting (in
January) seventy of the eighty-five paid up members were present,
intelligent, eager, interested, participating heartily in the
discussions. It has cost years of labor, but these mothers have reached
the point where they can talk intelligently about the children and their
needs.
"Only yesterday," said Miss Phelps, Kindergarten Director, "one mother
said to me: 'I used to be the most impatient woman with my children--I
simply couldn't stand it when they refused to do what I told them. The
other day my mother said to me, "You're about the most patient woman I
ever saw. What's done it?" And I said to her: "Well, mother, I do not
know of anything except those folks at the kindergarten, which all
helped me to look at children in a very different way."'"
Through the Mothers' Meetings the mothers have come to feel that they
are co-operating with the teacher and the school. Those mothers who have
children in the upper grades as well as in the kindergarten go to the
grade teachers too, seeking advice, or making suggestions. They have
learned to feel that they are an essential part of the educational
plan, and their enthusiastic interest tells of the advantages gained by
this co-operation.
The Oyler Mothers' Club has been the center of the movement to clear up
the community. Through them and through the grades refuse has been
cleaned and kept from the streets. The club maintains, out of its fund,
a medicine chest at the school, which is used by the visiting nurse. It
has cleaned up the children, and that is no small item.
"Back in 1904," says Mr. Voorhes, "I had five hundred of the children
vaccinated in my office, and such dirt and vermin I never saw! Nearly
every child had the high water mark on his wrist, and their clothes and
bodies were filthy. They didn't know a bathtub from a horse trough; they
don't now for the matter of that, because there are scarcely a dozen
houses in this section that have bathtubs, but the children are clean."
Each year the old members of the Mothers' Club bring in the new mothers,
saying to Miss Phelps: "This is my mother, I brought her," "This is
mine!" with a delighted satisfaction in having added something to the
club. The kindergarten, filling two rooms, is thriving, and the
kindergarten teachers, visiting and advising in the home, are cordially
welcomed everywhere.
VIII The Disappearance of "Discipline"
"Discipline," smiled Mr. Voorhes, "no, we don't mention the word any
more. Five years ago the discipline problem in this school was more
serious than in any school in town. We couldn't handle it, not even with
a club. To-day the discipline looks after itself."
The disciplining of an undisciplined school may sound like an immensely
difficult task. Wrongly essayed it would be. Rightly directed it
becomes the merest child's play. The teachers have disciplined the
school--disciplined it through kindness--and here, again, the
inspiration may be traced to the Mothers' Club and the kindergarten, for
it was in the kindergarten that the first real attempt was made to bring
this school into closer relations with the home by home visiting. Little
by little the example told on the grade teachers, who went to see the
children when they were absent; nor was it long before a custom grew up
in the school, by virtue of which a teacher who wished to visit one
absent child, might pick her own time to make her visit. If perchance
the psychological moment was during school hours, she went then, while
another teacher or the principal took her place.
Among the many illustrations of the efficiency of this system one stands
out strongly. A boy had been away for a week, sick with rheumatism, when
his teacher decided to call and see him. She went hesitatingly, however,
for this boy had been rough and troublesome all through school, but
particularly to her. At last her mind was made up. She visited the boy
and came away radiant, overjoyed at the cordial reception he had given
her. Again she went, and the mother, opening the door with a glad face,
said:
"Come right in, Tom's been looking for you."
"Is he better?" the teacher asked.
"Yes, pretty much, but he said that he would get well right quick when
you came to see him again."
Does anyone wonder that the boy should feel so kindly over attentions to
which he was not accustomed? Is it strange that he should have come back
to school with a firm resolve to be decent to his teacher?
Discipline? There is no longer a problem of discipline. The teachers
are enthusiastic over the work, because they can see its results in the
changed homes and lives about them. The children engaged in occupations
which they enjoy and sensing the efforts of the school in their behalf,
discipline themselves by being frank and hearty in work or in play.
Mr. Voorhes is not surprised at this transformation. The plan on which
he staked his reputation was a simple one, based on the idea of serving
a community which he had studied carefully, by providing for it an
education that met its needs. Though revolutionary from an educational
viewpoint, the plan succeeded because it was socially sound--because it
linked together the school and the community, of which the school is a
logical part.
IX The Spirit of Oyler
Oyler has a motto, a very shibboleth, "The school for the community and
the community for the school." Not only do its principal and teachers
believe that the school must center its activities about the needs of
the community in which it is located, but they put their belief into
practice, studying the community diligently and seeking to find an
answer for every need which it manifests. Out of this spirit of service
has grown up a warmth of feeling and interest among the teachers seldom
surpassed anywhere.
"When I came to Oyler I felt about it as Sherman felt about war," says
Mr. Voorhes. "Now I would not trade places with any school man in
Cincinnati. The teachers feel the same way. Never yet have we had a
teacher who wanted to leave. Each one has her class, that is enough. We
have no problem of discipline now. The children and their parents are
working for the school.["]
Sometimes people get the idea that Mr. Voorhes does not do very much.
One visitor spent half a day observing, and then sitting down in his
office she said:
"Mr. Voorhes, I have been here half a day and I haven't seen you around
at all. What do you do?"
"Madam," answered Mr. Voorhes, "I am a man of leisure. All I do is to
sit here at this desk, ready to get behind any one of my teachers, with
two hundred and fifty pounds from the shoulder, in order to prevent
anybody or anything from getting in the way of her work."
Small wonder that the teachers like to stay. Small wonder that the work
which the school does commands the respect of the people of Cincinnati.
In the school, as well as in the neighborhood, each person has a task
and a fair chance to do it well.
From its position as "the worst school in Cincinnati" Oyler has risen,
first in its own esteem, and then in the esteem of the city, until it is
looked upon everywhere as a factor in the life of the west end, and an
invaluable cog in the educational machinery of the city. Its tone has
changed, too. Mr. Roberts, who came, a total stranger, to assist in the
work while Mr. Voorhes was sick, says, "I have never heard a word of
discourtesy or a bit of rudeness since I came to this school." That is
strong testimony for a new man in a new place. Splendidly done, Oyler!
Mr. Voorhes has not stopped working. On the contrary, he is at it harder
than ever, shaping his school to the ever-changing community needs. He
has stopped disciplining, though, and he has stopped wondering about the
success of his experiment. Time was when Oyler looked upon high school
attendance much as a New York gunman looks at Sunday School. Last year
of the thirty-three children in the eighth grade, eighteen--more than
half--went to high school. The tradition against high school has been
replaced by a healthy desire for more education. "One day a week in the
shops," Mr. Voorhes says, "means interest and enthusiasm. Our children
compete in high school with the children of grammar schools from the
well-to-do sections, and with the best our boys and girls hold their
own."
The community is interested. Parents and manufacturers alike come to the
school, consult, advise, suggest, co-operate. The school boy is no
longer sneered at by "the gang." The school has made its place in the
community, and "the gang" is enthusiastically engaged in school work.
The complexion of the neighborhood has changed, too. It is less rough,
the police have less to do. Houses are neater, children better clothed
and cared for. Oyler has won the hearts of its people, improved the food
on their tables and the clothes on their backs, sent the children to
high school, and their mothers to Mothers' Clubs; and the people who
once uttered their profanity indiscriminately in every direction now
swear by Oyler.