of the ability to read, write, and use figures intelligently—be carried
on with everyday experience and occupation as their background and in
definite relations to other studies of more inherent content, and be
carried on in such a way that the child shall feel their necessity
through their connection with subjects which appeal to him on their own
account? If this can be accomplished, he will have a vital motive for
getting the technical capacity. It is not meant, as has been sometimes
jocosely stated, that the child learn to bake and sew at school, and to
read, write, and figure at home. It is intended that these formal
subjects shall not be presented in such large doses at first as to be
the exclusive objects of attention, and that the child shall be led by
that which he is doing to feel the need for acquiring skill in the use
of symbols and the immediate power they give. In any school, if the
child realizes the motive for the use and application of number and
language he has taken the longest step toward securing the power; and he
can realize the motive only as he has some particular—not some general
and remote—use for the symbols.
4. Individual attention. This is secured by small groupings—eight or ten
in a class—and a large number of teachers supervising systematically the
intellectual needs and attainments and physical well-being and growth of
the child. To secure this we have now 135 hours of instructors’ time per
week, that is, the time of nine teachers for three hours per day, or one
teacher per group. It requires but a few words to make this statement
about attention to individual powers and needs, and yet the whole of the
school’s aims and methods, moral, physical, intellectual, are bound up
in it.
I think these four points present a fair statement of what we have set
out to discover. The school is often called an experimental school, and
in one sense that is the proper name. I do not like to use it too much,
for fear parents will think we are experimenting upon the children, and
that they naturally object to. But it is an experimental school—at least
I hope so—with reference to education and educational problems. We have
attempted to find out by trying, by doing—not alone by discussion and
theorizing—_whether_ these problems may be worked out, and _how_ they
may be worked out.
Next a few words about the means that have been used in the school in
order to test these four questions, and to supply their answers, and
first as to the place given to hand-work of different kinds in the
school. There are three main lines regularly pursued: (_a_) the
shop-work with wood and tools, (_b_) cooking work, and (_c_) work with
textiles—sewing and weaving. Of course, there is other hand-work in
connection with science, as science is largely of an experimental
nature. It is a fact that may not have come to your attention that a
large part of the best and most advanced scientific work involves a
great deal of manual skill, the training of the hand and eye. It is
impossible for one to be a first-class worker in science without this
training in manipulation, and in handling apparatus and materials. In
connection with the history work, especially with the younger children,
hand-work is brought in in the way of making implements, weapons, tools,
etc. Of course, the art work is another side—drawing, painting, and
modeling. Logically, perhaps, the gymnasium work does not come in here,
but as a means of developing moral and intellectual control through the
medium of the body it certainly does. The children have one-half hour
per day of this form of physical exercise. Along this line we have found
that hand-work, in large variety and amount, is the most easy and
natural method of keeping up the same attitude of the child in and out
of the school. The child gets the largest part of his acquisitions
through his bodily activities, until he learns to work systematically
with the intellect. That is the purpose of this work in the school, to
direct these activities, to systematize and organize them, so that they
shall not be as haphazard and as wandering as they are outside of
school. The problem of making these forms of practical activity work
continuously and definitely together, leading from one factor of skill
to another, from one intellectual difficulty to another, has been one of
the most difficult, and at the same time one in which we have been most
successful. The various kinds of work, carpentry, cooking, sewing, and
weaving, are selected as involving different kinds of skill, and
demanding different types of intellectual attitude on the part of the
child, and because they represent some of the most important activities
of the everyday outside world: the question of living under shelter, of
daily food and clothing, of the home, of personal movement and exchange
of goods. He gets also the training of sense organs, of touch, of sight,
and the ability to coördinate eye and hand. He gets healthy exercise;
for the child demands a much larger amount of physical activity than the
formal program of the ordinary school permits. There is also a continual
appeal to memory, to judgment, in adapting ends to means, a training in
habits of order, industry, and neatness in the care of the tools and
utensils, and in doing things in a systematic, instead of a haphazard,
way. Then, again, these practical occupations make a background,
especially in the earlier groups, for the later studies. The children
get a good deal of chemistry in connection with cooking, of number work
and geometrical principles in carpentry, and a good deal of geography in
connection with their theoretical work in weaving and sewing. History
also comes in with the origin and growth of various inventions, and
their effects upon social life and political organization.
Perhaps more attention, upon the whole, has been given to our second
point, that of positive subject-matter, than to any one other thing. On
the history side the curriculum is now fairly well worked out. The
younger children begin with the home and occupations of the home. In the
sixth year the intention is that the children should study occupations
outside the home, the larger social industries—farming, mining, lumber,
etc.—that they may see the complex and various social industries on
which life depends, while incidentally they investigate the use of the
various materials—woods, metals, and the processes applied—thus getting
a beginning of scientific study. The next year is given to the
historical development of industry and invention—starting with man as a
savage and carrying him through the typical phases of his progress
upward, until the iron age is reached and man begins to enter upon a
civilized career. The object of the study of primitive life is not to
keep the child interested in lower and relatively savage stages, but to
show him the steps of progress and development, especially along the
line of invention, by which man was led into civilization. There is a
certain nearness, after all, in the child to primitive forms of life.
They are much more simple than existing institutions. By throwing the
emphasis upon the progress of man, and upon the way advance has been
made, we hope to avoid the objections that hold against paying too much
attention to the crudities and distracting excitements of savage life.
The next two or three years, _i. e._, the fourth and fifth grades, and
perhaps the sixth, will be devoted to American history. It is then that
history, properly speaking, begins, as the study of primitive life can
hardly be so called.
Then comes Greek history and Roman, in the regular chronological order,
each year having its own work planned with reference to what has come
before and after.
The science work was more difficult to arrange and systematize, because
there was so little to follow—so little that has been already done in an
organized way. We are now at work upon a program,[2] and I shall not
speak in detail about it. The first two or three years cultivate the
children’s powers of observation, lead them to sympathetic interest in
the habits of plants and animals, and to look at things with reference
to their uses. Then the center of the work becomes geographical—the
study of the earth, as the most central thing. From this almost all the
work grows out, and to it the work goes back. Another standpoint in the
science work is that of the application of natural forces to the service
of man through machines. Last year a good deal of work was done in
electricity (and will be repeated this year), based on the telegraph and
telephone—taking up the things that can easily be grasped.
Footnote 2:
This year’s program is published in the _Elementary School Record_.
Address The University of Chicago Press for particulars.
In mechanics they have studied locks and clocks with reference to the
adaptation of the various parts of the machinery. All this work makes a
most excellent basis for more formal physics later on. Cooking gives
opportunity for getting a great many ideas of heat and water, and of
their effects. The scientific work taken up in the school differs mainly
from that of other schools in having the experimental part—physics and
chemistry—emphasized, and is not confined simply to nature study—the
study of plants and animals. Not that the latter is less valuable, but
that we find it possible to introduce the physical aspects from the
first.
If I do not spend a large amount of time in speaking of the music and
art work, it is not because they are not considered valuable and
important—certainly as much so as any other work done in the school, not
only in the development of the child’s moral and æsthetic nature, but
also from a strictly intellectual point of view. I know of no work in
the school that better develops the power of attention, the habit of
observation and of consecutiveness, of seeing parts in relation to a
whole.
I shall now say a few words about the administrative side of the school.
At the outset we mixed up the children of different ages and attainments
as much as possible, believing there were mental advantages in the
give-and-take thus secured, as well as the moral advantages in having
the older assume certain responsibilities in the care of the younger. As
the school grew, it became necessary to abandon the method, and to group
the children with reference to their common capacities. These groupings,
however, are based, not on ability to read and write, but upon
similarity of mental attitude and interest, and upon general
intellectual capacity and mental alertness. There are ways in which we
are still trying to carry out the idea of mixing up the children, that
we may not build the rigid stepladder system of the “graded” school. One
step in this direction is having the children move about and come in
contact with different teachers. While there are difficulties and evils
connected with this, I think one of the most useful things in the school
is that children come into intimate relation with a number of different
personalities. The children also meet in general assemblies—for singing,
and for the report of the whole school work as read by members of the
different groups. The older children are also given a half hour a week
in which to join some of the younger groups, and, if possible, as in
hand-work, enter into the work of the younger children. In various ways
we are attempting to keep a family spirit throughout the school, and not
the feeling of isolated classes and grades.
The organization of the teaching force has gradually become
departmental, as the needs of the work have indicated its chief
branches. So we now have recognized divisions of Science, History,
Domestic or Household Arts, Manual Training in the limited sense (wood
and metals), Music, Art (that is, drawing, water colors, clay modeling,
etc.), and Gymnasium. As the work goes on into the secondary period, the
languages and mathematics will also of necessity assume a more
differentiated and distinct position. As it is sometimes said that
correlated or thoroughly harmonized work cannot be secured upon this
basis, I am happy to say that our experience shows positively that there
are no intrinsic difficulties. Through common devotion to the best
development of the child, through common loyalty to the main aims and
methods of the school, our teachers have demonstrated that in education,
as in business, the best organization is secured through proper regard
for natural divisions of labor, interest, and training. The child
secures the advantage in discipline and knowledge of contact with
experts in each line, while the individual teachers serve the common
thought in diverse ways, thus multiplying and reinforcing it.
Upon the moral side, that of so-called discipline and order, where the
work of the University Elementary School has perhaps suffered most from
misunderstanding and misrepresentation, I shall say only that our ideal
has been, and continues to be, that of the best form of family life,
rather than that of a rigid graded school. In the latter, the large
number of children under the care of a single teacher, and the very
limited number of modes of activity open to the pupils, have made
necessary certain fixed and somewhat external forms of “keeping order.”
It would be very stupid to copy these, under the changed conditions of
our school, its small groups permitting and requiring the most intimate
personal acquaintance of child and teacher, and its great variety of
forms of work, with their differing adaptations to the needs of
different children. If we have permitted to our children more than the
usual amount of freedom, it has not been in order to relax or decrease
real discipline, but because under our particular conditions larger and
less artificial responsibilities could thus be required of the children,
and their entire development of body and spirit be more harmonious and
complete. And I am confident that the parents who have intrusted their
children to us for any length of time will agree in saying that, while
the children like, or love, to come to school, yet work, and not
amusement, has been the spirit and teaching of the school; and that this
freedom has been granted under such conditions of intelligent and
sympathetic oversight as to be a means of upbuilding and strengthening
character.
At the end of three years, then, we are not afraid to say that some of
our original questions have secured affirmative answers. The increase of
our children from fifteen to almost one hundred, along with a practical
doubling of fees, has shown that parents are ready for a form of
education that makes individual growth its sole controlling aim. The
presence of an organized corps of instructors demonstrates that
thoroughly educated teachers are ready to bring to elementary education
the same resources of training, knowledge, and skill that have long been
at the command of higher education. The everyday work of the school
shows that children can live in school as out of it, and yet grow daily
in wisdom, kindness, and the spirit of obedience—that learning may, even
with little children, lay hold upon the substance of truth that
nourishes the spirit, and yet the forms of knowledge be observed and
cultivated; and that growth may be genuine and thorough, and yet a
delight.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors.
2. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.