GRADING THE SCHOOL.
The planning and making of a course of study falls to the lot of few
teachers at present. Nearly every state has either a well-planned state
course or else the county is the unit, and the county superintendent or
the county board of education plan the course. While there is growth
along this line in many places, the organization of the schools is less
perfect, and the course of study is planned by the teacher in charge of
the school.
A uniform course of study is a great strength to the school system.
By uniformity, I do not mean dead uniformity, but intelligent,
rational uniformity. Not the uniformity that takes all the life
and individuality out of the teacher, but the uniformity that sets
definite, rational ends, and makes a proper criterion of work and
attainment possible in the different schools. What is needed is a
course of study flexible enough to be adjusted to the varying classes
and schools and uniform enough that the pupil leaving one school may
be easily and properly classified when he enters another school. Many
of our city systems have more red tape and system than any thing else,
but our country schools in most states will be improved by more system
and organization. Many able persons and many teachers of experience
will cry out against better grading of the country schools and declare
it cannot be done. This was the cry twenty-five years ago when my
own state began in a crude way to grade the country schools. It will
continue in every onward step taken.
Experienced teachers who have become used to the old way are often
the first to cry out against the change, and assert vehemently that
it will never work in the country school. Long after it has become an
accomplished fact there will be some who will refuse to see it. Like
the stubborn father whose son had told him he could show him snow in
June. Following the boy up a narrow little ravine, the boy pointed down
in the cavity of an old hollow stump and said, “Look there father,
there is the snow.” The father took care to close his eyes before
looking, and replied: “Son, I don’t see a bit of snow.”
The very argument used to prove that the country school cannot be
graded and follow a uniform course of study is the best argument for
gradation and a uniform course of study. I believe that every one who
has ever studied the subject will agree that a rational uniform course
of study will do the following things:
1. Secure better attendance.
2. Secure more regular attendance.
3. Keep pupils in school longer. Hundreds of pupils are kept in school
and do good work because of their desire and their parents’ desire that
they graduate. The desire for a diploma may not be the highest motive
for an education, but so far all of our best institutions have found it
necessary to hold to the custom.
4. Secure better work on the part of both teachers and pupils. The
tread mill grind of going over and over the same work year after year
disgusts many pupils with school life. Unless there is specific things
set for the grade, or in other words, if there is not a course of
study, very few schools but will repeat the same work with the same
class. When a boy in the ungraded school we went over the identical
work five years in succession, the only variation was the natural
variation from having three different teachers in the five years.
There is but one argument against the grading of the country schools.
That argument is that the pupils do not attend regularly. Grading is
one of the best promoters of regular attendance. If there is anything
that stirs parents and makes them alive to school matters and observant
of what is going on in school, it is for their boy or girl to fail to
be promoted. Irregular attendance is very apt to be remedied when they
find that it will endanger the promotion. This overcomes many a flimsy
excuse which would otherwise keep the child out of school near the
close of the year. It makes the work of school a reality, a business,
something to be rated along with any other kind of business instead of
an entertainment or place of amusement to be attended when there is
nothing else to do.
In my own experience I have never been troubled much with attendance
running down near the end of the year, although I have taught in
different schools, different localities, and often as late as the
middle of June. Pupils and parents knew that those who missed the last
month or the last few weeks of the term must stand an examination at
the opening of the next term before being promoted. It may have been a
false motive, but I believe it was as good and as legitimate a motive
as many parents have for keeping children out of school the last
month or six weeks of the term as is often done. Pupils want to come
and parents usually arrange to let them come rather than to risk an
examination after the summer’s vacation of three months.
While in common with all good teachers, I have put forth an extra
effort near the close of the school year to keep up school interest
and a good school spirit, I think the graded school course has helped
me much. As a boy, I attended the ungraded school where any pupil took
practically anything that suited him or his parents. I began teaching
in an ungraded school, and am glad that at the end of two years I left
it as well graded as many city schools. The schools of that county are
now well graded, much to the advantage of education in the country.
Two of my best teachers were bitterly opposed to the grading of the
country schools. They fought it in institutes, associations and at
every possible opportunity in conversation. One of them taught long
enough to be converted and see the error of his way, the other never
did surrender, quit teaching fifteen years ago, and thinks the world is
badly out of joint. The grading of country schools is coming, in fact,
is here in some form except in the most primitive communities. It is
the common sense plan, it is practical, it is efficient. It does not
have the hide-bound red tape of the city system, but it gives all the
interest of class stimulus and definite rational accomplishment as a
standard.
If you want to find individualism gone to seed, if you want to find
hobbies ridden hard, and to the everlasting detriment of children, go
to the ungraded public or average private school. The teacher leads
off on his hobby, and he magnifies the hobby as he goes. If it is an
ungraded public school, they go to seed on arithmetic, or history or
map-drawing, or the particular line that offers least resistance or
that fits the teacher’s particular whims best. If it is the average
ungraded primary private school, filled with mammas’ little angel
darlings, too pretty and too petted to go to the public school, it
is even worse. The teacher masticates everything, and puts it into
the most charming fashion and makes believe they are really doing
something. She is also discovering latent geniuses every few days.
If the child likes to use water colors, she is an embryo artist, and
her mother must develop this unusual talent. If the child can sing
“Merry Greeting to You” she is a musician and the mother must from that
day plan to keep her very exclusive and later send her to Paris to
finish. A uniform course of study planned properly, representing the
accumulated experience and judgment of our best educators, may have
some flaws, but on the other hand it saves many of the gravest mistakes
with the great mass of teachers and persons unaccustomed to thinking on
educational subjects.
The planning of a rational course of study is no small task. It will
vary with state and probably with the locality within the state. It
will vary much with the nation. The danger is that each small locality
may feel that their particular needs are different and must have
special attention. In making the course of study the knowledge of
the specialist is needed, toned down and corrected by the liberally
educated man with broader views. Conditions must be weighed and
due consideration for the worth of studies taken into account. The
scientist wants to magnify science, the historian history, the
mathematician mathematics, etc. It is in this particular that the
specialist in the high school or the grades must be held in check by
a liberal-minded superintendent or principal. Unless this is done,
each will overload the student with his specialty. I have had teachers
who if left to themselves would have monopolized the time of the high
school pupil with Latin. The student that did not know Latin was in the
estimation of that teacher a block-head, and should quit school and go
to work.
Examine a course of study and you will find revealed much of the
judgment and mental caliber of the teachers of the school. It is
not uncommon to find high schools proper with university curricula.
High-sounding names, often, are an attempt to hide the fact that it is
an ordinary high school and many times very ordinary indeed.
Before me is a recent catalogue of a collegiate institute--it would be
more appropriate to call it a village high school, that completes in
two years Latin, including Preparatory Latin, Cæsar, Cicero, Sallust,
Ovid and Virgil, and then devotes the last year to Greek. There must be
either intellectual giants in those parts or else some gigantic fools.
To the thinking man the course of study would be a signal to give the
school a wide berth.
We must not forget that the course of study is made for the child and
not the child for the course of study. It must not be too hide-bound.
There may be once in a while an exception to it. There may be
extraordinary children that will not fit into the ordinary course.
These should be treated as exceptions, and considered by themselves.
Study the cause and figure the results of such changes and then be true
to the child rather than to the course of study. The ungraded school
goes to one extreme. Each child is changed and classified for any sort
of whim. If he does not get all of to-day’s lesson he goes it alone,
thereby losing the incentive that comes from class competition. On the
other hand, the course of study may become a fetich until the pupil
that cannot make the uniform course is ignored. The saner, safer middle
ground is best.
Below is given a mere skeleton outline of a course of study. Roughly it
follows what is sometimes called the nationalized course. It would seem
that careful adjustment would adapt it to almost any kind of school.
The teacher or local board could follow its guidance as to subjects
and quickly allot the work in the different grades. The texts used,
the local conditions and the particular classes would thus be cared
for. One class perhaps could do more in arithmetic than the same grade
next year. Certain standards could be set. If the class could not
reach this standard they could come as near reaching it as possible,
and the remainder of the work could go over to the next year. The best
classes would set standards of attainment that succeeding classes
might be envious of equaling or surpassing. I have known teachers and
classes to snooze over simple interest for month after month while if
the teacher and the class had known that if they did not get a good
working knowledge of simple interest in one month that the class would
be considered slow or else the teaching poor, the work would have been
done and well done in one month. Teachers and classes accomplish most
when much is expected of them. That is one of the good things about
a uniform course of study. One school learns to compare itself with
another school, and both are benefited by it.
Set certain definite accomplishments for the class and the grade, do
well what work you undertake, but keep moving. The outline may help you.
I. Primary Grades.
1. First year.
1. Reading.
2. Writing
3. Spelling.
4. Language.
5. Numbers.
6. General lessons.
1. Singing.
2. Drawing.
3. Care of the body.
4. Calisthenics.
5. Morals and manners.
2. Second year.
1. Reading.
2. Writing.
3. Spelling.
4. Language.
5. Numbers.
6. General lessons.
1. Singing.
2. Drawing.
3. Care of the body.
4. Calisthenics.
5. Morals and manners.
3. Third year.
1. Reading.
2. Writing.
3. Spelling.
4. Language.
5. Primary arithmetic.
6. General lessons.
1. Singing.
2. Drawing.
3. Care of the body.
4. Calisthenics.
5. Nature study.
6. Morals and manners.
II. Intermediate grades.
1. Fourth year.
1. Reading.
2. Writing.
3. Spelling.
4. Language.
5. Arithmetic.
6. Geography.
7. General lessons.
1. Singing.
2. Drawing.
3. Health lessons.
4. Nature study.
5. Calisthenics.
6. Morals and manners.
2. Fifth year.
1. Reading and literature.
2. Writing.
3. Spelling.
4. Language.
5. Arithmetic.
6. Geography.
7. General lessons.
1. Music.
2. Drawing.
3. Hygiene.
4. Nature or agriculture.
5. Calisthenics.
6. Morals and manners.
3. Sixth year.
1. Literature.
2. Writing.
3. Spelling.
4. Elementary grammar.
5. Arithmetic.
6. Geography.
7. History.
8. General lessons.
1. Music.
2. Drawing.
3. Hygiene.
4. Nature or agriculture.
5. Calisthenics.
6. Morals and manners.
7. Sloyd.
III. Advanced grades.
1. Seventh year.
1. Literature.
2. Orthography.
3. Grammar.
4. Arithmetic.
5. Geography.
6. History.
7. Physiology.
8. General exercises.
1. Music.
2. Drawing.
3. Nature or agriculture.
4. Sloyd.
2. Eighth year.
1. Literature.
2. Orthography.
3. Grammar and composition.
4. Arithmetic.
5. Geography.
6. History.
7. Physiology.
8. General exercises.
1. Music.
2. Drawing.
3. Nature or agriculture.
4. Sloyd or manual training.
5. Literary exercises.
No one would expect you to have a daily lesson in all the above
subjects. For example, in the first year reading, writing, spelling and
language would be combined. In the second year these subjects in the
main would be combined. The general lessons need not be daily lessons
and often two or more years could be combined in the same instruction.
Calisthenics could be general exercises for all the grades or the
two advanced grades might be excused from these if you thought best.
History and geography might come on alternate days, or history and
physiology. The course is to represent the lines of study that in a
well-graded school are kept abreast. The allotment of time and the work
is left to the adjustment of the teacher or school.