WHAT MAKES A GOOD SCHOOL?
In an institute of something over a hundred teachers, nearly all of
them comparatively young in the work, I was once asked to give a
ten-minutes’ talk on what makes a good school. I am glad that I was,
not because anything which I said was so helpful to the young teachers,
but because it set me thinking by what things I judge teachers and the
school. My notes show the following points, although I am not sure of
the exact wording of the talk:
_1. The teachers and the pupils of a good school should be happy._--A
good digestion, a clear conscience, and reasonable success are three
things that should make any man or woman happy. A healthy child has
the first and second, and their ideas and hopes and ambitions of
success are and should be at school age very largely wrapped up in
the successes of the school and the home. If the teacher is unhappy
the school becomes unhappy. A low nervous state, indigestion, worry
either about school or other things, trouble in the home, sorrow over
friends or family, uneasiness about financial matters or anything that
saps the energy or spoils the sleep of the teacher, is detrimental to
the school. Anything that disturbs the majority or even a considerable
minority of pupils interferes with the school. If the teacher is
thoroughly discouraged over school work or if a very large percentage
of the pupils are displeased with the teacher after the first month,
there can be no whole-souled, happy work and conditions in the school.
If you or any considerable number of your pupils are unhappy, try
if possible to remove the cause. Your results in teaching will be
infinitely better, the work will be less taxing to you, you and the
pupils will get more out of life at the time and more out of life
in the future if all are happy in the school-room. To the practiced
eye five minutes will tell whether the work is a work of pleasure to
teacher and pupils or whether it is a task to both.
_2. The whole atmosphere of the school must be conducive to good
work._--While the teacher and the pupils are happy it should be that
quiet happiness that makes for good work. Children may be boisterously
happy. The idea of a good time with many boys is the loudest noise
they can make. It is the quiet, composed happiness springing from
interesting work well done that gives the best atmosphere of the
school. It is the spirit, the atmosphere, the social or psychological
conditions growing out of the relations existing in the school that
gives life to the school and that educates in the broadest sense. This
is intangible and invisible, but it is easily discerned, and to the
discriminating principal or superintendent it will form very largely
his basis for judging the teacher and the school. In associations with
visiting principals in my own school and in visiting other principals,
a frank estimate has often been given of the relative success of
teachers. It is surprising often how the visiting principal can in five
minutes rate a teacher, and this rating will in the main agree with the
regular principal. The practiced eye of the principal should, like the
practiced eye of the physician, see more in a minute than the unskilled
would in a month. For my own part I trust very largely to the spirit
and atmosphere existing in a room, the social echo of the school, and
it is only occasionally that I am far wrong.
_3. The personality of the teacher and its influence on the
school._--Does she know what to do, does she know how to do it, does
she have the dignity to get this done promptly and well without it
ever entering the mind of a pupil to question its propriety or her
ability to get it done? Your personality should be strong enough
that it is rare indeed that any pupil dare to dispute your authority
and then you should have weight of character enough to prevent open
rebellion. The personality of the teacher, like the atmosphere of the
school, is intangible. Someone has said that personality is “cultured
individuality.” It is individuality with the corners ground off and
polished. It is the individuality that gets results without fighting
for it. It does not offend in taste, in physique, or personal bearing.
It is the personality that pleases and yet makes the pupil, the parent,
or the public to hesitate before it dares express a criticism.
The personality of the teacher reaches the outward as well as the
inward. It is read in the teacher’s dress and bearing. No teacher can
afford to neglect her dress and personal appearance. Dress need not
be costly, but it should be in taste. To the lady teacher, a becoming
dress, a spotless collar, an appropriate ribbon, hair neatly brushed,
teeth white as pearl, nails immaculate as ivory--these are potent
influences and will win over thoughtless boys and careless girls when
all the switches in a mile square, and other means of punishment known
to the modern school, would fail. Spotless attire is essential to the
lady teacher, but a man will find it of scarcely less importance. There
must be no suggestion of the dude and the dandy, but clean linen, well
kept hands and nails, clean teeth, uncontaminated breath, clothing that
fits and is free from dandruff and dust--everything of the gentleman
but nothing of the dude--these will count in your personality and go
to determine the worth of your school.
_4. The good school has interest and enthusiasm, but it must not be of
the soap-bubble variety._--If you have the first insight into human
nature, if you know the first thing about swaying pupils in mass, you
know that it is easy to waste energy, get up steam and chase fleeting
phantoms in school, make a tempest in a teapot, and be no farther along
at the end of the year educationally than at the beginning. The faddist
in the school-room, the teacher that periodically discovers the coveted
panacea that will relieve the pupils from all good, old-fashioned,
hard work, is as dangerous as the demagogue in politics. Interest and
enthusiasm should be well directed. Sanity should guide it. It should
drive toward a worthy goal, it should be tempered by rationality and
common sense. The interest should as soon as possible be transferred to
self interest. One of the most enthusiastic teachers I ever knew was
of the hypnotic, spellbinding kind. Pupils waved their hands, snapped
their fingers, and jumped up and down in their eagerness to tell what
they knew of a topic. Strange to many--not strange to the man who
knew something of good teaching--very, very few of the pupils of this
teacher either continued school after the graded school course or took
much interest in self-directed study or reading in after life.
_5. In a good school the teacher loves the work._--We have much unrest
in teaching. For years teachers have been inviting dissatisfaction.
They have brooded over fancied evils, poor salaries, and lack of tenure
of position, until the great mass of them have become infected. In
teaching as in other things, if you look up the stars will guide you,
if you look down the sewer may beckon. The young teacher often does
the best work because she is happy and contented with her lot in the
first school. When she begins to tire with teaching, when she begins
to look forward to the time when she can get more congenial work--in
the store, in the office, or possibly in the home--she grows more and
more dissatisfied with school, she grumbles more and more about low
salaries, an unappreciative public and bad children. In a good school
the teacher is in love with her work and feels that for the time being
nothing would tempt her to leave it.
_6. A good school will have a well-arranged program giving not only the
recitation periods but the study periods as well._--Systematic study
is essential. As a university student I found my time planned until
at certain times each day I found myself wanting to take up certain
studies. Just as one may become hungry at their usual time of eating,
so should one come to desire to do work at certain times. Too much
variation of a program weakens it in the minds of the children. This
program should be prepared with thought and care. There should be a
proper balance of study. Here is where good judgment in the relative
value of studies is shown. I visited a sixth grade once where as much
time was used each day on spelling as upon any other study. Now I
believe in spelling. I believe we are neglecting spelling, but I cannot
think it is worth as much and is justified in having as much time in
the sixth year as any other study of the school course, surely not if
the proper amount of attention to spelling has been given in the first
five years.
_7. In a good school the modern studies--music, drawing, manual
training and domestic science--will be recognized._--The two last will
be needed worse in some schools than others. The old-fashioned home
life is fast disappearing. Whether this is better or worse is not ours
to discuss. The fact is that under the modern trend pupils are not
taught to do the homely and valuable tasks that was so common forty
years ago. Then the boy made his sled, his wagon, his hobby horse, and
his ball bat. Now he buys them and loses the greatest good of all, the
skill and the development in making them. He got his manual training
then in his home life, now, except on the farm, he gets scarcely any of
such training, and must depend upon the initiative of the school, else
go forever without it. The girl then was busy with helping her mother
in the house work. She learned to cook, to sew, to make quilts, to
wash, iron, and scrub. In other words, she got a complete and efficient
training in domestic science in her own home, and often had not only
the practice in doing it but had an intense liking for it. Much is
changed now. The school must come to the demands and needs of the time
and give the girl some touch with, respect for, and knowledge of this
essential work or she never gets it.
Music is more an intellectual and cultural subject. It needs no
defense. The time is coming, and let us hope before many generations,
when as nearly all the people can sing ordinary music as can read the
ordinary book. Drawing, not necessarily the decorative art which so
often is called drawing, needs no justification. It leads to closer
observation, it is needed in the practical affairs of life, it develops
so many of the powers of the mind that as a cultural study it needs
no defense. A good school will recognize these modern studies. In the
country, the manual training may go more to the farmer’s needs, it
may be more closely allied to agriculture than in the cities. School
gardening is far more essential to the city child, however, than to
the country. In the crowded districts of the city, it is a rest and
recreation together with intense interest in a new and valuable line
of thought to tend the small school vegetable garden. In the country,
or in the city district, where each pupil has a vegetable garden at
home, and where the father often is skilled in the work of furnishing
vegetables for the market, the school garden is not worth the time and
energy put upon it. Like fashions in hats and dress the teacher who
feels that she must be up-to-date, must follow the fads and fashions
of New York, Chicago, Washington and other places regardless of the
difference in conditions, will have pupils spend an hour a day in
tending a vegetable garden when they had better be sent home to help
their parents to tend the family garden.
The modern studies, however, must be kept in their legitimate place.
When manual training has for its avowed purpose the making of a
carpenter or a mechanic, when the study becomes strictly practical
instead of educational, it is out of the proper province of the common
school. Even the high school is not to make doctors, lawyers, clerks,
mechanics, but to make thinking men and women, who then can with time
and direction soon develop into these others. The very purpose of
the school is to give in a large measure those things that have very
little connection with the later life of the individual. The increased
power to think, to analyze, to understand, the higher ideals of life,
the hopes, the aspirations, the ability to see the world in a broader
light and from a wider horizon--these are the essential things after
all. To save the boy from his dwarfing environment, to kindle in him
ambitions and desires, to give him broader views of life without making
him unreasonably discontent with his own lot is the great purpose of
the school. His life will be narrow enough in his little niche without
making his school training narrow him still more. The most impractical
of the so-called practical men often want every lesson in school to
be a lesson to save the time of apprenticeship instead of a lesson to
develop higher thinking power.
_8. In a good school the teacher or teachers will be
professional._--They will have studied the problems of the school and
have high ideas and ideals of what it should be and of its place in the
development of the life of the child. They will look on the purpose of
the school, and hold to these essentials even at risk of the criticism
of faddists. A thorough educator refused a principalship at a better
salary. When asked why, he replied that the qualities the board were
looking for must be found in a carpenter, a football coach, and a
peanut vender, and as he did not desire a position along either of
these lines, it would not be worth while to accept a position requiring
special qualifications along all of these lines. Eight hours a week was
to be devoted to manual training. He could use say a plane and a hammer
very well, but he had never had any desire to become a carpenter,
else he would have taken it up. He was expected to take charge of the
boys’ athletics, having daily drills and preparing them for the annual
festivities. He cared little for sport, and believed the playground
should be distinctly the place for self-initiative of pupils, feeling
that the greatest lessons of school life came from the fact that pupils
here were left free from the direction of teachers so that they might
have some chance at self-direction. The third requirement was that he
should be able to drill vaudeville school plays, sell popcorn, peanuts,
lemonade and other similar things to procure funds for decorating the
school, improving the grounds and furnishing money for athletic sports.
If he was to take up commercial life as a serious matter, he preferred
to go into business. These three lines absorbing most of his time and
sapping his energies made him prefer to remain where the thought and
energy of the principal was directed to the development of mind and
character.
In many schools the demand is for the carpenter, the football coach,
and the peanut vender combined for principal rather than the man who
sees the deeper problems of mental development.
_9. The teacher or teachers should be loyal to their school._--The
teacher who teaches in a district or school where she from any cause
dislikes the place, will not teach her best school. In cities some
teachers teach in certain districts only under protest, and never do
their best work. I should not seek to hold a teacher in my school when
I knew she was deeply dissatisfied with me or the school. Her work
would be forced, and she would unconsciously put less enthusiasm into
it. Just as the pupils should love their school and their teacher and
feel that they would not exchange it for any other school, so should
the teacher feel that her lot is well cast. The patrons should be as
loyal to the school and the teacher as the teacher is to the school.
Loyalty of teacher, pupils and patrons, will make a prosperous and
successful school.
_10. A good school is properly heated, lighted, ventilated and
carefully looked after by a trusty janitor._--Thousands of eyes are
ruined yearly by poor light, pupils are injured in health by poor
heating and ventilation. The care of the building counts for so much.
Proper janitor work is as necessary as any other work. It is hard
to keep clean and live in a hog pen. It is hard to think elevating
thoughts and live in dirt and dust and cobwebs. The schools, the
churches and the hotels are the best advertising agents of any
neighborhood. A good school near by often increases the market value
of a farm from ten to twenty dollars an acre. The same is true of a
church. The best class of emigrants, the best citizens who want to buy
a farm to live on and to cultivate do not care to go to localities
where there is not a majority, a strong, working, active majority of
the people interested, vitally interested, in such things. Environment
makes the price of property. The neighborhood of good schools and good
churches is worth more per square rod than the neighborhood which is
content to let its children be educated in a building fit only for a
sheep shed or to attend a dilapidated church.
_11. The good school has decorations for its walls._--These silent
but effective teachers grow into the lives of the pupils. Simplicity,
plainness, but good taste should be the test of the school decorations.
Get good pictures--not necessarily costly ones--get good, plain, but
artistic frames, select pictures that appeal to children, and yet
are artistic, and let them be hung in good taste on the wall. Do
not overcrowd, study the simple and the artistic in arrangement. In
selecting, do not forget the value of the portrait as a school picture.
Washington, the father of his country; Lincoln, true and noble, a man
of the common people; Longfellow, poet beloved by all; the list is a
long one--these features looking down daily grow into the lives of the
pupils. Then landscape views, Landseer’s animals, pictures of homes and
famous paintings, the list is almost endless. To these may be added a
few good statues. Good taste in the selection and the funds to buy
with will make any school-room what it should be as to decorations.
These are some of the first things that I should look for in judging
a school. Buildings and grounds and numerous other things cannot be
touched upon.