When the room is in a building the windows are so arranged that the
largest amount of air is taken into the room. The windows are never
closed.
]
Happily certain phases of the situation are now being remedied. Through
the increase in the differentiation of special classes within the
schools our educational systems are making education more nearly free to
all, and so taking a most important part in the great work of
prevention. We are ceasing to think quite so exclusively of the
ambulances at the foot of the precipice and are building our fence, foot
by foot, across its top. By means of these special classes, the
different demands which differently constituted minds and bodies make
are in great part met, the fact that certain obstacles prevent many
minds from attaining full development is recognized; and due allowance
is made for the effect physical and mental handicaps have on individual
education.
To give an instance: In the public schools of New York these special
classes are carried out to an admirable extent. Physical handicaps are
recognized and provided for in the classes for cripples, for blind,
anaemic and tubercular children, and in the School for the Deaf. The
teachers of these classes come to know a great deal about the homes and
the individual difficulties of their pupils, and what home or medical
care will be of the greatest assistance to them educationally. Bodies
are cared for, lunches even are furnished, that the mind may have a
chance to grow strong and keen—for the school lunch is more and more
recognized as a real factor in education.
For the backward children and for those who are mentally rather than
physically defective, there are other special classes; those for the
over-age children, for foreigners who come to school before they have
learned to speak English, for children who are trying to get their
working papers, and the so-called Ungraded Class for those who are
apparently or really backward to a hopeless extent. Often members of
this latter group find their way into the classes for foreign children
or those who are trying for working papers, so limiting the best
usefulness of those classes.
But one step further must be taken, and in some places and in some
connections is being taken in this work of prevention, and of bringing
together the incomplete little being and his opportunity for becoming
more complete. This step is the adaptation of the ideal of social
service to our educational work and through it we shall finally come to
see, I believe, the supremely important part the schools must play in
the solution of our most perplexing social problems. Often this part
will be not to take the actual steps themselves, but to point out to
other especially equipped agencies the steps that must be taken by them
in order to prevent future misery and crime. From the schools must come
our most valuable information and advice concerning the treatment of
various groups of dependent children. They constitute the great dragnet
and the natural clearing house.
The day is fast coming when just as surely as social service is an
inseparable and honored part of both religious and medical institutions,
so it shall be of our educational work. Phases of this service or
movements closely allied to it, are already being slowly introduced into
the public school systems of some cities, volunteer agencies are
carrying on a more definite social service in close connection with the
schools, and always a good teacher, interested to learn of the home
surroundings of her pupils, is the most effective social service worker
the schools can have.
But when the effort is made to introduce direct social service into the
school system itself a suspicion has often been felt on the part of the
governing body, or on that of the taxpayer, that here is an attempt to
turn the schools into charitable centers. They do not seem to realize
nor take to heart the message of that minister of twenty years ago that
while it is all very well to talk about training the mind, no one has
ever yet seen a mind that was not connected with a body. The obstacles
which often prevent the mind’s full development must be discovered and
removed before the education the schools offer can be taken full
advantage of. The same close relationship which hospital social service
bring about with a patient’s home must be established by the school with
the homes of its pupils—as in the case of Nello—so that any hindrance to
a child’s education existing there may be ascertained and as far as
possible overcome. Much social service of a valuable kind has been
carried on in connection with some of the special classes in the New
York city schools by outside agencies devoted to the care of particular
forms of physical defect, and their assistance to both teachers and
pupils has been generous and effective. In some cases the closest
relation has existed between these organizations and the school system,
as in the case of the classes for cripples. But as yet none of this work
has been made an actual part of the system, though its value is
recognized and the volunteer service used to the fullest extent.
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