CHILDREN AND THE SCHOOL
Wise parents will know the character of the influences affecting their
children at all times. At no time can their responsibility be delegated
to others. There is a tendency to think that when children go to school
the family has a release from responsibility. But the school is simply
the community--the group of families--syndicating its efforts for the
formal training of the young. Every family ought to know what the
community is doing with its children. The school belongs to all; it is
not the property of a board, nor a private machine belonging to the
teaching force; it belongs to us and we owe a social duty as well as a
family obligation to understand its work and its influence on the
children.
Parents ought to visit the school. Wise principals and teachers will
welcome them, setting times when visits can best be made. The visitors
come, not as critics, but as citizens and parents. The principal
benefits will be an acquaintance with the teachers of our children and a
better understanding of the conditions under which the children work for
the greater part of the day. By far the larger number of teachers most
earnestly desire character results from their work. It will help them
to know that we are interested in what they are doing.
§ 1. HOME AND SCHOOL CO-OPERATION
Parents and teachers, both desiring spiritual results, can find means of
co-operation. Parent-teacher clubs and associations have done much to
bring the home and the school together. Meeting regularly in the
evening, so that fathers, too, can attend, gives opportunity to work out
a common understanding to raise the spiritual aims of the school, and to
discover means by which the families may aid in securing better
conditions for school work.
One of the most important considerations relates to the moral effect of
the school life and environment. We are committed in this country to the
principle that the public school cannot teach religion, but this by no
means relieves it of responsibility for moral character. The family
needs this ally. Children expect instruction in the school and they feel
keenly the power of its ideals and the standards established by its
methods and requirements. The family and the school greatly need to
co-ordinate their efforts here to the end that there may be under way in
both an orderly program for the moral training of children.
§ 2. THE SCHOOL TEACHING PARENTS
The school may help the home if arrangements are made for parents to
meet regularly and receive instruction in those forms of moral training
which can best be given at home. This is one method of solving the vexed
question of sex instruction. Many hesitate as to the wisdom of such
instruction in schools; but no one doubts that it ought to be and could
be given in families but for the fact that parents are both ignorant of
what to tell and indifferent to the matter. It may be that some day the
state will not only say that the child must go to school, but also that
every parent intrusted with children must either prove ability to train
and instruct in these and other matters or go to school to obtain the
necessary training. The state would not go beyond its province if it
required ignorant parents--and that means most of us in matters of moral
training--to go to school and learn our business. And without waiting
for such compulsion the school may now offer opportunity for all parents
to obtain the desired information. Teachers are especially trained to an
understanding of child-nature and to methods of pedagogy; they are
prepared to teach many things we ought to know; why should not the
family obtain the advantage of such expert knowledge?
The school would also be within its province if it undertook to
stimulate the indifferent parents, both rich and poor, to an
appreciation of the educational task and opportunity of the home. Each
institution greatly needs the other. The school reaches all the children
of all the people; might it not be made a larger means of helping all
the parents of all the children to quickened moral responsibility and to
greater educational efficiency?
§ 3. CONTROLLING SCHOOL CONDITIONS
The family ought to know the conditions at the school outside the
recitation or working hours. Few parents have any conception of the
power of the playground over moral character. Perhaps a smaller number
realize how dangerous are some of the elements at work there. Play of
itself is immensely valuable, but play means playfellows, and some of
these are simply purveyors of indecency and moral contagion in
conversation and act. We are required to send our children to school; we
have a right to demand freedom from moral contagion. Do you know what
goes on in secret places on the grounds? Do you know that the vilest
ideas and phrases are current in pictures, cards, on scraps of paper,
and in handwriting on walls, not only in the high schools, but often
among children of from six to twelve years of age? This is too large a
subject to be developed properly here. It is one familiar to all
wide-awake school men and women and ought to be equally so to the
parents of children. Where the school combats this evil the home should
intelligently aid; where the school is indifferent the family dare not
rest until either the indifference is quite dispelled or the indifferent
dismissed.
Do not expect to get the facts concerning these suggested conditions by
inquiry among your children. They are reticent, naturally, on such
matters when talking with adults; besides, the sense of school honor
holds them to silence. If they tell you voluntarily, you are happy in
their free confidence. Do not betray it; simply let it lead you to make
further inquiry at the school from the authorities and stimulate you to
insist that, for the sake of the spiritual good of the young, the school
must furnish conditions of moral health.
I. References for Study
Ella Lyman Cabot, _Voluntary Help to the Schools_, chaps. vii,
viii. Houghton Mifflin Co., $0.60.
W.A. Baldwin, "The Home and the Public Schools," _Religious
Education_, February, 1912. $0.65.
II. Further Reading
M. Sadler, _Moral Instruction and Training in Schools_. 2 vols.
Longmans.
John Dewey, _The School and Society_. The University of Chicago
Press, $1.00.
Smith, _All the Children of All the People_. Macmillan, $1.50.
G.A. Coe, "Virtue and the Virtues," _Religious Education_,
February, 1912.
III. Topics for Discussion
1. What ought parents to know about public-school life?
2. In visiting a school what may the parent do to acquire
information in the proper way?
3. How may the home co-operate with the school?
4. What degree of instruction in morals ought the school to give?
5. In what way does the school best help in moral training?
6. What do you know about the conditions on the playgrounds of your
own school?