The New Education Part 9

Better still, if John cannot master his arithmetic in the regular cla.s.ses, he may attend voluntary cla.s.ses on Sat.u.r.day, at night, or during the summer months. The schools afford him every chance to keep up in every subject, and if he cannot make his way in this subject or in that, he works in the fields which are open to him, doing what he can to make his course a success.

John, in the schools of Gary, is John Frena, with all of John Frena's limitations and possibilities. The Gary school seeks to bridge the limitations, expand the possibilities, and give John Frena a thousand and one reasons for believing that if there is any place in the world where he can grow into a complete man, that place is the Gary school.

XV Smashing the School Machine

One of the oft-repeated complaints against the old education arose from the iron-clad system of promotion which once in each year, with automatic precision, separated the sheep from the goats, saying to the sheep, "go higher," and to the goats, "repeat the grade."

For the sheep, the system worked fairly well, at least that once; but for the goats, it was a tragedy. The child who had failed in one out of six branches, side by side with the child failing in six out of six, repeated the year.

The new education affords several remedies for this situation. Of these the most generally known is promotion twice yearly. While this affords considerable relief, it is greatly improved upon in Springfield, Ma.s.s., by the division of each grade into three divisions--advanced, normal and backward. These divisions the teacher handles separately so that when promotion time comes the children who have shown special apt.i.tude are prepared to go into the next grade. Meantime the children have been constantly changing from one division in the cla.s.s to another.

Perhaps the most generally practicable plan for relieving the mechanical features of promotion is found in Indianapolis, and even more intensely in Gary, where children are promoted by subjects rather than by grades.

In Indianapolis, the child entering the sixth grade, takes all English with one teacher from that time until the end of the eighth grade. If the child is strong in English, he advances rapidly. If he is weak in English, the teacher gives him special attention. Learning each pupil's capabilities in her particular branch, the teacher is able to give the individual child, over a series of years, the help which his special case requires.

In Gary the departmental idea is carried through the entire school system. In the Emerson School, for instance, children may take eighth grade work in English and high school work in nature study or history.

The departmental work is strengthened in Gary, in Indianapolis, and in a number of other cities, by afternoon work, Sat.u.r.day cla.s.ses and vacation schools. Here, a child interested in any phase of the school work or desiring to make up work in which he is deficient, may spend his spare time to his heart's content.

An even greater individuation of children exists in Fitchburg and Newton, Ma.s.s., and in Providence, R. I. Children from the country and foreign children who have difficulty with their English, together with any other children who do not fit into any grade, are placed in an ungraded cla.s.s. A typical ungraded cla.s.s of fifty pupils contained Germans, Russians, Greeks, French, Italians and Polish children, who were unable to speak English on entering the school. The ages of these children varied from eight to fifteen. As soon as the ungraded children appear to be fitted for any special grade, they are transferred.

This ungraded work is supplemented by "floating teachers," who are located in each school for the purpose of dealing with special cases.

The case of any child who, for this reason or that, cannot keep up with the work in a particular subject, is handed over to these teachers. Thus individual attention is secured in individual cases.

XVI All Hands Around for An Elementary School

These progressive educational steps are not isolated instances of success in new lines, nor are they incompatible with good work. They may be welded into a unified system, aglow with the real interests of real life. It is possible to correlate the old standard courses and the new fields in such a way that the child will gain in interest and in life experience.

Nowhere is this possibility better ill.u.s.trated than in the elementary schools of Indianapolis. Take as an example School No. 52, which is located in an average district. The children, neither very rich nor very poor, possess the advantages and disadvantages of that great ma.s.s known as "common people."

The children in grades one to three, inclusive, in addition to studying the three R's, spend thirty minutes each day learning to measure, fold, cut and weave paper. In grades four and five, an hour and a half per week is devoted to simple weaving, knife-work, raffia work, sewing and basketry. Grade six has four and a half hours of similar work each week, while in grades seven and eight, the pupils are occupied for one-third of their entire school time in art work, book-binding, pottery work, weaving (blankets and rugs), chair caning, cooking, sewing and printing.

"But how is it possible?" queries the defender of the old system. "How can the necessary subjects be taught in two-thirds of the time now devoted to them? Are we not already crowded to death?"

Yes, crowded with dead work, the proof of which lies in the fact that the children who devote a third of the time to apply their knowledge get as good or better marks in the academic work than the three-thirds children. That, however, is not the really important point. This course of study is valuable because it gives a rounded, unified training.

This is how the course is organized. The school life is a unit, into which each department fits and in which it works. The spelling lesson is covered in the cla.s.sroom and set in type in the print shop. The grammar lesson consists in revising compositions with regulation proofreaders'

corrections. The art department designs clothes which are made in the sewing cla.s.ses. The drawing room furnishes plans for the wood and iron work and designs for basketry and pottery. In the English cla.s.ses, the problems of caning and weaving are written and discussed. The mathematical problems are problems of the school. Children in the sixth year keep careful accounts of personal receipts and expenditures--accounts which are balanced semi-weekly. The boy in one woodworking cla.s.s makes out an order for materials. A boy in another cla.s.s makes the necessary computations and fills the order. All costs of dressmaking and cooking materials are carefully kept and dealt with as arithmetic problems. For the older boys, shop-cards are kept, showing the amount and price of materials used and the time devoted to a given operation. These again form a basis for mathematical work. The whole is knit together in a civics cla.s.s, which deals with the industrial, political and social questions, in their relations to the child and to the community.

Best of all, the things which the children talk and figure about, plan and make, have value. The seventh and eighth year girls make clothes which they are proud to show and wear; they cook lunch for which some of the teachers pay a cost price. The baskets are taken home. Eighty chairs are caned by the children each year. The bindery binds magazines, songs and special literature. The boys make sleds and carts, hall stands, umbrella racks, center tables and stools. They make cupboards and shelves for the school, quilting-frames on which the girls do patchwork.

Rags are woven into rag carpets and sold. The print shop prints all of the stationery for the school. Each can of preserves, in the ample stock put up by the girls, is labeled thus:

"PRESERVED PEACHES"

with labels printed by the boys.

June, 1912, witnessed a triumph for the entire school. The children in the upper cla.s.s had taken up the study of book-making. They even went to a bindery and saw a book bound and lettered. Then, to show what they had learned, they composed, set up and printed--

A BOOK ABOUT BOOKS by June 8 A Cla.s.s.

This book of twenty-eight pages, tastefully covered and decorated, contained three half-tone cuts which the children paid for by means of entertainments; an essay by Hazel Almas on "The History of Books," one by Adele Wise on "The Printing of a Book," and one by Ruth Kingelman on "The Art of Bookbinding"; the program of the commencement exercises, and a collection of poems and wise sayings.

The children went further and invited Mr. Charles Bookwalter, the owner of the bookbindery where they had learned their lesson, to come and talk to them on Commencement Day. He came, made a splendid address and went away filled with wonder before these achievements of fourteen-year-old grammar school children.

Each grade has a special subject of study. This year the boys in the Eighth A are studying saws; the boys in Eighth B, lumbering; the girls in Eighth A are investigating wool and silk; while in Eighth B the girls are studying cotton and flax. This "study" means much. Not only do the children discuss the topics, write about them, read books on them, and do problems concerning them, but they visit the factories and study the processes from beginning to end.

When the problem of pins came up, the teacher desired several copies of a description of pin-making, so she asked the cla.s.s to write out a letter to the manufacturers. The cla.s.s, left to select, decided to send this letter:

SCHOOL NO. 52, Indianapolis, Ind., Oct. 11, 1912.

AMERICAN PIN COMPANY, Waterbury, Conn.

_Dear Sirs_: On seeing the pamphlet on pins you have been kind enough to send us, I have decided to write and ask you if you would kindly send us about twenty of your pamphlets on the making of pins.

We are in the eighth grade, and expect to go out into the world in January, and your process of making pins will be spread abroad to the whole world.

We are very anxious to know more about the making of pins, and we are very much interested in your process.

Yours sincerely, RUTH HARRISON.

Need I say that the American Pin Company sent immediately twenty duplicates of the desired pamphlet?

The work in this school where thought and activity go hand in hand, is done by the regular grade teachers--done, and done well. They are as enthusiastic as the pupils. Four years' trial has convinced them. On the day that I visited the school, I walked into a cla.s.sroom where twenty girls were busy sewing. The order was perfect. Every one was busy. The teacher was nowhere in evidence.

"That teacher," explained the princ.i.p.al to me later, "is off at a teachers' meeting. She left these girls on their honor to work. You see the result."

I saw and marveled. Yet why marvel? Was not this a typical product of the system which knits thought and activity into such a harmonious, fascinating whole as the most fortunate adults find in later life? Out of such a school may we not well develop harmony and keen life? Never yet have men gathered grapes from thistles, but often and often have they plucked from fig trees the figs which they craved and sought.

XVII From a Blazed Trail to a Paved Highway

Pages might be filled with descriptions of similar successes, yet I think that my point is already sufficiently established. How can we disagree regarding so plain a matter? The path of educational progress has led away from the three R's along a trail, blazed at first by a few men and women who dreamed and stepped forward hesitatingly. Often they retraced their steps, discouraged, and gave over the little they had gained. By degrees, however, the trail was blazed. The way became clearer. After all it was possible to connect education with life.

Slowly the light of this truth dawned upon men's minds. Gradually the way opened before them. One by one they trod the path, bridging the worst defiles, straightening the road, cutting out the thickets and filling in the mora.s.ses, until at last, behold the way, explored by hesitating, derided pioneers, no longer a trail, but a broad highway.

Others have gone--their name is legion--and have succeeded. The three R's are but the beginning of an adequate elementary curriculum. You, in your own city, with your own teachers, can vitalize your elementary schools. You can teach the children to use their heads and hands together, and thus show them the way to a deeper interest in your schools, and a larger outlook on their work in life.

CHAPTER V

KEEPING THE HIGH SCHOOL IN STEP WITH LIFE

I The Responsibility of the High School

"Every pupil of high school maturity should be in high school atmosphere whether he has completed the work of the grammar grades or not," insists Dr. F. E. Spaulding. "Perhaps the high school course of study is not adapted to the needs of such children. Well, so much the worse for the course of study. The sooner the high school suits its work to the needs of fourteen and fifteen-year-old boys and girls, the sooner it will be filling its true place in the community." Such opinions, voiced in this case by a man whose national reputation is founded on his splendid work as superintendent of the school system of Newton Ma.s.s., bespeak the att.i.tude of the most progressive American high schools.