Particularly effective work has been done on the social side of high school organization at the William Penn High School (Philadelphia), where Mr. Lewis has turned the conduct of student affairs over to a Student Government Association, directed by a Board of Governors of eighteen, on which the faculty, represented by five members, holds an advisory position only. The Association gives some annual event, like a May day fete, in which all of the girls take part. It assumes charge of the corridors, elevators, and lunch rooms; grants charters to clubs and student societies, and assumes a general direction of student affairs.
“It really doesn’t take much time,” Irene Litchman, the first term (1912-13) President, explained. “We like it and we’re proud to do it. We used to have teachers everywhere taking charge of things. Now we do it all ourselves.” True enough, Madame President, and it is well done, as any casual observer may see. Similar testimony is to be had from the sick girls who have received letters and flowers, from the children whose Christmas has been brightened by Association-dressed dolls, and from the girls whose misunderstandings with members of the faculty have been settled by the Student Association.
Each class in the Washington Irving High School (New York) gives one reception a term to one of the other classes. In addition, an annual reception and play are given by the entire school. The plays for these occasions are written, costumed and staged by the students. Last year the reception was given to Mrs. Dix, wife of the Governor of New York, and the play “Rip Van Winkle” was acted by eighteen hundred girls. Such organizations and activities lead high school students to feel social relationships, and to assume responsibilities as members of the social group.
A high school education is included, by progressive communities, in the birthright of every child. Since only a small part of these children are preparing for college, the school must offer more than the traditional high school course. The principal of a great Western high school which housed nearly two thousand children, pointed to one room in which a tiny class bent over their books. “That is probably the last class in Greek that we shall ever have in the school,” he said. “They are sophomores. Only two freshmen elected Greek this fall, and we decided not to form the class.” Time was when Greek was one of the pillars of the high school course of study. In this particular school, splendidly equipped laboratories, sewing rooms, and shops have claimed the children. The classics are still popular with a small minority, but the vast majority come to learn some lesson which will direct their steps along the pathway of life.
Everywhere the technical high school courses are gaining by leaps and bounds. The William Penn High School (Philadelphia), established in 1909, is to-day enrolling four-fifths of the girls who enter Philadelphia high schools. In some cities, technical work and classical work are done in the same building; in other cities, they are sheltered separately, but everywhere the high school is opening its doors to that great group of school children who, at seventeen or eighteen, must and will enter the arena of life.
The technical high school has not gained its prestige easily, however. The bitter contests between the old and the new are well portrayed by one dramatic episode from the history of the Los Angeles High School. Mr. John H. Francis, now superintendent of the schools of Los Angeles, was head of the Commercial Department in the Los Angeles High School. Despite opposition and ridicule the department grew until it finally emerged as a full-fledged technical high school, claiming a building of its own,—a building which Mr. Francis insisted should contain accommodations for two thousand students. The authorities protested,—“Two thousand technical students? Why, Los Angeles is not a metropolis.” Mr. Francis gained his point, however, and the building was erected to accommodate two thousand children. When the time for opening arrived it was discovered, to the astonishment of the doubters, that more students wanted to come into the school than the school would hold. When Mr. Francis announced that students up to two thousand would be admitted in order of application, excitement in school circles ran high, and on the day before Registration Day a line began to form which grew in length as the day wore on, until by nightfall it extended for squares from the school. All that night the boys and girls camped in their places, waiting for the morning which would bring an opportunity to attend the technical high school.
Though less dramatic in form, the rush toward technical high school courses is equally significant. It is not that the old high school has lost, but that the new high school is drawing in thousands of boys and girls who, from lack of interest in classical education, would have gone directly from the grammar school into the mill or the office.
The modern high school is housed in a building which contains, in addition to the regular class rooms, gymnasiums, a swimming tank, physics, and chemical laboratories; cooking, sewing, and millinery rooms; wood-working, forge, and machine shops; drawing rooms; a music room; a room devoted to arts and crafts; and an assembly room. This arrangement of rooms presupposes Mr. Gilbert’s plan of making the high school, like the community, an aggregation of every sort of people, doing every sort of work.
Physical training in the high school has not yet come into its own, though it is on the road to recognition. All of the newer high schools have gymnasiums, but the children do not use them for more than thirty, forty, or fifty minutes a week. Sometimes the work is optional. The West Technical of Cleveland, with its outdoor basket ball court, its athletic grounds and grandstand, in addition to the indoor gymnasium, offers a good example of effective preparation for physical training. William D. Lewis of the William Penn High School sends all students who have physical defects to the gymnasium three, four, or even five times a week, until the defects are corrected. These exceptions merely serve to emphasize the fact that we have not yet learned that high school children have bodies which are as much in need of development and training as the minds which the bodies support.
Several real attempts are being made to teach high school boys and girls to care for their bodies, as they would for any other precious thing. Hygiene is taught, positively,—the old time “don’ts” being replaced by a series of “do’s.” In many schools, careful efforts are being made to give a sound sex education. The program at William Penn, in addition to the earlier work in biology and in personal and community hygiene, includes a senior course, extending through the year, in Domestic Sanitation and Eugenics. The course, given by the women in charge of Physical Training, deals frankly with the domestic and personal problems which the girls must face. The time is ripe for other schools to fall in line behind these much-needed pioneers.
The course of study in the modern high school is a broad one. Latin may always be taken, and sometimes there is Greek. French, German and Spanish, Mathematics, History, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Civics are almost universally offered on the cultural side of the curriculum. In addition, girls may take dress designing, sewing, millinery and home economics; boys may take wood-working, forge work, machine-tool work, electricity, printing, and house designing; and both boys and girls have an opportunity to elect art, arts and crafts work and music.
In some schools the combination of subjects group themselves into definite courses, as in the Newton High School, which offers,—
The Classical Course.
The Scientific Course.
The General Course.
The Technical Course.
The Technology-College Course.
The Extra Technical Course.
The Fine Arts Course.
The Business Course.
Other schools, like the Indianapolis Manual Training School, permit the pupil, with the advice of the principal, to make his own combination of subjects. Whether prepared by the school or by the pupil, however, the courses lead to college, to normal schools, to advanced technical schools, or to some definite vocation. On one subject, progressive high schools are in absolute agreement,—the course of study must furnish both culture and technical training in a form which meets the needs of high school children.
The tendency toward vocational training finds its extreme expression in the so-called Industrial Co-operative Course in which boys and girls spend part of their time in school and part in the factory. Note this legal document. “The party of the second part agrees to place, as far as possible, the facilities of his establishment at the disposal of the School Committee for general educational purposes along industrial lines.” In these words, the individual manufacturers of Providence, Rhode Island, who are co-operating with the school board for the establishment of the industrial co-operative course in the Technical High School, place their mills and factories at the disposal of the school authorities. The plan instituted at the suggestion of the manufacturers themselves has won the approval of all parties during the two years of its operation.
The Providence experiment differs from those of Cincinnati and Fitchburg, Mass., in two respects,—in the first place, the school authorities have a written contract with the manufacturers. In the second place, they may decide what the character of the shop-work shall be. The boy who elects to take the industrial co-operative course in Providence spends ten weeks in a shop at the end of his freshman year. Apprenticeship papers are signed, the boy gives a bond, which is forfeited if he drops the course without a satisfactory reason, and for three years he spends 29 weeks in the shop and 20 weeks in school, alternating, one week in the shop, the next in the school. For their shop-work the boys receive ten cents, twelve cents, and fourteen cents an hour during the first, second, and third years, respectively. Though this wage is not high, it is sufficient to enable the boys to earn enough during the year ($175 to $250) to pay for their keep at home during their high school course.
At the present time sixty-two Providence boys are working part time in machine shops, in drafting rooms, in machine tool construction, in pattern making and in jewelry making. In order to keep the scheme elastic, the school offers to form a class in any trade for which sixteen or more boys will apply.
The part-time course is primarily educational and secondarily vocational. Since it may determine the character of the shop-work, the school is in a position to insure its educational value. Again, the academic training is still received in the school, while the technical work, heretofore done in school rooms, is carried on in the fields of real industry. As a supplement of the old time system of apprenticeship, the part-time school is an undoubted success, because it adds to shop apprentice work all of the essential elements of a high school education.
The high school has not done its full duty when it has educated the child,—it must go a step farther and educate him for something; then it must go a step beyond that and help him to find himself in his chosen profession. This vocational guidance which is filling so large a place in public discussions, may mean guidance to a job or it may include guidance in the job. In either case children must be led to decide upon the kind of work for which they are fitted before they leave the school.
Jesse B. Davis, Principal of the Central High School at Grand Rapids, furnishes a brilliant example of this vocational directing. Mr. Davis begins his work through the theme writing and oral composition of the seventh and eighth grades. The purpose of the pupils’ reading and discussion is to arouse their vocational ambition and to lead them to appreciate the value of further education and training for life. This study upon the part of the pupil is supplemented by talks given by Mr. Davis, prominent business and professional men and high school boys who have come back to finish their education after a few years of battle with the world.
The high school classes in English are small—never more than twenty-five, and the work is so arranged that the teacher may get a good idea of the capability of each student. To facilitate this, the English Department has prepared a series of essay subjects in the writing of which the pupil gives the teacher a very definite idea of himself. Beginning with “My Three Wishes;” the pupil next writes a story about his ancestry; an essay on “My Church,” which explains his belief; an essay on “The Part I’d Like to Play in High School;” a study of “My Best Friend,” and finally an essay on “The Work of My Early School Days,” which shows the pupil’s likes and dislikes. In addition to this, the teacher notes any physical defects—eyesight, hearing, and the like—which might incapacitate the pupil for particular vocations. This data, together with reports from all departments on neatness, sincerity, ambition and other qualities is filed in the office.
During the second term of the freshman year papers are written on approved biographies, dealing in each case with the qualities, opportunities and education of the great one. These essays, read in class, form the basis for a compilation of the elements necessary for success in life.
The work of the sophomore year begins with the preparation of a class list of professions, semi-professions and trades,—a list which is checked with the permanent list kept by the department. Succeeding classes thus discover the breadth of the vocational field, besides adding to the knowledge accumulated by their predecessors.
After completing this list, the pupils write a letter to the teacher, choosing a vocation and assigning reasons for the choice. When the pupil cannot decide, the teacher assigns the vocation apparently best suited to the pupil’s capacity. An essay on his vocation is then prepared by each pupil, showing first, what kind of activity and what responsibilities the vocation involves; second, its social, intellectual and financial advantages; third, the corresponding disadvantages; fourth, the qualifications and traits necessary to success in the vocation; and fifth, the reasons for choosing the vocation. Then, under the advice of the teacher, the pupil writes to some man well known in the profession of his choice—some lawyer, mining engineer, doctor or contractor—explaining what he is doing, and asking for advice. The generous responses given by men in all walks of life do much to confirm the pupil in his faith, or to make him see that his choice is an unwise one.
At the beginning of the junior year those pupils preparing for college send for the catalogues of the colleges which stand highest in the line of work in which they are interested, and write an essay, giving the comparative value of the courses offered by the various institutions. By this means judgment takes the place of sentiment in the selection of a college. While the college preparatory pupils are engaged in writing on their college courses, pupils who are going directly from the high school into business write an elaborate essay on the kind of preparation necessary for their vocation, the qualities requisite for success in it, and the best place and means of entering it. Studies of the proper relations between employer and employed occupy the second half of the junior year.
The work of the senior year deals, in the first half, with the relation between a citizen and his city; the second half, with the relation between a citizen and the state. The pupil has thus passed from the narrower to the broader aspects of his work in life.
The effectiveness of the work is enhanced by the organization of the high school boys into a Junior Association of Commerce (in an exact imitation of the Grand Rapids Association of Commerce), which meets in the rooms of the latter on Saturday morning; transacts business; listens to an address by a specialist, and then visits his works, if he is engaged in a local industry. On the Saturday before Thanksgiving (1912), for example, Mr. VanWallen, of the VanWallen Tannery Co., gave the boys a talk on the tanning industry, then took them through his tannery, where they saw the processes of manufacture. The business men of Grand Rapids, who are highly pleased with this practical turn in education, co-operate heartily in every way. The boys are urged, during the summer months, to take a position in the work which they have chosen, start at the bottom and find out whether their beliefs regarding the industry are true. Then, too, the Free Library makes a point of collecting books and articles on various professions and vocations, and placing them prominently before the students. The English Department (with five periods a week) does other work, but none so vital to the pupils’ lives as this of directing them in the thing which they hope to do when they leave school.
The school may do more than direct the pupils in the choice of their occupations, by actually securing positions for them. The head of the Commercial Department in the Newton (Massachusetts) High School has a card for every student, giving on one side a record of class work for four years, and on the other side a statement of positions and pay of the graduate. New pupils are placed; old pupils are offered better opportunities. Employers are interviewed in attempts to have them promote graduates. Through this system, Mr. Maxim keeps in constant touch with the labor market and with graduates of his school.
Certainly the high school must prepare students for life. Whether, in addition, it shall constitute itself a Public Employment Bureau, finding positions for students, keeping in touch with their careers, and assisting in their advancement, is a matter yet to be determined.
Will the high school retain its present form? Probably not. If the Berkeley-Los Angeles plan prevails, there will be three steps in the public schools,—from elementary to junior high, to high school. If the Gary plan wins, there will be twelve years of schooling, following one another as consecutively as day follows night. Whether the Los Angeles or the Gary plan is adopted, one thing seems reasonably certain,—the high school will keep in close touch with life.
The high school is securing a surer grip on the world with each passing day. It is reaching out toward the grades, calling the pupils to come; it is reaching out into the world, making places there for them to occupy. The modern high school has ceased to be an adjunct to the college. Instead, it is a distinctive unit in educational life, taking boys and girls between the ages of fourteen and nineteen and relating them to the world in which they must live.
The era of the high school course is being succeeded by the era of the high school boy and the high school girl. First, last, now and always, the boys and girls, not the course, deserve primary consideration. Whatever their needs, the high school must supply them if it is to become a public servant, responsible for training children of high school age in the noble art of living.
Away off in northwestern New York State, where the sun shines fiercely in the summer mid-day, where the ice forms thick on the lakes, and the snow lies on the north side of the hills from Thanksgiving well on to Easter, there is a town of some three thousand inhabitants, called Lowville. The comfortable homes, brick stores, wide tree-bordered streets, smiling hills and giddy children look very much the same at Lowville as they do in any one of a thousand similar towns east of the Mississippi. Situated far back from the line of ordinary travel, the town is typical of a great class.
Stretching in all directions about Lowville is a fertile, prosperous, agricultural region, farmed by good farmers, who are intelligently awake to the problem of scientific agriculture in its multiple phases.
These farmers grow fruits, raise general farm produce, breed a little stock, cut some timber, besides all of the time-honored occupations of the professional farmer. The boys and girls growing up in the town or the neighboring countryside, blessed with good air, and a cheap supply of wholesome food, look pleasantly forward toward life as something worth living.
So much for the good side of Lowville. Sad indeed is it to recall that there is another side. Anyone who has been in close contact with country life can readily imagine the ignorance, bigotry, prejudice, unfairness and unsociableness of the population; the tendency to cling to the past no matter what its shortcomings; the unwillingness to venture into even the rosiest future which involves change. Lowville is blessed a great deal and cursed a very little. The blessings are being augmented and the curses minimized by means of the local high school.
Lowville Academy is an ancient private school whose usefulness was immensely enhanced when it was converted into a public high school. When Mr. W. F. H. Breeze took over the principalship he made no particular objection to the old class rooms and wooden stairs, but he was very insistent upon discovering, first, what the community needed, and second, whether or not the school was meeting the need.
More than half (at the present time sixty-five per cent.) of the pupils at the school came from outside of the village. That is, they come from the farms. As farmers’ boys, many of them have been brought up to all of the unscientific crudities which have been handed down in American agriculture since the early settlers took the land from the Indians in grateful recognition of their instructions in fertilization. While many agricultural anachronisms may be laid to the door of the redskins, planting by the moon and several equally absurd customs are traceable to the higher civilization of Western Europe.
Saturated with traditional agricultural lore—some better and some worse—the boys and girls from outside of Lowville, sixty-five in each hundred high school students, were growing up to become the owners of promising New York farms. They needed, first of all, an education which should equip them with all of the culture of our schools, beside giving them a knowledge of the sciences of agriculture and of mechanics. Those boys and girls who were planning to go to college required an advance course in those purgatorial topics which, for some inexplicable reason, are still regarded as necessary preliminaries to a college education. Most of the girls in Lowville and the immediate vicinity hope to marry sooner or later, and to preside over wholesome, clean homes. For home-making, also, there were certain possible educational provisions.
As prospective farmers, mechanics, college students, business men and women, as prospective fathers and mothers, the boys and girls of Lowville were looking to the schools—high as well as elementary—for an education which should enable them to do successfully and efficiently those things which life was holding before them.
Furthermore, Lowville had no spot around which community interests and civic ideas could center. There was intelligent interest in Lowville, its streets, schools, trees, houses, and business interests; there was, too, an interest, expressed among the neighboring farmers, in the wonderful strides of agriculture; furthermore, men and women were anxious to discuss political and social happenings in other parts of the world.
What more natural than that the school be converted into a center of interest and education for Lowville and the surrounding territory. Adults, as well as young folks, needed school help. Adults as well as young folks should then be accommodated in the Lowville schools.
“There was a peculiar opportunity,” said Mr. Breeze, in his crisp direct way. “The place needed organizing in educational lines. People were anxious to have it done. They wanted the advantage of a modern educational institution, but no one had provided it, so I made up my mind that my business was to do it.”
Mr. Breeze made his first innovation in the course of study, supplementing the old course by domestic science, several phases of agriculture and mechanics. Then he correlated the various branches in such a way that the subjects all harmonized with the work which any particular student was doing.
“We made up our minds,” Mr. Breeze explained, “that if we were to hold the children and to educate them usefully, we must make our course fit the things which they had to do in life. The work must come down to earth. It had to be practical—that is, applicable to everyday affairs. Some people confuse practical with pecuniary. There is no relation between the two words. Practical means usable. We set out to make a usable education.”
“No education is usable which has frills,” Mr. Breeze insists. “Frills are nice for looks, but you can’t put on frills until you have a garment to which they may be attached. Our school is providing the garment—we will leave the frills to some one else.”
With this idea in mind, the applied courses in the school were organized. Wood-alcohol cook stoves, such as those used in the village, ordinary sewing machines, typewriters for the commercial course, and the simplest tools for the machine shop, made up the equipment.
“These boys have but a few tools at home,” Mr. Breeze says. “When they go on the farm they will be compelled to use these tools. Why, then, should they be taught mechanics with tools which they cannot duplicate on their farms without an unjustifiable extravagance?”
Pursuant to such philosophy, the boys began their shop-work by equipping the shop, building benches, tool-chests, cabinets, and saw horses; putting lath and plaster on the ceiling; setting up the simple tools and putting the shop in running order. Meanwhile, the agricultural students set up two cream separators and a milk-tester, and arranged their laboratory. Then the school was ready for applied work, or rather, the students having graduated from a course in shop equipment, were ready for shop practice.
The entire class in agriculture makes inspection of nearby farms—here to see a well-managed orchard, there a new type of cow-barn or silo. Again they inspect the soil of a district, going carefully over it, picking samples and testing them on return to the school. In fruit-packing season, the students visit the packing houses, or else, in the case of some of the boys, they take a week of employment with a good fruit packer. In season they practice tree pruning, grafting, budding, transplanting and spraying. Whenever possible, the applied work of the school is done in connection with the real applied work of life.
The physics and chemistry are both related to the agriculture and the mechanics courses in the most intimate manner. From the earliest lessons in physics through analyses of heat, light and the principles of mechanics, the theories are constantly interpreted in practical problems which arise in the daily work of the Lowville farmer. The physics teacher, enthusiastic over his students and his work, builds machines and testing devices, which the boys and girls use in solving the problems which they bring from their homes. No less close to the life of the place is the chemical laboratory, which offers opportunity for the analysis of soil, the chemistry of fertilizers, experiments in testing food and milk, and a number of other matters pertaining to agriculture and domestic life.
The mechanical courses are closely related to the work in agriculture, since most of the boys who take up the mechanical work are to go on the farms. The course in mechanics passes quickly over the elements of the work—most boys have learned to use saw, plane, chisel, auger, and hammer years before. The smithing work of tempering, annealing, welding, soldering and removing rust, all leads up to the real work of the shops,—the making of products. The boys make pruning knives, squares and drawing boards, grafting hooks, nail boxes, apple-boxing devices (for this is an apple country), cement rollers, mallets, whiffle-trees, bob-sleds, holders for saw filing, bag-holders, chicken-coops, poultry exhibit boxes, hammer handles, greenhouse flats. Besides, they have exercises in belt-lacing, in cement work, and reinforced concrete. Then, too, they make models of barns and bridges, computing strains, lumber-costs, labor-costs, floor spacing and arrangement.
The agricultural course deals, in some detail, with fruit-growing, animal husbandry, grain-growing, and related topics. Though the scope of such a course is necessarily limited in a high school, it forms an invaluable addition to the knowledge of the boy who cannot go to an agricultural college before he begins his life on the farm. Taught by an agricultural expert, the work assumes real importance to the prospective farmer.
Nor are the girls of Lowville neglected.
The domestic science department, in charge of an expert, takes up household economics, sewing, dietetics and cooking. The work throughout is practical, the girls learning the principles of sanitation, and their application to the household; domestic art and home decoration; lighting, heating and ventilation. The sewing classes cover the usual exercises in simple hemming and darning, making towels, hemming napkins, and the like; then underclothes, and later dresses are made.
In the cooking laboratory the girls learn food values and food combinations, the cooking of simple dishes, the preparation of entire meals. The girl who finishes the domestic science course in the Lowville Academy is competent to organize a home, cook, sew, keep house and make as efficient use of her opportunities as does her brother who has been trained in mechanics or agriculture.
It is not in the applied courses alone that an extraordinary amount of co-operation has been attained. The academic branches, likewise, are so adjusted as to bear directly upon the work of the remaining courses. The Academic co-ordination is particularly noticeable in the English work, which is required of everyone during the entire high school course. English composition is made to serve as a connecting, co-ordinating study—related to all of the other courses in the school.
The student in agriculture writes reports on various phases of agricultural work, collecting them in a folder and arranging them in order, according to subject. Chemistry reports, history reports, all are made a legitimate part of the work in English.
The results of this system have been more than satisfactory to Mr. Breeze and his staff of co-workers. Students who would have left at the end of the grammar school, are attracted by the high school program, and “saved” by a high school course. The appeal of the school is a wide one. There are no class of boys and girls in Lowville who cannot find something worth while in the high school. Often a student otherwise not brilliant will succeed remarkably in a particular line. Of one such boy in particular Mr. Breeze spoke.
“He had no taste for Greek, but his reports and analysis in agriculture and mechanics were brilliant. The excellent drawing and sketching and the careful work showed how much appeal the applied course had made to his mind; yet but for the agricultural course he would never have come to high school. A farmer’s son with little taste for the ordinary academic studies was inspired by the idea of improved, scientific farming and was getting a thorough insight into the principles of agriculture, chemistry, physics, and mechanics, which will be of the greatest service to him when he takes up farming. Such topics as judging the age of cows, breed of cattle, cost of milk production, the cost of cow-barn construction, grain, hay, cattle rations, silage, and nutrition will all bear directly on the work of the farm in which he is so deeply interested.["]
So much for the contribution of the Lowville High School to the students who have gone out of its class-rooms and class excursions, stronger in body and more alert of mind. No less remarkable has been its service to the community. At the suggestion of the school authorities acting in co-operation with the Grange, the State, and several other agencies, Lowville has secured an agricultural specialist, whose business it is to travel through the countryside, advising farmers, discussing their problems and suggesting better methods of operating the farms, or of experimenting in new directions. Each winter for one week, a school for adults is held, with courses in agriculture for the men and courses in domestic science for the women. The teachers,—experts from the Cornell School of Agriculture,—are exceptionally well prepared to deal with the problems of New York State farmers.
Higher education at Lowville is education for everyone in Lowville and vicinity who wants it. With one eye on community needs and the other on the best means of supplying them, the Lowville Academy is giving to the citizens of Lowville a twentieth century higher education.
[20] Much of the material in this chapter appeared originally in the Journal of Education.
If any two words in the English language can express the spirit of the Cincinnati schools, they are “co-operation” and “progressivism.” The people of Cincinnati, high and low, have banded themselves together in an endeavor to make good schools. Cincinnati schools are not a monument to any individual or group of individuals, rather they are the handiwork of the citizenship. In their eagerness for educational progress, the people are not hypnotized by every cry of “lo here! lo there!” nor do they live in terror of new educational ideas. Their one aim, the education of Cincinnati’s children, takes precedence over every other consideration. Perhaps that fact explains both the co-operation and the progressivism.
Co-operation in the educational work of Cincinnati has been developed to a remarkable degree. “There is not a civic society in the whole town which is not working with the schools,” says former Superintendent Dyer. Mr. Dyer might have left out the word “civic” and still have been very close to the truth.
Mr. Frederick A. Geier, a leader among the manufacturers who have made possible the “half time in shop, half time in school” system, says of his activity in co-operating with the school authorities: “As a citizen of Cincinnati, I am interested in the schools for two reasons: first, because good schools will bring under their influence the maximum number of pupils and parents, and it is the best agency I can conceive of for producing a high quality of citizenship; second, as a manufacturer I feel that the material prosperity of a community is directly related to the mental and manual equipment of its people.” Showing his faith by his works, Mr. Geier has labored in season and out of season to make the schools of Cincinnati the most progressive in the country.
Speaking as “a woman and mother,” Mrs. Isabella C. Pendleton, of the Civic League, which has played an active part in building up school sentiment, says: “I consider that the most important features of our school system are the manual training for boys and the domestic science for girls. I am happy to say that to-day a girl on graduating from our schools is capable of taking care of a home.” As public schools go, that is not an insignificant achievement. No wonder Mrs. Pendleton, a woman and mother, is interested in schools which accomplish such vital results.
From what extraordinary sources do the schools in Cincinnati secure their support! “All of the local dentists have been brought into close contact with the school system by the efforts of the Dental Society to introduce mouth hygiene into the schools,” says Dr. Sidney G. Rauh. “We dentists,” adds Dr. Rauh, “are firm believers in general co-operation.” No less cordial is the Board of Health in its endorsement of the schools, and in its efforts to raise the health standard of school children.
“I do not believe there is any city in the United States which offers as good an example of the spirit of co-operation as Cincinnati does,” affirms Carl Dehoney, of the Chamber of Commerce. “Why are we so active in co-operating with the schools? Simply because we realize that good schools, and especially practical schools, which will fit young men and women for their real life work, have a tremendous bearing upon the efficiency of the people of the city.” Mr. W. C. Cauldius, also of the Chamber of Commerce, says: “Our school development is the result of a few years of public support and sympathy.” In similar enthusiastic words the leaders of every phase of Cincinnati life express their interest in educational progress.
Let no one infer from what has been said that the people of Cincinnati are agreed upon all of the details of educational policy, nor upon the fundamentals either, for that matter, but they have adopted an educational creed which runs about as follows:
1. I believe in making the schools provide for the educational necessities of every child.
2. I believe that this can be done when all work together.
3. I believe that new ideas are the life-blood of educational advance.
That simple creed adopted by teachers, principals, mothers, manufacturers, dentists and trade unionists has become a great motive force in the upbuilding of the Cincinnati schools.
The most evident thing about the Cincinnati school organization is its democracy. The feudal spirit of lordship and serfdom existing in many schools between superintendents and principals on the one hand, and teachers on the other, is nowhere evident in the Cincinnati schools; instead, each teacher, thrown upon her own initiative, is a creative artist, solving her particular problem as she believes that it should be solved, and abiding by the consequence of her failure or success.
Early in his work Mr. Dyer made it clear that he would not tolerate a mechanical system of education. “Up here on the hill, in a wealthy suburban district, is a grammar school. Its organization, administration and course of study must necessarily differ from that other school, located in the heart of the factory district. The principal of each of these schools has a problem to face—each will succeed in proportion as he grasps the significance of his own problem and the readiest means for its solution.” Is not that a refreshing sentiment from a superintendent of city schools? Note this other delightful touch: “My teachers soon learned that I regard the teacher who works exactly like another teacher as pretty poor stuff.” Before the axe of such incisive radicalism, how the antiquated structure of the old school machinery came crashing to the ground, to be replaced by a system which recognized each teacher as an individual builder of manhood and womanhood, working to meet the needs of individual children. It is not an idle boast which the English make when they glory in the absence of a curriculum; for even the best curriculum, if mismanaged, is speedily converted into a noose, the knot of which adjusts itself mechanically under the left ear of teacher and child alike. The school authorities of Cincinnati destroyed both knot and rope by giving to their teachers and principals this injunction: “Make your school fit the needs of your children and your community.”
The old-time, machine-minded school superintendent, filled with the spirit of co-operative coercion, assembles his teachers. “Now let’s all work together,” he exclaims, “Here, Susie Smith, this is what you are to teach your pupils, and this is the way in which you are to do it.” It was in quite a different spirit that Mr. Dyer said to each one of his teachers: “You do your work, I’ll do mine, and together we will make the schools go.” It was in this spirit that the teachers were called together to confer on the reorganization of the course of study. Each teacher in each grade had her say in the matter. If the most insignificant teacher in Cincinnati said to Mr. Dyer: “I have an idea that I think would improve the work in my grade,” his invariable reply was: “Then try it. There is no way to determine the value of ideas except to try them.” By that policy Mr. Dyer surrounded himself with a group of vitally interested people, each one suited to the task in which he believed implicitly, and each one fully convinced that the success or failure of that part of the Cincinnati school system with which he was immediately concerned, depended directly upon his efforts. No wonder the schools succeeded!
The kindergartens are at the basis of the educational system of Cincinnati, and they are in charge of a woman who believes in herself and in her work. Perhaps the people of Cincinnati are not justified in believing that their kindergartens are the very best in the whole United States, but Miss Julia Bothwell, who directs them, says, modestly enough, that she has visited kindergartens in many cities, adopting their schemes and improving in response to their suggestions, until she is convinced that no other city in the land can show a better kindergarten system than that of Cincinnati. In truth, her plan is ordinarily referred to as the “Cincinnati idea.”
Cincinnati children begin their kindergarten work at four and a half or five, entering the first grade at six. While in the kindergarten they play the games and sing the songs that all kindergartens play and sing, but with this difference: their plays and songs are built around the things that they do.
The yellow October leaves of Cincinnati’s parks half shadow the activity of the busy classes of little kindergarten folks who go there to work and to learn. The Park Commissioners, like every one else in Cincinnati, are in thorough sympathy with the work of the schools, so they allot to each kindergarten class a plot in the park, in which the children—using all of the tools themselves—plant tulip bulbs under the direction of the park gardeners.
“Tulips are the first thing up in the spring,” Miss Both well explained, “so we have decided to use them. For years we tried gardens, but children of kindergarten age are not willing to give gardens as much attention as they require; then, too, the gardens ran wild during the summer, so we have settled on the tulip. After the children have planted the bulbs they sing and talk about their work. Then, early in the spring, they begin to visit their plots, watching the first shoots of green as they appear, looking eagerly for the buds, and then, at last, as the reward of their interest, picking the flowers and taking them home. Thus, each child, during his kindergarten course, sees the complete cycle from bulb to flower.”
Besides this flower-culture in the park, the children grow hyacinths in the school rooms, visit the woods to collect autumn leaves and spring flowers, make excursions to the country, where they may see animals and crops, and always, for a few days after an excursion, talk about the things which they saw, draw them, sing about them and play games about them. In order to facilitate the work the Board of Education leases a farm, to which the kindergartens go in succession. By these means the life of the city kindergarten child is thoroughly linked with nature.
These things are not new in kindergartening, however. They have merely taken firm root in the fertile soil of Cincinnati’s educational enthusiasm. The real excellence of Miss Bothwell’s experiment consists in connecting the kindergarten with the early elementary grades on the one hand and with the community on the other.
The first grade children of Cincinnati come back to the kindergarten teachers for an hour’s kindergartening once each week, in order to clinch the kindergarten influence on the lives of the first graders. The first grade teachers meet the director of kindergartening once each week, for a discussion of kindergarten methods, and an initiation into the kindergarten spirit. Thus the lump of first grade abstraction is leavened with the leaven of kindergarten concretes, and the grade teachers get the spirit of kindergarten work. In the near future Miss Bothwell hopes to have the kindergarten work extend to the second grade, in order that the spirit, rhythm, harmony and joy of the kindergarten may thoroughly permeate the roots of the Cincinnati school system.
Even more significant—if anything could be more significant than the breakdown of the ironclad, first grade traditions—is the grip which the kindergartens of Cincinnati have secured on the people. The Cincinnati kindergartener is more than a teacher—she serves many masters. In the morning she holds kindergarten classes. On two afternoons a week she does kindergarten work with first grade children; on one afternoon she holds a conference with the supervisor; on a fourth afternoon she visits the classes of first grade teachers or confers with mothers’ clubs, and on her remaining afternoon she visits her children in their homes. Out of these varied duties has come: first, a group spirit among the kindergarteners, built upon frequent interchange of plans and ideas; second, an understanding of the relation between the problems of the kindergarten and the problems of the grades; third, a sympathetic grasp of the home conditions surrounding the life of many a difficult child; and fourth, sixty-one mothers’ clubs, one organized in connection with each kindergarten, which furnish a social gathering-place for mothers, an opportunity to influence parental ideas, and a body of invaluable public sentiment.
The idea of a kindergarten, usually regarded as a small part of the school program, has been evolved until, in this one city, it is a potent influence, working on children, teachers, parents and public opinion.
The kindergarten is not alone in its appeal to the child and in its affiliation with the community. Traditional grade education has likewise been modified and rehabilitated until it makes an appeal to parent and child alike. In the first place, a consistent effort has been made to provide accommodations for the physical education in the grades of the fifty-seven elementary schools. Twenty-five now have fully equipped gymnasiums in which children have two or three periods of exercise each week. In the schools not so equipped the physical work is confined to calisthenics. Each year the Board of Education appropriates five hundred dollars for the Public School Athletic League, which organizes meets and games, open to all public school pupils free of charge. Besides field days, baseball, soccer and football there is an athletic badge awarded to all pupils who pass an “efficiency” test in athletic activities.
The academic work of the grades is alive with enthusiasm. History, so often made a mass of dead names and dates, is taught in terms of life. The children learn that history is in reality a record of the things which people did, and of the forces which were at work in their lives; furthermore, that the commonplace acts of to-day will be the history of to-morrow. Translated into ideas and social changes, history stimulates thought, turning the child’s mind from the purely personal side of life to the social activities of which history is made.
Arithmetic and geography begin at home, in the things which the children know and do. Both are taught in terms of child experience. Both call to the child mind the things of daily life.
English, too, which is so important an element in education, is made to reflect child experiences. Teaching the reading lesson of “Eyes and No Eyes” one teacher asked her class: “Well, children, what did you see on your way to school this morning? What did you see, Elmer?”
“Well, I saw—I saw—” and Elmer sat down.
“I saw that it had been raining in the night by the mud in the streets,” said Alice; while John had seen trolley cars, and remembered that the number on one of them was 647.
A seventh grade girl had read the Psalm beginning, “Who shall ascend unto the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in His holy place?” After asking what a psalm was, and who wrote the Psalms, the teacher asked:
“Who was David?”
“He was the king of Palestine,” replied one boy promptly. After straightening out the history the teacher next asked:
“For what was David noted?”
“For being Solomon’s father,” ventured one little girl.
“Oh, no,” protested a boy, “He was the fighter.”
“Sure enough,” said the teacher, “would the fact that he was a warrior naturally influence his thoughts?” After an affirmative answer from the class: “Where do we find any evidence of that in this Psalm, George?" asked the teacher.
George considered the reading a moment. “Oh, I see, it’s where he says, ‘The Lord mighty in battle.’”
After an elaboration of this idea the teacher went on to ask why David wrote, “Lift up your heads, oh ye gates, and the King of Glory shall come in.” By careful questioning the class was led to see that cities had walls and gates; that David, who had won many victories, was accustomed to have the gates thrown wide to receive him, and that his triumphal entries had made a deep impression on his thoughts. After some more discussion the Psalm was read again, this time with surprising intelligence and feeling.
One eighth grade class in English was engaged in preparing a catalog of all of the pictures in the school, looking up the painters, their lives, their principal works, and the circumstances connected with the painting of the pictures which hung on the school wall. In the same room a girl had written a description of a sunset, in which she had said: “The western sky is illuminated with a fiery red, and the edges of the clouds are also tinted with a silvery hue.”
“What would Corot say about that?” asked the teacher.
The girl thought a moment. “I guess he would say that there was too much color.”
“Yes,” smiled the teacher, “he would say, ‘Let’s go home and wait for a few moments.’”
The essay work in the upper grades is linked with all of the other school work. The children write about civics, architecture, localities, books and pictures. One girl of thirteen wrote on “The Reaper”—“As I enter my bedroom one picture especially catches my gaze. It hangs on the eastern wall. It is the picture of a large city by moonlight. The moon is bright and the stars are out. A beautiful lake borders the far end of the city, and the moon makes the lake look like a mirror. The church steeple stands out clear against the sky. It is a beautiful summer night, and while the city sleeps an angel descends and bears a little child to the heavens above. Some mother must have given up one of her beloved flowers.”
No less valuable are the essays describing an ideal kitchen, a location for a house, a home, school life, and the various other things with which the child comes in contact.
Last among the academic branches, there is a carefully organized eighth grade course in civics, which, beginning with the geography and early history of Cincinnati, covers family relations and the tenement problem; the protection of public health—street cleaning, sewage, water, smoke abatement, and the activities of the Board of Health in providing for sanitation and the suppression of disease; the protection of life and property; the business life of the community—relation of the citizen to business life, the growth of commerce and industry in Cincinnati; Cincinnati as a manufacturing center, the labor problem, and the regulation of business by the government; the necessity for civic beauty; the educational forces of the community; the care of dependents and delinquents; the functions of government; and the collection and expenditure of city funds. In this way the child, before he leaves the elementary school, is given an idea of the real meaning of citizenship.
Beginning in the kindergarten, the art work extends through the high school, including in the lower elementary grades, paper-cutting and pasting related to school work, the seasons and the holidays. From the third grade on, the children make real products—trays, boxes, blotter pads, calendars, booklets and folios—work which is supplemented by object and constructive drawing and designing.
Shop-work is given to boys, and domestic science to girls, in all of the schools. The point at which these subjects are introduced and the amount of time devoted to them depends upon—what do you think? The regulations prescribed in the course of study? Not a bit of it! It depends upon the needs of the community and of the child.
Schools which are located in the poorer districts begin manual training and domestic science with the second grade, though ordinarily they are not introduced until the sixth. Normally the children are given one and one-half or two hours a week of such work, but over-age, backward and defective children may spend as much as half of their time upon it. For some of the girls a five-room flat has been rented, in which they are taught housekeeping in all of its phases. Otherwise the domestic science consists of hand and machine sewing, the designing and making of simple garments, the planning and preparation of food, and the organization and care of a household. Wherever possible, the boys make useful products in their shop-work, instead of constructing show pieces which have no value.
From top to bottom the grades are shaped to meet the needs of children. Each class and each school is built around this central idea. The school system, instead of taking the usual form of a cumbrous machine, is a delicate mechanism adjusted to the wants of Cincinnati children.
Not content with making the grades interesting, the school authorities of Cincinnati have made the high schools so profitable and popular that ninety-five out of each one hundred children who complete the eighth grade go to the Cincinnati high schools. Furthermore, during the past six years the high school attendance in Cincinnati has doubled. These two noteworthy conditions are the product of carefully matured and efficiently executed plans, and of infinite labor. Yet the results have more than repaid the labor which they cost.
“Our first task,” explained Dr. E. D. Lyon, principal of the Hughes High School, “was to persuade the community that it needed high school training. Next we secured two fine new high school buildings. Then those of us who are engaged in high school work faced the supreme task. We had to prove to the people that their expenditures on high schools were worth while, by providing a high school education that would mean something to the pupils and to the community.” Note the spirit of social obligation—a feeling prevalent throughout the Cincinnati schools.
“Most parents fail to see the importance of the high school problem,” said Assistant Superintendent Roberts, “because they never make consistent efforts to have their children choose their vocations intelligently. We began our work right there, at the bottom, by telling the parents of grade children about the high school courses, and what they meant. Eighth grade teachers, under the guidance of Mr. F. P. Goodwin, are expected to talk to their classes regularly on the vocational opportunities in Cincinnati and elsewhere, and to help the children get started right in high school careers. Besides that, we take the grade children on trips to the high schools, showing them on each trip some striking feature of high school work. Parents’ meetings are held, in which the high schools are explained and discussed, and we send circulars to the parents of sixth, seventh and eighth grade pupils, explaining the high school work as simply as may be.”
After arousing such expectations, the high school cannot fulfill its obligations in any way other than by the provision of a thorough course of study adapted to the needs of all types of pupils. The preparation for this in Cincinnati has been made with consummate skill. The pupil, on entering the high school, may select any one of the nine general courses, in which there are twenty-three possible combinations of subjects.
Four of the courses—General, Classical, Domestic Science and Manual Training—prepare for various colleges and technical schools. The other five courses—Commercial, Technical Co-operative Course for Boys; Technical Co-operative Course for Girls; Art and Music, lead to vocations. Housed in the same high school building is this range of work, which permits boys and girls to select a course which will bear directly on almost any line of work that they may care to follow in later life.
Each course is shaped to give the children who select it a definite training in the line of their interest. The General Course prepares pupils for college; the Domestic Science Course shows girls how to make and keep a home; the Commercial Course turns out bookkeepers; the Technical Co-operative Courses, enabling boys and girls to spend part of their time in the school and part in the factory, are arranged in co-operation with the principal industries of Cincinnati. The Art and Music Courses, like the other special work, are in the hands of experts who are competent to give a practical direction to the activity of their pupils.
In passing, it is interesting to note that the people of Cincinnati are getting the best possible use out of their splendid high school equipment. In addition to the regular classes which fill the Woodward High School from 8:30 to 3:00, the pupils in the continuation courses occupy the building every afternoon and all day Saturday. Five nights a week it is filled by an enthusiastic night school, three thousand strong, and during six weeks of the summer vacation a summer school holds its sessions there. It would be difficult to find a school plant which comes nearer to being used one hundred per cent of its time. To be sure, such things were not done “in father’s time,” but then the people of Cincinnati have a theory that while a good thing is worth all it costs, it does not pay to let even the best of things decay for lack of use. That is why the school system tingles from end to end with vigor and enthusiasm.
Besides the kindergarten, elementary schools, and high schools, the city of Cincinnati has a university, which, like all of the other educational forces of the city, is tied up with the general educational program. Those graduates of the Cincinnati high schools who desire to go to college, may pass from the high school of Cincinnati into the University of Cincinnati without a break in the continuity of their education.
The University of Cincinnati is a municipal university. The city appropriates one-half of one mill on the general assessment, for university purposes. The board of education appropriates ten thousand dollars a year toward the maintenance of the Teachers’ College, the school in which the city teachers are trained. The training school for kindergarteners is affiliated with the university, having the same entrance requirements as the other university courses. In explanation of this close connection between the city and the university, President Dabney begins his 1911 report to the board of directors by saying: “An effort has been made in this report to explain the service of the university to the city and people of Cincinnati. It is therefore not only an official report to the directors, but is also a statement for the information of all citizens.” Begun in this spirit of public obligation, the report details the services of the Teachers’ College in supplying teachers; of the School of Economics and Political Science in supplying municipal experts; and of the Engineering School for its inauguration of the widely-known industrial co-operative courses—for be it known to the uninitiated that the five hundred students of the University Engineering School spend alternately two weeks in the school and two weeks in a shop. More than that, the Engineering School furnishes experts for municipal engineering work.
That the students of the University may feel the interest of the city in their work, preference is given to the University graduates in appointments of teachers, of municipal engineers, and of employees on such municipal work as testing food, inspecting construction, and the like. University students may thus occupy their spare time in practical municipal work.
“The University should lead the progressive thought of the community,” says President Dabney, and by way of making good his proposition he avails himself of every opportunity to turn his students into municipal activities, or to co-operate in any way with the forces that are making for a greater Cincinnati.
There are children in Cincinnati, as in every other city, who cannot afford to go to the high school. The easiest answer to such children is, “Well, then, don’t.” The fairest answer is a system of schools which will enable them to secure an education even though they are at work. Cincinnati in selecting the latter course has opened a school for the education of every important group unable to attend the high schools who wish to avail themselves of advanced educational opportunities.
First there is the night school work, which, in addition to the ordinary academic courses, offers special opportunities in machine shop practice, blacksmithing, mechanical and architectural drawing, and domestic science. As these courses are carried forward in the Woodward High School building the students have all of the advantages of high school equipment.
Night school, coming after a day’s exertion, is so trying that only the most robust can profit by it. No small importance therefore attaches to the operation of the compulsory continuation schools under the Ohio law, which empowers cities to compel working children between fourteen and sixteen years of age to attend school for not more than eight hours a week between the hours of 8:00 A. M. and 5:00 P. M.—hours which will presumably be subtracted from shop time. By means of this adaptation of the German system even those children who must leave school at fourteen are guaranteed school work for the next two years at least. Although this is but a minimum requirement, it represents a beginning in the right direction.