What the Schools Teach and Might Teach Part 4

Where this work for girls is at its best in Cleveland, it appears to be of a superior character. Those who are in charge of the best are in a position to advise as to further extensions and developments. It is not difficult to discern certain of these. It would appear, for example, that sewing should find some place at least in the work of seventh and eighth grades. The girl who does not go on to high school is greatly in need of more advanced training in sewing than can be given in the sixth grade. Each building having a household arts room should possess a sewing machine or two, at the very least. The academic high schools are now planning to offer courses in domestic science. As in the technical high schools, all of this work should involve as large a degree of normal responsibility as possible.

We omit discussion here of the specialized vocational training of women, since this is handled in other reports of the Survey.

When we turn to the manual training of the boys, we are confronted with problems of much greater difficulty. Women's household occupations, so far as retained in the home, are unspecialized. Each well-trained household worker does or supervises much the same range of things as every other. To give the entire range of household occupations to all girls is a simple and logical arrangement.

But man's labor is greatly specialized throughout. There is no large remnant of unspecialized labor common to all, as in the case of women.

To all girls we give simply this unspecialized remnant, since it is large and important. But in the case of men the unspecialized field has disappeared. There is nothing of labor to give to boys except that which has become specialized.

A fundamental problem arises. Shall we give boys access to a variety of specialized occupations so that they may become acquainted, through responsible performance, with the wide and diversified field of man's labor? Or shall we give them some less specialized sample out of that diversified field so that they may obtain, through contact and experience, some knowledge of the things that make up the world of productive labor?

Cleveland's reply, to judge from actual practices, is that a single sample will be sufficient for all except those who attend technical and special schools. The city has therefore chosen joinery and cabinet-making as this sample. In the fifth and sixth grades work begins in simple knife-work for an hour a week under the direction of women teachers. In the seventh and eighth grades it becomes benchwork for an hour and a half per week, and is taught by a special manual training teacher, always a man. In the academic high schools the courses in joinery and cabinet-making bring the pupils to greater proficiency, but do not greatly extend the course in width.

Much of this work is of a rather formal character, apparently looking toward that manual discipline formerly called "training of eye and hand," instead of consciously answering to the demands of social purposes. The regular teachers look upon the fifth and sixth grade sloyd[*sic] which they teach with no great enthusiasm. Seventh and eighth grade teachers do not greatly value the work.

The household arts courses for the girls have social purposes in view.

As a result they are kept vitalized, and are growing increasingly vital in the work of the city. Is it not possible also to vitalize the manual training of the boys--unspecialized pre-vocational training, we ought to call it--by giving it social purpose?

The princ.i.p.al of one of the academic high schools emphasized in conversation the value of manual training for vocational guidance--a social purpose. It permitted boys, he said, to try themselves out and to find their vocational tastes and apt.i.tudes. The purpose is undoubtedly a valid one. The limitation of the method is that joinery and cabinet-making cannot help a boy to try himself out for metal work, printing, gardening, tailoring, or commercial work.

If vocational guidance is to be a controlling social purpose, the manual training work will have to be made more diversified so that one can try out his tastes and abilities in a number of lines. And, moreover, each kind of work must be kept as much like responsible work out in the world as possible. In keeping work normal, the main thing is that the pupils bear actual responsibility for the doing of actual work. This is rather difficult to arrange; but it is necessary before the activities can be lifted above the level of the usual manual training shop. The earliest stages of the training will naturally be upon what is little more than a play level. It is well for schools to give free rein to the constructive instinct and to provide the fullest and widest possible opportunities for its exercise. But if boys are to try out their apt.i.tudes for work and their ability to bear responsibility in work, then they must try themselves out on the work level. Let the manual training actually look toward vocational guidance; the social purpose involved will vitalize the work.

There is a still more comprehensive social purpose which the city should consider. Owing to the interdependence of human affairs, men need to be broadly informed as to the great world of productive labor. Most of our civic and social problems are at bottom industrial problems. Just as we use industrial history and industrial geography as means of giving youth a wide vision of the fields of man's work, so must we also use actual practical activities as means of making him familiar in a concrete way with materials and processes in their details, with the nature of work, and with the nature of responsibility. On the play level, therefore, constructive activities should be richly diversified. This diversity of opportunity should continue to the work level. One cannot really know the nature of work or of work responsibility except as it is learned through experience.

Let the manual training adopt the social purpose here mentioned, provide the opportunities, means, and processes that it demands, and the work will be wondrously vitalized.

It is well to mention that the program suggested is a complicated one on the side of its theory and a difficult one on the side of its practice. In the planning it is well to look to the whole program. In the work itself it is well to remember that one step at a time, and that secure, is a good way to avoid stumbling.

Printing and gardening are two things that might well be added to the manual training program. Both are already in the schools in some degree. They might well be considered as desirable portions of the manual training of all. They lend themselves rather easily to responsible performance on the work level. There are innumerable things that a school can print for use in its work. In so doing, pupils can be given something other than play. Also in the home gardening, supervised for educational purposes, it is possible to introduce normal work-motives. By the time the city has developed these two things it will have at the same time developed the insight necessary for attacking more difficult problems.

ELEMENTARY SCIENCE

This subject finds no place upon the program. No elaborate argument should be required to convince the authorities in charge of the school system of a modern city like Cleveland that in this ultra-scientific age the children who do not go beyond the elementary school--and they const.i.tute a majority--need to possess a working knowledge of the rudiments of science if they are to make their lives effective.

The future citizens of Cleveland need to know something about electricity, heat, expansion and contraction of gases and solids, the mechanics of machines, distillation, common chemical reactions and a host of other things about science that are bound to come up in the day's work in their various activities.

Considered from the practical standpoint of actual human needs, the present almost complete neglect of elementary science is indefensible.

The minute amount of such teaching now introduced in the language lessons for composition purposes is so small as to be almost negligible. The topics are not chosen for their bearing upon human needs. There is no laboratory work.

Naturally much of the elementary science to be taught should be introduced in connection with practical situations in kitchen, school garden, shop, sanitation, etc. Certainly the applied science should be as full as possible. But preliminary to this there ought to be systematic presentation of the elements of various sciences in rapid ways for overview and perspective.

To try to teach the elements only "incidentally" as they are applied is to fail to see them in their relations, and therefore to fail in understanding them. Intensive studies by way of filling in the details may well be in part incidental. But systematic superficial introductory work is needed by way of giving pupils their bearings in the various fields of science. The term "superficial" is used advisedly. There is an introductory stage in the teaching of every such subject when the work should be superficial and extensive. This stage paves the way for depth and intensity, which must be reached before education is accomplished.

HIGH SCHOOL SCIENCE

Having no elementary science in the grades, one naturally expects to find in the high school a good introductory course in general science, similar in organization to that suggested for the elementary stage.

But nowhere is there anything that even remotely suggests such a course. Students who take the cla.s.sical course get their first glimpse of modern science in the third or fourth high school year, when they have an opportunity to elect a course in physics or chemistry of the usual traditional stamp. No opportunity is given them for so much as a glimpse of the world's biological background. Those who take the scientific or English course have access to physical geography and to an anemic biological course ent.i.tled, "Physiology and Botany," which few take. Students of the High School of Commerce have their first contacts with modern science in a required course in chemistry in the third year, and elective physics in the fourth year. In the technical high schools the first science for the boys is systematic chemistry in the second year and physics in the third. They have no opportunity of contact with any biological science. The girls have "botany and physiology" in their first year.

The city needs to organize preliminary work in general science for the purpose of paving the way to the more intensive science work of the later years. A portion of this should be found in the elementary school and taught by departmental science teachers; and a portion in the first year of the high school. As junior high schools are developed, most of this work should be included in their courses.

As to the later organization of the work, the two technical high schools clearly indicate the modern trend of relating the science teaching to practical labors. What is needed is a wider expansion of this phase of the work without losing sight of the need at the same time for a systematic and general teaching of the sciences. It is a difficult task to make the science teaching vital and modern for the academic high schools, since they have so few contacts with the practical labors of the world. Cleveland needs to see its schools more as a part of the world of affairs, and not so much as a hothouse nursery isolated from the world and its vital interests.

PHYSIOLOGY AND HYGIENE

Teaching in matters pertaining to health is given but a meagre amount of time in the elementary schools. While the school program shows one 15-minute period each week in the first four grades, and one 30-minute period each week in the four upper grades, it appears that in actual practice the subject receives even less time than this. In the attempt to observe the cla.s.s work in physiology and hygiene, a member of the Survey staff went on one day to four different cla.s.srooms at the hour scheduled on the program. In two cases the time was given over to grammar, in one to arithmetic, and in one to music. This represents practice that is not unusual. The subject gets pushed off the program by one of the so-called "essentials." It is difficult to see why health-training is not an essential. In a letter to the School Board, February 8, 1915, Superintendent Frederick wrote:

"The teaching of physiology and hygiene should become a matter of serious moment in our course of study. At present it is not systematically presented in the elementary schools: and in the high schools it is an elective study only in the senior year. My judgment is that it should become a definite part of the program, as a required study in the seventh and eighth grades."

The small nominal amount of time as compared with the time usually expended is partially shown in Table 12. Professor Holmes' figures for the 50 cities include elementary science along with the physiology and hygiene.

TABLE 12.--TIME GIVEN TO SCIENCE, PHYSIOLOGY, HYGIENE ======+=======================+======================== | Hours per year | Per cent of grade time Grade +-----------+-----------+-----------+------------ | Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities ------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------ 1 | 10 | 37 | 1.3 | 4.3 2 | 10 | 41 | 1.1 | 4.5 3 | 10 | 40 | 1.1 | 4.4 4 | 10 | 37 | 1.1 | 3.8 5 | 19 | 34 | 2.1 | 3.5 6 | 19 | 40 | 2.1 | 4.2 7 | 19 | 45 | 2.1 | 4.5 8 | 19 | 57 | 2.1 | 5.7 ------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------ Total | 116 | 331 | 1.7 | 4.4 ------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------

In addition to the work of the regular teachers in this subject, a certain amount of instruction is given by the school physicians and nurses. In his report to the Board, 1913, Dr. Peterson writes:

"Health instruction is given by doctors and nurses in personal talks to pupils, talks to whole schools, tooth-brush drills conducted in many schools, and in visits into the homes by the nurses. Conscious effort is continually made by all doctors and nurses to inspire to right living all of the children with whom they come in contact."

Looking somewhat to the future, it can be affirmed that the school physicians and nurses are the ones who ought to give the teaching in this subject. After giving the preliminary ideas in the cla.s.srooms, they alone are in position to follow up the various matters and see that the ideas are a.s.similated through being put into practice both at school and at home. At present, however, 16 physicians and 27 nurses have 75,000 children to inspect, of whom more than half have defects that require following up. It is a physical impossibility for them to do much teaching until the force of school nurses is greatly increased.

For the present certain things may well be done:

1. A course in hygiene and sanitation, based upon an abundance of reading, should be drawn up and taught by the regular teachers in the grammar school grades. This course should be looked upon as merely preliminary to the more substantial portions of education in this field. The physicians and nurses should select the readings and supervise the course to see that the materials are covered conscientiously and not slighted.

2. The schools should arrange for practical applications of the preparatory knowledge in as many ways as possible. Children in relays can look after the ventilation, temperature, humidity, dust, light, and other sanitary conditions of school-rooms and grounds. They can make sanitary surveys of their home district; engage in anti-fly, anti-mosquito, anti-dirt, and other campaigns; and report--for credit possibly--practical sanitary and hygienic activities carried on outside of school. Only as knowledge is put to work is it a.s.similated and the prime purpose of education accomplished.

3. The corps of school nurses should be gradually enlarged, and after a time they can be given any needed training for teaching that will enable them, as the work is departmentalized in the grammar grades, to become departmental teachers in this subject for a portion of their time. Their "follow-up" work will always give them their chief educational opportunity; but to prepare for this the cla.s.swork must give some systematized preparatory ideas.

In the high schools, training of boys in hygiene and sanitation is little developed. The only thing offered them is an elective half-year course in physiology in the senior year of the scientific and English courses in the academic high schools. In the cla.s.sical course, and in the technical and commercial schools, they have not even this.

Physiology is required of girls in the technical schools, and is elective in all but the cla.s.sical course in the others. While in one or two of the high schools there is training in actual hygiene and sanitation, in most cases it is physiology and anatomy of a superficial preliminary type which is not put to use and which therefore mostly fails of normal a.s.similation.

The things recommended for the elementary schools need to be carried out in the high schools also.

PHYSICAL TRAINING

The city gives slightly more than the usual amount of time to physical training in the elementary schools. Except for first and second grades, where a slightly larger amount is set aside for the purpose, pupils are expected to receive one hour per week.