The New Education Part 11

"'Oh, no sir, no sir.'

"So it goes. The bright girl takes her cue from the teacher and the cla.s.s takes the cue from the bright girl. They must be taught to think and do for themselves."

Everyone interested in school children should visit the Was.h.i.+ngton Irving School (New York) and watch the truly wonderful McAndrew system of individualization. In the office, you are cordially greeted. You wish to see the school? By all means! But no teacher is detailed to serve you. Instead, a messenger goes in search of the Reception Committee. Two of the school girls, after a formal introduction, start your tour of inspection, if you are fortunate enough to be there at nine, with a visit to one of the a.s.sembly rooms, where, in groups of three or four hundred, the girls enjoy three-quarters of an hour each morning. The word "enjoy" is used advisedly, for, unlike the ordinary a.s.sembly, this one is conducted entirely by the girls.

Each morning a different chairman and secretary is selected, so that in the course of the year every girl has had her turn. The chairman, after calling the meeting to order and appointing two critics for the day, reads her own scripture selection, and then calls upon some girl to lead the salute to the flag. The minutes of the previous day's meeting are then read, discussed and accepted. After fifteen minutes of singing--singing of everything from "Faust" to "Rags"--the chairman calls on the two critics for their criticism of the conduct of that day's meeting. Some special event is then in order. On one Monday in December Miss Sage, head of the Biology Department, described the Biological Laboratory in the new school building. After she had finished, the chairman rose.

"Will anyone volunteer to tell in a few words the princ.i.p.al points which Miss Sage made?"

Three girls were promptly on their feet, giving, in clear, collected language, an a.n.a.lysis of the talk.

After you, as a guest, have been conducted to the platform, introduced to the chairman, and given a seat of honor, the chairman turns to the a.s.sembly, with the announcement,--

"Girls, I wish to introduce to you our guest of this morning."

Instantly the whole a.s.sembly rises, singing blithely, "Good morning, honored guest, we the girls of the Was.h.i.+ngton Irving High School are glad to welcome you."

The proceedings having come to an end, the chairman declares the meeting adjourned and you look about, realizing with a start that the girls--freshmen, soph.o.m.ores, juniors, and seniors--have spent three-quarters of an hour in charge of themselves, and have done it with interest, and with striking efficiency. Continuing your journey, you find the process of individualization everywhere present. Here a girl is in front of a cla.s.s, directing the calisthenics which precede each cla.s.s hour. There a girl is standing at the front of the room, leading singing or quizzing in geometry.

"Yes, it was a wrench," Mr. McAndrew admits. "You see, the teachers hated to give up. They had been despots during all of their teaching lives, and the idea of handing the discipline and a lot of the responsibility of the school over to the girls hurt them dreadfully, but they have tried it and found that it works."

VII Experimental Democracy

The high school pupil, after discovering himself, must next determine his relation to the community. It is one thing to break down what Mr.

McAndrew calls the W. I. (Wooden Indian) att.i.tude. It is quite another to relate pupils to the community in which they live. Yet this, too, can be done. The school is a society--incomplete in certain respects, yet in its broad outline similar to the city and the state. The social work of the school consists in showing the citizens of the school-community how to enjoy the privileges and act up to the responsibilities of citizens.h.i.+p. The Emerson School at Gary and the Union High School at Grand Rapids, organized into complete schools from the first grade to the end of the high school, are miniature working models of the composite world in which all of the children will live.

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 a.s.sociation, directed by a Board of Governors of eighteen, on which the faculty, represented by five members, holds an advisory position only. The a.s.sociation gives some annual event, like a May day fete, in which all of the girls take part. It a.s.sumes charge of the corridors, elevators, and lunch rooms; grants charters to clubs and student societies, and a.s.sumes 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 a.s.sociation-dressed dolls, and from the girls whose misunderstandings with members of the faculty have been settled by the Student a.s.sociation.

Each cla.s.s in the Was.h.i.+ngton Irving High School (New York) gives one reception a term to one of the other cla.s.ses. 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 relations.h.i.+ps, and to a.s.sume responsibilities as members of the social group.

VIII Breaching the Chinese Wall of High School Cla.s.sicism

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 princ.i.p.al of a great Western high school which housed nearly two thousand children, pointed to one room in which a tiny cla.s.s bent over their books. "That is probably the last cla.s.s in Greek that we shall ever have in the school," he said. "They are soph.o.m.ores.

Only two freshmen elected Greek this fall, and we decided not to form the cla.s.s." 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 cla.s.sics 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 cla.s.sical 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 cla.s.sical education, would have gone directly from the grammar school into the mill or the office.

IX An Up-to-Date High School

The modern high school is housed in a building which contains, in addition to the regular cla.s.s 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 a.s.sembly 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 s.e.x 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 Cla.s.sical 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 princ.i.p.al, 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.

X From School to Shop and Back Again

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 doc.u.ment. "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 inst.i.tuted 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, Ma.s.s., 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.

Apprentices.h.i.+p 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 cla.s.s 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 apprentices.h.i.+p, 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.

XI Fitting the High School Graduate Into Life

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, Princ.i.p.al 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 cla.s.ses 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.