VOL. X, No. 1 OCTOBER, 1930 BULLETIN OF THE Department of Elementary School Principals The President’s Message—Roys . ...... ‘ Greetings—Sutton .. , . The 1931 Yearbook on Supervision—Tucker K «4 . ee The Community is the Larger School—Wright Vital Values in Education—University Point of V iew—McKown Report of the Research Committee—Cober ....... The Continuity of Reading Activities—Cisne . . — os Vital Values in Elementary School Libraries—Lathrop eer Vital Values in Education—Superintendent’s Point of View— Borden... ~<¢ « oon English and Its V hee to Oe Schoole—Cessell go cat, SG ae Sas Vital Values in Elementary Education—Pyrtle ... . . The Distinctive Contributions of Geography in Education— Parkins The Importance of a Reeding Pregrem to the Schools—White Viewpoints on the Unit Plan of Work—Mossman . Making a School Thrift Account Thrifty—Jacobs American Education Week .... . ° Secretary's Minutes . . i, gees eS Executive Committee Meeting aaa a Report of the National Enrolment C ommitteo—Ritow Constitution and Bylaws ........ Auditor’s Report The Detroit Meeting PUBLISHED QUARTERLY BY THE DEPARTMENT OF ELEMEN- TARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION AS- SOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES, 1201 SIXTEENTH STREET NORTHWEST, WASHINGTON, D. C. ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER NOVEMBER 20, 1922, AT THE POSTOFFICE AT WASH- INGTON, D. C., UNDER ACT OF AUGUST 24, 1912. ACCEPTANCE FOR MAILING AT SPECIAL RATE OF POSTAGE PROVIDED FOR IN SECTION 1103, ACT OF OCTOBER 3, 1917, AUTHORIZED DECEMBER 18, 1922. BULLETIN of the DEPARTMENT OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS Frep H. Durry, Editor, 1616 Ridge Avenue, Steubenville, Ohio Published quarterly in October, January, April, and July by the Depart- ment of Elementary School Principals of the National Education Associa~ tion of the United States. The payment of $3 active membership dues entitles a member to attend all meetings of the Department, to hold office, to receive the Bulletin and Yearbook. Two dollars of each membership fee is for a year’s subscription to the Bulletin. Subscription to nonmembers is $3 per year; single copies, 50 cents; Year- book, $2. Members are requested to report at once any change of address, giving old as well as new address. Entered as second-class matter November 20, 1922, at the postoffice at Washington, D. C., under act of August 24, 1912. Acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in Section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917, authorized December 18, 1922. Executive and Editorial Offices, 1201 Sixteenth Street Northwest, Wash- ington, D. C. OFFICERS OF THE DEPARTMENT 1930-31 President, CAsste F. Roys 2609 Bristol Street, Omaha, Neb. First Vicepresident, HERBERT C. HANSEN 315 Plymouth Court, Chicago, III. Second Vicepresident, EARL R. LAING Burt School, Detroit, Mich. Third Vicepresident, Mrs. Cora 8. RUSLING 4416 South Normandie Avenue, Los Angeles, Calif. Fourth Vicepresident, Georce D. TAYLOR 392 Augustine Street, Rochester, N. Y. Fifth Vicepresident, JULIA A. SHEEHAN Hunnewell School, Wellesley, Mass. Secretary, Fred H. DuFFy 1616 Ridge Avenue, Steubenville, Ohio Executive Committee E.izaBeETH McCormick, Howe School, Superior, Wis. (Term Expires 1931) James R. FLoyp, 717 Garden Street, Plainfield, N. J. (Term Expires 1932) M. EMMa Brookes, Miles School, Cleveland, Ohio (Term Expires 1933) Eva G. Pinkston, 5652 Belmont Avenue, Dallas, Texas (Term Expires 1934) National Chairman, Enrolment Committee HERMAN Rirow, Fort Sheridan, III. THE PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE CAssiE F, Roys 2609 Bristol Street, Omaha, Nebraska HE Department of Elemen- tary School Principals is a national organization devoted wholly to the professional interests of elementary school principals. During the past few years it has not only madearemarkable growth in numbers, but it has also made a splendid record of achievement pro- fessionally and financially. It is now recognized in the educational world as the most alert and profes- sionally-minded department of the National Education Association. It has been stated that “‘the ele- mentary school principal has the key place, if he will become a real professional worker. The prin- cipalship presents a challenge ” worthy of any man’s mettle. There are many problems which confront the principal of today. Our local, state, and national or- ganizations are our only hope to help us in studying and solving these problems. It is the aim this year to endeavor to carry on the great work of this Depart- ment as started and outlined in preceding years. One thing is essential—growth in professional consciousness. Let us strive to increase our membership. Mr. Herman Ritow, Fort Sheridan, Illinois, has again consented to act as National Chairman of the Enrolment Committee. Under his able leadership, combined with the efforts of 5,000 members, the membership of this Department should be doubled. The 1931 Yearbook will treat “Supervision” following the 1930 Yearbook, which deals so admirably with the various administrative phases of the prin- cipal’s work. The Tenth Yearbook will be edited by an able committee con- sisting of Isabel Tucker of St. Louis; chairman, Earl Laing of Detroit, and Aaron Kline of Chicago. The Bulletin, which is issued quarterly, is the only educational journal de- voted entirely to the interests of elementary school principals. The editor for the coming year will be Mr. F. H. Duffy of Steubenville, Ohio. Will you not [3] Cassie F. Roys 4 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION assist Mr. Duffy by sending to him accounts of some of the interesting activ- ities which are going on in your own localities? The winter meeting will be held in Detroit, February 22-28, 1931. Mr. Earl Laing has been appointed local chairman to make detailed arrangements. Mr. Crozier, president of the Department of Superintendence, has chosen the theme, ‘““Working Together for the Children of America.” ‘This theme will be discussed at the meetings of the Department. Will not each member give some time and thought to membership, to the editing of the Bulletin, to the Yearbook, and to the Detroit meeting? Your suggestions will be greatly appreciated by the Chairman of the Enrolment Committee, the Editor of the Bulletin, the Editorial Committee, and the President. AN APPEAL TO MEMBERS ORE than half the elementary principals of the country are not enjoying the advantages of membership that are yours. Tell your friends, especially the new principals, what membership in our Department means to you. Tell them of the Bulletin, of the 1931 Yearbook on supervision, of the Research Bulletins of the N. E. A., and of our semi-annual meetings. Tell them how to join by sending $3 to the Department of Elemen- tary School Principals, N. E. A., 1201 Sixteenth Street, Washington, D. C., accompanied by a statement of the name and address of the applicant. N. E. A. membership is a prerequisite. Membership dates one year from receipt of dues in Washington. CassiE F. Roys, President. GREETINGS WILuL1s A. SUTTON President, National Education Association HE elementary school principal is the key to the educational problems of America. The high-school principal and college president have a constit- uency so widely separated that it is impossible for them to exert influence upon the community, or to formulate policies for education over so wide an area. The elementary school principal, however, belongs to one community. He or she is the immediate interpreter of educational ideas and ideals to the commun- ity. It is to him that parents, regardless of what may be the age or advance- ment of the child, feel that they can go and ask for advice and guidance. The elementary school principal in any school community is recognized and known by the business and professional men and women who live in that community. It is to him that they look for educational guidance. On the other hand, this elementary school principal can have some knowledge of and a great deal of influence over every parent who sends children to his school. Therefore, as the immediate interpreter of education to the community, I greet you as elementary school principals. This intimate knowledge of and contact with a community brings a large number of direct and inescapable responsibilities. The elementary school principal should know education. Beginning with the kindergarten and ex- tending through the university he should know what constitutes a real school. He should be able to distinguish between a creative teacher and a routine teacher. He should be able to comprehend, understand, and put in practise a thorough course of study with attendant activities reaching into the home and the community. The basic principles of child psychology, the understanding of the greatest of all sciences and arts, sociology, should constitute a part of our preparation and these subjects should be constantly refreshed in our minds by new study and every day application. An elementary principal must not only be drilled in the fundamentals of education and the philosophy back of it, but he must understand the problems of the home. No elementary principal can direct effectively the affairs of edu- cation in the community unless he understands the typical home of the various units of society who send children to his school. Such knowledge cannot be gained by reading. It must come through actual contact with the homes of our people. It may not be necessary to,visit every home, but it is absolutely essential to visit one home of every type in the community. He must realize that the school alone cannot educate the child, that his education started long before he passed the portals of the schoolhouse, and an understanding and an apprecia- tion of the problems of the home and a willingness to help guide the mother in the preparation of the child for its school life constitute not only a work that may be.done but an obligation that must be fulfilled if the education of the child is to proceed in orderly fashion. [5] 6 NATIONAL EpUCATION ASSOCIATION The elementary school principal, understanding education and home life, must know how to make school a center of community activity. There are four great institutions contributing to the child’s education—the home, the com- munity, the church, and the school. The last of these must know how to func- tion with the rest. What a child learns in the community—through the books that he reads, the library he attends, the playground where he plays, the streets where he walks, the movies that he sees, and dozens of other activities that make up the community—more completely determines his education than the know]- edge which he receives in formal fashion at the task in the schoolroom. Many of us as elementary principals have not learned that the funny paper, the sports page, the magazine at the corner, and the newspaper filled with crime constitute a part of a child’s education as really and as vitally as that which he learns in arithmetic and geography. The elementary principal who knows how to use the school as a means of getting the best from the library, the best from the movie, the best from the playground, and from every department of community activity knows best how to educate the child. We must learn that education is a codperative process, that the schoolroom cannot cut itself off from all the other interests of the child and its home and really train for living in the com- munity. The elementary school principal has a better opportunity to impress char- acter and training for effective living on the minds of the youth of our land than that given to any other individual in the entire world. The responsibility is heavy, the reward is rich, the product is a civilization redeemed. ESSONS are a battle between the effort of the child to get his job done and the struggle of the teacher to get him to do it the proper way. He starts to write a composition. Now, in all fairness, I ask you, could you write a story without misspelling a single word, omit- ting a punctuation mark, without erasing words, crossing out whole lines? Write it all in fine penmanship, sitting up and holding your arm and your penholder exactly as the boy in the picture on the back of the writing manual does? Could you do it even in the quiet of your own office >—ANGELO PatRrI. fe, ur C- ks ts ‘THE 1931 YEARBOOK ON SUPERVISION ISABEL TUCKER Chairman, 1931 Editorial Committee HE EDITORIAL Committee for the 1931 Yearbook believes that there is a need for a statement by principals on supervision. In accordance with this belief, the Committee has sent thousands of letters to principals asking for articles. Superintendents have been asked to list the names of successful prin- cipals. Everywhere the Editorial Committee has ‘“‘sowed the seeds of encour- agement and opportunity” to potential authors. What will the harvest be? During the next few months the Editorial Com- mittee must collect, read, revise, and arrange the manuscripts which will con- stitute the 1931 Yearbook. Much depends upon the Committee, but even more responsibility rests upon the individual members of the Department. Only when our members provide tangible assistance in the form of manuscripts is there “grist’’ for the editorial mill. Please look over the sub-topics and choose the one which represents your special interest. Manuscripts will be accepted up to November 8th on the fol- lowing sub-topics: . Administrative phases of supervision Influencing the teacher . Adjusting and guiding pupils . Revitalizing the curriculum . Developing the principal for and through supervision . Evaluating the principal’s supervisory program. In the January Bulletin the Editorial. Committee will announce its prelim- inary plans for the 1932 Yearbook. The topic of this Yearbook will be: “The Principal and His Community.” The Chairman of the Editorial Committee for 1932 is Mr. Aaron Kline of Chicago. Awkwnd = LAST CALL FOR THE 1931 YEARBOOK HE 1931 yearbook is to be the principal’s statement on super- vision. Principals of both private and public schools are invited to submit manuscripts. Assistant principals are urged to present their viewpoints. Superintendents and supervisors can contribute valuable suggestions on codperation in supervision. Iris NoT TOO LATE! Send your article to one of the following BE- FORE November 8th: IsABEL TUCKER, Chairman Shenandoah School, Saint Louis, Mo. AARON KLINE Ear R. LAING Pullman Public School . Burt School Chicago, Illinois Detroit, Michigan [7] THE COMMUNITY IS THE LARGER SCHOOL EpitH D. WRIGHT Principal, Hawthorne School, Houston, Texas RINCIPALS should look upon the whole community as the school or edu- cating force. A child’s education is more than a series of disconnected ex- periences. Life does not stop when the child enters the classroom, nor does education end when he departs from the school door. Education requires an understanding of united and whole life processes as found in the everyday activities of the community about us.! Our community—The neighborhood about the school was at one time made up of home-owning people, and many of the families were related toone another. The big depot and the round-house were points of interest, because many were employed by the railroad as trainmen, yardmen, or office workers. Others earned a living in other parts of the city in various employments. Various labor disputes led to unemployment and the shifting about of the population. Many sold or rented their homes and moved to other cities. These big places were made into boarding houses or light housekeeping apartments. The neighbor- hood changed from a stable community to a more or less transient one. The type of nationality changed with the coming of Mexican families brought in to work on the roads during the World War. Obviously, our community con- sists of three population types: the typical ‘‘good families,” the transient homes, and foreign groups. There is little unity of interests, attitudes, or ideals. In the midst of the diversity stands our school, the one common element in the whole neighborhood. Our school as an active community unit—The school has the children six hours a day for five days in the week and nine months in the year. How can the school meet the problem of teaching children whose experiences and oppor- tunities are so varied? Realizing the need of these boys and girls, the teachers tried to make the school as nearly like a good home as possible, a place where parents and children could come and be happy. As there is no central place of amusement, we encourage parties of all kinds, such as: birthday, patriotic, Valentine, Hallowe’en, Christmas, and May fete. Always we try to keep in mind that the education of children requires opportunities for play and adven- ture. The planning of the parties and the play gives the emotional side of the child an outlet and stirs and stimulates the imagination and social life. Parents in less fortunate circumstances see their children having the same opportunities as the children from the wealthy neighbor’s home. In overcoming the passivity that had settled over our diverse community, we allowed the children the free- dom of the school as far as they could adjust themselves. Lines were abandoned early, older children were given the responsibility of younger members, and participation in school affairs was encouraged everywhere. *The author has received much inspiration from A Social Interpretation of Educa- tion by Joseph K. Hart. [8] os St HH DO e BD — =6O 2) _ he Oo ®H © a = ee FO! «6 hCU@®DUCUCTD ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS i) Reading proves a very difficult problem. Few of the homes have good books and magazines. This barren environment means children with a meager vocab- ulary and no literary background. The school provides library tables in the individual rooms. When a child has finished a piece of work, he may go to the table and read any of the books that appeal to him. It is pitiful to see how eager many of the children are for pictures, stories, and reference material. The chil- dren are encouraged to get reading books from the public library, and this in turn has led the adults in the family to do more reading also. Every child in the fifth grade has a library card. Our teachers are keenly interested in health work. We take particular in- terest in each child, and try to see that he substitutes good food for cakes and candy. The school board established shower baths in the school. Children who wish to bathe are allowed to do so on school time because a clean child is in a much happier state of mind. Clean bodies require clean clothes, and a point of contact is established with the family life. In most of the homes the cooking, washing, ironing, sewing, and tending the babies is done partly by the children. They learn how to do these things, and, therefore, like to help keep the school and grounds clean. The Friday morning assembly is part of the school program. Each grade takes some part in the exercises. It is interesting to watch the timid ones trying to make up their minds to say a “speech” or read a story. It is an honor to hold the flag for the pledge ; the child must be recommended by his teacher for some outstanding act done in the interest of good citizenship. Out of this assembly period many children have acquired poise and skill in speaking. Another out- come of the assembly has been that of developing pupil leadership in school activities. a Members of a luncheon club, made up of a boy and a girl from each grade selected on merit, eat lunch together on Thursday and talk over school affairs. One topic developed from a chance remark was, “Should we have company manners ?”’ Guests are invited to the luncheon from other schools. ‘These out- siders tell us what they are doing and our group responds with descriptions of our activities. This meeting gives practise in free discussion, talking in public, and developing powers in conversation. It means a wider knowledge of the city and makes the children feel that they are part of a good whole. The school has some statuary and many beautiful pictures on the walls, so that the children may come into direct contact with beauty and creative art. Possibly, this may lead to the abandonment in the home of the highly colored calendars and advertising pictures and their replacement by copies of master- pieces. The children help to earn the money for these purchases and so they know their value. The curios in the school exhibit give the children an idea of how other people in the world build their homes, how they dress, what orna- ments they wear, and their manner of living. This makes geography vitalized knowledge, not just something to read about in the textbook. Many of the teachers visit in the homes. They come to know health condi- tions when the mother works or the parents are separated. The home visits discover needs for food and clothing and when sympathy is necessary. While 10 NATIONAL EpucaTIOon AssoclATION there is no employment bureau at the school, the older students come back for advice or to ask help in getting a job. If there is need in the home, we are often asked for advice in meeting the difficulty. The school has always had a mothers’ club; but it is of the “invisible” type. By this term I mean that the mothers do not come in large numbers to the meetings ; but when needs arise they drop their home tasks and hasten to the school’s aid. One of the best pieces of community service was the work done by the mothers in the school kitchen without pay in order to give their children hot lunches. This particular sacrifice is not necessary now, as the school board has taken over the lunchroom work. Out of this mothers’ club has come adult leadership, because of individual mothers knowing the school problems. Our foreign population and some under-privileged adults have been factors in the development of a splendid night school. We give considerable emphasis to the social side—parties, entertainments, and group singing. Frequently, husbands and wives come together to learn English. Young girls and boys realize the need of writing and spelling in business and return to school for this particular training. Just this year we had an auditorium added to our plant. We expect this room to be a meeting place and a point of contact with the home. The recrea- tion programs will give many an opportunity to play who have not had the chance. Those who prefer to read will find the branch library a source of many happy hours. The children are encouraged to take hikes and to go on trips to the zoo, library, and other places where they may get information or make worthwhile contacts. We find that a few of our foreign children have not been on the street cars. Sometimes they have never ridden on the trains, although trains are con- tinually passing. W here are we going in our, school?—-Y ou may ask, what kind of a school is this? When do the children get their lessons? It is not an academic school, because that would not meet the needs of the children who enter our doors. This group of socially-minded teachers knows that the community causes a type of “outside” education. ‘They know the limitations of this outside world so they do not blame the children. According to Hart, “‘It is a question of beginning where the community really is, and building on the solid foundations of reality—from the ground upward, not from the clouds downward.” The teachers try to make the school day count in building vocabulary, mak- ing the school subjects vital through the activities program, and giving the chil- dren courage and poise in meeting life situations. Much of the school work is done individually, as many of the children are in the under-privileged group and they are old for the grade. We try to make the school a home and to give these children “rootages in many kinds and types of groups” so that we can overcome some of the arrested developments in this diversified community. The school is trying to reach the community through citizenship inasmuch as the one unifying principle is the fact that all are citizens, either good or bad. “The good citizen is the one who, because of the nobility of his character and the resulting usefulness of his life, is a constructive force in this community.” VITAL VALUES IN EDUCATION—UNIVERSITY POINT OF VIEW' Harry C. McKown University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania HE first vital value in education concerns useful knowledges and skills. All of us are familiar with the great array of futile, useless, and fre- quently silly, stunts which have been done and which are still being done in the name of education, usually justified on the basis of formal discipline, busy work, or tradition. All of us are familiar, too, with the ever increasing demand for more useful and more easily justifiable material and values. The elemen- tary school, because of its traditional and logical function as the purveyor of the three R’s, the tool subjects, is probably rather free from the common critic- ism that education is more concerned with its subjects than with its objects, and that it is too academic and bookish. A second perfectly evident vital value is healthy bodies. The boy or girl who is physically unhappy has little business attempting to become mentally and spiritually happy. He lacks the very basis upon which spiritual and mental happiness is built. Here again the elementary school is rather free of the shack- les which have hindered the development of healthy bodies in the high school and shackles which are beginning to make their appearance in the junior high school—interscholastic athletics—in which, for purposes of developing school morale, advertising the school, and enlisting community interest we build a program and forget our pupils. How many schools confuse a program of inter- scholastic athletics with a program of physical education! The typical inter- scholastic athletic program in the typical high school is not and never can be, as at present organized, a program of physical education, for the well-known reasons that too few pupils participate, those who need participation do not get it, those who get it do not need it, the activities are too highly specialized and are those in which the adult will not engage. May the elementary school de- velop a program of physical education and never a program of interscholastic athletics. A third evident vital value in education is many-sidedness. The individual with a single track attitude and experience is a narrow person, unhappily fitted to a civilization in which in one hour he must react intelligently to a dozen different phases of human experience—radio, dramatics, music, automobile mechanism, food, clothing, pressing local and international problems, amateur and professional athletics and sports, recreational activities, etc. We have somewhat reserved the development of this many-sidedness as a function of the junior high school, but we are realizing more fully that it is increasingly pos- sible of development in the elementary school. As the formal subjects are being pushed farther and farther down in the elementary school so are also the social or socalled extracurriculum activities. The elementary school, through a sen- *An address from the summer meeting at Columbus, 1930. [it] 12 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION sible use of the auditorium, the school club, such supplementary organizations as Boy and Girl Scouts, trips, music and dramatics, exhibitions, and the like, may at least help to start the development of this many-sidedness. A fourth vital value in education is desirable social responsiveness. All of us live in social and not individual environments and all of us must be trained to live in these situations. The school has a big responsibility in so training the pupils that they may live lives socially successful. Here again the socalled ex- tracurriculum activities offer opportunities. The pupil, through his participa- tion in room organization, clubs, council or cabinet, service committees and squads, and his work in helping to promote the various activities about the school, is learning by doing, is accepting and discharging his responsibilities in the same way he will accept and discharge them as an adult. A fifth vital value is happy spirits. The child or adult who is unhappy is a pitiable individual and much unhappiness can be attributed to an inability to sense and be delightfully thrilled by the beautiful. Of course the child must be educated from his appreciation of his childish pretties to those he should enjoy as an adult. Naturally those of adulthood should not be those of child- hood. In many instances, however, the adult has not become an adult, he has not grown up and put away childish things. Let us think definitely of three fields of education in which we probably have the greatest possibilities for cul- tivating happy spirits. All of us as children and adults read literature, listen to music, and look at works of art. Note the usual standards in literature. What is popular in literature (and in the movies, which is the modern predigested form of literature) ? Try to get into a motion picture theater when such masterpieces as “Her Fatal Error,” “Should a Woman Tell,” “Her Rosy Past,” or ““The Sins of My Grandmother” are being offered and you will find that you have to reserve your seats in ad- vance. If you want to attend a performance of what our teachers hold to be good literature, you will find that most of it has not been sufficiently interest- ing to justify screening or staging, and if it has been screened and staged you will have no trouble in getting seats at any time. Why did we as youngsters love the dime novels and the nickel thrillers—because we knew no better. We enjoyed them to be sure. Yet they were all as alike as the typical movie stories today. We lacked the experience upon which to make discriminating judg- ments. Sad the individual who never read one of these curdling tales ; sadder still the individual who read nothing but them; and still sadder the individual who since then has read nothing but the same type of literature—the individual who is still in the swaddling clothes of literary appreciation. In music witness the popularity of such classics as “Yes, We Have No Bananas,” “Barney Google,” “Don’t Bring Lulu,” and others, or the demand for the blues song crooner or mammy song singer. These show the size of the average individual’s standards of music appreciation. And I fear that many of the socalled operettas as given in our schools, with their brigands, pirates, outlaws, Indians, and whatnots, are little higher up the scale in quality. But in any case most of us are childish in our musical tastes. ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 13 Our childishness in art may be evidenced by the extent to which we clutter up our homes with cheap pictures, statuary, and gaudy household furnishings and decorations. Will you pardon a personal illustration? It always irritates me to attend a national or international exhibition of pictures and to find that first prize has been awarded to some drab, colorless, unintelligible, and unin- teresting painting of a pot and a pumpkin on a box. I can see in the exhibition many pictures which are much prettier and many which are much more inter- esting. This is because I have no esthetic nature or lack the education which would assist me in properly appreciating the artistry of these prize and honor- able mention pictures. I am not boasting about my ignorance of art. I am rather bemoaning the fact that, as a pupil in the school, I, an individual with no special interest or ability in drawing or art of any kind, was not given some suggestions which would gradually raise my standards from the ten-cent store type of gaudy color and misty vista. When I was in school my teachers were so interested in at- tempting to make Michelangelos and Whistlers out of half dozen of my school- mates that they had no time to do anything at all for twenty times as many of us who could never be producers, but all of whom would be consumers all of our lives. I am trying now to learn some simple things about art, but it is a slow and painful process. What then can we do with literature, music, and art to make for happier spirits? The boy or girl who has ability and interest will need little or no encouragement, but those who have little or no ability, who will be consumers rather than producers, are discouraged from learning anything about litera- ture, art, or music. Because they do not have the ability to meet the exacting requirements of passing courses, they do not enter them. In summary the pupil will consume literature, music, and art all of his life, and we owe it to him to so educate him that his consumption will be anything but barbaric. As yet we so frequently appear to think that our main job is only to educate producers, and we specialize in attempting to make writers of litera- ture, composers of music, and painters of pictures. We have hardly begun the more important job of educating for worthy consumption. When we do we will begin to approach in intelligent fashion this all important task of develop- ing happier spirits. A last vital value in education concerns sensible thrift practises. Nearly all of the elementary schools of the country have widely advertised programs of savings and very, very few of them have any program of thrift or make any attempt at all to teach thrift. Most of them confuse a program of saving with a program of thrift. How many teachers have told me that they were judged more by the extent of their pupils’ participation in saving than by their success in the usual school work. The cause and result of this coercion is to be found in the contests for the mystical one hundred percent in classroom and school savings. So interested are we in having our schools listed as a hundred percent or at least as high percentage in the advertising publications of the socalled school thrift companies that we usually allow or ask other pupils to contribute 14 NATIONAL EpucATION ASSOCIATION pennies for some indigent pupil who forgot to bring his “‘savings.” And how frequently when such pupil help is not forthcoming the teacher himself must dig down into his not too full pocketbook and make the necessary contribution in order that the record of the class or group shall be good enough to attract the attention of the authorities and be duly recorded in the advertising of the thrift company, and we teachers talk about training for character! What we need in the schools is a real program on the teaching of thrift, and this is not in any degree comprehended by a program of saving money. Saving money is important and basic, and systematic saving is a proper and worthy educational objective, but other habits just as important are those of spending, giving, and investing. As yet we appear to have no time for teaching these. Let us take buying for example. All of us buy and will buy all of our lives, and yet where do we learn to buy ? We learn from experience only and experi- ence runs an expensive school. Think of the millions and millions of dollars that are wasted each year because we as buyers are the rankest of amateurs, while the seller is all too frequently the rankest of professionals. For protec- tion, we need to educate the buyer on buymanship to match the education of the seller on salesmanship. In addition to saving and buying, a third set of important habits in thrift concerns giving. Giving is an important part of the financial, social, and ser- vice life of all. We support charity, religious institutions, distressed local and foreign communities, and many other worthy causes. How much of our giving is unintelligently done? Much of it is on the basis of an emotional rather than an intelligent reaction. A poor unfortunate on the street can do wonders in making us emphasize emotion and forget intelligence. So we encourage pan- handling, mooching, tag days, and other forms of begging which intelligent giving would drive from our communities. There might as well be a few pointers on Christmas giving, too. A fourth important wheel of the thrift chariot is investing. An investment expert recently stated that the women of the country buy each year seven hun- dred million dollars worth of “insecurities.” If we grant that men buy half as much, this would make a total of one billion dollars, half as much as our entire annual educational bill, wasted. We cannot do a great deal but we can do something. I should be willing to trade the establishment and functioning of one little idea on thrift for any year or two of any subject in the school. This idea is simply “Do not buy a dollar’s worth of anything until you have talked to your banker. He is safe, he is conservative. He is more interested in making five dollars this week than he is in making a million dollars in the next ten minutes.” The establishment of such an idea should assist in cutting down this enormous waste. Another most important phase of investment concerns insurance. If I were a girl I should not marry the most wonderful man in the world unless I were properly protected by insurance. While the younger pupils would not be able to appreciate many of the details of the various forms of insurance, a general idea could be planted which would later result in happiness. Material for the er ~~ = US be Qa = VS =~ Deh YY 1 WwW na ‘0 om 89 (O CD ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 15 older pupils might concern the advantages of the various kinds of insurance, home ownership, and investments of other kinds. It should be clear that because of the very nature of its function the elemen- tary school, with perhaps the exception of the upper grades, has always been fairly free from the practise of disseminating useless knowledge; yet it has also not been particularly interested in emphasizing the social and relational values of education, an emphasis which the junior high school, in particular, is just now making. There appears to be no good reason why this social phase should not be likewise emphasized more in the middle and lower grades. It is true that the elementary school to some extent is constantly developing this program and it will doubtless continue to develop a greater emphasis upon social objec- tives and activities. In conclusion the elementary school has the responsibility of at least beginning in good fashion the development of these vital values, objectives, or procedures in education, useful knowledges and skills, healthy bodies, many-sided interests, desirable social responsiveness, happy spirits, and sensible thrift practises, and its résponsibility is the greater because all children attend it and many will not go far beyond it. OW the change which is coming into our education is the shift- ing of the center of gravity. It is a change, a revolution, not unlike that introduced by Copernicus when the astronomical center shifted from the earth to the sun. In this case the child becomes the sun about which the appliances of education revolve; he is the center about which they are organized.—JOHN DEWEY. REPORT OF THE RESEARCH COMMITTEE E. W. Coser, CHAIRMAN Principal, Holmes School, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania RESIDENT HANSEN appointed the Research Committee! to follow up some preliminary surveys made during 1928-29. During the early sur- veys the Committee had listed a number of problems which elementary school principals reported as demanding investigation. In studying the list of poten- tial problems the Research Committee found itself facing many financial administrative, and research difficulties. Finally, by correspondence the Com- mittee decided upon a questionnaire study which could be met by the facilities available. The problem chosen for this year’s study was “how to maintain vital school and home relationships.””’ The Research Division of the National Education Association was asked to assist the Committee in preparing an inquiry blank. During April, 1930, a blank was sent to every fifth name on the membership roll of the Department. Eight hundred and fifteen blanks were mailed of which number 338 or 41 percent were returned. Of those returned 260 or 32 percent of the original broadcast lent themselves readily to tabulation. Organization of the problem—As the Research Committee thought about the problem, “how to maintain vital school and home relationships,” there seemed to stand out three sub-problems as follows: 1. a are the procedures commonly used in establishing school-home con- tacts 2. Are these procedures used as the need arises or as a part of a thought-out plan? 3. If the procedures are planned, just how does the principal proceed ? The following paragraphs of this report will be organized largely around the sub-problems. The Research Committee does not find itself in a position to lay down dogmatic and inflexible procedures, but rather to raise certain pertinent questions. It is the hope of the Committee that the members of the Department will discuss and use the following data not as the final word, but as suggestions on a problem which faces every elementary school principal. How useful are certain common contact procedures?—Every elementary school has many kinds of contacts with the homes of the community. From one viewpoint these contacts may be classified as follows: 1. Personal a. Home comes to the school. b. School goes to the home. 2. Impersonal. The term, “personal contacts,” is used to include those relationships in which persons meet face to face and discuss mutual problems. The term, “‘im- *The Committee’s personnel included the following elementary school principals: Lawrence Chase, Montclair, N. J.; O. D. Enfield, Los Angeles, Calif.; C. E. Stephens, Saint Louis, Mo.; L. L. Reeves. Seattle, Wash.; John Thomas, Detroit, Mich.; James Whittlesey, Dallas, Texas, and E. W. Cober, Pittsburgh, Pa. [16] ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 17 personal relationships,” applies to the exchange of viewpoints between home and school through such mediums as reports, letters, newspapers, and tele- phones. Table 1 shows the replies from schools in English-speaking communities and Table 2 is for the mixed foreign groups. Originally, the tabulations in Tables 1 and 2 included an analysis of school size,' but since these divisions did not show any outstanding differences they were omitted in this report. TABLE 1 PRINCIPALS’ EVALUATIONS OF PRocEDURES UseD IN MAINTAINING VITAL HOME-SCHOOL RELATIONSHIPS IN ENGLISH-SPEAKING COMMUNITIES Number of Principals Marking Each Device in Column 2 General Specific Procedure Very Sometimes Practically No Type or Device Useful Valuable Worthless Answer Tota! 1 2 3 a 5 6 7 1. Parent-teacher association......107 52 6 13 | Home 2. Classes for parents.................. 40 53 24 61 comes 3. Clinics and demonstrations.... 62 61 11 44 + 178 to the 4. Parents’ interviews.................. 152 22 1 3 School 5. American Education Week.... 44 79 27 28 6... Wiscellaneout................-..<---.. 14 8 0 156 J 1. Principal visits home.............. 75 60 13 30 ) School 2. Teacher visits home................ 86 54 11 27 goes 3. Visiting teacher work............ 52 18 6 102 178 to the 4. School nurse visits ........... -..... 123 40 2 13 Home 5. Attendance officer check-up.. 83 56 19 20 6. Miscellaneous.. .............:.....:.—... 5 3 0 170 1. Letters and notes.............. -...... 7 84 8 9 ) 2. Mimeographed bulletins ...... 47 88 15 28 S$: GEBOOE POR CF nics. oc... .2 i: ne ae 47 11 86 Impersonal 4, Daily newspaper...... ae 48 20 100 + 178 i te NONE c sedis cess ces sons-ceeeas 95 69 8 6 TRUE ROTI ai sass cssistainaes 107 57 6 8 F<, PO cic essasncnsiavccs 13 8 0 157 } Comments on Table 1 are as follows: 1. The principals replying to the inquiry voted 6 to 1 that interviews with parents at school should be rated as “very useful.” 2. Of the personal contact type the visits by school nurses were listed second most frequently as of outstanding value. 3. The parent-teacher association was third in frequency of highest rating among the personal type of relationship. 4, Among the impersonal contacts those of greatest value seem to be the pupil report forms, the telephone, and letters. 5. Outstanding among the “sometimes useful” devices we find the American Edu- cation Week and mimeographed bulletins. 6. Several devices or procedures which were not marked by a majority and there- fore not commonly used by those replying included: classes for parents, visiting teacher work, school paper, and the daily newspaper. 7. Among the miscellaneous items (not specified in the table) we find the following personal contact procedures: assemblies, parties, school programs, exhibits, special ‘Of the 260 replies tabulated 12 percent were from schools enroling over 1000 pupils, 44 percent from schools of 500-1000 pupils, and 44 percent from schools with less than 500 pupils. The smallest school reported enroled about 100 pupils, while the largest school did not exceed 2000 pupils. 18 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION weeks, athletic contests, and census taking. ‘The impersonal items added were: radio, questionnaires, principal’s monthly letter, and attendance certificates. TABLE 2 PRINCIPALS’ EVALUATIONS OF PROCEDURES USED IN MAINTAINING VITAL HOME-SCHOOL RELATIONSHIPS IN M:xEp ForEIGN COMMUNITIES Number of Principals Marking Each Device in Column 2 General Specific Procedure Very Sometimes Practically No Type or Device Useful Valuable Worthless Answer Total 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1. Parent-tcacher association...... 33 22 12 15 Home 2. Classes for parents... ............. 18 16 10 38 comes 3. Clinics and demonstrations.... 28 17 + 33 82 to the 4. Parent interviews...................... 61 20 0 1 School 5 American Education Week.... 24 34 12 12 6. Mitecellancous........................... 16 8 0 58 | 1. Principal visits home.............. 39 20 7 16 School 2. Teacher visits home .............. 37 24 4 17 goes 3. Visiting teacher work.............. 29 8 + 41 82 to the 4. Schoo! nurse visits.................... 68 14 0 0 Home 5. Attendance officer check-up... 60 18 2 2 6. Miscellaneous..........................-- 5 0 0 77' 1. Letters and notes...................... 39 35 3 5) 2. Mimeographed bulletins.......... 18 34 7 23 Resear 11 16 7 48 Impersonal 4. Daily newspaper...................- 3 19 11 49 | 82 Di: NI oo oscnce ccs rtsiatisensonuscs 39 28 4 11 B. IOS IN saints scscse 52 27 1 2 ee TEE 8 6 0 68 Comments on Table 2 are as follows: 1. In the foreign communities the procedures or devices marked “very useful” most frequently are: school nurse visits, interviews with parents at school, attend- ance officer check-ups, and pupil report forms. 2. Devices “sometimes useful” include: American Education Week, mimeographed bulletins, school paper, and the daily newspaper. 3. Among the procedures infrequently rated and therefore not used by a majority of those replying we find: classes for parents, visiting teacher work, school paper and daily newspaper. 4. The miscellaneous personal contact devices (not specified in the table) men- tioned include: special visiting days, meetings, school programs, exhibits, musical programs, clubs, visits by school psychologist, and census. The miscellaneous im- personal devices are: homework of pupils, weekly newspaper, and special letters. If we assume that both the English-speaking and foreign groups are fairly typical multiplying each figure in Table 2 by 2.2 will make both groups ap- proximately the same size. Large differences in the proportion of “‘very useful” ratings should indicate important variations in practises. The exten- sion of Table 2 to the proportions of Table 1 is given as Table 3. Apparently the value of various procedures used in maintaining vital school and home contacts differs in English-speaking as compared with foreign com- munities. Tables 1 and 3 seem to imply the following tentative conclusions. 1. The parent-teacher association and interviews with parents are more frequently marked “very useful” in the English-speaking communities than in foreign localities. 2. Foreign communities marked the school nurse’s and the attendance officer’s visits as “very useful” more frequently than the English-speaking communities. io, 82 ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 19 3. In foreign districts all forms of impersonal communication seem to be less useful than similar devices among English-speaking patrons.’ The one exception is the pupil report forms, which are marked “very useful” by a larger proportion of the principals in foreign localities. TABLE 3 EXTENSION OF TABLE 2 TO THE PROPORTIONS OF TABLE 1 TO BRING OuT IMPORTANT DIFFERENCES IN COMMUNITY RELATIONSHIP PRACTISES Number of Principals Marking Each Device in Column 2 General Specific Procedure Very Sometimes Practically No Type or Device Useful Valuable Worthless Answer Total 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1. Parent-teacher association ..... 73 48 26 33 Home 2. Classes for parents.................. 40 35 22 83 pone 3. Clinics and demonstrations.... 62 37 9 72 180 oh I 4. Parent interviews.................... 134 44 0 2 mae: 5. American Education Week.... 53 75 26 26 1. Principal visits home.............. 86 44 15 35 i 2. Teacher visits home................ 81 53 9 a7 jo. ie 3. Visiting teacher work eae 64 17 9 90 180 Same 4. School nurse visits.................. 150 30 0 0 5. Attendance officer check-up....132 40 4 4 1. Letters and notes... ........... 86 14 6 11) 2. Mimeographed bulletins........ 35 75 15 55 S Genes! PORE ccccii 24 35 15 106 180 Impersonal 4 Daily newspapet................ ot 42 24 108 5. Telephone ........ et ae 86 61 9 vi 6. Report forms.....:....2-15:.:.:. 115 59 z 4 Are community contact devices used in emergencies only or as a part of a plan? Following the evaluation of specific procedures and devices the inquiry blank asked principals how systematically they used the devices. Four princi- pals in five reported that they had a plan for vital home-school contacts. One principal in five used the specific devices as occasion demanded. How should a principal maintain vital home-school relationships ?—The inquiry blank suggested that there were three general types of contact de- vices: (1) personal, in which the parents came to the school; (2) personal, in which the school representatives went to the home; and (3) impersonal, in which school and home communicated with each other from a distance. About forty percent of the principals, both in the English-speaking and in the foreign communities, replied that they emphasized all of the above general types about equally. The second most frequent answer for English-speaking localities showed a positive emphasis upon personal contacts with the parents at the school. In contrast, the principals in foreign districts tended to empha- size the personal contacts in which the school workers went into the home. Of the 260 replies 133 sent written statements covering phases of their home-school program. Some of these descriptions indicate an active attempt by the school to share educational activities with every home. Other plans "This point is further substantiated by the fact that principals in foreign districts sent few examples of record forms, bulletins, advertisements, and similar impersonal devices. On the other hand, principals of schools in English-speaking districts sent many samples as requested on the inquiry blank. 20 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION were not extensive in philosophy or practises. It is impossible for the Research Committee to print these descriptions in this report, but it is important that certain comments be made: 1. Many of the home-school contacts are on an individual basis. Are prin- cipals making the mass type of “morale building” an incidental or supple- mentary activity? Is there little value in entertainments, mimeographed letters, newspapers, announcements, classes for parents, and similar activities which reach out to large numbers without much thought of the individual home? While many principals use the ‘‘mass influence” the plans reported showed a decided tendency to work with individual homes. 2. As a corollary to the paragraph above, so many home-school contacts seem to arise over problem cases. Children who are misbehaving or failing rather frequently are the cause of interviews between parents and school workers. Are there not many opportunities for Mterviews regarding the merits of children? Do we as educators become as excited over the successes of children as we often do over their failures? Are we responsible for teaching parents to look for and to develop the successful talents of children? 3. The parent-teacher association is undoubtedly the school’s strongest ally. This fact is testified to over and over again in the descriptions submitted by principals. Only in foreign communities is the formal organization of parents and teachers less successful. There is much to be done before the parent-teacher association satisfactorily handles such problems as these: (a) To interest parents in meetings when their children are not participating in the programs, (b) to enlist the active help and interest of the fathers, (c) to obtain the voluntary and interested attendance of many classroom teachers, and (d) to delimit its field of activities so as to play an honorable role in the education of the child without hindering the work of the professional teacher. Schools where such problems have been successfully met should prepare descriptive articles for our professional journals and magazines. 4. A special challenge to the parent-teacher organization is found in the foreign and mixed language communities. Judging from the reports sent in by principals the typical parent-teacher plan of organization is not very suc- cessful. What procedure or device can be substituted in foreign districts? Should the principal and the teachers run the parent-teacher organization as a social-lecture group? Should small groups be organized on a language basis ? Will informal visiting days take the place of the formal club? 5. American Education Week seems to be considered generally as a time for informal visits to the school. A few principals mentioned exhibits, entertainments, and social events in connection with the visiting. Should this week of contact be limited to more or less passive activities or should the school attempt “‘to teach” parents something about education ? 6. Health appears to be one of the most frequent subjects which brings the home and school together. Typical activities include: the weighing of pupils; preschool examinations ; examinations of the ears, eyes, nose, teeth, and throat ; problems of proper food ; sleep and rest; safety work. A large part of this re ig e 1 ) \¥ ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 21 work is now turned over to nurses and doctors who work largely on individual cases. Can the classroom teacher get too far removed from important respon- sibilities by this tendency to rely entirely on specialists ? 7. Principals in English-speaking districts are finding great value in monthly letters to the school’s patrons. These letters are usually mimeo- graphed or printed, although short messages may be written by the children. On the basis of the sample sent in to the Research Committee the contents of the letters are usually, (a) inspirational, (b) informational, (c) invitational, (d) scolding, or (e) mixed. The Committee wishes to raise such questions as these: Should the letters sent to homes be neat, clean-cut, and readable? Should the principal ever be cross or sarcastic in writing? Can these letters to the homes be too long, too full of details, and often irrelevent? Are there many principals, not using these monthly letters, who are overlooking an opportunity to shape home-school attitudes ? 8. School papers are being used frequently to maintain vital home-school contacts. Generally speaking, the samples sent to the Research Committee represented a most commendable effort to bring parents in sympathetic accord with the school’s work. The Committee was particularly impressed with school papers which obviously give much opportunity for pupil initiative and responsibility. However, the Research Committee believes that the commer- cial advertisements appearing in some school papers need careful scrutiny. A “meet me at Joe’s after the show” advertisement may prove a boomerang to the school’s character education program. Summary—The Research Committee of the Department of Elementary School Principals spent 1929-30 in studying ‘“‘how schools maintain vital home- school relationships.” This problem was suggested by elementary school prin- cipals in reply to a survey made in 1928-29. The findings and interpretations of the Committee have been set forth in above paragraphs. It is the wish of the Committee that these findings will be discussed by principal’s clubs and any inadequacies properly noted. There is an opportunity here for much experimentation, followed by written reports of practises, on the part of organized principals’ groups. The Research Committee is of the opinion that the “community relation- ship” phase of the principal’s work has not been adequately defined or dis- cussed in professional literature. Superintendents and others frequently insist that the principal should be a community leader. Yet community leadership in a way which will supplement the school’s program is not a thing to be done in an incidental or accidental manner. The proper education of children de- pends greatly upon active and vital home-school contacts. It is the recom- mendation of the Research Committee that this problem be given further consideration by the Department.’ "For further details on this point, see the Report of the Committee on Propaganda in the Schools, National Education Association, July, 1929. "It should be of interest to principals to note that the topic, ‘““The Principal and His Community,” has been chosen by the Editorial Committee for the 1932 Yearbook. Communications in this regard should be addressed to Aaron Kline, Pullman Public School, Chicago, Illinois. THE CONTINUITY OF READING ACTIVITIES W. G. CIsNE Principal, Brush Training School, Southern Illinois State Normal University, Carbondale, Illinois HE world of actual contact is small. For a proper understanding of con- temporary life one must have vastly more of these contacts than can possibly be gotten through actual experience. It becomes necessary to invent a way by which such experience may be had for the majority of the race, for it is only through the standards of the majority that we are able to judge types of civilization. Primitive man gained his knowledge by concrete experience supplemented meagerly by the oral reports of others. These experiences were sufficient to fit him for accepted standards of living in his small realm. Self- preservation and perpetuation of the race were his two main objectives. Since space and time, through modern invention, are being reduced to smaller factors in delimiting man’s activities, contacts are made and interests established throughout every known portion of the world. This results in a different social order, a broadening of vision, and an enlargement of life’s objectives. However, for the great majority of people, even though better means of transportation and communication are provided, the actual world of contact and concrete experience yet remains small. It becomes necessary, as our world of interest is broadened, that we understand and appreciate what is taking place in distant lands and in the minds of those who live there. The invention that makes this possible is that of written language. The art of read- ing is the means by which we can appreciate that which is removed from our world of immediate contact. A child begins to read when he understands the signs made by others. Grad- ually by the power of association certain motions have a definite meaning to him. Along with motion he begins to understand the significance of certain sounds. Soon he is in possession of a large number of meanings which are definitely associated with certain movements and sounds. This is reading in one sense. He is getting thought from outside his own organism. It is not the motion and sound that he thinks, but that for which they stand. Hence, the thought that comes as an interpretation and not directly through the senses is reading. The invention of the written symbol is probably the most farreaching of all inventions. Reading is the greatest tool we have for the elevation of the social order and common goodwill among peoples. The little child is intensely interested from the beginning in this art of inter- pretation of symbols, and his interest will continue and increase as long as normal conditions prevail and the opportunity is offered for its gratification. A misuse or neglect of this instinctive interest dulls its power and leads to atrophy. One day last winter, after telling a good story to a class of beginning first-grade children a primary teacher said, ““Wouldn’t you like to be able to take up a book and read a story just when you want to? Most of the good [ 22 ] ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 23 stories are found in books.” ‘The interest manifested by this little group as shown by their reaction aroused in the several adults present a deeper apprecia- tion of the art of reading. It brought them face to face anew with this acquired power of looking through symbols to the concrete experience pictured there, and gave them a new basis of appreciation of this splendid art. If this first strong interest of the primary children could be maintained and broadened and given proper direction, it would not be possible for anyone to say that although schools had made a success of teaching the mechanics of reading, they have failed in making reading a major activity in the daily lives of a majority of the people. To hold and deepen this interest so that it will become a vital factor in one’s everyday living is the problem. From the very start and all through the stages of mastering the mechanics of reading the content should be vitally interesting to the child. If this con- dition can be provided, the art of reading will not grow stale to him and he will ‘have a strong desire to gain skill in the activity. He will feel that this skill will help him gratify his interests. Too much drill upon mechanics in a certain stage of learning to read when the pupil is almost overwhelmed with difficulties often serves to dull his appreciation for the act itself. He begins to look upon reading as a difficult thing to do, especially if he is slow mentally, and the danger is that he will finally classify it as drudgery. This latter stage is danger- ous to progress. A discouraged pupil is not a learning pupil. The teacher must appreciate fully the value of the habit of succeeding as a factor in mental growth. This stage of reading is not only dangerous but probably the most dangerous in all the phases of the common school curriculum. It would be better to provide a wealth of interesting but easy reading until the child gains more ability to interpret, which he will do if carefully guided. Thus his interest will not have been dulled and he will gradually gain ability and desire to go on. When the child sees that his power to read widens his horizon, gives him a means by which he can find out about things which otherwise he would not know, gives him the power not only to see the present and the immediate, but the past and the distant, he will learn to appreciate the art of reading. Teachers would do well to emphasize this phase of the reading art and thus make chil- dren better understand and appreciate symbolic interpretation as a gift or legacy of the race. This should not be done by moralizing or sermonizing but by the more subtle method of suggestion. At first materials in which the child is interested and about which he knows must be given. Especial care must be taken in the mechanics stage to make interest in what is being read loom larger than the difficulties that have to be overcome. Otherwise, as stated above, the child will become discouraged. Here is where many teachers fail and where the tactful teacher shows his skill. If children can be brought through the first three or four years of school, or up until they have made what is called the reading adjustment—seeing through the mechanics to the thought—there is a great probability that with proper later direction a permanent habit of continuous daily reading will be formed that will widen and deepen thought and appreciation. 24 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION The curriculum of the school should endeavor to include the proper inter- ests of children in every needful activity. These should be touched upon daily, and wider knowledge and interest sought through reading, not simply as a reading exercise but as an activity to gain vital and interesting knowledge bearing upon the questions being considered. If this skill or tool of reading is used constantly to widen pupils’ interest, it will probably gain its highest eff- ciency if directed toward basic interests of the child. With these as a beginning one can gradually broaden and deepen this child level. Stories of the family and home life provide a large group of varied interests ; stories of pets and of animals with which he is familiar is a never failing source of delightful reading to the child. Child life in other lands, their homes, cloth- ing, customs, pets, food, play activities, is a large contributor to the literature of childhood. Folklore stories, fairy stories, and those dealing largely with the realm of imagination are another almost limitless source of interest. As children broaden their interests and go higher in the grades, such litera- ture should be provided as will contribute to the new activities of the cur- riculum. With our wealth of writings it is possible in almost every case to find supplementary readings that will serve to make fuller understanding of new subjects studied. Such readings should have for their objective the arousal of many-sided interests and a well-balanced intellectual and emotional growth. Well-written, simple books of travel are always interesting to boys and girls, especially if they deal with some topic connected with their studies. They show the same interest for these that one shows in anticipation of the view from the top of the next high hill that appears ahead. This connecting up with school activities of well-chosen literature is an opportunity the teacher has that no other person enjoys. Stories of adventure have a strong instinctive appeal, and in the development of the social studies of history and geography this instinc- tive interest may be used to a great advantage in breaking down the necessarily limited view of a single text. Probably next to that of adventure comes the interest in the lives of those who have forged ahead in the various activities of the race. This reading of biography not only sets before children very clearly the problems by which the subject was faced but gives the method of solution for these problems. A strong interest in those whose leadership the world has recognized is a very wholesome activity to cultivate, and one that results with- out fail in widening the intellectual horizon. It is a splendid thing for youth to read of these leaders and realize the traits of character that were the basic reasons for their success. By this sort of reading, children come in contact with the dominant traits of the ideal characters of every land and people, and thus become more sympathetic in their views. Fiction which shows at least a decent adherence to reality is a means for growth; historical fiction especially serves perhaps to give us a picture of a passing age which can be gotten in no other way quite so thoroughly. There is a place for fiction, for it gives a picture of the subjective world which is just as necessary to balanced growth and sym- pathetic views as knowledge of the objective world. However children must be guided in their choice with great care. It is not a case where the arousal of ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 25 interest is needed, as the romantic phase emphasized in fiction usually provides that, but it is a case of emphasis upon the proper traits of character. Current happenings should come in for a large place in the reading of the child, in the curriculum. If not stunted for want of nourishment, it is only natural that the child should show an interest in his world neighbors. After all, people are the most interesting things in the world, at home or abroad, and the interest shown in the various versions of ‘“‘children of many lands” should naturally increase as the intellectual horizon is broadened. It often happens that children in the lower grades learn to read and enjoy stories portraying life in other countries, and this interest is allowed to wane in the middle and upper grades for want of further use and application. A study of current hap- penings arouses this interest anew and teaches the child that people are much the same the world over with largely the same problems, ideals and aspirations. A sympathetic view of social life, as Parker has often said, comes only through knowing the conditions under which other people live. Attention should be focused in the study of current items upon those things that contribute to the better mode of thought and living. Improvements, inventions, great roadways of transportation, governmental changes, means of transportation, activities of organizations, philanthropies, progress in knowledge, exploration, indus- tries, movements of population with corresponding reasons, and many other items may be stressed, omitting those elements that reflect the downward trend. More time should be given in the curriculum for pupils to make reports of and discuss their readings, done both in and out of school. The value of the art of reading will be emphasized by holding pupils responsible for what they read. This principle is general in its nature and holds true in the consideration of any learning process. Assigning an interesting book, which gives further treatment of some unit of subjectmatter under consideration, to a boy to make a report upon to the class is a splendid exercise for learning. A principal said to a boy who did not fully appreciate the chance the school was giving him, “Take this new basketball rule book, compare the rules to those of last year, and tell us tomorrow just what changes have been made. We want to start our practise for the team soon.” The boy was impressed with the responsibility thus imposed and used his power of interpretation for a certain definite pur- pose. He was interested and worked out the changes and reported them with much satisfaction to both the principal and the other members of the team. “Rank imposes obligation” is a good principle to use even in teaching the value of the reading art. The principal thinks that from that time on the boy used his reading skill to a much better advantage. It was transformed from a passive, static performance to a dynamic tool for doing definite things for definite ends. This may be slightly overdrawn, but there is a strong element of truth in the deduction. Pupils of the grades can do high grade reading and thinking if guided up to the highest levels their ability will permit, but too often they are allowed to dawdle on lower mental planes without appreciation of either the considerations in hand or their own powers of interpretation. If we can keep the reading activity upon the basis of broad and vital inter- ests through the grades and high school, and show the pupils that it provides 26 NATIONAL EpucATION ASSOCIATION an endless contribution to the knowledge, appreciation, and sympathies, we will have gone a long way toward establishing an activity which will function vitally through life. When students fully understand that rounded progress is necessary for the best and fullest living they will seek the means by which it is gained. PUPIL ACTIVITIES IN THE PRIMARY GRADES He will read pre-primers, primers, and first readers up to ten or more so as to make thorough adjustment on the first level of this new art of interpretation, and also gain useful ideas. He will read bulletin announcements, sentences on the board, placed there by the teacher relative to the work in hand, and items of general interest to children. He will have opportunity to find on the reading table many attractive storybooks on the primary level relating to stories of children, home life, animals. He will read fairy stories of the simpler kind, later folklore, and more difficult fairy stories. He may read simple stories of great men, perhaps at first on the basis of sentence statements ; later in primary level he may read simple biographical stories. He will have his desire and appreciation for reading strengthened by hearing parents, teachers, and friends talk about their own readings. He will listen to much oral reading from others. He will especially enjoy reading to entertain others. IN INTERMEDIATE GRADES He will be more independent in his choice of reading, showing trends of apprecia- tion, yet to be guided by his teachers. He will read much about children of other lands; their customs, play, homes, food, clothing, work, and sports. He will read many true stories from history from the biography standpoint. He will enjoy simple books of travel, especially those written around the thread of a story. He will read newspapers and magazines of the easier type. He will read attractively written stories of the development of industries, such as the “Story of Glass,” etc. He will enjoy reading stories of adventure and of early pioneer days. He will read biography of the successful men of discovery, pioneer movements, in- vention, great industries, diplomacy. He will read to know more of his hobby if he has one, and the chances are he will have at this age. ; Upper GRADES He will read more extended books of travel. He will read historical fiction to broaden his viewpoint. He will enjoy the newspapers and magazines of a more dignified type. He will be very independent in his choice of reading, showing the trend of his thinking. He will read much to expand his view of certain conceptions in which he is inter- ested. He will broaden his views of history by reading books written in detail about certain periods. He will be interested in new discoveries, new inventions, improvements of engineer- ing, transportation, commerce. He will form tastes for certain kinds of reading and seek to gratify this taste. He will discuss his readings with others and thus gain a more unbiased opinion or seek further activity to justify his viewpoint. He will use reference books to clarify and amplify his readings. He will read maps, charts, graphs, to interpret many of the ideas set forth in his readings. He will read portions of the Bible and seek to enjoy it as he would any other literary production, on the basis of authorship and the thought portrayed. VITAL VALUES IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL LIBRARIES! EpirH A. LATHROP Assistant Specialist in School Libraries, U. 8. Office of Education N its evolution the acceptance of libraries as integral parts of schools has, like many educational developments, come from the top down. For a long time universities and colleges have regarded libraries as essential equipment. Within the last quarter of a century libraries have found their places in most high schools, and more recently the best high schools are realizing that if such libraries are to render their greatest service to the schools, trained librarians must be in charge of them. Now, the attention is on the elementary school library. This is evidenced by the consideration of standards for elementary school libraries on the part of leaders in national library and educational associations; by emphasis on the elementary school library in courses of instruction in higher institutions of learning ; and by an increase in the amount of bibliographical material dealing with the subject. A joint committee from the American Library Association and the National Education Association prepared a set of library standards for elementary schools with enrolments of 500 to 2000. These standards were published in 1925 by the American Library Association. The Committee has been con- tinued for the purpose of preparing standards for rural elementary schools of various types—small, medium, and large. The School of Library Science of Columbia University advertises courses designed to give superintendents and principals an understanding of the func- tion of the library in elementary and secondary schools. Similar courses are given in other library schools. The library courses for elementary school principals, which were held in connection with the summer meetings of the National Education Association at the University of Washington in Seattle in 1927 and at the University of Minneapolis in 1928, are significant of the interest of elementary school prin- cipals in the school library problem. The specific purpose of these courses was to emphasize the need of better library facilities for elementary schools. The amount of literature on any subject is an index to the interest in it. The past few years have been marked by a considerable increase in the literature dealing specifically with the problem of the elementary school library. This literature is found chiefly in articles in library and educational journals; in publications of state educational and library agencies, the American Library Association, and the United States Office of Education. Recently two books have appeared on the subject. One of them, The Elementary School Library, by William A. King, was published in 1929. This book, as the title indicates, deals exclusively with the problem of the elementary school library. The other, The Library in the School, by Lucile F. Fargo, published in 1930, considers in *An address from the summer meeting at Columbus, 1930, [27] 28 NATIONAL EpucaATIONn AssocIATION one volume library service for schools of both elementary and high-school levels. These trends indicate that the idea of the library as an integral part of the elementary school is not only accepted but is gaining ground. It is the opinion of quite a number of writers on the subject that in the future the library will be much more an integral part of the school than it is at present. Dean Russell of Teachers College, Columbia University, gives us something to think about along this line. For the education of children we have schools. Into these we have introduced libraries. For the education of adults we have libraries. Into these we have intro- duced schools—the time may come when there will be neither libraries in schools nor schools in libraries, but a new educational institution will emerge which combines the best features of both.’ The introduction of libraries into schools is the result of modern educational developments. In this progress is to be found the vital values in elementary school libraries. I shall now discuss the values of libraries in relation to four of the modern educational developments. CHANGES IN SCHOOL CURRICULUMS The modern philosophy of education is bringing about great changes in school curriculums. These changes manifest themselves in a new type of organ- ization, a reduction in the use of formal textbooks and a demand for school activities that are in tune with life situations. The old courses of study are organized about school subjects such as reading, arithmetic, history, etc. In the more progressive courses there have been con- siderable combination and rearrangements of subjectmatter resulting in the organization of large units of content in English, art, geography, and other subjects. For example, a unit in one of these modern courses of study on, ‘‘In- troducing Greece through Olympic Games,” brought out such questions as these: What amusements had the Greeks ? What wars did they fight? What books and music had they ? How did they dress? What did they eat? How did they educate their children? What was their religion ? What occupations did they have? In finding the source of materials for this unit, it was necessary for the children to make excursions into such fields as athletics, history, litera- ture, art, clothing, food, education, mythology, religion, government, geog- raphy, and sociology. Each unit of organization in these progressive courses of study usually con- tains many references to books and periodicals. Therefore, in order to put into execution such courses of study schools must have access to libraries. Generally, the more use that elementary schools make of libraries the less use they make of formal textbooks. In a curriculum experiment conducted a few years ago in the elementary school of the School of Education at the Uni- versity of Missouri, a library of 3000 volumes was largely a substitute for conventional textbooks. This experiment, says J. L. Meriam who conducted "Russell, William F. Educational Developments and the Library. School Library Yearbook No, 2. American Librasy Association, Chicago, 1928. 49-53. ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 29 it, exhibited a school policy clearly in harmony with a present tendency in our public schools, namely, a greater use of the library and a relatively less use of the traditional textbook.! The more progressive courses of study emphasize current developments in home, community, and national life. For this reason no course of study can be uptodate. It must constantly be adjusted to meet new situations—a Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic in an airplane, the advent of the “‘talkies,” a Byrd expedi- tion to the South Pole, a five-power naval conference, a new planet swimming into our ken, the experiment of the American School of the Air. Textbooks do not contain information on situations that will develop next week or on inven- tions that may be brought to light next month. Yet these situations and inven- tions may vitally affect and even transform our manner of living. Where else must the school go for published information relative to current problems and developments but to libraries? New TEcHNICS IN TEACHING Improved courses of study with their realignment of subjectmatter, their references to many books and periodicals, and emphasis on life situations have brought about new technics in teaching. Today, elementary school children, like high-school and university students, are encouraged to read, observe, ex- periment, investigate, and organize for class discussion the information thus acquired. The practise of requiring children to memorize the contents of a few pages of a textbook is being replaced in the more progressive schools by laboratory methods that encourage children to make their own investigations through the medium of books, magazines, newspapers, pictures, museums, and personal interviews. A single textbook on a subject, no matter how complete it may be, cannot supply all of the data necessary in solving the many problems arising from a project. There must be access to books and other reading matter treat- ing of many subjects. The tendency towards individualization of instruction in our teaching pro- cedures makes many books on the various subjects taught in the schools a neces- sity. This is particularly true in the teaching of children with superior mental abilities. —I’o keep such children marking time while their classmates catch up with them inculcates habits of laziness and indifference. Such children should be given the opportunity to delve deeper, through reading, into their fields of special interests, than their classmates. It has been demonstrated that excep- tionally bright children read on an average three or four times as many books as children of average intelligence.* Modern teaching technics assume that the cultivation on the part of the chil- dren of selfreliance and initiative are as important as the accumulation of facts. ’ *Meriam, J. L. “Library and Textbook Service.” Bulletin of the Department of Ele- mentary School Principals. National Education Association. The Ninth Yearbook, p. 593-601. April, 1930. *Terman, Lewis, and Lima, Margaret. Children’s Reading, p. 56. 30 NATIONAL EpucATION ASSOCIATION Where else do children have a better opportunity to cultivate selfreliance and initiative than in the library searching for information for the solution of their problems? Children must be taught to acquire skill in handling both libraries and books if they are to make the best possible use of them. It is one of the objectives of good teaching that these skills shall be acquired to some degree in the elemen- tary school. To teach them effectively a new type of teacher is necessary—a teacher technically trained in libraries and books. This brings us to a discus- sion of the school librarian. THE SCHOOL LIBRARIAN It is impossible for the library to function as an integral part of the school without the school librarian ; and the influence of the school librarian is one of the most vital values of the elementary school library. It is the school librarian, in codperation with the teacher, who helps the elementary school child acquire the skills in the use of libraries and books that will help him carry on his educa- tion alone if necessary, through libraries. In many of our large city school systems the school librarian learns to know the child and his needs far better than his teachers for she is closely associated with him through his entire ele- mentary school course while his teachers change every year. Progressive movements in education have magnified the importance of the school librarian. So few are the persons qualified for this position that it is impossible for many schools to find adequately trained persons. Most of the few that are available are being placed in high schools. A school librarian needs a training particularly fitted for a particular kind of job. That such a person should have educational qualifications equal to those of teachers and technical library training in addition, is universally ac- cepted. Some schools require experience in teaching in addition. It is necessary for a successful school librarian to have a knowledge of the school curriculum and of the teaching methods of the various teachers in the school that use the library over which she presides. And above all, a school librarian should under- stand and love children. The child depends upon the librarian for a knowledge of the use of the library catalog. It is the librarian who stimulates the child to utilize the know]- edge that the teacher has given him concerning the intelligent use of tables of contents and indexes in books rather than looking up information for the child herself. How important it is that such skills as these be acquired while in the elementary school. Who of us that have taught in high schools have not found children laboriously turning the pages of books trying to locate information on given topics, apparently ignorant of such things as indexes ? It is the librarian who introduces the child to such reference books as atlases, encyclopedias, The World Almanac, Readers’ Guide, etc., and teaches him how to use them. It is the librarian who codperates with the teacher in stim- ulating the child to read and in developing within him discrimination in the selection of books. It is the librarian who introduces the teacher to the wealth ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 31 of printed materials in the library, which will aid him in the development of his school projects, and who informs him of new publications that come to the library. It is the librarian who frequently discovers the peculiar interests of the child throug: his “browsing” in the library, and who because of this dis- covery is often able to aid the teacher in making an adjustment for the child in his school work that the teacher could not have made alone. So, in many other ways, the librarian is constantly reinforcing the work of the teacher. In fact, today the librarian is indispensable to the modern school system. ENRICHMENT OF LIFE One of the aims of elementary education is the enrichment of the life of the child. Nowhere can the child better acquire the characteristics that will enrich his life than in his contacts with the library. Reading fosters ambition, arouses new interests, widens the intellectual horizon, stimulates imagination, cul- tivates an inquiring mind, and gives one the tools for continuing education. A knowledge of the biographies of the world’s heroes and heroines fosters the ambitions of youth. Boys and girls are naturally hero worshippers and it is during the elementary school period that they should be exposed to biography. What boy in reading the life of Washington does not say to himself “I want to be like that man”? What girl reading Louise Alcott’s “Little Women”’ does not covet a personality like that of ‘Jo’? In wishing to become like their heroes or heroines boys and girls become like them at least for a moment. Lowell expresses the idea in his poem called “Longing” when he says: The thing we long for, that we are For one transcendent moment, Before the Present poor and bare Can make its sneering comment. It isin the repetition of our desires to reach an ideal that we finally partially accomplish it. We grow like the things we think about. So boys and girls, continually wishing to become like the good men and women that they have learned to know between the covers of books, finally acquire their characteris- tics. Lowell expresses this thought farther on in his “Longing” with this couplet: Our lives must climb from hope to hope And realize our longing. Daily practise on the part of the child in looking up material for his school projects is sure to arouse new interests. For example, the casual stumbling of a child upon, the Cornell Rural School Leaflet entitled, “A Travelog of Birds,” may kindle an interest in birds that had hitherto been dormant. So it might be along many other lines. The illustrations can be multiplied indefinitely. The mechanically-minded boy’s interest is aroused by an article on ‘“‘How to make an Airplane.” What teacher has not noticed the difference between the child who comes from a home in which the contents of books and magazines are read and talked about and one who comes from a home where such a situation does not exist. The child from the former home draws from a fountain of knowledge that is 32 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION not available for the latter. His intellectual horizon is wider. This is one rea- son why youth should acquire the habit of using libraries while in school. It has been said that to those small libraries in the little fishing villages of Norway we owe Rolvaag’s “Giants in the Earth,” that epic of the struggle of the pioneers in subduing the plains of our great middlewest. It was in the books that Rélvaag read in the libraries of the Norway fishing villages that he learned to know the verities of life, and that his imagination was stirred to create literature of his own. Another presentday author, Fannie Hurst, says that to the public library in St. Louis, the city in which she grew up, she owes the greatest mental stimulus of her life. A democracy, in order to realize its ideals, is dependent upon people who are capable of thinking for themselves—people who reason, people who ask ‘‘why”’ and “wherefore,” people who have inquiring minds. May we not hope that as libraries become more and more integral parts of schools there will be many more people who will think for themselves and a far less number who blindly follow ideas that are handed down to them. The greatest value to the child in forming the library habit while in the ele- mentary school is that he has acquired a habit of using books as tools which will be beneficial throughout life. If he continues his education through high school and college it can make of him a superior student. If his schooling ends with the elementary school he has the tools for educating himself. All education is, after all, self-education. The person who drops reading after leaving school is uneducated, even though that person may have a string of college degrees after his name. The child who leaves school with a taste for wholesome reading permanently established and who is given the opportunity of gratifying that taste can hardly fail to make a happy, useful citizen. CONCLUSION In concluding it is well to ask ourselves how children react to an educational program that makes libraries such important factors in the schools. From the evidences at hand it appears that the right chord has been struck. The supervisor of school libraries in Oakland, California, says, ‘“The chil- dren are learning to choose books, to use books, to keep books in order, to lend them unselfishly, and to make the library and the classroom better places to be lived in.” The following incident told by Marguerite Kirk from an oral English class in a Newark, New Jersey school, with 95 percent of its pupils of foreign parent- age, illustrates how the children in that city use the library and museum as aids in vitalizing their school projects. A small boy who had made a wearisome speech in the oral English class received the criticism from his mates as he sat down: “It wouldn’t hurt him to have gone to the library and museum and got some pictures and things.” *Madison, Elizabeth. “The Principal and the School Library.”’ Bulletin of the De- partment of Elementary School Principals. National Education Association. Ninth Yearbook, April, 1930. p. 579. ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 33 This small boy was followed by a classmate who announced “China” as his topic. The classmate, says Miss Kirk, was armed with an assortment of articles that would do credit to a returned missionary. A coolie hat, chop sticks, tiny shoes, dolls in costume, and colored pictures of Chinese scenes were produced at the proper points in the narrative. The interest of the class was held until the end and even continued after the dismissal when an opportunity was given to handle the articles.' One has only to visit schools in counties with efficient county libraries to be convinced of the vitalizing effect of libraries on schools that are located in places remote from public libraries. Miss Askew, the state librarian of New Jersey, says that she does not know how children can see out of the sides of schoolhouses in which there are no windows. But they do, she says, for the county librarians report that when the book vans approach such schoolhouses the children rush out exclaiming with joy, “The library’s come! The library’s come!” Not long ago I visited a one-teacher rural school in Allen County, Indiana, in company with the school librarian. As we approached the schoolhouse we noticed a few children playing ball in the schoolyard. When we drove into the schoolyard the children suddenly stopped playing and this conversation was heard: “No, it isn’t.” “Well, it is—I guess I know.” ‘Anyway she isn’t there—Why She Is!” And with a shout the children gathered about the school librarian with a request for ‘“Raggylug”’ the story that was promised on her last visit to the school. Eagerly they asked their teacher to begin school immediately, and before she could ring the bell the children were in their seats breathlessly wait- ing for those words which are magic to children—‘“‘Once upon a time.” *Kirk, Marguerite. “Coédperation of Schools with the Library and Museum of New- ark, N. J.” Bulletin, Department of Elementary School Principals. National Educa- tion Association. October, 1926. p. 32-37. . T may very well be argued that time spent under competent direc- tion in a library, whether organized in the school building or out- side of it, is as important as anything that can be done by way of teach- ing facts in the classroom.—GeorGE D. Strayer and N, L. ENGEL- HARDT, The Classroom Teacher. VITAL VALUES IN EDUCATION—SUPERINTENDENT’S POINT OF VIEW! WALTER W. BordEN Superintendent of Schools, South Bend, Indiana OR more than a century in our nation we have clung to the fundamental principle that, “religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall ever be encouraged.” At all times and in all places in our country, education has been held as a necessity for the fullest development of every individual and for society as a whole. The question that confronts us as superintendents and leaders in educa- tion is not so much, “Shall we educate ?” but ““What shall we study and what and how shall we teach ?” I. One of the most important “values in education” is to acquaint one with what has been. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, the Roman, the Greek, the Hindu, the Jew, the German—each has endeavored in his own way to work out his individual problems and to hold fast to that which was good in his edu- cational philosophy. Each one of these nations has produced its great leaders in education as well as in other lines, and they have left their influence and phil- osophy with us. The principles of these leaders are records of history. We can make them a part of our lives by the study of nations and biographies. Their record is history. * Educational training and development should help one to interpret history. We do not study our history and kindred subjects today as we did when many of us were in school. Our educational experience has taught us better. History should not be a mere accumulation of facts about the past, but the information gathered should be the means for developing a broadened view, a more tolerant spirit, and a fuller life. * We are what we are today largely because of the past, but we should be able to interpret the lessons of the past—social, intellectual, and moral—for the betterment of the world as it exists today. No other country has so devoutly believed in and so enthusiastically pledged itself to free and universal education as has the United States. In this respect she leads all nations of the world. The maintenance of our complex civilization now depends upon the de- veloping of a real educational system. President Hoover recently said in a speech on Education as a National Asset : From generation to generation we hand on our vast equipment, our knowledge of how to run it, and our stock of intellectual and spiritual ideals. If we were to suppress our educational system for a single generation, the equipment would decay, the most “An address from the summer meeting at Columbus, 1930. [ 34] ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 35 of our people would die of starvation, and intellectually, and spiritually we would slip back four thousand years in human progress, One of the most important vital values of education, then, is that it fits us to understand and interpret the past. II. Another very essential “value in education” is the adjustment of the individual to what is. Education should give to every individual the ability to adjust himself to his environment. The general public is not competent to participate in a democracy. This has been attributed by several writers to the fact that our citizenry is not trained. Each individual in a community attains a different height of intelligence, and it is impossible for any community to rise above the intellectual level of the individuals composing it. Most persons really do not have opinions of their own about affairs. One of the vital values of education is to give an individual the background so that he will become competent to meet situations that confront him. There will be difficulties to be overcome. One problem is that a great many persons are incompetent because of lack of time to devote to the affairs of the day. The average business man hardly has time to give to the problems of the day so that he will be able to judge them rightly. If the business man is not competent to pass on the public mat- ters of the day, how can we expect the less competent thousands of other citi- zens to do so? There are the laboring men who know little and care less about the prob- lems of democracy. After a day of monotonous labor in the factory, doing the same thing in the same way, we can hardly expect them to come home to pon- der over the public affairs. They do not take the time even if they have the ability. There is a class whose members are competent but who lack the interest. They have the ability to study situations but they are more interested in golf, favorite clubs, and the like. Therefore they are disqualified because of lack of interest. Aside from this large number of American citizens who are incompetent because of lack of time and interest, there is a vast group who lack the back- ground for the demands made by society upon the average citizen today. They need the training given by education. In them educators are especially inter- ested. The population of the United States is one of the most heterogeneous of any nation in the world. To try to group the reactions of such a hetero- geneous mass is a problem and requires much in the way of educational training. ; Another problem is that of emotionalism. Most people can see things only from their own point of view. They are unable to look at a problem in which they have a part without prejudice. Education should help such persons to be open-minded. The emotional appeal is always resorted to when something vital is at stake, and it is always applied to the uneducated, the untrained in thinking. An example of this has been the campaigns by certain business interests to defeat 36 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION child labor bills. These interests have often said, “The state is taking away the right of the children from the parents.”” The appeal to the emotion is a good way to get action, especially by those who are untrained and uneducated. In this connection propaganda plays a great part. There are several objective difficulties that enter into adjustment. Educa- tion will be of vital use in solving these difficulties. First: The character of modern life and the speed and disorder of the world have a tendency to dull the power of discrimination. We need training to meet these situations. The rush and noise that is continually going on, the machinery of the factories, the scurrying mobs of the city, and the hundreds of things that crowd into the day’s life make thought a burden. Under such con- ditions serious contemplation is nearly impossible. Second: Time and space are not considered. Many people do not take “time” into consideration. They live by the old maxim, ‘““What was good enough for my grandfather is good enough for me.” They fail to take into consideration that other things must change with the change in material con- ditions. Education will greatly help every individual to solve this problem for himself. Third: The public has been eclipsed by modern industry. We are in the machine age today. Therefore our thinking must be different. Common in- terests have had much to do in the governing of behavior. But industry has so change everything, and so complicated all forms of society, that the small community has almost entirely gone. Today people must think in larger terms. The entire country, even the whole world, is inter-communicable and inter- dependent both materially and commercially. Modern industry and invention have made this possible. In order to keep pace, education is absolutely vital and important. Fourth: Education should enable us to discriminate between truth and propaganda. Take “news” for example. A great number of people are de- pendent upon the modern newspaper for their knowledge of public affairs. It is important, therefore, that the information thus obtained be correct infor- mation. Unfortunately this is not always the case. Many of the agencies of public opinion offer a big field for dishonest propaganda. Education should assist one to discriminate, but often even the best educated are deceived. There are two kinds of propaganda—honest and dishonest. Honest pro- paganda is not always valid, but people know it is propaganda—advertising for instance. Dishonest propaganda does not carry the label at all; people accept it as the truth. This makes it doubly hard to fight. Propaganda is nearly always organized to appeal to the emotions, to develop sentiments, and to create false impressions by giving out misinformation. This may be illus- trated by the terrible stories of German atrocities given out during the world war. Headlines play a big part in news. Many people read the headlines and nothing else. During the late war Munsterberg said, ‘Let me write the head- ay e€ d ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 37 lines and I care not who writes the article under the headlines.”” Education should be such that it will develop a people capable of discernment. III. A third very “vital value in education” is that it prepares one for what is to be. Learning is a lifelong process. William H. Kilpatrick says that society faces a problem today quite different from that of the education of former times, and that “society” is meeting this problem. In addition to the school there is now a host of these educational influences that are of great importance. These include magazines, radio, library service, newspapers, women’s clubs, luncheon clubs like Rotary and Kiwanis, Boy Scouts, Camp Fire Girls. All these agencies came into existence for the pur- pose of continuing education in a civilization that is undergoing a rapid change. Our education to be vital with respect to the preparation of what is to be must teach the children in our schools how to really live; how to organize facts learned and knowledge obtained ; how to really think. Education should be the means of inspiring in a person respect for himself. Next to the discovery of God, the greatest discovery any individual ever makes is the discovery of himself; finding the particular qualities and charac- teristics which are manifested and reflected in his personality; finding his own particular mission in life. Our education to be vital must train people to know themselves; to think for themselves. This is developing individuality. If we could not and did not develop personalities different from the common mold, our society would not advance. Through education these various types of personalities are developed. This makes our civilization progress. In this lies our hope for the future. It brings new developments in the field of science, literature, art, commerce, and government. Every superintendent is interested in his school, in what he is doing to de- velop every child in his school system for a successful life. What is a suc- cessful life? What proportion of human beings are successful? The answer is entirely a matter of standards. Success is not always a matter of entire life. The greatness of Gladstone and Lincoln was not a matter of single acts; each grew by years. Not so with Bismarck who outlived his historical self. Napoleon who in all the annals of mankind yields place to Casar, saw Waterloo after Austerlitz. Success is not always a matter of general accomplishments. Washington was successful alike as a soldier, as a legislator, as an executive, and as a man of affairs. Not so with Webster who had but one surpassing power, that of persuasion of men to high thinking of the state. Success is not always a matter of recognition at the time. What Greek would have dreamed that Aristotle would rule the intellectual world for 2000 years? Success is seldom evidenced by the accumulation of property. Who cares whether Copernicus or Columbus left fortunes? Jesus had not “where to rest his head.” Besides the development of individual personality, our whole life is cen- 38 NATIONAL EpuUCATION ASSOCIATION tered around personal and social relationships so we must teach the child to live happily with others. Our civilization is essentially social. People only can arouse our full responses. So children must develop a respect for the per- sonalities of others. Boys and girls must become social beings—physically, mentally, morally. “They must learn to play with others; later to work har- moniously with others. Of course, they should have their own ideas, but they must learn to respect the ideas of others. Education should make us deeply considerate of the personality of others. There are many mechanically smooth-running households, many schools ruled by iron hands; and some nations governed autocratically that are so be- cause the rest concerned yield to some autocratic tyrant. Reverence for personality of others is the greatest test and also the best stand- ard for friendships. Emerson had this in mind when he, in one of the best things he ever uttered, said, “Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can. This is the service of a friend.”” Education will create respect and reverence for spiritual things. After all these are the only things of value. There is a very general demand that our schools and colleges do more than they have done for moral training and character building of our pupils. The demand is as vague as it is general, but the hopeful feature is the evidence that people do appreciate the need. Since the school is universal in its reach, more and more responsibility has been placed upon it the past few years. Practically all children come under its influence. We certainly must have some agency to train the youth to lives of virtue. Matthew Arnold often said, ‘“Conduct is three-fourths of life.’’ This is an understatement. The most vital value of education is to emphasize that “Conduct and Reverence for God” is all of life. F for no other reason, the school library has been found to be indis- pensable the moment reading for recreation, for appreciation, and for enjoyment were recognized as factors in the motivation of chil- dren’s interest, their hopes, their desires. The child’s worthy use of leisure combines moral growth and behavior with true happiness, and this may be brought about by attaining right reading habits and choices on the part of the child himself. In it all the child must be en- couraged to want to read, if reading, according to one writer, offers the most pleasurable and profitable of all means for the enjoyment of leisure—Cuar_es A. KENT. ENGLISH AND ITS VALUE TO OUR SCHOOLS! GEorGE F, CASSELL Principal, Penn School, Chicago, Illinois OW heavy a task it is for a child to set down his thoughts in writing we teachers often underestimate. Creative composition, the writing of reasons and hopes and ideas that one holds, represent an effort which is taxing. Humbly, therefore, and helpfully, realizing the hardships of the path along which we ask him to come, so that we may not make the hardships a matter of distaste but rather an invitation to worthy success, let us open up the way of composition to the child for the sake of the values it presents. It is a medium through which he learns to communicate in a more or less careful way with persons with whom other methods of communication are not readily open. It is also a manner of making a record of what he has to say. Beyond this are the benefits that come from the effort to reduce to visible and exact shape the ideas that are his, and the necessity of searching himself as to the validity of those ideas and their logic ; the worth of his information and thought ; and the effectiveness and attractiveness of the form in which he has placed them. We are composing orally much of our time; and since the transfer of our thoughts from one to another by word of mouth is so regular a phenomenon and one of the distinctions which set us apart from all other forms of created things, it should be a joy always and maintained on a plane of sheer happiness. In unschooled and out-of-school childhood it is. Bad grammar, slurred enun- ciation, incomplete sentences, incorrect pronunciation stand not at all in the way of the four or five-year-old child who, with his fellows, composes and delivers his thoughts in glorious abandon and volubility. He does not know that he is composing. Think of the difference an hour makes with the children of the elementary schools! Unless we are wise, three o’clock may find a class in conscious fear before the number of the verb, while the antecedent of its subject is being sought, or so worked upon in the effort to have the correct form of a pronoun as to forget the meaning of the sentence. Four oclock finds groups of the same girls and boys exchanging with vividness and accuracy, with mirth or scorn or appreciation, their impressions of that day’s assembly program, the inter-room game they mean to win, the teacher’s vulnerable personality, or the relative prowess of national athletes. What a pity! We wanted them to speak freely in the classroom too, and they did not. Why did we want them to speak freely ? Well, we wanted to correct their speech. How can we expect anyone to want to speak if he feels that he is urged to utterance in order that he may be corrected? Hard as it is for the child to be silent, he prefers silence to talk that he feels will be subjected to such treat- ment. How then is he to be helped in oral English? I should say, in general, by treating what he has to say as being of importance, by encouraging him to "An address from the summer meeting at Columbus, 1930. [39] 40 NATIONAL EpUCATION ASSOCIATION impart his information to the very end, and by giving him the courtesy and apparently interested attention that is stimulating to the adult speaker. Of far greater possibility of service to the young people of our schools, how- ever, than composition, either written or oral, can ever be, is that part of their training in English that is broadly spoken of as literature. Among the gener- ally accepted aims of education are to be found, almost as articles of religious faith: training for worthy citizenship, helping to a profitable use of leisure, the producing of noble character, the beneficial articulation of the individual with his fellows of the home. All these depend upon the getting and the hold- ing of ideals, and I am convinced that it is through the literature with which the child becomes acquainted that he gets and holds his ideals to a degree much greater than is commonly believed. We wish to train the girls and boys for worthy home membership. We can do very much toward this through the reading material we present and the interpretation we give to it. Surely books of sincere purpose and stories involv- ing unforced situations make an ideal medium through which to pass to the child the conceptions of obedience to his parents, of unselfishness in his deal- ings with his brothers and sisters, of a justifiable pride in his family and in himself as a member of his family. The right sort of reading matter will do much toward this end. What of profitable use of leisure? I am not suggesting that the child should fill with reading most of the spaces that may lie between his school work, his play and his home tasks, nor am I prophesying that the average adult, even he upon whom as child or adult the magic of the printed word has laid its spell, will so use the larger part of the time that may come to him as respite from his usual work. Nevertheless, it seems to me that attitudes of mind and purpose of thought, influencing the choice of activity in leisure hours, come very di- rectly from previous reading. Train for citizenship! We have no more effective antidote against the un- desirable impressions that may come to the child from the conversation and the acts of cynical adults, against the false admiration for the prominence of people whose unsocial conduct has given them temporary publicity, against the lurid appeal of sordid lawlessness which unfortunately in the daily papers is often fitted out in heroic dress, than may be found in the record of the noble people of history and the best characters of fiction. Here is one of the most proper and effective means of training happily for citizenship. No connotation associated with the word character is of more interesting and vigorous meaning than that suggested by the Greek verb from which it derives—the idea of engraving or marking permanently the material upon which one works. The public schools wish to excel in character training. What implements to use in cutting the lines of character is a delicate matter for the teacher to determine. They must be many and varied, but among them must be found that of good reading. It is an instrument made to cut deep and clear, and one which makes possible the finer and more delicate lines in the finished plate. For this purpose the schools have no better tool, and I should be at loss to name another as good. VITAL VALUES IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION! E. RuTH PyrtTLe Principal, Bancroft School, Lincoln, Nebraska APPRECIATE the honor and privilege of bringing you greetings from your parent organization. I congratulate this Department upon the splen- did program set up for your meeting. No group of educators has a finer op- portunity than the one in the elementary field. Your splendidly planned pro- gram, which emphasizes essential values in the traditional subjectmatter together with proper emphasis on modern trends in education to fit modern needs and demands, will inspire and help not only the elementary but the whole field of education. I could wish nothing better for all of the children of America than to have them enjoy the opportunities and benefits provided for our best schools where | have been privileged to visit this year as President of the National Education Association. It is most encouraging that more and more teachers are leading pupils to thinking, weighing, measuring, reasoning, making judgments, and letting memory become the byproduct rather than the main objective in the day’s program. Having a keen sense of vital values will cause us to put emphasis on “‘first things first.” Dr. Dewey says that in our schools we have freed individuality in many modes of outer expression without freeing intelligence, which is the vital spring and guarantee of all these expressions. It does not take new or different equipment than we now have in nearly all schools, but use of the equipment or environment in a more profitable manner. For example he says, that to take the child out-of-doors widens and organizes his experience with reference to the world in which he lives. If it is to be vital, nature study must be pursued by observing forces at work under their natural conditions—plants instead of merely discussing dead and animals growing in their own homes specimens. We believe it is fundamental in our teaching that we have a sense of vital values in education and put emphasis on first things, first. Henry Turner Bailey emphasizes the fact that nature is the inexhaustible reservoir of suggestion for all science—the trees, the birds, the butterflies, the moths, the clouds, and the stars never cease to entertain and to bless all who have learned to love them. He says when we are wiser, we will run the buses of the board of education not to bring rural children into city schools, but to take city children into the country that they may learn to know, and love God’s first revelation to man, and feel at home in the natural world because they are well acquainted with it. Which is the greater tragedy, for a child to live in a crowded city in a home and school environment that almost prevents his chance for appreciation of the real values of life, or for a child living in the rural school environment— ‘Delivered before the Department at the meeting in Columbus, Ohio, July 1, 1930. Miss Pyrtle was then President of the National Education Association. [41] 42 NATIONAL EpuCATION ASSOCIATION perhaps surrounded by the beauty of God’s great out-of-doors—and yet not appreciating it because of having “eyes that see not and ears that hear not?” Once I asked a twelve-year-old boy about the scarlet tanager which was nesting within a stone’s throw of his school. This modern rural schoolhouse was located in beautiful river woods, a locality well known to ornithologists as one of the best in the United States for making a long bird list. The boy knew nothing about the tanager ; he said his teacher thought his class did not have time to study birds, they had so much arithmetic and geography ‘“‘to get.” Bishop William A. Quayle once said he would like to add a beautitude to the list, to read, “Blessed are those who have eyes to see and use them; Blessed are those who have ears to hear and hear with them.” The beautitude I would add is—“‘Blessed are those who help others to see.”’ These blessed surely include the classroom teachers of America who have the vision of putting the emphasis on “first things first” and put that into practise in everyday classroom instruction. Fortunate, indeed, is the child who is associated with that type of teacher! One of your favorite writers in his “God of the Open Air” expresses this philosophy of vital values: These are the things I prize, And hold of dearest worth: Light of the sapphire skies, Peace of the silent hills, Shelter of forest, comfort of grass, Music of birds, murmur of little rills, Shadows of clouds that swiftly pass, And, after showers, The smell of flowers And of the good brown earth— And best of all, along the way, Friendship and mirth. O individual or group will be judged by whether they come up to or fall short of some fixed result, but by the direction in which they are moving. The bad man is the man who no matter how good he has been is beginning to deteriorate, to grow less good. The good man is the man who no matter how morally unworthy he has been is moving to become better. Such a conception makes one severe in judging himself and humane in judging others—JOHN Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy. not t >) Vas use ists OY not ” to sed ild ive ito ild his THE DISTINCTIVE CONTRIBUTIONS OF GEOGRAPHY IN EDUCATION! A. E. PARKINS Professor of Geography, George Peabody College for Teachers, Nashville, Tennessee EOGRAPHY is not what it was three decades or so ago, nor is it what the rank and file of Americans of today think it is; even many school authorities know little of its presentday aspects. To be assured that tremendous progress has been made in the quality of the books in geography texts and supplementary reading, one has but to com- pare the books that were used forty years ago with those of today; and to realize that progress has been made in certain methods of teaching, one has but to recall the listless, deadening, memorative recitations of thirty years ago with a busy geography hour in the classroom of a skillful teacher where the children, surrounded by maps of many sorts, a school museum at hand, and a collection of pictures, are too absorbed with class discussions of the working out of what seem to them weighty problems to break the unwritten law of class decorum. The greatest progress in the science of geography has been in the higher institutions of learning. One will find geography departments with faculties numbering from two to a dozen or more in nearly every state university and larger endowed university from Boston Bay to the Pacific coast. This repre- sents a growth of only a little more than two decades. While I am to discuss the value of geography in the elementary school, I cite these facts concerning its status in the higher institutions to show that I am not talking about an old, decrepit subject or science that belongs to those ancient days when educa- tion was known as pedagogy and memorative recitations and formal disci- pline were in vogue. Geography is an old science. There are volumes in geography even older than the New Testament; but it is only in recent decades, since America has become a great industrial nation and a world power, and life in general has reached a complexity wholly new to developing civilization, that geography under a new and practical discipline has come into a new field of usefulness. Presentday geography acquaints the children with modern agriculture in its many phases—cereal growing, cotton culture, subtropical fruit produc- tion, humid agriculture, dryland farming, irrigation, land and water trans- portation, mining, and manufacturing. It is concerned with the busy world, with man at work in every clime and in every land. It considers the social and political conditions under which he works that effect his work. It looks at things from the world viewpoint. *An address from the summer meeting at Columbus, 1930. [43 ] THE IMPORTANCE OF A READING PROGRAM TO ‘THE SCHOOLS! Marcarer L. WHITE Elementary Supervisor, Public Schools, Cleveland, Ohio HERE is probably no school subject in the elementary grades that is more fundamental or important than that of reading. Every other school subject is dependent to some degree upon effective and intelligent reading. A statement that has often been made in regard to the reading program in the elementary grades says in effect, “The time of the children in the primary grades should be devoted to learning to read, while the time in the upper grades should be spent in reading to learn.” It seems to me that there is no reason why the two objectives cannot be accomplished at the same time, from the very beginning of the reading program. There are two objectives that we are all working for in reading: First, that of getting a child to enjoy and want to read; and second, teaching the child the mechanical skills necessary to be a good reader. One objective is useless without the other. Too often the work in the primary grades is confined to word recognition or, in other words, to building a reading vocabulary. This is quite important and necessary, but it is only a part of the program, for we all recognize the importance of establishing desirable habits from the beginning. It is essential for the reading program to plan to develop good habits in attacking new words, phrasing, eye-span, keeping one’s place, reading comprehendingly, as well as reading for many purposes, such as reading to follow directions, reading to get information, reading to answer questions, etc. Nor must the reading pro- gram lose sight of the fact that worthwhile and genuine interest must be developed and fostered. Another principle that should be consciously adhered to and planned for is that of using simple material in order to attain fluency in reading and to develop one’s confidence in one’s reading ability. As a result of experimentation, testing, and observation in our reading cur- riculum center in Cleveland, we have come to some rather definite conclusions as to some problems in primary reading. These are: 1. All children do not learn to read in the same way or at the same age. 2. There is not enough variety of methods to take care of individual differences. 3. The vocabularies of experience charts and incidental reading are often too specialized to be of great help in reading books of general interest. 4. There is not enough repetition of the same vocabulary in different and new situations. 5. Lack of reading readiness, due to environment, language difficulties, experi- ences, training, etc. 6. Lack of a variety of reading material. 7. Lack of interest in reading. 8. Lack of training in the mechanics of reading. *An address from the summer meeting at Columbus, 1930. [ 44 ] ol he re nt be ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 45 These problems are suggestive as to what should be taken care of in a read- ing program for the primary grades. By the time children have completed the third grade, most of them have mastered the mechanics of reading. “here are, however, new types of read- ing needed for the upper grades. he added subjectmatter that the child needs necessitates much reading to get the main idea, to get details, to answer questions, to form conclusions, and various other skills necessary in reference reading. Some of these skills require skimming, note-taking, and outlining. All of these are more or less new technics to be learned by the child. More and more stress is put on the proper use of books, such as the table of contents, chapter headings, encyclopedia, and dictionary. These grades also present the opportunity for developing new interests and appreciations, as well as fostering old ones. Realizing the complexity of the child’s reading problem at this stage a reading program should plan the best organization and pro- cedures for meeting this problem. As a result of reading tests and teachers’ judgment, certain children in Cleveland were placed in special reading groups, regardless of their grades. It was necessary to have nine reading groups. "Two groups were composed of children who were excellent readers, but who needed development in ap- preciation and taste. “Two groups were organized to work on reference read- ing. One group was organized for reading interest and another one to work on comprehension. Three groups were organized to work on the mechanics of reading. In order to organize these groups, all the grades had a reading period for forty minutes at the same time each day. This made it possible for a child to attend the particular group he needed. He could move from one group to another as his skill improved. We were amazed at the great number of children needing help in the mechanics of reading. It seemed to point-to the fact that there are always in these grades children of low mentality, but not borderline material, however, who are unable to cope with the amount of reading essential to carry on the work of these grades. The organization has proved to be very valuable in making both teachers and children conscious of individual problems in reading, as well as the many skills necessary for intelligent reading. Great improvement was shown in reading ability. We feel that another year the organization should include only the fifth and sixth grades, due to the fact that the range of abilities is too great to be handled effectively. No reading program would be complete without some provision for library reading. The elementary schools have a very definite responsibility for de- veloping the library habit and for fostering an interest in worthwhile books. VIEWPOINTS ON THE UNIT PLAN OF WORK Lots CorFFEY MOssMAN Teachers College Columbia University, New York, New York N THE spring of 1930 a class of sixty graduate students of elementary school supervision visited a sixth-grade class at the Lincoln School. The pupils reported to the audience their year’s work in studying the architectural achievements of the race. Following the observation the graduate students and the faculty discussed many aspects of the unit plan of work. Among the points of disagreement revealed by the discussion were: 1. There is disagreement as to boundaries or limits to a given phase of the work. One group holds that subjectmatter boundaries should guide. The other group feels that there should be freedom to follow its development into any phase of human experience that seems promising. The latter group seems to be seeking guiding prin- ciples for determining limits and direction, but the members of this group are not as yet in agreement as to the formulation of these principles. 2. There is disagreement as to the position and importance of subjectmatter. One group holds that subjectmatter has been selected and organized out of the richness of race experience and that the child should become possessor of it. The other group holds that possession of all subjectmatter is not essential, but that it is essential that the child enter into some phases of it, the selection to be in relation to child experi- encing. There is no agreement as to how this selection shall be made. It seems to be assumed that there will be a variability as to what is selected. 3. There is disagreement as to the degree of pupil activity or receptivity. The one group would hold that this is dependent upon the method of presentation. The other seems to feel greater pupil activity will result where children have freedom to initiate and develop interests of their own, than will occur where previously arranged sub- jectmatter is presented for them to receive. 4. There is difference in the value attached to freedom to follow a line of related interests and meanings without the restraint of subjectmatter boundaries. The one group would hold within subjectmatter lines, but would desire that other subjects develop related interests as they appear in their respective fields, a kind of natural, not forced, correlation. The other group would hold that greater intensity and value in work would result in developing a given interest in its rounded fullness without the inhibitions of subjectmatter lines. 5. There is difference of opinion as to when the child should consider subjects as such. There seems to be agreement that the work should begin as a unified thing in the kindergarten and first grade. There seems to be agreement that in time subject interests should appear and be developed. One group would hold that subjects should be definitely introduced as a means of developing this subject awareness and interest. The other group would hold that gradual awareness of common elements would lead to interests in aspects of experience which in time would lead to consciousness of subjects which should then be studied. This latter group would place rich experiences before consciousness of subjects. 6. There seems to be a difference of opinion as to the genesis of real interests. The one group seems to assume an obvious diversity within the interests of a group of children. The other group seems to assume that part of the teacher’s work is the development of group consciousness of common interests. 7. There seems to be a difference as to the relationship of the learnings to the child’s life. The one group seems to assume that it is the teacher’s responsibility to [ 46 ] 1e al ts 1e in a- is 1€ Oo =p ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 47 establish a relationship between the definitely selected subjectmatter and the child. The other group seems to seek to begin with child life and interests and develop these into relationship with larger race experience. 8. There seems to be a difference in the learnings sought. The one group seeks to have the child master these valuable knowledges and skills. The other group seeks primarily the development of attitudes and appreciation in living with a secondary emphasis upon needed knowledges and skills in so doing. 9. There seems to be a difference in the definition of a “unit.” The one holds that it is a section of subjectmatter content within a given field or subject. The other group disregards all subjectmatter lines and holds that it is the development of a phase of human living in terms of the child’s ability to gather and organize data about it and study it in relation to his interests. 10. There seems to be a difference as to the significance of continuity or sequence in the work. The one group tends to hold to a more logical sequence, emphasizing the presentation and development of the subject. The other holds to an emphasis upon continuity in the child’s experiencing, through developing relationships between new experiences and old experiences, leaving logical organization to follow the ex- periencing process later when the experiencing has compassed enough of the total race experience in this particular phase as to make the whole of this phase apparent. 11. There seems to be a difference in judgment as to what is the fundamental sub- jectmatter all should learn; as to when this fundamental subjectmatter should be possessed by the child, and as to how it shall be learned. 12. There seems to be difference of opinion as to the effect of the “unit” method in producing growth on the part of the teacher. The latter group tended to emphasize this value in the method. e 13. There seems to be a rather definite difference of opinion as to what readiness is. The one group seems to hold that the teacher’s work includes securing readiness for subjectmatter. The other group seems to hold that the teacher should find exist- ing readiness and give them development and guidance so that new readinesses of more worth continuously develop out of the experiences the children do have. 14. Some difference in thinking relative to creative work appeared. The latter group particularly held that genuine creative work must be based upon rich experi- encing and organization of the self in terms of these experiences. 15. There was expressed some questioning as to the length of a unit, the dominance of a single unit, and the possiblity of more than one unit at a time; but distinctly differing groups did not appear relative to these questions. T is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the Great Man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.—RALPH WaALbpo EMERSON. MAKING A SCHOOL ‘THRIF’'T ACCOUNT THRIFTY R. C. T. JAcoss Principal, Silberstein School, Dallas, Texas VERY virtue from the fountain of truth has a transforming power in it. Thrift is one of these virtues. It has no blighting influence anywhere. It is a sparkling draft that refreshes and blesses in every condition and circum- stance. We had taught thrift to our pupils, but few of them had come to know the meaning of thrift. It was our problem to make it a transforming power in their lives, so that by it we could “light up the spirit that was within them.” Our beginning was small. None of the pupils took to the abstract principle of thrift as desirable. Although this school and all the schools throughout the city had been talking thrift and teaching thrift for a number of years, when the first report was made for this school of one thousand pupils in October, 1928, it could show only forty-four depositors in savings accounts. At the close of December the report showed a gain of only fifty-seven. ‘This was above the average for the schools of the city but still not satisfactory to one who had the thrift idea as completely broken out in his system as a good case of measles. He believed that something ought to be done about it, and that something must be done about it. He knew that his teachers were teaching splendidly doing all that they thought reasonable to do. They were sincere, interested, hard-working ; but they looked at the poverty of many of the homes and their sympathies prompted them to say, “Be careful how you press this matter of thrift. Do not wound the pride or the spirit of your children.” Still the fire burned. The thing that caused some to hesitate caused the principal to work and to plead all the harder. He saw the want, the poverty, the squalor in many cases, but he was not willing that his pupils should be doomed to that all their lives. Something must be done! That there was poverty in abundance could not be denied, but must the chil- dren and the parents go on in that condition always? If so, it was a very sad outlook for them and for us. We could not believe that it was so. It was argued that many of our children were too poor to save and therefore could not save. To this the reply was: It is distressing to see how many things are denied them, but nothing is selfdenied. We will teach them selfdenial. When some- thing comes into their hands with which to buy, they have no rest until it is spent, almost always for something useless. Notice how the poorest of our children manage to buy cheap candy, whistles, and other toys. “They spend money somehow for things that are often destructive of health, which is a double thriftlessness. In order to teach them thrift we must get into their inner consciousness the value and desirability of selfdenial. In most cases the thriftless one had no objective. He had not looked ahead and singled out something for which it would be desirable to save. He never thought that if he would only save and bank his pennies as they came, his pennies and nickels could finally bring him the desirable things of life. When [48 ] I= — “we ‘? ELBMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 49 this was noticed we turned our attention toward setting before each child an objective that would make saving a pleasure for him. For many the objective had to be rather immediate, but when the start was made, the blood was up, the race was begun, victory was ahead, joy crowned the effort, selfdenial was enthroned, and the glory of triumph led on to achievement, to be repeated time after time as objectives were reached. In many cases there was no home incentive for thrift. "The blight of poverty had for years laid its benumbing hand on home and all its inmates, until gloom seemed to shut them in on all sides and there was no spirit left for fight. The distress of the poorest argued most strongly with the principal that everything possible should be done to lift them out of this condition, and put them on the road to independence. All the thought and planning that he could devise led only by one road—the way of thrift. If he could get the idea into their con- sciousness, if he could set an incentive before them, if he could fire their minds and their hearts with the desire to climb to independence and the desirable things of life by the way of thrift, he might go home and rest at night feeling that he had done some good in the world. With the beginning of the second term of school in January the principal called a council of his teachers to determine what more, in their judgment, might be done to promote thrift among the pupils. This referred not alone to the school savings accounts, but to the entire problem of thrift. What had already been accomplished in the way of teaching and training was reviewed and the teachers commended for their faithful work. The teaching of thrift had been correlated with all subjects taught in school and applied to every- thing the pupils used in any way—books, tablets, pens, pencils, clothing, food, time, health, and every conceivable thing that occurred to either teachers or pupils. Had we done all we could? What more could be done? Had our teaching reached into the lives and habits of our pupils as completely as could be desired? Were our pupils thrifty or wasteful? Could we make further progress in our thrift teaching and character formation? Did all of our pupils spend money for something? What did they spend money for? Were any too poor to have a school savings account ? There was apparently not an answer to any of these questions that was satisfactory to all the teachers, but they were glad to study them under the leadership of their principal, and to attempt to find the correct answer to everyone of them. As we studied these questions we laid more surely the foundations of all our thrift work with the pupils. We not only taught them how they might be thrifty with their materials, we observed them carefully so that we might assist them to form the habit of thrift with all their possessions and inherit- ances. We taught them how they might be thrifty of their time and opportun- ities, and, by doing odd jobs, earn money for their savings accounts. The work grew in interest and in significance. Device after device was adopted and many of them were striking in uniqueness. A bank teller was appointed for the school; it was his duty every Tuesday morning to make the rounds of the rooms, call for deposits, and write upon the central bulletin 50 NATIONAL EpuUCATION ASSOCIATION board two reports. One of these showed the number of depositors in each class to date, and the other showed the amount deposited by each class on that par- ticular day and the total deposit for the school. The next device was a large bar graph, worked out for all the classes by our departmental arithmetic teacher, showing the relative standing in thrift of all the classes week by week. This was posted prominently in the hall where all the pupils could see it and note the progress. In the arithmetic department the students worked out the percent of pupils in each class having bank accounts and the percent gain over the week before. Soon one class reached 100 percent in saving accounts and a beautiful certi- ficate was presented to them. This was an incentive to others. Within a short while another class had a 100 percent certificate. Pupils helped one another to get their accounts started and to keep them going. Thrift stories were learned by the pupils who had the highest talent as story tellers and told to their classmates and to the members of other classes in the auditorium. These stories served as reproduction lessons in English also. Thrift talks were assigned in the English department. The pupil producing the best or the most appealing talk was permitted to deliver his talk before other classes. Competition in one form or another was used occasionally in every class. One class had their Honor Roll of Bankers beautifully executed and hung upon the front wall. Other classes gave their bankers a “treat” of some kind. Group photographs of thrift savers were posted in other rooms. A thrift mag- azine, Silberstein Sunshine, was made up of thrift verses, news, and sayings, which had been practised by the platoon writing classes, and edited and com- piled by the writing teacher. The result of this teaching, promoting, inspiring, leading, guiding may easily be seen in the next citywide report on thrift, March 26: “Largest num- ber of deposits made in one week by any school was made by Ascher Silberstein on March 25—542 deposits.” This was the high record for the city for all schools since the beginning of thrift work in Dallas. On May 28, the day of final deposit, the number of bank accounts for the school had risen to 674 and the number of consistent depositors, that is, those who had deposited at least twelve times out of seventeen, was 352. Every one of our graduates had a thrift account and was proud of it. In a group of forty- two elementary schools this school takes first rank in the number of new ac- counts and in the total number of thrift savers. It has the distinction of having set a new high record never attained before by any school, either elementary or high, in this city. The amount deposited by the school during the last seven- teen weeks was $3008.65. The amount saved by this school is not insignificant for the children and for the community ; but best of all is the instruction that the pupils have received while they were building this splendid record. It has been a part of all they have been taught, and a very vitalizing part. It has given purpose, vigor, and power to every activity. It has given a new hope and a new aspiration. It has made learning more worthwhile. ur ill ll he its AMERICAN EDUCATION WEEK 1930 MERICAN EDUCATION WEEK is observed each year during the week that includes Armistice Day. It is sponsored by the American Legion, the United States Office of Education, and the National Education Association. It begins on Monday and ends on Sunday. The program aims to emphasize the enriched outlook on education which is found in the seven cardinal objectives. “The 1930 daily themes are: Monvay, November 10—Theme: The schools and the enrichment of human life. Show how the schools have enriched the life in your community. Have both pupils and citizens think of specific things which the school has done to encourage the higher and finer values. Note increased appreciation of beauty, of good order, the develop- ment of libraries, city planning, better habits of living, the growth of parent-teacher organizations, training for the wiser use of leisure through reading clubs, and the like. Emphasize adult education, noting the many grownups who are now pursuing some special line of study. Describe the specific things which schools are doing to train for the wiser use of leisure. Turspay, November 11—Theme: How schools promote patriotism and world un- derstanding. This eleventh anniversary of the Armistice is a fitting time to empha- size patriotism and world understanding because of the special efforts which are now being made to improve world relationships and to insist on a higher type of citizen- ship and public service. Let the schools of each community show what they are doing to bring about a better understanding of civic duty and of world relationships. The plans of the national commander of the American Legion for 1930 include one meet- ing in 11,000 American Legion posts, devoted to the subject of world goodwill. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12—Theme: The schools of yesterday. Every citizen should know the inspiring story of education in America—its crude beginnings, its hard struggle to get established, the difficulties of the pioneer period, the revival under Horace Mann and Henry Barnard, the rapid expansion of the elementary school dur- ing the last quarter of the nineteenth century and of the high school during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Let the authorities in each state and locality recall important events in local educational history and pay tribute to the pioneers who laid the foundations for the schools of today. The school of yesterday may be worked out by having some of the older people reproduce in costume the methods, spelling contests, ciphering matches, and other activities of the early school. Tuurspay, NOVEMBER 13—Theme: The schools of today. The school has become the dominant institution in American life. It is the most significant activity of both the state and locality. It is improving rapidly in scope and effectiveness. Visualize for your state and your community the extent of its educational efforts, the number of children served, the ideal of a fair start for every boy and girl regardless of race and gifts. Interpret through exhibits and addresses the aims and technics of the present system. Visualize also the major problems and needs. Let every citizen feel proud of his share in the great common enterprise. Fripay, NOVEMBER 14—Theme: What the schools have helped the individual to achieve. Every community has citizens of prominence whose debt to the schools is incalculable. On this day encourage these citizens to write and speak of what the schools have meant to them. Let them pay tribute to their teachers, to the influence of fine associates, to the widened outlook gained from their studies, to the ideal of personal growth, to the habits of regularity and industry for which schools stand. Show how schools emphasize the survival of the best. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15—Theme: What the schools have helped America to achieve. The greatest wealth of the nation is its human wealth. Peoples have survived [51] 52 NATIONAL EpucaTION ASSOCIATION on poor soils in the midst of unfavorable climate. They have perished in the presence of plenty. The ideals, habits, attitudes, skills, and intelligence which are perpetuated through the schools and the homes, build civilization to constantly higher levels. America’s high standard of living, her ability to produce and consume, have been made possible largely by the schools. Let each state and each community note what the schools have heiped it to achieve. SunpDAy, NOvEMBER 16—Theme: The schools of tomorrow and the future of America. The results of our universal and enriched program of education are only beginning to make themselves felt. The future is limited only by the ability of our people to plan and create higher standards of health, better homes, increased facilities for learn- ing, alert citizens, economic effectiveness, wise use of leisure, and the highest stand- ards of ethical character. Show how the ideal of a fair start for every boy and girl, the ideal of free choice of schooling and occupation for all youth, and the ideal of lifelong learning, must lead to a finer and richer life for the masses than has ever been attained in the history of civilization. Picture the school of tomorrow with its vastly increased service to the welfare of the human race. Make PLans Now—An early start is a vital factor in the success of your program. Let the superintendent direct activities. Request a proclamation from the mayor. Local officials of patriotic orders, parent-teacher organiza- tions, churches, civic and fraternal organizations will codperate by serving on committees and contributing their talent to the program. Newspapers and local radio stations will give the program proper publicity. LOVE education because in the country from which I came only the rich could afford it, and the poorer class had to go through the school of hard knocks, and I have graduated from that school. I began life as a peddler but poor as I have been, my two daughters and my son have gone through the state university and my son is also a grad- uate of Harvard Law School. He is now an assistant state attorney- general. I believe the only solution for making this world a better place to live in is education.—This statement from a leading citizen and state officer of one of our American commonwealths suggests the kind of tribute which citizens in every community are ready to bring as their contribution to American Education Week. ‘nce ited els. een hat ing : to rn- nd- irl, of pen stly ur on ra- on nd SECRETARY’S MINUTES—COLUMBUS MEETING HE DEPARTMENT of Elementary School Principals held two gen- eral sessions; one Monday afternoon, June 30, and the other Tuesday afternoon, July 1, at the First Congregational Church. At both sessions the music was rendered by the pupils of the public schools. The programs of the sessions were as follows: ViraL VALUES IN EDUCATION First SESSION Arithmetic and Its Value to our Schools Belle Torrey Scott, principal, Fulton School, Columbus, Ohio. Reading and Its Value to Our Schools Margaret L. White, general supervisor, Public Schools, Cleveland, Ohio. English and Its Value to Our Schools George F. Cassell, principal, Penn School, Chicago, III. Functional Values of Geography in the Curriculum A. E. Parkins, George Peabody College for Teachers, Nashville, Tenn. SECOND SESSION Greetings E. Ruth Pyrtle, principal, Bancroft School, Lincoln, Nebraska, and president of the National Education Association. Vital Values in Education—Superintendent’s Point of View H. C. McKown, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pa. Vital Values in Elementary School Libraries Edith A. Lathrop, assistant specialist in school libraries, U. S. Office of Education, Washington, D. C. Vital Values in Education—Superintendent’s Point of View Walter W. Borden, superintendent of schools, South Bend, Ind. The Purpose and Plan of the 1931 Yearbook Isabel Tucker, principal, Shenandoah School, St. Louis, Mo., chairman, Editorial Committee. Business Session. At the Business Session held on Tuesday afternoon, the following Resolu- tions were adopted : Resolved, That the Department of Elementary School Principals of the National Education Association: 1. Believes there should be created a Department of Education, with a Secretary in the President’s Cabinet. 2. Believes that periodicals that carry tobacco advertising should be excluded from the schools. 3. Requests all teachers to continue their efforts to keep before the children the harmful effects of alcohol on health, and reaffirms its support of the Eighteenth Amendment and urges its impartial enforcement. 4. Realizing that reading matter which portrays a degraded standard of home and community life has a deteriorating influence upon the minds and morals of youth, will exert every effort to banish this type of reading from places where pupils congregate, and will supply them with the type of literature that makes for the highest type of citizenship. 5. Believes that the “elementary school” ofers a splendid opportunity for a life of service, and its duties require as high a degree of intelligence and qualification as do the duties of the schools where the older children are taught. Its teachers and principals should be as well educated and trained as are the teachers and principals of the other schools. The Department also believes that the large elementary school will be found the most satisfactory in the future. The large [53] 54 NATIONAL EpucATION AssocIiATION elementary school plants should be as large and as well built and as completely equipped as are the other plants. We are asking that the younger children be given an equal chance and a square deal in their educational opportunities. 6. Believes that the time is here when the Department should take a more vital interest in health education and that a committee should be appointed. B. E. Koonce, Tulsa, Okla. H. G. Masters, Pittsburgh, Pa. W. T. LoncsHore, Kansas City, Mo., Chairman. The Report of the Nominating Committee was given, and accepted. Offi- cers were elected for the ensuing year: President—Cassie F. Roys, 2609 Bristol Street, Omaha, Neb.; First Vice president— Herbert C. Hansen, 315 Plymouth Court, Chicago, Ill.; Second Vicepresident—Earl R. Laing, Burt School, Detroit, Mich.; Third Vicepresident—Mrs. Cora S. Rusling, 4416 S. Normandie Avenue, Los Angeles, Calif.; Fourth Vicepresident—George D. Tay- lor, 392 Augustine Street, Rochester, N. Y.; Fifth Vicepresident—Julia A. Sheehan, Hunnewell School, Wellesley, Mass.; Secretary—F. H. Duffy, 1616 Ridge Avenue, Steubenville, Ohio. Members of Executive Committee—Eva Pinkston, 5652 Belmont Avenue, Dallas, Texas; James Floyd, 717 Garden Street, Plainfield, N. J. (To fill unexpired term of John Merrill, who resigned on account of ill health.) Cassie F. Roys, Secretary. On Monday and Tuesday mornings breakfasts were held at the Deshler-Wallick Hotel. These were very well attended. These breakfasts afford splendid opportunities for members of the Department to become better acquainted and to exchange ideas. Officers and committee chairmen gave reports, outlining some of the activities of the Department. Mr. Frank Hubbard, director of research, gave a splendid report of the research work. The Department closed its meeting in Columbus with a most enjoyable dinner at the Deshler-Waalick Hotel on Tuesday, July 1. Music was furnished by a group of boys and girls from the Junior High School, and community singing was directed and accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Heinz. Dr. W. O. Thompson, president emeritus of Ohio State University, spoke on “Vital Values in Education.” Cassiz F. Roys, Secretary. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MEETING Monpay Morninoe, JUNE 30, 1930 cor e ‘ + tami —e. HE FIRST meeting of the Executive Committee of the Department of | Elementary School Principals was held at the Deshler-Wallick Hotel. The meeting was called to order by the President, Herbert C. Hansen. The following members were present: Herbert C. Hansen, president; James R. Floyd, second vicepresident; Mrs. Margaret M. Smith, fifth vicepresident ; Cassie F. Roys, secretary ; Elizabeth McCormick, Earl Laing, and M. Emma Brookes, members of the Executive Committee ; Frank W. Hubbard, director of research, and Isabel Tucker, chairman of the Editorial Committee for the Yearbook of 1931. The minutes of the meetings at Atlantic City were read and approved. Miss Tucker, chairman of the Editorial Committee, reported concerning the work of the committee on the 1931 Yearbook. Mr. Hubbard, director of research, submitted suggestions concerning the activities and personnel of the research committee in the future. ‘These were discussed informally. tely 1 be ital ick as. he he he ys nd of ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS ona a. It was moved by Mrs. Smith and seconded by Miss Brookes that the new member of the Editorial Committee be appointed by the president early in the fall to sit with the committee at the February meeting. Carried. It was moved by Miss McCormick, seconded by Mr. Floyd, that the mem- bers of the Executive Committee of the Department of Elementary School Principals deeply appreciate the untiring efforts of the members of the Edi- torial Committee, Miss Tucker, Mr. Gist, and Mr. Laing, in connection with the 1930 Yearbook ; of the secretary, Miss Roys, in connection with the Bul- letin; and recognizes the valuable services of the Research Director, Mr. Hubbard, in the preparation of both publications. Carried. A discussion of the financial statement followed. It was moved by Miss Brookes, seconded by Mrs. Smith that the president, Mr. Hansen, be author- ized to put in an expense account for 1928-29 and 1929-30. Carried. It was moved by Miss McCormick and seconded by Mr. Laing that the policy adopted at the Atlanta meeting be continued, and that Mr. Hansen become a member of the National Council of Education, his term expiring 1936. Carried. It was moved by Miss McCormick and seconded by Miss Brookes that Mr. Hansen be our official representative to the Iowa state meeting in November, 1930, including expenses. Carried. It was moved by Mr. Laing, seconded by Miss Brookes that a committee on enrolment be appointed by the President, and that the Department look for- ward to the advisability of using our permanent fund for the purpose of defray- ing the expense of research and field work, which would be especially concerned with enrolment. Carried. Moved by Mr. Floyd and seconded by Miss Brookes that a vote of thanks be extended to Mr. Ritow, chairman of National Enrolment Committee. Carried. Meeting adjourned. Cassig F. Roys, Secretary. WEDNESDAY Mornino, JULY 2, 1930 The second meeting of the Executive Committee was held at the Deshler- Wallick Hotel. Those present were Herbert C. Hansen, president ; James R. Floyd, Elizabeth McCormick, Frank W. Hubbard, and Cassie F. Roys, secretary. The President made some very helpful suggestions to the incoming officers concerning the work of the Department in the future. It was moved by Miss McCormick and seconded by Mr. Floyd that all necessary expenses of the convention be met by the Department. Carried. A discussion concerning the sending of the Research Bulletins of the Na- tional Education Association to the members of the Department followed. It was moved by Miss Roys, seconded by Miss McCormick, that the policy of mailing these Research Bulletins to the members of the Department be con- tinued. Carried. 56 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION There was a general discussion concerning the transferring of certain moneys to the permanent fund of the National Education Association. It was moved by Miss McCormick, seconded by Mr. Floyd, that the retiring Presi- dent be authorized to investigate the transfer of certain moneys to the per- manent fund of the National Education Association, and if necessary take steps to secure the return of said funds to the surplus fund of our own department. Unanimously carried. The method of making reservations for the dinners of the Department was discussed. It was moved by Mr. Floyd that the sale of tickets for these dinners be closed at noon on the day of the dinner and that the guarantee to the hotel be for the number of tickets that were sold at noon. Carried. Mr. Floyd also moved that the price of tickets should be such that it will include all the neces- sary expenses of the dinner and that there shall be no expense to the Depart- ment. Unanimously carried. A vote of thanks and hearty appreciation from the Executive Committee in behalf of the Department was extended to the retiring President, Mr. Herbert C. Hansen, for his splendid and efficient work during the past year. It was moved and seconded that $100 be appropriated for the clerical ex- penses of the members of the Editorial Committee. Carried. The President expressed his hearty appreciation for the cordial support and splendid codperation of all members of the Executive Committee, the Editorial Committee, the National Education Association, and Mr. Frank W. Hub- bard, Director of Research. The Secretary was authorized to express appreciation of hospitality to the Columbus hosts. Meeting adjourned. CassikE F. Roys, Secretary. REPORT OF THE NATIONAL ENROLMENT COMMITTEE! HERMAN Ritow, CHAIRMAN Fort Sheridan, Illinois HE East wins again! Of the twenty states gaining in membership in our Department nine are eastern states. The combined increase in membership for these nine states is 216. Only Oregon and Nevada show gains in the far West over the 1929 enrolment figures. Our growth in membership during the past year took place in the cities over 10,000 in population. We have failed to reach the rural and small town principals! Much work needs to be done to enlist the interest of assistant principals. There must be close to 2000 of these persons—all eligible for active member- *This report is based upon an extensive analysis of the 1930 membership made by Frank W. Hubbard, assistant director, Research Division, National Education Association. fain was esi- er- ‘eps nt, vas ers tel Iso eS- irt- ert PXx- nd ial he Vv in ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 57 ship in our department. Do these persons realize that our membership is indispensable to all elementary school administrators ? Let each member of our Department, as well as the Enrolment Committee, do his utmost during the coming year. Begin now! Here are some procedures which have been effective : 1. Direct personal appeal by letter, phone, or “face to face’ to principals and assistant principals. 2. Appointment by state chairman of enrolment workers in every small town or by counties. (If you do not know your state chairman communicate with the writer.) 3. Appeal to superintendents of schools to impress principals with the importance of active membership in our Department 4. The best months for enrolment work are September, October, and November. Other points of interest taken from Mr. Hubbard’s analysis of our mem- bership list are as follows: 1. Five cities with greatest membership are Detroit 157, Chicago 151, New York 116, Philadelphia 81, and Kansas City, Missouri, 73. New York gained 22 members, Chicago 11, and Philadelphia 2 members. Three-fourths of the total enrolment comes from cities of more than 30,000 inhabitants. . 2. The four states with the greatest increase in membership are New York (81), Pennsylvania (52), New Jersey (51), and Oregon (24). 3. Alaska, Hawaii, the Philippine Islands, Canada, Porto Rico, and the Canal Zone have increased their combined membership from 26 to 71 or 173 percent. If the 48 states would increase their membership in proportion we would have 12,000 members in our department! 4. On June 25, 1929, our membership was 4562. One year later it is 4816—a gain of 254. We are proud that our membership campaign produced a gain of more than 250 persons. Yet our goal of 6,000 members in 1929-30 was not reached. Why are we still unable to arouse the bulk of our potential membership in the cities? Why do we fail to enlist the rural school principal? How can we demonstrate to assistant principals the ‘‘in-service-training” values of our membership ? The above questions cannot be answered by the Enrolment Committee alone. We need the advice and support of every member. Please—right now —turn to Table 1 on page 58. Are you satisfied with the standing of your state? Is there nothing that you can do toward developing a national esprit de corps among principals? The writer takes this occasion to thank the members of the National En- rolment Committee for their tireless efforts. You have given generously of your time and thought. It has been a pleasure for your chairman to have had the honor of working with such an unselfish group. The chairman also gratefully acknowledges the help of Headquarter’s Staff in Washington, D.C. Particular credit is due to S$. D. Shankland, Frank W. Hubbard, and their assistants for unfailing help and support. 58 NationaL Epucation Association THE 1929-30 MEMBERSHIP IN THE DEPARTMENT OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS Total No. gained Percent Rank of Rankof Rank of States and number of or lost of figures figures figures other units members since 1928- possible in col, in col. in col, 1929-1930 1929. membership 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 PAIROGIR,. 5s ainaian-nccasecsnccecns 51 + 9 5.1 24 9 34 Arizona........................ .. 28 —2 11.1 37 27 16 Arkansas............................ 19 0 2.8 36 21 44 California........... Rae 348 —11 18.2 2 41 6 Colorado.........0..0000000..... 83 — 5 13.8 16 34 9 Connecticut........................ 91 + 6 13.0 14 12 11 Delaware...............--.--::.0-- 9 + 4 18.9 47 15 5 Bens csisnssecsnsscneesace 48 14 5.6 26 45 31 CTOB ING nas aseacadnrsecnsneseccecee 42 —7 3 30 36 42 | Ee + 5 6.0 42 14 28 ERE a Oa re 255 + 1 10.8 7 19 17 Indiana............................... 91 — 4 7.9 14 33 24 ks a es oe 70 — 6 8.1 20 35 21 Oi ccicnini eons scecssecnesocs 80 + 3 11.4 17 16 15 ee aaa 44 +12 6.5 28 7 27 Louisiana............................ 22 — 8 2.9 34 39 43 Sonera 9 — 3 2.6 47 29 45 Marylanid........................... 56 +12 10.1 21 Zz 18 Massachusetts.................. 230 —37 13.0 8 50 11 Michigan................ serait 346 + 6 16.3 3 12 7 Minnesota... ...................... 123 +25 13.5 11 5 10 Mississippi......................... 15 — 3 0.9 40 29 50 Missouri............................. 176 —19 14.7 9 46 8 Montana... 16 + 1 6.0 39 19 28 Nebraska............................ +4 —19 5.0 28 46 36 | ES ae 3 + 2 5.1 48 17 34 New Hampshire.............. 11 + 2 6.6 43 17 26 New Jersey....................... 308 +50 19.0 5 2 4 New Mexico...................... 9 — 1 5.7 47 23 31 New York........................ 383 +73 7.3 1 1 25 North Carolina................ 45 —12 2.5 27 43 47 North Dakota................... 17 — 7 4.7 38 36 37 a 328 — 7 12.6 4 36 13 Oklahoma................0.....2... 52 + 9 4.7 23 9 37 _ EERE Ne es 105 +19 26.6 13 6 2 Pennsylvania.................... 277 +48 8.0 6 3 22 Rhode Island.................... 15 — 0 5.4 40 21 33 South Carolina................. 11 —1 1.4 43 23 49 South Dakota.......0000000..... 22 — 3 9.4 34 29 20 Tennessee........................... 37 — 9 3.4 31 40 41 _ | Ss 146 —11 5.6 10 41 31 ene 37 —1 11.9 31 23 14 EN 2 — 3 1.6 49 29 48 fo | ee 49 —1 4.7 25 24 37 Washington....................... 122 —22 20.2 12 49 3 West Virginia.................. 27 + 9 3.6 33 9 40 Wisconsin.......................... 80 —21 9.9 17 48 19 Wyoming...........2......-........ 10 —2 8.0 45 27 22 District of Columbia....... 58 —12 54.8 21 47 1 Alaska ) Hawaii Philippine Is, 71 +45 19 a Porto Rico Cook Islands Nore: Hawaii had 13 members in 1929 and 35 members in 1930. In the above table Hawaii ended the year with more members than 17 of the states. ble CONSTITUTION AND BYLAWS DEPARTMENT OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS AropTeD JULY 7, 1927, AT SEATTLE. AMENDED JULY 3, 1928, AT MINNEAPOLIS. AMENDED FEBRUARY 26, 1930, AT ATLANTIC CITY s F ignagsd majority of our future citizens receive all their formal educa- tion in the elementary school. To it is intrusted the physical, mental, and moral training of the child during h‘s tenderest years, and to it we must look for that basic training upon which all future education must rest. Educators everywhere and our federal, state, and local governments are realizing more and more the responsibility placed upon the elementary school, but primarily it is the elementary school principal who must face these responsibilities inti- mately. To meet the responsibilities of elementary education with a united mind and purpose, to study the problems of the elementary school with a broad and sympathetic outlook, to enlist the aid of educational forces every- where, and, in general, to give to the elementary child the advantages of united effort, we do hereby form the Department of Elementary School Prin- cipals of the National Education Association and adopt the following Con- stitution : ARTICLE I. NAME The name of the organization shall be the Department of Elementary School Prin- cipals of the National Education Association. ARTICLE II. MEMBERSHIP SecTION 1. Membership in the Department of Elementary School Principals shall be of two classes: Active members and associate members. SecTion 2. Active membership is restricted to members of the National Education Association who pay the regular membership fee and hold positions of the following types: Supervising principals of elementary schools, teaching principals in elementary schools, assistant and viceprincipals in elementary schools under supervising prin- cipals. Secrion 3. Associate membership is reserved for all members of the National Edu- cation Association who are not eligible for active membership. Associate members must pay the regular membership fee and are entitled to all privileges of the depart- ment, except the right to vote and hold office. ARTICLE III. OFFICERS SEcTION 1. The officers of the Department shall be the president, five vicepresidents, and the secretary, and they shall each hold office for a period of one year from date of election. SECTION 2. No elective officer except the secretary may hold the same office for more than one term until the lapse of a period of one year or more. SEecTION 3. The Executive Committee shall consist of all the officers together with four members elected at large. Secrion 4. Members at large shall hold office for four years, one member retiring each year. The member receiving the largest number of votes at the first election shall serve for four years, and the others three, two, and one, respectively, according to the number of votes received. Secrion 5. The president of the Department shall be chairman of the Executive Committee and the secretary of the Department shall be the secretary of the Executive Committee. ARTICLE IV. ELECTIONS SEcTION 1. Election of officers and Executive Committee shall take place in the busi- ness session held during the summer meeting of the National Education Association. [59] 60 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION Section 2. Election shall be by ballot. Secrion 3. Active members only are entitled to vote. Secrion 4. The Nominating Committee shall be appointed by the president at the first session of the summer meeting or earlier. The committee shall consist of not less than five members, of whom two or more shall be members of the Executive Commit- tee. The Nominating Committee shall nominate one candidate for each office to be filled. Nominations from the floor shall be permitted. ARTICLE V. DUTIES OF OFFICERS SecTION 1. The president shall preside at all meetings of the Department and of the Executive Committee ; appoint all committees not otherwise provided for; call meet- ings of the Executive Committee at his pleasure or upon written request of four of its members; sign all orders on the treasury; and perform such other duties as may from time to time devolve upon him. He shall be, ex officio, a member of all standing com- mittees. SEcTION 2. In the absence of the president of the Department, the vicepresidents in order shall perform all the duties of that office. SEcTION 3. The secretary shall keep a careful record of the proceedings of the De- partment and of all its committees, and he shall be responsible for their preservation. Within thirty days after any meeting of the Department and within ten days after any meeting of the Executive Committee, the secretary shall furnish a copy of the minutes to each member of the Executive Committee. He shall prepare and keep an accurate list of the members of the Department with their postoftice addresses, and perform such other duties as may, from time to time, devolve upon him. Secrion 4. The Executive Committee shall be the administrative body of the De- partment, subject to the call of the president, except as otherwise provided for in the Constitution. To supplement and assist the president in the conduct of his office, the Executive Committee shall, by a majority vote of all its members, fill all vacancies, except that of the president. The president or Executive Committee shall prepare in advance a program for each meeting of the Department, and shall cause the same to be published prior to the meeting. Secrion 5. The annual report shall contain a list of officers and committees of the Department, a list of members of the Department, together with their addresses and such other matter as the Executive Committee may direct. This report may be printed as a yearbook of the Department. BYLAWS ARTICLE I There shall be the following standing committees and such other special committees as the president may appoint: Committee on International Relations, Committee on Resolutions, Committee on Enrolment, Editorial Committee. ARTICLE II. ORGANIZATION AND CONDUCT OF COMMITTEES The first meeting of a committee shall be called by the first-named member thereof, who shall be its chairman. Minutes of the proceedings of each standing committee shall be kept and a copy thereof certified by the chairman and secretary shall be promptly furnished to the secretary of the Department. All standing committees shall report to the Department in writing at least annually and oftener if the president so directs. Vacancies in all committees except the Executive Committee shall be filled by the president of the Department. ARTICLE III. COMMITTEES SEcTION 1. Committee on International Relations. The Committee on International Relations shall consist of three or more persons appointed by the president. This Com- mittee shall bring before the Department all matters pertaining to international under- standing, friendship, and world peace and shall cause the same to be widely dis- seminated. Secrion 2. Committee on Resolutions. All resolutions offered at a regular meeting of the Department shall be referred to the Committee on Resolutions, unless other wise ordered by the Department. This Committee shall submit to the Department for its consideration such resolutions as they may deem advisable. the less mnit- » be eet- F its rom om- s in De- jon. any ites ate rm nd ted 2es on of, ree be all by ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 61 SECTION 3. Committee on Enrolment. The Committee on Enrolment shall consist of not less than one member from each state, but additional members may be appointed by the president of the Department. This Committee shall secure members for the Department, collect the annual dues and pay them to the secretary, furnishing him therewith a list of the names and postoffice addresses of members from whom such dues have been collected, and giving each member the secretary’s receipt, counter- signed by a member of the Committee. SecTION 4. Editorial Committee. ‘The Editorial Committee shall consist of three or more persons appointed by the president. This committee shall prepare the Yearbook and such other publications as the Executive Committee may direct. ARTICLE IV. BOOKS, RECORDS, PAPERS, AND PROPERTY SecTion 1. The records and accounts of the Department and of its officers, commit- tees, departments, sections, and divisions, shall be kept in books provided by the De- partment, which shall be the property of the Department. Secrion 2. All books, papers, records, and accounts of the Department and its offi- cers, committees, departments, sections, and divisions, shall be open at all times to the inspection of the Executive Committee or any member thereof. SECTION 3. Every officer, member, committee, department, section, or division of the Department having funds, papers, books, records, or property of any description belonging to the Department shall give up the same on demand to his or their suc- cessors in office, or to the person authorized by the Department or its Executive Com- mittee to receive the same. All such material and property is to be delivered in good condition. ARTICLE V. DUES Secrion 1. The annual fee for membership shall be three dollars ($3). Secrion 2. The fiscal year of the Department shall coincide with that of the Na- tional Education Association, but memberships shall run from one year from date received by National Education Association headquarters. ARTICLE VI Ten cents from the membership fee of each member annually shall be set aside as a permanent Reserve Fund of the Department. This Fund shall be placed in charge of the Board of Trustees of the National Education Association to be invested and conserved in securities that are legal. The Board of Trustees of the National Educa- tion Association shall be the Trustees of said Reserve Fund. At each annual summer meeting of the Department the Trustees shall report in detail the condition of said Fund and shall apportion the income to such uses as may seem, to the Department of Elementary School Principals, advisable. No part of the principal of said Fund shall be spent except after the unanimovs recommendation of the Executive Committee of the Department of Elementary School Principals duly ratified by a two-thirds vote of the members present at a stated annual summer meeting of the Department. ARTICLE VII. ROBERT’S RULES OF ORDER Robert's “Rules of Order,” insofar as they are not inconsistent with this Constitution, shall govern the meetings of the Department and its committees. ARTICLE VIII. RULES ON DEBATE The Department shall be governed by the ruling of the National Education Associa- tion that in debate each speaker shall be limited to five minutes unless otherwise ordered. 1 y ARTICLE IX. AMENDING THE CONSTITUTION SEcTION 1. An amendment to the Constitution or Bylaws may be proposed by the Executive Committee or by a petition of at least ten regular members of the Depart- ment. SEcTION 2. The proposed amendment shall be read in regular session at least twenty-four hours before a vote is taken upon it. SECTION 3. Two-thirds of the votes of the members present in a regular session will be necessary to make the proposed amendment part of the Constitution, ARTICLE X This instrument shali become operative from and after the last meeting of the sum- mer session of the year 1927, 62 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION AUDITOR’S REPORT Balance as at May 31, 1929......:.-.00....ccc.ccccccssscescscscseseseacsesnsesss .$ 7,540.07 Receipts: Membership Dues: Current Year—4,713 Members @ $3 each.......... : $ 14,139.00 Arrears—22 Members @ $3 each...... " Cf ; 66.00 1930-31—48 Members @ $3 each... : 144.00 Appropriation from National Education Association................. 1,000.00 Sale of Yearbook............ . ; ; oa a . 2,094.96 ——_———_ 17, ,443..96 24,984.03 Disbursements: Printing: I IN cn eadastpcrsenicosnsieneton FN Ee AOS SOR REN 489.75 September Bulletin—Research a RR Ni Rae CSE RE = 283.48 November Bulletin—Research.....-0000.000.00000000..0ccccccee : 361.25 October Bulletin... 20000... So duschaereice ese etmaniraats 488.55 I IN isa sinttncesstresetiscncvenenrsone wie Sen Sevekcaceait 509.50 March and May Bulletin—Resea rch . 441.93 Tickets, Membership Applications, Leaflets, Cc ards, Ete..... 443.29 Postage, Stationery, and Office Expense ety ccsossacsco, gee? Stenographic and Clerical Work....... paseetees saeco Sencsoun' oe Convention Expense (Atlantic City) 2.000000... peels 338.50 Commuttcee on Enrolment........................0.:..c00-.0ccseccccenscoseeasseseees 49.65 Miscellaneous................-.......... PUES Aa ee Meena rds Spe ste ae 413.59 Traveling Expenses: gg 8 ERECTOR ee? Cassie F. Roys...................... SUC Diy apie eee 183.48 EE ee ENE OS ere eee ae 214.35 BNO NIN os ctsscstcs cincabechasbiccecansteccansavecndie Sle, .. 99.65 1,308.38 12,536.59 Transferred to the Permanent Fund... 2000.00.00... 20.2000 oceeeeeeeeeeeee 4,188.34 ane 16,724.93 Balance as at May 31, 1930........00000........ Sisk Sort age ss assis asda ae CERTIFICATE OF AUDITORS We have audited the accounts of the Department of Elementary School Principals, recorded in the books of the National Education Association of the United States, for the year ended May 31, 1930, and certify that the foregoing statement of receipts and disbursements is correct and is in accordance with the books of the Association. Wasuincron, D. C., Peat, MArwick, MITCHELL & Co. June 18,1930. 0.07 3.96 4.03 +.93 10 als, for and THE DETROIT MEETING *THE Department of Elementary School Principals will hold its winter meeting in Detroit, Michigan, February 22-26, 1931, at the time when the Department of Superintendence convenes. Mr. Crozier, president of the Department of Superintendence, has chosen “Working Together for the Children of America” as his theme. This same theme will be discussed at our own Department meetings. Is not this a subject in which we are all most vitally interested? In planning your program for the coming year, may I urge that many members include this in their year’s schedule ? There will be two afternoon sessions, Monday and Wednesday, February 23 and 25. On Monday and Tuesday mornings, February 23 and 24, members will breakfast together. These breakfasts are for the purpose of renewing and making new acquaintances with other principals from all parts of the country. The banquet will be held ‘Tuesday evening, February 24. Reservations should be made early as indications at present are that there will be a large attendance. These may be made through the Detroit Convention and Tourist Bureau, 1805 Stroh Building. Be sure to state price of room desired, either single or double. Detroit, a beautiful city, will give you a most hearty welcome. Re- member, Detroit, February 22-26, 1931. [ 63 ]