APR } 9 1935 


RINCIPAL 


OFFICIAL REPORT 


Atlantic City, N. J., Meeting 


I. PRINCIPALS AND PRINCIPLES 


ll. THE PRINCIPAL'S JOB TODAY 


The elementary school is undergoing 
fundamental changes in form, structure, 
and function. What part can and should 
the principal play? What is his job to- 
day “and tomorrow and tomorrow’? 


APRIL 1935 
Vol. XIV, No. 4 





THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY PRINCIPAL 
BULLETIN OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS! 


Published in October, December, February, A 
tary School Principals of the National Education 


All elementary principals—administrative, 
The payment 


mem p in this department. 


I, and June by the Department of Elemeail 
ssociation of the United States. : 


sory, and teaching—are eligible to active: 


su i 
of $3 dues entitles active members to attend all 


meetings of the department, to hold office, to vote, and to receive the Bulletins. 


Associate membership may be had by all members of the National Education Association 
who are actively engaged in any phase of school work by paying the regular membership fee 
of $3. They are entitled to all privileges except the right to vote and hold office. 


Subscri 


copies of the Bulletin, 25 cents (except the 


on to non-members is $3 per year; single copies of the Yearbook, $2, single 
ficial Report, which is priced at $1). 





rr 


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 


ecember 18, 1922. 





Executive and Editorial Offices, 1201 Sixteenth Street, Northwest, Washington, D. C., 
va G. Pinkston, Editor 





OFFICERS OF THE DEPARTMENT, 1934-35 


President, M. Emma Brookes, Miles-Cran- 
wood Schools, Cleveland, Ohio 

First Vicepresident, Aaron Kline, Pullman 
School, Chicago, Illinois 

Second .Vicepresident, Edythe J. Brown, 
Kaley-Marquette Schools, South Bend, 
Indiana 

Third Vicepresident, Ira M. Kline, Green- 
burgh No. 8 Schools, White Plains, New 
York 

Fourth Vicepresident, Sarah L. Young, Parker 
School, Oakland, California 


Fifth Vicepresident, Mrs. Edith B. Joynes, 
Washington-Gatewood Schools, Norfolk, 
Virginia 
Executive Committee 
Herbert C. Hansen, 1045 N. Lockwood 
Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 

Cassie F. Roys, 2609 Bristol Street, Omaha, 
Nebraska 

Earl R. Laing, 
Michigan 

Mason A. Stratton, Brighton Avenue 
School, Atlantic City, New Jersey 


Burt School, Detroit, 


Executive Secretcry, Eva G. Pinkston 
1201 Sixteenth Street, N. W., Washington, D. C. 





See space below for Committees as they are appointed thruout the year. 





Membership Committee 


Ira Kline, Chairman 
Greenburgh No. 8 Schools 
White Plains, New York 


Edythe J. Brown 
Kaley-Marquette Schools 
South Bend, Indiana 


Cassie F. Roys 
2609 Bristol Street 
Omaha, Nebraska 


Life Membership Division 


Herbert C. Hansen, Chairman 
1045 N. Lockwood Avenue 


Chicago, Illinois 


The contents of this Bulletin are listed in the Education Index. 


The titles on the front cover of this Bulletin represent the titles of the afternoon pro- 
grams of the Department at the Atlantic City meeting. This Bulletin is the first official 


report of the winter meeting. 




















° AN 
The National THE Seventy-third An- 


nual Meeting of the 

E| F “us | N. E. A. will be held in 
ementary rincipa Denver, Colorado, June 
30-July 5, 1935. The D. E. 
S. P. will have afternoon 
| m xl : : . programs on July 1 and 2. 
Volu e V, No 4 ‘ April 1935 Our Department break- 
fast will be Monday 
morning and our banquet 
will be Tuesday evening. 


Official Report of the Convention Headquarters will be at 


the Shirley-Savoy Hotel. 
This issue of the Bulletin is devoted primarily to the 
publishing of the first official report of a winter meeting INVITATION 
of the Department of Elementary School Principals A. L. THRELKELD, su- 


which was held at Atlantic City, N. J., February ee ae pF ave 








23-28, 1935. Mrs. Margaret Menden- 
hall Smith as chairman of 
affairs for the elementary 

Contents principals at the Denver 


convention. 


Foreword—Brookes TO 


First Session—February 25, 1935 TRAVEL ARRANGE- 
, Principals and Principles MENTS will include pro- 
j ie vision for generous 
Greetings—Givens ; i ; railroad rates. Many prin- 
Report of the 1935 Yearbook Committee— cipals and their friends are 
Clement eee planning parties for ex- 
The Human Dynamo—AHolt tended tours. Informa- 
The Principal’s Participation in Politics— tion may we had by 
Twitchell | | | | writing to this office. 
Can Character Be Taught ?—Jenkins DENVER 
The Principal’s Responsibility for Teacher YOU ARE cordially in- 
Growth—Hartman | : vited to attend the Denver 
What’s It All About?—Michael meeting. Why not include 
Count for One—Adams... it in your summer travel? 
* 
PRESIDENT M. EMMA 
BROOKES and S. D. 


Second Session—February 27, 1935 Shankland, chairman of 
. ics the panel discussion, are 

7 > > , ry” 9 3 Y 
The Principal’s Job Today planning an exceptionally 
fine program for the Tues- 
day meeting. Denver and 


Banquet—February 26, 1935 
A Plea for Sanity—Coffman 


Panel Discussion—Morrison, Chairman 


Official Records Colorado principals will 
sponsor the Monday pro- 


Lacratarty’c ; ac__.__ P; >¢ 
Secretary's Minutes—Pinkston gram. 








FOREWORD 


‘ 
ANY elementary principals, whether members of this 
Department or not, were unable to attend the meet- R 

ing held at Atlantic City during the convention of the 
Department of Superintendence. This meeting was a I 
huge success and everyone who did attend went away with I 


a wealth of specific suggestions, and imbued with that 
enthusiasm and inspiration which is the natural result of 
a successful conference meeting. 

The Executive Committee has authorized the printing 
of this report as an issue of the National Elementary 
Principal in order that all members of this Department 
may receive the benefits of the fine programs given. This 
is another instance of the additional service which we are 
trying to render. 

For the past few years the Executive Committee has 
asked state and city groups to sponsor the Monday after- 
noon program. At this mid-winter meeting the New Jersey 
Elementary School Principals Association, of which Mr. 
Francis H. Budd, Newark, New Jersey, is president, gave 
the Monday afternoon program. On Wednesday after- 
noon a panel discussion was held. Dr. J. Cayce Morrison, 
assistant commissioner for elementary education, Albany, 
New York, ably presided. ; 

In reading this official report you will realize that these 
meetings cover and help solve many of today’s problems 
of the elementary school. Since many of your fellow- 
workers are members perhaps you will want to use this 
report as a basis for a discussion at the next meeting of 
your club. If your fellow-workers are not members why 
not show them this report and the many fine things it 
contains, and get them either to join our group or order a 
copy for study purposes? 


My \ re | A L 


Se - 7; _ 


President. 





2 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 




















FIRST SESSION, FEBRUARY 25, 1935 


Principals and Principles 


HE FIRST SESSION of the Atlantic City meeting of the Department of 

Elementary School Principals convened on Monday afternoon in the Rose 
Room of the Traymore Hotel, Aaron Kline, principal, Pullman School, Chicago, 
Ill., presiding. This session was sponsored by the New Jersey Elementary School 
Principals Association, Francis H. Budd, president. A musical interlude featuring 
Harold M. Augustine, bass-baritone, rounded out this enjoyable and worthwhile 
program. 


Greetings 


Willard E. Givens, Secretary, National Education Association, 


Washington, D. C. 


I am glad of this opportunity to bring greetings from the National Educa- 
tion Association to the Department of Elementary School Principals. As I 
look back over all of my educational experience, I know there was no time in 
which I had more real joy in my work than I did as an elementary-school prin- 
cipal, and I doubt if there was any time when I was of any more value to the 
world than I was during the time I served as an elementary-school principal. 

In the last two or three years, during the depression, when public relations 
were vital, I called upon the principals in my own city where I was serving as 
superintendent of schools, to find out just what we should be doing and what 
they were doing. I found this to be true, and I think it is true thruout the country, 
that in the school system where I served, the individual who knew his com- 
munity, knew what the people thought, and what problems they were facing, 
was the elementary-school principal. 

I wonder, after all, if most of the things that are really worthwhile are not 
accomplished by personal contact one with another. If that is true, and I per- 
sonally believe it is, the elementary principal generally speaking is located in 
a place where he can know his community. He is generally in a school that is 
not so large that he cannot know his teachers and know his pupils, as well as 
the community. 

It has been my experience that the high-school principal, fine as he may be, 
draws his children from such a large territory that when I have called him in to 
ask him about his community, he does not know very much about it; whereas 
the elementary principal is in close contact with what is going on in the vicinity 
surrounding his school. 

My personal attitude towards elementary principals can be summed up— 
if you will excuse this personal reference, because I believe actions speak louder 
than words—in this: It was my pleasure and privilege seven years ago in Oak- 
land, California, to put before the Board of Education and have adopted a 
so-called single salary schedule for principals in that city, in which the ele- 
mentary principal with the same training and the same qualifications, the same 





PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 3 











experience, and the same qualifications as to size of school, went on the pay 
schedule with all other principals, junior high and senior high. 

I think that is the biggest thing that I did while I was in that city, because 
it stabilized the elementary principal and gave him a position in that school 
system that put him where the elementary principalship was his life work and 
he had no desire to get into a high school because, if he served well and got in 
a large elementary school, he would get as much pay as in the high school 
As a result, we drew the very finest people, and they were content to make the 
elementary-school principalship their life work as well as a professional work 
from the educational side. They began immediately to study al! the problems 
in connection with the elementary work, and they are staying on, happy, and 
doing fine work. 

Personally, I believe that the elementary principal has just as big a field and 
renders just as fine a service as any other person in any other department, and 
therefore, if he has the qualifications, he should be put on the same pay basis 
as people in other levels of the educational field. 

I shall not take more of your time. You have a long and very worthwhile pro- 
gram. It is a pleasure for me to be here and bring you greetings, and I assure 
you, as far as the National Association is concerned, there will be the closest 
of harmony and the finest of cooperation between the Department of Elementary 
School Principals and the National Education Association, so long as you keep 
Miss Pinkston in Washington, because she speaks the same kind of language 
that I do. 


Report of the 1935 Yearbook Committee 
Socializing Experiences in the Elementary School 


Bess Clement, Principal, Eliza Clark School, 


Clarksdale, Miss., Chairman 


We are told that the world is a changing place. This statement is not new, 
for the phenomenon of change has been true ever since the world began. The 
significant thing for us today and for the future is not that the world is changing, 
but the fact that change is coming in certain unique ways. The leading institu- 
tions of society must adapt themselves to novelty or cease to exist. The school 
along with the church, home, and government, is feeling the strain which calls 
for “social human engineering.” It, therefore, appears that the educational 
program must be broader than the three R’s. 

The elementary school represents one of the most important laboratories in 
which this planned education may be wrought. The elementary principal stands 
in a strategic position which enables him to decide on innovations that may 


result in a program of activities fraught with possibilities, which may help 
children to achieve the goals of education. 

For many years, educators have been using informal activities which offer 
the learner integrating and socializing experiences. The Editorial Committe 


4 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 


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has decided that these informal procedures should be placed in a volume—the 
1935 Yearbook of the Department of Elementary School Principals. We believe 
that the material represents qualitative thinking which principals, teachers, 
and educators have been doing in this field. 

We should not think of the social aspect as simply one separable part of school 
life; it must form an essential part of everything that is done in school. It is 
just as hard to think of the hands separated from the body independently per- 
forming a piece of work, as it is to think of the child alienated from the impetus 
of his social purposing, creating worthwhile results. 

The 1935 Yearbook is not an attempt to cover the whole activity program. 
There is a section in the book devoted to this program, which provides a typical 
segment of the unit. We believe that curriculum builders will find the material 
included in the volume invaluable. The activities discussed lend themselves to 
the development of the social aspect. Children purpose, plan, and carry out their 
work grappling with situations which create learning possibilities. A report which 
did not invité your attention to a brief preview of the various chapters would 
be inadequate. The comments which are given must be less inclusive than the 
chapters deserve. 





Assemblies—For many years elementary schools, by a cumulative method, 
have been expanding the scope of assembly programs. Perhaps no other single 
activity within a school can totich so many lives in a vital way. The great number 
of articles of genuine worth which were submitted upon this subject indicates its 
favored place in the school program. 

The scope of the chapter deals with types of assembly programs; the integra- 
tion of assembly programs with the regular instructional activities; the assembly 
as a force in the development of school spirit and morale; a three-cycle plan 
for assemblies; a plan for an elementary school to broadcast its opening exer- 
cises; the administration and supervision of assembly programs; and functional 
assemblies. 

The co-authors of this chapter give many significant ideas upon the socializing 
possibilities of the assembly. They vision enlarged opportunities for the devel- 
opment of a social consciousness. The problems of providing for boys and girls 
to acquire broad generalizations, which underlie the attainment of the social 
ideas of a democracy, are tools forged from socializing experiences which stu- 
dents must use in order to think and act intelligently with reference to demo- 
cratic ideals. The writers point out that an effective citizenship needs a social 
consciousness as well as facts. 


Plays and Pageants—The second division of the yearbook deals with 
entertainments, plays, and pageants. If we think back over the happiest days in 
our own lives, a few celebrations generally vie for first place. This tendency to 
experience great joy in a vicarious sense may be our heritage from Western 
civilization. With the new leisure facing us, it should revert to its former zest. 
What place shall we give the activity in our elementary-school planning? 

The writers believe that the play as an all school project offers opportunity 
for creative expression and interpretation of what pupils have acquired and 





PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 5 








achieved in various departments. Until we devise ways and means by which 
children may reach out for bigger and broader meanings, we are not enabling 
them to secure a forward looking education for a rapidly changing civilization 
In answer to the question, Why connect dramatics with the tool subjects? an 
interesting discussion is furnished. The definite plan worked out for producing 
a play may prove as stimulating to readers as a pattern shop to an average 
American woman. Many new dresses are the result of a good new pattern. The 
chapter is rich in ideas which should prove highly stimulating to many whose 
latent powers need stimuli to impinge on the initial organ which sets the dynamo 
of creative thought in motion. 


“Red Letter” Days—This chapter is a brief one. The initial topic “Birth- 
right of the Smalltown Child” invites your attention to the importance of nur. 
turing human social interest at that period in life which is rich with opportunity 
Since elaborate calendars are no longer plentiful, even historical ‘red letter’ 
days may not be honored by proper emphases. The chapter treats the various 
types of celebrations and lists important “red letter’ days, which workers in 
the field have utilized. 

The idea of employing these experiences in making citizenship contacts is 
proposed. As a means for making permanent our American heritage of eventful 
race experience, they become part of the expanding cultural life of every child 
“Red letter” days seem to be entitled to a unique place in the school program 


Music and Rhythms—Chapter four re-evaluates music in the elementary- 
school program. The co-workers of this chapter tend to lean toward the Europear 
theory that music should be a subject of great importance in the elementary 
program. The various articles discuss such topics as: “School Music, a Social- 
izing Influence’’; “A Spiritual Choir”; “Socializing the Elementary School thru 
Extra-curriculum Music Activities’; “The Place of the Primary Rhythn 
Band”; and “Choruses in the Elementary School.” 


Pupil Participation in School Management—Pupil participation in 
school management embraces a most important section of the yearbook. In our 
“social engineering” for a new order, we cannot overlook our respective duties 
as teachers and principals in finding out what should be done about pupil par- 
ticipation in school management. In this chapter you will find discussions 
which deal with sharing responsibility; outcomes of pupil participation in school 
management; the uses of safety patrols in school management; pupil partici- 
pation in school management as a vehicle for the formation of correct attitudes: 
developing character by school participation; the junior police organization: 
and many other topics of varied interests. 

A sincere hope that this chapter will secure for children a right to participate 
in school management and, therefore, provide a channel thru which they may 
develop ability based on actual outcomes in the procedures, is included in the 
presentation of the yearbook. 


School Clubs—F ollowing the chapter on pupil participation in school man- 
agement is another chapter dealing with an activity which we believe to be a 


6 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 











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strong force in providing opportunities to improve the social aspect of educa- 
tion. It is by reclaiming youth’s energy and channeling it to intelligent purpose 
that we propose to compete with gang interest during the teen age. 

The section of the book devoted to clubs treats such problems as: what clubs 
to organize; suitable meeting places for clubs; supervision of clubs; clubs with 
interest groups; school organization of clubs; the teacher’s role in elementary- 
school clubs; every child a club member; the place of the school club in the 
guidance program; and many other interesting phases of club organization and 
administration. 


Socializing Opportunities in Physical Education—The author of this 
chapter has made a valuable contribution to future physical education programs. 
The wealth of important scientific data included in his study should serve not 
only elementary-school principals, but all those who are grappling with the 
problems of physical education. In this period of adjustment of society, with its 
huge budget of leisure, we need to devise ways and means for the play part of 
life, as we have never needed to devise them before. 

Two major obstacles which hamper the development of a broad and effective 
program of physical education are pointed out. If we are anxious to overcome 
these obstacles and to provide a program rich in opportunities for social and 
ethical development, we can turn to this chapter for guidance in the modern 
conception of physical education in the school; planning and organizing the 
elementary-school program; methods of teaching; securing competent leader- 
ship; providing a favorable physical environment; evaluating results of the 
program; and selected books on physical education. 


The School Newspaper—tThe original outline for the yearbook included 
one chapter on school publications. This chapter has been changed in title to 
“The School’: Newspaper.” The change was warranted by the information 
gleaned from the sampling process used to collect school publications from all 
parts of the country. This data indicated that the trend in the field of publica- 
tions emphasized the newspaper type. 

A discussion of the size paper to use, the technic employed in producing the 
set-up for the paper, and the average content limit is most stimulating to the 
principal who needs to have a working hypothesis. 

Let me urge elementary principals to become interested in the elementary- 
school newspaper. It can be utilized to promote every other activity within the 
school. Its socializing ability is unquestioned by those who have employed it 
in their respective schools. 





Cooperative Community Activities—One change which the age recently 
vanishing has brought about, is a lack of close community and school relation- 
ships. Cooperative community activities in this book represent a body of subject- 
matter intended not only to promote the social aspect of education, but also to 
restore faith in a strategic educational opportunity. 

I wish to quote one paragraph from Dr. William Heard Kilpatrick’s article 
which appears in this chapter of the yearbook: 





PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 7 








It may be permitted the writer to express in conclusion his profound conviction, first] 


that an actual situation responsibly faced is the ideal unit of educative experience; an 
second, that of all possible situations no other is quite so educative as one in which respor 
sible leaders of a community join with the young in carrying forward an enterprise in whi 


all really share and each can have his own responsible part. This is the education in whic 
democracy can most rejoice, particularly in these times when we must learn to put th 
public welfare first in point of time and importance. “Cooperative community activities, 
in solemn fact, form the vision of the best education yet conceived. 

The Activity Program—tThis chapter deals with the activity program. The 
inclusion of a chapter on the activity program is timely in view of the recent 
discussion of confusion in its terminology, lack of unity among its proponents 
and fundamental differences in its educational implications. The Editorial Con 
mittee takes no sides, but does attempt to give a cross section of the activity 
movement as it is now being developed by those who claim to understand 
Articles in the chapter include such topics as: “The Activity Program in Ow 
Public Schools”; “The Activity School”; “Why and How”; “The Third Grad 
Conducts a Post Office”; “Report of the Elementary School Activity Period 
“The Integration of Activities and Subjectmatter in the Elementary School’ 
“Developing Citizenship thru an Activity Program’; “School Activities ir 
Theory and Practise.” 

In presenting the foregoing report, the Editorial Committee urges principals 
and other educators to grapple with the possibilities of Socializing Experience 
in the Elementary School. The book is a challenge to many viewpoints held 
at this time. Its content is not circumscribed. The social aspect in educatior 
will ever change and reconstruct itself to meet the needs of the changing civiliza- 
tion. We have endeavored to grapple with this subject ourselves, and in the 
reconstruction of our own experience resultant learnings have emerged. 

To curriculum builders, to leaders of faculty meetings who are vitally inter. 
ested in the improvement of teachers in service, to those who are responsible 
for organization and administration within the school to promote child growt! 
and development in a new social order, we place in your hands the 1935 Year- 
book. Will you recognize and accept its challenge? 


The Human Dynamo 


Lucy Mason Holt, Principal, Ocean View School, Norfolk, Va. 


A long time ago, when most of us were children, kerosene lamps made their 
farewell bow and electric lights were installed. A little negress in Texas went int 
town to the white folks’ house and when she came home said to her mother, “Lor 
mammy, they don’t fix no lamps. When they wants a light they just slaps the 
wall and the light’s right there.” 

The electric-light plant was of chief interest to sightseers. The great big wheel 
the wide band around it, the little shiny things that spun around all the time 
and something else that sat there—it wasn’t shiny, it didn’t spin, but those wh: 
knew told us that it was the dynamo. The juice that made the wheels go round 
was generated in that, and that made the light. 


8 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 





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So the old field, the one-room schoolhouse, disappeared; larger buildings, with 
many teachers and hundreds of children, appeared in every community of con- 
siderable size. Some force was needed to hold the school together—to take in 
supplies, to distribute, to receive children, to reject children, to feed, to clothe, 
to wash, to bind up, to minister, to heal, to spank, to praise, to censure, to love 
into decent living, fine character, and worthy, God-fearing citizenship. Who 
does it? Where is it done? Is it just a high ideal that we aim for and never at- 
tain? Perhaps faith will be justified as with Longfellow: 


Long, long after, in an oak 

I found the arrow still unbroke, 

And the song from beginning to end 

I found again in the heart of a friend. 


In the classroom the teacher knows each individual child. In the office where 
problems come after the teacher exhausts his own resources, the principal must 
know something of the individual child, his background, his environment, his 
hopes, his ideals, if constructive character building is done. This is impossible 
where thousands are housed in one building. One principal says, “I do not know 
the name of any child in school; I could not undertake it.’ God forbid that 
such conditions shall continue, but speed the day when we shall put quality 
above quantity and cease to think that economy is worth more than human 
value. The individual child is the masterpiece of the school. Each one must be 
helped to develop the best that is in him. He must be studied, he must be guided. 
It is the individual that counts. 

When the time came for the children of Israel to come out of Egypt, God did 
not give them a road map and say, “Go.” He did not appoint a committee (if 
He had I guess they would be sitting there now), but He chose one individual, 
and every step in his life was training for his great work. Good came out of 
everything that at the time looked bad. 

When the time came for a Savior to be sent on earth we were not given a 
multiplicity of gods, as the Greeks, Romans, and others had had; but one tiny, 
helpless baby came to earth and was trained to manhood. 

Today we have in our schools the president of the United States for tomorrow, 
the judges, the doctors, the teachers, and also the convicts that shall serve their 
terms or meet their deaths in the gray walls with high windows. What are we 
generating in our respective offices, that each teacher reflects in the classroom, 
that is felt by each child and causes him to give back his best? Are you an execu- 
tive or an administrator? Are you sure that a certain text is the only one for 
reading or arithmetic? Are you satisfied that response to that gong and mass 
movement is fundamental in child training? 

Well, I’m not. I think a healthy, happy teacher is as “rock-bottom” essential 
as healthy, happy parents. I think that clean, well-fed, laughing children are the 
best material from which to make good citizens. I think that whether you are 
an executive or an administrator is not worth a snap, but it is all-important that 
you shall be human. Then, maybe in time, if you escape enough summer schools, 
read enough Bible, look long enough into a little child’s eyes, and pray, you may 
become a human dynamo. 





PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 9 











The Principal’s Participation in Politics 


William Twitchell, Jr., Principal, Peapack-Gladstone School, 
Peapack, N. J. 


When I told some of my friends I was going to discuss the principal’s par- 
ticipation in politics, the general reaction was, “Why, I didn’t know there was 
any!” As speakers are prone to overestimate the importance of their topics, at 
the very beginning I want to say that I think a principal’s participation in 
politics is a minor matter; that the improvement of instruction is still the funda- 
mental problem of the principal. 

Political activities, as far as the principal is concerned, may be divided into 
three phases, national, state, and local. All three are carried on in the district 
which the school serves. Any influence a principal is able to exert is necessarily 
the result of his activities in his own district. 

From the national point of view I think the principal’s activity is rather in- 
tangible. Summing it up briefly, I think it amounts to the fact that the principal 
is a leader. He is respected. His opinions are considered worthwhile, generally, 
and I think if the principal will express a humanitarian, liberal opinion on 
national matters, it will help. Some of the things, for instance, which I have in 
mind, are old-age pensions, the World Court, unemployment insurance, world 
peace, and health insurance. If all the principals in the country were to cham- 
pion causes of that type, I am sure they would move forward more quickly to a 
culmination. If principals do express such opinions, they may feel that they are 
contributing in a small way to a slow growth that ultimately means a happier 
life for a great many people. 

The second phase relates to the state. I hope you will pardon me for talking 
about New Jersey, but the teachers and friends of the school in New Jersey are 
organized. That organization is due to the leadership that we have had in the 
State Teachers Association. The leaders make out the policies and decide on the 
plans. We will give them their due, but the unit that puts that organization 
across in New Jersey is the community, and the moving force in the community 
is the principal. It is the principal who keeps the parents informed, organizes 
his teachers, keeps in touch with organizations in which he knows he will find 
sympathetic support. That state program is intended to conserve the educational 
facilities which we already have in the state, and to further a real opportunity, 
an equalized opportunity, for all the children in the state. 

Political activities in the local community represent the third and probably 
the most important phase. From my point of view, I shall put myself on record 
at the outset by saying that I do not think the principal has any business in em- 
broiling his school, his faculty, or himself in local partisan politics, that is, if the 
school is not directly concerned. If the school is directly concerned, I think he 
ought to fight with all his resources. If the policy, or the appropriation, or the 
program is being attacked, I think it is up to the principal to defend them to 
his very best ability. 

We know that we have some pressure put upon us even where schools are 
fiscally independent. There is pressure of one type or another placed on the 


10 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 








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school executive. However, I believe that the parents and the thinking citizens 
of the community have a deep conviction that politics should not play a part 
in the handling of the public schools, and, where politics does play a part, and 
where it becomes generally known, I am quite sure that you will find a reversal 
of feeling on the part of parents, and that situation will be corrected. 

I think that the principal should be a diplomat in his community. An article 
called “Strangers Within Our Gates,” printed in McCall’s Magazine, gives these 
attributes: “The diplomat is a fellow of tact, direction, and force. He preserves 
the dignity of his country in another land. He issues booster propaganda. He 
gathers information thru an honorable spy system. He lines up friendships 
and averts enmities. Thru his personality he endeavors to stimulate goodwill.” 
I think you can apply that almost wholly to the principal in his community. 

All community work is done thru contacts. I should like to take a moment to 
mention some of them. I think membership in a service club is of great advantage 
to a principal. It gives him a chance to be identified with a very respected group 
ina community and to meet the membership of that group on a footing offered 
by membership in the club, and make friends for the school. 

I think the principal should maintain a close contact with the press. He should 
endeavor to secure favorable notices. I am sure many of us do that, but how 
many of us endeavor to maintain such a close contact with the press that when 
something detrimental to the school comes up the editor will call the principal 
and say, “See here, set me straight on this, will you?” That doesn’t often happen. 

Relations with the superintendent and the board of education often call for 
diplomacy on the part of the principal. Occasionally the superintendent does not 
have very much sympathy with the elementary school outside of treating it as a 
training place for pupils, so that they may have a successful high-school experi- 
ence. A principal working in such a situation has to defend his program. 

In the final analysis, the best politician is he who serves his community best. 
Franklin, writing in Vanity Fair on the topic, advises in part, the simple and 
effective means of making yourself useful to your neighbors: 


Turkeys at Christmas is an old rule. Carry it a bit further, especially if you haven’t 
the price of a turkey. If your neighbor’s child gets in trouble, help him out. Call on the 
banker who forecloses a mortgage, and ask him if he can’t extend the time. Don’t forget that 
the old rule of politics in any Christian land is: the best way to be the master is to be the 
best servant. 


We can apply that to the school, particularly now when times are difficult. 
I heard of a principal who had a mother come in to him to complain that she 
couldn’t get relief. Many principals would have sympathized with her very much 
and let it go at that point, but this particular principal put on his hat and coat, 
went down to the relief office with the mother, explained the situation, and the 
mother received relief. Incidentally, the family was not broken up and the chil- 
dren were in the school. Undoubtedly that relief would not have been obtained 
had it not been for the principal’s intervention. 

I think hard times offer a real opportunity to the principal to serve the chil- 
dren of the community, and, if the community happens to be a poor one, that 





PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 11 








means free milk for those who need it, hot lunches either free or very inexpensive 
and the collection of old clothing to be passed on to those who really need it, 
May I take a moment to summarize? Nationally the principal can furth 

humanitarian causes; from the state point of view he can support the state pro 
gram, so that all children have better school opportunity; from the local poiny 
of view the principal should avoid partisan politics and should try to act th 
part of the ambassador in his community; and, lastly, the best politician is thy 
best servant. 


Can Character Be Taught? 


Albion U. Jenkins, Principal, South Eighth Street School, 
Newark, N. J. 


Conflicting answers to this question are not surprising since the very nature 
of character itself is in dispute. I asked several teachers and principals to define 
character. It was defined by one as personality, by another as conduct, by still 
another as what a man is in feeling, attainments, purposes, and motives. 

When asked whether character could be taught, again there was difference of 
opinion, One said, “No, it is something that is caught.” A retired principal of 
more than fifty years’ experience replied, “My feeling is that the outlook 
civilization is hopeless if character cannot be taught.’ The discussion of char- 
acter has led to two opposing schools of character education. 

Likewise, in the literature covering this field, one finds that it has not been 
definitely decided whether character consists in conformity to established stand- 
ards of conduct or in self-determination, or in some intangible hereditary quality 
which cannot be modified. A recent review of several hundred courses of study 
books, and articles dealing with character education revealed seventeen types of 
central or major objectives. It is plain there is no final answer. 


Meaning of Character and Teaching—Before adequate provision can be 
made for character education within a school, it is necessary for principals and 
teachers to arrive at working definitions of the terms “character” and “teaching. 
In my own school this was done thru reading, discussion, and special study. As a 
result, our character education program is built upon a distinction between per- 
sonality and character. Character is the expression of what a child does, it is 
regarded as an assemblage of those purposes and attitudes which determine con- 
duct or behavior, both in school and out of school. We believe that character can 
be modified and that it changes from day to day, for better or for worse. We be- 
lieve that the child is neither good nor bad, a bundle of potentialities which may 
be developed in either direction. Guidance is necessary. We have come to believe 
that it is our duty to improve the character of children; that materials from out- 
side mold the child, and that we should seize upon every opportunity for doing 
so. We believe that character is developed best when situations are provided in 
which children may practise making decisions. This being true, the teacher 
strives to provide for his children the most wholesome and stimulating environ- 
ment possible. At no time do we lose sight of the fact that native endowments 





12 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 














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and home and community conditions are factors that influence the character of 
our children. 

Teaching may be considered in either a narrow or a broad sense. From the 
narrow point of view—that education is an accretion of facts—character cannot 
be taught. But in the broader sense—that education is growth and that teaching 
has to do with everything the teacher does in directing, stimulating, and guiding 
the learner to develop ideas, attitudes, and ideals, which will eventually serve to 
guide and control his behavior—it is easy to believe that teaching may in large 
measure influence the character of children. From this point of view the placing 
of a work of art or the arrangement of an instructive exhibit may be regarded as 
teaching. In like manner, I would regard as teaching any discussion of conduct 
problems, or any presentations of ideas in class or assembly, that will modify the 
behavior of boys and girls. 

The problem before us then is not to decide whether or not the school can 
teach character, but, can and shall the school establish a well-balanced program 
of education with character training as one of its primary aims? I believe that it 
can and that it should. 

Whether this shall be done directly or indirectly is open to question. A recent 
study showed that the distinction between direct and indirect teaching is not 
clear. It is probable that both types of teaching should be used. 





Factors Influencing Character—The psychologists tell us that our atti- 
tudes determine our behavior. Attitudes are ways of feeling or responding to 
situations. We like or dislike, love or hate, respect or loathe, depending upon our 
feeling toward a particular situation or object. These attitudes are gestalts, 
unitary bases for responding, fixed methods of response, if you please, and rep- 
resent generalizations and closed opinions toward the various situations of life. 
These fixed methods of response are built out of knowledge and experience. For- 
tunately for education, we are told that these attitudes can be modified. New 
knowledge, new experience, and new ideals are constantly modifying the gestalt 
or pattern of response. 

The psychologists further tell us that there are two kinds of experiences that 
modify attitudes, the individual’s first-hand relationships with the things and 
situations towards which he is to hold an attitude, and, secondly, verbal experi- 
ence gained thru sermons, talks, maxims, and reading. It is thru these types of 
experience that the individual gradually modifies his gestalt. The teacher should 
be capable of recognizing the gradual building up of experience in the individual 
which eventually modifies his attitude. We see, then, that the bases of conduct 
can be modified. 

In addition, the psychologists tell us that character must be integrated, that 
it must be organized, that there must be a dominant power or central interest to 
resolve incipient conflicts between impulses, such as love and ambition, or in- , 
tegrity and deceit. Only in this way can an individual mobilize all his energies 
and exercise his powers most effectively. To integrate character is to lay the 
foundation for happiness in life. An analysis of behavior shows that it is de- 
pendent upon all the hereditary factors influencing character; that there are 


PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 13 








psychological factors; that character will depend upon social adaptation, inter- 
ests, attitudes, and personal security. To me, character is largely a matter of 
social evaluation, the same as personality. 

Administrators and teachers have done much superficial thinking in the field 
of character education. It is time they familiarize themselves with available 
theory and apply it in organizing a more effective program of character education, 

It is a simple matter to say that character can be taught and that the school 
must not evade its responsibility for character development. The school has not 
always assumed this responsibility directly but trusted that character growth 
would ensue as a byproduct. Today a new type of school is emerging. For want 
of a better name it is called a progressive school. This new school has definitely 
accepted the responsibility that it must deal with the child not only intellectually 
but morally and socially as well. It recognizes the fact that the whole child goes 
to school and that the improvement of his behavior is an important part of its 
work. There are certain factors in these schools which definitely make for the 
building of character. 


School Practises Influencing Character—I shall examine a few school 
practises in the light of the principles laid down by the psychologist. The kind of 
character training given to children will depend to some extent upon the kind of 
organization found in the school. Regimented schools in which the conduct of chil- 
dren is determined in advance by the teacher cannot hope to contribute much to 
the character growth of children. Low examination marks, failures, non-promo- 
tion, and grade repetition, regardless of effort, all lead to insincerity and discour- 
agement. The organization of the school is no inconsequential part of the character 
program. If it would make a positive contribution to the development of character 
it must provide sufficient freedom for the individual to gain practise in making 
decisions, in exercising self-restraint, and in developing self-guidance. Children 
should find themselves in an atmosphere of intellectual freedom where they may 
seek truth with the courage of their convictions. Here they will be encouraged 
to think for themselves, and ideas will be listened to with respect by both 
teachers and pupils. 

The new school provides a sense of accomplishment rather than an attitude 
of fear or indifference. This school studies the original nature of the children 
and meets their needs within the range of their capacities. It depends upon in- 
terest to provide the motivation for purposeful work. Any subject in the cur- 
riculum—spelling, arithmetic, reading, or history—helps to develop good char- 
acter in the child when he feels the need of mastery, makes conscious effort, 
and experiences the joy of achievement. In such a school one may hope to find 
intellectual integrity. 

And, finally, methods of discipline influence the child in his character growth. 
Proper methods encourage growth from within the child. Domination of the 
child intereferes with self-control and often produces disastrous antagonisms 
toward the teacher and the school. Thus, methods of control are frequently re- 
sponsible for behavior problems. Freedom in selection of mode of conduct, the 
privilege and opportunity for self-determination are powerful influences affect- 
ing the character of the child. 





14 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 











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Errors in judgment in the new school are carefully studied by the teacher. 
The native endowment of the child, his experience with similar situations, his 
knowledge or ignorance of the proper conduct, his appreciation of the rights 
and privileges of others, his desire or lack of desire to act for the common good 
of the group are carefully considered. Steps are taken to provide necessary 
knowledge, improve ideals, rebuild attitudes and remove blocks to satisfactory 
behavior as the case may demand. Only when all of these fail will punishment 
be administered and conduct dictated by the teacher. 

This program has been in operation for a number of years. We have no sci- 
entific way of determining the efficacy of our character education program. We 
do know, however, that there is no truancy in our school, that the great majority 
of our pupils are good citizens and interested in their work, that minor per- 
sonality problems are usually adjusted before the child leaves school, that where 
complete overhauling of attitudes and conduct has been necessary, complete 
personality change has resulted, that immortality does not exist, that there is 
constant improvement and growth in the desire to assume responsibility, that 
in accepting more freedom the rights of others are more adequately considered, 
that juvenile delinquency does not exist, that the antagonisms to teacher and 
school which are so destructive of personality and character have disappeared, 
and that the mental radiance lighting up every face indicates great joy and 
happiness in school associations. 

We do not know whether these traits and factors are indicative of character 
growth or not. The testimony of Alfred E. Smith before the Crime Commission 
emphasized the fact that crime begins with early school antagonisms which 
result in truancy, juvenile delinquency, petty crimes, and, finally, a criminal 
record. I believe this to be true. The solution of the crime problem in the United 
States rests largely with teachers in the elementary schools. It is they who can 
create a school environment where there will be no beginnings of truancy and 
juvenile delinquency. In this new environment children will find intellectual and 
physical freedom, will learn to assume social responsibility, will practise the 
difficult art of making wise choices in numerous situations, under the guidance 
and direction of capable and sympathetic teachers. 





The Principal’s Responsibility for Teacher Growth 


Albert L. Hartman, Principal, Edgemont and Watchung Schools, 
Montelair, N. J. 


The principal’s greatest test of leadership is his positive influence on the 
professional growth of his teachers. If he is accepted merely as a boss or a good 
fellow, he is doomed for failure. Every successful principal, however, must be 
an executive and should be a good fellow. 

Here is one fact that we must never overlook: The great majority of teachers 
desire to improve and grow. Their growth means more to them than to us. Many 
disagree with respect to which way is going forward, and no doubt there are 
those of you who would consider regression that which I would call growth. Then, 





PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 . 15 











when is a teacher growing? A few years ago I knew a teacher who radic: lly 
changed her methods of classroom procedure and her way of dealing with chil- 
dren. She was attempting to put into practise ideas secured from summer s tudy 
at a leading university. These ideas were not in harmony with the educational 
objectives of her principal. Therefore, the principal did not consider this teacher 
to be growing. 

Here is a danger that we must face with fairness. If we consider only those 
teachers to be growing who agree with us in point of view, we are in danger of 
acting in conflict with democratic principles of leadership. A growing teacher 
demands a growing principal, and often it becomes necessary for the principal 
to revise his point of view. Whenever a teacher or a group of teachers present 
a better procedure, it should not hurt the pride of any principal to modify his 
ideas. Growth, then, is a cooperative enterprise. 

What is it that causes growth and what are some practical technics that we 
may use to produce growth in our teaching staffs? 

Is not the answer leadership? Yes, some kind of leadership. To be sure, not 
all teachers grow as a result of the leadership of their building principals. It 
probably would not be difficult for each of us to point to a school where teacher 
growth has been a result of leadership outside of the building principal. I believe, 
however, that the work of our Department, with the aid of the National Educa- 
tion Association, has, is, and will continue to help bring better leadership on 
the part of building principals. Every principal in America should be a member 
of the Department of Elementary School Principals of the National Education 
Association. All of us here are members; one of our duties to the schools of 
America is to encourage our fellow principals at home, who are not members. 
to invest in this mighty force. Every principal should be impressed with the 
fact that he is a “trusted officer” of his superintendent of schools. To carry out 
that trust he must be informed. There is no better way of securing systemati: 
information than from the publications of our Department. 

What is good leadership? What is the kind that produces teacher growth? 

Leadership is too often confused with “ordership.” Less than five years ago | 
sat in a county meeting and heard a principal tell that he had become interested 
in the activity- type program and thru his bulletins he had instructed his teachers 
at the opening of school to try that method. No one questions the right of a prin- 
cipal to issue orders; in fact his staff will expect him to do so when necessary. 
A principal may issue wise and effective orders and yet not inspire his teachers 
to recognize and accept his professional leadership. The first duty of a principal 
as a leader is to set the pace in professional endeavor. This will tend to act in 
securing from his staff a willingness to comply with the spirit of rules and reg- 
ulations cooperatively developed. 

It is often said that good leadership is democratic leadership. What are the 
characteristics of democratic leadership? Employers of labor in America are 
beginning to distinguish between “drivership” and leadership. They are finding 
that the goodwill of their employees is profitable, and it should be said that 
back of this policy there is a desire to practise the philosophy of democratic 
organization. Under a despotic government, leadership and drivership are iden- 


16 | THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 








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tical. However, the most successful despots and military leaders have been able 
to identify the wills of their followers with their own. No really successful leader 
has been satisfied with implicit obedience. These leaders have been able to 
identify the wills of their followers with their own largely because of their 
magnetic personality. 

This idea of leadership is still too often the prevalent conception. No doubt 
there are situations where it is justified, but in our work it rarely has a place. Even 
in our profession today the ability to appropriate the wills of others and to weave 
these wills into a preconceived type of teaching is thought of as constituting 
genuine leadership. This kind of leadership is practically synonymous with “sug- 
gestion,” and those who hold to this philosophy would do well to become expert 
in hypnotism. Their success is entirely based upon their magnetic influence in 
appropriating the wills of their staffs to that of their own. 

The fallacy of this type of leadership, of course, is that it is always dependent 
upon someone else and is inconsistent with democratic self-government. The 
followers of a magnetic leader can switch from one cause to another, from one 
philosophy to another, without inner conflict because their loyalty is personal 
only. This, it seems to me, has little place in the noble profession of teaching. 

Democratic leadership means professional democratic cooperation. It is true 
that a real leader often expresses the common will, or at least the majority will, 
of his group, but this common will always represents the outcome of cooperative 
thinking. In the leader’s expression he will testify to more than one individual’s 
contribution. Leadership, to be democratic, demands that the best thought of 
one’s self and one’s colleagues be focused upon a common problem. After suffi- 
cient united deliberation the results are then accepted in a program of action. 

Right here is often the test of real leadership. Suppose after thoughtful deliber- 
ation a majority of my teachers disagree with a plan of action I hold very dear 
to my heart. Do I resort to personality control or to the use of authority vested 
in me by virtue of my position? If, in thoughtful deliberation with a professional 
group of workers, my ideas are not accepted, I have no right to resort to dom- 
inance. This does not mean that my leadership as principal is submerged into 
mediocrity. It does mean that a school can be no better than the average capabil- 
ity of the teaching staff, and that improvement takes place only thru the growth 
of the teachers. Growth comes as a result of democratic leadership and not thru 
dominance or personality control. If a principal is obliged to give up a plan of 
action which is not approved by the majority, he has two roads open on which 
to proceed. The first is a reexamination of his plan; the second an opportunity 
to show his leadership in teacher growth. He probably will have some work to 
do on both roads. 

It is the solemn duty of the principal to organize his work southat teachers 
are encouraged to realize their hj otentialiti democratic leadership is 
accomplish this aim. Growth, then, comes as a result of wise leader- 
ship. Some practical suggestions that will help teachers grow are next in order: 





1. Cooperation among teachers in the building for mutual improvement—Apparently we 
talk more about the cooperative attitude than we live it. However, I have seen small groups 
of teachers work together in an attempt to improve their work. Professional growth has 





PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 17 











always been the result. To encourage cooperation among teachers the first requisite is for 
the principal himself to demonstrate a cooperative attitude by putting into practise th 
principles of democratic leadership. He must also set up the necessary administrative machin. 
ery to encourage cooperation. 


2. Sympathy with each teacher’s problems—The principal’s office should be managed jp 
such a manner that every teacher feels perfectly free to come to him with her problems, 
both personal and professional. A sympathetic principal is aware of the fact that teachers, 
like other humans, are very different from one another. He must recognize this in practise. A 
principal may be admired for his intellect, his power of control, his ability to run a good 
school, but he will be loved only as he is human. In this business of dealing with people on 
must recognize the good that comes from kindliness and humaneness. 


3. Recognition of work well done—A good job well done deserves praise. Recognitio 
means more than commendation. It means confidence in professional ability. There are always 
teachers in a building with special talents. They should be recognized thru consultation on 
matters where their advice and information are of value. 


4. The long-range view—A principal’s point of view must be broad, far-reaching, and ey 
tend into fields outside of education. Two essentials are necessary here: (a) contact with 
what other principals and teachers are doing, and (b) contact with the broader aspects of 
one’s work. Study and reading inside and outside of our field are essential. 


5. Developing a feeling of confidence and security—As principals we must be thoroly con. 
vinced that teachers are professional workers, and not let a few who disappoint us warp ow 
attitude toward all. Leaders in all worthy movements would fail to lift the level of thos 
with whom they work if they permitted themselves to be retarded by the less competent and 
less willing. Democratic leadership develops cooperation and produces security. No principa 
can develop confidence and security unless he is an expert in fairness. Fairness often demand 
that we emotionally and intellectually forget certain faults and failures in our staff. 


6. Providing books and magazines, and encouraging membership in professional organiza- 
tions—Every principal should add the best books and magazines dealing with his and his 
teachers’ problems to the office library as they are published. Funds for the purpose may bi 
secured from such sources as school entertainments, the parent-teacher association, contribu- 
tions from the staff, and the board of education. No teacher in America should fail to invest 


in at least the two-dollar membership in the National Education Association. 


7. Freedom for experimentation—One should teach in the way to make the most effectiy 
use of one’s personality. Much has been said concerning creative work, but very little will 
be accomplished unless teachers are encouraged to experiment. Standardization levels down 
as well as up. When the chief concern is to conform to a standard we lose the vital chai 
acteristic of a teacher, namely, his enthusiasm. 

8. Building meetings—I know a school where a building meeting is held each week. Thes 
meetings are especially desired by the teachers. From these they secure inspiration, a co- 
operative attitude, and an ever-growing conception of the philosophy practised in the building 

9. Knowing what others do—There are many ways of keeping informed with respect t 
practises in other schools, but the most effective and inspirational way is to visit. 

10. Encouragement for study—Fortunate is the principal who works in a town where in- 
crements in salary are granted to teachers for additional approved study. 


Many additional technics of personnel development will occur to you. What 
one does to help others always enriches the quality of one’s own nature. In this 
phase of our work it can be truly said that the more we give the more we receive. 
In closing, may I say that perhaps the one most important quality a teacher 
desires in a principal is inspiration. 





18 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 





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What’s It All About? 


Raymond 8S. Michael, Principal, Junior High School No. 3, 
Trenton, N. J. 


Angelo Patri, one of the best known elementary-school principals of this coun- 
try, declares that the teacher of today is in grave danger of being submerged by 
this so-called modern education, and that in some cases, patrons, supervisors 
and superintendents are demanding that he conform, even tho next to a physical 
impossibility, to the latest methods and policies of instruction as advocated by 
our presentday self-styled progressives. 

Just what constitutes a progressive seems to be a very debatable question. 
Some of us flatter ourselves into believing that we are progressives, especially 
from the standpoint of recognizing the principle of individual differences. We 
attempt to meet the individual needs of our pupils by conscientiously striving 
to analyze, diagnose, and capitalize the varying abilities, capabilities, interests, 
ideals, attitudes, talents, as well as inherent instincts of our children, and care- 
fully and sympathetically directing these criteria so that the children may enjoy 
to the fullest growth and development, life in school, and future adult life in the 
community into which they will go. We are sometimes surprised, as well as 
amused to find others equally enthusiastic, frequently with far longer service 
records, but vastly different fields of experience or contacts, considering us in 
an entirely different light and referring to us as anything but progressive. 

In spite of the fact that in many cases school systems in this country are 
forced to use the same buildings, the same furniture, and the same equipment 
that were in service thirty or forty years ago, most of the supervisors and super- 
intendents are modern and up to date. In many cases they are enthusiastic advo- 
cates of the new education. They want for the children of their communities, as 
far as is humanly possible, the same sort of training and the same sort of edu- 
cational opportunities as given to the children in the best private schools, 
which, in many cases, are heavily endowed and are the last word in equipment 
and ideal teaching conditions. 

Every child is sent to school to receive an education which frequently begins 
the very first day with instructing him how to live properly and how to associate 
with other children of his own age level. Every parent feels that education of 
the very best kind is due his child. But there are many teachers and parents 
who frequently appear not to have a very definite idea for what the child is to 
be educated. 

To the question so often asked, For what are we educating our children? time 
and again comes back the answer in terms of generalities, for the better things of 
life, of course. But what are the better things? Have we definitely determined 
and decided this question in our own minds? Have we found the better things? 
If so, what are they? If our experience and our education as teachers and parents, 
gained in the schools or in the marketplace, have failed to raise us to the point 
where we can catch but the faintest glimpse of the vision, how can we intelligently 
direct and lead our children there, tho we are willing to pay the price? 





PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 19 








+ 


Many a child confidently leaves school with a diploma or a certificate in his 
hand and no education worthy of the name. “What can he do?” bluntly asks Old 
Man World. “Why he has a good education. He can do anything,” replies the 
proud parent or the trusting guardian. As a matter of fact, the boy is really 
equipped to do nothing at all. He has had a smattering of this and a smattering 
of that, and the diploma which he holds in his hand is worth less than the paper 
it is printed on. 

He, like hundreds of other children, has been periodically passed merrily along 
thru the grades of the school on the theory that children must not be coerced or 
forced to apply themselves to any task distasteful to them for fear of making 
them unhappy. Furthermore, the teacher was forbidden to give the child failing 
marks which would have required him to repeat the grade. The teacher was told 
that pupils dare not fail, as such a procedure would result only in developing 
within the child an inferiority complex, thus marring his life, not only as a 
child, but also as a man, with the result that he would leave school with hatred 
of the teacher, the school, and society in general. He must be passed at any rate 
regardless of his ability, or his attitude. Should the pupil fail to make the grade, 
it is never the fault of the child, but is rather the fault of the teacher and the 
school to adjust properly the instruction and the curriculum to the child. 

When a child learns anything, he must learn to do it right before it can be 
accepted as complete. This does not mean that he must get it right the first 
time, or even the second. The old maxim, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try 
again,” which stimulated so many of us, as students to greater endeavor, seems 
to have no place in the philosophy of some of our teachers and pupils of today 
If we accept incomplete, incorrect, and slovenly work, in fact anything less than 
the best that the child is capable of producing, we, as teachers, not only set up 
in the minds of our children false standards and values, but are guilty of devel- 
oping and fostering upon the community lazy, shiftless, indolent, mentally and 
morally warped citizens of tomorrow. 

We hear much these days about fads and frills, academic and non-academi 
subjects, inadequate housing, improvement of instruction, meeting the need 
children thru specialized programs, revised curriculums, the progressive school 
and the traditional school, freedom of education and formalism, creative effort 
and scholarship, subjectmatter versus the child, homogeneous grouping and 
heterogeneous grouping. The advocacy of the scientific use of tests and measure- 
ments as a means of improving instruction, is denounced by some on the grounds 
of formalizing instruction and resulting in the establishment of false standards 
of efficiency. The proposals of those who advocate the 100 percent promotion 
of all pupils and the abolition of all standards of measurement and promotion on 
the assumption that no child should ever fail, as well as the suggested abolition 
of the traditional marking system, report cards, honor rolls, and their attendant 
so-called extrinsic drives, which tend to emphasize scholarship and stimulate 
the child to greater endeavor, and in their stead, the substitution of report notes 
based entirely on the teacher’s subjective estimate of the pupil's progress in 
health, civics, social and emotional development, naturally raise the question, 
What’s it all about? 





20 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTAR) 








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Teachers are inclined to think of instruction as the most important activity of 
the classroom. It is certainly the most important activity of the teacher. But there 
can be no real teaching unless someone is at the same time learning, and the 
efficiency of instruction is in direct proportion to the success of the learning 
that is taking place in the pupils. To prove that learning has taken place, it is 
necessary to compare the learner’s ability before he is taught with his ability 
after being taught. The amount of learning is proportional to the amount of 
change in ability or his attitude. 

Tests and scholarship marks are the most widely recognized dependable forms 
of diagnosis; records and reports, as measurements in education. It is a gen- 
erally recognized fact that the lack of definite and unchanging standards makes 
scholarship records based upon teacher judgments and comparisons, unsubstan- 
tiated by concrete objective data, entirely unsatisfactory as measures of the 
effectiveness of a school or a school program. 

The quality of instruction depends on the quality of the teacher directing and 
guiding the pupil. The supervisor may be fine, the course of study may be per- 
fect, the equipment excellent, but unless the teacher has the essential training and 
the right attitude toward the work in hand, the others might as well not exist. 

The measure of the value of any school and its program is its service to the 
child. The child is either made or unmade during his school days. We, as teachers, 
have no right to allow him to expect a life of ease and indolence in school. He 
must be made to realize that he has certain definite objectives in life that must 
be met before he merits promotion, or is considered successful in the truest sense. 
He must be trained to meet trials, tribulations, and adversity, as well as success. 
He has no right to expect to go thru school and not be tested, checked, and tried 
a thousand times. A boy is a lot better for having met obstacles, some of which 
may have temporarily defeated him, perhaps battering him to his knees, leaving 
permanent, healthily healed scars. 

The child who forms the habit of working and doing everything as thoroly 
and as well as he is able, whether it be in academic or special subjects, school 
paper or dramatics, will be a worker and a good one as long as he lives. Once 
the habit of industry and work is formed, work becomes one of the most fasci- 
nating activities imaginable. 

Industry, perseverance, and accomplishment are great educational forces 
effecting character growth. Why should we fear them? Simply because some 


. people have misused them, are children to be deprived of their beneficent power ? 


True, school is a place in which children should live, but life itself demands a 
well-ordered day of work, play, rest, as well as leisure and social intercourse, 
and every phase of a well-ordered life, has its proper aim, its time, and its place. 

Good, sympathetic, competent teachers; properly graded and organized 
classes; well-planned courses of study with definite clear-cut objectives; sci- 
entific use of tests, recitations, achievement ratings, reports, and activity pro- 
grams are all essential to the educational growth and development of children. 

The best school is the’one that trains the mind, the heart and the hands of 
its children, and sends them out into the world self-respecting and self-sustaining, 


| desirable citizens. 





PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 21 











It matters little what subjects or activities are taught the child as long as the 
material of instruction has a direct bearing on the life interests of that child 
and he has been taught how to use that material properly. It is the child and 
his interests, the teacher and how the teaching has been done, as well as the 
proper application of the results of instruction to the good of both child and 
community that really counts in the final analysis. 





Count For One 


Mrs. A. Virginia Adams, Principal, East Landis Avenue School, 


Vineland, N. J. 


Elementary-school principals who count must have a clear understanding of 
the process we call teaching, namely, that children because of meager back- 
ground and other obstacles find subjectmatter uninteresting, unintelligible, and 
that the only remedy for this tremendous difficulty lies in supplying the human 
element which will adjust child to subjectmatter and subjectmatter to child. 

This human element is the teacher. He need not be a specialist, not a researc! 
worker, or a testing expert but the real teacher will understand children. From a 
storehouse of knowledge in matters pertaining not alone to school but to the 
world about and beyond the school he will interpret the problems of childhood 
bridging the gap between curriculum and learning, book and pupil, placing hin 
in a frame of mind where learning will be both natural and pleasant because the 
learner will be actively cooperating in his own learning. 

The American public knows full well that cheap builders build cheap men 
When teachers of understanding do a piece of work which readily sells itself t 
the community, questions of finance and administration must of necessity fade 
into oblivion. Search for and development of such teachers should thecefore be 
the most important work of the principal who desires to merit the title of leader 
and be worthy of his hire. 

In addition to this clear vision, the principal can well affiliate with those of 
other walks of life who dare to be original, human, and up to date. He should 
count as one of them because of great understanding, breadth of experience 
calm poise, virility, endurance, love of life and fellow man. 





Message Received at Convention 


Dear Fellow Members of the Key Department of the N.E.A.: 

From the snow-drifted northwestern corner of Wisconsin I send to all most hearty 
greetings. I assure you that my spirit is with you and I wish I were there in body, too. 

May the meeting which you are attending be full of inspiration for you. May you return 
to your homes with a greater appreciation of the work of our Department. 

May you all be kindled with the enthusiasm that will make you want to do your part 
in pushing forward the work of the Department which has been so broadly visioned. 


EvizaABETH McCormick, past president, 
Department of Elementary School Principals 





22 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 





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BANQUET, FEBRUARY 26, 1935 


HE SEMI-ANNUAL BANQUET of the Department was held in the Bel- 

vedere Room of the Traymore Hotel on Tuesday evening, President M. 
Emma Brookes, principal, Miles-Cranwood Schools, Cleveland, Ohio, presiding. 
Every available space was utilized for the principals and guests who attended 
this delightful affair. It is to be regretted that many more could not be accom- 
modated. Because the officers of the Department had been invited by the De- 
partment of Superintendence to be platform guests at their general session in 
the auditorium, the banquet program was not extensive. 





A Plea for Sanity 


Lotus D. Coffman, President, University of Minnesota, 
Minneapolis, Minn. 


It is customary for the speaker to declare at the opening of every speech that 
we are living in a new world. He follows this usually by saying that the tradi- 
tions, conventions, beliefs, and institutions of the passing generation are out- 
moded, outworn, out of date, obsolete, archaic, and generally useless. He 
pictures the breakdown of modern society and visions a new but undiscovered 
world which he, in company with other courageous and adventurous voyagers, 
is about to seek. In the course of his address he becomes militant, derisively cen- 
sures the world which his father and grandfather built, anathematizes them for 
their delinquencies, extravagances and stupidities, and calls upon high heaven 
to witness the fact that he with his clean heart, pure soul, and great mind will 
be guilty of none of these things. 

I know how to deliver one of these modern speeches which lashes the past 
and prophesies the future, but I decided for various reasons, some of which will 
become obvious, not to indulge myself in that pleasure at this time. 

When I first became a student of education, I was introduced to a number 
of so-called scientific studies, one of which maintained that human experiences 
move forward unevenly by steps. It was what was known as the plateau theory 
of education. I learned it well and prepared a lecture showing what happened or 
happens at each successive stage in one’s development. It was a good lecture, 
one that I hoped I could retain in my repertory during the remainder of my pro- 
fessional career. Now that speech is moldering in my files; indeed, it was care- 
fully and safely interred more than twenty years ago. Let it rest in peace. No 
more will it be brought forth for the purpose of discrediting the achievements 
of my educational predecessors and of predicting with the certainty of inspired 
leadership the dawn of a new era. 

Caught by the emotional enthusiasms that accompanied the scientific move- 
ment in education in its early stages, I was swept along by the claims of its 
warmest advocates. Indeed, I became a New Pioneer; as a matter of fact, I did 
not propose that any one should be any more of a pioneer than I was. It was 





PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 23 








only after the first wave of enthusiasm for the new idea had passed that I became 
convinced that some of my pioneering was in regions where there was no pay 
dirt and that I was including entirely too much territory in my prospecting 
Furthermore, reflection, study, and a careful analysis of the work and achieve. 
ment of my educational predecessors against the social and political background 
of their times, and in view of the instruments with which they had to work 
made me less and less certain that they were the stupid nonentities that I and 
other ardent crusaders for a new day were disposed to believe them to be. 

But the greatest blow of all fell when the scientists themselves showed that 
the only trouble with the plateau theory of education is that it is not true. Humai 
experience does not move forward by steps or rise by plateaus; it moves forward 
steadily and progressively, if it moves at all. I learned this profound truth wit! 
a sinking heart for it meant that my lecture must now be cast into the limb 
of forgotten speeches. At first I was rebellious and refused to believe, then I was 
contrite and ashamed that I should not have learned from common experienc 
what science had now proved to be true. 

There is an analogy between human experience and social progress. Just as 
we are disposed to think of individual progress as advancing by stages, so we 
are disposed to think of social progress as advancing by eras or epochs. We spend 
no inconsiderable share of our time describing the characteristics of a new era 
without thinking that the forces responsible for the changes we are witnessing 
lie far back in the past and that what we are seeing or describing is only th 
flowering or fruitage of these forces. 

We are in a period now when we are likely to lost sight of this important 
truth. We are picturing a new era, a revolutionary era that represents a break 
with the past. The pioneers of yesterday are pointed out as the exploiters ol 
nature’s largess and of common humanity. We scorn the individualism of yes- 
terday, which was supposed to teach the lessons of self-reliance, courage, and 
duty; and plead for a new world which shall be characterized by collective 
action, a world in which the individual will be compelled under any and al 
circumstances to accept the will of the majority. In this new world the individual 
is to be nothing; the State, everything. “In its service, (i.e., the service of the 
State) are found all possible satisfactions; for its advancement all personalities 
must be sacrificed; the evolution of the higher types must yield so that there may 
arise a State perfect, as a chemically pure substance is perfect, because of the 
rigid equality of its atoms.” . 

In this new State, the home, the church, private property, and individual op- 
portunity will no longer stimulate the imagination and aspirations of youth. The 
new State will emphasize equality rather than liberty as the dominant incentive 
of living, and individualism will become subservient to collectivism under gov- 
ernment control. Several powerful forces contribute mightily to the growth ol 
this philosophy in America—one is the ruthless exploitation of men and mate- 
rials by unscrupulous individualists, and another is the willingness on the, part 
of people generally to sell their liberty for bread. It is clear that the crimes of the 
past perpetrated in the name of liberty must never be permitted again; it seems 





24 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 











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equally clear that if men could earn their bread, they would try to regain much 
of their liberty. 

The apostles of new doctrines at every period of history are always influenced 
by the mistakes of the past, of which there are many, some of which are most 
egregious and inexcusable, and by their hopes and aspirations for the future in 
which we all share. The social philosophy of any given period or of any group 
is always determined by the mental and spiritual preoccupation of those who 
live in that period or who belong to the group. This principle was never truer 
nor clearer than now. The war with its destruction, the depression with its dev- 
astation, the drouth with the losses which it has entailed, the breakdown of many 
of the forces of civilization which have been hitherto regarded as safe and sane, 
have left humanity in a bewildered state of mind. To cure the weaknesses of 
the past we resort to untried experiments for the future. Social experimenting 
that strikes against the past and ventures into the future without following or 
using the established technics of scientific inquiry, is not experimenting at all. 
When tinkering with our institutions is substituted for social wisdom based upon 
careful study, inquiry, analysis, and trial, then confidence in the long run is sure 
to dwindle and vanish. 

The chief weakness of democratic peoples is their disposition to substitute op- 
portunism for deliberately planned and well-conceived programs. This is espe- 
cially true when there appears to be a breakdown of the forces and conditions 
that they have belie ed essential to their well-being. When such occasions occur 
in history, we refer to them as marking the end of one era and the beginning 
of another. The thoughtful historian tries to understand and to explain the 
causes of social evolution; he is not interested in mere change. He explores social 
movements, institutional changes, modifications of dominant political phi- 
losophies, inventions, innovations in industry and in economics, that he may 
comprehend the forces of social evolution. Already he has discovered that re- 
covery from the present depression is worldwide and that it is proceeding with- 
out regard to the forms of political control that exist in the various countries 
of the earth or to the government subventions that are being granted in aid. 
Plato was right when he declared that the real rulers should be the philosophers, 
if by that he meant genuine students of social progress. Surely he did not mean 
those who play upon the whims and caprices and misfortunes of the people. 

It would be easy to show that the forces that caused the depression are the 
forces that must and will cure it—history has done this in the past; it will do so 
again. But when the cure is effected, life will not be the same as it once was. 
Change does occur; progress is made; we do move forward from one point to 
another. Social moving is like a stream, sometimes narrow, sometimes broad; 
sometimes it flows rapidly, at other times slowly, but flow it always does. 

What I have been saying about personal experience and about social progress, 
ie., that they represent continuing forces in the life of the individual and of 
society, applies with equal force to every profession. One of the easiest things in 
the world is for the followers of a profession to be led astray from the practise 
of their profession. When lawyers become insurance agents; doctors, public 
officials; and teachers, standard-bearers in a crusade for some new doctrine, then 





PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 25 











law and medicine and teaching suffer. The surest way for a lawyer to get on in 
the world is to become a better lawyer; the best index of a doctor’s worth is 
the attention he gives to the practise and improvement of medicine; the most 
impressive sign of success on the part of a teacher is his growth in scholarship 
and improvement in teaching. These truisms are so axiomatic that we scarcely 
ever hear them mentioned any more; moreover, if we do mention them, we are 
likely to be regarded as behind the times. 

I know that there are those who maintain with vigor that the chief respon- 
sibility of everyone is to put social welfare ahead of one’s profession. Some of 
the advocates of this point of view would have us believe that the lawyer should 
forget his law, the doctor his medicine, and the teacher his teaching, to engage 
in a campaign of some sort. That the lawyer, the doctor, and the teacher have 
citizenship responsibilities along with all other citizens, is recognized by every- 
one. It is clear, too, that they must, or should know far more than they have ever 
known about the trends and problems of the times. They must help to interpret 
the trends and to solve current problems. But it is not the primary business of 
the lawyer, the doctor, or the teacher to administer our government. That calls 
for a special class of highly trained people who devote themselves diligently, 
faithfully and intelligently to the study of government and its problems. 

We have been a government of amateurs too long. We have maintained that 
everybody is competent to fill every public office. The man who promises the 
most, often makes a more effective appeal to the electorate than the man who 
guarantees a sound administration. Nearly everyone has to some extent become 
a pseudo-economist and a government expert, and maintains that he is compe- 
tent to fill any public office. 

Millions of citizens under the stress of the times are being influenced by the 
unreasoned appeals and false claims of a Moses from California, an Isaiah from 
Louisiana, and a prophet from Michigan. Government, if it is to be made 
secure and stable and progressive, if its vast array of complex problems is to be 
intelligently administered, must be placed in the hands of a well-trained and 
experienced personnel, who from the point of view of preparation and public 
recognition and security of position must be regarded as members of a profession 
as truly as are the doctors, the lawyers, or the teachers. 

Leadership in a period such as we are now passing thru is likely to become 
militant and to lose sight of the more fundamental and permanent considerations 
of life. Even those engaged in the professions are in danger of falling prey to the 
clamor of the times to an over-weening extent. In every period of transition there 
should be a re-estimation of the values of life and every program put forward 
to solve the problems of the period should be critically analyzed. Much that is 
old must be abandoned with regret; the new, on the other hand, may prove less 
promising than its untested claims warrant. In a time of change, teachers espe- 
cially must try to understand the forces responsible for the change, and their 
expression. At this particular moment they must know more about government, 
security, taxes, and taxation; about tariffs, exchange, commerce, war, and 
peace—far more than they have ever known. They must be familiar with the 





26 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 





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dominant political philosophies that are struggling for world supremacy. They 
must be students, as never before, of the forces and conditions that affect human 
welfare. I would, however, call their attention to the fact that a teacher acquires 
this information primarily that he may become a better teacher. There rests 
upon the teachers, as upon no other class, the supreme duty of teaching the 
facts about human progress. A good teacher will become more and more proficient 
in the tools of human learning and he will be constantly allured by the new vistas 
of attainment that an expanding and developing civilization provides. 

The recognition of a teacher comes as a result of his worth as a teacher. Worth 
is enhanced as he grows, as his knowledge becomes more expansive, more catholic, 
more cosmopolitan, and as he becomes more skilful in the technics of his pro- 
fession. A truly great teacher is one who sees the things he is teaching as social 
instruments or social materials that bear intimate relations to the world in which 
we live. A truly great teacher is one who is able to fuse the fragmentary sub- 
stances of the curriculum in the alembic of analysis to produce a personality 
whose attitudes of mind and dispositions of character are socially desirable and 
socially worthy. 

Every profession suffers from two things, viz., the danger that its members 
will wander away in pursuit of false gods, and the danger that comes from inertia. 
False gods were never more numerous than now. Inertia, of course, is always 
present. Many a teacher, four years out of college, is unable to read the literature 
of education because of the technical and scientific advances that have been 
made in the meantime. One of the strange things about every depression is that 
those who hold steadfastly to the fundamentals of human learning and to its 
advancement, are years later regarded as the ones who contributed most to 
social welfare and to human progress. If the schools of America were to become 
engulfed in a movement similar to that in many European countries, a move- 
ment which made them propagandizing and indoctrinating agents for some social 
or political creed, that would spell the downfall of democracy. If the teachers 
of America were enrolled under the banner of some social philosophy in the 
name of recovery and, as a result, neglected to improve themselves as teachers, 
the traditions and dreams, the hopes and ambitions, the virtues and values of 
everything we have stood for during centuries in this country, would be destroyed 
or discredited. 

As a matter of protection to myself, for I fear that some will say that this 
paper is reactionary to a fault, let me call attention to the fact that I am dis- 
cussing these matters in terms of emphasis rather than in terms of inclusiveness. 
Surely teachers, as all other citizens, will contribute in every way possible to 
relief and to recovery, but in so doing they will not forget their responsibilities 
as teachers. The great names in the field of education are the names of great 
teachers, or of great researchers, or of great exponents of education. Why do we 
return time and again to the writings of Barnard, Mary Lyon, Horace Mann, 
William James, Susan Blow, G. Stanley Hall, Wm. T. Harris, Charles W. Eliot, 
E. L. Thorndike, Henry Suzzallo? Because of what they had to say or what 
they did about education. It is true that some of them took an occasional excur- 








PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 27 








sion into some other field, but their immortality does not rest upon these ex. 
cursions. It rests upon their efforts to improve education. They were always in 
the front-line trenches, so to speak, trying to raise standards, to improve the 
technics of instruction, and to reconstruct and reinterpret the curriculum to 
conform to the needs of the times. Each of these leaders looked upon the schools 
as a great social instrument which society should be taught to use for its own 
good. 

We are all familiar with the pious frauds who wear the garments of some 
profession for protection to enhance their respectability, but do nothing or little 
to advance the welfare of the profession. The world is full of such persons; they 
are either out in front, waving a banner for some lost cause or some specious 
reform, or they are sitting on the sidelines too inert to contribute applause to the 
passing procession. 

What is education for? Why do we spend time perfecting ourselves in the 
science of education and in the art of teaching? Not primarily to make learning 
easy, economical, and efficient, altho that is one of our main purposes; not 
primarily to advance ourselves, altho that may accompany our growth and 
achievement; not primarily to solve the problems of society, altho we expect it 
to contribute to that end. No, we find that the justification for education lies 
in the fact that we are attempting to liberate the human spirit and to direct it in 
ways that will lead to its own self-development and growth. A school is merely 
a social institution which society in its wisdom has created to provide an atmos- 
phere and those conditions in which and under which the human spirit may be 
stimulated and made free to attain, under tuition, within the limits of its possi- 
bilities, its largest life. 

There is, in my opinion, a public conscience in the teaching profession, a con- 
science which expresses itself in a “constant and continuous searching for the 
thing that is better,” which, as President Norlin of the University of Colorado 
recently declared, “will prevail unless the venal efforts now being put forth to 
degrade not only the economic station but the social station of the teacher 
succeed to the point of making teaching, not an honored profession, but a menial 
occupation.” Of this I have no fear, provided we hold fast to the deep-seated 
traditions and sound doctrines that have permeated education from the begin- 
ning, and provided our country is able to solve its economic and unemployment 
problems successfully without destroying democracy. One of the fundamental 
assumptions of democracy is that human beings should be developed as person- 
alities. By this we mean that they should have the opportunity of developing 
as individuals. If this high aim be lost in our efforts to reconstruct society, then 
one of the most precious possessions of life will have been destroyed. It can be 
preserved best thru education. 

If I had the power and facility of expression to appraise the point of view 
which I have been trying to elucidate, I would, if possible, stir the teachers of 
this country to a higher sense of responsibility. I would sing the paeans of edu- 
cation as the only hope of democracy. I would, for a moment at least, forget its 
weaknesses and mistakes; I would refuse to point the finger of scorn at that 
unregenerate minority in society who deride education, who sneer at the educated 


28 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 














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man in public life and who wish to pursue without stint their continued exploita- 
tion of the masses. I would, for the time being, cease to lead the campaign for 
salary restorations and for better salaries—God grant that the teacher may be 
paid in money more nearly in accordance with his worth—I would cease prais- 
ing the political systems of other countries with their regimentation and loss of 
personal freedom. If I could write as I should like to write, I should do none of 
these things just now. I should exalt the real leaders of yesterday; I should 
present the wisdom of the past as deserving of our most profound considera- 
tion; I should show that society can progress only thru the progressive evolu- 
tion of education; I should exalt the teacher who, as he leads others, pursues 
the pathway of learning himself; I should carry the message of education to my 
people, my community; and I should provide a leadership which would consist 
chiefly in giving better schools to the community. 

Mr. Chips, the kindly, crusty, humorous and altogether lovable old school- 
master in James Hilton’s delightful story, Goodby Mr. Chips, concludes that 
the most desirable product of education is an understanding of the fitness of 
things, a sense of proportion. It is this, he maintains, that has given England 
its distinctive quality of poise, of leisured dignity, of easy efficiency, and it is 
this which modern industrialism with its chase after wealth and pursuit of 
success threatens to destroy. Altho criticized and humiliated at times for his 
unprogressiveness, Mr. Chips stood steadfastly by his task of maintaining a 
good school, and died the most respected and honored man of his community. 

Mr. Chips’ philosophy is worth pondering. Do we not run to excesses of taste, 
of self-indulgence, of extravagance and display? In our revolt against the tradi- 
tions and conventions of the past, are we not sometimes intemperate in our 
statements? Even in our social and political reforms, we rush madly to extremes, 
and hover uncertainly between the dictatorship of the money power as repre- 
sented by Fascism on the one hand, and the dictatorship of the proletariat on 
the other. Surely it is the part of education, while it is familiarizing us with 
science, acquainting us with literature, fitting us for the business of living, to 
cultivate in us the understanding of the true values of life which will enable us 
to find perspective, and to keep everything in its rightful place. “We shall never 
achieve moral ends by worldly means, nor build the kingdom of righteousness 
and peace by greed and strife.” 

The past has its contributions to make, the future its challenge, but the chal- 
lenge of the future is largely that of unfinished business. Last year we were going 
to establish economic liberty, to end unemployment, to rebuild our national life. 
Last year we were going to plan for world peace. These tremendous tasks are 
still ahead of us. For centuries the Kingdom of God has been at hand, always 
within our reach, and yet never quite atéggffhed. 

It will not be reached by repudiating the past im toto or by chasing the phan- 
toms of the future; it will be reached only as we understand that over long 
stretches of time civilization, like individual human experience, social progress, 
and the advancement of one in his profession, moves steadily on. It will be 
reached as our convictions are tempered by knowledge and experience and as we 
maintain balanced minds and an abiding sense of the fitness of things. 








PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 29 














SECOND SESSION, FEBRUARY 27, 1935 
The Principal’s Job Today 


boat has its roots in yesterday and holds the promise of tomorrow. The 
elementary school is undergoing fundamental changes in form, structure, 
and function. What is the significance of these changes? What forces are oper- 
ating? What part can and should the principal play? What is his job today “and 
tomorrow and tomorrow’’? 


PANEL—J. Cayce Morrison, Assistant Commissioner for Elementary Edu- 

cation, State Education Department, Albany, N. Y., Chairman 

Stephen F. Bayne, Associate Superintendent for Elementary Schools, New 
York, N. Y. 

Orville G. Brim, Professor of Elementary Education, Ohio State Univer- 
sity, Columbus, Ohio 

Prudence Cutright, Assistant Superintendent of Schools, Minneapolis, Minn 

Arthur D. Hollingshead, Ashland School, East Orange, N. J. 

Frank W. Hubbard, Associate Director of Research, National Education 

: Association, Washington, D. C. 

Aaron Kline, Principal, Pullman School, Chicago, Ill. 

Worth McClure, Superintendent of Schools, Seattle, Wash. 

Nathan G. Peyser, Public School 181, Brooklyn, N. Y. 

Belle M. Ryan, Assistant Superintendent of Schools, Omaha, Nebr. 

John S. Thomas, District Principal, Clippert School, Detroit, Mich. 

Goodwin Watson, Associate Professor of Education, Teachers College, 
Columbia University, New York, N. Y. 

David Willard Zahn, Commodore Barry School, Philadelphia, Pa. 

Claire T. Zyve, Fox Meadow Elementary School, Scarsdale, N. Y. 


The following questions for discussion were submitted to Chairman Morrison, 
prior to the meeting, by members of the panel. Mimeographed copies of these 
questions were given to the audience at the beginning of this session. 

What should be the guiding philosophy of the elementary-school principal? 
Brim. 

What changes are needed to make the elementary school an effective instru- 
ment for fulfilling the “American dream?”—McClure. 

How can the school best utilize the community resources for the moral and 
social guidance of children?—Peyser. 

How can the school best utilize the resources of home and community for the 
educational guidance of children?—Zyve. 

What improvements are needed in the pupil personnel work of elementary 
schools?—Cutright. 

How shall we determine success? What and how shall we report to parents?— 
Ryan. 








30 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 





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How can the school provide opportunities for developing the social attitudes 
and abilities requisite to successful participation in a democracy?—Hollings- 
head. 

What use should the principal make of scientific methods in the study of his 
problems?—Thomas. 


How can we adequately serve the individual needs of children in the face of 
the overwhelming economic pressures on the school?—Bayne. 

What effect does the changing elementary school have upon the principal’s 
relationship to teachers? to superintendent and board of education?—Zahn. 

What provisions shall the public make to guarantee effective leadership by 
elementary-school principals?—K/line. 

How can city, state, and national organizations contribute best to the growth 
and usefulness of elementary-school principals ?—Hub bard. 

What is the responsibility of the elementary school with reference to the 
various theories of social reorganization?——-W atson. 


Panel Discussion 


The meeting was called to order at two o'clock by President M. Emma 
Brookes. 

Miss Brookes: We have a very fine program this afternoon. I think we shall 
waste no time in preliminaries. It gives me the greatest pleasure to introduce 
your leader, Dr. J. Cayce Morrison. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: In the summer of 1920, a little group of principals, 
studying at the University of Chicago, met together and proposed that we 
should have a National Department of Elementary School Principals. If I am 
correctly advised, one of that group sits on the platform this afternoon, Dr. 
Worth McClure. The following February, that same group met at the annual 
meeting of the Department of Superintendence here in Atlantic City, and took 
the first steps toward organizing such a department. 

The years passed. In 1928, the Department of Elementary School Principals 
published its Seventh Yearbook, entitled Standards and Training for the Ele- 
mentary School Principalship. It made history. It helped the profession at large 
to recognize that the elementary-school principal is not a lost office in American 
education. It gave momentum to the study of the school principalship, and stimu- 
lated the organization of city and state groups of principals. 

But during the last five years other things have happened and the goals set 
in 1928 by the Department for its own membership have been modified; in fact, 
in many instances have been thrown overboard. Another of our friends here on 
the platform is from Chicago, Mr. Aaron Kline. Those of you who happen to 
be from Chicago or vicinity know what happened there one night in the summer 
of 1933. That process has been going on all over the country. 

The elementary school is changing. If you will look at your programs—we 
tried to express in a sentence or two the theme of this panel. The elementary 
school is changing as to function, as to structure and as to organization. What 
is the significance of these changes? What forces are operating? What part can 





PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 31 











and should the principal play? What is his job today and tomorrow? Because, 
after all, today is soon gone. We must see today, but we are interested in today 
only as it shapes our action for tomorrow. 

This group has not been able—coming as it does from the four corners of 
these United States—to assemble its entire membership to plot the discussion 
for this afternoon. But some of us met; all of us have been in correspondence; 
and we are ambitious enough to hope that we may lay the foundation today for 
certain discussions that will reverberate thruout the country, be picked up by 
local groups, and have something of the same effect in shaping the next ten 
years or five years that the yearbook of ’28 had, or that Cubberley exerted 
earlier thru The Principal and His School. 

(At this point Chairman Morrison introduced the members of the panel.) 

We are not discussing the future of the elementary school, we are not discuss- 
ing elementary education in the abstract; we are trying to visualize, if you 
please, the job of the principal, man or woman, as he or she undertakes to help 
operate this social institution, called an elementary school, for the benefit of 
children in a changing social order. 

Perhaps I should say a word as to the rules for this discussion. There will be 
no speeches but, with your help, we will try to think aloud, try to put together 
the various approaches that individually we have attempted to set down in black 
and white in order to clarify our thinking. As chairman, I will reserve the privi- 
lege to stop anyone who runs over the two-minute limit. 

Among ourselves we are agreed that we will interrupt one another just as we 
might in a fireside conversation on a winter’s evening. We will carry this discus- 
sion thru for a period not to exceed an hour. Then we will throw it open for 
questions from the floor. I wish you would play the game with us by beginning 
to note the questions that you would like to have answered, so that in the second 
hour you can hold us to account, as far as that is possible, for the answering 
of them. 

Dr. Brim, if you had to point the way to the future in a sentence or two, how 
would you do it? 

Dr. Brim: I was afraid he would call on me first, because our friendship 
goes back a good many years. It is hard to start off a panel, especially one which 
has such a tremendous scope. I myself vision the principal’s job today and 
tomorrow in this single sentence which I will say a word about after stating it: 
The principal’s job is that of a responsible, thinking leader of a responsible, 
self-respecting, thinking staff. 

I have chosen those words carefully. They are based upon an assumption that 
the good is relative to the situation. It cannot be imposed from the outside. It, 
of course, must take into account conditions much larger than the local situation. 
But it must also take into account the condition of the local situation. There- 
fore, as I see it, the principal and his staff must in the last analysis determine 
the philosophy and the program of the institution in which they work and for 
which they ought to be given responsibility. It is a concept contrary to that of 
a dictated or superimposed program or a criterion from the outside. The ele- 
mentary-school principal must, in a sense, be a philosopher who from time to 


32 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 





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time, or constantly, is formulating his own or with his staff the philosophy of 
the group and the school. Therefore, instead of his having a philosophy, I would 
say he should have a philosophic disposition, that is, he should possess a desire 
and tendency to consider the whole and to seek its deepest and most inclusive 
meaning or good. In order to do that, he must have knowledge first of man in 
his world from which our criteria of the good must come and in which it must 
be found. He must have a knowledge of child nature and his manner of most 
effective growing. He must have knowledge of his community, his people and his 
children. In addition to that, he must himself possess a liberated and super- 
intelligence always on the job. 

Now those are abstract statements. To illustrate them would take much time. 
I submit them as the essence of my concept of the principal’s job today ‘“‘and 
tomorrow and tomorrow.” 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: Dr. Bayne deals in direct administrative relationship 
with more principals than any other one man or woman in the United States 
today. Will that kind of philosophic approach to the question work, Dr. Bayne? 

Dr. BAYNE: I would like to ask Dr. Brim if he has in mind that in a great 
city system in which so many of us work, whether it be New York, Chicago, or 
Boston, there should be placed upon the principal the responsibility for formu- 
lating a philosophy for his school, and if so, whether the administrator must 
face, say, fifty different philosophies in one school system? 

I can see a school in a neighborhood of underprivileged children acting as a 
powerhouse, radiating influences into the community. In that same city, I can 
see a school that is reflecting the better advantages, the better conditions, the 
foresight, the encouragement and help of a highly intellectual community. 

Now does what you have said mean, when we apply it to administration, that 
when we get past the single school, the principal will administer that school as 
tho it were a world in itself, without relationship to the philosophy of the 
neighboring schools? 

Dr. Brim: My first statement is that the principal must know man in his 
world and formulate a program consistent with this knowledge. It isn’t some- 
thing made out of dreams. Now if he is a member of a city system, that is just 
as much a fact as the fact that he lives in the physical world; he has to build 
his philosophy in terms of, with due recognition to, the conditions of his com- 
munity, the conditions of the city, the conditions of his nation, the conditions 
of humanity. 

But I want to insist upon this, that the conclusions, the values, the program 
with which principals are working, shall have meaning and value to them, and 
that means this philosophy has to be achieved by the group who is practising it. 

Mr. ZAHN: May we get down to the individual school principal and his rela- 
tion to the formulation of this philosophy in his own specific school? Is it the 
principal’s function to cause all teachers to think the way he does? Is it the prin- 
cipal’s function to energize the faculty so that the philosophy shall be unified, 
or is it the principal’s function to encourage as many different philosophies 
within his own faculty as it is possible to encourage and hope that because the 


PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 33 











children have seen so many different kinds of thinking, they will have had in 
the elementary school a beginning concept of the world as it really is? 

Mr. HOLLINGSHEAD: My own personal feeling is that an idea may start any 
place and that if it is a legitimate idea, it has a right to function and that prin- 
cipals are, generally speaking, teachers on a different stage of the journey. Carry 
that thinking further thru to superintendents; the superintendents are principals 
on a different stage of the journey. These ideas which may originate any place 
at all in the school system are worthy of consideration, worthy of the democratic 
approach. By the examination of these ideas, the really democratic approach 
may be attained. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: You are saying, are you, Mr. Zahn, that in handling 
‘your own school, it is your function to keep the way open for ideas to come up 
from any source, teacher or pupil or parent? It is your business to keep coordi- 
nating those ideas, to keep an interplay of mind always there so that the best 
idea will win finally. Is that it? 

Mr. ZAHN: Yes, I'll accept that. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: Altho some of them will never win; there will always 
be a certain conflict. Does the same principle apply to the superintendent dealing 
with one hundred or six hundred principals, Dr. Bayne? 

Dr. BAYNE: I am going to quote from a report that I suspect the chairman 
wrote: “It is the duty of the principal and the superintendent to capitalize to 
the full the best thinking of his staff.” Did you write that? 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: I never make admissions in public. 

Dr. McCiuvre: I think we are rather groping for perhaps what the physicists 
call a frame of reference, and, to me, it is impossible to think of an elementary 
school without thinking of an elementary school in America in an evolving 
democracy. Now when you reduce the situation to that frame of reference, you 
then must ask the question as to where democracy is going and what part the 
school plays in that process. It seems to me that there are two sets of values 
the American people stand for. To state them is to state platitudes, but, never- 
theless, I question whether any of us fully sense the implications of those plati- 
tudes. I believe the American people are concerned with two sets of values. The 
first is that relating to the realization of individual personality, the opportunity 
for individuals, the growth of the individuals, the expression of individual initia- 
tive. The other set of values, without which the first set becomes mere anarchy, 
has to do with the development of social responsibility. In democracy we have 
a balancing of these two sets of values, the individual on the one hand and the 
responsibility for the progress of all on the other. 

As I think of the philosophy of the principal, I would go with Dr. Brim and 
I would go a little further than that. I would say that in his leadership of his 
teachers in a specific community, the principal is asking the question with his 
teachers as to how this school with this group of children in this environment 
may realize these two sets of values to the fullest. Every school should ask itself 
those two questions, regardless of whether it is an elementary or a secondary 

school, and every teacher should ask himself those two questions: Am I to the 
fullest realizing these two sets of values or helping my students to realize these 





34 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 





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two sets of values? And so the principal in specific instances is guided by con- 
siderations of those two sets of goals. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: That would apply just as well to the superintendent 
as to the principal. Am I right? 

You have met Dr. Peyser and Dr. Zyve; if I know their schools at all, they 
are administering, so far as the social economic background and environment 
of children is concerned, just about as nearly opposite types of schools as could 
be found in the United States. Yet, if I understood their work correctly, they 
are both adhering to the same philosophic principles of administration. I would 
like for Dr. Peyser to pick up the thread of this discussion and apply it with 
special reference to the question listed opposite his name. 

Dr. Preyser: I visualize the task of the principal in connection with both 
frames of reference to which Dr. McClure has referred. It appears to me that 
a general philosophy underlies the educational process no matter where the 
school may be located in the United States. A general philosophy of objectives 
and goals may be set for all schools but the specific outcomes and the method- 
ologies must vary in terms of the specific child group within the school and in 
terms of the social setting of the pupil body. I view the job of the principal today 
as that of the integration and direction of all of the educational forces that are 
affecting behavior changes in our children. We no longer subscribe to the edu- 
cational philosophy that the sole end of the school is to teach scholastic materials 
to children. We have enlarged our educational goals and we ask that education 
develop character, that it integrate personality, that it conserve and develop 
physical health, that it develop mental health, that it secure wholesome social 
adjustment, that it aid in the development of wholesome ways of living by our 
children in this changing social and economic environment of which they are 
a part. 

If we view the objectives of the school in this light, we must recognize that 
the job of the principal can no longer be limited to the activities that go on 
within the four walls of the classroom or within the four walls of the school 
building. The school is not the only agency that is operating in the life of the 
child, affecting for good or for ill his habits and attitudes and interests and 
appreciations and ideals. The home is at work and has been at work since the 
birth of that child. The forces of street and of playground, of the movie house, 
of the theater, of the tabloid newspaper, have been at work. Parent, brother, 
sister, play companion, gang companion, all are functioning as teachers in the 
life development of that child. Many of these forces are working cooperatively 
with the school. Other forces are at work disintegrating personality and affecting 
for ill the character development of the child. If we are to set up social adjust- 
ment as a goal and character building as an objective, then we can no longer 
conceive of the school as an isolated entity apart from life. We must mobilize 
all of the forces of the community that can operate for the life development of 
that child. We must tap the resources, we must guide them, direct them and fuse 
them into a functioning whole. 

Let me illustrate briefly in connection with the resources of the community. 
Ordinarily we conceive of social resources in terms of the relief agency, the 





PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 35 











hospital, the clinic, the child caring agency, the Society for the Prevention of 
Crime and the other numerous organizations to which we make appeal when 
a pathological situation occurs in the life experience of the child. A situation 
involving poverty, or delinquency or social difficulty arises and then we make 
effort to contact an agency in the community that might assist us in diagnosing 
the situation and introducing remedial activity. 

Every school administrator realizes the difficulty that we face in contacting 
the suitable agency and in securing the consistent integrated action required to 
secure wholesome adjustment. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: What are some of the agencies that you draw on in 
your school? 

Dr. Preyser: In the first place, we draw upon all of these that might be 
called remedial agencies in an articulated, unified way thru a community council, 
in which all are represented, which council meets periodically for a study of the 
social problems of the community and for a consideration of specific instances 
of pathology. 

In the second place, we consider among the social resources the educational 
forces of the community other than the school—forums, community centers, 
playgrounds and all other such instrumentalities. But, in the third place, we 
consider what I regard as the most potent of the community forces, the com- 
munity itself, the manpower and womanpower and institutional power united 
into a community force, conscious of its obligation to the community, to child 
life and to society, organizing itself for an analysis of the community situation 
and the educational situation, conceiving programs of education and recreation 
and health and social welfare and then setting up programs for an integrated 
plan and acting upon these problems. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: I want to stop Dr. Peyser here, but I think some of 
you may want to jot down a question and call him to account in the next hour. 
There is more to his story. 

Dr. Zyve, how does this look from the suburban area in which you work? 

Dr. ZyveE: Well, I should like to talk about it from a slightly different angle. 
Bringing it back again to the discussion introduced by Dr. Brim, it seems we 
are rather in agreement that a school is a part of a community, that it fits into 
that community as one section in a jigsaw puzzle, in which the thing is not 
complete without that section and in which the section cannot be removed; in 
which neither the community nor the school is on a different level of elevation, 
as it were, from the other. It seems to me our discussion so far has rather agreed 
on that. 

Adding to that, it means, which is rather comforting, that schools do not 
have to be identical. If this is our philosophy, it means there is no pattern for 
the elementary school, that the staff of the school looks as far as it is able at 
that school in that community from all sides; looks at the problems all the 
way around and then tries to make that school fit into that community. 

Now it seems to me that one problem we have is knowing to what extent we 
should further the influences of that community educationally and to what 
extent we should try to counteract them. I will take a rather innocuous example 


36 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 








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first, and I would like to go on to one which it seems to me is one of the big 
problems we meet today. The innocuous example might be the effect upon chil- 
dren of the machine age in which we are. If we think back to the gifts which 
children we know had at Christmas, I think in most cases we would discover 
that those gifts were far more intricate mechanically than the child could 
possibly understand. 

I heard Dr. Bayne make such a good point on this, that I am going to let him 
give an illustration for me and then pick it up from that point. 

Dr. Bayne: If I may break in, I just pointed out that my own six-year-old 
son (he isn’t six now; that was some years ago) was presented with a $30 or 
$40 electric train—at six years of age. On Christmas morning, his father and 
his uncle had a delightful time playing with that train. After an hour, I looked 
to see what he was doing, and he had taken the boxes in which the train had 
come and was playing private choo-choo by himself. 

Dr. ZyveE: Now I would like to go on for a minute and enter this question, 
which leads into a much more difficult problem today, that is, the rather new 
era in which we are trying to introduce opinion on social matters in the school. 
Now it pulls, it seems to me, right back to this philosophy we have set up of 
the school within the community. That is, we have believed that the school 
should be part of the community, that parents should have a part in the making 
of that school, and that their opinion is important. Then we seem to have ignored 
the fact that those children, in any school, not identical schools, in any certain 
section, already have a social philosophy. We have rather assumed, it seems to 
me, as we have discussed this issue during the last two or three years, that our 
idea that social opinions should be discussed with children is something entirely 
new. 

Now just as the child has lived in a family from the time he was born and 
unconsciously has a whole set-up within himself of an opinion about family life, 
so has he lived in some sort of social atmosphere. He has already received social 
instruction, thru his family and otherwise. 

Now, if our school is a part of the community and is trying to represent the 
community it is an open question as to what extent we should further the social 
opinions of that community and to what extent we should attempt to counteract 
them. I am putting this question from a purely practical standpoint, because I 
think it is one of the biggest problems we face today. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: Is there anyone in the panel who wants to pursue 
that question a little further? Dr. Watson. 

Dr. Watson: I am glad to have the question raised. It seems to me that not 
only in the session this afternoon, but at a number of other times in the course 
of this convention, these differences of outlook on economic-political questions 
have been treated as tho they were matters of choice, that just as one might 
join a Baptist church or a Methodist church or Congregational church or per- 
haps no church at all, so he might decide that he would take this viewpoint or 
that viewpoint or the other viewpoint with reference to the economic scene, and 
that the business of the school was simply to stand there holding out the various 
offerings in some form or other. Unfortunately, to me, it does not seem to be 





PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 37 











| 
| 
| 


that kind of a situation. In this community that Dr. Zyve was telling us about, | 
or in any other community, things are taking place, whether we want them to or 
not. We did not want to go thru five or six years of this kind of deprivation and 
unnecessary suffering and rising debt, unemployment and blasted hopes and 
defeated and thwarted purposes on the part of our youth and adult constituency, 

I am wondering whether Dr. Peyser in his suggestion that he was going to 
integrate, direct and mobilize all the forces that influence children really meant 
that he was going to do that; that he was going to take hold of this situation 
and deal with those forces that are doing things to people, whether we like it or 
not. I don’t believe we can say, “Now shall we drift along with affairs, or shan’t 
we?” Too many of the things we care about are at stake. 

If we have set our flag to any such standards as have moved American edu- 
cators in the past, then we cannot remain inactive and acquiescent in a civiliza- 
tion that drifts along to its own disaster, because its eyes have not been opened. 

Dr. Pryser: I should like to take up the question that has been raised by 
Dr. Watson. We in the schools will never be the sole molders of social and moral 
judgments in our schools. We are not, and never will be, the only propagandists 
of a present or a future social-economic pattern of life. The social sciences that 
we may teach in the classroom will ever come into favorable relationship or into 
conflict with the overt teachings or the unconscious conditions of life outside of 
the school. 

The climate of opinion in the local and general community must be considered 
in any educational program we plan, considered not academically but prac- 
tically as a force to be dealt with, cooperated with, or molded to our point of 
view. We cannot isolate ourselves within the school and assume that by scholastic 
instruction or even by artificially motivated activities we can mold the behavior 
patterns or the social attitudes of our children in a constructive, forward looking 
way without recognizing that outside there are vital forces, often emotionally 
more potent than those operating within the school that are contradicting and 
antagonizing that which we are trying to do. 

If we hope for success in any program of social development thru education, 
we have to consider the community as well as the child body within the school 
as a subject for education. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: You are saying, Dr. Peyser, that the principal has 
some responsibility for organizing community forces and some responsibility 
for helping the community to carry on an educational program in and for itself? 

Dr. Peyser: I am. I believe that the principal or else an enlarged organiza- 
tion within the school system, perhaps operating thru the principal, must take 
up the objective of community leadership. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: I would like to shift this discussion to the other set 
of values that Worth McClure mentioned—the individual. Look at the individual 
youngster for a moment. Miss Cutright, we have talked about social values, let 
us turn around and look at pupil values, individual child values. 

Miss CuTrRIGHT: It seems to me all of these factors which have been men- 
tioned have necessarily an influence on child behavior and child development. 
I agree with Dr. Brim that we need to establish a philosophy and with Dr. 





38 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 





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McClure that we need a frame of reference in order to guide our school activi- 
ties. However, it has seemed to me that we are not so lacking in a philosophy 
as we are lacking, as Dr. Peyser pointed out, in the technics for carrying out 
that philosophy. 

It seems to me this group as a whole would agree that the major purpose of 
the school is to promote child growth and to develop social responsibility. How- 
ever, we might disagree quite radically on the means of carrying out or accom- 
plishing that major purpose. 

I am at a loss to see how we can do much more than we have done in accom- 
plishing this major purpose of promoting child growth and developing social 
responsibility, until we know more about the individual child. 

The elementary-school principals whom I know most intimately carry a 
heavy responsibility. It is extremely difficult for them to integrate or to articulate 
the various forces in the school that touch upon the child and influence child 
development. Therefore, it has seemed to me that the elementary school of the 
future is headed quite definitely toward a better understanding of the individual 
child. 

Now, that means at least two major things to me. It means, first, that we will 
spend more time in exploring the child’s interests and the child’s capacities and 
that the elementary-school principal will have other people to help him, either 
the school nurse or the classroom teacher or the visiting teacher and the various 
other school agents. 

The second part of this trend seems to me to be this, that we will spend 
more time discovering children’s handicaps, their physical and mental and social 
handicaps. There, again, the principal will be the person who will integrate the 
various school forces that will bring this information to the school. 

We have in the past left this element of guidance, or so it seems to me, largely 
to the secondary-school level. We have considered this matter of individual 
adjustment a thing which should be accomplished before a child decides whether 
he will go to college and what course he should take in high school in order that 
he may enter the college which he wishes to attend. 

I propose for the purpose of discussion that the elementary school of the 
future is going to spend considerable time in developing technics for studying 
the individual youngster, and this may mean the type of thing which Dr. Peyser 
has indicated, that you will go out in the community to find forces that are 
influencing the child. It certainly means that we will set up some provision in 
each school for collecting and assembling and using information about individual 
children. 

Dr. BAYNE: May I ask a question? We have said that, or something like it, 
for a great many years. Now what is the greatest obstacle to carrying out your 
program, which, to my mind, is the clearest presentation of the situation? What 
is holding us back from it? 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: Who wants to answer that? 

Mr. ZAHN: Money! 

Miss Cutricut: I would answer that in another way. I would say the ele- 
mentary-school principal is hemmed in by such a large number of things that 





PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 39 








he or she has to take care of that unless the technics are made easy for the 
principal to bring together this information, that principal just has not the time 
as an individual to go about and bring together this information. 

Dr. Watson: Notice how that is tied up to the difficulty that was suggested, 
If we could provide that principal with adequate personnel in terms of office 
help, in terms of assistant or administrative staff, in terms of counselors and 
guides and the like, it would be possible to do many of these things we hold as 
individual ideas. I don’t suppose there is a person in the room who doubts that 
the country is wealthy enough—it has enough in its mines and its fields and 
in what its factories could turn out and its personal service, and so on—to 
sustain a very high level of life for all of its people, to give us not a million 
workers in education but three or four or five millions. We could do that; the 
wealth is here. The service could be provided. I would like to go back to Dr. 
Bayne’s question—what is it that stands in the way of our doing it? 

Dr. ZyvE: Dr. Watson, do you mean for an individual child, increase of 
personnel for the study of that child? 

Dr. Watson: It would reflect to the advantage of each individual child in 
that he could be given the individual attention and study which he cannot be 
given so long as we find ourselves living in a contracting system of support. 

Dr. Zyve: I meant do you mean increased personnel for the study of gen- 
eral problems which in general reflect back on him or for him individually? 

Dr. Watson: Both. 

Dr. ZyveE: Of course, I think there is a little point to be made against dividing 
the child up among too many adults; the more you increase, the more disinte- 
grated you have the child. 

Dr. Watson: I think we make a mistake in the school in introducing so many 
expert counselors, each of whom is supposed to work with the child. We should 
introduce those in somewhat more of a supervisory role, so instead of having a 
school psychologist who does the tricks on the child, we would have a psycho- 
logical supervisor with whom teachers and principals could consult and say, 
“What am I going to do with this child? This is the thing that is developing,” 
and so on. Thus, the expert is training the teacher to do a better job, rather 
than doing the job. We would avoid the difficulty you are talking about and 
multiply the efficiency of our personnel. 

Dr. Zyve: It may come back to the size of the elementary school. There may 
be a size at which it is possible for all the people there to know all the children 
and beyond which it is not possible. 

Dr. Peyser: I want to inject a note of difference there. We are stressing here 
knowing the child, learning to know his difficulties and the rest. I think the great 
problem that we have to face is rather the correlative of that; it is the problem 
of remedial work, of corrective work. I think we have been clinicizing children a 
bit too much and not getting anywhere after we have discovered the various 
weaknesses that the child manifests. I don’t think we have developed remedial 
instrumentalities to parallel the diagnostic facilities that have been developed 
and that we have introduced. 

Dr. Brim: I would like to make two suggestions, one of which may not be 





40 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 











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very welcome because it is always more fun to talk about faults outside yourself, 
rather than inside yourself. 

One suggestion as to why we do not know our children as well as we should is 
the fact that in our training as principals we have not been taught the thing 
we should have been taught. If we were to examine the pre-service training of 
ourselves before our job as principals, we would find that we have not been 
trained to understand the child as we should. 

The second thing I want to add with reference to what Dr. Peyser has said, 
is that we have fooled too much at clinical and specific remedial work and we 
have not tackled the system which produces the wrecks in children. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: Mr. Hollingshead. 

Mr. HOLLINGsHEAD: It seems to me there is another aspect to this problem 
of guidance which we have not considered. Personnel guidance considers the 
child largely as an isolated entity, concerns itself with just the individual. It 
seems to me we have to consider the problem of guiding the group of which he 
is a member. That is a determining factor in his development. Our teachers 
colleges have not concerned themselves with this problem: How can we guide 
children in group thinking, group planning, and group working together? How 
can we set up in our schools a program that can provide these opportunities of 
learning, these socially desirable traits or attitudes or abilities? 

Dr. Hupsarp: Coming back to Dr. Bayne’s point, what are some of the 
difficulties in the way? I am reminded of an experiment that was started in a 
school system recently. It was a character education experiment but it was 
really an experiment in guidance, and one of the outstanding characteristics of 
that experiment was a rather detailed and exact record-keeping of all the chil- 
dren. In that school, in the course of that experiment, they gave character edu- 
cation tests to the high school seniors, and the parents objected very strenuously 
because they said their children had not had a chance to develop their characters 
yet, because the experiment had just started in the lower grades. 

I think that comes back very well to what Dr. Peyser has been trying to 
emphasize, that is, the importance of carrying the community along with the 
principal in the development of this philosophy which is to guide the school, 
and unless he does carry the community along and get them to help him formu- 
late this philosophy, I cannot see that he can be sure that he will succeed in 
the technics and the experiment which he undertakes. 

Dr. Bayne: Mr. Chairman, you have asked for an examination of our own 
procedures. I venture to do this. I wonder—let’s make this a sort of public con- 
fession—whether in supervision we haven’t been thinking in the elementary 
schools constantly of preparing a child for a higher school, dealing with those 
things which are measurable and tangible and saying good luck to the other 
things, we hope they will be done. I wonder if the ease with which we can measure 
certain skills hasn’t led us even in our supervision to say the whole structure of 
elementary education is built on these tangible measurements. 

I am ready to come to the conclusion, rebellious tho it may be, that we ought 
not to be concerned with preparing children primarily for secondary schools. I say 
that for two reasons: first, because I am not quite satisfied in my mind that the 





PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 ‘ 41 











secondary school knows where it is going; second, because I think it is about 
time we made an earnest effort to do these things that we recognize as vital but 
have not done yet because our traditional supervision has held us back. 

Let us remember that education in an elementary school anyway is a con- 
tinuous process and we have been thinking in terms of grades, step, step, step, 
and we regiment to that. 

I wonder if the time is here when we are ready to think of pushing, of permit. | 
ting children to go ahead largely on a question of personality development, and 
not worry so much about these blessed grade standards. I do not want to throw 
them away, but I mean let’s draw off the emphasis from it. Then perhaps we 
will have time to pay attention to the intangible but holy things of child life. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: Dr. Bayne, I live in New York, too. What do you 
suppose is going to happen to you and me if we lay down the doctrine, that we 
will take these children whenever the parents trust them to our care; we will do 
the best we can for them for six or seven or eight years, whatever time the public 
specifies; and then will send them on to high school with our blessing—all of 
them, not part of them? What will happen to us? 

Dr. BAYNE: Why, we are doing it now, Mr. Commissioner. 

Miss CutricHt: Mr. Chairman, may I ask you a question? It may be in the 
Middlewest we are openly subscribing to this theory of child growth, rather 
than definite grade standards, but I should like to ask Dr. Bayne a question 
about that. I wonder if it isn’t quite as desirable when we take this larger view 
of the child development to substitute maybe the ramp idea for the step idea 
of grade standards. 

Dr. BAYNE: For those of you who have been tramping up the ramp to the 
ballroom at the auditorium—NMiss Cutright, of course, is checking me properly: 
I have no desire to run wild at this moment on that proposition. But I do feel 
that we ought to begin to move away from that overemphasis on grade standards 
as the sole measure of child achievement and promotion. I wish that we might 
have had some discussion of the Philadelphia experiment that they have been 
carrying on along this line, in which they indicate pretty well that we have not 
solved this thing wholly by retardation of children who cannot meet certain 
grade standards, rather that we have increased and multiplied and made more 
complex the difficulties by the very fact that we are retarding children, holding 
children back in school because they do not meet certain standards. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: Mr. Zahn, is there anything you want to say now for 
Philadelphia? 

Mr. ZAHN: The first thing I would like to state is that if I interpret the Phil- 
adelphia feeling correctly, it would not presume that educational goals and char- 
acter development goals are mutually exclusive, because they are not. I think 
every one of us here will recognize that the educational goal has abundant oppor- 
tunities for coincident character development, and that the use of educational 
material, even to the development of fundamentals in arithmetic, has some part 
in the development of character education. 

So far as the retardation of individual pupils is concerned, Philadelphia sub- 
scribes educationally to a process of individualized treatment for pupils, based 





42 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 








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entirely upon an individual study of the pupil and what in the light of our 
present knowledge we feel that pupil can ultimately do, If he accomplishes that 
from the point of view of character development and from the point of view of 
achievement in subjectmatter, we consider that he is able to proceed at a pace 
with the rest of the children. And I think this movement is not confined to 
Philadelphia. The revision of school marking systems and reporting to parents 
is developing all over the country and it is symptomatic of advanced feeling 
toward this whole problem. 

I feel that Miss Ryan may have something to say about the relationship 
of pupil achievement to what we expect parents to know about the individual 
pupils. 

Miss Ryan: It seems to me we are taking in a good deal of territory on this 
question and I am glad to speak on the question of how to determine success. 
I think that we had better clean our own back yards before we step out and try 
to discuss things on the outside. It would be nice, Dr. Watson, if we had the 
five million helpers, but we haven’t. We have to start where we are. 

The question of measuring success has been a serious detriment in the char- 
acter development of the children of America. We have pointed to success as 
academic success only. During the past years, the only successful child was 
the one who was academically successful. We sent him out in the world with 
that rating. 

Now we cannot speak of success alone. With our elementary children, we must 
rather speak of successes. He may be a success in arithmetic, he may be a success 
in the social group, he may be a near moron and accomplish something. If he 
does, he is an individual success. We have no right to label pupils as A, B, C, and 
D pupils. We should mark them rather along these various lines as successes, 
not taking the word in a general sense as a success. What shall we report to 
parents on the pupil’s report card? It seems to me that the parent would be glad 
to know something about the child’s health from the school standpoint. He would 
perhaps like to know if he were a success in his academic work. He would be 
glad to know if he were a success in citizenship. Then I think on the report card 
it would be a very good thing to leave a place for the parent to report back to 
us, to get the parents’ comments; that we report on these three things from 
our schools and get the parents’ comment. It seems to me the combination ought 
to help us do more for these boys and girls. 

Mr. ZAHN: I hope we get to the point where we take the measurement of 
pupil success on its face value and that when we find a definite failure on the 
part of a pupil in something that according to all we have to measure him by, 
he should succeed; that we definitely face the issue with parents and with the 
pupil, with the idea that a child shall be led to a better feeling of sportsmanship, 
a better attitude of the acceptance of a certain degree of failure. There is not 
one of us here who does not feel failure at times, but the way in which we accept 
it is a fundamental of character development. 

Only by indicating to the pupil that failure can possibly exist do we give him 
a properly conditioned feeling towards the community in which he lives, because 





PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 43 











he is going to fail in many respects. How he meets it is a tremendous problem 
in his own individual thinking. 

Dr. Zyve: It doesn’t seem to me that teaching an acceptance of failure is a 
part of our philosophy or should be a part of our practise with elementary- 
school children. 

Mr. ZAHN: I don’t think your inference is quite right if you are presuming 
I meant teaching the acceptance of failure. I do mean the acceptance of failure 
where failure is not, according to our best standards, warranted. 

Miss Ryan: Why do you call it failure? Why don’t you say acceptance 
of facts? 

Dr. Zyve: I would feel if we have any task in the elementary school, it is 
to develop in the child the sense of security. That is the one big contribution | 
think that we can make, at least below junior and senior high school. 

Mr. ZAHN: I don’t know that it isn’t possible to develop a sense of security 
out of failure, if success over repeated failures has been achieved. 

Miss Ryan: I don’t think the word “security” is a good word to use. I don’t 
think security is stimulating enough—a sense of confidence. 

Mr. KLINE: It seems to me that our discussion has shifted around to where 
it always does, to about 10 or 15 percent of the pupils under our care. As a 
matter of fact, a very large percent of our schools do not give us difficulty even 
under the grading system that we now have. It is the small group of failures 
that we are constantly thinking about—probably because they are the ones 
that give us trouble. 

I want to defend the elementary principals to this extent,—they do know a 
great deal about the technics of discovering facts concerning individual pupils, 
particularly individual pupils that are problem pupils, that are failures. Almost 
invariably their discovery leads to the fact that there is some community situa- 
tion over which they have no control and which they cannot correct, and, as 
was said here before, nothing is done about it. The whole thing, after all, goes 
back to community leadership. May I say something on that? 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: Very good! 

Mr. KL IneE: It is rather simple to mobilize and integrate the influences in 
the community that are favorable to school activity. It is another problem to 
handle two types of influences. One is the commercialized influence that is in 
opposition to the school, politically protected. We all know as principals what 
it means to interfere with that sort of thing. The other is the unorganized in- 
fluence in the community, many times difficult to detect, but having a tre- 
mendous influence on the child, particularly gang influence. 

Another point I would like to call attention to is the fact that many of our 
school districts are not homogeneous. We may have one type of community 
in half the district, another type of community in the other half; so that the 
technic of handling the situation that works in half the community does not 
work in the other half, and you cannot get a unified effort in your community. 
So when you go out to do this thing in a city or even in a small town, very often 
the problem ceases to be theory and becomes practise and you are up against 
problems that are serious. Sometimes they are so serious as to threaten the 





44 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 











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security of the principal in his position and he has to choose whether he will do 
all the good he can and hold his job or attempt to reform the whole community 
and lose his job. 

Dr. McCuure: I would like to take a shot at the superintendents. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: He has worked at both jobs. 

Dr. McCrure: I would like to push Dr. Bayne’s idea just a little further. 
The idea of grade progress, the stairway idea, instead of the ramp, is merely one 
symptom of the difficulty that we have in all of our thinking in America today. 
I tried to elaborate that for the benefit of the superintendents in a chapter in this 
year’s yearbook. I do not know whether they will profit by it or not. But we 
have a tendency to view things in the light of machine concepts today not only 
in schools but in everything else. The grade system is useful because it is a nice 
thing to handle mechanically; it is simple. The system of school marks lends 
itself to averages and various types of mechanical handling. 

Our types of school programs—the platoon school—purr along nicely. I think 
there are many good things about platoon schools. I am using that as an 
example. We have a mechanical type of organization. We think we can get an 
organization of a certain kind and that somehow it will automatically educate 
the children, regardless of whether we are on the job or not. 

One might go on multiplying examples of that sort indefinitely; various types 
of tests frequently become that. The work book which the teacher uses for the 
children sometimes becomes a rest book for her. 

I submit further that Dr. Bayne’s idea and Miss Cutright’s also is to think of 
the school as a place where we cultivate the growth of children and throw out 
the machine concept of a school, a school plant we say, or a school system. Let 
us think of it as a garden where we cultivate the growth of children and we 
will think a little more clearly if we get away from many of these machine con- 
cepts, these mechanical concepts. We then will think of growth as growth and 
conditions which promote growth, both in the school and in the community. 
instead of having to think how a thing is going to work mechanically. We need 
to develop a school organization in terms of purposes, rather than to let the 
organization become the dominant thing. 

Dr. Peyser: I would like to point out another implication of Dr. Bayne’s 
point of view. If we adopt that point of view, it will be necessary for us to im- 
prove the process of articulation between the elementary and the high schools, 
because according to that point of view the high school can no longer be a 
superior institution which will accept children only after they have attained a 
certain standard of achievement in arithmetic or geography, history and the 
rest. Education must be conceived as a continuous process from the earliest 
grade of the elementary school thru the highest grade of the secondary school, 
in which case the secondary school with each child will have to take up the task 
where we leave it off. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: There are one or two other issues I want to get into 
this discussion. Mr. Thomas, we have been face to face for twenty years in ele- 
mentary schools with a growing movement referred to as the scientific method 





PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 45 





~ 


in education. We have approached its application several times this afternoon, 
What does it hold for the next few years? 

Mr. Tuomas: Well, it seems from our discussion this afternoon that we have 
evidently many problems still unsolved. The thing which most of us, I believe. 
want more than any other thing in the elementary school is to have practical 
solutions. We have heard this afternoon a number of our problems discussed in 
a way which seems rather difficult to answer, but, nevertheless, I believe we are 
beginning to recognize that we do have problems. Most of the difficulty in the 
use of the scientific method, it would seem, has been that tests and measure- 
ments of all kinds have been administered too frequently without understanding 
the relative worth of the individual. Things have been too much on a group basis. 

Whether or not we accept the hope that we shall have three or five times as 
many educational workers, the fact still remains that principals are overcrowded 
with the details probably that should be handled by some other persons. Th 
principal then considers too frequently the scientific method just as the admin- 
istration of group tests and not in their relationship to the individual. 

Now there is another thing, however, that the people in the field of educa- 
tional measurement probably should consider more carefully, and that is that 
the science of education or the scientific method in education differs from the 
scientific method in physics or in mechanics. We are dealing with human beings 
as has been brought out here before. Therefore, it seems dangerous sometimes 
to apply the same mechanics or technics of the mechanical world to these chil 
dren in the school. The problems that we face are practical problems; whether 
we agree that the distribution of wealth is as it should be or not, the fact re- 
mains that we have more and more children in classes. How are we going to 
deal with them? Are we going to hope for the idealistic stage where we may 
reduce our classes by three or four times, or are we going to say, ‘“This is the 
situation we face at present. How may we deal with it? What are we going to 
do?” Are we going to say that it is impossible to handle, or for a teacher to work 
with fifty children at one time, or are we going to attempt to find different ways 
of working with those children? 

Teachers feel, I believe, that it is impossible to give each child individual 
help or individual attention. Perhaps there are ways that problem can be han- 
dled with the large classes or with even larger classes: we do not know. I think 
that is one typical example of the practical things we face at the present time in 
the field of the scientific method in education. If we recognize our problems, we 
will try to experiment and find solutions for what we actually face. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: We have been sitting patiently for an hour and a half. 
I propose a three- or four-minute recess to give those who need to go a chance to 
get out gracefully, and all of us a chance to stand and stretch and say hello to 
our neighbor; then we will have a free-for-all. 

(A five-minute recess was taken.) 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: I am sure I speak the satisfaction of the members of 
the panel that so many of you have stayed for the second round. 

Three members of the panel will have to leave in a half hour, so I will call | 
another recess in thirty minutes. Within these thirty minutes, the panel permits | 








46 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY | 





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me to say that they subject themselves to your questions. If you have questions 
this is the chance to get them into the record and we will answer them, if we can. 

Mr. W. L. DARNELL (Austin, Texas): Dr. Peyser, if I understand correctly, 
has the plan of mobilizing the forces in his community, using them in such a 
way as to assist in molding the trend of his school, possibly with the purpose 
of better preparing the students in his school to fit into that community. Is that 
the way I understand it? 

Dr. Peyser: No. I should not regard my objective in as passive a way as that. 

Mr, DaRNeELL: What I have in mind is that the child in your community may 
not remain in that community. In one of my schools, I have about a 20 percent 
turnover every year. It doesn’t seem to me that I should prepare the child for 
the type of service in which the people of that community are engaged. He lives 
in the gashouse district. I think possibly I should try to train him for something 
beyond the gashouse district. 

Dr. Preyser: Dr. Zyve wants to know what type of community that child 
enters after he leaves your community. 

Mr. DarNELL: I am trying to prepare him for something possibly better than 
the community in which he lives. He may go into another gashouse district. 

Dr. ZyvE: He is apt to. 

Mr, DarnELL: Yes, he is apt to, but I hope not. 

Dr. Watson: Why don’t you prepare him to attack the problems of that 
region so that he can make a better district than that present gashouse district, 
so that when he goes into any other kind of a community, he can help build a 
better community than he finds there? What about creative participation in 
making a better community? Isn’t that the real answer? 

Dr. Peyser: I think I might best satisfy the request of the gentleman who 
asked that question by indicating concretely how we are attempting to handle 
that situation. We have gathered together, first thru the organization of a 
parent association and then thru the enlargement of this parent association into 
a community organization, those men and women of the community who can 
be interested, whom we have been able to interest in the problems of the 
school and in the problems of that neighborhood. We have also linked up with 
the various social and educational agencies that are functioning in that neigh- 
borhood. This organization has divided itself up into a series of committees, 
one on housing, another on the prevention of delinquency, a third on street 
safety, a fourth on recreation, and thru the gamut of social and individual needs 
of the residents of that community. 

Surveys have been made by these committees of the situation in the com- 
munity with reference to the problem upon which they are specializing. Where 
needs are discovered, efforts are made to correct the situation. We discovered 
the absence of playgrounds in that community. The organization developed a 
number of playgrounds. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: I think that illustrates pretty well the way you have 
done it. I know Dr. Peyser can talk three hours on that. 

Mr. Pertscu (New York, N. Y.): I am very much interested in Dr. Peyser’s 
plans. I would like to pursue his thought a little farther. I am wondering about 





PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 47 








this, Dr. Peyser, there are communities of low economic level and those of 


average level and those of very high level. Now if you make the issue of sup- 


plementary services a matter for discussion and action by the community groups, 


I see danger of inequality of opportunity. In other words, along the water front 
and in the factory sections, you find communities which are not able to afford 
the accommodations or to urge or to fight for or win the accommodations that 


can be won, say, in the more privileged communities of Westchester, Long Island, 


Flatbush, or Riverdale. 

I am seriously concerned about affording equality of opportunity to all chil- 
dren. I wonder what supplementary services can be offered by the city or by 
the state in order to make up the slack in opportunities offered by local com- 
munities. 

Dr. PeyserR: When the drought struck the Middlewest, President Roosevelt 
enunciated the formula that that drought was a calamity not only to the Middle- 
west, but to the entire United States of America, and he called upon the people 
of the United States of America to assist in the solution of the problems that 
the Middlewest was facing. 

I think the same point of view should be advanced as regards community 
organization and treatment within a city community. I think the better endowed 
sections should cooperate. I think the city should get behind such a movement 
in an organized fashion. I do not think that this should be left to individual 
initiative. I think it should be set up as a program and this program integrated 
with the educational policy of the school system. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: Is there any other question? 

Mr. FRANK UNDERWOOD (St. Louis, Mo.): Dr. Brim started off the discus- 
sion, it seemed to me, in a strong defense of rugged individualism. That leads to 
differentiation. Now what I would like to know—-and I didn’t get very much 
from the general discussion along this line—is, what are we going to do about 


that factor which is probably the most important factor in the success of a 
democracy, social cooperation, influences that will lead to integration. Now prin- 
cipals may need some rugged individualism, but don’t principals need some con- 


cept of social cooperation and some technic of social cooperation and integration 
of the work of all the principals in a system? 


CHAIRMAN Morrison: We will give Dr. Brim and Dr. Watson both a chance 


at that. 
Dr. Brim: I said the principal should have the responsibility for thinking out 


the answer to his questions, but not that his question should be based merely 
upon personal feeling or upon local conditions. He would, of course, if he is work- 


ing in a system in a city, realize that he is a part of the city and that he must 
work out a program that is consistent with the welfare of the city as a whole. 
The fact that he does his own thinking, if he thinks, does not mean that he will 
be a rugged individualist. 


Thinking means that we realize our social independence and our social re- 


sponsibility. That, however, will be something not dictated from the office but 
arrived at by the brains of the man who is to do the work. 
Dr. McCcure: Every problem in a community is an opportunity for the prin- 





48 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 








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cipal to bring about this cooperative integrated action on the part of the com- 
munity, and so every citywide problem is an opportunity for the superintendent 
to bring together the interests that should be working on that problem, including 
the principals. 

Dr. WATSON: While that question is before us, may I have just one comment? 
People use that word “cooperation” to mean two very different things. Some- 
times they use it to mean you do along with everybody else the thing that you 
are being told to do, or else you aren’t cooperating, in which they mean carrying 
out a purpose which they had no part in formulating, but they are supposed 
simply to come in on the executionary half of the thing. 

Now the kind of cooperation that we want in a democracy and that I assume 
others have in mind is the kind in which the participants begin their participa- 
tion right from the very beginning with the difficulty that they are up against 
and what is to be done about it. They help make the plans and they share in 
the purposes and then they do participate in carrying the thing out. They do 
cooperate, but it is not fair to ask them to cooperate just after you have thought 
out what should be done and go tell them. 

Dr. McCiure: You won’t get cooperation if you undertake it in that fashion. 

Mr. Moss: I would like to ask, is it one-way traffic or two-way traffic in this 
matter of cooperation between the school and the community? I have been 
hearing much about what the school does in the community. I would like to ask 
of the people who are helping us in our thinking this afternoon, does the com- 
munity have any participation in the school? Is it one-way or two-way traffic? 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: Who wants to answer that? 

Dr. Brim: Since I started off, I will just say this: When I said the principal 
and his staff should think together, I meant the teachers and the children and 
the principal and the community would think together. Therefore, there is a 
contribution from the community, the parents, to the school, as there would be 
between the principal and teacher. 

Dr. McCuvure: I would just like to comment again along the same line as on 
this other question, that the principal who thinks it is a one-way street is going 
to find himself going up one street and the procession going in the other direction 
around the corner. If he doesn’t get the community point of view, which fre- 
quently will be better than his on many of these questions, if he doesn’t make it 
a community problem and community project, he is not going to get very far in 
leading his community. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: He will probably find it is a blind end street. 

Dr. Bayne: I think there are communities where it will be largely one way. 
I mean there are communities, probably not outside of New York, where condi- 
tions are such (I can see them very clearly) that the only vitalizing, improving 
force comes from that school. Now in that situation, the major influence will go 
from the school to the community. I know of communities in our own great 
metropolitan city, and the principal of one of those schools is sitting before me 
now, where the school has helped to clean up a neighborhood, make conditions 
livable fot children, and the principal did it almost single-handed. 


PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 49 











I am not saying there are other influences that might not be coming in to 
him at the same time, but the major influence was a radiating one. 

Miss Ryan: Is that the function of a school, to clean up a community? 

Dr. BAyNneE: I think so. 

Mr. Lupwic (New York, N. Y.): The last question was the job today “and 
tomorrow and tomorrow.” I have a conference with the teachers of my school 
and I present and discuss with them four of the fundamental objectives of the 
school. I say to them, “Now your teaching ability is to be evaluated not so 
much in what you do academically, that is, with an achievement test or an in- 
telligence test to which your class will be subjected, but I am going to try to 
evaluate your teaching on the basis of character development, of personality 
development and every opportunity that you give your class in social relation- 
ships, social experiences and also every opportunity that you give your class 
in developing those social traits that we classify as good citizenship.” 

Then they turn to me and say, “How are you going to evaluate that teach- 
ing?’ Can you help me as a principal to face that problem? 

Much as I believe it and much as the teacher is willing to accept it, may | 
just give this illustration to show what I mean? We developed a general pro- 
cedure for the election of the school officers in the general organization. There 
was the greatest enthusiasm; speeches were given by the pupils in the assembly 
that would have done credit to an adult. Posters were made up by the art depart- 
ment. Certainly there were numerous opportunities for the development of the 
various phases of the curriculum, art, English, and so on. And then the ballots 
were passed out in the classrooms and they did their voting. 

I purposely went around to as many rooms as I could reach. I have over 67 
rooms in the building; I couldn’t reach them all. All I did was go in and say, 
“How did the election come out?” Of course, I wasn’t interested in that; |] 
wanted to see what they were doing, how the pupils were getting the social 
cooperation and social experience. I entered one room: the teacher had _ the 
ballots on the desk and turned to me and said, ‘The ballots are here. I am going 
to count them after the class goes home.” 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: I guess Mr. Ludwig has answered his own question, 
hasn’t he? 

Mr. ZAHN: May I suggest that Dr. Bayne’s question of the one-way traffic 
between school and community can never really exist? Even what seems to be 
one-way traffic never is, because the instance that he stated brings back in a 
spiritual relationship between every teacher and every pupil, every parent and 
every pupil, every parent and every teacher, every principal and teacher, some- 
thing in a bettered spiritual relationship that is more valuable than this thing 
we are talking about in terms of mechanics. That spiritual relationship is per- 
haps the most valuable thing and it really constitutes the second way of the 
two-way traffic, even tho it is not evident on the surface. 

Dr. Brim: May I say a word with reference to the point? As we look to 








these newer, more recent and more complex values, let’s remember this, that 
there is no pattern answer. The good, again, is relative to the situation and as | 
we try to work for this new kind of education of value, let’s not look for a| 





50 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY | 


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standard measure, For these values, there is nothing adequate to judge the good 
or the bad except an informed intelligence on the job. We may get help, but it 
is help to our thinking, not a substitute for it. 

Dr. WATSON: May I say a word about that problem of valuation? I have 
spent quite a lot of time trying to get at the problem of measuring character 
and personality traits. It seems to me we can discern four stages in which schools 
are operating at the present time, practically, to apply the philosophy Dr. Brim 
so well stated. 

One of them is that in which they report simply a mark for certain traits, so 
much for citizenship, or for neatness, or cooperation, or deportment, or some- 
thing of that sort. That is probably the least satisfactory. It gives no valid basis 
for knowing what has happened beyond the fact that the teacher is favorably 
impressed or is not very favorably impressed. 

From that we went on to try to develop more objective measures and we have 
a second stage, the attempt to use tests for one kind of behavior or another. 
Most of us are pretty well convinced at present that that is not a feasible ap- 
proach, partly because of the amount of time that has to be put upon it. It is 
possible to get valid test results if you have sufficiently highly trained people 
giving enough time to it, who have no time to do anything else to children, if 
you really did a satisfactory measuring job. That rules it out as far as education 
is concerned. It is interesting for psychological experiment. 

We came into a third stage when we began the case study description of in- 
dividuals. We have to understand this child more or less genetically. We will 
find out something about his home background and put together the various 
test results; we have the impressions various teachers have of him, and we will 
give a little personality sketch. That was a great improvement and can be used 
in a very valid fashion in most places. 

I think we are going to have to go one step beyond that, namely, to case 
studies of situations, rather than of people, because the character that is formed 
can be judged very much better in the light of what all the circumstances of 
the case were than it can be in any other fashion. So we have what might be 
called the anecdotal kind of recording, in which day after day, and week after 
week, and month after month, the wise principal accumulates fairly detailed ob- 
jective accounts of what he said and what the teacher said and then what he 
did and then what they did and how that situation Worked out. If you have those 
observations accumulated over a period of time, you can pretty well tell the 
quality of adjustment to the situation that is coming out of it. Of course, that 
takes time to do; it takes training to be able to do it well, to evaluate it. It is 
part of the business of providing the economic base that we ought to have for 
the whole program to be able to do this, too, but that is the line along which it 
seems we are able to make the greatest progress at present. 

Dr. Zyve: I think your suggestion for increase in personnel might very well 
be for assistants under somebody’s direction, rather than additional experts, 
if you are suggesting a program of that sort. I mean the big problem in that is 
the fact that the teacher cannot do all those things himself with a group of 
forty children. 








PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 51 











Mr. HoLitincsHEaD: I was wondering, Dr. Watson, isn’t there another aspect 
to that problem? Don’t we have to know, as principals or teachers, what situa- 
tions would provide opportunities for learning these traits or these attitudes 
which you are attempting to measure? I don’t think we have any right, for in- 
stance, to measure a child upon, say, his ability to cooperate when we never 
provide him with an opportunity for cooperating. 

Dr. Watson: That is why I say measure the character of the situation 
rather than the character of the child and you will learn something about your 
child. 

Mr. HoLiiIncsHEeAD: What are these situations? 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: In other words, you are saying we have a responsibil- 
ity for helping to create situations in which children will live? 

Mr. HOLLINGSHEAD: Provide learning opportunities. 

Miss CuTrIGHT: I want to follow thru Dr. Watson’s suggestion just a bit 
farther. We have had suggestions this afternoon for sending home reports merely 
saying the child was a success. I wondered what a success was. 

We also had suggestions coming from the floor that teaching success should 
be rated on the degree to which children develop character or social responsi- 
bility. I wonder how we will measure these things. 

I proposed a moment ago that what we needed to do was to build some sort 
of a ramp which would take the place of our grade notions. I propose again that 
we need to develop some technic which will measure progress as child develop- 
ment, and that this ramp should be constructed of more than simply academic 
achievement. We should build into that, consideration of development of ability 
to take social responsibility and physical development. I would not be opposed, 
as some members here seem to indicate, to including consideration of intel- 
lectual development, that is, ability to read, write, and solve problems. I would 
like to propose as one method of constructing this ramp somewhat the idea 
Dr. Watson has proposed that we pass on from teacher to teacher a sketch of 
the child and that this sketch of the child, call it accumulative record if you 
wish, will contain certain pertinent remarks about the child’s home background, 
certain pertinent remarks about the child’s personality, that is, his classroom 
behavior, his liabilities and his assets; that that record contain certain indica- 
tions of his progress in reading, writing and arithmetic, and by passing on this 
record from teacher to teacher, and from year to year, the teacher and the prin- 
cipal may, by studying that record, gain some notion as to what progress the 
child is making and adjust the school situation to give progress. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: I don’t want to be too arbitrary in this, but I promised 
some of our friends here to observe the clock. We have sat very patiently and | 
think rather strenuously thru two hours’ discussion. I promised to call a halt 
here. What is your pleasure? Shall we adjourn this discussion now, or shall 
we take a three-minute recess and carry on for another half hour? 

(Cries of “Carry on!’’) 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: We will have a three-minute recess and if there is 
anybody left at the end of the three minutes we will go on for thirty minutes 
longer. I promise you we are not going any longer than that. 


52 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 








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(A three-minute recess was taken.) 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: There is one question that is causing me a good deal 
of concern right now, because I do not know the answer to it. Read the last 
question on the sheet in your hand. Everywhere I turn, there is talk of social 
reorganization. I am wondering what responsibility I have, you have in dealing 
with the teachers of these children in the elementary school. Dr. Watson, what 
do you say? 

Dr. Watson: Well, Mr. Chairman, I don’t know whether to answer your 
question or to throw it out to the audience. I have profited so much more by 
the second period here than I did by the first, in which we did most of the talk- 
ing, that I am inclined to throw it out to the group. I wonder whether it wouldn’t 
be wise to see what some of them have to say about it and see whether we wouldn’t 
learn more by talking at least in the form of questions they would like to raise 
along that line. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: All right, the question is ruled out unless you have 
some questions, 

Mr. Myers (Philadelphia, Pa.): I would like to know, particularly, Dr. 
Watson’s ideas about what social attitudes we are to expect of children at the 
end of the elementary-school period. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: What we now call the end of the sixth grade? 

Mr. Myers: Yes. 

Dr. Watson: I would say four things; one of them, by that time they should 
have come to some understanding of the grand trends of this society. I don’t 
mean by that all the details of it, but they should know in general the nature 
of the period in which we are living, a period which, just to give one charac- 
teristic of it, perhaps the most important single one, for a hundred years or 
more had a certain system of economic distribution that helped us onward and 
upward. It had its ups and downs, and so on, and then began to contract. They 
should see what it means to live in the period in which that declining standard 
of living, again with ups and downs, but generally contracting, is forcing us 
to cut down our education, cut down our playgrounds, cut down our health 
services and all the rest of it, to a point where great groups in the community 
are saying, “We have got to break with it in some fundamental fashion and to 
bring about the kind of change that will help us to realize our ideals.” 

Mr. Tuomas: How do we know this is not just another down? How are we 
so sure it is constantly contracting? 

Dr. Watson: If we are not sure, we have some studying to do, and those of 
us who are not, will find events our best teacher. We can start with this group 
here and say, how many of you are getting a 15 percent increase over your in- 
come a year ago? If you are not, you are worse off because prices have advanced 
in that proportion. In spite of the best efforts of well-intentioned people within 
the framework of the old order, the purchasing power of the mass does not rise. 
The thing that is accepted as prosperity or recovery within the framework of the 
cycle that you are talking about is increase in profits, which is just about like 
increase in fever in a sick patient, as far as the health of his system is concerned. 

A good many things have happened to answer your question in more detail. 





PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 53 











Children should know at least not only what is happening as a fact but some- 
thing of why it is happening, that the frontier is closed in, that technological] 
progress has made it possible to manufacture many goods with few men, that 
world markets have been closed by the tariffs that have been set up roundabout. 
that population is becoming essentially stationary. 

I have stated those in adult terms, but they can all be stated so that a fifth- 
grade child can understand generally the situation that has closed in about us 
and put us in this ever-deepening crisis. I would like him to learn more about 
it as he grows older, enter into it more fully; but just that idea was my first 
point. 

I think my second, third, and fourth points are not so very vicious and I will 
state them briefly so we can get back to discussion again. I will say the co- 
operative method we have been talking about is extremely important. He should 
come out of these six grades able to sit down and face a problem with other 
people. I mean to begin way back at the beginning of the problem, think it thru, 
work out a plan, carry out his part of it, cooperate with other people with whom 
he does not entirely agree in a friendly fashion, working toward common ends 
as far as they can be found. He should be skilled at doing that, much more so 
than we are at present. 

One quarrel I had with a lot of the suggestions made during the first part of 
the period was they were so terribly individual in the standards set for success 
and failure, rather than perhaps testing things in terms of group success and 
group failure, which may be more important for our purposes. 

In the third place, if we are going to have to rebuild America, build a new 
society, rehouse ourselves, replan our method of distributing wealth and the 
like, then I am quite sure that children ought to have an experience in creative 
work, in doing things differently from the way in which they have been done 
before, particularly as far as concerns their social institutions, their life in the 
school, in the community. 

While I liked what Dr. Peyser had to say about going out into the community 
where there weren’t playgrounds and so working that there came to be play- 
grounds, that is what I meant by creative participation and changing things 
and bringing them more nearly to the fore as we would like to see them. 

Then in the fourth place I think it is always characteristic of a period of great 
transition like this that these children as they grow up will have to make deci- 
sions which will separate them rather sharply from the authority and wisdom 
and personal influences of the past; so that I should like to see them just as 
adequate in themselves, just as independent, just as able to do their own think- 
ing, to stand on their own feet, to meet opposition of those who disagree with 
them as they could possibly be. If we succeed in doing those four things, the 
grand picture of what is happening in its gross, bald outlines, the cooperative 
method, well-skilled, creative participation that has been happy and success- 
ful, and a solid and firm independence of thought, then I think we will have 
achieved what we ought to do in the elementary school in social attitudes. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: Questions? 

Miss ALIcE KELIHER (Hartford, Conn.): I may seem for a moment to be 





54 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 


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taking you away from the question you asked, but I think we have a rather 
fundamental consideration that is basic to it, and that is the problem of how 
our teachers have been and will be educated, not only in pre-service education, 
but how they are going to be handled in their in-service education in terms of 
this question. I think that the four points Dr. Watson has raised ought to be 
stated directly over again in terms of teachers and in their work with schools. 
I have been a little disturbed by the suggestion here that you can go around and 
rate teachers in what they are getting in the way of character development. I 
think we have to dismiss the notion of rating teachers just as much as we dis- 
miss the notion of rating children, because teachers are going to be personalities 
dealing creatively with situations in which they find themselves. You will say 
instantly, of course, ““No, that isn’t true; that can’t be done. We have got to 
look forward to a day when we have a professional attitude in teaching, when 
we are trained for it and when our teachers are so handled in supervision and 
administration.” 

Take these four points. Teachers have got to be trained, as I see it, with years 
of understanding of what social changes are going on under their feet. They have 
got to work with us as supervisors and principals thru a distinctly cooperative 
method. If that is to function with children, it has got to function with teachers 
in our administration and supervision. Their work must be creative and, there- 
fore, we cannot go from teacher to teacher and expect to see the same thing going 
on in the two rooms that are next door to each other. 

The fourth point that they must be adequate persons in themselves, it seems 
to me, is extremely significant in that our job, or one of our jobs for producing 
this new social situation as principals and as supervisors, is to help teachers to 
realize an adequate self, a fearlessness of approach, a creativeness in application 
of their energy. To do that it seems to me we have got to build a highly profes- 
sional attitude in our school. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: Very good! 

Mr. Myers: Would it be fair to assume that that which we have been ac- 
cused of doing, say teaching subjectmatter to pupils, is a simpler thing than is 
being asked of us here? Would that be a fair assumption? 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: We have learned a good many things about teaching 
reading to children even. 

Mr. Myers: If the teaching of reading and other subjectmatter is a more 
simple thing than what is being suggested we should do, considering the aver- 
age teacher and the fact that there is much fault to be found with the way he 
has done the simpler thing, how much are we to expect of this more difficult 
thing? It seems remarkable that there has been so much discussion about the 
principal’s job and so little talk about the teacher, about the personality of the 
individual teacher. No matter what happens, if the different individuals on the 
panel had their way, it would still depend upon the ability of the teacher in the 
classroom to do the thing that is to be done. Of course, I can see what is being 
asked could be done, and is being done, by the relatively small number of ex- 
cellent teachers that we have now. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: I am glad there are not too many teachers here. 





PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 55 











Mr. Myers: I was going to say in the beginning—I didn’t want to be facetious 
—that either Dr. Watson has been, and is, a much better teacher than | am, oy 
that he has dealt with children who are much more developed than the type of 
child that I meet in my work. I try to teach such simple, comparatively simple 
things as the workings of a government, I mean the simple organization of a city 
government, and one has difficulty in doing that when one gets into the theory 
and social philosophy. I think you are asking too much of elementary-school 
people. 

Mr. HOLLIncsHeEaD: Isn't it possible there, Mr. Myers, to give our children 
the opportunity of learning these attitudes and ability in the solution of their 
own problems of social living? That is, taking the problems which naturally come 
up in their day-by-day living together and guiding them in their cooperative 
efforts of thinking and planning and working toward a solution of these prob- 
lems. I think there we have a very concrete means. 

Mr. Myers: At their level? 

Mr. HotiincsHeap: At their level, yes, sir; we have to do it. 

Mr. Myers: When you get into the discussion of social problems, our econ- 
omists cannot agree about what is to be done or as to what should be done. I 
do not know, I try to read as much as I can, but I do not know myself what I 
should expect, except I would like certain attitudes, childlike attitudes at the 
end of the elementary school, but they will not be about economics; they will 
be about games and about things in which children are interested. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: Let me break in here, Mr. Myers. I sat at the dinner 
table some weeks ago with a young lad who is not yet eight years of age. He said, 
“Which country do you think should get the Saar Basin, France or Germany?” 

Mr. Myers: You come to my school and see how many of those children you 
will find. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: I think Mr. Myers has given the popular answer. But 
I would like to say to Mr. Myers that if we can reorient our thinking to this 
problem and get our parents reoriented, we will all see miracles happen in the 
next ten years in the thinking of children under ten years of age. I want Mr. 
Myers to stick to his guns; he is right. 

Dr. Peyser: I am going to speak to the point Mr. Myers has made. I am 
afraid that from one point of view we are misinterpreting the concept of atti- 
tudes and are assuming that an attitude is an intellectual concept, whereas it is 
not. It is a mental and emotional set towards a situation or towards a line of 
activity. From that point of view, I cannot see at all the value of trying to de- 
velop in children between the ages of five and ten or eleven years intellectual 
concepts concerning socio-economic problems of the world. I think that an in- 
dividual’s general concepts and general attitudes toward life, toward law, toward 
institutions, toward society, are outgrowths of the more intimate relationships 
that he has experienced in his home, in the school, in the local community, in 
the relationships into which he enters personally. 

I feel that whatever attitudes, social and otherwise, we are trying to develop 
in those children, we ought to develop out of their intimate personality experi- 
ences, moving out in wider and wider circles from the home into the smaller 





56 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 














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community, into the larger community, and into all of the occupational and other 
situations of life. 

Mr. Tuomas: Mr. Chairman, if I may be permitted to inject a little adver- 
tising into this program, the next Yearbook, as you know, of the Department 
of Elementary School Principals is attempting to do just that thing. It is called 
Socializing Experiences in the Elementary School, and it does set up practises 
in which children may engage in the hope that they may develop some of these 
attitudes—attitudes which are normal to the life of the child. 

Dr. McCuvre: A publication of Ann Arbor schools, called Introducing Real- 
ity into the School Curriculum, I think would be of interest to Mr. Myers. 

Miss THORNDYKE (Cincinnati, Ohio): I would like to speak along the lines 
Dr. Peyser was speaking. I have difficulty with the emotional set against honesty; 
stealing is my great practical problem. I know it is a practical problem with 
every principal in a big city. Of course, my own school is in the worst slums 
in the world. I know what I am talking about. 

Only this summer I visited Hell’s Kitchen in New York and the Limehouse 
regions of London, and mine is worse. 

My question is this: a child, not one child, but almost my whole school, steals 
just naturally and instinctively in the kindergarten, first and second grades (he 
has no question about stealing in those grades; here’s an orange, he is hungry, 
it is his for the taking). No questions enter his mind. 

I wouldn’t even consider it a criminal act because I would steal if I were 
very hungry and so would you, possibly. But when he is in my school four or 
five years, then there will begin to be inhibitions against stealing. Would you 
count that a success and mark that growth? 

(Cries of “Surely!’’) 

Miss THORNDYKE: Then Miss Ryan asked this question: “Is it the function of 
the school?’’ Now that is a question I am asked constantly. I am dismissed in 
my pleas for help with, “That is not the function of the school. Don’t pay any 
attention to it.” 

I want to know what I shall do. I know my school is just like many others. 
This gentleman here talked of a one-way, one-traffic school; that is what I have. 
If we are not a beacon light in the neighborhood, we are nothing. They look to 
us for help along these lines, “Can’t you stop the stealing?” Altho they themselves 
are thieves and have served terms in the penitentiary, they don’t want that 
career for their children. 

Now I want to know this: Aren’t the schools of America going to take any 
responsibility for this crime wave that is sweeping over and reaching a peak at 
the age of nineteen when we are just thru with them? Why, surely, I can see it de- 
veloping in my own school in the second grade. They are making little wooden 
guns; they play the game of Dillinger. Banditry and stealing are the things that 
are prevailing in the American schools. 

When I enter my hotel at home, it is the sport of the whole hotel to see a 
little five-year-old child run up with a gun and hold me up—the principal of the 
school. He is holding me up, and of course I laugh and think it is very funny 
and agree with them, and then I think, “What does that mean?” There is no 





PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 57 








stoppage on the sale of these toy guns. I have drawer after drawer filled with toy 
guns. 

Mr. Ross (New York, N. Y.): Speaking of schools, coming back to the ques. 
tion of today, the principal’s job of today, it seems to me the principal’s job 
varies with the very school he administers and of which he is guardian. Speak- 
ing of districts, I have a situation as follows: Here is a school of 2200 adolescents, 
with one out of every two children from a broken home, according to the statistics 
gathered, with the mother the bread-winner, with the home underprivileged eco- 
nomically, so that the earning power never averages more than $15 to $20 a 
week, unless both mother and father are working to double that income, with 
the parents away from the home from morning until eight o’clock at night. 

Now I face the problem of being the guardian in every direction. Where shall 
I go for help? I go into the community. Am I to gather the resources of the home 
and the community to help me, or how far can I go to change that community 
before I can possibly use it as a source of help to myself? 

The problem looms bigger than that of teaching the curriculum, and certainly 
the problem of delinquency is tremendous when you realize that it happens to 
be the area of largest delinquency in the city of New York. I ask myself and ask 
this gathering, what shall be the path of the principal in such schools? 

Miss Ryan: That is the very question I raised when I almost got booed. | 
would like to know how you are going to spread yourself over all this work. If 
you are going to do all the community work and all the work inside of your 
school, I am asking the principal where his greatest responsibility is. You are 
held responsible for certain things in your school, how are you going to find 
time and energy to do all these extra jobs? 

Mr. Ross: I should say that salvation lies in the cooperation of a group of 
teachers in the school who get a vision of the needs of the community and the 
opportunities for service. It is only then that you can get out and do something 
in the community and have the reflection of the school felt in the home and 
within the child. 

Dr. McCcvure: I would like to ask you what your solution for that is. 

Mr. Ross: My own? 

Dr. McCiure: Yes. 

Mr. Ross: I have given the faculty a vision of the problem they face and I 
have encouraged those to work with the problem who have an interest in seeing 
this child advanced to a level that is worthwhile. Secondly, I have enlisted leaders 
in the community who happen to be teachers in taking a hand in making changes 
in the community, having those changes come from members of the group them- 
selves who have risen above the average of their community, rather than having 
certain teachers look down upon a community and attempt to change it from the 
outside. 

Then, of course, I have made use of the possible facilities, in keeping with 
Dr. Peyser’s idea, within that community, using the leadership in that com- 
munity as a leader of it, by which to.lift the rest of the community to a higher 
level of cooperation with the school. 





58 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 











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Of course, I have gone into the school organization, keeping in mind the very 
needs and abilities of these children, needs in terms not only of school but in 
terms of their adjustments to the community they are going to face in a few years, 
community life and the opportunities for living within that community. 

Miss BitpERSEE (New York, N. Y.): Shouldn’t it be a larger problem than 
the problem of an individual school? Since we have, for example, in a city like 
New York these very underprivileged sections—and I am a principal in a school 
that is not quite as underprivileged as Dr. Ross’s, but it is underprivileged— 
we have, I think, made use of community facilities, shouldn’t that be spread to 
other parts of the city? Shouldn’t there be some movement to make people in 
the privileged parts of the city see their responsibility, not only from the view- 
point of the children, but perhaps from the narrower points of view of the prin- 
cipal and teachers? Why should this heavier responsibility be on a few schools 
or a comparatively few schools? Why shouldn’t it be a very wide and broad 
movement to improve the whole feeling toward these communities and make 
people feel that they are responsible? 

Dr. Peyser: Mr. Chairman, don’t you think it is about time we realize there 
are some problems the school cannot solve, no matter how earnestly it may 
struggle with those problems? We must realize there are some problems that are 
not just pedagogical or are not solvable thru the efforts of a group of school 
people, no matter how earnest they may be or how well organized they may be. 
The problem that Dr. Ross is facing is a community problem; it is a race prob- 
lem; it is a problem that challenges the attention and the most earnest efforts of 
every force in society. I think one of the great functions that Dr. Ross and his 
group could serve is that of awakening the conscience of the community, of the 
larger community, to a realization of that problem and of pointing out the way to 
a solution to the larger community, to the city officials, and to everybody else. 
But I doubt very much that any one school, as Miss Bildersee points out, can 
hope to solve that situation. 

Dr. Watson: May I just point to the fact that the contributions of the last 
three or four people who have spoken from the floor ought to be sufficient answer 
for anybody who wonders whether economic problems are very close to the lives, 
concerns, and interests of children. Maybe you do not state them in terms of 
economics, but each of these situations we have confronted, down to the very 
simplest boy that wants an orange while oranges rot on the ground in Florida, 
is an economic situation which children can understand, with which they must 
deal, toward which they do have attitudes. 

As we go out—principals responsible for seven and one-half million children 
who have no means of support except public relief today—we cannot evade re- 
sponsibility for interpreting to them some attitude toward their predicament. 

Miss Ryan: Dr. Watson, would you put their economic problem in the prin- 
cipal’s job ahead of the supervision of the school and instruction for which the 
position seems to be originally appointed? 

Dr. Watson: I would not say ahead of, Miss Ryan, but as one purpose, a 
major purpose for which the principal carries on this supervision and organiza- 
tion. After all, what is he doing it for? What is he trying to achieve in the 





PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 59 











process? I see it as modifying adverbially the action that he carries on as a prin- 
cipal in his job. 

Mr. WAYLAND (New York, N. Y.): After three days of this convention, I am 
reluctantly coming to the conclusion that social change within our own group 
has been so rapid that progressive education is now an orthodoxy. | foresee a 
difficulty in entering the field of character traits, moral and social development 
of right attitudes, and that is the difficulty that Mr. Myers implies in what he 
says about the few teachers who are qualified to do this work. | am afraid that 
if we develop this line a, little more, we shall have worked into a standardized 
pattern in this field, too, and that those many teachers who are not capable of 
careful evaluation of the traits of the individual pupil will simply use a stereo- 
typed procedure that perhaps will not always be the best thing for the individ- 
ual pupil. What I am thinking of, to give an example, is this: We have taken a 
great deal from the findings of the mental hygienists as to the relative extrovert 
and introvert traits of pupils. We are tending now to regard as standard the 
aggressive type of pupil, and the child who is introverted, who is negative, who 
is backward, is diseased mentally. Now are we going to develop or attempt 
to develop aggressive characteristics in all the children, and in that way, per- 
haps as a byproduct, make the subways of the great cities even more barbaric 
than they are today? Or is there not a supreme value for civilization in the intro- 
vert and odd type? Has not civilization developed thru the efforts of these odd 
types? So I am inclined to decry the present attempt to standardize traits, to 
standardize characteristics, to standardize the sort of moral pattern which we 
rather smugly assume to be the best and to be fitted to each pupil. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: Thank you, Mr. Wayland! Lest another one of my 
friends from New York, since I am from New York, gets the floor, I am calling 
this meeting to a close. 

Miss BILDERSEE: May I say just one thing more concerning duties of the 
principal? We have had our duties multiplied; I don’t think there is any limit 
to the number and the type of duties that we must assume. I think we must feel 
that teaching of the subjects is an important duty, but I do think that there are 
very many other duties that have been thrust upon us thru the very rapidly 
growing knowledge of what is necessary for the children. I want to stress the 
point that was made before, that we should have, I think, assistants to help us in 
carrying on the work we certainly should heed. 

Miss Gross (New York, N. Y.): I think we have a big job of education 
ahead of us in orienting our parents to this wonderful program we are thinking 
about. For example, when Dr. Bayne proposes to substitute ramp for stair steps 
in the educational process, what are we going to do about getting our parents 
in sympathy with us in doing that sort of work? 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: I know this crowd is teeming with questions unan- 
swered. We are not going to attempt to answer any more. 

Mr. Lupwic: We here assembled want to express our appreciation to the 
Chairman and to the distinguished ladies and gentlemen seated on the dais for 
the effective presentation of this problem and for the opportunities of discussing 
it in this worthwhile way. 





60 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 


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PRESIDENT Brookes: I want to express our appreciation to Dr. Morrison and 
members of his panel, also to Miss Eva Pinkston, the executive secretary, who 
helped to plan this program. 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: I still insist on making my speech. I want to thank 
most sincerely all the members of the panel for their part in this program. 

Miss Brookes: Wouldn’t you like another one sometime? (Cries of ‘“Yes!’’) 

CHAIRMAN Morrison: These people worked in preparation for this panel; 
they didn’t wait until they came here this afternoon to determine what they 
were going to say or how they were going to put the parts together. 

I want to thank you for the part you have taken, because we couldn’t have 
done it alone. When I walked in this afternoon, I had never faced any program 
I was so afraid of as I was of this one. Because you came and became partici- 
pants in it, it has gone as well as it has. 

There are some issues I should have liked to consider here that we haven’t 
been able to include. If I were drawing any indictment of the American ele- 
mentary school today, it would be not that we have failed in the “gaspipe” 
areas and “‘Hell’s Kitchen,” but that we are failing to meet the needs of those 
exceptional children entrusted to our care. I would like to come back with you 
on another discussion of that subject. 


(Adjournment at four-forty o'clock) 


SECRETARY’S REPORT 
Atlantic City, N. J. 
February 23-28, 1935 


The Department of Elementary School Principais held two general sessions in the Rose 
Room, Traymore Hotel, Atlantic City, New Jersey, February 25 and 27 respectively. 
Mr. Mason A. Stratton, member of the Executive Committee and principal of the 
Brighton Avenue School, Atlantic City, was host at a delicious breakfast given for the 
officers of the Department and the Editorial Committee at the Dennis Hotel, on Sunday, 
8:30 a.m., February 24, 1935. ° 

The usual get-together breakfast of the members of the Department and their friends was 
served in the roof-solarium of the Madison Hotel, Monday, February 25, 7:30 a.m. The 
beautiful surroundings and the splendidly arranged service at the Madison made this occasion 
one of the lovely events of the convention. At this family meeting there were one 
hundred twenty-two present. President M. Emma Brookes gave a word of greeting, and 
stressed the fact that all principals should register early at the hospitality headquarters, 
Crane Building, on the Boardwalk; she introduced the former presidents of the Department 
who were present, made announcements of the activities of the week which would interest 
elementary principals, and called the roll by states to see how many sections of the country 
were represented. Nineteen states were represented by the 122 in attendance. 

A letter of greeting from Miss Elizabeth McCormick, Superior, Wisconsin, past president, 
to those assembled was read by the secretary. (See page 22.) 

The secretary told the group assembled of the great honor which had been brought to the 
Department in the selection of President M. Emma Brookes by the Department of Super- 
intendence to preside at the Thursday afternoon, February 28, convention radio program. 

The semi-annual dinner was held in the Belvedere Room, Traymore Hotel, Tuesday, 
February 26, at 6 p. m. Dr. Lotus D. Coffman, president, University of Minnesota, gave the 
address on “A Plea for Sanity.” 





PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 61 








This delightful occasion was so well attended that all available seating space was utilized 
and many who wanted to be with us could not be accommodated for every ticket had been 
sold and extra tables placed. President Brookes had to make the most of every minute, jp 
extending greetings and making necessary announcements because the officers of the Depart- 
ment had been invited to be platform guests of the Department of Superintendence at their 
evening program at the auditorium at 8:15. 

The New Jersey Elementary School Principals Association presented a complimentary ticket 
to the Hollywood Theater for Wednesday evening to all who registered at hospitality head. 
quarters in the Crane Building. This theater party was indeed a great treat. 


EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MEETING 
Sunday Morning, February 24, 1935 


The first meeting of the Executive Committee of the Department of Elementary School 
Principals of the National Education Association was held Sunday morning in President 
Brookes’ suite, Traymore Hotel, Atlantic City, New Jersey. The following persons were 
present: M. Emma Brookes, president; Aaron Kline, first vicepresident; Edythe J. Brown, 
second vicepresident; Ira M. Kline, third vicepresident; Mrs. Edith B. Joynes, fifth vie 
president; Herbert C. Hansen, Cassie F. Roys, Mason A. Stratton, Executive Committee 
Bess Clement, John Thomas, Editorial Committee; Richard Foster, research director, N.E.A.; 
Floyd Potter, hospitality chairman, New Jersey Elementary School Principals Association; 
and Eva G. Pinkston, executive secretary. 

President Brookes asked Miss Bess Clement, chairman of the 1935 Yearbook, to report 
the plans and progress made by the Editorial Committee. Miss Clement reported that the 
Editorial Committee would like the name of the 1935 Yearbook to be Socializing Experience 
in the Elementary School. She called particular attention to the helpfulness of principals 
and friends of elementary education, who have sent contributions for this yearbook and she 
feels the material which it will contain will be of great help to teachers and principals 
everywhere. A motion was made by Miss Roys, seconded by Mrs. Joynes, thanking Miss 
Clement for the splendid report she had given and to the Editorial Committee for th 
voluminous amount of work accomplished. Motion carried. 

A motion was made by Mr. Ira Kline, seconded by Mr. Stratton, that the recommendation 
of the Editorial Committee be accepted with regard to the name of the 1935 Yearbook 
Motion carried. 

Miss Brookes asked Mr. Thomas, the retiring member of the Editorial Committee, t 
report on plans for future yearbooks, to mention changes which should be made in the 
procedure of the committee and to give any suggestions which he felt would help the Edi- 
torial Committee in their work. 

Mr. Thomas reported: (1) that the 1936 Yearbook should be more of a research type; 
(2) that the study be conducted by a relatively small group; and (3) that the subject selected 
for the 1936 Yearbook be Mental Hygiene or Personality Adjustment. 

At the Cleveland meeting, February 27, 1934, the Editorial Committee recommended that 
the chairmanship of the committee be served the third year instead of second as at present 
This plan was approved but no action had been taken as to who would serve. Mr. Thomas 
said that it was with the unanimous approval of the Editorial Committee that he recom- 
mended Dr. Samuel Berman as chairman of the 1936 Yearbook. The Editorial Committee 
has several studies under consideration for future yearbooks and would like to report on 
them later. A motion was made by Mr. Hansen and seconded by Mr. Stratton that the 
recommendation of the Editorial Committee be approved and that Dr. Berman be chairman 
of the 1936 Yearbook. Mr. Thomas also recommended that the Editorial Committee meet 
this spring to finish important details of the 1935 Yearbook, and to make the necessary 
plans for beginning the 1936 Yearbook, because of the shift of chairmanship. Dr. Foster 





62 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY 











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reported on the work done on the yearbook by the research division. A motion was made 
by Mr. Aaron Kline, seconded by Mr. Hansen, that the Editorial Committee meet about 
May 15. Motion carried. 

The secretary read letters of greeting from Miss Elizabeth McCormick, Superior, Wis- 
consin, and Mr. Earl Laing, Detroit, Michigan. These letters were thoroly appreciated. 

A motion was made by Mr. Aaron Kline, seconded by Miss Brown, that the secretary 
be instructed to write to both Miss McCormick and Mr. Laing, thanking them for letting 
the group hear from them. Motion carried. . 


Monday, February 25, 1935 


The second meeting of the Executive Committee met in President Brookes’ suite, Traymore 
Hotel, Monday, February 25, 9:30 a.m. Those present were: M. Emma Brookes, president; 
Aaron Kline, first vicepresident; Edythe J. Brown, second vicepresident; Ira M. Kline, 
third vicepresident; Mrs. Edith B. Joynes, fifth vicepresident; Herbert C. Hansen, Cassie 
F. Roys, Mason A. Stratton, Executive Committee; and Eva G. Pinkston, executive secretary. 

President Brookes asked for the report of the secretary and that the problems presented 
be discussed. The secretary had prepared a folder for each person present. This folder pre- 
sented the duties of the headquarters office; activities which had been accomplished since 
the Washington meeting; a financial statement from June 1 to January 1; progress made 
in life-membership campaign, which shows that the 100 mark has about been reached; 
membership figures as of February 1, 1935; report on the survey of elementary education 
asked of the U. S. Office of Education; report of facts about nursery schools; and problems 
confronting the Department. 

The secretary’s report also shows that there were 2930 members on February 1, 1935, 
which is 126 ahead of the same date last year. On February 1 there were 73 life members 
and since coming to the convention this number has been raised to 94. 

A motion was made by Miss Roys, seconded by Mrs. Joynes, to accept the secretary’s 
report as discussed. Motion carried. 

After discussion it was decided to take to the summer meeting the ribbons which are at 
headquarters office and to ask the person in charge at the hospitality booth at Denver to see 
that all visiting principals have one. 

A motion was made by Mr. Ira Kline, seconded by Mr. Hansen, that a letter of apprecia- 
tion be sent to Dr. E. E. Oberholtzer thanking him for designating Wednesday, February 27, 
1935, as Principals and Supervisors Day, and to write to President Henry Lester Smith of 
the N. E. A. to see if a day could be similarly designated at Denver. Motion carried. 

A motion was made by Mrs. Joynes, seconded by Miss Roys, that the April issue of the 
National Elementary Principal be an official report of the winter meeting. Motion carried. 

A motion was made by Mr. Stratton, seconded by Miss Brown, that the April issue of the 
bulletin be sold to non-members for $1.00, members to receive it on their membership fee. 
Motion carried. 

A motion was made by Mr. Aaron Kline, seconded by Mr. Hansen, that Mr. Stratton, 
Mrs. Joynes, and Miss Clement be a committee to meet with Dr. Grace Langdon, Federal 
Administrator of Nursery Schools, and report Wednesday morning at the executive meeting, 
about the place nursery schools should occupy in the elementary school. 

After discussion about future membership campaigns, it was decided to work more closely, 
if possible, with enrolment chairmen so as to reach every principal in each state. 

A motion was made by Mr. Hansen, seconded by Mr. Ira Kline, that Miss Eva G. 
Pinkston be made permanent secretary of the Department and that the yearly increments 
continue until the position is comparable to that of the secretary of the Department of 
Superintendence. Motion carried. 

A motion was made by Mr. Aaron Kline, seconded by Mr. Stratton, instructing the presi- 
dent to take proper action to include retirement allowance in the position of permanent 
secretary. Motion carried. 


PRINCIPAL, APRIL 1935 63 














Wednesday, February 27, 1935 


The third executive meeting of the officers and executive committee of the Department 
of Elementary School Principals met in President Brookes’ suite, Wednesday, February 27, 
1935, 9:30 a.m. Those present were: M. Emma Brookes, president; Aaron Kline, first vice- 
president; Edythe J. Brown, second vicepresident; Ira M. Kline, third vicepresident; Mrs. 
Edith B. Joynes, fifth vicepresident; Herbert C. Hansen, Cassie Roys, Mason A. Stratton, 
Executive Committee; and Eva G. Pinkston, executive secretary. 

Miss Bess Clement, chairman of Editorial Committee, and Mrs. Margaret Mendenhall 
Smith, chairman of arrangements, were invited to be present and discuss plans for the 
Denver program. An informal discussion was held and Mrs. Smith, who has been appointed 
general chairman by Dr. A. L. Threlkeld, superintendent of Denver Schools, was asked not 
to make lavish arrangements, but keep the prices within the reach of all. She was to 
invite the principals of Colorado and Denver to make and sponsor the Monday afternoon 
program, and to send to headquarters a final copy of same by May 1, so that it could be 
printed in the June issue of the National Elementary Principal. 

The Department programs will be held on Monday and Tuesday afternoons, July 1 and 2, 
respectively. The get-together breakfast will be on Monday morning, July 1, as usual, and the 
semi-annual banquet will be on Tuesday evening, July 2. Mrs. Smith was asked to make 
complete arrangements for both these social functions, and to appoint her committee. 

Mr. Stratton, chairman of the Professional Relationships Committee, made a splendid 
report of the work accomplished to date. 

A motion was made by Mr. Aaron Kline, and seconded by Miss Brown, that the report 
made by Mr. Stratton be accepted and appreciation be extended to him and his committee 

Mr. Stratton gave a comprehensive report of the meeting he, Mrs. Joynes and Miss 
Clement had had with Dr. Grace Langdon about nursery schools. The secretary read a 
letter received from Dr. Francis Kirkham in which he asked that the Department of Ele 
mentary School Principals sponsor the use of the Club Guide for pupil activities thruout 
the United States as a part of its service to its members in the important field of character 
education. A motion was made by Mr. Aaron Kline, seconded by Miss Roys, that the 
Department of Elementary School Principals is not in a position at this time to adopt or 
sponsor any particular plan of character education. Motion carried. 

A motion was made by Mr. Ira Kline, seconded by Mrs. Joynes, that the request for 
the calendar reform be laid on the table till the Denver meeting. Motion carried. 

A motion was made by Mr. Stratton, seconded by Mr. Aaron Kline, recommending that 
the president appoint two members of the executive board to confer with Dr. R. D. Owen 
Temple University, on the feasibility of a study of spelling reform. Motion carried. President 
Brookes appointed Miss Roys and Mr. Ira Kline to work with Dr. Owen. 

After a discussion as to the ways and means of increasing the membership of the Depart- 
ment, the president appointed a committee to work with the executive secretary and help 
in forming a plan to get more principals to become members of the Department. The presi- 
dent appointed Mr. Ira Kline, chairman, Miss Brown, and Miss Roys. 

A motion was made by Miss Roys and seconded by Mrs. Joynes that Mr. Hansen be 
appointed life membership chairman to work with the executive secretary. 

A motion was made by Mr. Hansen and seconded by Miss Roys that letters be sent to 
Mr. Floyd Potter, hospitality chairman of the New Jersey Principals Association, for the 
delightful hospitality and personal service he and his committee rendered; to Miss Florence 
Mason, in charge of Crane Building hosts and hostesses, also to Mr. Scull of Crane Building 
for his courtesies; to Mr. Francis Budd, president of the New Jersey Principals Association, 
and those who participated in the program Monday afternoon, for their splendid program; 
to Dr. J. Cayce Morrison and those who helped make the Wednesday program the success 
that it was; to Mr. Montgomery, manager, Traymore Hotel, for the many courtesies which he 
and his staff extended; and to Mr. Mason A. Stratton, for the splendid arrangements he had 
made for our social meetings. Motion carried. 
Eva G. PINKSTON, 

Executive Secretar) 


64 THE NATIONAL ELEMENTARY PRINCIPAL 


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