i % 


Ce 
€ 


CY MAR 12.1929 9 


= - , 
0 NID AOL DAL EE LONELS TAS OM OE NI OEE RE EAL I VN NE 5 TO ML i 
+ > rs ‘ ; - _— ; : 


_ NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION 


‘ 


DETROIT, MICHIGAN 





Copies of this advance print of the. Proceedings of thei 
~~ Department of Superintendence for 1916 can be obtained : 
‘of Durand: W.. Springer,’ Secretary, .N.E.A,, Ann Arbor, , 
RB cana for 25 cents per copy. 7 


\ 





NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION 


OF THE 


UNITED STATES 


Proceedings 


of the 


Department of Superintendence 


AT THE ANNUAL MEETING 
HELD AT 


DETROIT, MICHIGAN 
FEBRUARY 21-26, 1916 





ee ee ae 


Composed and Printed By 
The University of Chicago Press 
Chicago, Iilinois, U.S.A. 





CONTENTS 


DETROIT MEETING, 10916 


Secretary’s Minutes—W arriner 

Address of Welcome—Keeler ; 

Response to Address of Welcome—Blair 

What Is Going on in the World—Butler 

The Ford Idea of Education—M arquis , 

Debate: The Best Organization for American Schools Is a ‘Plan Which Shall 
Divide These Schools into Six Years of Elementary Training and Six Years of 
Secondary Training—J udd 5 get aR ey 5S eee 

Pearse 

Greetings—J ohnson 

The Public School and the New American Spirit—Becht 

The Superintendent as the Layman Sees Him—Churchill . 

To Whom Is the Board of Education Responsible ?—Winship . 

Some Suggestions for Improving the Rural-School Curricula—Creelin : 

Joint Discussion: The Minimum Essentials versus the Differentiated Course of 
Study in the Seventh and Eighth Grades—Coffman 

Bagley 
Snedden 
Address—Ferris . 
Brumbaugh 
Willis 

Booker T. Washington: An Appesciation~=Cétens 

High Points in the Los Angeles Plan—Francis 

Significant Developments in Educational Surveying—A yres 

The Thirtieth Man—Finley pecs 

Definiteness and Compulsion in Education— iden 

Manners and Morals: Our Problem—Carmalt 

Scouting as an Educational Asset-—West ‘ 

The National Morality Codes Competition—Fairchild 


ROUND TABLES 
I 


Rouno TaBLe or STATE AND CouNTY SUPERINTENDENTS: 
How Not to Train Rural Teachers—H yatt . 
Rural Supervision in the Mountains of the South—Burkes 
The Status and Need of Rural Supervision—M onahan 


II 


Rounp TaBLe or SUPERINTENDENTS OF CITIES WITH A POPULATION OF OVER 
250,000: 
A First Step in Establishing the Six-Three-Three > acelin 
The Determination of Educational Policies—Snyder . 
The Education of Foreigners for American Citizenship—Crist 


3 





4 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION 
a 


Ill 


Rounp TABLE OF SUPERINTENDENTS OF CITIES WITH A POPULATION BETWEEN 
25,000 AND 250,000: 
Community Activities as a Means of Motivation—Hunter 
Teaching Tenure—Keating . 
A Study of Deviate Children: The Problem of Delinquency and | Submormality 

—Jones ; Reet a ie ; 

Vacation-Club Work—Beveridge 
Short-Unit Industrial Courses—King 


IV 


Rounp TABLE OF SUPERINTENDENTS OF CITIES WITH A POPULATION UNDER 25,000: 
Reliable Measurements of a School System—Wilson . : 
The Ethical as the Essential Factor in Training for Efficient Citizenship i ina 
Democracy—Cookson eae ee eee 


V 


Rounp TABLE OF DirEcTORS OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH: 
The Two Phases of Educational Research and Efficiency in the Public Schools 
—Melcher . ain 
Standardization of Teachers’ Sesspinations-—-C or 
Improving Instruction thru Educational Meamsrement—Bellon 


VI 


Rounp TABLE oF CoMPULSORY EDUCATION, SCHOOL CENSUS, AND CHILD WELFARE: 
Does a Strict Enforcement of the Compulsory-Education Law Assist Teachers 
and Supervisors in Their Work ?—Shallow 
Hervey . 


SUPPLEMENTARY List oF ACTIVE MEMBERS 





DEPARTMENT OF SUPERINTENDENCE 


DETROIT MEETING, FEBRUARY 22-25, 1916 


SECRETARY’S MINUTES 


FIRST DAY 


EVENING SESSION—Tuvespay, FEBRUARY 22, 1916 


The Department of Superintendence of the National Education Association met 
in the Arcadia Auditorium, Detroit, Mich., at 8:00 p.m., with President M. P. Shawkey, 
state superintendent of schools, Charleston, W.Va., in the chair. 

After music by the Central High School Orchestra, Roy Ellis, director, the 
session opened with an invocation by Rev. Charles Henry Williams, D.D., pastor, Second 
Congregational Church, Oberlin, Ohio. 

Addresses of welcome were given by Charles E. Chadsey, superintendent of schools, 
Detroit, Mich., and Fred L. Keeler, state superintendent of public instruction, Lansing, 
Mich., to which response was made by Francis G. Blair, state superintendent of public 
instruction, Springfield, Ill. 

After music by the Eastern High School Quartet, consisting of Howard Parks, Virgil 
Rechte, George MacLaughlin, and William Joy, Nicholas Murray Butler, president, 
Columbia University, New York, N.Y., presented an address entitled “What Is Going 
on in the World.” 

President Shawkey announced the following committees: 


COMMITTEE ON NOMINATIONS 


R. B. Teitrick, deputy state superintendent of public instruction, Harrisburg, Pa. 
Henry Snyder, superintendent of schools, Jersey City, N.J. 
age Rosier, superintendent of schools, Fairmont, W.Va. 
llis U. Graff, superintendent of schools, Omaha, Nebr. 
Henry A. Davee, state superintendent of public instruction, Helena, Mont. 


COMMITTEE ON RESOLUTIONS 


Calvin N. Kendall, state commissioner of education, Trenton, N.J. 


Edward F. Buchner, professor of education and philosophy, Jo Hopkins Uni- 
versity, Baltimore, Md. 
{: A. C. Chandler, superintendent of schools, Richmond, Va. 
ranklin B. Dyer, superintendent of schools, Boston, Mass. 
William S. Sutton, dean, Department of Education, University of Texas, Austin, Tex. 


SECOND DAY 
MORNING SESSION—WEpnEsDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1916 


The meeting was called to order by President Shawkey at 9:30 A.M., in Arcadia 
Auditorium. 

The following program was presented: 

“The Ford Idea in Education”—Samuel S. Marquis, Sociological Department, 
Ford Motor Company, Detroit, Mich. 


5 





NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


Debate: “The Best Organization for American Schools Is a Plan Which Shall Divide 
These Schools into Six Years of Elementary Training and Six Years of Secondary Train. 
ing”—Charles H. Judd, director, School of Education, University of Chicago, Chi 
Ill., affirmative; Carroll G. Pearse. president, State Normal School, Milwaukee, Wis, 
negative. : 
om warren B. Johnson, president, National Education Association, Rock: 


AFTERNOON SESSION—WEpnNEsDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1916 


The meeting was called to order in Arcadia Auditorium by President Shawkey, at 
2:00 P.M., and the following program was presented: 


Cantata: “Walrus and the Carpenter’”—Chorus of three hundred grade-schoo] 
children; Thomas Chilvers, director; Esther White, accompanist. 

“The Public School and the New American Spirit’ —J. George Becht, executive 
secretary, State Board of Education, Harrisburg, Pa. 

“Functions of Boards of School Control” —Ellwood P. Cubberley, professor of edu- 
cation, Leland Stanford Junior University, Stanford University, Cal. This paper as 
read constitutes chap, ix of the author’s book on Public School Administration (Houghton 
Mifflin Co., Boston, Mass., 1916). For this reason it will not appear in this volume. 

“The Superintendent as the Layman Sees Him’”—Thomas W. Churchill, president, 
Board of Education, New York, N.Y. 

“Relation of a Member of a Board of Education to the School System’’—O. M, 
Plummer, director, Board of Education, Portland, Ore. 

“To Whom Is the Board of Education Responsible ?”—Albert E. Winship, editor, 
Journal of Education, Boston, Mass. 


EVENING SESSION—WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1916 
Central High School 


At this time, the students of the Central High School presented a Shakespearean 
review entitled ‘The Passing Show of 1616,” in which were introduced various selections 


from the plays of Shakespeare, as follows: 

Hamlet’s Address to the Players; Petruchio Is Breaking the Spirit of Katherine; 
A Scene from The Tempest; The Dance of the Fairies in Midswmmer-Night’s Dream; 
Caesar’s Ghost Appears to Brutus, from Julius Caesar; Ophelia’s Mad Scene, from Hamlet; 
The Choice of the Caskets, Merchant of Venice; Touchstone, Celia, and Rosalind in the 
Forest of Arden, As You Like It. 


THIRD DAY 
MORNING SESSION—Tuurspay, FEBRUARY 24, 1916 


The meeting was called to order in Arcadia Auditorium, at 9:30 A.M., with President 
Shawkey in the chair. 

The following program was presented: 

“Some Suggestions for seth the Rural-School Curricula”—G. C. Creelman, 
president, Ontario Agricultural College, Guelph, Ontario, Canada. 

Joint discussion: “The Minimum Essentials versus the Differentiated Course of 
Study in the Seventh and Eighth Grades”—Lotus D. Coffman, professor of education, 
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn.; John D. Shoop, superintendent of schools, 
Chicago, Ill.; William C. Bagley, director, School of Education, University of Illinois, 
Urbana, Ill.; David Snedden, commissioner of education, Boston, Mass. 

The annual business meeting followed the program. 

The first order of business was the report of the Committee on Revision and Exten- 
sion of the Work of the Department of Superintendence. This committee was appointed 
in accordance with a resolution adopted at the Cincinnati meeting. Charles E. Chadsey, 
superintendent of schools, Detroit, Mich., chairman of the committee, made the report, 
which was adopted, as follows: 

The committee understands that it was the purpose of the resolution under which it 
was appointed that it should consider the clarifying of the work of the department and 





Superintendence] SECRETARY’S MINUTES 7 


make such suggestion for an extension of that work thru the year as would gather together 

and organize professional information of significant value in the work of administrative 

ising officers and would codify the tenets of this department touching the 

and duties of such administrative and supervisory officers in their several relations 

their community, institution, and board of trustees, to the end that this selected 

information and professionally approved doctrine might aid more effectively these officers 

in meeting and solving their local problems. The committee recommends for your con- 
sideration the following: 

The Department of Superintendence is one of the several departments of the National 
Education Association. As a department it is concerned with defining the nature of its 
activities in a way that will avoid the confusing of its work with that of the other depart- 
ments of the general Association. 

The main constructive lines of the activities of this department are the considera- 

ion of: 
“a 1. Courses of study that will meet the needs of communities. 

2. Enumeration, classification, and promotion of pupils. 

3- The certification of the qualifications of teachers and the methods of securing their 
appointments. ’ 2 ‘ 

4. Proper school supplies and the mode of securing such supplies, including textbooks 
and 


apparatus. s 

s. Plans for school building. 

6. The formation of school districts with regard to population, opportunities, and 
interrelations. 

7. The methods of raising and apportioning school moneys. 

8. The relations of superintendents to boards of education. 

The committee recommends that there be appointed at each meeting of the depart- 
ment a committee on one, or committees on more than one, of the above, or co-ordinate 
formative lines, the members of these committees to represent typical parts of the country 
and to have as their chief object the bringing before the department reports on comparative 
conditions, industrial, cultural, etc., and information on what is being accomplished in 
some of the most progressive schools, and that at least one session of a department meet- 
ing be devoted to hearing and discussing such reports. 

The committee further recommends that the Executive Committee of the National 
Education Association of the United States be requested to ask the Board of Directors 
to make an appropriation of $500.00 to meet the expenses during the current year of such 
committees as may be appointed under these resolutions. 


CuarLes E. Cuapsey, of Michigan 
James M. GREEN, of New Jersey 
NaTHAN C, ScHAEFFER, of Pennsylvania 
Ben BLEWETT, of Missouri 
Witiram H. Maxwe Lt, of New York 
Committee 
The nominating committee reported as follows: 
For President—John D. Shoop, superintendent of schools, Chicago, Ill. 
cai ol Vice-President—Fred L. Keeler, state superintendent of public instruction, 
, Mich. 
For Second Vice-President—John Dietrich, superintendent of schools, Helena, Mont. 
For eee? shacgacet T. Maguire, supervising principal of Washington School, 
5% 


The persons named were unanimously elected as officers for the coming year. 

The Committee on Resolutions presented the following report, which was adopted: 

1. We affirm that every child in the United States of America has definite educational 
needs for which ee provision should be made by proper legislative enactment and 
by ample resources for support. In so far as the public, the superintendents, and the 
teachers are now meeting these needs, the American school system will be able to fulfil 
the larger educational obligations of an expanding modern democracy. 

_ Webelieve that American public education now offers substantial hope for the realiza- 
tion of the fundamental Fars ew of liberty and humanity which will alone support a 
ee neloes and internationalism, by which peace, justice, and progress will be 


We believe that a new international note should be sounded in our educational pro- 
gram, calling upon us to cultivate mutual understandings and interdependence among 
the of the world, and to this end we recommend that our national government 


policy of appointing educational attachés to our embassies and legations in 
countries. 








ee 








8 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 





2. The complete unification and Americanization of all our people is a necessity 
In view of the temporary cessation of immigration, the present is a particularly oppor. 
tune time for the extension of educational agencies that will effectively prepare immi 
children and adults for the rights and duties of American citizenship. 

We recommend that the president of the department be authorized to 
a special committee to co-operate with the United States Bureau of Education and all 
other agencies in realizing this goal. 

3. We rejoice over the progress in state, and especially in national, legislation which 

romises to guarantee the protection of children from the ill effect incident to undesirable 
i neon gd labor at the time when future public welfare demands that they should be jn 
school, 

4. We reaffirm our approval of federal aid to vocational education as proposed in the 
Smith-Hughes bill now before Congress. We believe that the end to be served is so impor. 
tant and so diversified as to require a federal board, the members of which shall be educa- 
tional pe of the interests concerned and shall give their undivided attention 
to the inistration of the act. 

5. We commend most heartily the activities of the United States Bureau of Educa- 
tion and its helpful co-operation in the development of education in all parts of the 
country. We recommend to the Congress of the United States a generous increase jn 
appropriations for the Bureau in order that it may be able to respond to the multiplied 
demands thruout the nation for its services. 

6. We reaffirm our belief that a small board of education is the most efficient instru- 
ment for the administration of the affairs of public schools. 

7. We reaffirm our belief in the value of a bureau of research in connection with the 
superintendent’s office. We also commend the properly conducted, sympathetic, and 
constructive school survey as an aid in the solution of school problems. We look forward, 
however, to the time when every school system will be so equipped in its own regular 
official and teaching staff as to conduct a continuous survey from within. 

8. We affirm that the overcrowding of the elementary schools is a most serious defect, 
requiring, as it does, the individual teacher to be responsible for the instruction and the 
discipline of too many pupils. We believe that it is the part of educational economy 
to provide as speedily as possible for the abolition of this practice. 

g. In view of the progress that has been made in raising the standards of preparation 
for teaching, it is recommended that school boards and superintendents thruout the 
country adopt, as soon as possible, for their guidance in the selection of elementary and 
secondary teachers and supervisors, the highest standards now in force in our more 
progressive states. 

10. In order to secure more efficient teaching we reaffirm our belief in the necessity 
of helpful, sympathetic, and constructive supervision of schools, both city and country. 

11. We reaffirm our belief in the importance of encouraging all agencies designed to 
promote the physical well-being of children. We note with satisfaction the increase in 
the co-operation between health and school authorities. 

We strongly favor physical training that will develop mind and character as well as 
body, but we are emphatically opposed to the introduction of compulsory military train- 
ing into the high schools of the country before mature consideration of the educational 
questions involved therein. 

We suggest the appointment by the incoming president of the department of a 
committee of nine to study and to report upon the proper place for and purpose of military 
education of American youth, and in case it is appointed we recommend that the Execu- 
tive Committee request the Board of Directors of the National Education Association 
to provide for the necessary expenses of this committee. 

12. The country child is entitled to as good a school as the city child. He should 
have a semen yr trained teacher, who is paid an adequate salary. The rural schools 
should have supervision. We believe the county superintendent of schools, as well 
as the'city superintendent, should be chosen solely on account of academic and prof 
pore tee roe executive ability, and character. We are convinced that his selection 

uld be determined by some method other than that of popular election, which is usually 
influenced by considerations other than educational. e further recommend the con- 
solidation of rural schools wherever practicable. i 

13. We express our appreciation of the action of the various railroad associations 
which gave to the members of the department the benefit of the open rate. 

14. We express our appreciation of the hospitality extended to the department by 
Superintendent Chadsey, his colleagues, the citizens, and the various organizations of 
Detroit. 

15. We extend the thanks of the department to President Shawkey for the excellent 
program prepared for this meeting. 





oO ms tS 2 Peo. 














superintendence] SECRETARY’S MINUTES 9 





16. We express our appreciation for the many courtesies extended by the hotel 


ts. 

17. We thank the representatives of the press for the excellent reports of the meetings 
of the department. 

Invitations for the 1917 meeting were presented by Boston, Mass.; Kansas City, 
Mo.; Milwaukee, Wis.; Minneapolis, Minn.; and Omaha, Nebr. 

Five minutes was allowed for the presentation from each city, and it was voted 
that on successive ballots the city receiving the fewest votes should be withdrawn. On the 
first ballot, Boston received 305; Kansas City, 336; Milwaukee, 63; Minneapolis, 47; 
and Omaha, 163. This dropped Minneapolis automatically and Milwaukee asked to 
withdraw. A second ballot was ordered, but after the vote for Boston had been taken 
and before the vote for Kansas City could be counted, Boston withdrew and moved that 
Kansas City be made the meeting-place for 1917 by acclamation, which motion was 
carried. 

AFTERNOON SESSION—Tuurspay, FEBRUARY 24, 1916 


The afternoon was given to round tables, as follows: 


(A) ROUND TABLE OF STATE AND COUNTY SUPERINTENDENTS 


Chairman—Carl G. Schulz, state superintendent of education, St. Paul, Minn. 

“How Much and What Kind of Supervision?”—C. P. Cary, state superintendent 
of public instruction, Madison, Wis. 

“How Not to Train Rural Teachers” —Edward Hyatt, state superintendent of public 
instruction, Sacramento, Cal. 

“Rural Supervision in the Mountains of the South” —Jennie Burkes, county superin- 
tendent, Claiborne County, Cumberland Gap, Tenn. 

° Status and Need of Rural Supervision”— A. C. Monahan, specialist, United 
States Bureau of Education, Washington, D.C. 


(B) ROUND TABLE OF SUPERINTENDENTS OF CITIES WITH A POPULATION OF OVER 250,000 


Chairman—J. M. Gwinn, superintendent of schools, New Orleans, La. 

“A First Step in Establishing the Six-Three-Three Organization’”—Herbert S. Weet, 
superintendent of schools, Rochester, N.Y. 

“The Determination of Educational Policies’—Henry Snyder, superintendent of 
schools, Jersey City, N.J. 

“Textbooks—Principles Governing Their Selection” —Randall J. Condon, superin- 
tendent of schools, Cincinnati, Ohio. 

“The Education of Foreigners for American Citizenship’”—Raymond F. Crist, 
aney or of naturalization, United States Department of Labor, Washing- 


* Adaptation of Schools to Varying Needs” —Ben Blewett, superintendent of instruc- 
tion, public schools, St. Louis, Mo. 


(c) ROUND TABLE OF SUPERINTENDENTS OF CITIES WITH A POPULATION BETWEEN 
25,000 AND 250,000 
Chairman—Ira B. Bush, superintendent of schools, Erie, Pa. 
“Community Activities as a Means of Motivation”—Fred M. Hunter, superin- 
tendent of schools, Lincoln, Nebr. 
“Teaching Tenure”—John F. Keating, superintendent of schools, Pueblo, Colo. 
“A Study of Deviate Children—The Problem of Delinquency and Subnormality” 
—C. Edward Jones, superintendent of schools, Albany, N.Y. 


, “Vacation Club Work”—J. H. Beveridge, superintendent of schools, Council Bluffs, 
owa. 


“Short-Unit Industrial Courses”—M. B. King, Department of Public Instruction, 
Harrisburg, Pa. 
(D) ROUND TABLE OF SUPERINTENDENTS OF CITIES WITH A POPULATION UNDER 25,000 


Chairman—John Milne, superintendent of schools, Albuquerque, N.M. 


“Effective Constructive Economy in Supervision”—W. E. Hoover, superintendent 
of schools, Fargo, N.D. 





10 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 
——_——<——_—_—— jj __ 


“Effective and Economical Supervision in Small Cities” —Walter S. Deffienbaugh 
Division of School Administration, United States Bureau of Education, Washington, D.C 

“Reliable Measurements of a School System”—Otis G. Wilson, superintendent of 
schools, Fairmont, W.Va. 

“The Ethical as the Essential Factor in Training for Efficient Citizenship in a Democ. 
racy”—Charles W. Cookson, superintendent of schools, Troy, Ohio. 

“The School’s Responsibility in the New Nationalism”—W. E. Albig, superintendent 
of schools, Bellevue, Pa. 


’ 


(E) ROUND TABLE OF DIRECTORS OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH 


Chairman—Frank W. Ballou, director, Department of Educational Investigation ang 
Measurement, public schools, Boston, Mass. 


“The Two Phases of Educational Research and Efficiency in the Public Schools”— 
George Melcher, director, Bureau of Research and Efficiency, Kansas City, Mo. 

“Standardization of Teachers’ Examinations”—Stuart A. Courtis, supervisor of 
educational research, Detroit, Mich. 

“Comments on Ten Intelligence Tests Applied to Ten Thousand Children in Grades 
V-VIII Inclusive”—Albert Shiels, director, Division of Reference Research, Depart. 
ment of Education, New York, N.Y. 

“Improving Instruction thru Educational Measurement”—Frank W. 
director, 9 ose, game of Educational Investigation and Measurement, public schools 
Boston, Mass. 


(F) ROUND TABLE OF COMPULSORY EDUCATION, SCHOOL CENSUS, AND CHILD WELFARE 


Chairman—John W. Davis, director, Bureau of Attendance, New York, N.Y, 


“The Control and Supervision of Field Workers”—Henry J. Gideon, chief, Bureau 
of Compulsory Education, Philadelphia, Pa. In the absence of Mr. Gideon, this 
= af Howard W. Nudd, director, New York Public Education Associa sien! ee 
York, N.Y. 

Discussion: R. L. Cooley, director of continuation schools, Milwaukee, Wis,; 
Howard W. Nudd, director, New York Public Education Association, New York, N.Y, — 

“Does a Strict Enforcement of the Compulsory-Education Law Assist Teachers and 
Supervising Officials in Their Work? (a) Increased Assistance; (6) Reduction of Retarda- 
tion; (c) Conservation of the Nervous Energy of the Teacher and Supervising Officials” — 
Edward B. Shallow, associate city superintendent of schools, New York, N.Y. 

Discussion: A. B. Rhett, superintendent of schools, Charleston, S.C.; M.C. Potter, 
eupeniendont of schools, Milwaukee, Wis.; Charles E. Chadsey, superintendent of 

ls, Detroit, Mich. 


“The Policy of Free Education in a Democracy Requires a Federal Child-Labor 
Law, Stringent and Strictly Enforced State Statutes as oo Compulsory Education, 
c 


and a Continuing School Census’”—James D. Sullivan, chief, Compulsory Attendance 
Division, New York State Department of Education, Albany, N.Y. In the absence of 
Mr. Sullivan, this paper was read by Charles F. Wheelock, assistant commissioner of 
secondary education, New York State Department of Education, Albany, N.Y. 

Discussion: Ben Blewett, superintendent of instruction, public schools, St. Louis, 
Mo.; Herbert S. Weet, superintendent of schools, Rochester, N.Y.; Henry Snyder, 
ee of schools, Jersey City, N.J.; Henry D. Hervey, superintendent of schools, 

uburn, N.Y. 


EVENING SESSION—Tuurspay, FEBRUARY 24, 1916 
SCHOOLMASTER-GOVERNORS’ EVENING 


The meeting was called to order in Arcadia Auditorium by President Shawkey at 
8:00 p.m., and the following program was given: 

Chorus: The Pirates of Penzance—Boys’ Chorus, Northwestern High School; 
Clara E. Starr, director. 

Introduction of President-elect John D. Shoop, superintendent of schools, 
Chicago, Til. 

Address—W oodbridge N. Ferris, Governor of Michigan. 

Address—Martin G. Brumbaugh, Governor of Pennsylvania. 

Address—Frank B. Willis, Governor of Ohio. 





ADDRESS OF WELCOME 


FOURTH DAY 
MORNING SESSION—Frmay, FEBRUARY 25, 1916 


The meeting was called to order at 9:30 A.M. by President Shawkey in Arcadia Audi- 
torium. 
The following program was given: 


“Booker T. Washington—An Appreciation” —O. T. Corson, editor, Ohio Educational 
Monthly, Columbus, Ohio. 


“High soy in the Los Angeles Plan”—J. H. Francis, superintendent of schools, 
Angeles, Cal. 
ate Significant Developments in Educational Surveying”—Leonard P. Ayres, director, 
Division of Education, Russell Sage Foundation, New York, N.Y. 
“Report of Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education”— 
Clarence D. Kingsley, high-school inspector, Boston, Mass. 


AFTERNOON SESSION—Fripay, FEBRUARY 25, 1916 


The meeting was called to order by President Shawkey in the Arcadia Auditorium 
at 2:00 P.M. 


The following program was presented: 


“The Thirtieth Man”—John H. Finley, president, University of the State of New 
York, Albany, N.Y. 


“Definiteness and Compulsion in Education”—A. Duncan Yocum, professor of 
educational research and practice, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa. 

“Manners and Morals—Our Problem”—Alice M. Carmalt, assistant professor of 
education, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pa. 

“Scouting as an Educational Asset”—James E. West, chief scout executive, Boy 
Scouts of America, New York, N.Y. 


“The National Morality Codes Competition” —Milton Fairchild, chairman, Execu- 
tive Committee, National Institution for Moral Instruction, Washington, D.C. 


E. C. WarRINER, Secretary 


PAPERS AND DISCUSSIONS 


ADDRESS OF WELCOME 


FRED L. KEELER, STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, 
LANSING, MICH. 


The state of Michigan deeply appreciates the distinction this gathering 
brings to her. Michigan’s hospitality is extended with special joy to a 
meeting of the nation’s educators, and it is with keenest pleasure I bid you 
welcome. 

Many of you are not strangers to Michigan. To many of you this 
meeting is a home-coming rather than a visit toastrange land. It is hardly 
possible to name a city in the United States, certainly not in the West, that 
does not have teachers and educational leaders who were trained in Michi- 
gan. Our state was the first state in the Union to organize a complete 
public-school system from kindergarten to university. For two generations 
Aan Arbor and Ypsilanti stood out as the educational centers of the West. 
We are proud that the newer states have found much in the Michigan 
system worthy of adoption, and we rejoice over the marvelous progress 
our sister-states are making in promoting public education. 








| 
i 
i 
| 
| 





12 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 





The people of Michigan have always maintained a broad view of the 
purpose of education, and with characteristic liberality their educationa] 
institutions are open, not only to the citizens of our own state, but to any 
person from any quarter of the globe who wishes to come. We believe 
that we do most for ourselves when we do much for others. And there js 
abundant reason why we should hold this view. Michigan is great because 
she has done much for others and because she has done much for herself. 
But she stands ready always to acknowledge that she has also received much, 

Michigan was carved from that great empire, the Northwest Territory, 
which was created by the Ordinance of 1787—a document which ranks 
with the Declaration of Independence and the federal Constitution. The 
Ordinance states that “there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary 
servitude in said territory.” That provision was drafted by that greatest 
statesman of the South, who belongs, not only to America, but to the whole 
world—Thomas Jefferson. The Ordinance also provides that “religion, 
morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happi- 
ness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be 
encouraged.” This statement expresses the sentiment of our whole coun- 
try today. That sentiment founded New England, and New England 
gave it tous. Indeed, the very author of the Ordinance of 1787 was Nathan 
Dane, of Massachusetts. It appears, then, that the founding of the North- 
west Territory was conceived in the best thought of the North and the South. 

Not only have we received ideas from other sections of the country, 
but we have received men with ideas. Each state of the Union is permitted 
to place in the Capitol at Washington the statues of two of its favorite sons. 
Michigan has placed there the statues of Lewis Cass and Zach Chandler. 
Both of these men came to us from New England. John D. Pierce, our 
first state superintendent of public instruction—the first state superinten- 
dent in this country—whom we regard as the founder of the educational 
system of Michigan, came to us from New England. James B. Angell, 
for forty years president of the University of Michigan, came to us from 
New England. Dr. Angell is now the president emeritus of the great insti- 
tution to which he has given his life. A great educator, a great scholar, 
a great diplomat, above all a great teacher, we are proud today to honor 
him as the first citizen of our state. 

Five New England states have given us superintendents of public 
instruction. Each New England state has given us a governor, and some 
of them two. President Jackson made a young fellow from Kentucky 
governor of Michigan Territory before he was out of his teens. This was 
done much against our protest. But of course we decided that the only 
thing to do was to agree with Jackson and we gave the boy achance. After 
awhile we liked the boy so well that we adopted him, and when Michigan 
became a state we elected Steven T. Mason our first governor. It is perhaps 
noteworthy that up to the present time Michigan has chosen only one 














—: os oe 


oma Oo: sa hlUGG.S.lUhR CU. 


2 Qo Ge > 


oe ere se owt oOo fF Ss a ons @ ses &# 


—_ 


2 me po 








superintendence] ADDRESS OF WELCOME 13 





governor who was a nativeson. This policy, I must say, has not the unani- 
mous approval of the native sons. 

I repeat, we believe both in giving and in receiving. There are more 
judges on the federal bench today who received their training at Ann Arbor 
than from any other university in the country. There are today twenty- 
six members of the national Congress who received their training at Ann 
Arbor—more than from any other university in the whole country. And 
while we are training these leaders in national affairs, we are richly rewarded 
in the men we take in from the outside. Several of the superintendencies 
of our larger cities are held by men from other states. Three years ago, 
when the city of Detroit was searching for a man to take charge of her great 
system of schools, she went west and brought home from Denver, Colo., 
our present superintendent, Charles E. Chadsey. 

The most American thing in America is our public-school system. 
Nowhere is the work of public education better illustrated than in Michi- 
gan. Our state university, with over seven thousand students from every 
country in the world; our normal-school system, with more than four thou- 
sand students; our agricultural college, with an enrolment of two thousand 
students; a group of splendid denominational colleges, with two thousand 
students; our public schools with over five hundred thousand children in 
attendance—all these testify to our conviction that the safety of our coun- 
try demands that “‘schools and the means of education shall forever be 
encouraged.” We tax ourselves to support our educational establishment, 
not, primarily, to give the young people certain advantages. We regard 
our tax as an investment which richly repays us in the quality of the citizens 
we get to take part in our democracy. We believe that the most expensive 
liability a state can have is an ignorant citizen. When I hear the reckless 
attack made at times by hostile critics of our schools, I wonder what 
counsel gives them inspiration. That our schools are not perfect, no one 
will deny. But when I think how young the institution is, and what pro- 
digious burdens have been heaped upon it all at once, and when I see with 
my own eyes with what marvelous skill the schools of the country discharge 
their responsibility, I declare to you that the American public school chal- 
lenges the admiration of the whole world. A little while ago I visited the 
schools of Calumet, that wonderful mining camp in northern Michigan. I 
found there in one schoolroom boys and girls representing thirty different 
nationalities. The wall before them was draped with the stars and stripes. 
I saw the boys and girls rise and salute their flag. And then in a reverent 
spirit they sang: 

My Country, ’tis of thee, 


Sweet land of liberty, 
Of thee I sing. 


I have heard our national anthem sung many a time before, but since 
that day it has had for me a new meaning. Go into the schools of Detroit 





14 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


some evening and you will find there ten thousand men and women who, 
at public expense, are being given the fundamentals of an education. 
of these are foreigners who are being taught our language and who are being 
taught the meaning of American citizenship. 
My friends, I will close as I began: Michigan appreciates the honor of 
entertaining this great meeting of the nation’s educational leaders. We 
welcome you the more because you are engaged in a work close to the 
hearts of the people of Michigan—a work we regard as the most important 
business in our country. We welcome you because your presence will be 
an inspiration to us this week, this year, and the years to come. In behalf 
of the sterling citizenship of our state; in behalf of twenty thousand teachers 
—the most enthusiastic, loyal, and devoted teachers that ever blessed a 
great state; in behalf of one million of the most splendid boys and girls; 
in behalf of the superintendents and teachers of Michigan here present, 
I extend to you a hand of welcome, 


RESPONSE TO ADDRESS OF WELCOME 


FRANCIS G. BLAIR, STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, 
SPRINGFIELD, ILL. 


Speaking for the members of this great Association, I cannot assume 
that your welcome extends any farther than to us as a body of men and 


women engaged in a great work. I cannot assume that your welcome 
extends to the ideas which we bring, to the educational programs and 
resolutions which we shall here formulate. This fact is not mentioned 
as a matter of complaint, but rather to raise a question which strikes at 
the very spirit of American life. It is charged that the people of the 
United States have scant regard for the opinions of their leaders in any 
field of thought, that they treat with indifference or contempt the opinions 
of experts, that they resent authority, and show little respect for law. 
I cannot, of my own knowledge or experience, assert that this attitude is 
peculiar to America, but some who are widely traveled and deeply learned 
in the affairs of nations declare that nowhere else in the world are the 
leaders of thought—the experts—held in such light regard as in this great 
democracy. 

In the face of this great world-crisis, it is becoming in us as the leaders 
of education in this great democracy to review seriously our educational 
creeds and philosophies to see whether this gross national defect is in any 
way chargeable as an outcome of our educational system. 

Of course, some of it results directly from the very form of our govern- 
ment. Its cornerstone is the Declaration of Independence, whose glowing 
lines declare “that all men are created equal and are endowed with certain 
inalienable rights.”” No one who believes in the true spirit of a democracy 
will in any way try to tarnish the luster of those shining, glorious words, 





a Oe a ee ae ae a ee a ee ee eS ke Re 


ra se Ooo ele ae ee 


oe 


e 
d 
e 
d 
d 
ut 
le 
y 
1S 
y. 
is 
d 
n€ 
at 


= eo 


Superintendence] RESPONSE TO ADDRESS OF WELCOME 15 


put he will stupidly err if in accepting the doctrine that all men are created 
equal he concludes therefrom that the judgments of all men are equally 
trustworthy uponall questions. No one will lightly cast a doubt upon the 
soundness of this doctrine of equality in so far as it relates to equality of 
opportunity. The cynic may deny it and the unfortunate may doubt it, 
but the man of faith, the patriot, will ever hold it as a sound and precious 
truth, altho he knows that equality of opportunity does not mean equality 
of condition or attainment. This gospel of equality of opportunity is the 
modern Jacob’s ladder on which are seen ascending and descending, not 
angels, but boys and girls, menand women. Who are these that are descend- 
ing? They are the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren 
of those men and women who heard the call of opportunity and who, 
thru heroic effort and merit, climbed to the very top, honored by the 
people as worthy leaders, and blessed as noble benefactors, but whose 
offspring lost the gleam of the star and the call of opportunity, and foolishly 
assumed that achievement and merit can be transmitted from father to 
son, and stupidly erred in thinking that in America positions of social and 
civic preferment are hereditary. So down they come, some of them reluc- 
tantly, some of them resentfully, but nevertheless they descend to get a 
new point of view and a new start. And who are these who are ascending ? 
They are those who have caught the glint of the star and have heard the 
call. Here is a lad whose father but yesterday was a workman on the sec- 
tion. This is the son of a fruit peddler. And this one caught his vision 
and his zeal between the handles of a plow. These, all, are the children of 
high endeavor, the sons and daughters of American opportunity. Who, 
with all of its inconsistencies, with all of its disappointments, with all of 
its failures, would draw a curtain of doubt and discouragement over this 
glowing ideal ? 

But while something of this national infirmity which we are considering 
may spring from this foundation doctrine of freedom and equality, we may 
discover if we look farther that much of it finds its origin in our educational 
creeds and philosophies. 

At about the same time that we were writing the governmental theories 
of Rousseau into our Declaration of Independence we were writing his 
educational ideas into our systems of education. But it took over a hun- 
dred years for his theories of extreme individualism, of revolt against 
authority in education, to exert any marked influence upon the prevailing 
methods in education. But reinforced by the sweet and gentle teachings 
of Pestalozzi and Froebel and systematized by Herbart the spirit of this 
great revolt against the ancient doctrines of authority and discipline and 
obedience has swept into and pervaded the entire body of our system of 
public education. 

No one who knows will undertake to deny that this great change has 
brought into public education a spirit of sympathy which it sadly needed. 





16 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


It changed the center of gravity of the educational solar system, Jt 
placed the child and his interests at the center, and made al] other matters— 
educational theories, courses of study, and methods of instruction—revolye 
about him and take their meaning from him. It breathed into the nostrils 
of an austere and rigid form the breath of life and it became a living soul, 

All of this the most conservative will admit. They will go even farther 
and agree that this great rebirth in educational doctrines and procedure 
has added greatly to the strength of our democracy. But there are many, 
who are in no sense educational heretics, asking seriously whether we have 
not carried this spirit of individualism too far. There are those who are not 
wedded to the old régime in education who feel that modern society has 
suffered a great loss by this extreme reaction against authority and discipline 
and obedience. 

No one will deny that every child has certain inborn possibilities and 
potentialities which must be allowed to unfold according to the law of his 
own nature, but one may very properly question whether any individual, 
so developed, can live and work with his fellows, can play the part of a 
man in the affairs of a great nation, unless he has learned somewhere along 
the line that beyond his individual needs and desires there lie powerful 
social and civic forces and laws which will add to or subtract from his per- 
sonal power and influence as he works with them or against them. No 
one desires a return of the old strait-jacket system of discipline. Every- 
one rejoices in the new freedom which has come to the child in the new 
methods of organization and control, but many thoughtful people are asking 
whether the movement has not gone too far, whether our children are not 
suffering a distinct loss in character thru the decay of obedience to rule and 
order, whether it is not breeding a weakness in the very quality of citizenship. 

Everyone wants the child to think out for himself everything that lies 
within his power. Everyone wants him to doubt, to question, to experi- 
ment until he finds a satisfactory answer. No one wants him to accept the 
opinions and commands of others with unthinking docility. No one asks 
that he stultify his own intelligence and smother his own will in servile, 
stupid obedience to another. But many believe profoundly that the 
greatest respect for authority is compatible with the highest degree of intel- 
ligence, that the strongest will is capable of the most instant and complete 
obedience to the will of others, that the very greatest degree of freedom 
comes only to him who recognizes and obeys established law and authority. 

It is very right that we should hold up before the youth of this country 
the opportunity that everyone has to become a leader in some field of 
endeavor. It furnishes a worthy ideal. It points out a definite star to 
which all may hitch their wagon. But we shall err greatly if we do not 
make it clear that there can be no leaders unless there are followers; that 
an army made up wholly of generals would be an impossible army. We 
must show that no one can lead unless he has learned how to follow. We 








Superintendence] WHAT IS GOING ON IN THE WORLD 17 


_— 





must never lose sight of the fact that this great economic, social, and civic 
democracy demands group-thinking and group-acting; that its very safety 
depends upon the power of its citizens to fix their thought harmoniously 
upon a common aim, to concentrate their effort solidly toward a common end. 

I do not want to be misunderstood. Iam not alarmed by every shadow 
cast by the clouds of war. I refuse to become panic-stricken at the sight 
of the very clouds themselves. I do not share that feeling of worshipful 
awe which some good people are exhibiting toward this new international 
god called Efficiency. How in the midst of this great test of the nations 
that word has been flung round the world! How it has been blazoned upon 
the very sky! A gentleman addressing a large audience in one of our cos- 
mopolitan cities declared that unless the United States could effect thru its 
educational system the same degree of economic and governmental efficiency 
possessed by some of the European nations, Ichabod would be written across 
our door and the light of our great democracy would go out forever. Not 
a few of us will sympathize with the statement of the speaker who replied 
that rather would he contemplate the destruction of American democracy 
thru its liberty-loving, wasteful, blundering incompetence than assist in 
compelling it to that fatal form of efficiency which is driving some European 
nations on to their certain ruin. Not one of us desires that the American 
government shall become so compactly articulate that like an ivory ball 
it shall take its directions and angles of reflections from a cue held in one 
man’s hand. 

But we shall be untrue to the sacred trust committed to us as leaders 
in public education if we do not weigh carefully the meaning of that great 
word efficiency in its relation both to our educational system and to our 
government. We may discover that a very great deal of the thing which 
that word signifies can be appropriated by us with profit to our schools and 
to our nation. We may discover that thru the shifting of the emphasis 
in some of our theories of education and thought, the redirection of some of 
our methods of instruction and control, we shall attain that kind of efficiency 
which is the essence of a real democracy—individual freedom with respect 
for authority, personal independence with loyal acknowledgement of leader- 
ship, the greatest degree of intellectual and civic liberty, joined with the 
most profound respect for law and order. 


WHAT IS GOING ON IN THE WORLD 


NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER, PRESIDENT, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 
NEW YORK, N. Y. 
[Abstract from Newspaper Reports] 
‘Have you really considered how profoundly every one of us must be 
affected by what is going on in the world? The day that marked the open- 
ing of the present great war in Europe marked also the opening of the great 





18 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


struggle to determine whether our present civilization is to survive or 
whether we are to enter on a period of social retrogression which 
will pull us back into even lower depths than those from which we have 
climbed. 

At the present time, strange and unfamiliar conditions confront us. So 
many things that we thought settled forever are uncertain; so many 
things that we thought we had put behind us are staring us in the face; 
what we have longed for and prayed for now seems impossible. The times 
are so grave, the disturbance of settled order is so severe, the break with 
advancing civilization is so complete, that no man dare speak with con- 
fidence or dogmatism. 

And it was all so unexpected! In June, 1914, I was in Paris, with one 
hundred representative men of all the great nations of the earth. They 
spoke of the multiplying evidences of a new era when all the nations of the 
earth would be friends, leaving the world to give all its thought to social 
betterment and civic improvement. And even as we were speaking the 
thunder clouds were gathering for the greatest storm in history! 

We often read of great crises as if they were specimens in a museum, 
We speak of the fall of Rome, of the Renaissance, of the French Revolution, 
of American constitution-making, almost as if they were things apart from 
us. Unless I am mistaken, we are living even now in one of the great 
world-epochs. As I read history, there have been only two eras of signifi- 
cance equal to this. Five hundred years before Christ, the battles of 
Thermopylae and Salamis determined that Greek democratic individualism 
rather than Oriental collectivism of race, religion, caste, and fixed authority, 
should be the dominant note of government in the Western world. The 
second great crisis came when Charles Martel drove back the Arab hordes 
at Tours, thus deciding that Western civilization should be not Moham- 
medan but Christian. From that day to this, Western civilization has not 
had so much at stake as in the present war. Happy are we to be neutral, 
but we cannot be indifferent or withhold our moral judgment when every- 
thing that we hold dear is in the melting-pot. With the opening of the 
European war there began a new epoch in the history of civilization. On 
the issue of that war depends the existence of this civilization of which we 
are so proud. 

What has the world been doing these past one thousand years? It 
has been building nations that sought to be ends in themselves. This 
nation-building began with the downfall of the Roman Empire, and in this 
struggle of men to express themselves in terms of the nation we have the 
clew to the history of the past ten centuries. We have erected the nation 
into something superior to moral rules and obligations. It is this false 
patriotism—a patriotism that makes the nation superior to moral law— 
that is now singing hymns of hate. It is that narrow and unethical con- 
ception of nationalism that has brought Europe to the edge of ruin. If our 





Superintendence] WHAT IS GOING ON IN THE WORLD 19 


——————— 





civilization is to continue, this war must be the Nemesis of that nationalism 
which regards the nation as an end in itself. I am convinced that the 
present war is the result of this perverted notion of nationalism. It is one 
of those volcanic outbursts in terms of nations which shows the disturbance 
within. It is a blind, unthinking fanaticism that is hurling the nations 
at each other’s throats, and, when the horrors of war have been relegated 
to the past, it will be determined whether the great principle of nationality 
is to be a blessing or a curse. 

What does it mean? Will it prove to be what the Greeks call a “‘kathar- 
sis,” a purification or a cleansing of the spirit? Or does it mean that our 
children are to see the institutions of a thousand years dissolved like mist 
into elemental forms? The world may or may not learn the lesson of this 
great conflict. It depends on us, in great measure, to say whether it shall 
be ruinous, or whether it shall pave the way to more splendid things by 
reason of the terrible lessons that are waiting to be learned. Spencer 
said that when evolution reached its high mark, an involution or inevitable 
downward tendency would set in, and then would come another upward 
tendency. If we are unable to grasp the lesson of this war, we must be 
content to drift back. Shall we do that? 

I am an incurable optimist. For my part, I have faith to believe that 
the world is going to profit by its present dire experiences, and that we 
are going forward to a time when men will live and work together regard- 
less of the too restricted and too narrow views of nationality that prevailed 
in the past. I believe we are about to gain a new and a splendid conception 
of life and patriotism—a new internationalism such as the world has never 
seen. The great struggle of the nations is going to be a great purifier of 
thought—a stimulus to co-operation. Ultimately it will bring the world 
to a time when men will truly co-operate, when brotherly love will be a 
real, tangible thing and not a myth—a time when war will be a thing for- 
ever in the past. 

Another great lesson of the war will be learned in terms of religion. 
This will come to pass when we shall cease to worship a tribal God, cease 
to be twentieth-century pagans, and shall learn to serve the one, the only 
God of all nations. 

I like the saying of Bossuet: ‘“ Beware when God wipes out! It means 
He is getting ready to write!”’ It seems that the American nation, with 
all its acknowledged imperfections, has at this time a contribution to 
make to the world that will be epochal in its effect. We have learned, as 
the world may learn, that one nation may be made out of forty-eight nations. 
We have learned that people of diverse language, customs, and religions 
may dwell together in peace under one flag, provided each is given his due 
rights. We have developed great leaders whose thought and opinion all 
the world may well receive. We ask the nations of the world to take 
Washington and make him theirs; we ask them to take all our leaders 





20 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


that have done so well in developing the principles of federated unity and 
follow them in the cause of the civilization of the world and the eterna] 
betterment of mankind. 


THE FORD IDEA IN EDUCATION 


SAMUEL S. MARQUIS, SOCIOLOGICAL DEPARTMENT, FORD MOTOR COMPANY, 
DETROIT, MICH. 


The impression has somehow got abroad that Henry Ford is in the 
automobile business. It isn’t true. Mr. Ford shoots about fifteen hun- 
dred cars out of the back door of his factory every day just to get rid of 
them. They are but the by-products of his real business, which is the 
making of men. 

William Carey, cobbler and missionary, asked as to the nature of his 
business, said: “My business is extending the Kingdom of God, but I 
mend shoes in order to provide money to carry on my work.” Mr. Ford’s 
business is the making of men, and he manufactures automobiles on the 
side to defray the expenses of the main business. 

Some people call the fifty-acre group of buildings out in Highland Park 
the Ford Factory. Well, it is that, but it is a great deal more. It isa 
school. Mr. Ford is more interested in men than in machines. He is 
before everything else interested in the education of his employees. 

The Ford school at the present time has about twenty-five thousand 
pupils. It has fully twice that many more on the waiting list. Before 
very long people will be registering an application at the Ford school for 
their boys as soon as they are born, just as they are now doing at some of 
the more exclusive academies and colleges down east. 

Any man can enter the Ford school, provided there is a vacancy, 
who is eighteen years of age and is out of employment. Married men are 
preferred to single, and boys with mothers to support are given a chance 
before those who have no one dependent upon them. The boy under 
twenty-two years of age with no one looking to him for support is not eligible 
for profit-sharing. It would be cheaper to admit him than the boy with 
someone dependent upon him for support; but Mr. Ford prefers the latter 
at five dollars per day to the former, because the money will do more good 
in meeting the needs of more people. 

A prominent eastern manufacturer said to me recently: 


There is no use trying to meet facts with theories. Mr. Ford has done for his men 
that which I said could not be done and ought not to be done, but he has done it, and it 
works to the benefit of all concerned, and that puts an end to the argument. I have 
come on to find out how he does it, for I want to do as nearly as I can the same things for 
my employees. 


Mr. Ford has done in finance that which financial experts claimed was 
impossible. He has accomplished in mechanical lines that which trained 





Superintendence] THE FORD IDEA IN EDUCATION 21 


and experienced men said could not be accomplished. His one answer to 
the statement, “It can’t be done,” is to do it. 

A young engineer, a graduate of one of our universities, said to me: “If 
Henry Ford had had a technical training, he would have known better than 
to have attempted to do some of the things he has done successfully.” 
And the young man did not see the humor in his statement. 

It is a good thing that once in a while some man with originality and 
courage, and unhampered by the traditions of the schools, confronts the 
mechanical, economic, and social problems of the world. Because there 
is a man of this kind out at the Ford is the reason why the impossible and 
the unexpected happen there so frequently. 

When the Ford profit-sharing plan was announced, the Jeremiahs got 
busy. All sorts of dire things were about to happen. The labor market 
would be upset. Chaos would reign in the industrial world. Ford em- 
ployees, made suddenly rich, would squander their wealth to the detriment 
of the community and the lasting injury of themselves. But nothing of the 
sort has happened. ‘Things quite the contrary have come to pass. 

When Mr. Ford made known his‘intention to give the man who had 
made a mistake a chance to come back, another howl went up. The city 
would be overrun with undesirables. Crime would increase. Men, it 
was asserted, would break into jail in order to get into the Ford. It didn’t 
happen; and the reason why this did not happen, and the reason why 
Ford employees did not spend their money in a manner detrimental to 
themselves and to the community, and the reason why the labor market 
was not demoralized, and the reason why workmen in other factories did 
not throw down their tools and go on a strike, and the reason why all the 
other dreadful things predicted did not come to pass, was that along with 
the profit-sharing plan went a plan for the education of the working-men 
in thrift, honesty, sobriety, better housing, and better living generally—a 
plan that protected them and everybody else. The Ford idea in education 
was declared impossible. The men would not stand for it. It invaded 
their personal rights. It took away their liberty. It was paternalism of 
the worst sort. 

But it has worked. It is not resented except occasionally by a man who 
claims that the liberty guaranteed him under the Constitution of the United 
States to get drunk and beat up his wife has been invaded. 

The Ford school provides five compulsory courses. There is a course 
in industry and efficiency, a course in thrift and economy, a course in 
domestic relations, one in community relations, and one in industrial 
relations. 

The Ford English school, which is an important branch of the main 
school, provides courses in speaking, reading, and writing English, and in 
arithmetic. This course is not exactly optional. A man who declines to 
take it is laid off for a couple of weeks in order that he may have time to 





22 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


think it over. If after further persuasion he refuses to attend the classes 
he is given an opportunity to find employment elsewhere. 

I must not forget to mention that in this school we have our professor 
of table manners who teaches the art of eating a meal in a manner that yjlj 
not interfere with the appetite of the other fellow. We also have a profes. 
sor of etiquette, such as is required in the ordinary station of life. 

Then we have a special course in the art of making a new start in life, 
with the degree of A.M. LL.D., which being interpreted means: A Mistake 
Doubly Lived Down. The big lesson we try to teach in this course is that 
while no man can outrun his past he can outgrow it. 

A study of the foregoing courses will make it clear that the Ford idea 
of education is: 


. To improve a man’s tastes and at the same time increase his earning power, 
. To teach a man to use his income in a constructive manner. 

. To put a man into a right relation with his family. 

. To put a man into right relations with his community. 

. To put a man right with his work and his employer. 

. To fit the foreigner to become a citizen and to encourage him to do so. 

. To give the man who is down and out a chance to come back. 


It is a poor, blind, blundering, educational system which cultivates in 
a man a taste for things which it in no way prepares him to obtain. To 
increase a man’s capacity for happiness and at the same time to fail to 
develop his power for procuring the means for obtaining the happiness 
for which you have given him the craving is a cruel thing to do, nota 
kindly one. That educational system is a failure which does not provide 
for compulsory vocational training for every boy or girl, high and low, 
rich and poor. The system of education which only increases, thru the 
so-called cultural studies, the capacity for happiness, and fails to develop 
the power for gaining that happiness, is a system bound to increase human 
misery and failure. The Ford idea is to increase a man’s capacity for 
happiness and at the same time to increase his efficiency, his earning 
capacity, his worth to society, so that he may have access to the things he 
has been taught to enjoy. 

The thing we need to see is the cultural possibilities in vocational train- 
ing. It is possible to develop a man’s mind and soul in the training of his 
hand. We fail to see this because we underestimate the dignity of manual 
toil and its worth to society. ‘I want you to go to school and get an educa- 
tion so that you will not have to work as hard as I have worked,” wasa 
remark often made to me by my father. He did not mean to do so, per 
haps, but he was instilling into my mind the idea that an education meant 
a higher standing in the social scale and exemption from the degradation 
of physical toil. One still meets too frequently with this enervating and 
demoralizing idea in the atmosphere of our public schools and colleges. 
A college man at the Ford school discovers that he has a great many things 





superintendence] THE FORD IDEA IN EDUCATION 23 


to learn under the tutorship of men who have never seen the inside of a 
college. The fact is, we are giving at the Ford a great many high-school 
and college men their first real cultural training so far as will, thoroness, 
accuracy, honesty, and a sense of the dignity of labor are concerned. Edu- 
cation does not consist in developing the human intellect alone, but the will 
and emotions as well. It is not enough that a man thinks right, he must 
be able to will what is right, and to feel what is right as well. We believe 
at the Ford that the true aim of education is to increase the sum-total of 
human happiness, but you cannot make an addition to a man’s happiness 
that will stay unless at the same time you increase his usefulness to society. 
In order to get more, he must be able to give more. Cultural training 
without vocational training is about as wise a procedure as planting wheat 
in the desert before developing a system of irrigation. True culture cannot 
be imparted before one has experienced the toil out of which culture springs. 
Much of our school culture starves to death. It is blindly given at the 
expense of the training on which it must depend for sustenance in after- 


In public school and college we stimulate study by assuring the pupil 
that an education will pay. It will mean more dollars in one’s pocket later 
on. We stimulate a man’s desire for an education at the Ford school in 
the same way. But we go farther. We not only teach a man how to earn 
more money, but we begin at once to teach him how to spend it. Lessons 
on how to use money are just as important as lessons on how to earn it. 

We receive every man on six months’ probation. This is our prepara- 
tory school in which a man qualifies for profit-sharing. It is during this 
time that we make a careful study of his habits. If, at the end of six months, 
we are satisfied as to his ability to make use of his profits, we place him on 
the profit-sharing list, but he must have demonstrated the fact that he 
spends money in a constructive way. There are but two ways of spending 
money. One builds up and the other destroys the man, his family, and 
the community in which he lives. The Ford man must be a builder. If 
he is not, he is called into the office and his destructive habits are pointed 
out. He is informed that until these habits are overcome his profits will 
be withheld. If he makes good within thirty days, all withheld profits 
ate restored; if it requires sixty days for him to get right, he receives 75 
per cent of his withheld profits and 25 per cent are put into a charity fund. 
The company does not benefit by the withheld profits of its men. Ifa 
man taken off his profits does not qualify within six months, his discharge 
at the end of that time is automatic. Needless to say, few men discharge 
themselves. The certainty of the loss of a minimum income of five dollars 
a day, by spending it unwisely, is a strong incentive to the constructive use 
of money. 

Environment plays an important part in the Ford idea of education. 
The environment of a man must be right if you expect him to come clean and 





24 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


strong out of it. Thru our investigators, we frequently take a look into 
the homes of our employees. If conditions are not right in the home, we 
set ourselves the very first thing to the task of making them right, Jf 
families are separated, we endeavor to bring them together. If husband 
and wife are living apart, we leave nothing undone in our effort to reunite 
them. 

When the efficiency of a good workman begins to decline, we have come, 
as the result of past experiences, to look into the home for some kind of 
domestic trouble. In the majority of instances we find our suspicions 
confirmed. Family quarrels have an almost immediate effect on the output 
of lathes and drill presses. 

Much has been said about the home as the foundation of state and 
church. We have made the discovery at the Ford that the family is also 
the basis of right economic and industrial conditions. The welfare of the 
factory, no less than the welfare of the state and church, depends upon the 
home. We therefore keep a close watch on the home. We encourage 
better housing. We take families up bodily, if need be, and move them 
into better neighborhoods. We insist that a man shall provide generously 
in proportion to his means for his wife and children. Should he fail to do 
this, we may turn his profits over to his wife, until he learns to do the square 
thing. We impress upon a man’s mind the fact that the one condition 
on which we will share profits with him is that he in turn will share them 
with his family. 

Mr. Ford’s idea is that a home in which there are roomers or boarders 
can never be a real home. We therefore insist that the wife of a profit- 
sharer be free to give her entire time to the home. Roomers and boarders 
must go or profits are withheld. Wives seldom object to this ruling. 

So firmly convinced are we that the home is the first essential to right 
living that more than once we have gone out and rented a house, sent to 
distant cities for the workman’s family, and put them together in the new 
home. The results are worth many times the investment. 

I regard the discovery by the Ford school of the economic value of 
the family as one of the most important contributions made in modem 
times toward the problem of bringing the home back to its proper place in 
modern society. It is a fact, once it is appreciated, which will throw the 
energy of our great industrial organizations into the reconstruction of the 
home. 

In addition to the course in domestic relations, we have a course on 
civic relations. We have a great many foreigners. A great many letters 
come to us criticizing us for employing so many. To these we reply, 
reminding the writer that his great-grandfather—possibly his grandfather 
or father—was a foreigner, and that had the people already on American 
soil treated his illustrious ancestor as he wants us to treat the foreigner 
today, he would be wallowing in the slums of some European city instead 





Superintendence] THE FORD IDEA IN EDUCATION 25 


of enjoying his present privileges. We are taking no little pains to make 
these foreigners citizens in the best sense of the word. We are trying to 
teach them a higher kind of patriotism than some of our “hope to die” 
American critics display in their condemnation of our employment of the 
“hated foreigner.” In short, we are trying to lead these men to love their 
adopted country without acquiring a hatred of the one from which they 
came. It is curious how many people mistake the hatred of other lands for 
the love of their own. These are those patriotic people who tell you how 
the sight of the stars and stripes in a foreign port brought tears to their 
eyes, and in the next breath tell you how cleverly they beat their beloved 
country out of its revenue when they passed thru the customs on their 
return from abroad. 

The Ford English school, of which mention has already been made, 
was established especially for foreigners in our employ. In that school we 
have at the present 136 instructors and 2,200 students. We teach them to 
speak, read, and write English and give them instructions in other funda- 
mental branches of knowledge. We use the dramatic system of instruc- 
tion. The men come to classes before and after work for a short time 
two days in each week. The lessons last an hour and a half. The course 
is given in 68 lessons covering a period of 34 weeks. The men who come 
up to the required standard are graduated. On next Sunday we graduate 
a class of 512 and have our exercises in the Light Guard Armory. Each 
graduate receives a diploma. Our teaching force is a voluntary one, and 
in order to increase the efficiency of these men, some of whom have never 
been beyond the sixth grade in school, we have organized a Teachers’ 
Club which has much of the spirit of a college organization. Matters of 
general educational interest are discussed, college songs are sung, and a 
fraternal spirit is created. The object of this English school is not only 
to make the men more efficient in our work in the shop, but also to prepare 
them for citizenship. The first thing we teach them to say is, ‘I am a good 
American,” and then we try to get them to live up to the statement. We 
found in the beginning a prejudice on the part of one nationality in the 
factory against another. A candidate for the vice-presidency of one of our 
graduating classes was repeatedly turned down, and when the men were 
asked why they did not vote for him they stated that it was on account of 
his nationality. It was explained to them that neither he nor they were 
foreigners, but that they were all Americans and should vote for the man 
purely on the basis of merit. After this explanation was made the man was 
unanimously elected. 

We encourage these men to buy homes, knowing that the ownership 
of property will lead to interest in civic matters. We encourage them to 
take out naturalization papers, rendering them every possible assistance 
we can in this matter. And in promoting men we do not overlook the 
efforts of those who have co-operated with us along these lines. We feel, 





26 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


and we try to make them feel, that there is something wrong with the man 
who accepts the privileges of this country and refuses to assume in return 
his full share of the duties of citizenship. 

The right relationship between employer and employee follows naturally 
in the wake of the things we try to do for our men. The spirit of the Ford 
school is not that of paternalism but of fraternalism. ‘‘Help the Other 
Fellow”’ is the motto of the institution. We try to be fair with our men, and 
their appreciation is shown in the hearty good-will with which they do their 
work. 

One hears a great deal of Ford efficiency. The secret of Ford efficiency 
is the good-will of his employees. The men are happy, made happy by 
the wage and profit-sharing that put anxiety out of life. In return for what 
they receive the men work not only with a will, but with a “good-will,” and 
no efficiency methods ever devised can take the place of the “good-will” of 
employees toward employer. Will plus scientific efficiency methods will 
do great things, but “good-will” plus ordinary intelligence will do a lot 
more. ‘And when you get the two together—good-will and efficiency— 
competition ceases. This is why Henry Ford is getting out of raw, unskilled, 
and what some ignorant people call “ignorant foreign labor’ greater results 
than any other employer in modern times. 

The consciousness of having made his workmen happy was the pay he 
expected for doing it. The increased efficiency of his men as a result of 
their good-will came as a by-product and exceeded all expectations. 

Our special course for the man who is struggling to regain his place in 
the world would require an article of great length were I to go into detail. 
Suffice it to say that of those given the chance, the great majority do make 
good. Mr. Ford’s idea is that the cure for crime is work, not in stripes and 
behind stone walls, but in the open where men are made strong by the con- 
fidence and encouragement of their fellow-men. Experience is demonstrat- 
ing the truth of his theory. 

There is a very definite end in view in the Ford idea of education. We 
have in mind a man who is right in his relations toward his employer, his 
family, and toward the community in which he lives. This is the kind of 
man we have in view. This is the human product we seek to turn out, 
and as we adapt the machinery in the shop to turning out of the kind of 
automobile we have in mind, so we have constructed our educational system 
with a view to producing the human product we have in mind. 

Knowing the kind of man we want, we proceed first of all in accordance 
with Mr. Ford’s idea to make it possible for a man to have his share of 
human happiness; for no man can be right in his relations to his employer 
and to society so long as they deny him the happiness, or the means thereto 
which it is his right to have. 

Henry Ford’s greatest desire in life is to make others happy. Inc- 
dentally he has proved to the world that the business of making others 





ewe OolCOkLUlCUrn'lUcrrtlUC rtlOllUCUre lr lU!LlCUmrwrODlUC RS (titi kw lc hlOlUmml]lC WCC, CUDLLlCUrhDlUlUC DC CUCOlUCOD 


4+ w 


_— Superintendence] DEBATE ON SCHOOL OGRANIZATION 27 


happy pays commercially. But the fact that it pays is not his first con- 
sideration. A great deal of his money comes as a sort of by-product of 
the business of helping the other fellow. It seems that every time he dis- 
covers a way of making more people happy, more money pours in. But 
so long as the money is used, as it always is, to give more people employ- 
ment at a wage that provides for some of the luxuries of life, as well as for 
its necessities, nobody cares. 

Henry Ford is one of the few men controlling great wealth whom the 
masses of men want to see control still more. 


DEBATE: THE BEST ORGANIZATION FOR AMERICAN SCHOOLS 
IS A PLAN WHICH SHALL DIVIDE THESE SCHOOLS INTO 
SIX YEARS OF ELEMENTARY TRAINING AND SIX YEARS 
OF SECONDARY TRAINING 


I. CHARLES H. JUDD, DIRECTOR, SCHOOL OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF 
CHICAGO, CHICAGO, ILL., AFFIRMATIVE 


How long are the elementary schools and the high schools to stand 

apart? How long are pupils in the seventh and eighth grades to be deprived 
of their right to a richer course of study because of the artificial line which 
has heretofore cut them off from geometry and biology, from the languages 
and literature of other nations, and the skilled arts which train the eye 
and hand? How long are we to accept with complacence the wasteful and 
discouraging reviews which characterize the eighth grade and compel chil- 
dren to mark time on the threshold of the great change into the first year 
of high school? How long are we to tolerate a curriculum in the first year 
of the high school which seems so strange to the ordinary child that he is 
alienated from the pursuit of higher knowledge ? 
' These are the questions which we are to discuss today. The answer 
is brief and clear. So long as you listen to the dark counsels of those who 
say to you that children in the upper years of the elementary school cannot 
do more than they are now doing, you will hold them back. So long as you 
let those who scoff at their fellow-teachers make you think that high schools 
are for the few and elementary schools have the secret formulas of democ- 
racy, you will be content to shut your eyes to the fact that the American 
high school is one of the most typical expressions of our western-world 
democracy. So long as you are willing to jog along with the clumsy school 
organization that originated in the middle of the last century, you will 
waste the time of children by your ox-cart methods. 

If, on the contrary, you will open your eyes and realize that our high 
schools today register 30 per cent of all the children of high-school age, 
you will begin to see that the time has come to adopt a modern form of 
organization which will facilitate the continuation of every child’s education. 





28 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


If you realize that the three R’s have expanded in the modern world 
into science and civics, into art and knowledge of human life, you will be 
inspired with enthusiasm for the introduction of some of these better things 
into the earlier years of a child’s life. Elementary schools should not be 
the homes of drudgery and the abode of the downtrodden. Elementary 
schools have a right to a part of the new light of a new age. 

If we liberalize the elementary school, we shall also, in like spirit, 
liberalize the first year of the high school. When one thinks of the wall of 
Latin, algebra, and ancient history, over which most of us climbed half q 
generation ago, he is certainly glad of an opportunity in mature life to 
knock a few stories from the foundation of that moss-grown barrier. 

The answer, I say, is brief and clear. We cannot longer allow anyone 
to befool us into satisfaction with the present breach between the elementary 
schools and the high schools. 

Lest there should be a few conservatives among us, let us begin by asking 
them what is sacred about the eight years of the present elementary school, 
Were these eight years determined upon after careful consideration? Not 
at all. The elementary school was, at the outset, an undefined and, in 
many respects, unlimited institution. One can remember, if his experience 
goes back to a district school, how the older boys and girls of the community 
came in during the winter term and took a little work when they were 
otherwise unoccupied on the farm or in the home. Pupils in such schools 
were frequently much older than our present eighth-grade pupils. The 
reason why they came to the common school was that no high school was 
near at hand to offer them extended opportunity. These older pupils 
were the forerunners of those who today are dem unding a larger and a 
richer education than that which has heretofore characterized the grades, 

Indeed, in New England, where economic conditions were favorable, 
the experiment of a nine-year elementary school was tried. Even today 
over the whole state of Maine, except in the large cities, the nine-year school 
is the standard school and expresses the ambition of the people for more 
education than can be included in the limits of a course based on the 
three R’s. 

On the other hand, there are seven-year elementary schools in the 
United States which go to show that there is nothing sacred about the eight- 
year school. In many of our southern states the seven-year school flour- 
ishes and is retained by men and women of this organization who are 
thoroly acquainted with the eight-year school. 

The famous experiment in Kansas City shows that a seven-year school 
is a perfectly rational and altogether economical school. So much mis- 
information has been circulated about the Kansas City schools that I 
took pains to secure from Superintendent Cammack information on the 
matter. The average time required by the pupils who last year completed 
the seventh grade in Kansas City was 7.65 years. We know that the 





Superintendence} DEBATE ON SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 29 


average time required by children in eight-year schools to complete the 
eighth grade is 8.5 years, so that it is seen that the Kansas City schools get 
their children thru the elementary course a year earlier than other schools. 
Superintendent Cammack’s figures show, also, that more of the children 
get thru the Kansas City schools than in eight-year systems. 

All these details show that the eight-year school is not a fixed law of 
nature. Where, then, did it come from? Some time in the middle of 
the last century when the high schools were very little developed, when 
the common school gave the common child all the training he was to get, 
the example of Europe was accepted and our eight-year school crystallized 
into form. 

The European eight-year school is the product of an entirely different 
national attitude toward education. In Europe, the boy or girl who goes 
to an eight-year school goes no farther. The eight-year school is a complete 
unit. The eight-year school of Europe is the device of aristocracy to give 
only a limited education to the common people. 

The school of Europe which is intended for children who are going on 
is not an eight-year school. No child of the governing class goes to the 
eight-year school in Europe. 

This is the thing we borrowed from Europe—an eight-year school for 
the poorer classes, an eight-year school which aims at a meager education, 
an eight-year school sharply marked off from the higher schools. 

It is interesting to note in this connection that the age of fourteen which 
was selected as the upper limit of compulsory education was not determined 
by a careful investigation of the intellectual life of children or the subject- 
matter of instruction; it was originally established in Europe and in the 
traditions of our civilization because it is the period of confirmation in the 
church. In Europe religious education has always been a part of the work 
of the school, and when the child is ready for confirmation his education 
automatically stops. 

The student of education sees in the later developments of American 
schools a brilliant illustration of the biblical parable. This old European 
bottle, full of the New World ferment, is covered with the patches put on 
by conscientious but misguided hands, and yet hope grows less and less 
that our new ambitions can be held together in this antique vessel. 

The elementary school breaks up when nature asserts itself. In the 
best schools of this country the upper grades are departmentalized. This 
means that the methods of teaching children cannot be the same in the 
lower grades and the upper grades. The division of the eight-year school 
into upper classes conducted by one method and lower classes conducted 
by other methods is a natural and wholesome readjustment. 

Further evidence that the eight-year school is no unit appears in the 
fact that the present-day course of study is different from that offered in 
the old-fashioned unit school. One cannot keep an eighth grade alive on 





30 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


ditch-digging problems and definitions of parts of speech. There are new 
courses in civics, new courses in local industries, and new courses in science, 
There is even a tendency to read some of the classics in English literature 
which used to be labeled as the exclusive property of the high school. The 
duplicating of high-school work has gone so far in the upper grades of the 
elementary school that harsh words are sometimes passed down by high- 
school teachers who find that Julius Caesar and other strictly high-school 
characters have been kidnaped. 

What does all this duplicating mean? It means that you can surround 
the common people of the United States by an eight-year school, but they 
will break out as soon as they can. In America there is today in reality 
no eight-year school. The shell is broken, save only in those unfortunate 
localities where some arch-conservative is holding it together by devices 
which repudiate nature. 

If we turn from worn-out European tradition to scientific studies of 
human nature or even to observation such as a sensible teacher can make, . 
we find that it is the twelve-year-old child who is putting away childish 
things in the first flush of adolescence. The twelve-year-old child begins 
to look into the larger world. He begins to think of his duties to society 
and himself. When he is fourteen or fifteen, he will be half thru the critical 
period of adolescence. If you want to influence an adolescent in a large 
way, you must begin at twelve, not fourteen. 

Another product of the science of human nature is the principle of 
individual differences. The fallacy of believing that all pupils are exactly 
alike was the fallacy of a generation ago. The study of human nature 
and the needs of society have forced upon us a new conviction. We now 
realize that an individual to be a productive member of a democratic 
society must play some part other than that which is played by his fellows. 
In our schools we must provide preparation for the diversified duties of 
democratic society by giving full recognition to individual capacities and 
individual training. Children in the lower grades exhibit personal char- 
acteristics which deserve attention, but in those early days when the most 
fundamental types of learning are being worked out, the common traits 
of human nature are in preponderance. By the time the child has reached 
the fifth and sixth grades, his personality begins to express itself emphati- 
cally in new ways. Having cultivated acquaintance with the fundamentals 
of knowledge, he now begins to make applications of knowledge to his own 
individual life, and the period of adolescence finds him ready to assume 
personal responsibilities and make personal decisions with regard to intel- 
lectual and moral matters. Whether we like it or not, the child in the 
seventh grade is growing into an individual. Whether we like it or not, his 
tastes and outlook will begin to mark themselves off sharply from the 
tastes and outlooks of other members of the class. That school alone is 





_—= we Lo ’ 


SO. e434 we ee 


Superintendence] DEBATE ON SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 31 


intelligent in its management of seventh-grade children which recognizes 
the fundamental principle of individual differences. 

There are those among us who contend that children of this age must 
be driven into the same mold, that they must be made to fit some abstract 
notion, developed in the mind of the pedagog. Some of these conservatives 
may have their way for a time, but the years will prove that their conser- 
yatism is falsely conceived. That education is most appropriate to a 
democracy which is most broadly planned and executed. 

Up to this point we have shown that reorganization is going on in our 
school system thru the changes which are naturally developing in the 
elementary school. If we turn abruptly to the high school, we shall find 
here a tendency toward reorganization which is even more pronounced. 
The high school has been in some degree from the earliest period an institu- 
tion organized to give to all its students a broad outlook upon life. Some 
high schools have degenerated into appendages of colleges and have been 
satisfied to offer merely a narrow preparatory course. But the typical, 
the vigorous example of the American high school has been characterized 
by the broad purpose of introducing the student to life. The great fields 
of human knowledge are to be canvassed by the student in series of courses 
which carry him thru history, literature, science, and mathematics. In 
our modern high school there is added to this list of academic subjects an 
intensive study of the vernacular and a whole series of practical and indus- 
trial arts which are to widen the student’s horizon. The result of this 
ambitious program is that the curriculum of the high school has come to be 
so crowded that it is quite impossible to meet the demands in the short 
four years allotted to this school. The Committee of Ten, when it made 
its report in 1894, saw very clearly that the secondary school cannot do 
the work which it must undertake and confine its program to four years. 
The pronouncement' of that committee in this matter is perfectly definite 
and is as follows: 

In preparing these programs, the committee were perfectly aware that it is impossible 
to make a satisfactory secondary-school program, limited to a period of iour years, and 
founded on the present elementary-school subjects and methods. In the opinion of the 
committee, several subjects now reserved for high schools—such as algebra, geometry, 
natural science, and foreign languages—should be begun earlier than now, and therefore 
within the schools classified as elementary; or, as an alternative, the secondary-school 
period should be made to begin two years earlier than at present, leaving six years instead 


of eight for the elementary-school period. Under the present organization, elementary 


subjects and elementary methods are, in the judgment of the committee, kept in use too 
long. 


The secondary school is thus on record as having discovered the prob- 
lem of reorganization before the lower school became clearly aware of it. 


* Report of the Committee of Ten on Secondary School Studies, p. 45. Published for the National Educa- 
tion Association by the American Book Company. 1894. 











32 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 





Even today we have a situation which can be described in somewhat the 
same terms. The secondary-school people are taking up the innovations 
of the intermediate school or the junior high school with enthusiasm, 
Elementary-school officers, on the other hand, are somewhat more conserva- 
tive. The elementary-school principal hesitates to lose his upper classes; 
the elementary-school principal is afraid that he is to be deprived of his 
most experienced and efficient teachers. While the high-school people 
are driven by sheer necessity to accept a change, the elementary-school 
people are not convinced because they feel that it may be possible by 
makeshift devices to evade for a time the real issue. 

That the high school is compelled to expand may perhaps be made more 
impressive by calling attention to the fact that it has already expanded at 
the upper end into the Freshman and Sophomore years of college. There 
is not an American college which does not complete the secondary course 
of its students. In many institutions this is done by an evasion which can 
hardly be described as subtle. In these cases the college prints a long list 
of requirements, accepts students who do not fulfil these requirements, and 
then compels these students to make up conditions after entering. A 
“condition” is a confession that the college cannot demand from students 
its own prescribed secondary course. 

Other colleges deal with the problem more directly and say to the stu- 
dent, take elementary German or French, elementary history and science, 
in the early years of your college course and thus complete the broad survey 
of human knowledge which the high school could not complete. Until 
you finish this introductory work we cannot let you specialize or enter the 
professional schools. 

The evil of this situation lies, not in the fact that the colleges are in 
reality secondary schools in their Freshman and Sophomore years—the 
evil lies in the fact that many colleges are making a frantic effort to force 
the high school to do more work. Students take not four but five and even 
six units in a year in the effort to cover human experience in four years. 
The high school needs relief, and the broadest educational statesmanship 
will be exhibited in providing this relief. 

It would be easy to pile up arguments for the reorganization of the 
high school. What does it mean that some of our better schools are organiz- 
ing two-year courses? What does it mean that the elective system has 
come to the rescue of the first year? What is supervised study? Every 
reform in the high schools is an eloquent pronouncement in favor of an 
extension and a modification of the present school organization. 

Why one should have to present all these facts in the form of arguments 
is hard to understand. Let one look out over our schools and he will see 
the change coming. This is not a prophecy; it isafact. More than 1oper 
cent of the approved high-school systems in the north-central territory are 
at work today on the problem of organizing intermediate schools. We 





Superintendence] DEBATE ON SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 33 


ought to have every ounce of our energy to devote to the discussion of the 
best way of carrying out the program. It is truly irritating that one must 
pause to say, “Come with us; it is so, it is so,” when he should be in council 
discussing the next step forward. 

Perhaps there are some who do not understand why this movement is 
so swift in our day. Perhaps those who hold back are merely dazed by 
the rapidity of the change. There is an explanation for all this, and perhaps 
we shall do well to give that explanation in all detail. 

When the Committee of Ten made its report, it had a theoretical insight 
into the situation, but its contentions operated only very feebly in bringing 
about real changes. This teaches that change in organization does not 
grow out of theory, and we have new confidence in the vitality of the real 
changes of today. In the same way, the forces that have been operating 
to change the elementary school have been at work slowly until, finally, 
within the last few years, there seems to be a consummation of this move- 
ment with a rapidity that is literally astonishing. When the historian of 
education writes an account of the last five years, he will point out the fact 
that during these years the great fundamental need of social economy bore 
down upon our people with unmistakable emphasis. It made very little 
difference in the early days of our American civilization that a student 
lost one or two years thru our clumsy school organization, but today we 
are not at liberty to waste the time of students in any sense of the word. 
We must give to students and we must give to communities the best forms 
of organization possible. There have been inco-ordinations in the earlier 
years, as every serious writer on education has realized and pointed out. 
Today the public is calling upon us, in an age of efficiency and scientific 
insight, to cure these inco-ordinations. We are forced to act and act 
promptly. What was theoretical discontent has become a real demand 
for improvement. 

Curiously enough, this demand for economy is misunderstood by some 
of our conscientious colleagues. They think of intellectual parsimony when 
we speak of economy. They think we are going to hold back something 
from children. They cry out for the old-fashioned waste as the sure mark 
of generosity. Let us exercise what charity we can with them. Let us 
tell them that economy means better organization, less friction, more rapid 
progress, less loss. Everywhere the forces of society are set in the direction 
of improving the opportunities of every child. These opportunities must 
be so complete and so well organized that there shall be no question at 
all about the investment of equipment and teaching which society is making 
in the schools and the investment which the child is making in time and 
energy. We must see to it that there is no wasteful duplication. We must 
fit the courses to the needs of the individual child. We must fit these 
courses to the needs of his growing mental life. We must change the 
methods of our administration at a time when it is appropriate to the child’s 








34 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


change in mental attitude. Anyone who stands in the way of this move. 
ment is an enemy of society and an enemy of the individual child. Economy 
does not mean something that is narrow and limiting; it means, rather, a 
better organization. 

_Sometimes it has been said by those who oppose the intermediate 
school that the break between the sixth grade and the seventh grade wil] 
be widened by this new form of organization. They are saying, also, that 
the break between the ninth grade and the tenth grade is a menace to the 
fuller development of the child’s education. The answer to these criticisms 
lies in the fact that the whole motive of this organization is to create a 
continuity where heretofore there has been a disjointed and wastefully 
duplicating system. The seventh grade is to recognize the individual 
child’s needs and is to give him such a course as is suited to his adolescent 
experience. In doing this, it will effect a change in methods of operation 
just at the point where the child himself is undergoing a change. The 
child will reach out and meet the charge in school organization which 
is provided for him. To delay this change until two years after the child is 
prepared for it, as we do in an eight-year school, jeopardizes the whole 
relation of the school and the pupil. To make the change at the time in 
the child’s life when he is ready for it and when the change will be congenial 
to his needs and intellectual demands is to economize his life and energy 
in the largest sense of the word. We avoid a break by moving parallel 
to the child’s own motion, not by crossing him obliquely in the path of 
development. In exactly the same way, if we change the first year of the 
high school so as to make it fit the child’s needs, we shall effect economy by 
removing those obstacles to the natural progress of the pupil which now 
exist in the first year of the high school. 

The effect on teachers and school officers will be equally wholesome with 
the effect on students. It is quite impossible to work out these changes 
which are contemplated in the organization of an intermediate school 
without showing the irrationality of all the harsh feelings and criticisms 
that heretofore have existed between the elementary school and the high 
school. We shall make for unity by cultivating in the school organization 
itself a new spirit of adaptation of the courses to the students. If the whole 
corps of teachers could be trained by this new form of organization to see 
that the one dominating principle of school organization which is acceptable 
in modern society is the principle of continuity and adaptation to the child’s 
needs, we shall have eradicated those criticisms and personal animosities 
which have in the past so often expressed themselves in the petty criticisms 
passed back and forth between shallow-minded partisans of distinct and 
antagonistic schools. 

In these few paragraphs, I have tried to outline the changes which are 
transforming the eight-year school into a richer school, better adapted to 





ae ee? en a eo 


; 
, 
y 
l 
y 
l 
f 
; 
y 
y 


w @eooerrnru +} we 


anh w 


Superintendence] DEBATE ON SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 35 


the children, and better related to the other members of the school 
system. I have tried to show that the high school, too, is changing. 

The consummation of these changes is seen in a new amalgamation of 
those grades which have until now been universally held apart. The 
seventh, eighth, and ninth grades belong together. No artificial line can 
permanently divide them. As we become more intelligent in our scientific 
insights, as our social life expresses itself more freely, we become vividly 
aware that the sixth grade is the natural point of differentiation and that 
the problems of secondary education unfold themselves from the child’s 
twelfth to eighteenth year. 

The new order of school is not an imitation of an outworn model; there 
is here all the vigor and appropriateness of a new social life finding its large 
and natural expression. There is a cure in this new organization for the 
littleness and provincialism of those earlier days of separation. 

Surely the burden of proof lies heavily on the shoulders of anyone who 
would oppose this movement. He must show that the old order is efficient, 
economical, and full of harmony. He must make us believe that the upper 
years of the elementary school are like the lower years. He must persuade 
us that the high school can give an adequate view of life in four years. 

He must not only persuade us, but he must also persuade the children 
in the schools and the parents in the homes. The strength of this new 
organization is in the fact that it meets a felt need. Where it is put into 
operation it holds children in the schools, equipping them for life in accord- 
ance with the laws of their natures. This movement is a great substantial 
social fact and he who opposes it must answer to society. 


Il. CARROLL G. PEARSE, PRESIDENT, STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, 
MILWAUKEE, WIS., NEGATIVE 


In beginning this discussion, the negative makes no denial of the fact 
that the elementary schools of the country, as well as the secondary schools 
and the colleges, need readjustment and a much better adaptation to the 
needs of both the pupils and the community; none of these three grand 
divisions of the American educational system has kept pace with the changes 
in the industrial and social life of the nation, nor is any of them, in general, 
meeting satisfactorily the demands of the time. But to the plan proposed 
by the affirmative as a remedy for existing difficulties, the negative offers 
a most positive dissent. 

Our present educational system is a growth; it was not prescribed for us 
byothers. It has grown up as the joint result of our national conditions and 
our compelling desire that all the people be educated. It is, therefore, reason- 
able that it, and the causes that have produced it, receive consideration before 
itis gaily thrown aside for the plan here proposed, or for any other plan. 





aE 


36 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


Our ancestors in the colonies that have given us our ideals in education 
clearly held two beliefs: first, that all children should be taught to read and 
write and cipher so that they could read the Bible and the laws, communi- 
cate with others or make a record, and compute, as required by their daily 
business; secondly, that leaders were needed, ministers, lawyers and judges, 
doctors, to tell the people what to think and what to do. To educate 
leaders, colleges were needed. These two notions gave us the elementary 
school and the college. 

Boys who wished to enter the colleges must be trained in that knowledge 
which was required by those institutions. Not all boys could be fitted for 
college by the father, or the minister, or some learned friend of the family, 
Academies and “grammar schools” were set up for this purpose. Two 
generations after the Revolution, Horace Mann preached his crusade, 
with its principle that every child should have the chance for an education, 
which, to him, meant a college training. To make broad the highway 
from primary school to university, the academy and the ‘“‘grammar school” 
were turned into the public high school. 

General intelligence increased; other subjects joined the “three R’s” 
in the common-school curriculum. We wanted our children to learn 
certain things. But more especially we wanted them to remain in school 
until about the age of fourteen, at least, before taking up the burdens of 
life, or before deciding on the particular direction their future studies should 
take. The curriculum was arranged, from time to time, so as to occupy 
generally the time indicated. In Maine and in other New England states, 
where youth matures later, some nine-year elementary schools were estab- 
lished; thruout the South, owing to climatic conditions, maturity comes 
earlier, and many seven-year schools were instituted. But in general 
the eight-year elementary school became the accepted pattern for the 
country. 

There were always failures in the old-style schools. But the boys and 
girls who were poor at their books often did best at their work; they dropped 
out and went to work, and little was said. But when people flocked to the 
towns, schools became large, and were of necessity more closely graded. 
Here the large number of failures in the grammar grades attracted atten- 
tion; school funds are wasted when it takes two years to teach a boy what 
he should learn in one; also, many children who fail leave school unprepared 
for successful work in life. 

But the high schools and colleges are having trouble as well as the 
elementary schools. Too few children get into the high school; too 
many fail after getting there; too many who fail, and too many others, 
drop out. 

Young men graduate from college too late by two or three years. 
When they enter the professions, they too often, because of the preparation 
now required, come into the practice two, three, even four years later than 





= or «tm 


rr sc os. 


Qa 7 Ret & OO oc OO ce’? SS 


aoe @&@ews ©. 0 7c oO © .-o* 


— <-> 7a -. 


ret fsb SeTwTprom 


-— Gaperintendence] DEBATE ON SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 37 


they ought. A committee of the National Education Association on 
Economy of Time in Education stated a few years ago: 

Since the early New England college, we have added four years to preparation and 
three years to specializing for the professions. Instead of converting the college into the 
university, we have piled the German university on top of our imitation of the English 
type [of college] without adjustment of the system, and the situation is full of difficulties 
and absurdities. 

For this generally unsatisfactory condition we have been seeking 
remedies. Some public schools have put their grammar-grade failures 
into “industrial classes,” giving them mostly hand work, in the effort to 
interest them and hold them in school; other schools have had similar 
classes called ‘“‘prevocational classes,” which have sometimes tried also 
to train these children, made failures by the faulty conditions in regular 
classes, into usefulness as shop or factory hands. Now comes this proposal 
to cut off the seventh and eighth grades—separate the twelve- and thirteen- 
year-old children—from the elementary school and put them into the high 
school, thus organizing a six-year elementary school and a six-year high 
school. When we remember the difficulties which fourteen-year-old chil- 
dren now have in too many high schools, it seems a queer remedy. 

Two types of the six-year high school are proposed; sometimes one 
type is urged, sometimes the other. The one type is to provide separate 
courses, and probably, where possible, separate schools, for different groups 
of children. These are to be required to choose, at the end of the sixth 
grade, whether they will follow industrial careers, or go into commerce, 
or have a liberal education and probably go into a profession. If the chil- 
dren do not know what to select, someone is to choose for them and put 
them into the compartment selected. The other type is to be a sort of 
glorified grammar school, somewhat different from our present schools in 
equipment and curriculum, but differing chiefly in having the seventh and 
eighth grades separated from the lower grades. 

The first type of six-year high school, where children are separated into 
classes according to their “‘probabie future employment,” is no doubt sug- 
gested by those familiar with the secondary schools of England and 
Germany. In both these countries, only those who are to go into the pro- 
fessions or those who are to have a liberal education enter the secondary 
schools, which are largely separate institutions, and do not have any close 
or direct connection with the elementary schools. These secondary schools 
are for “‘the classes’’—the children of families of wealth and social position, 
and for a limited number of other children who show promise of special 
mental ability; these are taken out of the elementary schools at twelve 
years of age or earlier, while most of the children—the common children— 
are left in the elementary schools to be trained as workers. 

The headmasters in the English secondary schools, which are in reality 
college-fitting schools, clamor to have their students sent to them at the 





38 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


age of twelve or earlier; in the German schools, children who are to haye 
the “higher education” go into the secondary school before the age of 
twelve, often at the end of the fourth or even of the third school year, 
America does not wish a public-school system the organization of which 
is drawn from such educational practices, or from countries with such social 
and educational ideals. 

It is fair to ask who among us is now advocating this plan. I regret 
to say that our highest educational official has taken this, as I believe, 
erroneous view of the remedy for existing conditions. The honored and 
influential ex-president of a great eastern university is quoted as having 
said at an important educational gathering a few years ago that each child 
should choose, or someone should choose for him, at the age of twelve, his 
future career, and his future education should be shaped to that end. A 
Committee of the National Education Association on Economy of Time 
in Education in its report a few years ago favored the plan. In connection 
with this report it may be noted, however, that on this committee of five 
there were three college men and one high-school man; only one public. 
school man was among the number, and he was not the most aggressive 
member of the group. 

Many college men, including my distinguished opponent, would be 
pleased with this plan, and there are reasons why college men should favor 
it. The young men now too frequently come from the professional schools 
three or four years too late; too often they graduate from the colleges two 
or three years too late. Some kind of an adjustment will, within a few 
years, be forced. If the plan we are discussing could be adopted, the organi- 
zation of the professional school could be saved; the college could retain its 
present organization and prestige as a four-year institution. The college 
could then also get from the high school that more thoro and extended 
training in the college-preparatory studies which the college is now asking 
for but which the high school does not find itself able to give. That the 
two years thus gained for the benefit of the colleges would be taken from the 
elementary schools is no doubt of little importance to the college men. 
Only a small minority of children get thru the high school, and fewer yet 
get to college, and the college is interested only in this selected minority. 
By this plan too the proper aspiration of the high school to expand and 
become a more important institution could be gratified. It may be thatif, 
by taking the two years from the elementary schools, this importance could 
be given to the high schools, they might relinquish the desire to expand 
by the plan of taking into the high school the “junior college,” the first two 
college years. Only the common schools of the common people would suffer. 
Shorn of these two years, they would be greatly reduced in importance, in 
prestige, and in their power to influence American life and institutions. 

Many employers would be glad to see this six-and-six arrangement. 
The differentiated courses for the industrially destined pupils would give 





geaoeoekeseaeare 


Rabo 


= 
= 


Pp = S&S’ c& ce‘ 


cos 


gowenrpe cfretsyyeae =a. 


eal 


wo r.iowwFev# vw" 232 we = ~~ 


( 
t 
s 
0 
V 
. 
s 
e 
d 
8 
e 
e 
1. 


onal 


— ee — 


: sipetntendence] DEBATE ON SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 39 


gq means of training hand workers in the years from twelve to fourteen that 
nothing we now have can equal. One such employer is quoted as saying 


that he would like to have the public schools send him a boy who could 
“read a blueprint, run a drill press, and be satisfied with his job.” A boy 
caught at the age of twelve and trained for his “probable future employ- 
ment” as a hand worker might perhaps fill even this last specification and 
“be satisfied with his job” as attendant to a drill press for life. 

It is to be regretted also that some public-school men, who can hardly 
have realized what such a six-and-six plan would quite certainly do to the 
common schools sooner or later, are echoing the cry for the plan, the chief 
benefit of which is to be reaped by the colleges. Perhaps this is only natural; 
many public-school men are loyal graduates of the colleges which are push- 
ing this plan; they have been accustomed to look to the colleges for leader- 
ship; the colleges have recognized and regular means of giving publicity 
to their views. Public-school men seldom have mediums of publicity; 
they perhaps too often take the word of some one who offers to give it. 

The advocates of the plan tell us—that is, some of them in arguing the 
question do—that the great change in our young people comes at twelve, 
not at fourteen; that the age of twelve marks the time in a child’s life 
when he puts away childish things and becomes a man. This, from 
“scientific men,’’ sounds queer. Common people know without asking 
“educators” that these great physical and spiritual changes come at about 
the age of fourteen in our latitude and climate. In the tropical south, 
the time of change arrives earlier; far to the north, it may be delayed; 
but, for the great majority of our young people, it comes at about fourteen. 
I quote only one authority, G. Stanley Hall, who will no doubt be accepted 
assuch. He says in his great work on adolescence: 

These years are the best decade of life, and that it [the book] may directly and 
indirectly help the young to exploit aright all the possibilities of the years from fourteen 
to twenty-four, and safeguard them against insidious dangers, is the writer’s desire. 

' It is childish to say that our elementary school has been made to end 
with the pupil’s fourteenth year because the church confirms its children at 
fourteen. We have fixed the end of our elementary school to coincide with 
the fourteenth year for the same reason that the church confirms young 
people into its membership at that age; because, at about the age of four- 
teen, profound spiritual as well as physical changes fit the youth for this 
experience and participation. The church of Europe has learned thru 
a thousand years the wisdom of this course; and this is based upon an even 
older experience and practice running back into the mists of pagan anti- 
quity. If we should accept the age of twelve as a “change” period requir- 
ing @ new and separated school organization, we must remember that there 
isanother “‘change”’ period at about the ninth year; we must make another 
sub-organization and establish still another school in a separate water- 
tight compartment for children of that age. 





40° NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 
i 


Children at twelve years of age are seldom fit to make choice of a life 
career; parents and teachers are seldom fit to make this choice for them 
at that time. You know that this is true of your own twelve-year-olg 
children. Why should you presume to require the children of others 
the “common people”—to choose at that time? The changes of even 
preadolescence often put a very different face on matters in two years, and 
choices made at the age of twelve will often be and often ought to be 
remade at fourteen or later. The two years in question are, however, 
invaluable for vocational guidance—as a time for reflection and for obtain. 
ing information before children are forced to the iron gates of decision, 
Traditional standards and considerations, parental influence and the 
influence of surroundings, up to the age of thirteen are strong; after that 
young people begin to exercise greater independence in choosing occupations, 

But there is still a weightier reason than any of the foregoing why this 
type of the six-year high school ought not to be permitted to get’a foothold 
among us. The deeper reasons for a public-school system are social and 
political. Every man pays school taxes to help to train every child of the 
state as an intelligent citizen. More important even than the knowledge 
which is so important to intelligent citizenship is the sentiment of real 
democratic equality, and a knowledge and understanding of each other 
and an interest in each other on the part of all our people—not merely the 
liberally educated, not merely the workers in industry or in commerce, 
but all the people. There is enough scramble and selfishness and conflict 
of interest after the youth leaves school for the work of life; there is enough 
tendency to social separation and exclusiveness if we do the best we can, 
But to push downward by two years the time when our children in the 
people’s schools are separated into groups, largely if not wholly according 
to their “future probable employment,” would be little short of a crime on 
the part of those responsible for it, and nothing short of a calamity to us 
in our national life. The separated high schools, where commercial and 
industrial and “‘liberal’’ high-school courses of study are followed by separate 
groups of pupils under separate roofs, are bad enough; but to introduce 
this division at the end of the sixth grade would be as inexcusable as it is 
unnecessary. 

That form of the six-and-six plan which proposes a common course of 
study for all children but proposes to cut the seventh and eighth grades 
away from the grades below, while less dangerous and fraught with less 
grave dangers to our institutions in the near future, brings with it certain 
serious dangers nevertheless, and is wholly unnecessary; all the improve- 
ments and reconstructions which are required can not only be made without 
resorting to it, but they can be more advantageously made with an eight- 
year elementary school than under the six-and-six plan. 

The end of the elementary school is a natural stopping-place. If the 
common school ends with the sixth grade, a far greater number of pupils, 





\2 


BBES 


SBeSEeSB BBeBeBZERB SEBS SBBRBESBSETEB 


QBQEeEeBB SSB RTE Ss 


@WMEesa 





| Superintendence] DEBATE ON SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 41 













































_ especially those who are over age, will wish, or will be urged by short- 
sighted or greedy parents, to leave school, than will be the case if the ele- 
mentary school stops only at the end of the eighth grade. This does not 
need argument; every practical school man knows it. 

If the six-year elementary and six-year high school is to be accepted 
as our type, a general reorganization of our schools everywhere must take 

. This will require in many, probably in most places, the erection of 
special buildings for the new type of school, with new and expensive equip- 
ment and furnishings. It will require the appointment of teachers of the 
high-school type and with the high-school standard of salaries. A good 
many public-school administrators, as well as a good many experienced 
parents, will wonder how much better off boys and girls in their thirteenth 
and fourteenth years will be if placed in charge of the type of teachers often 
found in charge of high-school classes in the earlier years; they will be sure 
to raise the question at once as to how much better and more wisely the 
entering high-school students will now be handled by the high-school 
teachers under high-school conditions than the same pupils have been 
handled by grammar-school teachers and principals in the later years of 
the grammar schools. But, waiving this point for the present (tho the 
superiority of high-school teachers and high-school methods should be 
clearly shown before the proposed plan can be seriously considered), can 
anyone doubt that the plan proposed would greatly increase the cost of 
carrying on the schools? The cost of high-school buildings is very much 
greater than that of entirely satisfactory grammar schools; the cost of 
instruction for high-school students thruout the country approaches, if it 
does not reach, a figure twice as great as that for pupils in elementary 
schools. 

The difficulties of the plan would be largely increased by the fact that 
only the larger towns could or would organize in accordance with it. The 
expense of separate establishments, or for greatly increased high-school 
facilities and equipment, would be out of the question for the small com- 
munities with limited financial resources. This would result in a dual school 
organization, with most of the larger towns administering their schools 
on one basis and the smaller communities on another. This would cause 
endless trouble and loss to pupils transferred from large to small or from 
small to large school systems. Public-school men know how constantly 
this circulation from one town and school system to another is going on, and 
they, at least, can realize how serious a problem this constant readjustment 
of pupils entering from other school systems would be. 

But to one who studies the six-and-six problem from the standpoint 
of the needs of the community and the needs of the pupils, the plan is seen 
to be wholly unnecessary. The present common organization of school 
units has within it the possibility of all the reforms which are necessary. 
By the plan which the negative side favors, the necessary modifications 


Ce RD C8 SO, 


See nragseaeernrmer as & ea 8 ee 8 


PF Feet ebe es 


42 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


to give vitality and motive and interest to the work of young people 
to the age of fourteen, and to enable the schools to meet more effecti 
the needs of their communities, are entirely possible within the present form 
of organization. 

The work of the grammar grades in the average school neither appeals 
to the interest of most of the pupils nor serves their needs or the need of 
the community. The studies are for the most part suitable, so far as they 
go. Each subject in the curriculum has been included in response to a felt 
want; it is not likely that any of them will be dropped out. The things 
taught have a purpose, either practical, for business or citizenship, or cyl. 
tural in a desirable way. But something is lacking in the way the subjects 
are treated, and something much more important is lacking, namely, the 
things that are not taught in the schools. 

The schools are still teaching the things that sufficed when much educa- 
tion was given, incidentally, it may be, but nevertheless given, at home and 
elsewhere out of school. The morning and evening and vacation-time 
duties which once filled the out-of-school time of children have become 
almost obsolete, so far as town children are concerned. For them the 
morning and evening chores and the vacation-time work about the farm 
are things of the past. Even the old-time sports and the recreations in 
which we and our fathers took delight and found education are no more, 
The schools must bring back the opportunities which have slipped away. 

The school grounds must give the play space and the space for digging 
and planting which once could be had elsewhere. The short school day is now 
packed full, but it can be made longer, if the required variety is given to 
the school exercises. It was made short when children had work at home; 
make it long enough now so that they can do some hand work at school. 
Aschool day one hour longer, with another hour available if the child desires; 
a school year four or five or six weeks longer than at present—long enough 
to turn to useful training a considerable part of the long and useless vaca- 
tion which is a bane to children and a plague to parents—will give oppor- 
tunity for all the vitalizing and motivation that will be required, and that 
within the present form of school organization. The course of study, suit- 
able enough when the home, the shop, the farm, and the playground were 
educational auxiliaries, can, with this added time, be reshaped so as to give 
this physical and motor training, so as to develop judgment and poise, and 
so as to have vital interest for all normal children. Increased opportunity 
for hand work, not for dull children only, but for all; outdoor work and 
play, work in the dirt and with growing plants and animals; unorganized 
play, and sports and games which require organization and direction; 4 
more detailed and practical study of our history and government, especially 
the practical application of the will of the people to the affairs of local 
government, including a study of and instruction in the obligations of the 
citizen to his government and to his neighbor, his fellow-citizen; a study of 





ce oecmeperpectiorprnr ere Eeata est lke 


nee SoS QP. 


-- &© 3S @& 2" Fe Fe 2S OO OO ee TF ee ae aS aS >. = 


ss 


T - 


Qaatwewr akia=< ast o 


Fy agaihtendence) DEBATE ON SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 43 


yocations and of the proper choice of a career; the study of household 
economies—the apportionment of income, the relative and particular 
responsibilities of the earning and the buying partner, the necessity for 
thrift, both in saving and in avoidance of waste; the responsibility of the 
head of the household to understand the care and upkeep of the “plant” 
in which he lives and to see that it is a comfortable home; household arts 
for all girls—cookery and sewing, homemaking, the art of simple home 
pursing, the care and feeding of little children; for both partners in the 
home, the duty of maintaining its essential standards, and an understanding 
of the importance and the rightful place of the home in the community; 
these topics suggest something of the mines that lie waiting to be worked, 
and the possibilities of enriching and motivating and rendering vital and 
fruitful the work of the grammar grades in the elementary school. Utilizing 
these and other things which lie waiting to be used, it is not necessary to cut 
off the seventh and eighth grades and separate them from the lower grades 
in order that the pupils may be interested or happy or profitably employed. 

There does not seem to be any reason why, with an hour in the day 
allowed for optional studies as suggested, classes in algebra or in Latin 
or in German or in French cannot be formed wherever there is a call for 
them, for those pupils who wish, or whose parents wish them, to begin these 
subjects. 

Such a plan would be of the greatest value also in that the improved 
facilities for the seventh and eighth grades would be available, in a consider- 
able degree, for sixth-, and fifth-, and fourth-grade pupils, and even for 
the younger ones, where they were fitted to profit by the opportunities. 

Such a plan would make the six-and-six arrangement, as a means of 
securing desirable provision for the seventh and eighth grades, as unneces- 
sary as an automobile in Venice. 

But strong as the educational and administrative reasons to be urged 
against this perhaps less dangerous type of the six-and-six plan are, the 
strongest argument is again political and social. . 

We have long viewed with apprehension the gradual disappearance of 
men from the elementary schools. In many cases now the more energetic 
and ambitious women are beginning to follow the men into the high schools, 
where the pay is better, and into the professions, and into business. Every 


Superintendent of schools knows how difficult it is to keep those women who 


are strongest and most able, and especially to keep men of the type we wish 
our boys and girls to be associated with, in the service of the average ele- 
mentary school. With the seventh and eighth grades cut away, nothing 
is more certain than that the most desirable men and the stronger women 
would be drawn, in increasing proportion, into the secondary schools and 
into businessemployments. The elementary schools would be left more and 


more in charge of the more mediocre and less aspiring women and of a few 
unambitious men. 





44 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 
Beg A ed at ag le NE a cae ACR yO a a a Bee Oa Es ar re 


The American common school has not always been high in economic 
efficiency; it has not always given back dollar for dollar the value that was 
put intoit. Butasa nursery of democracy, no instrument has ever equalled 
it. For four generations, it has been transforming the children of Qjg 
World immigrants into American citizens. It is more important to the 
perpetuity of American institutions than any other agency. Imperfect as 
it has been, it is indispensable. 

With the plan proposed by my opponent, the American common school, 
in which all the children of all the people are to be educated, would sink 
from its high estate. It would become a school composed of little children 
taught by women. Beautiful and splendid as the service of American 
women has been to American schools, no one, they least of all, would wish 
to see such a result. The welfare of the nation demands that the common 
schools be not reduced below their present dignity and importance; that 
the needed reforms in the grammar grades be made without destroying 
the elementary schools as an influence in our national life. 

We cannot afford to listen to a proposal which will delegate to the 
secondary schools and colleges the chief duty of shaping the social and 
political ideals and attitudes of the nation. We cannot stand idly by while 
the birthright of the American public school passes from it; we cannot con- 
sent to this plan which will make of the common school an ineffective and 
feeble thing as regards its function as a nursery of democratic sentiment 


and patriotic citizenship; we cannot consent to have the common schools, 
which have been the bulwark of American ideals, transformed into a system 
of infant schools. 


GREETINGS 


DAVID B. JOHNSON, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION, 
ROCK HILL, S.C. 


I congratulate the officers of this Department of Superintendence and 
I congratulate you upon this great meeting in this great and progressive city. 

As we are having a record-breaking meeting here, so also we hope to 
have a record-breaking meeting of the general Association at New York 
City next July. In order that we may have that, however, we must have 
your loyal support and your presence there. May we not confidently 
count on both ? 

I hope that none will allow his allegiance to the parent Association to 
be weakened in any respect because of his commendable allegiance to this 
great department. The parent Association needs your presence and your 
help. I believe the great body of teachers of the rank and file will be 
benefited by your attendance upon the meetings of the general Association 
and I believe you yourselves will be benefited thereby. Let us have thena 
great get-together meeting next summer of the teachers of all classes in this 





1% 


Benak = 


ol, 
nk 
en 
an 
sh 
on 
at 
ng 
he 
nd 
ile 
mn 
nd 
nt 
ls, 
eM 


anrs3 & 


= 


See BPREES 


Supetintendencel THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AND AMERICAN SPIRIT 45 


great country. Let us determine to put the National Education Associa- 
tion where it belongs—first among the educational associations of the 
world in numbers, in influence, and in helpful work undertaken and accom- 
plished. It does seem that out of 600,000 teachers in this country, we 
ought to have more than 7,200 active members of the National Education 
Association. Would it not be a great service to the schools, to the teachers 
themselves, and to our country for us to work to increase the active mem- 
bership of the National Education Association, an organization which 
stands for development of leadership in that army which is doing the most 
effective work of all forces of any kind in preparing for the defence of our 
country against its most deadly foes—ignorance, inefficiency, disloyalty, 
and low moral standards ? 

The meeting in New York next summer will be the first meeting of the 
Association ever held there, and we hope to make it memorable in many 
respects. I am glad to tell you that all of the educational, commercial, 
and civic forces of New York City and the educational forces of the state 
of New York are working together heartily and enthusiastically to help 
us make the meeting a great one. Columbia University and New York 
University have both postponed the opening of their great summer schools 
until after the meeting of the Association to avoid conflict with it. 

A number of entertainments and interesting trips will be arranged for 
the visiting teacher, of which one will be a trip up the Hudson, probably 
to West Point. I cannot speak officially as to Coney Island or Chinatown, 
but, without these sights, the many other sights and experiences of New 
York City will prove a liberal education to anyone who has never been 
there and renewed inspiration to everyone who has. 


THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AND THE NEW AMERICAN SPIRIT 


]. GEORGE BECHT, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION, 
HARRISBURG, PA. 


Little more than a month ago, there occurred in the city of Philadelphia 
an event which was widely noted in the public press as one of the most 
significant and important conferences assembled in this country in recent 
years. That conference sounded a national call to public and private 
agencies to enlist in the work of Americanizing America. Gathered to- 
gether on that notable occasion were representative men and women from 
the various phases of social, professional, industrial, and civic life. Capital 
and labor, official and civilian, settlement worker, teacher, preacher, and 
social economist sat side by side in earnest conference on one of the most 
complicated problems that confronts the America of today. 

The conference had its origin in a propaganda, inaugurated less than 
a year ago, to promote a nation-wide movement to bring American citizens, 





40 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


foreign born and native born alike, to a realization of the common privyi- 
leges, the common opportunities, and the common loyalties of all the 
inhabitants of America wherever born. Directly stated, its object is to 
devise ways and means to amalgamate the many diverse peoples inhabiting 
the United States into a national unity; to encourage the use of the English 
language thruout the nation; to promote the best standards of American 
living in every community; to teach the proper interpretations of American 
citizenship; and to encourage a recognition of foreign-born men and women 
in the human, social, and civic aspects as well as in the industrial aspects of 
our American life. 

Thoughtful people everywhere recognize the fact that the problem of 
self-government is not solved. Far from being solved, it is just beginning 
to disclose itself in all its vast complexity. In small units of government 
where the interests of the people are limited and range along well-defined 
lines, where there is a common ideal, and where competition is slight, there 
the problem of self-government presents relatively few difficulties. But 
where the unit of government is large, where the interests and purposes of 
a people are diverse, and where the spirit of competition is marked, there we 
shall find self-government an increasingly complex problem—one that 
challenges the best thought of a free people. 

In this country we have passed from a simple homogeneous people into 
a highly complex heterogeneous cosmopolitanism. The several groups of 
early settlers were widely differentiated in point of customs, creeds, habits, 
manners, and traditions, and succeeding generations retained and passed 
on many of the racial or group characteristics, yet within each group life’s 
activities were ranged along simple lines. Because people live far apart, 
racial characteristics did not obtrude themselves and national life developed 
with comparative smoothness. But the multiplication of interests thru 
invention, scientific discovery, industrial and commercial expansion has 
expanded simple life. Into this natural expansion of the internal life of the 
American people, Europe has poured annually for many years thousands 
of her subjects. The vastness of our territory and the economic oppor- 
tunities on this side and a restless discontent with the intolerant social, 
political, and ofttimes religious conditions of the Old World have caused a 
flood of immigrants to invade our shores, greater in number of individuals 
than any recorded migration in history. The first decade of the present 
century added nearly 9,000,000 aliens to our population. 

An examination of the figures relating to the alien element in this coun- 
try shows that every third person in the United States is either foreign 
born or born of foreign parents, and that three millions cannot speak the 
English language and twice as many more cannot read English. One 
sixth of the population (15,000,000) of the United States is therefore directly 
or indirectly influenced by foreign conditions. Four-fifths of the more 
recent immigrants belong to the class of unskilled laborers. Seventy-five 





a OR OO OTT IE 


- 


Superintendence) THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AND AMERICAN SPIRIT 47 


per cent of the inhabitants of cities having a population of over a million 
are foreign born or in the generation of the immigrant. Furthermore, the 
tendency to mass in certain states and centers is a marked characteristic. 
It is a current saying that New York is the largest German city in the world 
except Berlin; the largest Italian city except Rome; the largest Polish 
city except Warsaw, and by far the largest Jewish city in the world. Fifty 
different languages are spoken by this alien folk. One thousand two 
hundred newspapers in the United States are printed in thirty-one languages 
other than English. These papers are generally American in spirit, but 
their chief items of interest are news of the fatherland. Thus they keep 
the alien in constant touch and sympathy with his native land. 

The assimilation of this polyglot immigration into the American nation 
js one of the tremendously significant problems confronting America today. 
The matter of absorption is becoming increasingly difficult owing to their 
yast numbers, their varied habits and traditions, and their inability to 
grasp the full meaning of the spirit of liberty as exemplified in the thought 
and activities of our people. 

The elemental background of American liberty was the fusing of the 
spirit of Puritan and Cavalier thru the shock of the Revolutionary War. 
That influence may be traced across the continent. From the crossing of 
their blood, the union of their virtues, and the mingling of their best tradi- 
tions came the type of American citizen who influenced history during the 
greater part of the nineteenth century. During the early period of immi- 
gration, beginning distinctively in 1840, most of the immigrants came from 
Northern Europe. Since they had many of the same traditions and ideals 
and the same political standards, the process of assimilation was compara- 
tively easy, but in the last twenty years most of the immigrants have come 
from Southern Europe and are farther removed from the thought and spirit 
of American life. With limited understanding and lack of training and of 
vision, they do not readily adjust themselves to the new environment. 
Misunderstood and ostracized, as they often are, their disappointment gives 
way to discontent, which is likely to express itself in turbulence. 

But a new social ideal is taking possession of America today. It is 
the spirit speaking out from the great heart of humanity. It recognizes the 


. vast and intricate human relationships the world over. It realizes that 


the treatment of the immigrant and his relationship to the social and indus- 
trial order present an unprecedented problem. The new American spirit 
stands not for the elimination of whatever has not been produced on Ameri- 
can soil; but it rather welcomes the best of the culture, the arts, and the 
crafts of the Old World, that thru the process of education and training 
these may be incorporated into our life and thus we may be enriched with 
this spiritual inheritance. 

In aid of this new movement to Americanize America, the distinctive 
formal educational forces of the country will play no unimportant part. 





48 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


Already the United States Bureau of Education is co-operating with the 
Bureau of Immigration, and the public school has become the rallying. 
ground for the organization of the new forces. The school is rapidly divest- 
ing itself of the archaic methods of teaching citizenship. The time is not 
far past when memorizing preambles to constitutions, powers and duties 
of congresses and legislatures, outlining departments of government, and 
learning definitions constituted the teaching of civics. The painful results 
were apparent when pupils described England’s government as a “limited 
mockery,” and confidently asserted “that the first conscientious congress 
met in Philadelphia and that the constitution of the United States was 
established to promote domestic hostility.” 

The adult foreigner must be prepared for citizenship no less than his 
children—nay, even greater is the necessity that he shall have special train- 
ing. Fortuitous conditions will educate the plastic and impressionable 
child, while the parent responds only to specific training. And all too 
frequently the alien receives no aid, encouragement, or opportunity to 
prepare for the sacred right except at the instance of political partisanship, 
The school for the adult is becoming to be as much a part of public educa- 
tion as a school for the child. Our attitude to the foreigner has not always 
been characterized by sympathy or even respect. Too often we have tried 
to awe him with the superiority of our institutions, by exploiting our tradi- 
tions, extolling our heroes, and boasting of our freedom, hoping thereby 
to impress him with our vaunted greatness and thus cause him to forget 
his fatherland and to discard the customs and culture of his race. Such 
an attitude clearly violates the fundamental principles in training for loyalty. 

Critical observers of social heredity point out what must be very 
apparent to anyone who analyzes the problem presented by the fact that 
a man deeply and truly disloyal to his own folk and culture is not likely to 
become a deeply and truly loyal American. Then, too, there is always 
the obvious danger which has its basis in a profound and fundamental 
psychology that in any attempt to change or completely transfer from one 
loyalty to another, the very capacity for loyalty is destroyed. Nothing 
is more deeply rooted than social and group instincts and traditions. To 
strip these from the individual and to cover him with an alluvium of social 
habits ever so thick may after all prove to be only a cheap substitute. 

What makes the Japanese patriotism so vital is the fact that the religion 
of the Japanese includes a reverence for the past. That reverence is the 
thing that is perpetuated. The school must make more of our national 
holidays. Unfortunately, one of our essentially patriotic holidays comes 
during the vacation period. But happily there has been a decided reaction 
from the degeneracy of a bombastic, half-riotous occasion, with its toll of 
injury to life and limb, to a more dignified mode of celebration in which 
sanity and safety are predominating characteristics. The schools here can 
render a service by making our national holidays an opportunity for teach- 





Superintendencel) THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AND AMERICAN SPIRIT 49 


ing the lessons of sacrifice. Too often the alien looks upon this land of the 
free and this home of the brave as a land of unrestricted liberty. He must 
understand that personal liberty must always comport with moral law and 
political liberty with civil law. In our land, democracy has a problem of 
race as well as a problem of social and industrial classifications. 

The revival of pageantry in various communities, working out thru 
ceremonial and dramatic form the episodes that marked the rise and progress 
of a city or community, is one of the most significant methods of impressing 
upon the young the spirit of sacrifice and social service. American chil- 
dren show their love and appreciation for heroic deeds in their selections 
of declamations which set forth the exploits of such heroes as Horatius, 
Gustavus Adolphus, and William of Orange. These make their appeal 
to children, not because the expression of their lives symbolizes a race or a 
group, but because they represent fundamental expressions of human life. 
The school and the community should help preserve the best traditions 
of the alien and help him to work them out into the newer relationships. 
To neglect their heroes is to subtract one of the most fruitful factors in 
teaching patriotism. Garibaldi, Pasteur, Disraeli, Volta, Mendelssohn, 
Marconi have a meaning to the world that is not consequent upon the fact 
that they were born across the sea. The courage, strength, ardor, and 
spirit of the great men of any nation are admired by other nations. 

Hitherto the school has regarded the teaching of citizenship as a special 
topic, or the work of a separate department, but we are learning that every 
recitation constitutes a lesson in citizenship, and that there is an arithmetic 
of character, a geography of character, as well as the ethics of character. 
There is no branch of study that may not lend itself to training for civic 
righteousness and civic efficiency. The problem of training youth in citizen- 
ship does not involve new institutions, new text, and new subject-matter, 
but rather a new attitude of the teachers and a new atmosphere in the 
classroom. Children must be helped to think thru the problems of the 
community and the relationships of the individual to the social group to 
which he belongs as well as to the civic order. The alien, as well as the 
native American, needs to be instructed in the limitations of liberty. He 
must learn that his liberty must be liberty under the law. If American 
children understood this as thoroly as they ought to understand it, we should 
not have to blush in the presence of the foreign child when children of 
native Americans, with half-baked ideas about liberty and independence, 
interpret that liberty and independence in terms of unbridled license. 
What indeed must be the effect upon children of the alien when in high 
schools or in the grades they note the pupils strike because someone has 
been punished, or because a teacher has been promoted or demoted or a 
holiday refused? Above all else, the school must teach a reverence for 
the law and respect for the rights of others. No word is so misunderstood 
as “liberty.” 





5° NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


The problem of democracy is this: “How to utilize without waste the 
tremendously potent forces of human life that are everywhere about us,” 
The problem is largely individual. The wealth in character of the state is, 
in the long run, the wealth in character of the individuals composing it, 
Every social structure is the outgrowth of personal ideals. The public 
school has been an efficient agency. It will be more effective in the future 
as, with deeper consecration, superintendents and teachers advance to the 
unprecedented problems that lie before them. With new ideals, new aspira- 
tions, new hopes for the enlarged brotherhood of America, may we not hope 
that these dissimilar nationalities will be incorporated into the newer type 
of citizenship ? 


THE SUPERINTENDENT AS THE LAYMAN SEES HIM 
THOMAS W. CHURCHILL, PRESIDENT, BOARD OF EDUCATION, NEW YORK, N.Y, 


There are 5,833 public-school superintendents in America. I havea 
speaking acquaintance with only 111. From the superiorities of these 
to fashion an ideal head, including such pulchritudes as a layman especially 
admires in a school executive, is my undertaking. 

In mixing my paints I should like plenty of red. Rousseau’s dictum 
comes to my mind: “Let him first be a man.” You want warm body 
color in making the portrait of one whose main business is the rearing and 
culture of men. Red blood, hard muscle, virile speech, manly manners 
seem to me indispensable in the head of a school system. The traditional 
pattern with spectacles, with the scholar’s stoop, the parchment skin, the 
painfully proper speech chastely devoid of slang and expletive—the type 
strictly devoid of variation from the conventional—has had its day. 

The perpetuation of a deep and accurate scholarship has long been 
preached as the purpose of public schools by mild-mannered men who 
expressed rather their own instinctive desire than any great public need. 
Those who founded the American public-school system had no such 
notion. Enlightenment, liberty, self-management, self-government—that 
is, ability for, and desire of, democratic citizenship, each working for all and 
all for each—was the result expected by the early patriots who proposed 
in America that education should be free and universal. There cannot 
be any doubt of this. The words of Jefferson, of Adams, of Franklin, of 
Washington, and of the framers of the Ordinance of 1787, under which the 
schools of this western territory grew, are as clear as the sunshine in this 
particular. The perpetuation of scholarship, the preservation of polite 
learning, the bestowal of a literary culture—all as an asset of personal 
distinction—was undoubtedly the aim of educators in the period before 
the Revolution. Learning meant gentility. Gentleman and scholar 
were words repeatedly linked together. School meant leisure; leisure 
meant means; means meant birth or high estate; all meant aristocracy. 


— 2 [Oe ~ ie ee eee SR ce ee CU. oe ee 





Superintendencel) THE SUPERINTENDENT AS THE LAYMAN SEES HIM 


No one would think of disputing that. It is too plainly written in the his- 
tory of the world before the overturn of 1776. But what especially interests 
us now is the slowness with which the principles of the Revolution per- 
meated the soul and substance of education. The Fathers of the Republic 
and the statesmen of succeeding years have been in substantial agreement 
that tax-supported schools are for the creation of an intelligent, liberty- 
loving, self-directive people. On the other hand, there has persisted in the 
public schools a surprising amount of Old World assumption that the lower 
schools ought chiefly to concentrate their attention upon grammar and 
classic arithmetic, leading to upper public schools where Latin, ancient 
mythology and history, rhetoric and polite scholarship are the staples of 
instruction. Is that not true? Our forefathers conceived a school system 
to generate political virtue for the future; our fathers let the school master 
continue to retail the pedantic learning of the past. Our theory of schools 
proposes the cultivation of manhood; our practice clings to the mediaeval 
purpose of producing learned men of letters. Tradition insists that the 
school superintendent be a scholar. All the underlying reason for the 
existence of schools, all the needs of the time demand, “Let him first be a 
man.” A century and a half of American familiarity with the school 
manager assuming the scholar-type has lamentably failed to give the school 
superintendent that confidence and respect which are required to enable 
the schools to realize the purpose for which they were established. Per- 
petuation of a scholastic ideal dear only to a very small proportion of the 
country is much easier for a superintendent than any other course. His 
life, spent among books, his thoughts, guided from infancy along well- 
trodden paths thru normal school and university, his purpose incrusted 
with academic ideas, repeated year after year in conventions of his own 
kind, make of him a Living Yesterday. He is concerned with the perfection 
of systems by which what-used-to-be may more perfectly be preserved. 
This notion of a superintendent’s function has lamentably failed. There 
never was, since the nation was born, so widespread and definite a protest 
against the failure of schools. Cities misgoverned, public lands stolen, 
whole precincts selling their votes, juvenile crime increasing, colleges bend- 
ing their necks for the yoke of rich men’s foundations, periodicals reeking 
with salacity, the drama smothered in -sex-madness, and prominent 
employers informing the newspapers that the school children can neither 
read, nor write, nor spell, heads of state departments of education confes- 
sing that “the lives of school children are wasted,’ all these things are 
weakening the American faith in public education. Far be it from me 
to insist that all or any of these distressing things can fairly be charged to 
the failure of the schools. But the pertinent fact is that the founders of 
the free-school system expected it to produce a higher type of self-governing 
citizen than the Old World knew. The distressing outcome is that so many 


* Andrew S. Draper, state commissioner of education, New York. 





52 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 
_ 0 at SR etm aN Et LAN AO 
prominent publicists' declare that the hopes of the Fathers have beep 
bitterly disappointed. 

Among the many answers that suggest themselves to these somber 
reflections, these two take prominence. Either the expectations of what 
public education ought to do have been too high or the public schools have 
not been efficiently directed toward realizing these expectations. 

First, was the hope and belief of the founders of the free public schoo] 
that it would preserve liberty, prevent tyranny, decrease vice and crime, 
and increase human happiness, too high a hope and too confident a belief? 
Most of you have said no. When the superintendent campaigns for increase 
of funds, he urges that the money be spent for schools so as not to be needed 
for jails—to set men right rather than to lock men up for going wrong, 
You call the school the bulwark of the nation’s liberties, the agent of 
progress, the urging force for “that one far-off, divine event toward which 
the whole creation moves.”” We cannot look to the school superintendent 
for a denial that the results expected from free and universal education 
have been estimated too high. We come to the other query: Have the 
public schools been really directed toward delivering an intelligent, liberty- 
loving, self-governing, co-operating, happy people? I think not. They 
have been too generally used as the means of perpetuating an ancient con- 
ception of scholarship. Their programs show it, their managers’ words 
declare it. Nothing short of a complete revision of the conception of public- 
school service will abate the dissatisfaction which has arisen as the result 
of a comparison of the product of the schools with the conception of what 
public education is for. The main agent of this revision is obviously and 
inevitably the superintendent. He must purge himself of the fallacy that 
scholarship is the main desideratum in himself or in the school system. The 
public does not tax itself for scholarship. It expects intelligence. Intel- 
ligence is as distinct from scholarship as morality is from theology. Intel- 
ligence is common-sense; it is “know how’ penetration, brightness, 
understanding. Scholarship is the sum of the conventional attainments 
which custom and fashion have imposed upon schools. Intelligence is 
mind-power for use in any circumstance, old or new. Scholarship is an 
accumulation which requires a special situation for its enjoyment, either 
the leisure of the study or a company of specially trained persons. Your 
communities are not demanding of you the graduation of scholars, but an 
output of human creatures who can think, reason, judge, and decide about 
the large concerns of personal and national life. Most of you and most of 
your helpers have been trained to think about academic subjects—about 
nouns and pronouns, x and y, which do not matter much. To say a thing 
is academic (that is, pertaining to school) is to say that it will not work. 
This was well enough when education was the preparation of gentlemen 


* Richard Grant White, Rebecca Harding Davis, Charles W. Eliot, Rabbi Emil Hirsch, Edward Bok, 
Michael Friedsam, Captain Charles King. 





Superintendencel THE SUPERINTENDENT AS THE LAYMAN SEES HIM 53 


superior to toil. To maintain such an academic education at the expense 
of a nation of workers is as fatuous as it is dishonest. These observations 
do not hurt you any more to hear than they hurt me to say. I, too, have 
been nurtured on flowers from the gardens of antiquity. I, too, love the 
echoes from a learned and refined past. To be called scholar, to parse, 
to scan, to quote, are as dear to me as to the most refined of this learned 
body, but scant 5 per cent of my post-academic life is spent upon the things 
my schooling emphasized. Scant 5 per cent of all our citizens travel paths 
to which their school training naturally leads. To bring a school system 
to an adequate public service does not demand a scholar. Were it not for 
a fashionable tradition about it, such as requires the English judges to 
incase their heads in cages of false hair, or Michiganders to vote the Republi- 
can ticket, a superintendent might properly be unable to know whether it 
was Nessus or Narcissus who had trouble with his shirt, or whether Savona- 
rola was an indoor skater or a toilet preparation. But truly it is of supreme 
importance that the person to undertake the commission of bringing the 
schools to produce what they were founded to produce—intelligent, self- 
governing, co-operating citizens—shall be a supremely manly man. 

I have known superintendents who set great store by organization. 
They made and tended systems. The mechanism bedeviled them. They 
could act only as the machines within their own heads would allow. “Keep 
the rule even if you lose the boy” was their motto. Their hero was that 
sweet little idiot of our boyhood days, Casabianca of the burning deck, 
immortal martyr of stupid regularity. 

Of what use is an organizer who fails to produce anything that is worth 
organizing? Our school system is wonderfully provided with good roads 
laid out by superintendents, but the highways do not lead where the chil- 
dren have to go. The expert roadmaker, the skilled organizer, is in great 
danger from his own ability. Often the people of his system will travel 
more joyously and arrive more quickly at a more desirable place on paths 
of their own making. The organizer runs a great risk of becoming a driver. 
He mechanizes education too much, therefore he dehumanizes it. Maybe 
some parts of the country need more organizing power in their superinten- 
dents. Those I have seen ought to soft-pedal their organization for a while 
and use the human stops a little more. Let us have a superintendent who 
can organize, but let him first be a man. 

One hears much about the superintendent as leader. It sounds exalt- 
ing, more often to the superintendent than to the teachers. A need of 
leadership there has always been since superintending was invented. 
Where the leadership idea is over-prominent in the superintendent’s mind, 
there is inevitably a narrowing of his ideas down to those put forward by 
himself in exclusion of those offered by others. An educational department 
is a garden of talent wherein hundreds of valuable seeds of education lie 
in the soil along with weeds a-plenty. Some leaders are so keen to banish 





54 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


weeds that the possibilities of the varied talent all thru the system are 
never realized, but remain dry seeds in dry dust. It stands to reason that 
the sum of the brains of a teaching staff, including the brains of a superin- 
tendent, ought to amount to more than the brains of the superintendent 
alone. Leadership, personal authority, concentrated spotlight on the head 
man, have kept back many a city from its money’s worth of education in 
the schools.- What we want in the superintendency is a man, not a monopo- 
list, a discoverer who searches out and pushes along every genuine fellow- 
laborer who will contribute ideas for the common good. Let us have manly 
give-and-take in educational councils with the superintendent conscious 
of the fact that there ought to be many persons in the department as 
intelligent and as able as he. There is an innate spirit of advance in every 
normal personality. A superintendent suffused with a real devotion for 
public service will nurse that spirit, inspire it, give it scope and employment 
to develop a school system rich in able personalities. A narrow-minded 
superintendent will fear the competition of other minds, will give none 
of his supreme problems to other workers in the schools, and will carry on . 
what should be a democracy of public service as tho it were the realm of an 
absolute monarch and he its czar. 

In schools and colleges there have appeared the students’ council and 
other co-operative associations. The vital element of such an idea is the 
very American essence. We believe in the management of their own affairs 
by the people themselves. We believe that to prepare the people for such 
management public schools were established and are maintained. We 
count it, therefore, a regrettable condition if any school system or any 
superintendent neglects to use to a large degree the form and principle of 
democratic government in the conduct of departmental affairs. I know the 
objections that are running thru your minds; that the teachers are not big 
enough to discuss educational policy; that the teachers are too selfish to 
recommend an extensive improvement of the service if it brings any hard- 
ship upon them; that in many cities of the country the teachers are pulling 
one way and the superintendent another. But, granting all the infirmities 
of teachers, which make the sharing of participation with them seem unduly 
arduous, the way to make teachers big enough te grasp big policies is to 
bring teachers up against big policies. The way to cure the selfishness 
of teachers is to bring it up against a great service demanding sacrifice. 
The way to stop teachers and superintendents from pulling in different 
directions is for superintendents when teachers are pulling toward the public 
benefit to pull with them. The educational work in each locality is greater 
than one superintendent can do. There must be a larger number of hearty 
people uniting for the common good. No mere scholar, no organizer, no 
one full of the ambition of personal leadership, can get hearty and efficient 
service out of these people. Back of scholarship, formation of plans, and 
desire of leadership, is the great inspiring hope which constitutes the essence 





Superintendence) THE SUPERINTENDENT AS THE LAYMAN SEES HIM _ 55 


of teaching, namely that the nation shall grow in wisdom, in loyalty, in 
generosity, in the great qualities of manhood. For this, scholarship 
has proved inadequate, organization has failed, leadership has not sufficed. 
Greater than all these and waited for by city after city thruout the whole 
nation is the incarnate spirit of manhood, a living, virile sense of the great 
possibilities of life, a determination to organize the agencies at hand to 
realize it. I yield to none in respect for the clergy, those ministers of God 
in a careless world preaching the Gospel of a clean and happy life. But 
yours is a ministry which gives you mankind in the making. Twelve times 
as long as to the clergyman, you have the minister’s flock each year in the 
schools. In your hands is the rearing and culture of men. The makers 
of our free school conceived this to be its work, and not the delivery of that 
cut-and-dried curriculum of yours which goes by the name of an education. 
Ido not conceive your main business to be the question: ‘‘ What is the Bos- 
ton course of study ?” or “What does Cleveland teach?” But I do know 
that in your own town there is waiting for an answer the query: “What 
are these children around me? What are the possibilities before them ? 
What are the forces of manhood and womanhood by which they shall realize 
their destiny? How can I help these forces grow? How guide them 
aright?” We may no longer close our ears to these demands and salve 
our souls with the unction that we are doing what Boston does and with 
as much success. The business of a superintendent is not now to keep in 
motion the old machine that came over in the “ Mayflower,” a pattern of 
the thing that polished the sons of gentlemen in the days when knighthood 
was in flower. A superintendent is not a tale that is told, but an agent 
of a better tomorrow. His mission is not to prove that Horace Mann was 
right, but to propound anew to the best minds in his own town: “What is 
the most we can do for these children?” It means the breaking of old ties, 
the surrender of fond memories, the abandonment of assumed omniscience, 
the adoption of humility and willingness to learn, bravery to advance, 
audacity to hazard new adventures, courage to take one’s commission in 
one’s hand and to risk it among carpers and cavilers such as have obstructed 
progress since creation’s dawn. Oh, it is inspiring to be a school superin- 
tendent in 1916! There never was a time when a real one was greater in 
demand. If he will cease to be content with forms and will give himself, 
both heart and soul, to the pursuit of that end which the best vision of the 
best thinkers of ’76 conceived, a sustaining spirit will come within him 
driving out all pettiness and weakness whatever that has at any time 
brought any superintendency into contempt. He will, by this devotion 
and this service, feel himself to grow and to remain in the full stature of 
aman. 





56 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCJ ATION [Detroit 


TO WHOM IS THE BOARD OF EDUCATION RESPONSIBLE? 
A. E. WINSHIP, EDITOR, “JOURNAL OF EDUCATION,” BOSTON, MASS. 


It is true that a school consists of a teacher, textbooks, and pupils, 
but in America there would be no teachers, no textbooks, no schoolhouse, 
no equipment, nothing out of which to make a school, but for the board of 
education that administers the funds that are tax raised. 

So far as the public schools are concerned, the boards of education, 
directly or indirectly, have the first word and the last as to the use of tax- 
raised school moneys. Doctrinarians may quarrel as to the desirability 
of having experts, pure and simple, handle the funds, and direct how they 
shall be used, but they will achieve so little in our day that we may assume 
that boards of education will stand sponsor for the use of these moneys. 

Members of boards of education are as intelligent, as devoted, as honest 
as any class of people intrusted with any official responsibility. The tradi- 
tional assumption is that boards of education are chosen primarily to prevent 
the spending of the people’s money, that their business is to put on brakes, 
to make it difficult for superintendents and other school officials to get 
money for school uses. Boards of education often try to find ways and 
means to prevent teachers from getting influence that might increase their 
salaries. This is due entirely to the inherited tradition that it is the first 
duty of these boards of education to prevent increase of taxes for school 
purposes. Unless this attitude can be changed, it makes no appreciable 
difference whom we elect to boards of education, men or women, experts 
or philanthropists. 

The board of education is elected by the people to look after the interests 
of the children and to do that alone. It is the business of the board of 
education to get as large appropriations as can be wisely used for the good 
of the children, for schoolhouses, for equipment, for textbooks, for teachers, 
Boards of education are expected, are required by common-sense and con- 
science, to get as adequate and as modern buildings and equipment and as 
efficient teaching as they can get the money to buy. 

Every law providing for the election of such boards specifies that they 
are elected to provide school privileges for “all the children of all the people.” 
No law was ever passed that stated that these boards are elected to prevent 
the use of money, to put on the brakes, financially. Whoever is elected 
on a ticket that virtually pledges a candidate to serve in the interest of the 
taxpayer instead of in the interest of children is virtually doing an unlawful 
act, is trying to thwart the purpose of the law. It ought to be possible 
to indict such a man for contempt of legislation, at least for conspiracy to 
defeat the ends of the law. Any party or organization or group of citizens 
who should run a candidate on the issue of serving the interests of the tax- 
payer should be indictable for conspiracy to defeat the purposes of the law. 
The mayor and the city council are expected, officially and traditionally, 





Superintendencel SUGGESTIONS FOR RURAL-SCHOOL CURRICULA 57 


to guard the treasury, but the board of education is expected by specific 
law to get all the money that can be used advantageously for the advantage 
of the children. 

It is not at all uncommon for board members to be elected to erect a 
schoolhouse in a given section out of spite against some other section of the 
district, or to oust a superintendent who has said or done something with 
no relation to education that arouses the prejudices of a given set of people, 
or to depose a principal who has offended some influence, or sect, or organi- 
zation. Any such campaign, any such pledging of a candidate, any action 
based on such a pre-election pledge, is definitely, deliberately, emphatically 
unlawful and should be indictable. Members of boards of education are 
responsible first, last, always, and everywhere to the children and to them 
alone. 

Boards of education have the greatest of all responsibilities in American 
official life. They have America’s future in their hands as have no other 
class of Americans. On the lower side, they must protect the men and 
women of tomorrow from the civic pests of the cheapness and narrow- 
ness, the prejudice and spite of today which have been inherited from 
yesterday. On the other side, they must protect the men and women 
of tomorrow from the conceited dreamers of today. 

To the members of boards of education alone is given the opportunity 
to get the right perspective of the child in the schools as he is jeopardized 
by the conservative of yesterday and the zealot of today while trying to 
plume his wings for the opportunities of tomorrow. 


SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVING THE RURAL-SCHOOL 
CURRICULA 


G. C. CREELMAN, PRESIDENT, ONTARIO AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE, 
GUELPH, ONTARIO, CANADA 


The whole rural-school problem may be considered as a large one in 
itself. And there are many phases to the problem. Where population 
has decreased, there is an attendance so small as to hinder proper class 
organization or the incentives to work that come from the enthusiasm of 
numbers; there is the frequent changing of teachers, due to goodness knows 
how many reasons, but economic chiefly; there is the inexperienced girl- 
teacher trying her apprentice hand in the rural school; there is the poor 
equipment and the non-attractive school and surroundings; there is the 
non-progressive board of trustees, interpreting trusteeship to mean doing 
only what the law makes compulsory and with no vision of the great divi- 
dends to be earned in investing generously in education; there is irregularity 
of attendance, owing to bad roads, sickness, work at home, and indifference 
to education; there is the lack of play—that best part of school life; there 





58 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


is need for medical inspection; there is need for truancy officers and real 
compulsory education; there is the dropping out of school of the boys 
about the time they reach fourteen years of age, going out into life thus 
insufficiently equipped; there is the school work reflecting courses of study 
prepared with the graded urban school in view; there is the high schoo] 
only at a distance, requiring boarding in town and again giving instruction 
specially adapted to the urban dweller or the few pupils who may proceed 
to the college or to professional life. 

Agricultural teaching is the remedy.—What is the best way to meet the 
defects in our schools and what different kind of school should be aimed at ? 
Our answer to the first question is: The rural-school problem will be best 
solved by the introduction of agriculture and domestic science. We must 
make our schools appeal strongly to our patrons as institutions worth while, 
deserving strong financial support as institutions giving children something 
which they cannot afford to do without. Not agriculture in the school so 
much as the school in agriculture is the goal. There will be a rationalizing 
of the work of the rural school; it will reflect its environment and meet 
the real needs of those depending on it for an education. It will seek to 
serve and not to stand off apart from its best opportunities. It will not 
interpret agriculture and homemaking as narrow things. It will mean play 
and music and books and social mingling as much as soils and crops and 
cattle and cooking, ‘‘for life is more than meat as the body is more than 
raiment.”’ The school will be for everybody; not limited to the uses of 
children but bringing everybody to school, if not for instruction, then for 
no less necessary recreation. It will be the heart of the community, 
vitalizing every home. From it will arise new visions of education. 

The new kind of school_—What different kind of school might be aimed 
at? There is a kind that embodies the new spirit of co-operation. Per- 
haps it will necessitate the breaking down of our sectional scheme of school 
administration, making the township or a group of schools the unit of 
administration. It will need a new kind of trustee, and perhaps a larger 
outlay of money. 

In many places the old kind of school has served its day. There should 
be a consolidation of schools which will permit of the introduction of agri- 
culture, domestic science, and manual training. Possibly this may be 
associated with a township or county people’s high school, located in a 
central place (not a town) in the township, managed by a township board 
of trustees composed of farmers. Such a school will have as its headmaster 
a teacher trained at the agricultural college; his classes will be conducted 
chiefly in the winter months, and pupils of all ages will be taught; his 
summer work will be to follow his pupils on to their farms, help in the other 
schools of the township, and work his own little farm which is provided with 
his home. In time a teacher of domestic science will carry on similar work 
with the girls and women. The school will be provided with adequate 





Guperintendencel SUGGESTIONS FOR RURAL-SCHOOL CURRICULA 59 


grounds and facilities for play. The school will be a social as well as an 
educational center for the township. There will be a good assembly hall 
in which public meetings, lectures, and social gatherings may be held. 
With the school as the head, all the other schools of the township will be 
closely associatea, receiving from it help and inspiration. 

Such a school might be, if the people desire it! 

In spite of the general progress undoubtedly being made, all these 
defects must be recognized and met. We have made considerable advance- 
ment in the last ten years; we have still a long way to go. We must ever 
set up higher ideals if continued progress is to be secured. 

In introducing this topic, I am presuming that all of us have long ago 
in our minds settled two questions: (1) That every boy in every country 
school should have an opportunity to learn the scientific principles of his 
father’s business. (2) That every girl should receive instruction in house- 
hold science whether she or her parents believe in it or not. 

No matter how strongly you and I have thought on this matter, how- 
ever, these subjects have not been generally introduced into our schools, 
perhaps for the following reasons: (1) It is easy to outline a course of study 
that seems simple and easily introduced. It seems altogether different 
to transfer a course of study from paper into reality. You have no doubt 
found this out for yourselves. (2) Agriculture seems to be especially hard, 
not to introduce, but to get practical results therefrom. It is easy to inter- 
est children in plant and animal stories, but it is not easy to instruct children 
so that an improvement is readily seen in the field crops and the flocks and 
herds and the home life of the neighborhood. (3) The pressure of the 
general course of study limits the time for such new subjects. (4) There 
is a lack of knowledge of these subjects on the part of the superintendents 
and inspectors. They may assume, or even feel an interest in the work, 
but without definite knowledge the lack of ability to be helpful soon mani- 
fests itself and the teacher and pupils soon lose interest. (5) There is 
frequent changing of teachers. (6) The limited knowledge and experience 
of the teachers is beyond question the greatest difficulty. 

Teaching agriculture in rural schools.—We have long since come to the 
conclusion that special training must be given to the teachers if definite 
or really instructive work is to be accomplished and that the state should 
pay for this training. This may be done in one of two ways: (1) The board 
and lodging and traveling expenses may be paid by the state, for a definite 
time, to some central place where agriculture is well taught; (2) the state 
may offer a bonus of $25 or $50 a year, to be added to salaries of such 
teachers as take such courses and afterward successfully teach such subjects 
to their pupils. 

It is for each state to settle for itself where in the state such teacher’s 
courses may be taken up. At first glance, it would appear perfectly natural 
to use the grounds and buildings and equipment and staff of the agricultural 





60 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


college. We believe at the Ontario Agricultural College that we are doing 
some of our best work in training teachers for rural-school work. This 
does not mean that we are turning out teachers from our regular agricul. 
tural courses, but that we have thrown open our doors to the rural teachers 
of the province, and that in co-operation with the Department of Education 
we are using our large plant to help the cause of the rural school. This js 
bringing results. 

The other way of trying to teach agriculture, in a pedagogical way in 
normal schools at odd hours and sandwiched in between other studies, has 
not met with success. On the other hand, given a purely agricultural 
environment with practical science teachers and fields and woods and flocks 
and herds and plants, and nature everywhere, it seems easy to interest and 
instruct along all lines of rural activities. We have had intelligent teachers 
in training who at first showed resentment when asked to make their own 
gardens, to collect insects or plants, and to make observations of tempera- 
tures and erosion and wood-lots. We have never had one who continued: 
for six consecutive days who did not show first interest and then enthusiasm 
in the work. 

School gardens.—Perhaps the easiest and best way to start the agri- 
cultural work in rural schools is to start the pupils to plant and care for 
gardens. We have had pupils return to the school-garden work on Satur- 
days when nothing that we can think of would induce them to return for 
regular school work. The garden idea permits of starting in winter with 
germination tests and weed-seed determinations, also selection of seed and 
removing of impurities from samples from father’s granary and corn crib, 
While gardens imply flowers, I have seen in schoolyards splendid experi- 
ments with field crops, such as liming soil for alfalfa, spading under clover 
for green manure, the eradication of weeds by cultivation and by spraying, 
the growing of potatoes at different dates of seeding and with different 
kinds of fertilizers. In some gardens enough vegetables are grown to supply 
the domestic science class the following winter, from which the girls in 
turn make vegetable soup each day, for one cent a bowl, and serve it to all 
those who bring their lunches to school. Then again the garden furnishes 
endless illustrations for teaching arithmetic, language lessons, and so forth. 

The school fall fair—This has been one of our most progressive move- 
ments. The teachers and pupils seem to find in it a long-felt want. 

With a small beginning in 1912 of 25 school fairs, the work has progressed 
so fast that this past season of 1915 as many as 234 school fairs were held 
in 41 different counties, including 2,291 schools representing 48,386 children. 
Seed was supplied and instructions were given to the children, who planted 
and cared for 51,243 plots. They also became responsible for 6,868 settings 
of hens’ eggs of bred-to-lay strains. The total number of entries at the 
school fairs amounted to 116,236, and the total attendance, including 
children and adults, was 157,000. 





Superintendencel) SUGGESTIONS FOR RURAL-SCHOOL CURRICULA 61 


A regular inspection of the plots in the summer is important. It keeps 
the teacher in the neighborhood; it helps the children to a better care 
of the plots, lends a pleasant diversion, and enlists a larger sympathy from 
the parents. Competent judges who can give their reasons for the awards 
are also a great help, not only in insuring fair play and no favoritism, but 
jn emphasizing the importance of careful selection and preparation of 
exhibits. 

At.these fairs, oratorical contests have been inaugurated with splendid 
results. Hardly a school fair but had its attraction of ambitious boys and 
girls speaking from an improvised platform. Exhibits of cooking by the 
small girls have also come to be a very important feature of the school fall 
fairs. 

Live stock judging is coming also to be a part of our school fair work. 
The parents supply the stock to be judged, and the district representatives 
or county agents conduct the contest, or some other agricultural college 
graduate is secured to superintend. 

Teaching domestic science.—I shall not dwell upon this phase, as you 
have a special section on this program devoted to the work. I will say, 
however, that as 95 per cent of the people in the United States and Canada 
do all their own housework, it seems stupid that the people have not long 
since risen and demanded that the art and science of the household be made 
compulsory by every board of trustees in the country. 

For one hundred dollars, equipment may be procured and used even 
in a one-room school, so that every girl may receive useful instruction in 
cooking and sewing and laundry work. She wants only a start, the rest 
she will get at home by constant and careful practice. 

The older boys——Many farmers’ boys leave school permanently just 
when they should be starting their secondary education. There are many 
reasons why, and it is not necessary to mention them here. What we have 
not done is to make it easy for such boys to return to the same school some 
years later and find instruction according to the need. We have, it is true, 
added continuation classes to our common schools, but these have not 
attracted many pupils who have been out of school for any appreciable 
length of time. There must be hundreds of thousands of young men, 
between sixteen and twenty-five years of age, who would be greatly bene- 
fited, and perhaps given an entirely new viewpoint in life if they could get 
some systematic instruction just at this stage. 

We find that six weeks’ and ten weeks’ courses for farmers’ sons in the 
winter time are coming to play an important place in our agricultural 
educational scheme. As many as fifteen hundred, in classes of from ten 
to twenty-five, have been in attendance at such short courses in one season. 
Given a class of young men who have had practical experience in farming, 
and offer them a chance to learn the why of farm operations, and it is won- 
derful how quickly they will become interested. Keep them at it for six 





62 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


or ten weeks, and it is remarkable how their whole outlook on life is changed, 
Co-operation becomes possible in the neighborhood; the agricultural college 
and experimental stations become real and personal; reports and bulletins 
are read and understood; cow-testing is made easy; a water system js 
now within reach; tile draining is practicable and possible, and the whole 
future looks altogether different. We secure agricultural college graduates 
to do the teaching. Good men who perhaps were school teachers before 
going to college, and who are now farming, are easily attainable at a mod- 
erate cost. We are trying in this way to give help to those who want it 
when they want it. 

To sum up, it seems to me that what our rural-school curriculum needs 
is the teaching of real agriculture to young farmers and a chance for every 
girl to get a start in systematic homemaking while her time is not worth 
very much. I should like to see in every rural schoolhouse a creed for every 
boy and every girl, something like this. 


OntTARIO Country Boy’s CREED 


1. I believe that life in the country can be made just as pleasant and profitable as life 
in the city. 

2. I believe that father and I can form a partnership that will suit both of us. 

3. I believe that if I kill every weed on my father’s farm we shall be well paid by the 
increased crop alone, to say nothing of the benefit to our neighbors. 

4. I believe that by careful selection of our chickens I can double the output of the 
floek. 

5. I believe that by introducing alfalfa on our farm we can keep twice as many 
domestic animals as at present. 

6. I believe that by keeping twice as many animals we shall be able to grow much 
larger crops of alfalfa and other things. . 

7. I believe that by planting shade trees, growing flowers, shrubs, and keeping a 
tidy homestead, we shall be better contented and happier in every way and our farm will 
increase in value. 

8. I believe not in luck, but in pluck. 

9. I believe that farming is a most honorable calling, and, having decided to stay on 
the farm, it is my duty to make the best use of my time in school that I may be the better 
farmer in the days that are to come. 

10. I believe in working when I work and playing when I play, and in giving and 
receiving a square deal in every act of life. 


OnTARIO CouNTRY GiRL’s CREED 


1. I believe that I have a right to be happy every day. 

2. I believe that God’s blue sky and God’s green earth are a part of my inheritance. 

3. I believe that I have a right to love little chickens and ducks and lambs and 
puppies as well as dolls and ribbons. 

4. I believe I could take care of these things as well as my brother who does not 
love them as much as I. 

s. I believe I would love to keep house better than anything else, and I only wish 
they taught housework at school. 

6. I believe that keeping a garden all my own would be great fun, and I believe that 
I could be very happy in giving away the flowers and in cooking the vegetables that I 
raised myself. 





Superintendencel) STUDY IN THE SEVENTH AND EIGHTH GRADES 63 
th ST TS a Ss ae 

7. I believe that I could study real hard at my grammar and geography and arith- 
metic and spelling if I could do cooking or sewing with the other girls in the afternoon. 

8. I do not want to go to town and leave my father and mother and my brothers 
and sisters, for I know I shall miss them all and the trees and the creek and the green 

and the old woods and everything; but oh! I do not want to stay at home and do 
nothing but wash dishes and carry water and do the chores and grow old like auntie. 
[ want to laugh and love and live. 

g. I believe I can learn to sew and cook and do laundry work and do them well, and 
[ want to learn them and I want to learn to do them well. 


to. I believe in the square deal for girls as well as boys and I want everybody to be 
happy all the time—the old as well as the young. 


JOINT DISCUSSION 


THE MINIMUM ESSENTIALS VERSUS THE DIFFERENTIATED 
COURSE OF STUDY IN THESEVENTH AND EIGHTH GRADES 


I. LOTUS D. COFFMAN, PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF 
MINNESOTA, MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. 


There has been a growing educational theory that individual rights and 
liberties are paramount to social duties and to the social will. It is true 
that the most distinctive and valuable contribution of current educational 
psychology is a knowledge of individual differences. The discovery of 
these differences has resulted in an exaltation of the importance of the 


individual, and that exaltation has become the dominant note in educational 
theory and practice. So deeply enmeshed is the doctrine of individual 
differences in educational thought that we are in some danger of forgetting 
that interest, one of its by-products, is not always a measure of value, that 
mere spontaneous activity in itself never produced reflective thinking, that 
natural learning, apart from human intervention, is a fiction, a dream, an 
anomaly. 

The only national rights anyone has are those he uses for collective 
welfare. Certain standards and certain values must be set up for the 
training so that all may more satisfactorily satisfy the conditions of 
good citizenship, of neighborhood, and of family life. At this particular 
time it is becoming increasingly imperative that we ask what is best for 
society, what is best for the state, rather than what is best for the individual. 
The gigantic problems this country is facing and will soon have to solve 
will demand new conceptions of responsibility, a more wholesome respect 
for the ideals of American life, a stiffening of our moral fiber, and a more 
Tigorous mastery of the tools of learning. 

If the efficiency of a state or of a nation depends upon the trained 
intelligence of the people, the school must play its part in solving those 
problems which are basic to social welfare and to national integrity; and 
in doing so it must provide first and above all a curriculum consisting of 





64 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


minimum essentials, a curriculum consisting of those great facts and prin. 
ciples which all should be expected to acquire within the limits of thei 
respective capacities. 

The violent reaction we are experiencing against providing a curr. 
culum consisting of minimum essentials is due to the wholesale attempt to 
apply a uniform curriculum uniformly to all classes of children. This 
practice has placed no premium upon variations in methods. By 
initiative upon the part of teachers will be stimulated and encouraged 
if we vary the methods of instruction to harmonize with the capacities of 
the children for the purpose of securing more uniform outcomes in matters 
of skill, knowledge, standards, ideals, appreciations, obligations, and duties, 
We regard it as a healthy sign and as a mark of progress that teachers 
enjoy great freedom in the adaptation of materials to the abilities of 
children. Any educational program that offers little opportunity for the 
exercise of resourcefulness and initiative on the part of teachers is the 
product of mediaevalism. A certain amount of freedom is desirable 
because it stimulates ambitious teachers to improve their methods; a 
certain amount is necessary because some individuals and some classes 
will do more work than other individuals or other classes. 

But the great fact remains that there is a certain irreducible amount 
of material, constantly increasing in character and in amount, which all 
children should be required to master if they are to be in possession of those 
things which constitute the essentials of our common life and common 
welfare. It is quite as necessary, and certainly as valuable, that we empha- 
size the stabler aspects of society in the curriculum as that we be conversant 
with every variation proposed. Initiative is an eminently desirable 
quality, but initiative without guidance becomes anarchy; initiative with- 
out being founded upon a substratum of common ideals determined by sane 
leaders will result in national destruction. But ideals cannot be formulated 
in a vacuum. They always follow in the wake of or cluster about ideas, 
and it is those ideas and practices which constitute the basis of social life 
for which we are pleading. 

It is not uncommon to hear the special pleaders of individual differences 
proclaiming that reading should be taught without readers, arithmetic 
without arithmetics, and that we should abandon all textbooks and courses 
of study. The discovery of an obsolete bit of material in the curriculum or — 
some defect in method has encouraged them to declare the entire school 
system to be antiquated and worthless, the “most gigantic and momentous 
failure of modern times.”’ They also urge differentiation in the seventh 
and eighth grades because of the elimination and retardation found in these 
grades, and they cite as the cause of this retardation the lack of adjustment 
between the different grades of ability found in the school and the course of 
study. While this mal-adjustment has no doubt contributed to the mortal- 
ity of the schools, still the total population in school between 1900 and 1910, 





Superintendencel) STUDY IN THE SEVENTH AND EIGHTH GRADES 65 





as shown by the census returns, increased proportionately more rapidly 
than the general population for each age group, and more rapidly for boys 
than for girls in every state in the Union except Nevada. Altho mortality 
js descriptive of a condition to be ameliorated, we have much evidence to 
show that both enrolment and attendance are improving. The greatest 
achievement of the last century, one unparalleled anywhere else in all the 
world, is the retention in school of four children in ten to the age of fifteen 
and of one child in ten to the age of nineteen. We are not familiar with a 
single trustworthy investigation that establishes beyond question the fact 
that retardation and elimination are due primarily to the uniformities of the 
curriculum. That much of the retardation and elimination is due to 
causes over which the school has little or no control has been clearly 
demonstrated. Moreover, a recent investigation in one state has shown 
that enrolment and attendance have increased as rapidly in 120 schools 
having no vocational work as in 117 schools having vocational work. Evi- 
dently there is a nation-wide faith in public education, whether it be general 
or special, cultural or vocational. 

Another of the stock arguments for the differentiation of the curriculum 
in these upper grades is that it should be organized to serve the needs of 
the community in which the school is located. We have no desire to mini- 
mize the importance of this conception. We are convinced that there 
should be many more contacts than now exist between the school and the 
community, that we have not yet become sufficiently sensitive and self- 
conscious concerning the possibilities of social service thru such contacts. 
The localization of the activities of the school in terms of the dominant 
industries and activities of the community will vitalize the curriculum and 
motivate instruction. It will make a direct appeal to the pupils and ‘it 
will encourage local support for the schools. These results are highly 
desirable. But attempts to localize the school curriculum may result in a 
situation inimical to the interests of democracy. The natural consequence 
of localization may mean an accentuation of the differences already exist- 
ing between the communities. If such be the case, and if the practice be 
extended indefinitely, then one of the great obligations of the public school 
will be neglected. If, as is generally admitted, the common school, and 
in that we would include the seventh and eighth grades, is the agent of 
universal education, if the station of a nation among the nations of the 
world can be determined by the attention it is giving to the general educa- 
tion of the masses, if social solidarity depends upon likemindedness rather 
than upon unlikemindedness, then we must safeguard those things which 
made for the homogeneity of our people, and not accentuate unduly 

community differences. , 

We cannot educate all who live in farming communities to be farmers, 
or all who live in mining communities to be miners. We know that a 
Majority of the sons of any generation will not follow the occupations of 


o 2? 


TaRse PRESB aB 


2 





66 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


their fathers. Since there is a tremendous shift in occupations from genera. 
tion to generation, is it not all the more important that all people be edy- 
cated alike in those things which are essential to mutual understandj 
and to mutual intercourse? This does not imply that all shall think alike 
all the time, but that all shall have the basis and the instruments for 
similar thinking when it is required. Otherwise, the charlatan, the mounte. 
bank, and the demagog will need to appeal only to the emotions, the super- 
stition, and the ignorance of the people to lead. But few will deny that an 
educated citizenry is as necessary to fight the battle of peace as a trained 
citizenry is necessary to fight the battles of war, and neither can be secured 
without common elements in our educational program. 

Frequently the advocates of localization forget the fact that approxi- 
mately one-half of the people living in cities were born, reared, and educated 
in rural districts. Had they been trained in the district schools in a narrow 
curriculum, colored by one or two local occupations, they probably would 
have found it far more difficult to adapt themselves to city life. Moreover, 
the mobility of our population between states, a tendency we should hardly 
think of restricting, must be reckoned with when we are considering 
education in terms of national good and national integrity. Unless we 
safeguard all those things which make for social welfare and mutual under- 
standing and social intercourse in our educational program, the localiza- 
tion of the curriculum, valuable as this conception is, must lead to 
occupational stratification. 

When any educational theory seeks to establish new ethical standards, 
to undermine our codes of personal morality, when it strikes powerfully and 
sharply at the value of racial experience, when it declares that many of 
our stabler institutions are antiquated and worthless, the validity of its 
arguments should be tested. Not education merely, but every phase of 
American life has been permeated and infected by the invidious implica- 
tions of the doctrines of individualism. 

The extent to which the doctrine of individual liberty has forced itself 
into business is a matter of common knowledge. Men will refuse to buy 
of a grocer or a butcher whose scales are not properly adjusted when they 
themselves resort to trickery in disposing of stocks and securities. Men 
will vote to imprison the dealer of adulterated milk when they them- 
selves do not scruple in selling watered stock. In other words, business 
has become a game. At least, it is called a game in which each player is 
dominated by self-interest. 

The same tendencies are at work in the political field. Politics, anvil 
is looked upon as a game in which trickery, deception, and fraud are the 
proper cards to play. 

It would seem that we need a new conception of public responsibility. 
Taking morals and public duties as we find them, we are impressed with the 
necessity of devising new standards if we are to prevent degeneracy. We 





-—- ~~ ~~, Fe -_s ~~. hUlCi—r lO naa: bees ClUlUlUCeltCO 


——~— ono os ss ws ros & — 


Guperintendence) STUDY IN THE SEVENTH AND EIGHTH GRADES 67 


must prevent the spirit of our trusteeship from sinking into abeyance and 

from being replaced by the spirit of selfish or local ends. To divert atten- 

tion from the immediate and alluring and to center it upon the stabler 
and interests of society is a problem of paramount importance. 

The trial of democracy as a form of government before the civilized 
world has been going on too long to be overlooked in the burst of enthusiasm 
for human freedom. All human freedom is limited by its capacity for 
stable and efficient government. Democratic nations have died only by 
self-slaughter. The last shreds of autocracy can be extirpated in a democ- 
racy only by learning submission to law, not to a master; to efficiency of 
organization under a higher servant, not under a ruler; to energy and 
eficiency of devotion to the common welfare, not to individual liberty. 
Our nation faces the task of reinterpreting its ideals and readjusting its 
life. Purpose must take the place of destiny, and there must be a change 
from drift to mastery. Our domestic and public affairs and our educational 
program must all be more efficiently organized. In the future there will be 
less talk of rights and more insistence on duties. It will be realized that 
there can be no solidarity without sacrifices. If we do not loyally volunteer 
for the new life of our country, we shall be drafted. In this work of national 
readjustment our educational system will be tested as never before. 

President Eliot has recently declared that democracy is on trial now 
and that unless it can effect a highly efficient organization with national 
unity as its goal it must perish when it comes into competition with more 
efficient nations. National integrity and economic efficiency depend upon 
intelligent citizens and they depend upon the educational ideals fostered 
by the country. If education is not used to promote the resources of the 
nation as a whole, but to divert these resources into individual channels, 
it becomes a source of weakness instead of strength. As Fouillée points 
out, “The danger that above all others the democratic nation must avoid 
is the disintegration of society into units with no immediate concern but 
self-interest, into individuals to whom social duties and bonds are gradually 
ceasing to appeal.”’ A growing consciousness of social welfare and of social 
organization is calculated to shift the emphasis from the demand for 
individual liberty to a demand for social unity. © 

Modern educational psychology has not only made us aware of varia- 
tions in ability, it has also discovered that there is a common central tend- 
ency around which individuals cluster or tend to cluster. Slight variations 
from this central tendency are numerous; large variations from it are rare. 
Similarities in mentality as well as similarities in social ideals and stand- 
ards are after all important criteria for determining the selection of the 
materials of education and the attainments of children. Variation in 
ability is essential to social progress, but resemblances in ideals, customs, 
skills, and standards are essential to social stability. Differences among 
people are no more basic to democracy than likeness among people. That 





68 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


community of ideals and ideas, which serves as the basis for mutual under- 
standing and which must be lifted from level to level with each succeeding 
generation, cannot be assured without a common pabulum in the school, 
If this and succeeding generations are to consider common problems, if 
democracy is dependent upon agreement in thought and action with refer. 
ence to the great fundamental conceptions and issues of life, then education 
in measuring up to its responsibility must seek to transmit the facts, 
principles, and standards and to inculcate the ideals which will safeguard 
those conceptions and issues. 

A curriculum which serves this purpose cannot be narrow and restricted, 
It will be an enriched and socialized curriculum. All those things which 
relate to health, to civic responsibility, to our relations with one another, 
must be emphasized. There must be an examination and reinterpretation 
of the subjects now in the curriculum for the purpose of making them more 
serviceable and valuable to us all. New materials will be introduced under 
the sanction of new pressures for the purpose of satisfying new demands of 
general social utility. 

Before specialized skill and knowledge are set up as ends of education, 
all that knowledge of a non-technical nature with which every well-informed 
and reasonably well-adjusted citizen in an American state is equipped; all 
those social and personal habits; all those ideals, attitudes, appreciations, 
prejudices, and contempts which distinguish the desirable citizen; all those 
duties and obligations which fix our responsibility and constitute the basis 
of our social life; all those tools which represent the instruments of learn- 
ing and the expression of experiences as our common usefulness—all these 

common elements the seventh and eighth grades, whatever else they do 
or do not do, must see that their pupils possess on leaving them. 


II. W. C. BAGLEY, DIRECTOR, SCHOOL OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF 
ILLINOIS, URBANA, ILL. 


The question of differentiated curricula versus common elements in the 
seventh and eighth grades is not a question to be solved on the basis of 
expediency; it is not a question to be solved on the basis of individual, 
local, or partisan interests; least of all should the issues that it involves 
be clouded or obscured by emotion or prejudice. The answer that this 
department gives to this question is fairly certain to commit both the 
department and the public schools definitely and perhaps irretrievably 
to one or another of two fundamental educational doctrines, and this at 
the present time especially is not a responsibility to be considered lightly. 
Today, more than ever before, we are in a position to appreciate the funda- 
mental influence which a permeating philosophy exerts over the conduct of a 
people. Inacountry where institutionalized education is universal, the doc- 
trines that dominate the people’s schools will have a large share in deter- 





SeEetnys ae 


@e2cnrewtseeoezey 


SBSBSSBSERBPRESE BKRPEBTBBBSSTSER ESB = 


Superintendence] STUDY IN THE SEVENTH AND EIGHTH GRADES 69 


ee a a Oe ee ee ee ee a 


mining the doctrines that dominate the succeeding generation. Under our 
decentralized system of school administration, the body that has the largest 

in determining the dominant educational doctrines is this representa- 
tive body of school administrators. Your decisions will have a preponderant 
influence in shaping public opinion upon educational problems. Your judg- 
ment will be a large factor in giving to the people the counsel and advice 
that may determine basic educational policies. 

It is important, then, that our discussions should emphasize basic 
principles. The issues that are involved are too fundamental and too 
serious to justify a quibbling debate over unessential matters. We shall 
quarrel neither as to the need of differentiations nor as to the wisdom of 
meeting individual needs and individual capacities by a rich and varied 
program of studies. Personally I believe that there is a place for certain 
differentiations, not only in the seventh and eighth grades, but even from 
the very outset of school life. The important question is not, Shall differ- 
entiated programs be provided? but rather, Upon what principles shall 
differentiations be based ? 

Touching this important question, there are three theories or doctrines 
widely current in American education that appeal to me as fraught with the 
gravest dangers. The first of these theories is this: that common elements 
in the school program are unnecessary beyond the point where children 
have fairly mastered the “tools of knowledge”; substantial uniformity 
up to this point, we are told, is both economical and expedient, but uni- 
formity beyond this point, while both cheap and easy to administer, cannot 
be justified by any principle of educational values. According to this view, 
common elements beyond the fifth or sixth school year are not essential, 
and while there will continue to be some uniformity, this will be determined 
merely by convenience, not by basic and fundamental principles. This, I 
believe, is substantially the view held by a group of prominent students of 
education who have recently published a joint statement of principles that, 
in their judgment, should govern the construction of curricula. It is also 
a view that is either implicit or explicit in the current arguments for reor- 
ganizing the seventh and eighth grades on the junior high-school plan. 

This point of view, while representing a wholesome reaction against 
the extreme and deadening uniformity that once prevailed, overlooks 
entirely, and to my mind inexcusably, one of the most important problems 
that education in a democracy should strive to solve—the problem, namely, 
of insuring an adequate number of common elements in the people’s culture; 
the problem of insuring an adequate measure of likemindedness, a fund of 
ideas, ideals, and standards common to all the members of the democratic 
group. If a democracy needs anything that education can furnish, it 
certainly needs this essential basis of mutual understanding, for if democ- 
Tacy means anything, it means that the people in the last analysis must 
govern their own affairs; it means that the will of the people must be 





7° NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


supreme. If this collective will is to guide aright the destinies of a great 
nation, it must be based upon a collective intelligence of a high order; and 
collective intelligence of a high order is impossible without a high level of 
common ideas, ideals, and aspirations. 

The curriculum problem in the seventh and eighth grades and in the 
high schools, then, is not to be solved by discarding or belittling the principle 
of uniformity. The obvious avenue of solution is first to determine with 
great care what elements of knowledge, skill, and aspiration may best be 
made common to all; to insure that, whenever we ask everyone to master 
certain elements of knowledge and skill, these elements shall be really 
worthy of the honor that is being conferred upon them—the honor of being 
among the common denominators of the collective thinking of a great 
people. In the past, the common elements of the school program have not 
always or often been determined carefully, and while it is probably true 
that many if not most of the materials now standardized in the elementary 
program deserve the high recognition that has been accorded them in making 
them the basis of the common culture of the people, it is also true that some 
of them have outlived their usefulness, while the presence of others could 
not be justified even as having historical value. The first problem in curric- 
ulum construction, then, is to make this determination of the minimal 
essentials which are to constitute the common elements of basic education, 
These must be thoughtfully and carefully selected, not upon the basis of 
individual whim, or doctrinaire caprice, but upon the basis of their human 
worth. They must represent the most precious and enduring parts of the 
culture-heritage of the race. Nothing cheap, nothing tawdry, nothing 
that is of merely evanescent or superficial value should be included here. 

Carefully selected, rigorously tested common elements, then, should 
form the core of every seventh- and eighth-grade program. Around these 
should be built the differentiations, the diversified offerings, but no one 
should be permitted to escape the common elements—that is, no one who 
is to have a voice or a vote in the government of the people. 

And this leads to a second current doctrine that, to my mind, is sur- 
charged with social dynamite. It is the insidious notion that, what we call 
general or liberal education is needed only by those who are going into the 
professions; that workers in the industrial, agricultural, and commercial 
fields donot, need. the kind of culture that the general and liberal work of 
the seventh and eighth grades and the high school is supposed to represent— 
that instruction in history, in geography, in literature, is really vocational 
education preparing for the “white-collar” occupations. And so we have 
the proposals for differentiated courses in history—industrial history for 
those going into the industries, political history for those going into the 
professions; and we have proposals and even experiments in the teaching 
of English which would relegate the great masterpieces to the white-collar 
pupils, and feed those destined for other callings on the inspiring contents 





aecp FS BBE BS Ie 


SosorEetuscs 


Ss 


ESOP MS RSES BeoOre Ere aro ew eg yy 


TE = 


Superintendence] STUDY IN THE SEVENTH AND EIGHTH GRADES 71 


of poultry bulletins and mail-order catalogs. I do not mean that the sober 
sense of the educational public has yet permitted the lower schools to be 
exploited by these fantastic schemes; I do mean that proposals no less 
absurd have been made by serious and sincere individuals who have been 
caught by this notion that the cultural materials of our upper grades and 
high schools are of value only to those who are headed toward the professions. 

That the work of the seventh and eighth grades is now very far from 
perfect from the point of view of providing the essential common elements 
of general education, we shall readily admit; but the defects are those of 
detailed application, not of fundamental principles. Certainly these sweep- 
ing reorganizations which propose differentiated curricula beginning with 
the seventh grade are an extreme and unwarranted means of solving the 
problem. To adopt a policy which in time is certain to force vocational 
choices at or before the age of twelve is to work a personal injustice to mil- 
lions of immature children, most of whom will not thank you at a later day 
for thus prostituting their interests and selling their birthright. Most of 
those who advocate early vocational differentiation are not thinking of 
their own children. Of course a broad and liberal training is presupposed 
for them. These opportunities for early vocational choices are for other 
people’s children. And what do the “other people” think about them? 
Two years ago, the Illinois Federation of Labor adopted a report from its 
educational committee—a report, by the way, which expressed a keener 
appreciation of the difficult service rendered by the public-school teacher 
than any similar document that I have seen coming from a group of laymen. 
In adopting this report the Federation went on record against vocational 
differentiation prior to the age of fourteen. Even Mr. Cooley, with whose 
advocacy of the dual system of vocational schools I have had no sympathy, 
has at every point in his constructive proposals safeguarded inviolably the 
general and liberal education of all children to the age of fourteen. And 
he has done this, I am told, against the pressure of some of the powerful 
commercial and industrial interests that he has represented. When this 
department last year adopted a resolution that apparently indorsed voca- 
tional differentiation at the age of twelve, a Chicago newspaper that was 
advocating the dual system immediately seized upon the resolution as an 
illustration of the inconsistency of. the schoolmen. This paper said in 
effect: Here are the schoolmen protesting in one breath against the dual 
system of schools which threatens their control of the educational situation, 
and protesting on the high grounds of democracy; and in the next breath 
they adopt a policy of premature vocational differentiation tenfold more 
undemocratic than the dual system could ever be. 

With the junior high-school movement as an agency for instituting 
wholesome reforms I have no quarrel. There are many things to be said 
in favor of segregation of the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades. But many 
prominent advocates of the movement are insisting that its essence is 





72 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 
——_————_——_— — ____ 


differentiated curricula, and differentiated curricula will inevitably mean 
vocational differentiation; they will mean a separation of the sheep from 
the goats, and class restrictions in respect to liberal education; they wil] 
mean curtailing by two full years the common pabulum of culture so eggen. 
tial to a democracy; they will mean the inevitable narrowing of interests 
at a time when, above all times, interests should be broad and liberal, 
Furthermore, if the downward movement starts, it will certainly continye. 
Those who predicate their confidence in the junior high school on the theory 
that an important corner in mental development is being turned at the age 
of twelve can easily find another corner at the age of nine. In fact, if the 
junior high-school movement is based upon the assumed virtues of voca- 
tional differentiation at the age of twelve, it is simply the first step toward 
the Europeanizing of a democratic school system which, with all its faults, 
has still constituted an “educational ladder with its base in the gutter and 
its tip in the university.” 

The work of the seventh and eighth grades is open to vast improve. 
ment—in which respect, by the way, it bears a close resemblance to the 
work of the high school, the work of the college, the university, and the 
graduate school. Mortality is still too high in these seventh and eighth 
grades. Our boys and girls who reach the end of the compulsory educa- 
tion period before they graduate from the elementary school need oppor- 
tunities and stimulus for further cultural and vocational training; these 
opportunities and this stimulus should certainly be provided. I am heartily 
in sympathy with every plan that promises to alleviate these conditions 
without at the same time surrendering, as do these present-day proposals, 
the fundamental principles that form the educational basis of true democ- 
racy. I am also in favor of certain differentiations all along the line that 
will supplement and complement the essential basis of common elements. 
We must provide adequately for the ro or 20 per cent of pupils who find the 
present standards too rigorous to meet, and we must also provide for the 
10 or 20 per cent who find the present standards too easy and who acquire 
enduring habits of laziness and carelessness because they are not stimulated 
to their best efforts. But the differentiations which these problems involve 
will be primarily differentiations in teaching rather than differentiations im 
materials. The problem is one of adaptation. We can never hope by any 
legerdemain of subjects, courses, and curricula to meet every individual 
difference in rate of mental growth or in capacity for mental mastery. 
To take the materials that have proved their worth and to adapt them to the 
needs, capacities, and aptitudes of individuals is the task of the teacher. 
As a teacher I cannot escape my responsibility merely by throwing the blame 
back upon the curriculum that I may be attempting to teach. The fault 
may be in the curriculum, but it avails me nothing to advance the 
faults of the curriculum as a cloak for my own inefficiency. It avails me 
nothing to say that I could teach all right if only I could find materials that 


BE&se sP SBEeB SSR SETSE SRTERBBZSAEPesE 


a 


a2of 





- = se.h6ULfSY bal 


e 

y 

S 

, 

it 

S, 

Ie 
re 
re 
d 
ve 
in 
y 
al 
y. 
he 
eT, 
ne 
ult 
he 
me 
at 


Guperintendencel STUDY IN THE SEVENTH AND EIGHTH GRADES 73 


ee ee ee 


everybody wanted to learn. If such materials were available, my office 
would soon be vacant; it would necessarily disappear for it would represent 
a luxury without a purpose. 
A great deal of our trouble today lies in the fact that we are looking 
all of the ills of education as curriculum ills, when, in reality, many 
if not most of them are teaching ills. And in the improvement of conditions 
in the seventh and eighth grades, this matter will need some attention 
put hardly, I take it, from the high schools and colleges. During the past 
few years, I have visited several hundred classes on the elementary, secon- 
dary, and higher levels of public-school work. Easily the best teaching 
that I have seen has been in the primary grades and in the seventh and 
eighth grades." I shall not generalize from my limited experience, but 
personally I am very skeptical of any proposal which would bring down 
into the seventh and eighth grades the methods commonly found in many 
high-school classes—methods which have in turn been derived from college 
classrooms. Nor am I wildly enthusiastic about the prospect of reproduc- 
ing among seventh- and eighth-grade teachers the attitude toward the work 
of teaching which characterizes many high-school teachers and many more 
college professors. This may be a minor point, but if my earlier proposition 
is correct, if the problem of differentiation to meet individual needs and 
capacities is primarily a teaching problem and only secondarily a curric- 
ulum problem, then it seems to me that the teachers in these grades should 
be men and women to whom the art of teaching is something more than a 
topic for sneering contempt. 

Closely akin to this phase of our discussion is the third and final current 
doctrine that has intimate relations to this matter of differentiated curricula 
in the seventh and eighth grades. I refer to the belief that educational 
values are to be determined exclusively or chiefly by the relation of 
educational materials. to the ‘immediately felt needs” of the pupils—the 
doctrine that interest is the chief measure of value. The weight of this 
doctrine obviously falls on the side of curriculum differentiation, for the 
greater the number of offerings and the fewer the common demands, 
the greater the likelihood that something appetizing to the individual will 
be found. 

Again it is necessary to keep the balance. Interest is an educational 
agency the potency of which it would be folly to ignore. We have indeed 
traveled far from the rigorous doctrines of the Puritans, and no one can 
greatly regret that the severity, the harshness, and the repression of the 
olden time have given place to a recognition of pleasure and happiness and 
the joys of life. But, after all, the problem is to balance the two forces. 
Then, nothing was good unless it had a bad taste; today nothing is good 


*Classroom efficiency varies with supervision. Effective supervision is much more prevalent in the 
elementary school than in the high school. It is practically non-existent in colleges and universities. 
There is a prejudice against classroom supervision among secondary and higher teachers; hence the danger 
of the movement to reorganize the upper grades on the high-school model. 





74 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 
—_————— — _ oe 


unless it tickles the palate. Both are extreme views, and either, unbalanced 
by its complement, will lead to individual and social disaster. 

Toward a solution of these problems of seventh- and eighth-grade 
work—of all educational work, for that matter—we need a co-operation 
of these two forces. The teacher’s attempt to make work fascinating ang 
attractive must be met half-way by the aggressive effort of our boys and 
girls. In the last analysis, the efficiency of our educational system depends 
upon the capacity of our boys and girls to do “hard, uncoaxed, uncompli- 
mented work willingly and heartily.” With this attitude as a basis, the 
doctrine of interest may be applied to the last notch; with this attitude 
lacking, our present emphasis upon the doctrine of interest commits us to 
a pernicious individualism that is full of social perils. 

Is it not an opportune moment to suggest that our schools can never 
be more than superficially successful until public opinion places its powerful 
sanction upon what may be called the duty of intelligence? The kind of 
preparedness that a democracy needs most is not primarily the kind that 
we hear so much about today. The kind of preparedness that a democracy 
always needs, whether to face the crises of war or the crises of peace, is that 
which is represented by the highest possible level of general intelligence, 
Under the influence of the present crisis, it should not be an impossible 
task to direct the thinking of the people toward this momentous problem. 

There are those who believe, and believe sincerely, that duty and sacri- 
fice are outworn virtues that have no place in a democracy. It may not 
be enough to argue that, if democracy can find no place for these virtues, 
the world will shortly find no place for democracy. Can we insure ona large 
scale an effective sense of duty that will impel all the children of all the 
people to pay the necessary price for the trained intelligence—the price 
of effort and sacrifice that must always remain the basic factors in mental 
mastery? ‘There are boys and girls in our high schools and in our state- 
supported colleges and universities who look upon the opportunities and 
privileges that the bounty of the people provides always with the attitude 
that these are rights, never stopping to think that a right implies a corte- 
sponding duty. It is wrong to permit this condition to continue—wrong 
to these boys and girls themselves, wrong to society primarily for whose 
benefit public education has been established, wrong to the schools whose 
efficiency is impaired and whose service is restricted by the essentially 
individualistic attitude that our current educational doctrines deliberately 
encourage. 

The fundamental issue in this matter of “differentiation” versus 
“common elements,” then, is the issue between individualism and collec- 
tivism, and the struggle here is only a tiny example of the eternal struggle 
between these two forces. It is the struggle to find the proper balance, 
the adequate proportion of emphasis to give to each factor. It is the lack 
of a proper balance on a vastly larger scale that is drenching Europe with 





== S&S Bw Poa? Bo ee 


SrFS a? & 


Superintendencel) STUDY IN THE SEVENTH AND EIGHTH GRADES 75 


blood today. Many are asking whether, in our own country, we have not 
gone too far in the direction of individualism. In our educational theory 
we have certainly gone too far, and educational practice has gone about 
as far as it is safe to venture without a counteracting movement. In my 
opinion, the time is ripe for a little tincture of iron in our educational philos- 
ophy; for the touch of a more virile idealism; for a renaissance of thoro- 
ness and a reasonable measure of rigor; for something approaching a 
revival of the ideals of duty and effort. 


lI. DAVID SNEDDEN, COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION, BOSTON, MASS. 


The efforts now being made in various states to reorganize curricula 
of training and instruction for children from twelve to fourteen or fifteen 
years of age constitute undoubtedly the most significant and important of 
contemporary movements in education. We are justified in assuming 
without argument that the scope and character of that instruction and 
training will be materially modified in the near future. Readjustments 
in administrative plans, restatement of purposes, and new developments 
in means and methods employed may all be expected. For some years 
educators have discussed plans for a “six-and-six” division of the years 
given to elementary and secondary education; and we now hear much 
about the intermediate school and the junior high school as means of 
providing better education for children from twelve to fourteen years of age. 
Already a large number of interesting experiments along these lines are 
being tried. 

The writer holds that the theses given below can now be successfully 
defended, and in this paper it is proposed to contribute toward their 
discussion : 

a) The educational needs of pupils of twelve to fourteen years of 
age are variable to such an extent that, if conditions of educational 
administration permitted, a number of courses of training and instruction, 
dissimilar as to many important elements and also even as to quality of 
results expected in common studies, should be provided. 

b) The number and variety of subjects of training and instruction suited 
to and desirable for at least some important groups of pupils of these ages 
are now far too large to be properly included in the educational program 
of any one learner; and the number and variety of these desirable studies 
tend steadily to increase. 

¢) It is highly probable that as regards flexibility of courses of instruc- 
tion and training the school suited to the needs of pupils from twelve to 
fourteen years of age will in essential respects repeat the history of the 
liberal arts (general) college and the general secondary school which, in 
the early stages of their history, offered uniform curricula composed in 





76 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


the main of prescribed studies, but which subsequently and in ever. 
increasing measure found it desirable to increase the range of their studies 
and to give pupils wider latitude in making individual programs of 
study. 

d) While it may safely be assumed that for some years to come at least 
the individual programs of instruction and training for all pupils of twelye 
to fourteen years of age will be required to contain studies or elements com. 
mon to all, nevertheless it is even now expedient and desirable in well. 
organized schools, and, of course, subject to administrative limitations as 
to expense and also subject to certain general conditions hereafter to be 
described, to allow pupils to elect individual programs in large measure 
from among all the subject courses offered. 


UNLIKE ENDS OR OBJECTIVES IN EDUCATION 


Every specific subject or even phase of subject of school work should, 
of course, be taught with certain conscious ends or objectives in view, 
These objectives or goals determining the teachers’ aims are but illy defined 
at present, especially where the education of children from twelve to eighteen 
is concerned, but we may expect them to be more fully analyzed and stated 
in the near future, as educational processes become more scientifically 
correlated between social and individual needs on the one hand, and indi- 
vidual powers and possibilities on the other. But, in the light of present 
experience, it seems highly desirable to classify the objectives of the educa- 
tion that is adapted to children of twelve to fourteen years of age into at 
least two groups according to the presence or absence in each study or 
phase of study of certain fundamental characteristics. A few concrete 
cases will make this clear. 

The objects to be attained in teaching a pupil to spell, for example, 
differ essentially from the objects to be attained thru having the same 
pupil listen to a good musical recital or witness a dramatic performance. 
It is unfortunate that educational psychologists have not given more atten- 
tion to the fundamentally unlike character of the learning processes here 
contrasted. In teaching spelling the outcome expected on the part of the 
pupil is a certain quite definite and easily recognized ability to do, to exe- 
cute, to express in action, and the learning process cannot be terminated 
economically until this end is achieved. On the other hand, the learning 
achieved in hearing a recital or witnessing a dramatic performance (and 
we are agreed that some form of learning is thus achieved) can be subjected 
to no profitable test of expression, of doing. We expect absorption, assimi- 
lation, growth, as results, but the final outcome is so remote from the original 
stimulus that we do not, ordinarily, seek to trace connections. 

For the sake of convenient classification, let us call the first type of 
learning the alpha type, and the second the beta type. Let us repeat that 
the conspicuous result expected in the case of the alpha type is ability todo, 





a ae a 


— — he he OS ee UlUlCU CU 


Superintendencel) STUDY IN THE SEVENTH AND EIGHTH GRADES 77 


to express in action, while the most tangible result expected in the case of 
the beta type is appreciation or, in one sense of the word, interest. 

In the seventh and eighth grades, it is probably in accordance with 
sound pedagogy so to teach arithmetic, penmanship, composition, spelling, 
and, presumably, grammar that these subjects should properly fall in the 
alpha class. On the other hand, literature, science, and civics are, or 
doubtless ought to be, so taught as properly to belong to the beta class. 

History, geography, music, art, and practical arts seem to be composite. 
It is manifestly important, for example, that certain phases of history and 
geography should be so definitely taught that the resulting fixed knowledge 
becomes as available and inerrant as should be knowledge of the multiplica- 
tion table. But it is intolerable that all geography and history as organized 
for children from twelve to fourteen years of age should be so taught. Most 
of the supplemental material used, and indeed much of the contents of the 
textbooks in current use, also, should be read, talked over, and the resulting 
impressions assimilated, but no fixed and instantly usable knowledge need 
be expected. Hence the proper organization of these subjects should 
involve a conscious and definite differentiation between alpha and beta 
portions, teaching units or phases. 

It is difficult to determine the effect of the differentiations here proposed 
on music and drawing (or art), because the purposes of these subjects in 
elementary education are, as yet, so imperfectly defined. It is probable 
that both subjects are now composite, and that in the interest of effective 
teaching they should be differentiated into alpha and beta phases or teach- 
ing units. There is much discussion at present of the teaching of music 
for the purpose of developing musical appreciation. Picture-study has 
a place in some schools for a similar purpose. Clearly these are beta phases 
of these subjects. But it is also probably desirable that some children 
should be taught to execute music—that is, to read musical notation 
accurately, to sing, or to play. These are clearly alpha phases. Perhaps, 
also, upper-grade pupils should be given definite drill in drawing as an art 
of expression—also an alpha phase. 

Now the distinction here made is of fundamental importance in any 
discussion of flexible courses, or elective systems, because of the probability 
that the right and expediency on the part of the school of prescribing studies 
or phases of studies applies with far greater force to the alpha group than 
to the beta group. For one thing, the processes of learning in the alpha 
group are much more arduous, as a rule, than in the beta group; but in 
the alpha group, at least for the elementary school, will be found many of 
the common intellectual tools of civilized society—the arts of oral and writ- 
ten expression, receptive (or silent) reading, definite knowledge of geographi- 
cal and historical facts, simple principles of hygiene, generally accepted 
tules of behavior, etc. On the other hand, learning in the beta group is 
easier, or should be, if needed adaptation is made for individual interests; 





78 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


and in respect to appreciation studies generally, society can well afford to 
have and perhaps even to procure a large degree of variability rather than 
of uniformity among its members. We should all spell alike and have ip 
common a definite knowledge of some of the facts of American history; 
but it is of advantage rather than disadvantage that our people should 
vary greatly as to the fields or individual examples of literature, and of 
history, in which they find interest and satisfaction. 

It should, then, theoretically prove possible for us to enumerate all 
the desirable ends or objectives in the systematic education of young 
people from twelve to fifteen years of age, and to classify them into the two 
divisions suggested above, according as the learning sought is specific, 
definite, and instantly usable in active life, or as it results in appreciation, 
taste, modified sentiment, ideal, and undifferentiated background of 
knowledge (experience, intellectual nurture). 


THE POSSIBLE CURRICULUM OF THE JUNIOR HIGH 
OR INTERMEDIATE SCHOOL 


In order to set clearly before ourselves, without unnecessary restric- 
tions, the possibilities of flexibility in schools for children from twelve 
to fourteen years of age, let us assume a very large city school receiving 
only pupils who have completed sixth-grade work, and designed to retain 
these pupils for but two or three years. Let us assume further that the 
school possesses financial means sufficient to enable it to organize and offer 
any kind of instruction for which there is a substantial demand, and which 
in the judgment of the authorities it is wise to offer to pupils of the stated 
years and qualifications. Let us furthermore assume, for the sake of con- 
crete description, that the work is offered as units, a unit consisting of the 
equivalent of five weekly periods of 60 minutes each, extending thru twelve 
weeks, to cover both instruction and recitation, and any other form of 
‘exclusive claim on the attention and energy of the pupil of average power 
for the 60 minutes. Theoretically, then, in view of recent progress in 
enriching elementary-school curricula and in urging desirable new forms of 
instruction and training, the following subject courses might profitably 
be offered in Grades VII and VIII in such a school, the alpha and beta 
units being separately indicated: 


Name of Subject Alpha Units Beta Units 
(Figures at left refer to explanatory notes at end of section) 


(1) English expression: 





Superintendence) STUDY IN THE SEVENTH AND EIGHTH GRADES 


———ee 


Name of Subject Alpha Units Beta Units 
. (Figures at left refer to explanatory notes at end of section) 


(10) General history 6 
(11) American history 3 or 6 
(12) Community civics 2 

(13) Literature 5 

(14) General moving pictures 3 

(15) Music, individual vocal 

(16) Music, chorus 

(17) Music, piano 

(18) Music, appreciation 

(19) Music, band 

(20) Drawing, representative 

(21) Art, appreciation 

(22) Geography 

(23) Science, general 

(24) French 

(25) German 

(26) Spanish 

(27) Latin 

(28) Industrial arts 

(29) Agricultural arts 

(30) Commercial arts 

(31) Household arts 

(32) Arithmetic, commercial 

(33) Arithmetic, industrial 

(34) Arithmetic, home 

(35) Arithmetic, geometry, and algebra... . 

(36) Hygiene 20r 4 
(37) Physical training 5 0r4 
(38) Vocational guidance 3 or 6 

(1) To include all general studies designed to give greater power in the use of the 
vernacular, oral and written. 

(2) Including reading aloud, ‘“‘speaking,”’ correct use of voice, “‘oral composition” 
(or sustained delivery to audience), debate, correct usage, etc., all from standpoint of 
effort to secure definite attainments. 

(3) Composition, letter-writing, correct usage in writing, etc. 

(4) Systematic analysis, with correction of personal solecisms. 

(5) Origin and structure of common words. 

(6) Chiefly to meet individual needs. Good spellers excused. 

(7) Chiefly to meet individual needs. Good writers excused. 

(8) Drill in alphabet, to produce readiness in use of indexes, dictionaries, etc. 

(9) Drill in technique. The subject not clearly defined as yet, but evidence exists 
that it is very important. 

(10) A general reading and lecture course—no drill. 

(11) Selection of special details and fundamental generalization for drill for alpha 
units; general and interesting phases of subjects as beta units. 

(12) To include a small amount of definitely organized knowledge as alpha units. 
Beta units to cover thrift, reading about sanitatioh, practice voting, school self- 
government, readings, visits, etc. 

(13) Close analytical study of one or two selections, and certain central facts of litera- 
ture, under alpha units. Beta units to include home reading, library reading, etc., but 


bd 








80 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


no requirement as to uniformity of material for all pupils. Individual choices, subject 
to approval of instructor. 

(14) That is, not definitely correlated with other subjects, and is designed chiefly 
to enhance discriminative appreciation of moving pictures as a means of education and 
diversion. 

(15) Drill for pupils having marked capacity to profit from such study. 

(16) Selected group desiring drill. 

(17) For selected pupils desiring definite training. 

(18) All available forms of music offered to all desiring such training. 

(19) Selected group desiring definite training. 

(20) A general course; additional specialized work in correlation with practical 
arts. 

(21) Plastic and decorative, and in part correlated with practical arts, but she \i4 
include pictures, room decoration, architecture, advertising illustration, and moving 
pictures. 

(22) Separation of formal or drill phases from appreciative phase, preserving correla- 
tion, by means of specific “teaching units” for both alpha and beta phases. 

(23) Largely interpretive of scientific aspects of surroundings. 

(24)-(26) To produce mastery of spoken or of written language, according to pre- 
determined aims. 

(27) For drill in part. Subject could be reorganized to give insight and appreciation 
(beta units) in part. 

(28) Miscellaneous shop experience on projects from wide range of industries, 
including reading about the industries, and other means of enriching experience. Proj- 
ects from textile, printing, metal-working, woodworking, food-packing, transportation, 
and other industries. ; 

(29) Including gardening, poultry-raising, correlated reading, etc. 

(30) Typewriting, elementary bookkeeping, commercial penmanship, commercial 
readings, visits to commercial establishments, etc. Much of it on practical project 
basis. 

(31) Primarily to build on home experience and to enhance appreciation. 

(32)-(34) To be definitely practical subjects, correlated with practical arts courses. 

(35) Recommended for pupils expecting to enter high school and college. 

(36) To include certain alpha phases for definite knowledge and practice—teeth, 
posture, etc.—and others (beta) for insight and wide appreciation. 

(37) Some definite physical training to cure defects or to prevent apprehended 
defects (alpha units). Games, “boy scout” activities, miscellaneous developmental 
play, athletics, etc., for beta units. 

(38) Readings, individual conferences, lectures. 


THE VARYING EDUCATIONAL NEEDS OF CHILDREN OF TWELVE TO 
FOURTEEN YEARS OF AGE 

The foregoing idealized curriculum shows clearly that there is even now 
available for possible use in courses of study for the junior high or inter- 
mediate school many times as much material as any one pupil can compass. 
Common experience teaches that hardly any subject is included above 
which cannot be “used” in some educational way, and to the interest 
and advantage certainly of individuals and even of groups of pupils. 
But there are no great numbers of these units that can reasonably be 
regarded as essential to all pupils alike, and which therefore should be 
universally prescribed as positive requirements. Equally, there are few 





Superintendencel) STUDY IN THE SEVENTH AND EIGHTH GRADES 81 


ee 


that any pupil should be prohibited from taking if he wishes—here called 
negative prescription. 

But what shall be the bases of these positive and negative prescriptions ? 
They certainly include at least the following: (a) the limitations imposed 
by the varying native capacities of pupils; (6) the requirement that each 
pupil, even against his own desire and that of his parents, shall, as a part 
of his right to a protected childhood and as a logical accompaniment of 
compulsory school attendance, be required to receive the instruction and 
training that will probably be necessary or greatly advantageous to him 
in later life; and (c) the right of society to have each person fitted as far 
as may be to take his part as citizen, parent, soldier, and worker in a world 
where all human activities are increasingly socialized and corporate in 
character. 

No argument is required to prove that children of twelve to fourteen 
years of age vary greatly as to natural capacity. Some are so talented that 
they can carry a large program of studies with ease and profit. Others are 
fortunate if they can, only at best, meet minimum requirements. Some 
are born with natural gifts for music, foreign language, and drawing. 
These pupils can master their favorite subjects with an ease not possible 
to children less gifted in these directions. It is the observation of every 
teacher that some children have inferior natural capacity for arithmetic 
and other forms of mathematics, while others find only slight difficulty 
in these subjects, even in portions where rigorous abstract thinking is 
required. These natural limitations will therefore be influential in deter- 
mining what large numbers of pupils will, or will not, be allowed to 
take. 

On the other hand, the rights of the child, irrespective of his own desires 
in early youth or those of his guardians, to obtain or be given the education 
essential to a fair start in life are of paramount importance. This right 
applies not only as regards those minimum attainments in reading, writing, 
spelling, and number which are to be expected of all normal children; it 
should include also the requirement that children, manifestly talented in 
certain directions, shall be obliged at a suitable age to begin studies, such 
as foreign language, that may later, as far as can reasonably be foreseen, 
prove essential in the careers and positions of personal influence toward 
which their native powers seem to direct them. 

Finally, no one will dispute the obligation on the part of society to 
require all persons to acquire in childhood at least the minimum of knowl- 
edge and training which is essential to their successful participation in 
corporate life. Not only are the arts of expression to be included here, 
along with moral training, knowledge of civic facts and responsibilities, 
and everyday arithmetic; eventually each person may be required to sub- 
mit to the training required for a vocation, and for the work of the soldier. 
Society must give this degree of education as a means of self-preservation. 





82 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


But, when an extensive curriculum of subject courses is offered in g 
school, the burden of proof rests on the school to establish a strong presump.. 
tion as to the necessity of the units which are prescribed, whether for al] 
or for those electing stated courses. Subject to the requirement that the 
pupil and his parents provide for the full use of the pupil’s time, the learner 
should be free to elect his own program of studies, unless the school 
authorities can defiriitely establish the desirability of prescription. 


THE PROS AND CONS OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 


Clearly, then, educators charged with organizing and administering 
education for persons from twelve to fifteen years of age are, or soon will 
be, confronted by conditions which constitute, if the distorted figure may be 
permitted, a three-horned dilemma: (a) Possible educational offerings (or 
opportunities for giving particular kinds of instruction and training) are 
becoming many fold more numerous than can be taken by any one indi- 
vidual or group of individuals presenting like characteristics; (b) the native 
capacities of pupils or of distinctive possible groups of pupils vary greatly; 
and (c) some subjects or phases of subjects, as yet not fully determined or 
defined, should in some cases be prescribed for all, and in other cases for 
all having stated forms of ability or probable future fields of usefulness, 
How shall the administrator proceed under these conditions? Shall he 
disregard, as he has heretofore done, the first and second considerations, 
and insist on a limited curriculum of prescribed studies for all, thus ignoring 
opportunities for varied training and instruction? Shall he include in 
his curricula all possible studies, but segregate them in rigid courses, so 
that each shall constitute a fixed system in itself, like a railroad route, of 
such a character that the pupil, once en route, cannot cross to another line, 
and can change his route of travel only by going back to the starting-point 
again? Or shall he simply organize the school offerings into one long series 
and allow the pupil to range and choose ad libitum? Manifestly, each of 
these courses is open to objection. They are all psychologically unsound. 

In reality, each method is desirable and feasible as to certain elements 
or types of studies in the curriculum. Some studies or subject courses 
should be prescribed for all pupils; some should be prescribed only as com- 
ponent elements of definite courses, and therefore to be required only of 
learners electing such courses, while, possibly, elective to others; and 
some should be freely elective to all. But it is here contended again that 
as regards all prescribed work, whether generally prescribed or prescribed 
for those electing specified courses, a heavy burden rests upon the authorities 
making the prescriptions to establish the presumption that it is better that 
these prescriptions should thus be made than that the pupil, subject to 
reasonable supervision from home and school, and to the general require- 
ment that he must employ all of his school time profitably, shall freely 
elect his own course (subject, also, of course, to the limitations imposed by 





sy i 


ll 


: 
L 
) 
f 


~~ 


SS > 17 HO HD SP 


Superintendencel) STUDY IN THE SEVENTH AND EIGHTH GRADES 83 


the necessities of efficient and economical school administration). Here 
we are, of course, at once involved in the old debate as to the merits and 
demerits of the elective system and the capacities of learners wisely to use 
such a system. 

All of us have read (and perhaps participated in) lengthy discussions 
as to the elective system in college and school. We were long ago told that 
learners—whether college Juniors or high-school Freshmen—were not old 
enough or wise enough or earnest enough to choose their own studies to 
advantage. They would usually choose “snap” courses. Their programs, 
under freedom of election, would consist of unco-ordinated subject-courses, 
the resulting learning would be fragmentary, discursive, and unsubstantial. 
“Rasy instructors” would be in favor, real efficiency would disappear, and 
chaos would prevail. 

It is a fact that in nearly all debate as to the elective system, its oppo- 
nents have had the stronger arguments. The proponents, while usually 
able eventually to win the day in action because of favoring circumstances, 
have never, it would seem, formulated the most fundamental and strongest 
arguments in favor of their position. 

It must surely be admitted that the pupil, whether in seventh, or tenth, 
or fifteenth (college Junior) grade, is but poorly equipped to make so 
momentous a choice as that involved in electing the studies he will hence- 
forth pursue. Almost equally, after college graduation, he will be but 
poorly prepared to elect his profession, his place of future work, his physi- 
cian, his political party, a woman to be his wife. Here we express, of course, 
only an admission that our system of education includes as yet hardly any 
provision for adequately guiding the individual in the matter of many, if 
not all, of the important decisions he must make in life. 

For, if we ask what is the alternative to free election of studies, even, 
let us say, in the college period of education, we are confronted by the fact 
that except in rare instances there exists as yet no organized procedure 
whereby the individual, with his limitations of capacity and opportunity, 
his interests, and his obligations to society, can be guided into making 
choices that best meet or serve his needs. The opponents of election have 
probably never asserted that they were ready to provide the personal 
attention and scientific insight that would be required adequately to have 
prescribed for the individual student on the basis of sound diagnosis the 
best program of studies for him. It is certain that in college and secondary 
school this could not be done, for the sufficient reason that never yet have 
educators in those institutions accomplished anything substantial in the 
way of capacity for making scientific diagnoses of the capacities, limitations, 
and probable opportunities of individual learners. 

Furthermore, even assuming that such diagnoses were possible at any 
period, the prepossessions of the advocates of rigid courses—or, usually, 
of one rigid course—would probably have prevented them from studying 





84 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 
——_—-_-_————————————  —  .O OO OOO _ 


the variant qualities of the minds of their students, again for the sufficient 
reason that the all-important consideration, as teachers have believed, was 
the subject to be taught—Latin, algebra, Greek, rhetoric, logic, physics, 
etc.—and not at all the characteristics of the individual learner. 

In other words, the historical alternative to free election, at least of 
courses, if not subjects, has been rigid prescription as determined by 
inflexible tradition or custom or educational theory. The variability of 
learners as to capacities, interests, and needs has been ignored. Traditions 
and dogmas as to the superior or even unique educational values of certain 
ancient subjects of study have governed. The newer subjects were intrin- 
sically inferior, if not worthless, educationally; hence any choice of them 
has been regarded as necessarily bad. The thought that election of studies 
is bad has always been fathered by the wish that it should prove bad from 
the standpoint of the opponent whose favorite studies might not be elected, 

The various attempts heretofore made to modify, on the one hand, 
the rigidity of the inflexible one-course curriculum, and, on the other, to 
prevent the wasteful possibilities of completely free election, have con- 
stituted admissions that adjustments of courses and studies, based partly 
upon the capacities of learners, and partly upon their varying needs, are 
highly desirable and probably feasible. But it is a fact that no satisfactory 
statement of the principles which should guide in the matter has, as yet, 
been formulated. There is still too often the naive assumption that the 
“system ’’—that is, the collection of educational dogmas and traditions as 
expressed by unprogressive educators, usually thru conference or committee 
edict—knows best what the “‘student’’ needs and should have. This is 
not an individual student, James Ferguson, for example, but an abstract 
human being, an educational John Doe, who has met entrance requirements 
and who is probably assumed to be taking his class attendance in the same 
spirit in which he would accept a necessary, tho distasteful, sentence toa 
hospital. 

It is still too early, perhaps, to formulate the underlying principles 
which should govern flexibility of curricula and courses; but it is possible 
even now to apply to the possible junior high-school curri¢ulum the best 
results of contemporary theory and practice as to this educational problem 
in secondary school and college. 


CONTROLLING PRINCIPLES OF FLEXIBILITY IN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOLS 


If we take, for example, the entire range of subject-courses that it is 
possible to offer in the junior high school, it is clear that all cannot be 
regarded as being on the same footing from the standpoint either of election 
or of prescription. Some are essential to all, many essential to none. 
Some are essential in cértain courses, others essential to no particular course. 
On the other hand, there are many that may well be regarded as educational 
luxuries—highly pleasurable to those who can afford them and surely not 





fr —_—-— =| —- Fe Ww 


Superintendencel) STUDY IN THE SEVENTH AND EIGHTH GRADES 85 


injurious to any who can take them without detriment to their more neces- 
sary work. But what are the subject-courses that belong in those respec- 
tivecategories? It is difficult for us to reach sound conclusions here because 
our prepossessions are at present so much stronger and more clearly defined 
than are any available findings based on scientific study. In the idealized 
curriculum for a junior high school given above there are found from 58 
to 88 alpha units (or subject-courses to be taught with the aim of producing 
power to do), and from 52 to 82 beta units (or subject-courses in which 
appreciation is a controlling purpose). No one average pupil, probably, 
could take in two years more than 30 of the total 140 units supposed to be 
offered. A slow pupil could take perhaps not to exceed 20, while an excep- 
tionally strong pupil could take 40. What requirements shall we make, 
what advice offer, and what liberty allow, to our junior high-school pupil 
confronted by the foregoing curriculum ? 

First, let us repeat that our attitude toward the alpha units should not 
be the same as that toward the beta units. If the beta units are taught 
(or, better word, offered) with due regard to appropriate pedagogical prin- 
ciples, we may experience difficulty in keeping pupils from them, or, at least, 
from some of them. They should prove inherently interesting to children 
as do play, the “‘ movies,” sports, and certain kinds of fiction, or as the opera, 
fiction, travel, and association prove attractive to adults. On the other 
hand, the alpha units present, in the main, the characteristics of the harder 
work of the world. The interest with which they are pursued must often 
bea derived interest—derived, in some cases even, from fear of punishment, 
or fear of forfeiture of desired approval, or from love of gain or approval. 
Hence it can at the outset be asserted that prescription will be much more 
necessary in the case of the alpha than of the beta units. 

Let us assume that a careful study of the capacities of average children 
of twelve to fourteen years of age, coupled with an equally careful study 
of the objectives, individual and social, which should be realized thru their 
education, shows that it is expedient and desirable that their two-year 
programs could and should include substantially 15 alpha units and 15 
beta units. We might then establish the following rules to govern the 
making of individual courses: 

a) Any pupil deficient as to spelling, writing, and silent reading accord- 
ing to some definite standard shall be required to take these alpha subjects. 

b) Every pupil shall elect four alpha units in English expression, in 
addition to those required under (a). 

c) Every pupil shall elect at least six units designed to provide a definite 
course in one of the following fields: (i) foreign language and mathematics; 
(ii) commercial arts; (iii) industrial arts (boys); (iv) household arts (girls) ; 
(v) agricultural arts. 

d) No pupil shall have fewer than 15 or more than 20 alpha units. 

e) Every pupil shall elect at least ro beta units. 





NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION 


CONCLUSIONS 


The following are the conclusions of this paper: 

1. The reorganization of education designed for young people from 
twelve to fourteen is one of the most important of contemporary move. 
ments in the field of general education. 

2. It is right and proper that this period should continue to be reserved 
for general education (cultural, physical, and social education), and that 
no specific vocational education should be offered in it; but (a) vocational 
guidance, based on communicated information (books, lectures, individual 
conferences), observation of men at work in vocations, and participation 
in simple processes derived from industry, all designed as phases of general 
education, is acceptable and desirable; and (0) differentiated courses in 
practical arts, partly as a means of enabling each pupil to find himself, and 
partly as a means of acquiring valuable experience in reception and expres- 
sion or execution (not necessarily contributing to vocational power 
however), are desirable. 

3. Central schools should, as far as practicable, be organized for all 
pupils from twelve to fourteen, to include not only the normal in grade, but 
the retarded as well. As far as practical, retarded pupils should take the 
same studies as pupils of normal grade; and where, in the more technical 
studies, they cannot do this, special courses containing work especially 
adapted to their needs should be provided. 

4. Whenever it seems that a new study can profitably be offered toa 
substantial group of pupils of these ages, it should be introduced. 

5. It is to be expected that many more studies or subject-courses will 
be offered than can be taken by any one pupil; and hence will arise the 
necessity of election of courses or subjects. 

6. In providing for the selection of individual programs, prescribed 
studies should be reduced to the minimum, and large freedom allowed to the 
* pupil and his parents to elect, subject to full advice, the subject-courses to be 
taken by the pupil. Choices made by pupils may frequently be unwise, 
but rarely more unwise than the courses prescribed arbitrarily by the 
authorities. 


ADDRESS 


WOODBRIDGE N. FERRIS, GOVERNOR OF MICHIGAN 


I want to have it distinctly understood that I appear before you as 
an educational exhorter. I haven’t a new thing to say to you; I haven't 
anything to tear down. I just want to present two or three very old notions 
and exhort you to their observance. 

If I were to organize an educational system, I would make for its 
center health—h-e-a-l-t-h, health. I ask teachers to care as much about 
health as the great industrial institutions of this country care about 





Seperintendence] ADDRESS 87 





health. If you will do that much, there will be important changes in the 
United States in a comparatively short time. Our great factories are 
today houses of glass. What for? Light, light, and more light. They 
are so built that they can have air and more air. The industrial world 
has found out that it pays in dollars and cents to have light and air, and 
of course any industrial institution that has light and air has all other 
sanitary provisions. 

Many of our school buildings, viewed in the light of what I have 
already said, are unfit for the use of our boys and girls. You say, ‘“‘ What 
can we do about it?”’ You can do everything. It is about time school- 
masters and schoolma’ams came to realize the power they possess. You 
can do almost any wise thing if you have a mind to, or rather, if you 
want to. 

Tonight I make the appeal for air and sunlight. In Michigan we 
have a state sanatorium for tuberculosis patients. This sanatorium is 
full of patients, every single case a well-defined case of tuberculosis. 
They are sleeping out of doors, living out of doors, playing out of doors, 
working a little out of doors—everything out of doors except dressing 
and undressing; on account of the peculiar usages here in America, par- 
ticularly in sanatoriums, they are obliged to dress indoors. The same 
restrictions are not placed on people who are well as on people who are ill. 
We know that the only means by which we can help these people is to have 
them live out of doors. Well, what under heaven has Michigan and the 
other states in the Union against people who haven’t tuberculosis? I 
want you to answer that question. My state is going to stamp out tuber- 
culosis, that is, kill tuberculosis, get rid of it somehow. I ask our officials 
to take hold of the educational machinery of my state and see if they 
cannot do something to get well men and women to live as they ought to 
live with reference to air and sunshine. Now, you yourselves don’t do it. 
You don’t believe in fresh air, you don’t want fresh air, you won’t have 
fresh air; you won’t live out of doors, you don’t want to get out of doors, 
and consequently what hope is there ? 

Microbes do not thrive out of doors; they don’t sit up in the trees 
nor on brick or stone walls. They are indoors. Every cold, every case of 
pneumonia, is an indoor disease. Let us come a little closer to our subject. 
What can you people do with the present schoolhouses? You cannot have 
them condemned and torn down; you cannot build new buildings in order 
to have air and sunshine. You can take out the lower or upper sash, and 
put in a cotton-cloth screen for the entire year. You will use more fuel 
possibly, but you will have fresh air and better air, less sickness, and teach 
a few boys and girls how to live and have health instead of tuberculosis 
or any other disease. Will you doit? No, the majority of you won’t. 

And what else can you teachers do? On every sunshiny day, on every 
fair day, in the rural and village schools, you can take your boys and 





88 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 
«a si aa ma a name ee ea ee eee re ee 


girls out of doors and conduct out of doors every class that can be con- 
ducted successfully out of doors. I dare you to do it. There has never 
been a schoolroom built to equal God’s schoolroom. I would much rather 
have the boys and girls out of doors, now and then glancing at a bird ina 
tree or a squirrel scampering around, than observing a curtain when it falls 
down inside. 

I go further, I plead in behalf of medical inspection. I hold that every 
American child, when he enters the schoolroom, has the right, if the state 
is going to demand what it does, to have just as good teeth as modern 
science can give him; he has a right to have a pair of eyes just as good and 
efficient as modern science can give him; he has right to have just as sound 
ears and efficient ears as modern science can give him; just as good a 
throat and nasal cavities as modern science can give him; just as good a 
body as modern science can give him. You agree with me, don’t you? 
Is there any possibility of disagreement? You see then what I mean by 
health in the schoolroom. In five years, you can perceptibly improve con- 
ditions thru your own efforts along the lines I have suggested, without state 
aid. It is up to you. By the way, the people will respond. They will 
listen to you. 

We have in this country a tremendous school equipment, costing mil- 
lions and millions of dollars, and for whom? Your traditional answer is, 
for the boys and girls of a certain age. Talk about superstition—I haven’t 
any language whereby I can describe my contempt for this answer. And 
what has it done? It has paralyzed the majority of people, so that, whena 
man whose hair is like mine speaks about getting an education, he is told 
that he is too old. When a man or woman is too old to learn, there is only 
one thing I can suggest. He should take a shovel and pick, go to the family 
cemetery, where I hope he has bought a lot, dig a grave, get into it and 
stay there. 

In our democracy, public schools should be for all of the people all of 
the time. We now use them less than 50 per cent of the time. The re- 
mainder of the time they are idle. City schools should be open six nights 
in a week and six days in the week. There are many schoolmasters who 
think that the people would not take advantage of these privileges. 

I love the flag. I like to hear folks talk about it; but I have always 
had a profound admiration for the people who carry the flag. I want to say 
that one of the highest forms of patriotism in this country consists in carry- 
ing out the idea I have suggested, of giving all of the people in this country 
an opportunity to acquire the fundamentals of an education, and especially 
an opportunity to learn to speak and write English. Oh, what a gigantic 
influence it would have on the solution of industrial problems, on the 
solution of national preparedness! 

One other thing: Don’t forget the few fundamentals we have taught 
in the public schools ever since they were organized. Above all, teach a 





Superintendence] ADDRESS 89 


few things so that they will stick. Isn’t it humiliating to hear the graduate 
of a college or university say: ‘‘Oh yes, I have been out of college five 
years; I cannot read my Virgil, I cannot read my Cicero, it is all gone.” 
Or, “I once knew a little something of geometry, but it has vanished; I 
knew something of chemistry, but it is gone.” Don’t mention it again 
as long as you live. What is the use of advertising your foolishness? Don’t 
take particular pains to mention it. I am not afraid of any of those fellows. 
I am afraid of the fellow who has learned something that has stayed with 
him. There is E. A. Strong, professor of physical sciences, State Normal 
College, Ypsilanti, Michigan, who is now nearing his eightieth year. He 
has taught science all his life. If an Ypsilanti girl tomorrow should say: 
“Doctor, I am puzzled a little with that passage in Virgil,” he would 
read it as tho he had only learned it yesterday. He mastered the classics 
at Union College. I am not arguing as to whether you should teach the 
classics or not, but whatever you do teach, teach it so that it will stick. 
The greatest teacher I ever had was Herman Kriisi. He covered plane 
geometry in just forty weeks, but in some of the high schools in Michigan 
the period is sixteen weeks. Every theorem was presented in the form of 
aproblem. No textbook was used. Every student presented his own solu- 
tion. I would like to find a Kriisi student in the United States who today 
does not know his geometry. I know plane geometry and I have not 
taught the subject in twenty years. Somebody says: “Do you teach 
geometry that way now in your own school?’’ No, because I am com- 
pelled to cover a certain amount of ground in a certain number of units 
of time. Why so? Many of my students enter colleges and universities, 
and I must meet the requirements of these institutions. 

Please don’t think lightly of my appeal for health, my appeal for all 
the people, my appeal for thoroness. 


ADDRESS 


MARTIN G. BRUMBAUGH, GOVERNOR OF PENNSYLVANIA 


In the United States we have gone far to put to the test a new theory of 
government—that the will of a majority expressed in law, constitutional 
and statutory, is the sole and adequate guidance for all the people. We 
have put democracy on trial. We have proclaimed its adequacy. We 
have unhesitatingly subscribed to its beneficent operation. We stake on 
it our lives, our property, and our sacred honor. We have at all times, 
with bated breath, in the solemn hours of reflection, asked ourselves whether 
after all we have found in our democracy, as it works its issues, the golden 
good we are proud to claim that it holds. What gives this heart-tremor, 
this tender solicitude, this half-awakened fear that perhaps we have not, 
after all, found the pot of gold at the end of our rainbow of hope and faith ? 





go NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


Why are we half fearful to put our democracy fully to the test? Is jt 
because we question its fundamental rightness? Absolutely no. What 
visioning souls wrought in Independence Hall we hold sacred and secure, 
The doubt is born, if at all, because we have not given to democracy its 
adequate channels of expression. We have not been fair to our own 
dominant ideals. 

What we need to do—and do it now—is to make possible a complete 
reliance upon our theory of government and put it to its fullest use. To 
do this we must unhesitatingly lay larger reliance upon education. An 
enlightened democracy is the hope of the nation. The school is the hope 
of the Republic. 

This agency, devised by wise insight and carried steadily into the genera- 
tions of our advance, needs re-establishment and rejuvenation in these 
stress years of our advance. The whole theory of preparedness is funda- 
mentally a theory of education. Our armies and our navies, the front line 
of preparedness, and our industries, the secondary line of defense, are alike 
dependent upon a trained, skilled, intelligent, efficient citizenry. The 
resources of a people, material and spiritual, are its safeguards. Education 
is the guaranty of resourcefulness. 

Our educational system under control of our fundamental theory of 
government is not only the most potential agency to stabilize our national 
ideals, but it is the agency pre-eminent for their completest realization. 
No equipment of material good can replace a training of our people into 
a homogeneous nation. This'fact is emphasized as one considers the far 
reaches of racial ideals that here fuse and fashion this mighty people. From 
every land and from every clime they have come, they are coming, they 
will come, and, unless these all pass the portals of our educational system, 
and in its halls get essential baptism of American ideals and achievements, 
and a keen understanding of national purposes, we cannot hope for a nation 
whose democracy is its boast and its certain permanence. 

We turn then to the school and demand for it a much larger place in 
the American mind. It is increasingly manifest that it, best of all our 
institutions, trains for service, for efficiency, for living, and for promoting 
the government whose agency it is. We must in the school train for 
co-operation in all civic duties, for competition in all industrial activities, 
for moral steadfastness in all social endeavor, and for the intertwining of 
these into one serviceable and substantial system of national equipment. 

We have committed ourselves to a vast enterprise—the making of 
men and women fit for the Republic. There must be no looking backward. 
We must go steadily on until the proud boast, “I am an American citizen,” 
shall be a synonym for civic pride, industrial efficiency, and moral and 
religious worth. Then we shall be prepared—not for war—but for the 
peace that passeth all understanding and is permanent. 





Superintendence] ADDRESS 


ADDRESS 


FRANK B. WILLIS, GOVERNOR OF OHIO 


In these times we hear much about conservation, a word to which the 
last ten years have given a new significance. We hear of the conservation 
of the public domain, of forests, of game, of insectivorous and song birds, 
of water power, of mineral resources, and the public health. All these are 
important. I wish to say, however, that to the teachers of the country is 
committed the momentous problem of the conservation of the intellectual 
and moral energy of the Republic. 

We see around us in the material world evidences of the prodigalities 
of nature. We see life in myriad forms struggling for existence. We see 
in the elements the manifestation of mighty powers that are yet to be uti- 
lized in the service of man. In the motion of the air as it sweeps over the 
country and in the power of the restless sea thundering on rocky shore, 
there is sufficient energy to heat and light and move the world. 

To the educators of the United States is committed the intellectual and 
moral energy, in large measure undeveloped, of those who will soon not 
only shape the destinies of the Republic, but constitute the Republic 
itself: for what is our nation but the aggregate of its citizenship? On 
you more largely than on any other body of men in the United States 
devolves the problem of the conservation and development of the energies 
of the children of the nation. 

Garfield once said, before he was president: “I always feel like taking 
off my hat to the American boy. I do not know what possibilities are 
wrapped up under his plain jacket.” To the schoolmasters of the land are 
reserved the privilege, the opportunity, and the responsibility of develop- 
ing these large possibilities. The intellectual and moral powers must not 
be dissipated or frittered away and wasted. They must be directed to 
useful and beneficient ends. It is a great thing to attain dexterity in kick- 
ing the football or plying the oar in physical contests, but it must be made 
just as worthy in the public eye to wield the hammer and the trowel, to 
guide the lathe and the drill, to follow the plow and drive the harvester 
thru fields of golden grain; and hand in hahd with manual training must 
go the intellectual and moral development suited to the varied needs of 
our American citizenship. 

On Washington’s birthday there was published in this country a detailed 
statement setting forth the pre-eminence of the United States among the 
nations of the earth. In making comparisons, population was considered, 
but much was properly made of the fact that the efficiency of the individual 
citizen must be taken into consideration. The enormous population of 
China and the relatively large population of Russia do not give them a 
dominant position among the nations of the earth. By careful calculation, 
the expert arrives at the conclusion that “the United States exceeds all 





92 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


ee ee ee 


other nations in size of effective population.” In wealth and resources our 
dominance is even more pronounced. If this superiority is to be main- 
tained, the energies of the rising generation must be conserved and the 
average individual citizen of the United States, morally, mentally, physi- 
cally—in all that goes to make up efficiency—must be the peer, yea, even 
the superior, of the average citizen of the most favored nation beyond our 
borders. 

To make him such is in large measure the work of those who are 
assembled here. The subjects for discussion on your program show that 
you are awake to this fact. You are met to discuss practical educationa} 
problems of momentous import. I bid you Godspeed in your work. With 
the realization of your ideals we shall have not only ‘‘a new conception of 
nationalism,’”’ but a new nationalism and a new patriotism that shall include 
all in the old that brought us to our present high estate, and add to it all 
that is to lead us to the greater Republic yet to be. 

We hear much of preparedness both for national defense and for national 
elections. Probably both are necessary. Certainly the President must 
be backed up with power if his efforts for peace are to be successful. Our 
foreign policy must be something more than an international school of 
correspondence. Peace is our passion: “our interest is in concord not in 
conflict’’; yet we must have an army and a navy big enough to protect 
every American citizen wherever he has a right to be. On the wings of a 
new American-built merchant marine, Old Glory must be carried to all 
the ports of commerce of the world. With this preparation for defense, 
not conquest, must come also industrial preparedness to maintain our 
standard of living and thinking. Let us inculcate the homely virtues of 
honesty, hard work, and hopefulness. One of the qualifications absolutely 
essential for permanent success in public or private life is old-fashioned, 
square-toed honesty. Our young people must be made to understand the 
dignity of labor and the honor of toil. Human nature is so constituted 
that it is best developed by toil and battle and struggle. The coral insect 
perishes where the currents are gentle, but grows and thrives under the 
thunderous attacks of waves that would grind granite to powder. With 
honesty and hard work and good cheer let there be coupled a patriotism 
that knows only one country and one flag. The elements of our cosmo- 
politan civilization are diverse, yet they become one in the democracy 
of the American schoolroom. This thought hag been well expressed by 
an Ohio school-teacher in the following lines: 

Briton or Teuton, it matters not, 

Once we’ve been thru the Melting Pot; 
Changed forever each heart and mind, 
Old World fealty left behind; 
Henceforth, Yankee, in blood and bone, 


We have one country and one alone: 
AMERICA, 





Superintendencel BOOKER T. WASHINGTON—AN APPRECIATION 93 
I nearer tinmeetnstnpanareegoeendninsinsns-ihetegisansesmenanyiienne 

Land of the larger, nobler view, 

Land of the immigrant’s dreams come true; 

Country where tyranny, caste, and clan 

Yield to the sacred rights of man; 

Nation whose glorious history 

Brightens the hope of humanity; 

Storehouse of treasure, rich and vast, 

Gift of a providential past, 

Spared by fortune of time and place 

To nurture a new and favored race; 

Land of our opportunity, 

Land of our children’s destiny: 

AMERICA. 


If you do well your work of teaching honor, industry, optimism, patriot- 
ism, and faith in a Power not ourselves that makes for righteousness, the 
future of the Republic is safe. 


BOOKER T. WASHINGTON—AN APPRECIATION 


0. T. CORSON, EDITOR, “OHIO EDUCATIONAL MONTHLY,” COLUMBUS, OHIO 


Born a slave, without a record of either the place or date of his birth; 
permitted to grow up in the midst of the direst poverty, without any of the 
refining influences or tender associations so essential to the happiness and 


welfare of a little child; compelled at a very early age to work in the salt 
and coal mines of West Virginia, under conditions which the most heartless 
exploiter of child labor, in these days, even if the law permitted, would 
hesitate to impose upon any human being; with ro opportunity to go to 
school and satisfy his insatiable thirst for knowledge; without even a 
chance to play for which the soul of every child |. ungers; without a word 
of encouragement or a whisper of hope from anyone, with the possible excep- 
tion of his kind but poor and ignorant mother; without even a family name; 
with everything in both heredity and environment against him and with 
nothing in his favor: these are a few of the countless and apparently 
insurmountable difficulties which surround the birth, childhood, and youth 
of the man in whose honor the members of this Association, representative 
educators of a nation, now reverently pause for a few moments, in their 
consideration of educational problems, in order that an opportunity may 
be given to pay a brief but very imperfect tribute to his memory. 

Can it be that out of the depths of such hopeless conditions, there could 
come, not only a great leader of his race, but also one of the greatest edu- 
cators and philanthropists which any age or race has ever produced—a man 
of sterling character and brilliant achievements, who would be honored 
by degrees from some of America’s greatest universities, whose fame would 
extend across the seas, and whose untimely death would be sincerely mourned 
by all who knew his worth and work? Certainly, a half-century ago, no 





904 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


one would have prophesied such a future for such a child, and even today, 
with an intimate knowledge of the achievements of the all too brief life of 
Booker T. Washington, it is exceedingly difficult for us to believe what we 
so certainly know. 

It is pleasing and profitable to turn from a consideration of the discourag- 
ing conditions which surround the beginnings of the life of this poor boy, 
with no promise of success, to an enumeration of a few of the marked stages 
in the steady growth and development of that life in the years that were to 
follow. 

His first taste of knowledge, as represented by symbols, in learning 
to recognize and make “18,” the number allotted to his stepfather in mark- 
ing the barrels at the salt mine; his advancement in mastering the alphabet 
and thus teaching himself to read; his success from the start, in the midst 
of the most disheartening circumstances, in carrying out the “one resolve,” 
which he tells us remained with him constantly in a “determination to 
secure an education at any cost’’; his training in the home of Mrs. Ruffner, 
where he laid the foundation of all his future success by learning to do every- 
thing exactly as it ought to be done and precisely when it should be done; 
the passing of his entrance examination to Hampton, which consisted in 
sweeping and dusting a room so perfectly that Miss Mackie, the head 
teacher, who was not at all prepossessed in his favor, at once recognized 
in him the qualities certain to win; his hard work as a student, which won 
for him a place upon the honor roll of commencement speakers; his unself- 
ish devotion to his work as a teacher in the school at his former home, where 
he stood ready at any time, day or night, to teach anything he knew to 
anyone who wanted to learn; his later study in Washington, where his 
observations and experiences served to deepen his conviction of the neces- 
sity of industrial training for his race; his call to Hampton as a teacher, 
which furnished him additional opportunity to prepare for his future career; 
his life-work at Tuskegee, extending over a little more than a third of a 
century, beginning in 1881 with practically no equipment of any kind, with 
himself as the only teacher, and with only a score and a half of students, and 
ending with his untimely death a short time since, in the Southland to which 
he was always so devotedly loyal, at the home he so dearly loved, located 
in the midst of one of the most noted educational communities in all the 
world, with its property valued in millions, its teachers numbered by hun- 
dreds, and its students enrolled by thousands: these are only a few of the 
many achievements recorded in the life of the man whose memory we cher- 
ish, who had the power to turn emergencies into opportunities, and win 
victories in the midst of conditions which ordinarily insure defeat. 

How he made himself the master of his fate and won for himself such 
a prominent and permanent place in the educational world is an interesting 
study. Fortunately, the secret of his phenomenal success is not enshrouded 
in any mystery to be solved by some biographer with a theory of his own 





Superintendence]) BOOKER T. WASHINGTON—AN APPRECIATION 95 


aE 











invention. Booker T. Washington is his own biographer. In Up from 
Slavery, with its wealth of interesting and instructive contents and its 
charm of simple and direct style, he tells the wonderful story of his struggles 
and achievements. In it all there is not a single note of complaint or 
bitterness because of his hardships and not a word of boastfulness regarding 
his attainments. Every difficulty which beset his pathway, he seems to 
have expected and to have utilized as a means of growth and development, 
while every special recognition which resulted from his efforts came to him 
- asa surprise for which he was always profoundly grateful. 

The fundamental principle upon which he constructed his philosophy 
of life and built his hope of success is found in his own statement, frequently 
repeated in modified form, that “every persecuted individual and race 
should get much consolation out of the great human law, which is universal 
and eternal, that merit, no matter under what skin found, is, in the long 
run, recognized and rewarded.” 

He believed with all of the intensity of his being that merit, and merit 
only, would win success and that any man would be recognized and rewarded 
just in proportion as he learns to do something well; learns to do it better 
than someone else; learns to do a common thing in an uncommon manner; 
learns to make his services of indispensable value. 

As a natural outgrowth of his abiding faith in the success which merit 
is certain to win, he was able to say in the face of some of the most trying 
circumstances which ever confronted a human soul: 

I will not say that I became discouraged, for, as I now look back over my life, I do 


not recall that I ever became discouraged over anything that I set out to accomplish. I 
have begun everything with the idea that I could succeed. 


The success which he believed he could win by meriting it was not, 
however, in any sense, a selfish success. He earnestly strived to succeed . 
in order that he might thereby be able the better to serve. In his auto- 
biography we read: 

From my early childhood, I have had a desire to do something to make the world 
better, and then to be able to speak to the world about that thing. 


It was this desire, aroused in his early childhood and deepened by the 
experiences of each passing year, that impelled him to perform deeds of 
heroic self-sacrifice—literally to give his own life in unselfish service for 
others—and that enabled him to tell the inspiring story of what he had done 
with rare eloquence and power. How well he succeeded in realizing the 
first part of his desire ‘‘ to do something to make the world better,” thousands 
of his own race who came under his influence at Tuskegee, and thousands 
of the white race who realize what he accomplished for humanity, unite 
in bearing willing and convincing testimony. That he also succeeded in 
realizing the second part of his desire, ‘to be able to speak to the world” 
about what he had done, his numerous educational addresses, and pub- 
lished articles and books abundantly prove. And now that his voice is 





96 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


silent and he can no longer speak directly to the world, the noble institution 
at Tuskegee, to which he gave his life, still remains to speak, out of its 
splendid history and with its future promise, most eloquently and forcefully 
of his great work. 

On this occasion it is interesting to recall that Mr. Washington dated 
the beginning of his public-speaking career with his first address before the 
National Education Association at Madison in 1884. This was also his 
first address that dealt in any large measure with the general problem of 
the races. It is not surprising that many white people, some of them 
from his home community, went to the meeting expecting to hear the 
South abused. They were all pleasantly surprised by not hearing a word 
of abuse, but, on the other hand, a full and generous recognition of all the 
praiseworthy things which the white people of Tuskegee and the South 
had done to help in starting the school. In this address, as in all others 
which he made, he was guided by a few fixed principles, which were im. 
bedded in deep-seated convictions, and from which he never deviated, 
These principles, stated briefly, were a determination to say nothing at 
any time that he did not feel from the bottom of his heart to be true and 
right, never to say anything in an address in the North that he would 
not be willing to say in the South, and an earnest desire to say something 
that would cement the friendship of the races and bring about hearty 
co-operation between them. 

In many respects, his greatest address before the National Education 
Association was delivered in 1900 at the Charleston meeting. On that 
occasion an unusual audience assembled under unusual conditions. The 
great hall in which the meeting was held had been built a short time before 
to accommodate the reunion of Confederate veterans. Of the eight 
thousand persons in attendance, at least one-third were colored people. 
Seated on the same platform were the speaker of the evening and other 
representatives of the colored race, who, a few decades before, had been 
slaves, and some of the most prominent white citizens of the South, who had 
formerly owned slaves. To the credit of the founder of the great educational 
institution at Tuskegee, he felt that night, in an unusual manner and to an 
unusual degree, the weight of the heavy responsibility resting upon him. 
Only those who were near him in that trying hour can comprehend the 
anxiety which burdened his soul and which manifested itself all too plainly 
in his trembling body and embarrassed manner. How well he met that 
responsibility and meesured up to the opportunity which came with it, all 
who heard him will aly. ays remember. In an address of remarkable power, 
_replete with humor and pathos and abounding in statements of fundamental 
significance to both races, driven home by unanswerable logic, and withal 
tactfully and eloquently phrased, this apostle of good sense made his plea 
for the education of his race and their right to receive such recognition as 
their honest efforts to attain respectability and win success might merit. 





BoPrene S&F & BD Oo MaDe te 


AGE 


= 
coal 


Beeereaweae FBR aAaSE EP 


Superintendence] BOOKER T. WASHINGTON—AN APPRECIATION 97 





To the credit and honor of the citizens of Charleston and of the South 
will always be remembered the cordial reception and hearing accorded to 
the speaker, and the uniform courtesy shown to him and the members of his 
race at that memorable meeting. 

Any just appreciation of the life and work of Booker T. Washington 
must emphasize the high regard in which he is held by the white people 
of all sections of our united country. When asked what he regarded as the 
most important result of his work, he replied: 

I do not know which to put first, the effect of Tuskegee’s work on the Negro, or the 
effect on the attitude of the white man to the Negro. 

In his large and constructive task of winning the approval of all thought- 
ful southern white men and the cordial support of southern public opinion, 
he succeeded, not by hard work alone, but by hard work directed by the 
rarest common-sense and the highest practical wisdom. In his many pub- 
lic addresses and published articles, there cannot be found a single unwise 
statement or untimely remark. 

In no one of his addresses, however, did he rise to a higher plane of 
thought and expression than in his first great address before the people 
of the South at the Atlanta Exposition in 1895—an address which Clark 
Howell, the successor to the lamented and loved Henry Grady, declared 
to be “the beginning of a moral revolution in America.”’ It was in this 
address that he used the historic sentence which revealed to his refined and 
cultured audience of southern citizens his rare sense and sound judgment, 
and which at once won for him the hearty sympathy and cordial support 
of the white people who heard him then for the first time. It is impossible 
to imagine or describe the scene which followed, when this, up to that 
hour, comparatively unknown leader, held his dusky hand high above his 
head, with the fingers stretched wide apart, and said: 

In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the 
hand in all things essential to mutual progress. 

This address was a revelation to all who heard it or read it, and marks 
the beginning of a newly awakened and more sympathetic interest in the 
education and uplift of the colored race, and also of a better understanding 
of that relation between the races which is so essential to their mutual 
progress. 

Of the many estimates of the character and work of Booker T. Washing- 
ton which have been given, two have been selected for record in this appre- 
ciation. The first is by a leading representative of the white race, Walter H. 
Page, our ambassador to England. In his fine introduction to the latest 
edition of Up from Slavery published in 1914, he says: 

It is well for our common country that the day is come when he and his work are 
regarded as highly in the South as in any section of the Union. I think that no man of 
this generation has a more noteworthy achievement to his credit than this, and it is the 


achievement of the moral earnestness of the strong character of a man who has done a 
great national service. 





98 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


The second is from a member of his own race, Emmet J. Scott, who go 
loyally served his principal for so many years as his private secretary: 
The glory of his life was its dedication to the service of both races, North and South, 


He will be remembered as an educational enthusiast whose sympathies and activities were 
broad enough to include all races and movements looking to the betterment of mankind, 


In years, as measured by the calendar, Booker T. Washington’s life 
was brief indeed. He did not live out man’s allotted time on earth. Ip 
that brief life, however, he traveled the long journey which marks the dis. 
tance between the birth of a slave boy and the death of an acknowledged 
leader of his race, of an educator of international fame, and of a benefactor 
of mankind. Measured by deeds of heroic self-sacrificing service for others, 
his life is limitless in its length and breadth and depth. 

Mark Hopkins, the great college president, the teacher and inspirer 
of Samuel C. Armstrong; Samuel C. Armstrong, the great principal of the 
school at Hampton, the teacher and inspirer of Booker T. Washington; 
Booker T. Washington, the great founder and principal of Tuskegee, the 
teacher and inspirer of thousands of men and women who today mourn his 
death and revere his memory: these are three of the immortals in the world 
of education, the influence of whose living and teaching will forever remain 
to bless humanity and to encourage and to inspire all who teach. 


HIGH POINTS IN THE LOS ANGELES PLAN 


J. H. FRANCIS, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, LOS ANGELES, CAL. 


The first high point of the Los Angeles public schools I shall mention is 
the high cost of living, the high cost of educational living. Those of us 
who have read the reports of the survey of the Cleveland schools have 
discovered that we occupy the unique position of being among the cities 
which rank first, if we are not the first of them all, in respect of average 
cost per pupil; and as regards this element of cost the report also declares 
that we rank first in the cost of teachers’ salaries. We pay, as I recall it 
now, on a basis of average daily attendance something like $54 per pupil 
per year for the elementary schools, $87 for the intermediate, and $130 for 
the high schools. 

We are trying to build well in the material phases of education, not 
because the public can see the brick and mortar that goes into a building 
and we can take our visitors around and show them what we have done 
in the way of building, but because it adds somewhat to the efficiency of 
the school. But I think that we are approaching the time when we will 
be able to get along with less of the luxuries in buildings and equipment 
and expend a larger proportion of our funds upon the intellect and the 
spirit of education. 





Superintendencel HIGH POINTS IN THE LOS ANGELES PLAN 99 


This cost has increased for two reasons: (1) We have reduced the 
number of pupils per teacher; (2) we furnish more special teachers. 

It is quite simple for a superintendent to lessen the cost of his system 
by adding to the enrolment per teacher, but it is a tremendously expensive 
thing in the development of the individual child. We do not believe that 
it is possible for a teacher to face forty different little personalities and 
jndividualities, and assume the responsibility for their mental, spiritual, 
and physical development, and do it successfully. It is beyond human 

er. Education does not consist in passing a child thru a course of 
study of the minimum essentials, and stamping him as having completed 
that course to the satisfaction of his teacher or teachers. It consists rather 
in creating an atmosphere that is free, that is intelligent, and that can 
understand and talk to each child. 

As has been said, we furnish more teachers for special teaching, supply- 
ing special teachers for the larger buildings and for groups of smaller ones, 
for music, drawing, cookery, gardening, and sometimes for sewing, sloyd, 
social work, home work, Batavia work, and so forth. 

I have been asked what our regular teachers do while these special 
teachers have charge of the pupils. I do not know. Really I do not care 
much more about it than that, for I know the real teacher will use this 
time profitably, and the time-serving teacher is worthless anyhow with 
her time. There are a hundred ways in which the teacher may fit into a 
large elementary or high school, where she can use her time to the greatest 
profit in handling individual problems while these special teachers are 
handling the problems of their departments. 

The rock toward which the educational ship is drifting is the financial 
one. You and I must educate the people to believe that it is better to save 
achild to himself before he runs into the reefs of his life than it is to expend 
money on police courts, jails, and juvenile courts trying to patch him up 
and protect society from him after he has been wrecked. The public must 
recognize that the greatest asset of a nation is her boys and her girls, and 
that instead of spending too much money today on offering these boys and 
girls a chance at their better and bigger selves we are spending all too 
little. ; 

The second point in our work is an attempt upon the part of our schools 
to lengthen the school day by offering shopwork, home economics work, 
and work in music, drawing, art, and playground activities before and 
after school. To be sure, that attempt has been very seriously crippled 
this year on account of lack of funds and for other reasons, but we have 
made a fairly good start along a very significant line. 

Someone has said: ‘‘Give me control of the leisure time of our boys 
and girls, and you may have them all the rest of the time,” and it is coming 
to be tremendously true. The greatest danger this nation faces today 
comes from the unoccupied time of her boys and her girls, and the reason 





100 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 
aS ee a RNY ANE A a 


that countless thousands of them “go bad,” as we call it, is not because 
they wish to but because there is no place to “go good.”’ 

' The solution of the problem lies in having the public schools offer 
them something to do that is worth their doing and that will occupy them 
more than three or four hours a day out of twenty-four, and more than 18 
days out of the 36s. 

In the large cities of the nation the moving picture, one of the greatest 
instrumentalities for education in modern times, has been allowed by 
us to be commercialized; and yet for the last ten years it has been the 
most powerful single instrumentality in the education of the American 
youth. The result for the coming generation cannot be measured. The 
fault lies not with the moving picture, but it lies with you and with me 
who are professed educators, because we did not gather it up fifteen or 
twenty years ago, and take it into our schoolhouses and into our churches, 
controlling the character of the pictures put on the film, and turning it 
toward an educational development and the solution of educational prob- 
lems. I have yet to see the boy who wouldn’t rather do something worth 
doing than something that is dissipating and degenerating, and when he 
does not do such things it is because there is no chance for him. Take a 
great city like Detroit, and other cities of the nation: what can your boy 
and mine do before school and after school, on Saturdays and during the 
long summer months? Opportunities must be offered him in school shops, 
on school farms, in drawing centers, music centers, dramatic centers, in 
school printing presses, and in other things that might be offered by the 
schools to take up the slack of his leisure time. 

We are measuring the boy’s experience with our experience as a boy, 
forgetting, however, that great social and economic changes have made 
his life wholly different from the one we lived. When we were boys, there 
was something to do and we had to do it. In the great cities today there 
is nothing to do, and the public schools must put into the lives of boys and 
girls something that modern civilization has taken out of their lives. We 
cannot expect the kind of men and women that will keep our nation con- 
tinuously growing in greatness unless we prepare our boys and girls for 
their responsibilities in life. 

The third point is diversity. You have been hearing a great deal these 
days about uniformity. This is about diversity. I have a theory that 
children do differ. As I look at the little fellows, and know that they have 
different heredities, different environments, and different sets of experi- 
ences, I am quite convinced that they themselves have certain points of 
difference, and that the most striking feature of hwnanity is its differences 
rather than its likenesses, and that the attempt to make all alike is working 
against nature and will not succeed. So we have diversified both in courses 
of study and in organization of schools, and this has cost money. In school 
activities, we have diversified in the way of nature-studies, taking children 





oo 


— i 


Superintendencel) HIGH POINTS IN THE LOS ANGELES PLAN IOI 


out into the country and down to the beaches, having picnics, intellectual 
picnics, and taking them into places of amusement, and getting them to 
look at things as they are. You say you cannot do that without scientific 
background; but really some of the science of these boys who learn to 
handle snakes and to become familiar with plants is almost equal to that 
of the laboratory expert who has given his life to studying the thing theo- 
retically. At all events it is refreshing, and it has in it the elements of life. 
And we take our pupils three or four times a year out on the hills. Of 
course, you couldn’t do that here. And we take them to the mountains, 
and down to the beaches, where they wander with their teachers, talking 
with their teachers, and learning with their teachers. 

We achieve diversity in the way of home gardening; diversity in the 
way of additional shop work; diversity in the way of additional music, 
with an elementary-school orchestra organized four years ago, with twelve 
hundred little folks playing in it. The parents declare that these little 
people are anxious to learn their private music lessons in order to get into 
the orchestra. It is a center of life, a stimulation of activity and hopeful- 
ness for the future. If this nation is ever to be a musical nation, it will 
not be because we have the great stars of the world play for us and sing 
for us. It will be because we get the largest number of our boys and our 
girls interested in music. 

They say that we are crowding the courses of study. Surely we are. 
Yet we are giving 85 per cent of our money, and 85 per cent of our time, to 
the so-called academic studies, the “essentials” of education. We might 
extend the school day, for that is too much time and too much money to 
give to what we term the essentials of education. After all, what are the 
essentials of education? A certain group of studies, a certain amount of 
each of the studies of this group, given at a certain time. We take a little 
fellow at six years of age in the first grade. We expect him to read with a 
certain degree of efficiency and cover a certain amount of territory. If he 
does not, we say he is a failure. We send word home to his parents that 
he is a failure. It is a crime against childhood. A little child cannot fail. 
What if he doesn’t read as well as this boy by the side of him? Give him 
time. His mother doesn’t worry if she has three boys and they do not all 
talk at the same age or walk at the same age; and yet we great psycholo- 
gists and philosophers get the little fellow, set him down in front of us, and 
ask him to sit down and fold his hands and look up to us as if he really 
loved us, and read with the same degree of efficiency as the child at the 
side of him who may have a different development and a different set of 
experiences. 

The time is coming when we will desist from this barbarity of school 
reports, and just follow that child in his tendencies and his developments. 
We have now no definite information by which to tell the parent of the 
child what his tendencies are. Under the new system, we will follow that 





102 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


child carefully, watch his tendencies, and then, by the time he gets into the 
seventh grade, we will be able to'say: ‘“ His school history indicates that 
possibly this line of activity would be best for him, but not surely.” After 
he gets into that grade we will give him a chance to confirm it himself, 
and, when he gets to the high school, we may be able to give definite jp. 
formation that will help the parent and the boy, and say: “We think 
your ability lies along the line of literature, or art, or science, or mechanics 
or agriculture, or something else.” 

We have diversified the school also. I am going to give you a brief 
illustration of what we call the ‘“ Neighborhood School,” where the school 
is organized to meet the needs of the neighborhood. It has a penny lunch. 
room where we feed the children; and lunch for the child if he does not 
have his penny. If he does not, the teacher is in touch with the home and 
knows whether or not he ought to have the penny. In the last six or seven 
years, the penny lunch alone has revolutionized the school. 

The next high point is the intermediate school. I have learned a lot of 
things about the intermediate schools that I did not know before, and that 
I do not now believe. I have heard that the high school has no right to 
take the children from the elementary school, as if the children belonged to 
the grade, instead of the grade belonging to the children. I have heard 
that the intermediate school is directing the child toward a definite voca- 
tion in life. My conception of it is that the intermediate school is only 
widening just a little the opportunities of the child to find himself some. 
where. I have heard that the same thing can be done in the elementary 
schools. It is a question of numbers. There are no elementary schools in 
the country that I know of that have a large enougl number of seventh-, 
eighth-, and ninth-grade children to offer them any very wide course of 
study or wide area of activities. 


I have heard that our democracy is in imminent danger because we are . 


taking the child and throwing him into castes. What about this universal 
democracy of which we boast? Dowehaveit now? Those of us who would 
concede it would have to confess that there are few civilized nations in the 
world today fundamentally less democratic than we are. This is due to 
the fact of a lack of mingling among boys and girls who have different 
aptitudes and following different lines of work. It is because the rich man 
doesn’t understand the poor man and the poor man doesn’t understand 
the rich man; because the scholar doesn’t understand the workman and 
the workman doesn’t understand the scholar. If we are going to have 
democracy, it will be by the efforts of those who understand each other 
and because all of us have a chance to develop ourselves into efficiency 
along lines in which we are working. 

We have six intermediate high schools with seven thousand pupils, and 
so far we have accomplished this: one option in the seventh grade, two 
options in the eighth grade, and more in the ninth grade. There is no 





0 
) 
d 
a- 
y 
e- 
in 
a) 
of 


escsh 48 BBB BE SSR ERS 


Superintendencel HIGH POINTS IN THE LOS ANGELES PLAN 103 


attempt at shaping of the boys and girls into any definite thing at all. We 
have succeeded so far in bridging the gap between the eighth and ninth 

es, and, where we have had thousands of boys and girls dropping out 
of the ninth grade, we now have from 85 per cent to 87 per cent of them 
going thru the ninth grade of the intermediate school into the tenth grade. 
Where we had a large number of boys and girls falling out of the eighth 
grade at the end of the eighth grade in the regular elementary schools, we 
now carry 85 per cent to 86 per cent from the eighth grade in the inter- 
mediate schools into the ninth grade, carrying a larger number of boys and 
girls one year longer at least. We have not only done that, but we have 
saved a half-year. 

We have brought together a thousand boys and girls of the same age, 
of the same aptitudes, of the same hopes, and put them together where 
they can work out the same problems. 

‘There should be diversity in the elementary schools, but the kind of 
diversity that comes in the eighth and ninth grades, and the seventh grade 
too, must be conceded to be a little different from the diversity of those 
elementary schools. You cannot get together, in the seventh and eighth 
grades of the average school system, enough pupils of the same age and 
grade to give a chance for this diversity that is needed. There has been a 
lot of talk about the change of the child. It is really a problem of mathe- 
matics. It is a problem of offering at the right time the thing that could 
not possibly be offered under the old administration. 

These intermediate schools have practically eliminated failures from 
the ninth grade. They have carried the children into the second year of 
the tenth grade. They have saved the city a half-year of expenditure, and 
they are working out the same problems, in the same way, that the high 
schools are working out. 

Our city established the intermediate school for the sake of the seventh- 
and eighth-grade boys and girls, and not for the sake of the high schools. 
We have told the high schools time and again that it is not the business of 
the elementary schools to prepare children for the high schools, any more 
than it is the business of the high schools to prepare boys and girls for the 
colleges. Neither is it the business of the first grade to prepare boys and 
girls for the second grade. It is the business of the first grade to have the 
fullest, freest, and deepest development of the first grade possible. If 
that does not meet the needs of the second grade, let the second grade 
change to meet the situation; and, if the elementary schools are developing 
the boys and girls as they ought to, and if the high schools are not satisfied, 
let the high schools change their demands. 

What we need is the right kind of life for boys and girls. 





NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 





SIGNIFICANT DEVELOPMENTS IN EDUCATIONAL 
SURVEYING 


LEONARD P. AYRES, DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF EDUCATION, RUSSELL Sagp 
FOUNDATION, NEW YORK, N.Y. 


Two important conditions are shaping the school-survey movement. 
The first is that school surveys are rapidly increasing in number. At the 
present time, there are under way or definitely projected more school surveys 
than all those combined that have so far been completed. That the move. 
ment is rapidly spreading is certain. It is here because the public want 
to know the facts about their schools, and the school survey is the most 
efficient means yet discovered for finding them out and making them known, 

The second significant fact about school surveys is that they are steadily 
improving in quality. It is almost literally true that every survey report 
that has been published has in one or more conspicuous respects been 
superior to all its predecessors. This is because we began to make surveys 
without knowing how and have been learning as we went along. 

The school survey differs from other reports on school systems in its 
fundamental philosophy and basic methods. The purpose of the survey 
is to educate the public. Its object is to tell the people in simple terms all 
the salient facts about their public schools and then to rely on the common 
sense, the common insight, and the common purpose of the people as the 
first great resource in working out their problem. If we regard the survey 
in this broader way as an implement for social progress rather than a mere 
method of educational investigation, we shall realize that complete survey 
work involves three steps. 

The first step is a competently conducted study of the situation. The 
second is the education of the public in the findings of the study. The 
third is doing something about it. This means utilizing the newly found 
fact basis for the purpose of constructive action designed to improve the 
situation. It is in the second of these three steps that the most important 
developments are now being made in survey methods. The survey has 
begun to find out how to educate the public. It has begun to bridge the 
gap between knowing and doing. 

Almost a year ago the city of Cleveland undertook a thoro study of its 
educational problems. The work began last April as an educational survey 
which includes the problems of industrial education as well as those of the 
regular school work, and which looks into the future as well as studies the 
present. This survey is being carried on under the auspices of the Cleve- 
land Foundation and with the co-operation of the Board of Education. 
Some twenty-five specialists have been engaged in the work for varying 
lengths of time and the entire expense will be about $35,000. 

The reports of the Cleveland work are being published in twenty-five 
volumes. This does not mean, however, that the report is to be so formid- 





"co og oOo So 


Qo &S f=? ets es 


5p ANS Pe Se TF BD 


a 


=< & 


m 
he 
ey 
re 
ey 
he 
he 
ad 
he 


i= 
— 


e & 


guperintendencel) DEVELOPMENTS IN EDUCATIONAL SURVEYING 105 


able as might appear from the mere statement of the number of volumes. 
It means that the Cleveland Survey has developed a form of publication 
quite comparable to the sectional-unit idea in office furniture or modern 
pookcases. In Cleveland the entire survey work has been divided into 
relatively small sections and a complete and independent treatise is being 
prepared on each section. 

There are many advantages resulting from this form of publication and 
most of them relate to securing superior results in educating the public; 
in bridging the gap between knowing and doing. The typical procedure 
is as follows: The specialist employed to study one feature of the work 
submits his report. It may have to do with health work, or provisions for 
exceptional children, or school buildings, or the teaching force, or any other 
phase of the educational work of the city. 

After the report is submitted, the director of the survey and other 
members of the staff work over it with the author to make sure that its 
findings are accurate and that its recommendations are in harmony with 
those of the other sections. The report is then put into what the office 
force has come to term “tentative final form” and some twenty copies of 
it are made by the mimeograph process. These copies are then submitted 
to the members of the survey committee, the members of the board of 
education, the superintendent of schools, and such interested school officials 
as the board or the superintendent may designate. 

For example, a manuscript dealing with health work is submitted to 
the chief medical inspector, while one having to do with buildings is sub- 
mitted to the architect and the business director, and a meeting is held 
of all those persons to whom the manuscript has been submitted. At this 
meeting, criticisms, corrections, and suggestions are discussed at great 
length and in great detail. In addition to the verbal discussions, all of 
the members are invited to submit written memoranda. 

These conferences result in clearing up before publication questions 
of fact and questions of form. They do not clear away all the differences 
of opinion with respect to interpretation and recommendation. In these 
matters the final decision is left in the hands of the survey director. This 
process of conference has resulted in mature deliberation concerning each 
fact presented and each recommendation offered. Some of the reports 
have been rewritten as many as five times before being finally sent to the 
printer. The representations of the members of the board of education 
and the school officials have resulted in some changes in every volume and 
in scores of changes in some of them. In the aggregate, some hundreds of 
alterations have been made as a result of the representations and arguments 
of the school people. 

After the report has gone thru this searching process of revision, it is 
printed in the form of a small bound monograph of anywhere from 60 to 300 
pages in length and usually having many diagrams, tables, and illustrations. 








106 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 
a —— — — __ 


Each monograph, as it comes from the printer, is given to the public 
and to the newspapers at a public luncheon given in one of the leading hotels, 
The director of the survey or the author of the monograph gives a talk of 
a little more than a half-hour’s duration presenting the gist of the report 
published that week. Moreover, the reports are placed on sale at the 
time of the meeting. A uniform charge of twenty-five cents is made for 
the volumes altho it costs more than that to publish them. During the 
first few months of the work, the methods and problems of the survey were 
discussed at these luncheons, and during the last few weeks the findings haye 
been discussed in the manner just described. 

Altho this work has now been going on for more than ten months, the 
weekly audiences have always comfortably filled the hall, and recently they 
have been growing so large that the hotel accemmodations have been 
entirely inadequate to care for them. 

As the weekly luncheons have increased in popularity, the newspapers 
of the city have given increasing amounts of space to the consideration of 
educational problems and the discussion of the weekly reports. On more 
than one occasion, the report of the weekly educational luncheon has backed 
everything else off the front page except the date and the weather. 

This laborious process constitutes a new development in educational 
practice and in the technique of the school survey. We may call it bridging 
the gap between knowing and doing, or we may term it a process of carrying 
the community. It is a method of educating the public concerning its 
educational problems. Its object is to make the entire school system pass 
in complete review before the public eye. It makes the schools and the 
public pay attention to each other. It presents the past, the present, and 
the possible. Its aim is to place before the citizens a picture of the schools— 
a picture so accurate that it cannot mislead, so simple that it cannot be 
misunderstood, and so significant that it cannot be disregarded. The 
Cleveland experience demonstrates that it is entirely possible to arouse the 
public to this sort of interest in their school problems and then to sustain 
that interest. 

_ There are some developments in the character of the findings of the 
Cleveland Survey that have come as a result of these new methods of bring- 
ing the school people and the public into the survey work. Since each 
section of the report is a separate volume, it must be sufficiently complete 
to stand on its own legs. In order to meet this requirement, the different 
specialists have been compelled to delve deeply into the fundamental factors 
conditioning their problems. Moreover, the Cleveland work has been 
conducted under specially favorable circumstances. The workers have had 
ample time and there has been ample financial support. The work has 
enjoyed the co-operation of the school authorities and the reports have 
profited by the searching criticism to which they have been subjected. As 
a result of these conditions, the findings of the Cleveland Survey deal in 



















































eseeseaare lé% 


a 


B2s 


ers 
of 
ore 
ed 
nal 
ng 
ng 
its 
ASS 
he 
nd 
— 
be 
he 
he 
sin 


BRrPakras arts ber = 


Superintendencel) DEVELOPMENTS IN EDUCATIONAL SURVEYING 107 


the main with fundamental problems rather than with details; with the 
essential rather than with the contingent; and with what to do rather than 
how to do it. 

This newest sort of school survey work is illustrated by the section of 
the Cleveland Survey devoted to measuring the quality of classroom instruc- 
tion carried on under the direction of Charles H. Judd, of Chicago. At 
the outset, we decided that in measuring classroom processes and products 
it was not so important to find out how the work in Cleveland compared 
with that in Detroit, Boston, New York, and a dozen other cities, as it was 
to find out how the work in Cleveland compared with the Cleveland stand- 
ard. We decided that the important thing was to find out what kind of 
progress was being made thruout the system, grade after grade, and how 
the achievements of different grades and schools compared with those of 
other grades and schools. The work proceeded, moreover, on the theory 
that it was vastly more important to leave in the city a corps of teachers, 
principals, and supervisory officers understanding the use of testing methods 
and trained in the giving of the tests than it was merely to find out how the 
work compared in excellence with that done somewhere else. 

As a result of these decisions, some very interesting methods have been 
developed for discovering the factors affecting progress and achievement 
in the basic school subjects. For example, the Survey has discovered and 
mapped out the neutral ground between speed and quality in handwriting. 
In general, children who write rapidly write poorly and those who write 
well write slowly. Nevertheless there is a point to which quality may be 
developed without reducing speed and a point to which speed may be 
increased without hurting quality. The Cleveland Survey has discovered 
these points for that city for each grade. 

Moreover, a method has been developed by which to measure and record 
for each school the progress made from grade to grade on both speed and 
quality combined. Again, several hundred teachers have been trained in 
the use of the handwriting scale. In short, the methods of measuring 
achievement in handwriting are no longer mere scientific curiosities; they 
have become valuable instruments of teaching and of supervision. 

The tests in spelling comprised more than 2,100,000 individual spellings. 
The tests were made up from tests that had previously been given to chil- 
dren in eighty-four other cities. In Cleveland two series of tests were given 
—one with the words arranged in lists and the other with the words arranged 
in sentences. There has long been an active controversy as to the effects 
of the two methods on the accuracy of the results. In Cleveland the out- 
come will not give comfort to either party in this controversy, for the results 
showed that the children spelled the words just as well in the sentences as 
in the lists and just as well in the lists as in the sentences. Valuable data 
were produced showing improvement from grade to grade and the compari- 
sons between different schools. 





108 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


It is more important, however, from the point of view of school adminis. 
tration, that these tests resulted in finding definite standards of progress 
from grade to grade, from the third thru the eighth, in every fundamenta] 
operation in arithmetic. 

Children in all the.grades were tested in oral and silent reading. The 
studies not only resulted in showing how much the children could read out 
loud or silently in a given period of time, but they developed a method for 
measuring how much the children comprehended and retained of what they 
had read. 

Two striking results stand out as products of these reading-tests. The 
first is that children read very much more rapidly to themselves than they 
doaloud. The second and much more important showing is that in general 
the fastest readers are the best readers and the slowest readers are the poor- 
est readers. That is to say, the child who reads rapidly is apt to be the one 
who retains and produces best what he has read, while the one who reads 
in a slow and stumbling manner is apt to retain but little of the meaning, 

Turning now from educational to administrative problems, the findings 
again have for their object the analysis of the situation, rather than the 
weighing of it in the balance. Cleveland, like most other rapidly growing 
cities, has many overcrowded school buildings. The pressure for school 
accommodations is powerful while the shortage of funds is painful. In 
every city in the land where these conditions obtain, attention has been 
directed toward the administrative methods in use at Gary, Ind., by means 
of which increased numbers of children are accommodated in the school 
buildings. 

During the past few years, Superintendent Shattuck O. Hartwell, 
formerly of Kalamazoo and now of Muskegon, Mich., has been carrying 
thru an important series of experiments to determine how far the Gary 
idea may be applied to the existing school buildings of a school system 
established and running along conventional lines. He has developed some 
very important answers to these questions and put them into practical and 
successful application in the city of Kalamazoo. One of the most inter- 
esting reports of the Cleveland Survey is the book by Superintendent 
Hartwell on the platoon plan, which is the name applied to the Gary idea 
as he has modified it for use in existing school systems. 

The study of the school and the immigrant has brought to light the 
fact that Cleveland, like other modern industrial cities, really has three 
great systems of education all simultaneously active. The first of these 
is the public school system. The second is the parochial school system. 
The third is a system about which we know little but which is of great 
social import. It is the system of schools and classes conducted in the 
afternoon, in the evening, and on Sundays by the different nationality 
groups for the purpose of instructing their children in their native languages. 
Thousands of children in the city of Cleveland are enrolled in these classes 





ae ae a ae SS O'S he [6h 


Superintendencel) DEVELOPMENTS IN EDUCATIONAL SURVEYING 109 


and are doing this most arduous school work in addition to that of the regular 
sehools. 

Some of the findings of the Survey are social rather than educational 
or administrative in nature, but they have important educational implica- 
tions. For example, in the study of commercial work, an analysis of some 
thousands of office positions held by men and women, and boys and girls, 
demonstrates with great clearness that the modern commercial work of 
men is an entirely different thing from the commercial work of women. 
With perfect definiteness the records show that the requirements of the 
work, the lines of promotion, and the necessary preparation are of one sort 
for the boys and men and of another and entirely different sort for the girls 
and women. These are facts which no city can afford to overlook in plan- 
ning its high-school courses in commercial work. 

The studies of the educational provisions for exceptional children have 
brought to light the fundamental condition that these children consist of 
two great groups who may be designated as the socially competent and the 
socially incompetent. The socially competent consist of all those who are 
of normal mentality and who will spend their lives in association with normal 
people. They are the backward, the blind, the deaf, the crippled, the 
foreign, and the children of the open-air schools. Since they are socially 
competent and are to spend their lives in competition with the rest of us, 
they should be educated in special classes in regular schools and have at 
least part of their work in the regular classes with the normal children. 

The socially incompetent children consist of the feeble-minded and the 
epileptics who may be cared for during their younger years by the public 
schools but who are so deficient that they must eventually be placed in 
institutions. The duty of the school system is to prepare these children 
for self-support in institutional life, and the most reasonable way of doing 
this in large cities is to segregate them in special schools. 

In the field of industrial education, eight special studies covering the 
most important industrial activities of the city are being conducted. Each 
study has three objects. It attempts to describe the industry in simple 
terms, not only portraying the nature of the work, but giving information 
concerning wages, unemployment, and health conditions. Secondly, it 
tells how people may get into the industry and what the prospects of promo- 
tion are after they get in. In the third place, each study discusses education 
for the industry, both before entering it and afterward. 

These industrial studies have brought to light some interesting and 
important discoveries. In the past few years, we have heard a great deal 
of criticism directed toward the public schools because they were educating 
large numbers of pupils for commercial and professional work and very 
few for industrial work. These criticisms have been accompanied by 
impressive figures showing that there are a great many people engaged in 
industrial work and very few in professional work. One thing that has 





IIo NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


been entirely overlooked in making these comparisons is that most of our 
industrial work is done by people of foreign birth, while our professiona] — 
positions are held by people of native birth. Our school children are almost 
entirely of native birth altho many of them are of foreign parentage. When 
we talk about their vocational destinations, we should remember that we 
are in the main discussing American-born people and that we must base 
our considerations on figures showing what American-born people are 
doing. For Cleveland such a comparison indicates that for American- 
born boys the chance of becoming a lawyer is greater than the chance of 
becoming a mason, and the chance of becoming a doctor is greater than that 
of becoming a tinsmith. Similar facts affect each consideration of voca- 
tional education for men and for women and for every sort of vocational 
career. 

There is another most important consideration conditioning every plan 
for the organization of industrial education. This is the consideration 
of the community’s capacity to absorb workmen trained for any given 
occupation. In Cleveland about four thousand boys leave the public 
schools each year. Most of them range in age from fourteen to eighteen 
and in school advancement from the sixth grade to the last high-school 
class. They represent a cross-section of the city’s adult manhood of a few 
years hence. 

Now the census figures tell us that if present conditions maintain in 
the future only about 25 in each 1,000 of these boys will be carpenters, 
Since about 4,000 boys leave school each year, it is probably true that there 
are about 1oo future carpenters among them. Now Cleveland has more 
than 100 elementary schools and 11 high schools and these too future 
carpenters are widely scattered among them. Most of them are in the 
elementary schools, for few high-school boys become carpenters. Even 
if we knew which boys were destined to become carpenters and even if we 
knew when they would leave school and even if we should decide to give 
them all trade preparatory education for the last two years of their school 
life, we should still have an average trade class in carpentry of only two 
boys in each elementary school. This is administratively and educationally 
impossible. It indicates something of the difficulties involved in the organi- 
zation of preparatory industrial education and illustrates the importance 
of analyzing the social factors controlling the situation. 

To summarize: Among the recent developments in the methods of 
school surveying there may be distinguished two trends which are specially 
significant. One of these is the attempt of contemporaneous surveys to 
analyze the fundamental factors which constitute the real educational 
problems. The second is the development of a new survey technic which 
spends time, uses energy, consumes money, and directs attention toward 
educating the community in the problems and tasks of their educational 
system, as well as in discovering and formulating the conditions themselves. 





Superintendence] THE THIRTIETH MAN Ill 


This is the process of making the schools and the public pay attention 
to each other. It is the process of bridging the gap between knowing 
and doing. It is the method of carrying the community. 

These newer developments in educational surveying are strange and 
novel now, but next year or the year after that they will be familiar and 
even commonplace. They will soon be a part of the modern scientific 
method in education which was only emerging from theory and experiment 
a scant ten years ago but which is profoundly reshaping our educational 
systems today. Thus progress plods along from paradox to platitude. 


THE THIRTIETH MAN 


JOHN H. FINLEY, PRESIDENT, UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, 
ALBANY, N.Y. 


[After contrasting the unorganized public life of the frontier democracy 
of forty years ago on the prairies of Illinois, as he remembered it, with the 
present public life of our great commonwealths, President Finley gave a 
description of a little one-room schoolhouse where he had gone to school. 
He said in part:] 

The schoolmaster was the only paid representative of the community, 
of society, of the state, within my horizon, for there was no postmaster, 


no policeman, no constable, no rural free delivery, and, so far as I know, no 
assessor, supervisor, or overseer of the poor. 

The pupils were of little public concern, quite in contrast to the immi- 
grant child coming to this democracy. They are guarded by many anxious 
ordinances and laws, in which public provision is made that his eyes shall 
be properly opened; that he shall have a certain cubic footage of air space; 
that contagious diseases shall be kept out of his path. They sterilize his 
milk; filter his water; forbid his taking old-fashioned cough medicines 
or soothing syrups prepared by secret formulae; remove his adenoids and 
tonsils; vaccinate him; tell him how to avoid tuberculosis and to correct 
his astigmatism or strabismus. They follow him with antitoxin and dis- 
infectants; label poisons and put them out of his easy reach; label educa- 
tion and compel him to literacy; police his ways; take him in an ambulance 
to a public hospital, if he is injured, and try to preserve the spark of life 
in him as long as possible before his name is added to the mortality column. 

Forty years after this early experience with the crudities of pioneer 
administration, I made an estimate of the number of persons giving service 
to the state, either directly or thru some municipality. As nearly as I 
could determine then, one person in every thirty adults, at any rate in the 
most thickly settled communities, was a public servant. 

I then said that since the activity of the state was increasing (in that 
very year 104 new boards and commissions had been voted in the various 





I1I2 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


states), it would not be long before society found 1 in 30 too few, J] 
have just had a new estimate made, and I find that for the state of New York 
the ratio even now is perhaps 1 in 28; it may be even 1 in 27 or 25. 

Think who this thirtieth man is. He sweeps the streets of the city and 
starts the fires in the schoolhouse. He is pontifex of the country roads. He 
lights the lamps when the great lamp of heaven goes out, and extinguishes 
the fires of the earth. With one hand he gathers our letters, and with the 
other he distributes them in the remotest cabins on the mountains. He 
weighs the wind, reads the portents of the clouds, gives augury of the heat 
and cold. He makes wells in the valleys among the hills, he fills the pools 
with water, and carries it from those distant hills to the city. He tastes 
the milk before a city child may drink it; he tests and labels the food in 
the stores and shops; he corrects false balances and short measures. He 
keeps watch over forest and stream; gives warning of rocks and shoals to 
men at sea, and of plague and poison to those on land. He is warden of 
fish and bird and wild beast; he is host to the homeless and shelterless; 
he is guardian and nurse to the child who comes friendless into the world 
and chaplain at the burial of the man who goes friendless out of it. He is 
assessor and collector of taxes—treasurer and comptroller; he is the teacher 
of seventeen million children, youths, men, and women; he is public 
librarian and maker of books, for the blind even; overseer of the poor, and 
supervisor; superintendent, doctor, nurse, and guard in hospital, prison, 
and almshouse; coroner, and keeper of the potter’s field. He is mayor, 
judge, public prosecutor, and sheriff. He is a soldier in the army and a 
sailor in the navy, general and admiral, legislator, justice, member of the 
cabinet, governor, and president. 

In addition to this he is a member of numberless public commissions 
and boards, paid and unpaid, industrial and educational, scientific, philan- 
thropic, administrative, with functions ranging all the way from the 
inspection of terrapin in one state and scythe stones in another state, to the 
regency of a state university. 

I have thought that if one who saw the real significance of the list of 
these thirtieth men could express it, he would find in this list more vital 
stuff than that out of which the classics of literature have been written—a 
poem of men fighting fires in the forests and in the tenements; of men and 
women fighting pathogenic bacteria in the air, earth, and water; of men 
fighting flood and drought; of men and women fighting ignorance and sloth 
and passion in thousands of schoolrooms; of millions of public servants 
fighting uncleanliness, and corruption, and disease, and waste, with broom 
and statistics, with lens and meter and test tube and scalpel, and honest 
and expert eyes and clean and skilful hands. 

Who should not be proud to be a public servant! 

The New York Suna few months ago credited me with a contribution to 
folk-lore in the creation of a mythical character, “the happy taxpayer.” 





superintendence] THE THIRTIETH MAN 113 





The intimation of the editor was that three conditions were necessary 
to give this imagined person an almost real existence: that the taxes should 
be equal; that they should be economically spent for the public good; and, 
above all, that they should be low. 

I agree as to the first two incarnating qualities, but I think that the 
third is not essential to the transmutation; for the three words potent to 
transform the demi-sprite into a happy human citizen are equality, economy, 
and exaltation or glorification. 

If we could but see our taxes touching with a healing hand the sick, or 
the eyes of the blind, or the ears of the deaf, or touching with illuminating 
hope those who sit in despair, if we could but see taxes transforming, 
protecting, teaching, carrying the community to a service greater than all 
who pay them could give if they labored individually, we should pay 
taxes as gladly as we give and labor and suffer for those who are 
dearest to us. 

There are soldiers who are happy in exposing their lives for a country; 
there are men who are happy in offering their hard-earned fortune for a 
cause; there are fathers who are happy in their self-denial for the sake of 
a son’s education; there are mothers who are happy in the very suffering 
that makes other life possible. And there are citizens even now living in 
New York (not alone in my imagination) who are happy in paying taxes 
for a common good higher than their own. 

The first book which I had a part in writing was a treatise on taxation. 
I should like to prepare another book on the same subject now. I should 
have, of course, to devote chapters to the incidence, to the equalization, 
to the economic expenditure of taxes. But I should make the culminating 
chapter one on the “‘hallowing”’ of taxes, on “‘How to Make People Happy 
in Paying Taxes.” 

I would show, for example, how the public tax had been converted 
into the training of a New York East Side boy, named Goethals, who would 
some day dig the Panama Canal. I would show how taxes had been trans- 
muted into the skill of a certain doctor who had saved thousands of lives, 
and of a brother who had organized the weather bureau. I would show 
how taxes had taken an Italian boy, trained him, and then sent him to Cuba 
to expose his life in discovering how the yellow-fever germ is carried. 

So I propose, wherever I go, the organization of local societies of “The 
Happy Taxpayers,” with the motto “ Equality, Economy, and Exaltation,” 
and for working capital this purpose: millions for making the people of the 
state happier, better, but not one dollar for avoidable incompetence or sloth 
or dishonesty in public service. 

And what we are spending for education is a pittance by the side of 
what we are spending for war. The people of Europe are spending each 
week for war more than we spend in a year for education. And shall we 
say that any sacrifice less than that which they are yonder making for their 





114 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


er 


country is too much for us to make for our children—since the children of 
today are tomorrow’s state? What we do for their right training we do 
for their defense. 


DEFINITENESS AND COMPULSION IN EDUCATION 


A. DUNCAN YOCUM, PROFESSOR OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH AND PRACTICE, 
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PHILADELPHIA, PA. 


Somewhere or other in his career, every radical, from some point of 
view or other, becomes a conservative. Sometimes it is because his propa- 
ganda has been well established and in turn is being attacked; more rarely 
it is because he comes to realize that even his most cherished aims are in 
danger of being carried too far. Anyone who happens to be familiar with 
my own viewpoint knows that I believe in an education for efficiency in 
which practical preparation for everyday life plays a conspicuous part, 
But as I have listened to recent discussions, I am beginning to believe that 
we still need, tho in a new sense, the old watchword of W. T. Harris: “Does 
it train the mind?” The recent tributes to his memory in the Journal of 
Education have recalled for many of us his persistent attempt to exclude 
manual training and physical culture from the public school, because he 
was so long unconvinced that they developed the intellect, and his eager 
welcome of the kindergarten when he became convinced that it did. My 
only reason for taking part in this program is an equally firm belief that 
even tho there are no mental faculties in the old sense of a memory or an 
intellect that can be trained into general usefulness, general mental training 
still survives in forms not only as truly practical as vocational guidance and as 
natural as Montessorianism, but essential to the efficiency of each. 

In the complete educational readjustment now under way, practical 
education and adaptation to child nature are temporarily the chief factors, 
because they are substituting definite and immediate forms of usefulness, 
which the common citizen can see for himself, for the hocuspocus of an 
academic training which pretended to transform a knowledge of participial 
adjectives, pons asinorum, and the pancreatic fluid, into good citizenship, 
business efficiency, and healthful living. Every stage of public education 
is being socialized. It is not so surprising to see teachers of history, who 
have been trained in sociology and economics, neglectful of material that 
is unrelated to modern affairs, but teachers of Latin are busying themselves 
in listing the uses to which Latin can be put in everyday life, while even the 
International Commission on the Teaching of Mathematics justifies the 
teaching of geometry to the ordinary student on the ground that it is essen- 
tial to the making of tesselated pavements and stained-glass windows. No 
wonder that one of the most distinguished among my own critics, fearful 
for his literary ideals, protested that professors of pedagogy seemed to think 
that “The Ancient Mariner” was written for no other purpose than the 





Superintendencel DEFINITENESS AND COMPULSION IN EDUCATION IIs 





teaching of kindness to animals. The recent advance of the kindergarten 
upon the first grade, and its consequent rescue from arrested development, 
tho partly due to the Montessorian popularizing of adaptation to child 
nature, is being made easier by the fact that the training of the primary 
school is becoming practical and social. 

Even the genetic movement as a whole, seizing upon immediate prac- 
tical usefulness as the only natural incentive to study, is for the time being 
little more than a phase of the panic toward the specific. Children are 
learning to spell, not because they have been taught to love spelling, have 
pride in their skill, or have formed the habit of noting the spelling of new 
words, but in order to write a letter to the mayor or to make a list of manual- 
training materials. Enough practical or specifically useful material must 
be included in the course of study to teach adequately every essential phase 
of morality, health, industrial efficiency, citizenship, social service, social 
intercourse, and individual leisure. But this is a very different thing from 
including every fact that is practical without regard to whether it is necessary 
to these essential ends, or excluding all other incentives and kinds of material, 
regardless of other forms of usefulness, and of relative educational values. 

It is unnecessary that the just emphasis of the practical should blind 
the eyes of teachers, parents, and pupils alike to the usefulness of the 
general. If the new gospel of definiteness is rightly taught, the common 
citizen and the ordinary teacher will perceive the usefulness of the general 
as readily as that of the specific. Its fundamental principle is not that 
every fact or idea must have a specific or practical usefulness, but that it 
must have a definite usefulness. Every fact that is taught need not imme- 
diately result in knowing a good cut of beef, or ability to qualify for a 
primary election, but it must as definitely suggest some equally apparent 
form of usefulness. As compared with the general, the specifically useful 
has the advantage of being self-apparent. It has to be definite and obvious. 
It is useful or harmful in itself. If it is not definite, it is not specific. The 
recent picture-play, The Birth of a Nation, for example, is certain to teach 
the Ku Klux Clan so that it definitely suggests mob law and race prejudice, 
while under right instruction it can be made to teach even more certainly the 
necessity for an impartial judiciary and just laws. It is some such definite 
association with life that makes it specific. If it is just listed in the school 
textbook as a secret conspiracy against northern rule, it becomes an aca- 
demic fact with no specific value whatever. Mere possibility of practical 
usefulness without the definite association which suggests it is not practical 
or specific. The discovery of coal in Pennsylvania is merely a bit of 
isolated information until it is definitely associated in the understanding 
and memory of the learner with the possibility of manufactures wherever 
coal can be cheaply enough transported. 

Without equal definiteness of suggestion for generally useful facts, their 
possible usefulness is highly improbable. But if they are definitely 





116 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


associated with the two or three ideas that make them useful, the usefulness 
of generally useful facts can be made as probable and obvious as that of 
the specific and immediately practical. My favorite illustration is the 
introduction of the steamboat on the Ohio and Mississippi. It is put into 
the textbook on account of its high degree of possible usefulness, But 
if it is merely listed in Madison’s administration or under 1811, its usefyl- 
ness is wholly a matter of chance. Associated with the opening of the 
Mississippi to trade and settlement, it is useful only to the extent of aroys- 
ing the mental satisfaction which always comes from associating an effect 
with its cause. But if it is used definitely and certainly to associate lessened 
time in transportation with increased trade and population, it not only 
explains the opening of the West and the building of transcontinental 
railroad lines, but the effect of every shortened commercial route from the 
discovery of new ways to the Indies to the opening of the Panama Canal. 

This definiteness of suggested usefulness for what is generally useful 
is not self-apparent, as in the case of teaching the effect of poor ventilation 
or other specifically useful facts, but it can be made as apparent. And if 
general usefulness is not made apparent enough for the common citizen 
and ordinary teacher to see it, it is unlikely that possibly useful facts will 
ever be generally useful to the pupils to whom they are taught. It is 
just as easy to teach the definite association which multiplies usefulness 
by making it general, as the specifically useful associations that must be 
added one by one. Every teacher drills upon the meaning of circumference 
because it is practical. It is just as easy to drill upon the fact that circum 
means around in a great group of words—a suggestive association that 
does not result in good citizenship but that multiplies vocabulary. 

Surely no ordinary teacher would persist in having pupils waste time 
memorizing lists of products for each country they study when she has 
pointed out to her the fact that in infinitely less time they can permanently 
associate with product in general such ideas as necessary natural conditions, 
localities, processes, uses, and markets, which with each new product will 
suggest a multitude of new information. In the one case the pupils vainly 
try to remember a multitude of specifically useful details. In the other 
they surely remember a few generally useful ideas that will suggest and help 
in retaining a thousand more. 

Even more apparent is the high relative value of generally useful 
habits. The common citizen and the ordinary teacher see their superiority 
of usefulness without its being pointed out by illustrations. But if mathe- 
matics and the languages, long the sole means to general discipline, are to 
be thrown on the scrap-heap; if industry, concentration, perseverance, 
observation, inference, and cumulative reasoning are to be realized thru 
practical portions of all subjects, and if teachers of every branch are to be 
held responsible for all generally useful discipline, what is everybody's | 
business is in grave danger of becoming nobody’s business. 





Superintendence] DEFINITENESS AND COMPULSION IN EDUCATION II7 


The material within each branch best adapted to the teaching of each 
habit must be specified and the formation of the general habit and the 
associated conditions favorable to its transfer must become a conscious aim 
for the teacher and a definite demand of supervisory authority. The 
definite associations favorable to the general application of every highly 
useful idea and habit are as essential to efficiency as the fundamental 
operations to number. 

If definiteness is thus essential to efficiency, it inexorably follows that 
the compulsion possible only thru repetition in the sense of drill is equally 
essential. The Herbartian injunction continually to teach old facts in 
new relationships defeats its own end if old facts are not also repeated in the 
definite association that makes them most useful. Even the general many- 
sidedness sought by the fifth of the “formal steps”’ is retarded, if associa- 
tions that just happen to come to teachers or pupils are added one by one, 
in place of multiplying associations a thousandfold by certainly memorizing 
the few which will make the most general ideas definitely suggestive in the 
greatest possible variety of ways. The type study is ineffective if the 
few general associations that make it a type are not certainly memorized, 
together with the associations thru which their application and transfer 
are made probable. 

More than this, no matter how general the multiplication of associations 
may make the application of some practical fact, it will not remain prac- 
tical if it is not memorized and remembered in the associations that make 
it practical. Lincoln’s birthday exercises may emotionalize the name of 
Lincoln and multiply its associations and yet contribute only incidentally 
to religion or good citizenship, unless it has associated with it such practical 
ideas as faith in divine providence and equality of human rights. 

I have come to believe that if we are about to enter upon a period of 
national preparedness for defensive war, every heroic achievement of our 
patriotic past and every war in which our forefathers nobly fought must be 
so taught as definitely and surely to suggest not only the need for self- 
sacrifice and mighty deeds, but every resulting form of horror and misery, 
thru an emotional appeal that, in spite of military pageants and schoolboy 
drills, will be strong enough to keep us, thruout all our future history as we 
are today, haters of conquest and lovers of peace. 

It is not mere names and facts, but names and facts in the definite 
associations on which their usefulness depends that should be emotionalized 
and made many-sided. And when they are found with high emotional 
usefulness for the learner in a particular period of development, thru their 
recurrence in his experience or what they will transform for him into experi- 
ence, they must be memorized and taught, no matter how unnatural they 
seem to be or how much more naturally they may be developed at some 
later time. The analogy of education and growth has been carried too far. 
It is only the brain that grows in the sense of developing what is already 








118 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


there. The mind grows thru the definitely suggestive associations that are 
planted in it. The mind of childhood is a kindergarten constituting jn 
itself a favorable or unfavorable environment for the growth of ideas, 
Education is as dependent upon the definite associations in which ideas 
are planted in the human mind as upon the racial inheritance, heredity, 
and individuality which they will find there to condition their growth, 
And after all is said and done, no racial tendency or individual idiosyncrasy 
is more natural than the human memory. 

The most formidable obstacle to a movement having definiteness and 
compulsion for its end is the fact that they are not as dramatic as they 
are obvious. If they could be given the popular appeal of industrial train- 
ing or Montessorianism, they would contribute more than any other single 
factor to hastening the day when education will be not only practical and 
natural but efficient and controlling. 

After all, there is something dramatic in the definiteness that means 
multiplying usefulness and raising it to the mth power in place of adding 
useful facts one by one; that compels each frequently recurring idea to 
suggest its most useful associations; and that summons up for the generally 
useful habit the geni of favorable conditions that can make it a wish come 
true for any field of experience and any realm of thought. If instruction 
can put Aladdin’s lamp within the learner’s grasp, why should we scorm 
the slavish drill that teaches him how to rub! 


MANNERS AND MORALS—OUR PROBLEM 


ALICE M. CARMALT, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF 
PITTSBURGH, PITTSBURGH, PA. 


In a recent address given by G. Stanley Hall at the University of Pitts- 
burgh on “The Great Philosophies of the World,” he made use of the pro- 
foundly significant thought that neither philosophy nor civilization nor 
even religion itself has been able to avert this terrible calamity that is 
devastating Europe today. Then he made an appeal to all educators 
that we in America see to it that war does not appear in the eyes of our boys 
as a glorious and thrilling adventure, but that they should see it as it really 
is, in all its cost and horror. 

In what way have our boys been trained to meet serious and ethical 
questions that may and do arise every day, individually and nationally? 
This is a timely and significant thought for us all at this time, when a crisis 
seems approaching. George Eliot has said: “To every man comes 4 
crisis when in a moment, without chance for reflection, he must decide 
and act instantly. What determines his decision? His whole past, the 
daily choices between good and evil that he has made thruout his previous 
years—these determine his decision.’””’ What training have we given our 





Superintendencel | MANNERS AND MORALS—OUR PROBLEM 119 


boys and girls that they may be prepared for these momentous decisions ? 

About fifteen years ago, I was deeply impressed by a statement of a 
prominent lecturer that we are not training our boys and girls in manners 
and morals; that, as a consequence, our young men and women, as a 
general rule, are neither well behaved nor moral in their reactions. I then 
determined that I would begin a careful study of the subject. I would 
select boys and girls of middle teens, as at that period altruism blossoms. 
I would observe them in public places, when they were not under super- 
vision and not on the playground, where some license is allowed. For 
fifteen years I have kept records and am being forced to certain conclusions. 
I am able to say that some of our youth are being trained to be considerate 
for others and to base their decisions on the fundamental ethics of com- 
munity life. By far the greater number, however, have shown a lack of 
both manners and morals, ranging all the way from thoughtlessness to 
positive rudeness and heartlessness. Some actions were so significant as 
to be startling. 

Three lads of about eighteen, apparently from good homes, entered the 
street cars and sat near me. They began to discuss in audible tones their 
recent experiences in wage-earning, chuckling gleefully over the oppor- 
tunities they had found and improved to pad their expense list, publicly 
proclaiming themselves swindlers, and they did not know it. The alarming 
thing about it to me was that boys of their apparent opportunities should 
not have been trained in the fundamental ethics of business relations. 

There is, also, a lack of chivalry toward the weak, the old, and the help- 
less. The three great influences in our children’s lives—the home, the 
church, and the school—have failed to make that lasting impression to 
which they have a right. In almost every instance that I have tabulated, 
the offenders did not realize that they were violating any rules of conduct. 
They had not been trained in the fundamental principles of right living nor 
the daily application of the Golden Rule. 

I also observed and made records concerning the behavior and apparent 
standards of our young men and women, for the boys and girls of yester- 
day are the young men and women of tomorrow. The conclusion is forced 
in upon me that among reputable young people today there are two classes: 
those who act upon principles carefully thought out beforehand, and those 
who act upon impulse, deciding questions that may arise largely upon the 
basis of preference for one course rather than another. 

An experience, some years ago, illustrates the former class. A fellow- 
teacher and I were taking a short trip together and, busily engaged in con- 
versation, we did not notice that the conductor had not taken up our tickets. 
Iasked my friend what she should do about it, and she said, glancing around: 
“I suppose they have receptacles for rubbish.” She tore up her ticket and 
later dropped the pieces into a wastebasket. Curious to learn her reac- 
tions, I asked her what a ticket meant to her. She thought a moment 





120 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


and then said slowly and thoughtfully: “I suppose it is a sort of receipt; 
I enter into an agreement with a railroad company that for a sum of money 
it shall carry me a certain distance, and it gives me the ticket so I can show 
it to the conductor in case he challenges my right to ride. I have ridden 
unchallenged so the ticket has no further value.” I have asked many 
persons since then what they would have done under such circumstances 
and they have replied: “Do? I would have ridden it out the next chance 
I had. What do you suppose I care for the railroad company!” She 
didn’t care anything for the railroad company, but she did care for herself 
and her own standards and she could not violate them for even an extra 
ticket. 

This incident and many others have impressed me with the truth that 
there are two ends to any moral act—the one, affecting the external world, 
is the objective end; the other, affecting the person himself, is fastened to 
his own moral nature and i; subjective. It is vitally necessary that each 
one of us shall every day live up to our own standards, recognizing what they 
are, and thereby growing to higher and nobler possibilities. 

The problem of training our boys and girls aright is a complex one 
altogether too big for any single or simple treatment. The necessity for 
character as the supreme product of our schools has been recognized by 
every speaker that I have heard from this platform this week. The world 
of business and the professional world alike need standards and the encour- 
aging side of the present situation is that the standards are already in the 
process of formation. The profession of medicine has so sharply defined 
what a physician may and may not do that it is easy to separate the repu- 
table physicians from the quacks. The legal-aid societies are for the safe- 
guarding of the legal profession. Even the standards of university men 
are deservedly high, worked out by the upperclassmen themselves. 

But how about the teaching profession? Is it easy to separate our 
real teachers from our false? Do we make our standards so clear that those 
in training for the most responsible of the professions know definitely 
just what they may and may not do? 

The first and immediate step to be taken is clear. We must become 
conscious of our standards. How can we make that deep impression on 
our boys and girls for which we hope and pray, if we have not definitely in 
mind the end for which we are working? The country is full of noble 
actions, unselfish deeds, and characters that would be a model for our 
youth if only they understood them and could consciously make use of 
them. 

In the light of this thought, it is significant to note the nation-wide 
movement to be explained to us later—a movement already undertaken 
to find out what are the standards of our best people. But need we wait 
a year to find out their conclusions? We can begin at once. The super- 
visors here in this hall should begin immediately to arouse the teachers 





Superintendence] MANNERS AND MORALS—OUR PROBLEM 121 


under their supervision to debate and discussion and to try to work 
definitely toward a solution. 

The world, old and young, thrills to noble deeds and at the statement of 
fundamentals of virtue and unselfish service for others. On the sixth 
of last September, in the Court of the Universe, at the San Francisco 
Exposition, a vast crowd had gathered to do honor to Goethals, the builder 
of the Panama Canal. The chairman of the day, in introducing the guest 
of honor, made a statement that aroused great enthusiasm in the audience. 
He said that while all admitted the greatness of the achievement in building 
the Canal, there is an even greater service that Goethals has done for the 
country in his action in refusing an honorarium from the United States as 
a reward for his services on the Canal. Goethals gave as his reason for 
refusing that he had been called upon by his country to serve her; he had 
responded and had done his best; he had but done his duty as thousands 
of others are doing every day; he had been generously rewarded as to salary, 
and the incident was closed. A prolonged and enthusiastic response from 
all that immense crowd showed how ready we are to recognize the funda- 
mental right thought when once it is voiced before us. 

Today, the words duty and honor are more rarely heard than when 
the gentleman and gentlewoman of the old school were among us. They 
should be household words. We should not ask that life be made easy 
for our children but that the children be made strong to meet it. 

Dr. Storrs, late of Brooklyn, who was settled for sixty years over one 
parish, preached wonderful sermons, and one that I had the great good 
fortune to hear made a deep impression on me. He was speaking of the 
church militant and he closed with these thoughts: Every nation has had 
its own mission to fulfil: the Hebrew nation, thru all the dark ages, kept 
alive the idea of the one God—the Hebrews had a genius for religion; the 
Roman nation worked out a system of laws and government, and under 
its protection the wonderful Spirit was born of the old Jewish race that was 
to give to Mosaic law a spiritual interpretation; the Grecian nation devel- 
oped a language of sfch beauty that it could be used to record the history 
of that wonderful life; the teachings of that great Spirit finally inspired a 
small band of religionists to leave home and friends to seek a far-off land, 
where the greatest extent of fertile soil and temperate climate on the whole 
earth were awaiting them, where they were to help build the mightiest nation 
of all, because here was to be a nation that was to have for its fundamental 
purpose to make men. 

It is in this nation that our work is to be done. Our work then is to 
make men and women, and character-building is the fundamental, the 
all-important part of this work. 





NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION 


SCOUTING AS AN EDUCATIONAL ASSET 


JAMES E. WEST, CHIEF SCOUT EXECUTIVE, BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA, 
NEW YORK, N.Y. 


I am here today on behalf of the Boy Scouts of America—182,622 men 
and boys—143,782 boys under instruction as tenderfoot, second-class, 
and first-class scouts, and 38,840 carefully selected clean men of strong 
character giving leadership without compensation, as members of local 
councils, troop committees, and scout commissioners, scoutmasters, or 
assistant scoutmasters—to ask you as representative educators of our 
country to accept the program of scouting as an educational asset. 

Not only do we desire your attention to what can be said in support 
of the claims that scouting is an educational asset, so that it may fully 
justify a place in your program, but we earnestly hope that the possibilities 
of this movement as an asset in the work to which you have committed 
your lives will be made so clear that each of you here will become personally 
interested in the proper development of the movement, so that, thru the 
resources which you command, it may become more largely available to 
the boys of our country. 

I hope that I shall not give offense by claiming that the inadequacy of 
our public-school system to meet the full needs of the growing boy makes 
necessary the boy-scout scheme or something similar to cope with present- 
day conditions. The school is handicapped by its traditions and by its 
limited opportunity for control and influence in the life of the average 
boy. Even under favorable conditions, the school provides leadership 
for only about one thousand of the five thousand hours a year a boy 
has for activity. It is seldom that the school exerts such a hold on the 
boy as to furnish him with a motive or anything like a program for his 
activities after he is released from the schoolroom for the day, or for his 
vacation period. 

The complex conditions of present-day civilization add to the problem. 
Unfortunately the home and the church also fail to provide adequate 
leadership or a definite program for the time of the boy outside of the school- 
room. Modern invention and improved living facilities decrease the 
demand upon the time of the boy for chores about the home. Generally 
speaking, the boy has no opportunity to choose how he will spend his leisure 
time. This is largely a matter of chance, governed by environment. With 
the coming and going of the various seasons, his interest passes without 
definite program or any direction in the games and activities of the boys 
in his neighborhood. 

Too often the value of the schoolroom instruction and discipline is 
seriously affected by reason of the undirected activity of the boy outside 
of the school. The results of these conditions are shown in the continuance 
of the necessity for the state and municipality to provide increasing sums 





Superintendence] SCOUTING AS AN EDUCATIONAL ASSET 123 


each year for police supervision and for institutions to deal with inefficient 
citizenship. 

Because of a lack of education in character, too many of our boys and 
young men show an absence of self-discipline by indifference to a higher 

, conscience. 

Another element which contributes to the unsatisfactory results of our 
public-school system is the fact that the program and method within the 
school itself fails to give the boy early enough in life a chance to discover 
the things he is by temperament and native ability best fitted to do—in 
other words, a chance to discover himself. 

In the city of New York, of the forty thousand boys and girls who have 
not passed beyond the grammar school, and yet receive their working papers 
each year, but a very small percentage even attempt to seek their first 
employment because of any particular desire to follow a given line of work, 
or because of any special training or ability to do any one thing efficiently. 
The great proportion are willing to accept any opportunity for earning a 
fair wage. A small proportion of these are ambitious enough to accept 
the opportunity of the night high schools to fit themselves along special 
lines, but the great proportion engage in blind-alley occupations and too 
many become mere drifters and thus add to the burden of the community. 

Indeed, it was the definite evidence of the inadequacy of public-school 
instruction in England that led Robert S. S. Baden-Powell to develop plans 
for the training of the young men who were sent to him from the large 
cities of England, and finally led to the development of the boy-scout 
scheme. As he has expressed it, the great proportion of these young men 
who were sent to him for service in South Africa as recruits were so depend- 
ent upon the conveniences of modern civilization that they virtually 
expected to be tucked in at night. They lacked discipline, resourcefulness, 
initiative, as well as practical knowledge of how to care for themselves. 

Unfortunately, as all who are familiar with the facts know, a somewhat 
similar condition was found among the young men who were enlisted for 
service in the Spanish-American War. The lack of practical knowledge 
on the part of the enlisted men, as well as the lack of leadership, has cost 
this country very dearly. 

In order to meet the condition as he found it, Baden-Powell, instead 
of giving the ordinary military training to the group of recruits, worked out 
plans for giving them what he called “stunts in scouting.”” Men were sent 
off in small groups and compelled to shift for themselves in the woods and 
forests, Every effort was made to give these young men experiences similar 
to those which were common to the young man living in the rural com- 
munities. 

Upon returning to England, Baden-Powell was surprised to find that 
the principles involved in his plans for dealing with men had been applied 
in boys’ schools, Eventually he responded to the many invitations pressed 





124 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


upon him and set himself to the task of working out a program for boys, 
As a result we have the wonderful movement known thruout the civilized 
world as the scouting program. 

Baden-Powell insists that he should not be given credit for what it 
involves, because, as he says, he helped himself freely to all that was avail. 
able, in this and other countries, in the way of programs of work with boys, 
Notwithstanding what he has to say, however, it is a fact that the plan 
of organization and psychology involved in the scouting program was dis- 
tinctly new. Particularly is this so with reference to the idea of service 
which is a cardinal principle in the scouting program. 

The appeal to the boy’s imagination thru the word “scout,” the recog. 
nition of the principle of self-government, and the placing of a boy on his 
honor, have all been very effective. Likewise the total absence of the use 
of the word “don’t” or anything of a negative character has been effectively 
cared for by placing emphasis upon “do.” 

As a scout, the boy willingly adopts as real and vital the universally 
accepted principles of life as set forth in the scout oath and law. This 
effectively influences the boy’s nature and character so as better to prepare 
him for that work which the church can best do. 

A scout promises upon his honor to do his duty to God and to his coun- 
try, to obey the scout law, to help other people at all times, and to keep 
himself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight. 

The scout law, covering twelve fundamental principles of life, requires 
a scout first of all to be trustworthy. That means he must not tell a lie, 
cheat, or deceive, but must keep every trust sacred. A scout is loyal to all 
to whom loyalty is due, including his scout leader, his home, his parents, 
and his country. A scout is helpful, that is, he is prepared, thru the special 
program of scouting activities, to save‘ life, help injured persons, and to 
do at least one worthwhile good turn daily. A scout is friendly to all, 
a brother to every other scout. A scout is courteous, especially to women, 
children, and old people, and he must not take any pay for his acts of 
courtesy or kindness. A scout is kind to animals and will not kill nor hurt 
any living creature needlessly. A scout is obedient; a scout is cheerful 
even when facing hardship and drudgery. A scout is thrifty; he not only 
recognizes his obligation to pay his own way, but realizes his duty to help 
carry the burden of worthy causes, and the needs of his country. A scout 
is brave and does what he knows is right in spite of jeers and threats. A 
scout is clean in body and thought, stands for clean speech, clean sport, 
clean habits, and travels with a clean crowd. Finally, a scout is reverent 
toward God; not only is he faithful in his own religious duties, but he 
respects the convictions of others in matters of custom and religion. 

Every step in the scouting program is for character development and 
good citizenship. The variety and interest, as well as the practical knowl 
edge insured by the tenderfoot, second-class, first-class, and various merit 





5 
2) 
ll 
3 
al 
0 
l 


rer OS ee eS 


oo 


Superintendence] SCOUTING AS AN EDUCATIONAL ASSET 125 


badge tests, are, after all, but a means for holding the interest of the boy, 
pledged to the scout oath and law, under such leadership as will bring about 
character development. The form of troop organization, the scoutmaster 
and his assistants, the local council, and, indeed, the National Council and 
all its officers, are but a means to this end. This character development 
manifests itself in health, efficiency, chivalry, loyalty, patriotism, good 
citizenship, and joyous living. Time will not permit a detailed description 
of the plan of organization and methods of procedure, but in order that 
all interested may be accurately informed we are placing in your hands 
with our compliments a copy of the official Handbook giving all of this 
information. 

We want you to look upon the boy-scout idea as a movement rather 
than an organization, and to realize that we are merely seeking to supple- 
ment existing agencies for the education of the boy. The scout movement 
makes available a carefully selected leadership for the boy’s leisure time 
and endeavors to supply the required environment and ambitions thru 
games and out-door activities which lead a boy to become a better man and 
worthwhile citizen. 

We want to help boys on leaving school to escape the evils of blind- 
alley occupations—that is, such work as gives the boy a mere wage for the 
moment, but leaves him stranded without any trade or handicraft to pursue 
when he is a man and so sends him as a recruit to the great army of unem- 
ployed, and what is often worse, the unemployable. Doing is learning, 
and when a scout in the formative stage of his life has this lesson thoroly 
impressed upon his mind, he has learned to be resourceful. The simple 
self-help experience which a scout receives in his impressionable years 
prepares him to meet emergencies covering the entire range of experience 
which may develop later in his life. 

Please keep it clear in mind that the scout movement is not seeking to 
displace established educational agencies, nor does it undervalue the abso- 
lute necessity of schoolroom instruction for all boys just as long as 
practicable. 

Scoutcraft includes instruction in first aid, life-saving, tracking, signal- 
ing, cycling, nature-study, seamanship, campcraft, woodcraft, chivalry, 
and all of the handicrafts. 

In scouting the boy does not stand still. The opportunity and incen- 
tive for progress are always at hand. He first becomes a tenderfoot, then 
a second-class scout, and then a first-class scout. After this the whole 
sphere of the scout program is made available by the boy’s own application 
to qualify himself to pass tests for the various merit badges which cover 
a wide range of practical and interesting subjects. 

We find that a boy takes up a hobby with the same zest with which he 
plays tennis or football, and that this hobby under proper leadership may 
lead him to the realization of the thing he is best fitted to do as a life-work. 





126 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


In other words, we transfer the efforts of the boy from idle plays or harmfy} 
. mischief to vital achievements. 

As an organization, the boy-scout movement is not military in thought, 
form, or spirit, altho it does instil in boys the military virtues, such as honor, 
loyalty, obedience, and patriotism. It also gives boys a practical knowledge 
of the principles of hygiene, sanitation, and actual camping experience and 
physical training. The uniform, the patrol, the troop, and the limited drills 
are not for military purposes, they are for unity, harmony, and rhythm of 
spirit that help in dealing and doing things together as scouts, that boys 
may absorb the force and truth of the scout law which states that a scout 
is a friend of all and a brother of every other scout. 

Scouting presents greater opportunities for the development of the boy 
religiously than do other movements instituted solely for boys. Its aim 
to develop the boy physically, mentally, and morally is being realized very 
widely. 

The movement has been developed on such broad lines as to embrace 
all classes, all creeds, and at the same time to allow the greatest independence 
to individual organizations, officers, and boys. 

The Boy Scouts of America maintain that no boy can grow into the 
best kind of a citizen without recognizing his obligation to God. The 
recognition of God as the ruling and leading power of the universe and 
the grateful acknowledgment of his favors and blessings are necessary to 
the best type of citizenship, and are a wholesome thing in the education of a 
growing boy. No matter what the boy may be—Catholic or Protestant or 
Jew—this fundamental need of good citizenship should be kept before him. 

The Boy Scouts of America, as an organized body, therefore, recognizes 
the religious element in the training of the boy, but is absolutely non- 
sectarian in its attitude toward that religious training. Its policy is that 
the religious organization or institution with which the scout troop or the 
individual scout is associated should give definite attention to the boy’s 
religious life. 

In thus making available to boys of all classes a common meeting- 
ground where they may play and compete and learn to know that the other 
fellow is not much different from themselves, the boy-scout movement is 
performing a distinctive and important patriotic service, and again the 
observance of the scout law, and the tremendous cumulative value of the 
required daily good turn, and the creation of better feeling among millions 
of scouts in our own and other lands, constitute a latent but powerful and 
rapidly growing factor for universal good will and the brotherhood of man. 

The Boy Scouts of America has just celebrated its sixth anniversary. It 
has troops organized in all parts of the country and in all of our possessions. 
During the past year there was an increase of 46 per cent in the enrolment. 
In every community the best type of citizenship is represented in the leader- 
ship provided. Especially is this true where there is a chartered local coun- 





Superintendence] SCOUTING AS AN EDUCATIONAL ASSET 127 


cil. In such cases the responsibility for the selection of the leaders of groups 
of boys is delegated to the local authorities. Two-thirds of our troops, 
however, are working in communities where local councils have not yet 
been organized. In these cases the responsibility for certifying to the 
leadership of a group of boys is a difficult problem. It gives me great 
pleasure on this occasion to testify to the practical service which has been 
given by school superintendents in our efforts to handle this problem. It is 
our invariable rule, wherever an application for a commission is presented 
without the recommendation of men who, because of the positions they hold 
in the community, command recognition, for us to call immediately upon 
the school superintendent for co-operation. We usually ask if the superin- 
tendent would be willing to intrust his own boy to the leadership of the 
man who seeks the commission. Ordinarily this brings about the proper 
investigation and a report which gives us a basis for action. 

A recent study of the qualifications of 7,067 men who hold commissions 
as scout-masters shows that about 65 per cent of them are college men 
and that over 80 per cent have either a high-school or a college education; 
1,685 give their occupation as clergymen, and 790 as public-school teachers; 
others are professional men, journalists, students, and men engaged in 
mechanical or mercantile pursuits. In practically every one of the 350 
chartered councils, the public schools are definitely represented thru the 
service of the school superintendent on the executive board and in many 
cases the school superintendent serves as president of the council. 

The value of the scout movement as an educational asset has been 
recognized by a number of our large universities by the definite encourage- 
ment given in developing leadership. Scout courses have been organized 
in the summer schools in the University of Wisconsin, University of Cali- 
fornia, University of Virginia, University of Texas, Teachers College of 
Columbia University, and at numerous other places. 

It is with great pleasure that I can, by special permission, quote from 
James E. Russell, Dean of Teachers College of Columbia University, as 
to scouting as an educational asset. He says: 


I regard the scout movement as one of the most valuable educational agencies of this 
generation. One lesson of the present European war is that American boys must be 
trained in patriotism and in those homely virtues which would make for civic order and 
social stability. For this purpose I know of no means so effective as those employed 
by the boy scouts. I hope to see the time when every American schoolboy will look 
forward to becoming a good scout and will be trained to incorporate the ideas of the boy 
scout into his life as an American citizen. 

It is practically impossible to do much in the way of military training with boys 
under eighteen years of age. It must be taken seriously and its inclusion in the courses 
of our public schools should not be considered. Even Germany does not pretend to give 
military training to boys, but sets aside several years after school life to this man’s work 
Then it is taken seriously, and results in making trained soldiers. The most that can 
be hoped for in this country is a preparatory training for boys which should include 
characteristics of the later life-work and give some idea of a live interest in the process 





128 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 





of their later vocation. There must be a substitute and in my opinion it is before us now. 
This substitute is the boy-scout movement. 

The movement is distinctly non-military, but it should appeal as much to the mogt 
ardent militarist as to the non-militarist. It is non-military in the same sense that 
manual training is non-vocational or non-professional, but it is preparatory to good 
citizenship and everyday service. It furnishes physical training to the boy and accustoms 
him to outdoor life and camping. It gives him a purpose that is suited to his age ang 
appeals to his boyish traits. It utilizes to good advantage the gang spirit. It is remark. 
ably appealing in teaching him keen work and instils in him high ideals. This, in a sense 
is more than military training ever can do, in that it develops character, initiative, via 
intelligence. 

Give me one million boy scouts grown into manhood and I will fear neither foreign 
domination nor internal social disorder. But we ought to have more than one million 
to fall back upon. We ought to have five millions of boy scouts in this country, 

This entire movement should receive the support of the schools thruout the country, 


Professor Roberts, of the Kansas State Agricultural College, in an article 
on school science, gives another point of view. He says: 


There is just one solitary place where your boy and mine can get this real kind of 
fundamental training which teaches him how to be a man, how to take care of himself 
and others in emergencies, and that, as you know, is absolutely not in the public schools 
at all. It is in the organization of the boy scouts: 

Contrast the methods of the scouts, for example, to the methods of the school. One 
is dynamic and the other is static. One develops to the maximum, encourages, indeed 
forces initiative; the other glorifies military subservience to routine. The one not merely 
asks but demands originality and resourcefulness. The other requires uniformity at 
all costs and exalts above individual expression the ideal of discipline and order. The 
one forces the boy to hammer himself into something individual; the other hammers the 
individuality out of the boy. 


T. C. Hassell, principal of the Fair Park School, says: 


The school cannot utilize all the energies of the boy. This splendid movement comes 
to our aid. The troublesome element is smaller since the scouts were organized. It 
tends to raise a higher standard among boys. Their personal appearance is better, 
Cigarette smoking is on the wane, because of the example of the boy scouts. 


In a letter just received from Robert S. S. Baden-Powell, permit me 
to quote the following: 


It may be some encouragement to these gentlemen to know that our educationalists 
over here are now recognizing that our principle of encouraging active doing on the part 
of the individual instead of passive reception of ideas by the mass is practical education, 
as opposed to theoretical instruction, and they are therefore taking a close and sympathetic 
interest in it. 

Moreover, the value of our system is now proved by results and not merely by theory, 
The war has put the movement and its methods to the highest possible test; it has proved 
the inherent vitality of the organization; it has shown that boys so prepared can respond 
to a sense of responsibility and duty at a time of national crisis to an extent never before 
realized—which is patriotism far above ecstatic flag-waving; and in the by-product of 
soldier-making the foundation of character given by the scout training is found to be as 
valuable as it is in the making of citizens in other lines of life, whether civic, commercial, 
intellectual, or industrial. Indeed, in this aspect it offers visions of being able to meet 
in some degree the difficult question which just now is agitating America, namely, that of 
preparing for defense without the imposition of militarism. 





5B af? TF & B&B & & & 


eos 


of 
elf 
ols 
ne 
ed 
ly 
at 
he 
he 


= 


28Eeei bas SESE 


Superintendence) NATIONAL MORALITY CODES COMPETITION 129 


All of us realize that the opinions of men are changing and that this is 
a critical time in the history of our country. It is the responsibility distinc- 
tively of this group of people as well as all of us engaged in work with boys 
to keep calm and to help in securing deliberate consideration as to the 
advisability of any of the many changes which are daily proposed affecting 
our national life and the education of the youth of our country. Those 
of us who are supporting the boy-scout movement firmly believe, as stated 
by Dr. Russell, that in the boy-scout movement can be found a program 
adequate to meet the needs of the growing boy in preparing him for the 
responsibilities of citizenship. Certainly we are making a distinctive con- 
tribution to preparedness by instilling in boys a proper conception of their 
responsibility to their country and by the development of the ideas of 
service. In so far as the scheme of scouting can be utilized in part or in 
whole by schools or other agencies working with boys, it is available simply 
for the asking, independent of the definite affiliations of the group of boys 
with the Boy Scouts of America. We ask, however, that no attempt be 
made to call them boy scouts, or have them use the official uniform and 
badges, unless they comply absolutely with the official regulations and 
meet the prescribed standards. We hope that the schools of our country 
will definitely accept scouting as an educational asset and will co-operate in 
the organization of troops locally and in guiding the movement nationally, 
so that, to a larger extent than ever before, the future of our nation may be 
benefited by the development of boys, not merely in scholastic training, 
but in character and social efficiency. This is true education! 


THE NATIONAL MORALITY CODES COMPETITION 


MILTON FAIRCHILD, CHAIRMAN, EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, NATIONAL 
INSTITUTION FOR MORAL INSTRUCTION, WASHINGTON, D.C. 


A business man of large experience in general affairs has come to the 
conclusion, on his own initiative and as the result of thoro study, that the 
fundamental need of the nation is the moral or character education of 
children and youth. He has offered a prize of $5,000, the largest prize 
ever offered in an educational competition, for the best of seventy morality 
codes, written by selected competitors, each of whom shall endeavor to 
interpret intelligent public opinion as to what moral or character ideas 
ought to be inculcated in American children and youth by the nation’s 
schoolsand homes. The conduct of the national morality codes competition 
is in the hands of the Executive Committee of the National Institution 
for Moral Instruction, Washington, D.C. One year, Washington’s birth- 
day 1916 to Washington’s birthday 1917, will be allowed for this nation-wide 
study of public opinion, and for the formulation of the morality codes. 
All seventy codes will be published by some one of the schoolbook publishers 





130 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


in the form of school reference books, to be called “ Morality Books,” which 
it is hoped will be placed on the teacher’s desk in every schoolroom, country 
and city, thruout the nation, and in many homes. The price of the “ Moral. 
ity Books” will be as low as possible. A small royalty will be taken for 
the treasury of the National Institution for Moral Instruction, which wil] 
be used in research work to determine effective methods for character 
education in schools and homes. 

The success of such an undertaking as this depends on the co-operation 
of many, and co-operation depends on good will. Therefore let me explain 
several points which superintendents of schools will wish to have informa. 
tion on before they give the national morality codes competition their 
good will and co-operation. 

The National Institution for Moral Instruction is incorporated for 
research in character education of children and youth for no personal 
profit. It contemplates the organization of a small faculty of specialists 
in this field of education, and the development of collaboration on the part 
of a selected group of educators and others from the entire nation, to the 
end that the wisdom of experience may be organized into a body of ideas 
and principles which can be used as the material of instruction in the 
moral or character education of children and youth. It is an institution 
primarily for study of the problems of character education. It is nota 
propagandist institution to force schools to do what superintendents do 
not care to have them do; but a research institution to find out how superin- 
tendents can arrange to have the schools do effectively what they wish 
the schools to do, namely produce character as a resultant from education. 

The National Institution for Moral Instruction is an inside, not an 
outside, organization. Its executive committee is composed, in addition 
to the chairman, of P. P. Claxton, Willard S. Small, William C. Ruediger, 
and Margaret Bell Merrill, all actively engaged in education. The presi- 
dent of its board of directors is David Snedden, who will soon be professor 
of “social education,” in Teachers College, Columbia University. Its 
directorate is chosen from the different centers of educational research 
thruout the nation, with a sufficient representation from the general public 
to insure breadth of experience. It is regarded as essential to progress in 
character education’ that there be arrangements made for nation-wide 
collaboration among educators, because generalizations in matters of moral- 
ity ought to rest on experience, and the experience of the individual is too 
narrow for certitude in this field of knowledge. 

The donor of this prize for the best code of morals for instruction of 
children and youth is anxious that the educators should believe that he is 
not seeking any personal glory or indirect gain. He wishes to assist edu- 
cators and others in developing this phase of education, because he believes 
it is neglected and needs developing for the good of the nation. He desires 
his name to remain unknown, but, under the title “advising treasurer,” 





Superintendencel) NATIONAL MORALITY CODES COMPETITION 131 


he wishes to work out plans for adequate financial support for the National 
Institution for Moral Instruction, and to have part in formulating broad 
plans for universal moral education of all the nation’s boys and girls. I 
am permitted to say that he is not a resident of Washington, D.C., but of 
one of the cities in the nation at large. 

The national morality codes competition is a study and interpretation 
of intelligent public opinion rather than an interesting struggle among 
literary people for a prize. In all but five states, the state superintendent 
of public instruction has accepted appointment as the co-operating educator. 
The full list you will find printed in the announcement circular. Each 
co-operating educator has chosen and appointed the state representatives 
who are to write the state morality codes in the competition. In states 
having a large population, more than one morality code writer has been 
chosen. The total number of code writers will be seventy. 

Each of the morality code writers is to endeavor to make a thoro study 
of public opinion in his state regarding the moral ideas which ought to be 
inculcated in the minds and hearts of children and youth, and in doing 
this is to consult a large circle of advisers among teachers and parents. 
Letters of advice will be asked from all interested. The intelligent public 
opinion of the state is to be back of each morality code, not merely the 
individual opinions of the code writers. 

There will be two “Morality Books,” one for elementary schools and 
one for high schools, for each code is to be written in two parts, the ele- 
mentary part for boys and girls between nine and fourteen, and the high- 
school part for youths between fourteen and eighteen years of age. The 
“Morality Books’’ will be revised from time to time, and the schools will 
be supplied continuously with a reference book from which any teacher 
and any pupil can find out what intelligent public opinion believes should 
be taught American boys and girls as to right and wrong in the world of 
boys and girls. 

But what is a “code of morals”? Washington had a code; Franklin 
had a code; Baron Rothschild had a code; hosts of people have written 
out for themselves short statements of their intentions as moral beings, 
and lived by them thru the storm and stress of this world life. The National 
Institution for Moral Instruction has formulated a code covering the ethics 
of work, called “The Code of Successful Workers,” which will make clear 
what a morality code is like. 


al 
ts 
rt 
re 
aS 
ne 
mn 

a 
lo 
n- 
sh 
n. 
an 
on 
rT, 
si- 
or 
[ts 
ch 
lic 
in 
ide 
al- 
:00 


THE ETHICS OF WORK 


This “Code of Successful Workers” has been formulated from personal experience 
by many men and women who have achieved great success as workers. It presents their 
personal attitude toward their work, and reveals the sort of people they have striven to 
make of themselves. It is true and reliable. It is offered as a means by which young 
people can learn the requirements which success in work imposes on them. Those who 
work. by this code will find satisfaction, honor, and a good living in the world of work. 


SB8fee 


= 
= 





NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION 


THE CopE oF SUCCESSFUL WORKERS 


RESOLUTIONS THEY MAKE FOR THEMSELVES 


1. I will respect all useful work and be courteous to the workers. Work of all kinds is 
essential to the success of the world, and benefits come to many from the service rendered 
by each honest worker. I will respect myself, therefore, when doing any useful work, 
and show respect for good work done by others. I will be courteous to all workers, regard 
their rights, and make life more agreeable for them when I can. 

2. I will know my work and have ambition to do it well. I will keep determined to 
succeed in work, to master some one line, to develop aptitude and gain skill. I wij] 
keep my mind concentrated on my work, and make work my chief interest. I will accumy. 
late knowledge and experience. 

3. I will take the initiative and develop executive ability. I will use business sense, 
have courage to make decisions and go ahead, be quick-witted, well balanced, and of 
good insight. I will be adaptable, and make all I can of my powers of invention. 

4. I will be industrious and willing. I will bring enthusiasm to my work, be energetic 
and quick about it, and have endurance. I will be punctual, and always an attentive 
worker. I will be patient and persevering, and have system. I will keep myself in good 
health. 

5. I will be honest and truthful. I will regard property rights, be economical of 
materials, and put in full time. I will be frank and honorable in my treatment of others, 
and preserve my personal integrity. 

6. I will educate myself into strong personality. I will develop force of character and 
have some worthy purpose in life. I will use my leisure wisely. I will be well informed, 
self-possessed, self-controlled, self-respecting, stable, open-minded and teachable, alert, 
observing. I will be quick to understand, and of good memory. I will use my imagina- 
tion, and be ready to take responsibilities. I will gain knowledge of human nature, show 
sympathy, and take an interest in people. I will be friendly, cheerful, harmonious, and 
always tactful. 

7. I will be faithful to my work. I will hold to high ideals. I will be reliable, accurate, 
and careful. I will do my work right, for the people who need done the things I help to do, 
I will be thoro. I will keep my word. 

8. I will be loyal. I will take pride in my firm or company, factory, store, or farm. 
I will protect its interests, and help to make work successful. I will be unselfish and 
obedient in my service to my superiors, and do good team work. In professional work, 
I will hold to the ethics of my profession. In an institution, I will be true to its purposes. 
I will be devoted to my home. I will be loyal to the people with whom I work. 

9. I will be a gentleman—a lady. I will keep clean and neat, be pure and of good 
repute, courteous and polite to all. I will form wise personal habits. 


The world does not owe me a living, but I am proud to make a good living 
for myself. 
Copyrighted 1914 by the National Institution for Moral Instruction, Washington, D.C. 


This ‘‘ Code of Successful Workers”’ differs from an individual’s morality 
code in that the experience of some two hundred people is the broader 
foundation on which it rests for its generalizations. It has the authority 
of public opinion in the field of work. The “Morality Books” are to inter- 
pret the wisdom of many thousands of intelligent people. If a boy should 
wish to study carefully “conduct becoming a gentleman,” it would be 
impossible for him to find a printed explanation of public opinion on this 
topic. There is no school in the nation which provides a chance for any 





Lod 


2. 


ic 
ve 
od 
of 
, 
nd 
d, 
rt, 
\a- 
Ww 
nd 


of 


a FBP 


~ Guperintendencel NATIONAL MORALITY CODES COMPETITION 133 


= eee nee 


thoro study of public opinion on any of the many important phases of 
morality. The schools have their geographies and histories, their books 
of nature, their arithmetics, etc., from which pupils can learn a host of 
facts useful to them, but the wisdom of grown-up people as to how to live 
has never been formulated for children as a body of knowledge. This 
morality codes competition is to produce one important expression of 
public opinion in a field of knowledge most intimately related to the vital 
needs of the children. 

Children force on parents the problems of moral education, and many 
find themselves at a loss to decide what moral ideas to inculcate. This 
book of morality codes will be a guide to both parents and teachers, and a 
basis for harmony between school and home. 

Normal-school students can inform themselves by studying this book 
of moral codes as to what moral ideas they are expected to inculcate in 
the minds of their pupils when they begin teaching. Their individual 
ideas and experiences can be supplemented by a study of the wisdom which 
has come to many others thru personal experiences in the large world of 
human affairs. 

These “Morality Books,” it is believed, will be of great use to the 
teachers in their regular classroom and personal work with pupils, in cases 
of discipline, and when stimulating the moral growth of pupils. They 
will be of use in normal schools as a means of preparing teachers for their 
work as educators of character, and they will influence parents to support 
at home the morality which is taught at schools. 

We have been making out a character chart by collaboration among 
several hundred people which seems to me to make clear the need of the 
child for a thoro character education. The items in this character chart 
can be regarded as the index to the “Morality Books.” The character 
of the perfect human being would be about as follows: 


Iniellectual character, needed for wise thinking: 
. Earnest, not trifling 


. Sincere and open-minded, not diverted by personal interests 
Discerning, not superficial 
Alert, not indolent 
Accurate, not indefinite 
Useful, not merely interesting 
. Inventive and constructive, not lacking initiative 
. Rational and judicious, not over-emotional, hysterical, or melancholy 
. Thoro, not illogical 
10. Keen in sense perceptions, not unobserving 

Working character, needed for doing useful work: 

1. Purposeful, not led merely by likes and dislikes 

2. Teachable, not stubborn 

3. Obedient, not balky 

4. Cautious, not heedless 

5. Ambitious, not self-satisfied 


Sy Ar eerp er 


o 





NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION 


. Persisting, not vacillating 

. Industrious and energetic, not lazy and dilatory 

. Attentive, not careless 

. Decisive, not procrastinating 

. Progressive, not opposed to change 

. Thrifty, not wasteful 

. Artistic, not slovenly 
13. 
14. 


Adaptable, not slow to fit into new surroundings 
Executive, not haphazard 


Personal character, needed for doing right by oneself: 


I. 
. Influenced by high ideals, not content with low standards 
. Conscientious, not lawless 

. Independent, not suggestible 

. Self-controlled, not weak 

. Refined, not coarse 

. Self-respecting, not dissipated 


I An & Ww WD 


Thoughtful, not merely impulsive 


Social character, needed for doing right by others: 


I 


OF 
NO FH 


I. 
2 
3 
4 
5 
6. 
7. 
8 
9 
° 


Genuine, not affected 


. Honest, not thieving nor disposed to cheat 
. Truthful, not given to lying and deceiving 
. Honorable, not sneaking 

. Just, not unfair 


Harmonious, not wrangling 
Forgiving, not vindictive 


. Disposed to trust others, not suspicious 
. Sociable, not exclusive nor snobbish 

. Loyal, not treacherous 

. Pure, not lewd 

. Courteous, not rude 

13. 
14. 
15. 
16. 


Tactful, not brusque nor priggish 

Generous and sportsmanlike, not stingy nor jealous 
Public-spirited and patriotic, not selfish 
Respectful, not impudent nor flippant 


Emotional character, needed for the joy of living: 


© ONANP WD 


. Courageous, not timid 
. Capable of true love, not cold-hearted 


Kindly, not cruel nor hateful 
Sympathetic, not self-centered 


. Congenial, not repulsive 


Responsive to the beautiful, not indifferent 


. Alive to truth, not uninterested 
. Devoted to righteousness, not inclined to evil 
. Humble, not conceited 


. Patient, not irritable . 
. Tolerant and with a sense of humor, not angry over differences of opinion 


. Hopeful, not pessimistic 


. Reverent, not irreligious 


Physical character, needed as a basis for human life: 


I. 
2. 
3. 


Well-developed body, not poorly nourished 
High resistance to disease, not susceptible 
Vital, not sluggish 





Superintendence] HOW NOT TO TRAIN RURAL TEACHERS 


ee 


4. Ready muscular control, not bungling 

5. Endurance, not quickly tired 

6. Strength, without disabilities 

7. Grace of figure and carriage, not frumpy 

8. Expressive face, not stolid 

g. Strong, musical voice, not choked nor rasping 


The “Morality Books” with some such index as this are to contain the 
convictions of the intelligent general public as to what is right in daily 
conduct for the child. These moral ideas which are the fruits of general 
experience should be inculcated by some effective method in schools and 
homes. No reference to methods or principles of moral instruction and 
training is to be made in the morality codes. Moral truth, the wisdom of 
human experience, should shine thru the code expressions. The words used 
should appeal to the minds of children and youth, and be useful as a basis 
for talks by teachers and parents, and for quotation in school and home 
discipline. 

The code writers should strive for completeness, definiteness, and prac- 
ticability of moral ideas in their application to childhood and youth, and 
for clearness, simplicity, and appeal in literary expression. The code receiv- 
ing the award must be easy to understand, sound and fundamental in its 
interpretation of intelligent opinion regarding morality, and well written. 

Let me plead for interest in this nation-wide study and formulation of 
intelligent public opinion in matters of morality. I take it that there is 
general agreement that the major purpose of education is to guide and 
stimulate each child to achieve the most perfect development of its personal- 
ity. Intellectual education, vocational education, physical education, 
represent only important divisions of a complete education. The personal, 
social, and emotional life of a child also needs guidance in its development. 
There is a character education which each child needs. In addition to the 
information which schools give, they should also educate the child into the 
character power to live. 


ROUND TABLES 


ROUND TABLE OF STATE AND COUNTY SUPERINTENDENTS 


HOW NOT TO TRAIN RURAL TEACHERS 
EDWARD HYATT, STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, SACRAMENTO, CAL. 


I feel some diffidence at expressing my notions on preparing rural teachers before 
people representing so widespread and vast a continent as this. I only know our own 
conditions, and we are only one phase of the problem, a faraway phase, hanging on the 
extreme western fringe of the nation. You will understand that I am only undertaking 
to speak according to my own lights, and that these may not serve very far from home, 
may be entirely unsuitable for other regions in this great commonwealth. 





136 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


In our part of the country, the great agency for producing rural teachers is the state 
normal school. We have at present eight splendid normal schools scattered all the way 
up and down the state. Every one is located in a city—one at San Francisco, one g 
Los Angeles, one at San Diego, one at San Jose, and so on. A normal school is an agget 
for a city—and only a city has enough momentum to grab it from a legislature. 

Now these excellent normal schools are fully open to all the young people of the 
state who qualify. Theoretically, the rural people have the same rights there as others, 
and theoretically they prepare teachers for the rural schools in the same way as for the 
city schools. 

But practically and in fact, what happens? What is so natural, so easy, and so cheap 
as for the swarms of city girls who graduate from the city high schools to enter at onceg 
normal school right at home? They are not ready to marry, they want a little mor 
schooling, they would like a job that pays real money—so why not? It is actually easier 
and cheaper for them to take the normal course than to do anything else—easier and 
cheaper than to stay at home. Consequently, they do take it, in larger and larger numbers, 
not consciously choosing the teacher’s profession, but drifting into it. 

How different the situation of the young people in the remote and inaccessible rural 
regions. When they graduate from their local schools, it is well-nigh impossible for them 
to go to normal school. They cannot go in any such way, with any such ease, such lack 
of additional expenditure, as the city girls do. They must tear up their old associations, 
they must buy new clothes, must have money for transportation, must leave the home 
nest, must have cash in hand for every little act of life. They cannot doit. They have 
not the money. They cannot leave their homes. Only the occasional one, the one with 
the fixed ambition to be a teacher, can overcome the inertia necessary to break away and 
go to the city in order to enter the normal school. 


Consequently, the great body of normal graduates are girls who are raised in the - 


cities where the normal schools are located. The great body of normal graduates go out 
to teach first in the rural schools. In two years’ time, if they are good, they may secure 
employment in the city. 

The final result, the result in the large way, the naturally to-be-expected result is 
that the rural schools are taught by a body of young women who have never been in the 
country before, who scream at a cow, who take a fit at a horse, who cannot get up for 
breakfast, who cannot sleep for lonesomeness because everything is so still. These are 
good, honest, well-meaning girls, doing the best they can, remember. 

But what can they do for rural children? What influences do they exert toward 
making them happy in their rural environment, toward teaching them to appreciate and 
enjoy rural pleasures, toward inducing them to stay on the farm? These teachers cannot 
do it. They are not built that way. It is as impossible as for the Ethiop to change 
his skin. Their lives have been spent in the city. Their friends and pleasures are all 
there. There is the heaven to which they will return as soon as they can finish their two 
years of purgatory. 

“Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh.” In what direction, think you, 
will be the whole trend of such a teacher’s unconscious influence upon the children with 
whom she associates for a year or two? Where, to them, will lie the great things, the 
attractive things, the desirable things of life? Where will they really desire to go as 
soon as they can? What will they dream about? Where will they expect to seek their 
fortunes ? 

Even the ambitious country-bred teacher, who does break thru difficulty, overcome 
inertia, and go away to a normal school or college for a period of years, has his heart and 
head full of the city. Naturally so. His own adventures and successes have been there, 
and he looks forward there to his future successes and adventures. 

Ergo—I should say, that one of the ways certainly not to train rural teachers is by 
the agency of a normal school located in and dominated by a city. 





er ee ee ae ae 


wv 
a 


FEE se888282 885% 


Sf #88 


roit 
ate 
ray 
at 
set 
the 
Ts, 
the 
eap 
ea 
ore 
ier 
ind 
TS, 
ral 
em 
ack 
ns, 
me 
ive 
ith 
ind 
the - 
out 
ure 


Superintendence] HOW NOT TO TRAIN RURAL TEACHERS 137 


often hear the consolidated school, the centralized school, urged as the great panacea 
for the ills of the rural children. Indeed, I have often urged it myself. It is a fascinating 
and inspiring idea—a strong populous school, with an enterprising, ambitious man for 

incipal. What possibilities it would have! How it could organize, how inspire the 
young people! How it could have debating teams, literary societies, sports, athletics, 
student government, contests, clubs! How it could become the center of the civic life, 
and fill the community with wholesome enthusiasm! The picture is so attractive and 
so feasible that I have sometimes almost, but not quite, resigned my job, in order to 
work it out myself in some fortunate neighborhood! 

But let us hold our horses long enough to inquire as to the real influence of the cen- 
tralized school upon the rural children, its power to create rural ideals, to build rural in- 
dinations, rural tendencies. 

However it may be otherwhere, in our country it somehow nearly always happens 
that the centralized school is located in the largest town in the neighborhood. The 
children are transported, yes, from the country to the town! and their minds are trans- 
ported no less than their bodies! Their most impressionable years are spent away from 
the country, in absorbing the things that will fit them for life in the city, and that 
will probably unfit them for happiness, content, and success in the country. 

The very best teachers now alive—those that get credit and renown, and money, and 
advancement—are those who can most skilfully and efficiently inspire their pupils and 
point them toward and train them for the great things of life—in the city! Really, they 
cannot do anything else. That is what they are trained for, that is their tradition, 
that is what they know, that is what is expected of them, that is what they are 
paid to do. 

Very many wise and earnest men and women—the greatest and most famous of our 
time--are now thinking and talking and writing about improving the conditions of rural 
life. They see it as a vital necessity for the future power and prosperity of the nation. 
They see that the people who possess the land and till it are really those upon whom our 
country must depend, and that it is placing the nation in jeopardy to let the land pass 
into the hands of indigestible aliens or ignorant, brutalized peasants. They see it as a 
necessity for our future to have our land owned and worked by solid, happy, intelligent 
American citizens, and not at all by absentee landlords and their serfs. They perceive 
danget to our institutions when the newly arrived Japanese or Italian is so efficient, so 
adapted to conditions, that he can drive the American off the farm and take possession 
of the soil. 

These wise ones are pretty unanimous in loading a redirecting of rural thought and 
rural life upon that patient and suffering camel, the public school. They frankly confess 
their inability to teach new tricks to old dogs, and ask the schools to raise an altogether 
new breed of pups. But to do so we must evolve a new breed of schools and a new breed 
of teachers to put into those schools. It is not merely a matter of education; it is a mat- 
ter of thinking, of feeling, of hoping, of believing. 

We cannot check the exodus from the country by something superficially applied 
from the outside. There must be something born in the children, some change in the 
atmosphere they breathe, some alteration of their ambitions and aspirations. As it is, 
nearly everybody wants to go to the city—really hopes and desires to go, sometime. 
The lonesome housewife doomed to drudgery; the mother, who sees the druggist’s chil- 
dren and the doctor’s offspring better off than hers; the farmer, working long hours, 
Without the good clothes and smug appearance of the banker and lawyer; the girl dream- 
ing of the fairy prince; the boy tired of the everlasting chores—they all want and hope 
and desire to go to the city—and sooner or later they go. For that matter, you went, 
didn’t you? Sodid I. But we do not want the others to go. 

Giving the rural people greater profits, greater prosperity, will not do. Isn’t it the 
prosperous farmers who are the greatest sinners? Do they not lease their fine farms to 





138 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 
$$  —.s $m —— ™ 
immigrants, and buy a place in town, so that their children may have “advantages” 
so they will not have to work so hard ? ; 

The results of the exodus are not only bad in a large way for the farming 
but also in a large way for the people who move. On the farm, children are an asset; 
in the city, a liability. The poor man who leaves the farm dooms his family, present 
and prospective, to extinction. The expense of keeping it, the difficulty of securing plenty 
of wholesome food, abundance of wholesome air, exercise, and good growing conditions 
for it will sooner or later wipe it out. 

The rich man who leaves the farm for greater “disadvantages” in town is not much 
better. His children have no spur toward effort. They fritter themselves away op 
society, dissipation, sport, and what not. They, too, scatter and disappear from the 
earth in a generation ortwo. The city is always an extinguisher of the family in every way, 

Now if the sovereign people of this nation, with patriotic vision of the future, really 
propose to change these conditions, to turn the cityward tide, and if they really propose 
to lay the responsibility of effecting the change upon us school people, we undertake g 
very vital and serious task—the task of making over a nation, of changing the heart of g 
people, of making them appreciate and love and desire the things they do not, of giving 
them hopes and pleasures and aspirations that now they have not. 

The teachers who can do this are not yet bred; and to return to my text, the way 
not to prepare them is any of the ways in which we have been preparing teachers. We 
have been preparing them in exactly the opposite direction—to encourage, and stimulate, 
and spur on the procession to the city, not to stem or check or turn it! 

The rural-mindedness so necessary to rural life cannot be produced in our old way, 
by a course. We must devise some new agency to do it with—automobiles, or aeroplanes, 
or high powers, or submarines, or something! Isn’t that the way of the rest of the world? 


RURAL SUPERVISION IN THE MOUNTAINS OF THE SOUTH 
JENNIE BURKES, COUNTY SUPERINTENDENT OF CLAIBORNE COUNTY, CUMBERLAND GAP, TENN. 


When the subject of rural supervision in the mountain sections of the South was 
chosen, it was my plan to tell true stories of actual experiences as told or written to me 
by various county superintendents and supervisors whose everyday work is confined 
to the rural schools in the mountains. But I soon found that this story-telling would 
take too much time and that I could not enter fully into the spirit of another’s story. 

“For the truth which another has won from nature or from life is not our truth 
until we have lived it. Only that becomes real or helpful to any man which has cost the 
sweat of his brow, the effort of his brain, or the anguish of his soul.” 

This, then, is my apology for confining my subject to the narrow horizon of my own 
experience as superintendent of schools in the mountains of Tennessee. 

Perhaps the highest type of supervision for the rural schools in the mountains is 
expected to come directly from the county superintendent. But his duties are so numer- 
ous that efficient supervision along any specific line becomes a physical impossibility. 

If a supervisor is a person who changes a teacher from what he is to what he ought 
to be, we are willing to admit that much time and money have been wasted in the South 
on account of the lack of such ideal supervision. However, investigation shows that 
wherever supervisors have been employed their supervision has generally tended toward 
the upbuilding of our schools. It has also been found that a successful supervisor of 
superintendent in the mountains should be a rural-school specialist and a professional 
educator. He must have an exceptiona! degree of enthusiasm, a passion for service, 
the courage of the uninitiated, and the nerve of an ex-president. 

Claiborne County lies in the Cumberland Mountains of eastern Tennessee. It isa 
typical mountain country so far as ruggedness, bad roads, and low property assessment 





Best STiFse 82252 


3 


RESBEES” §2 3 FE ER 


kr 


Superintendence] RURAL SUPERVISION IN THE SOUTH 139 


ee ee ee ee ee ee 


are concerned. Three years ago, when I became superintendent of the Claiborne County 
schools, I found myself confronted with every problem known to education. Our school 
fund was small on account of our very low assessment; our school term was only three 
and one-half months; our teachers were poorly paid, and likewise poorly qualified; our 
buildings unspeakable, our equipment nothing. 

Undoubtedly our most valuable asset was a county board of education, consisting 
of five people who had little schooling but an abundance of common-sense, rugged honesty, 
wholesome spirit, and a willingness to do something for the betterment of our schools. 

We learned that every board of education should have a clearly defined, definitely 
planned school policy, so our slogan for the first year became “Better schools and a 
longer school term.” After a series of educational campaigns conducted in every district 
of the county, the court met and raised our public-school levy from thirty-five to sixty 
cents, which in turn lengthened our school term from three and one-half months to five 
months, and permitted better salaries for our teachers. 

Before our schools opened, the teachers were assembled in a county institute for 
three weeks, where they were given special training in the public-school subjects and a 
little psychology. 

With the courage which only the inexperienced know, we took our schools out of 
politics, abandoned recklessly old customs of doing things, and established a new order 
of administration. The last straw was when the board employed a rural supervisor of 
schools. The people considered this action a piece of unheard-of extravagance and ques- 
tioned its legality. The court at its next session took up the matter and voted against 
the employment of a supervisor, by a majority of seventeen to five. When this honorable 
body were told that they had absolutely nothing to do with the hiring of a supervisor, 
they settled back with this question: “‘What will she do next ?” 

The answer came a few weeks later when the county, state, and federal governments, 
under the Smith-Lever bill, employed a county agricultural agent to help the farmers 
in their work. We hope that these agricultural object-lessons will speedily bring about 
an economic revolution, because it is an economic problem, fundamentally, that our 
mountain people have to face. 

The indifference of the country people toward the schools, and the unsightly school 
buildings and grounds, compelled us to adopt for our slogan the second year: “A school 
improvement association for every school.’’ 

Appropriations from the county and state made it possible to have a very much 
better institute for our teachers the second year. For four weeks some of the best edu- 
cators of the state gave courses, including practical psychology, public-school music, 
primary methods, story-telling, games and plays, agriculture, home economics, and special 
lectures on history, English, and sanitation. At the close of this institute, the teachers 
unanimously adopted the following list of specifications for standardization (in the order 
of adoption) : 

School graded. 
Library and bookcase. 
— painted; roof, doors, windows, and locks repaired. 
Drinking-fountain or water-cooler with individual drinking-cups. 
Timepiece (clock preferred). 
Globe, maps, good blackboard, erasers, and waste-basket. 
Brooms, duster, and sprinkler, or oiled floors. 
Cloakrooms or racks for hats and caps. 
Flowers in yard, on table, or in window. 
. Neat school grounds. 
. Sanitary outhouses. 
First-aid remedies. 
. Inventory showing everything received and added during the year. 
5. Two eo well-framed, and an additional picture each year. 
Call for class use. 


CEVOKVEyE yn 


eH 
nro 


ne 





NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION : 
swore» py vb hPa Tg ly Se la a a ata RS aa Nace un a a een 
. Proper seating. 
. Proper ventilation. 
. Proper heating (stove jacketed). 
. School improvement club. 
. Activity of teacher in church and Sunday school. 
. Attendance at teachers’ meetings. 
. Daily schedule posted (including daily study and recitation periods). 
. Taking and reading at least one educational journal. 
. Minimum of at least three public gatherings in school. 
. Visiting every home, or stating reason for failure. 
. No use of tobacco nor alcoholics by teacher or pupils. 
. Personal supervision of pupils at play. 
. Neat personal appearance of teacher. 
. Orderly assembling and dismissing of pupils. 
. Reading of Bible at opening exercises. 
. Neatly kept register, with daily roll-call. 
- Domestic arts in home or school; two exhibits by at least one-half of the girls, 
34. Manual training in home or school; exhibit at close of school, by at least one- 
half of the boys. 
35. School exhibit at county fair. 
36. Subscription to at least one daily newspaper. 


Every school that complies with 75 per cent of the items of standardization will be 
classed a standard school; those that comply with 85 per cent of the items will be classed 
as superior schools. 

This was a very progressive and courageous step on the part of the teachers, when 
we consider that the best-equipped school in the county at that time could not measure 
up to half-standard. Every school made an effort toward standardization, and, thru 
the earnest work of teachers, patrons, and pupils, at the close of the school year, there 
were 29 superior schools and 52 standard schools, out of 102 schools in the county. 

We know that our schools have not fulfilled their whole mission until they reflect 
the everyday life and activities of the country people, so our slogan for the past year 
became “Better education for all.” Thru the volunteer service of some of our teachers, a 
‘number of moonlight schools were organized, and nearly one hundred adult illiterates 
were taught to read and write, while scores of men and women extended their education 
in subjects of their choice. 

In the mountain sections, the one-teacher school is at present a necessity. As our 
roads become improved and our people acquire a more comprehensive idea of the true 
meaning of education, we may hope for consolidation in a small way, but the one-teacher 
school, like the poor, I fear, will always be with us. Yet, in spite of existing conditions, 
the board has abandoned by elimination or consolidation twelve small schools. 

We believed that in our valleys consolidation was possible, roads or no roads, if 
the people really wanted it. We argued that if good roads will bring consolidation of 
schools, why won’t consolidated schools bring good roads? The state and county each 
appropriated $1,000 to foster the idea of consolidation, and this $2,000 was offered to the 
community that would raise the largest amount toward the construction of a model 
consolidated school building. Today there stands in Powell’s Valley, on seven acres of 
land, a beautiful brick building where the children from three one-teacher schools and 
one two-teacher school are enjoying advantages they never knew before. 

At its very next session, the county court issued pike-road bonds to the amount of 
$377,000, so that good roads might go hand in hand with good schools in Claiborne 
County! 

This year our increased assessment will give us at least a six months’ school term. 
Our teachers’ salaries have been raised, so that we shall not hold a county institute but 
require our teachers to attend a state normal school or the summer school of the South. 
Another county agent has been employed under the Smith-Lever bill to organize girls’ 
canning clubs, and to do extension work in home economics. With all the forces I have 





Superintendencel) STATUS AND NEED OF RURAL SUPERVISION I4I 
| ATL ET SANTEE ES ES RN NET SNL ES eS 
mentioned hammering away on the same problems, we believe we have achieved a foot- 
hold in the wall of true education by which we may climb to better and higher standards. 
There are many counties in Tennessee and the South that have accomplished more than 
we have, but I know of none whose teaching force is so loyal in service, so willing to work, 
and so sweet about it. 

By this time I hope I have proved that the rural teacher is the school. Of course, 
visits from supervising teachers and the superintendent may inspire the efficient teacher 
and may help the inefficient teacher in her work, but if these visits are not frequent, the 
supervision does very little good. Any supervision, however, is better than no supervi- 
sion, for even that will help to keep the superintendent in closer touch with the schools 
than if there were none. Much will be done for education when our teachers can be 
brought to realize that the greatest problem we have is how to make our schools affect 
the community life. And how to do it is a question that can be settled only by the indi- 
vidual teacher working for the greatest good of her own community. Thus the problem 
of rural supervision in the mountains lies largely with the teachers who must, in isolated 
communities, become the leaders of public opinion. 


THE STATUS AND NEED OF RURAL SUPERVISION 


A. C. MONAHAN, SPECIALIST, THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OF EDUCATION, 
WASHINGTON, D.C. 


A discussion of this subject is practically a discussion of the status of the rural-school 
superintendents, county or district, as we seem to understand by the term “supervision’’ 
everything included in the work of the superintendent. Our conception of what consti- 
tutes supervision is constantly changing. At first it was the management of the business 
side of the school system, later it became management of the business side plus the direc- 
tion of the educational work of the school and the methods of teaching, and now in many 
cases it is the direction of the educational work only. This is indicated by two expressions 
in very common use thruout the country, “units of organization for administration,” 
and “units of organization for supervision.’”’ In our city systems the two units are iden- 
tical. The unit is the territory under the management of a single board and also under 
the supervision of a single superintendent; but in rural districts the two units are identical 
only in the “county unit” states. In the superintendency unions of New England, each 
a unit of supervision, the management rests with as many separate boards as there are 
towns in the union; in the New York supervisory district, with as many separate boards 
as there are school districts in the supervisory district. In the 40 states employing county 
superintendents, in which the unit of supervision is therefore the county, the unit of 
organization for management and support in 4 is the township and in 22 the old local 
school district. 

Let me outline briefly the various systems of rural supervision in the United States: 
In New England, the city or town includes everything within the township lines, all 
under the management of one board and under the charge of one superintendent. A 
large number of the city superintendents of New England therefore have charge of rural 
territory as well as urban territory, and rural schools as well as urban schools. In the 
more sparsely settled sections, two or more townships are joined together to form a 
“union superintendency.”” In management each township is independent. The super- 
intendent divides his time among his townships in proportion to the number of schools 
or teachers in each. In Vermont the superintendents are all appointed by the state board 
of education and paid by the state. The state board determines the boundaries of the 
districts, following township lines but disregarding county lines. The average district 
contains from 100 to 120 square miles. The Massachusetts supervisory districts contain 
from 2 to 4 townships, with from 20 to 40 teachers. The townships retain control of the 





142 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


management, engage a superintendent certified and approved by the state department 
of education, and receive from the state a fund equal to one-half of the superintendent’s 
salary. This plan has been in operation for 28 years. Supervision of schools in the smal] 
towns of Connecticut dates from 1903, in which year the legislature passed an act pro- 
viding that towns with less than 10 teachers might petition the state board of education 
for the appointment of a superintendent. The state board appointed the supervisor, 
the town fixed his salary, paying one-fourth of it, the state paying three-fourths, Ip 
1907 the law was amended so that towns with as many as 20 teachers might ask for 
a supervisor, provision being made for the payment of the entire salary by the state, 
As a result there are now 93 towns in the state, in 32 supervisory districts, under 32 
supervisors appointed and paid by the state, and an average of 30 teachers to each 
supervisor. 

The average New England superintendent of a union district has 17 schools, 34 
teachers, and 52 square miles of territory. Very few assistant superintendents are em- 
ployed, as they are unnecessary in such small supervisory districts. Little allowance 
is made for traveling expenses, as but little is needed; however, very well-trained men, a 
great majority (83 per cent) being college graduates with successful teaching experience, 
are employed. 

The results of this close supervision of rural schools in New England are identical 
with those obtained in Connecticut, as summarized by C. D. Hine, secretary of the State 
Board of Education, as follows: 

1. Better attendance. 

2. Decreased number of one-room schools thru consolidation. 

3. Increased number of trained teachers employed. 

4. Increase in the proportion of pupils graduating from the elementary schools and 
entering the high eyed 

5. Increased regularity and punctuality of children. 

6. Marked improvement in buildings. 

7. Unmistakable evidence of greater interest in schools on the part of school officers 
and parents. 

A study of the records of the small towns now having school supervision shows the 
following interesting changes since 1903-4: 

1. Proportion of registered pupils attending school every day has risen from 77 
per cent to 82.7 per cent. 


2. The number of one-room schools in these towns has decreased from 537 to 481, 
or Io per cent. 

3. The number of normal graduates employed as teachers in these towns has increased 
from 211 to 382—an increase of 55 per cent. 

4. The number of pupils attending high schools from these towns has increased from 
1,131 to 2,004, or 77 per cent. 

Perhaps one of the most significant results of supervision has been the elimination 
of waste effort and lost time in the schoolroom. The gain in efficiency by these economies 
is making possible the more rapid advancement of pupils. Already a reduction of the 
elementary-school course from the traditional nine years to eight has been effected in 
schools: under state supervision. The gain thru economy of time and better organization 
of work will eventually mean the completion in the early years of the course of the neces- 
p> 4 training in fundamental operations with numbers and in the mechanics of a 

penmanship. One or two years in the latter part of the course may be then dev 
to practical studies directly helpful to pupils soon to leave school for work. 


The New York system is similar to the New England system in many ways, the 
supervisory district corresponding closely to the New England supervisory district in 
size and formation. It is a development, however, from the county rather than from the 
township. The old county superintendents of New York were replaced January 1, 1912, 
by district superintendents, each county—with four exceptions—being divided into from 
2 to 8 supervisory districts. There are approximately 207 supervisory districts in the 
state, and there are 57 counties, making an average of 4 to a county. The district bound- 
aries coincide with the township boundaries: so the New York districts, like the New 
England districts, may be said to be made up of a union of townships. The superin- 





Superintendence) STATUS AND NEED OF RURAL SUPERVISION 143 


tendents are selected by boards representing the townships in each supervisory district. 
The average number of schools to each county superintendent is 52, the number of teach- 
ers 82, the number of square miles of territory 254. 

The superintendents, like those in New England in the union supervisory districts, 
are approved by the state department of education and are practically all college-trained 
men, approximately 68 per cent having two or more years’ college work. The powers 
and duties conferred upon them are practically the same as those conferred upon the city 
superintendents in the states in which they are working. 

In all the other states of the Union, with two exceptions, the supervision of rural 
schools is in the hands of county superintendents with or without assistants. These two 
exceptions are Virginia and Nevada. In Virginia the superintendent is a “division 
superintendent,” the division in most cases, as far as rural schools are concerned, being a 
county; in several cases it is two counties. In Nevada the supervision is under five 
deputy state superintendents of public instruction. Arkansas might be cited as another 
exception, for Arkansas as yet employs county superintendents in but one-fourth of the 
counties of the state. In the other counties there is no supervision. 

In three States—Maryland, Florida, and Louisiana—the county superintendents 
have under their supervision all cities in the counties, as well as the rural territory; in 
the other states, cities are set apart under their own supervisory officers. In at least 30 
of the 40’states having county superintendents, assistant county superintendents under 
one title or another are employed, the number varying from that of a certain state with 
nearly 100 counties, one of which only employs an assistant, to that of Ohio, with 88 
county superintendents and approximately 540 district superintendents. This plan is 
new in Ohio, being the result of the school laws passed by the legislature in January, 1914, 
and it is too early to know definitely what its results will be; however, it is very similar 
to the West Virginia plan, which has been in operation long enough to prove that it is 
very satisfactory. The boards of education of the West Virginia magisterial districts, 
civil districts corresponding to the eastern townships, employ district superintendents, 
or two adjacent districts may unite in employing a single superintendent. He is legally 
an assistant to the county superintendent. All districts have not employed such super- 
visors, but there are 82 altogether, enough so that one-third of the rural teachers in the 
state are in supervised districts. Kentucky is trying a plan somewhat similar; it has 
approximately 200 rural supervisors or “supervising principals,’ each confining his 
work to one of the “educational divisions” of a county. Oregon’s plan is also similar. 
By legislative enactment of 1911, counties with more than 60 teachers were divided 
into supervisory districts, each district containing approximately 60 teachers, and a 
supervisor appointed for the district is made responsible directly to the county 
superintendent for all of his work. The 1915 legislature made the plan optional 
instead of mandatory, to be continued, however, until voted out by the school directors 
of the county. 

These are all instances of plans where each supervisor has a definite portion of the 
county to which his work is confined. Other states have passed mandatory or permissive 
laws for assistant county superintendents working thruout the entire county from the 
county superintendent’s office. Pennsylvania, for instance, requires every county with 
200 rural teachers to employ at least one assistant, with 400 teachers at least two, etc. 
Wisconsin has a supervising teacher in each county. [Illinois allows the county commis- 
sioners to employ assistants when they desire to do so; in Cook County they employ five. 
In states with the county unit, the county boards of education, as a rule, may employ as 
many assistants as they wish; the county boards of Maryland, for instance, have the 
same privilege in employing assistants to the county superintendent that the city board 
of Baltimore has in employing assistants to the city superintendent. In one county with 
600 teachers the board employs nine assistants. In the county-unit states, probably 500 
tural-school supervisors or assistant superintendents are employed. 





144 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 
RSS ASIST ices it at Re AAT Lie le RT AEN 

This all sounds as if in the 40 states with county supervision there are but few county 
superintendents without assisting supervisors; as a matter of fact, the number with 
such supervisors is very small in comparison to the total. In the approximately 2,830 
counties in the 40 states, approximately 18 per cent employ assistants. In 10 states 
none are employed; in 5, assistants are employed in ro per cent or less than 10 per 
cent of the counties. Clerical assistance, in many cases only part-time, is furnished to 
29 per cent of the superintendents. It is noteworthy that the majority of assistants are 
employed in county-unit states and relatively few or none in the district-unit states, 
The 10 states in which none are employed are all in the group organized for management 
on the “district” plan. 

The efficiency of the supervision of the county superintendents who are working 
without assistants (82 per cent of the total) depends upon many things: the size of the 
territory under their supervision, the conditions of travel, the number of schools, teachers, 
pupils, etc., the organization for the administration of the school affairs, the legal powers 
and duties conferred upon them, their education, training, and experience, the length of 
the term of office for which they are elected or selected, and the method of election or 
selection. 

We are making in the bureau, at the present time, a study of county supervision, 
and have definite data to indicate the difficulties of the county superintendent’s job, if 
the county superintendent makes a real attempt to supervise by visiting his schools. 

The average territory of the county superintendent in the United States is 1,500 
square miles. In 13 states, practically all eastern states, the average for each state is 
less than 600 square miles; in 13 others, it is between 600 and 1,000; in 3, it is over 5,000. 
(The area of the state of Rhode Island is approximately 1,248 square miles.) The rural- 
school term in the majority of these states is so short (five to eight months) and the roads 
so bad that the county superintendent cannot make many visits in a year; the average 
county superintendent spends 36 per cent of his time visiting. In about one-half of the 
states, the prevailing number of visits is one per year, in almost all of the others two per 
year, the visits being from one-half to two hours in length. He has 84 school buildings, 
77 per cent of which are one-teacher buildings, and 132 teachers. In one state, the average 
is 217 buildings, 354 teachers; in four other states, the average number of teachers per 
county is over 200. 

For traveling, the county superintendents are allowed traveling expenses in prac- 
tically all states, the amount, however, varying from almost nothing to about $800. In 
practically all states certain allowance is made for office expenses, including salaries of 
assistants and traveling expenses. The salaries paid the county superintendents vary in 
different states, from $3,000 paid in New Jersey to each county superintendent to an 
average of $720 paid in Wyoming. There are four states in which the average salary is 
less than $1,000 per year and there are three states in which the average is more than 
$2,000 per year. The average of the 40 state averages is $1,388. This sounds much better 
than it ought, for minimum salaries paid in individual cases are very low. Ten county 
superintendents in the United States receive less than $300 per year; 24, more than $300 
but less than $500; and 64 receive more than $500 but less than $700. 

The legal powers and duties conferred upon the county superintendents vary very 
greatly. In some states they are very limited, being little more than what the county 
superintendent can coax the school directors to allow him to do; in other states they are 
very great. For instance, the county superintendent in Washington has the supervision 
of the work of common schools of his county, enforces the use of the course of study, 
enforces the rules and regulations required in the examination of teachers, and conducts 
the examinations, holds teachers’ institutes and county meetings of school directors, 
suspends teachers for neglect of duty, enforces the compulsory education law, may require: 
reports of school directors and teachers, and the plans for new school buildings must be 
approved by him before the building may be erected. In practice, he controls the estimate 





Guperintendencel) STATUS AND NEED OF RURAL SUPERVISION 145 
Ie ee nenenennetnnteennnenonsntttrenneenphsinhstneenessnaena sess 
of expenses in each district and has much influence in the selection of teachers. He also 
selects the county board of education, a professional board consisting of himself and four 
others, which is authorized to grade the eighth-grade examinations, to adopt textbooks 
for the entire county, to prepare teachers’ manuals, courses of study, rules and regulations 
for governing circulating libraries, and to adopt such rules and regulations concerning 
the schools of the county as are not inconsistent with the state laws or the regulations 
of the state board of education. 

Very much, of course, depends upon this superintendent’s general education, training, 
and experience in school affairs. From our special inquiry relative to the schooling of 
the county superintendents, we find that 6 per cent have attended elementary schools 
only, 3 per cent have had one year of secondary school, 3 per cent two years of secondary 
school, 4 per cent three years of secondary school, 20 per cent four years of secondary- 
school work; 17 per cent have had one year or less than one year of higher education, 17 
per cent have had two years, 6 per cent have had three years, and 22 per cent have had 
four years. In making this average, if we omit the county superintendents of Ohio, who 
are practically all college graduates, and Pennsylvania and Indiana, which have a large 
number of college graduates, the percentages of those with secondary education or less 
are much greater than just given and represent more nearly the average condition. 

It is interesting to make a comparison of the general education of the county super- 
intendents for the states where these officers are appointed as against the states in which 
they are elected. We divided the 40 states with county superintendents into three 
groups; the first, of which there are 13, being the states in which the superintendents 
are appointed; the second, of which there are ro, being the states in which the superin- 
tendents are elected by popular vote for four-year terms; the third, of which there are 17, 
the states in which the superintendents are elected by popular vote for two-year terms. 

In the first group, 2.5 per cent have attended elementary schools only 

In the second group, 8.4 per cent have attended elementary schools only 

In the third group, 6.6 per cent have attended elementary schools only 

In the first group, 5.5 per cent have had more than an elementary and less than a 
complete high-school course 

In the second group, 18 per cent have had more than an elementary and less than a 
complete high-school course 

In the third group, 10 per cent have had more than an elementary and less than a 
complete high-school course 

In the first group, 12 per cent have had the equivalent of a full high-school course 

In the second group, 19 per cent have had the equivalent of a full high-school course 

In the third group, 25 per cent have had the equivalent of a full high-school course 

In the first group, 37 per cent have had college work of from less than one year up 
to three full years, and 43 per cent are graduates; in the second group, 39. per cent have 
had college work of from less than one year up to three full years, and 12 per cent are 
graduates; in the third group 41 per cent have had college work of from less than one year 
up to three years, and 17 per cent are graduates. If we compare the two groups, one 
including the 13 states in which the superintendents are appointed, the other the 27 
states in which the superintendents are elected, we find the following: 


Amount of Schooling First Group Second Group 


Elementary education only 2.5 per cent 7.2 per cent 
From one to three years secondary 5.5 per cent }20 per cent 14.0 per cent }44.2 + per cent 
From coy secondary 12.0 per cent 23.0 per cent 
one e 37.0 per cent 
Full four high 


years 43.0 per cent 


40.0 per cent 
80 per cent 15.0 per cent 55 + per cent 


This seems to prove that for county superintendents a greater number of men and 
women who have received more general education and training are appointed by county 





146 ' NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


boards than by popular election. It appears also that those appointed have had more 
teaching experience previous to selection than elected officers: the average for those 
appointed being 9.3 years, for those elected 8.9 years. This is an argument in favor of 
the appointed county superintendent. Another argument might be found in the figures 
showing the total number of the superintendents of the two groups who have been rp. 
appointed or re-elected. Among the appointed superintendents, 36 per cent are serving 
their first terms; 29 per cent their second terms; 35 per cent their third or more thay 
third terms. Among the elected superintendents, 63 per cent are serving their first terms; 
26 per cent their second terms; and 11 per cent their third terms. The records of some 
of the states are interesting. One state has as high as 70 per cent of county superintep. 
dents who are serving their first terms; this, of course, is a state where the county super. 
intendents are elected by popular vote. A study of the number of superintendents who 
have been in office more than eight years brings out the fact that most of these are in the 
group of appointed superintendents and very few in states where they are elected by 
popular vote. This may or may not be an argument for appointed superintendents, 

It is a little off my subject to discuss the relative merits of the appointed.versus the 
elected county superintendent. The status of this question is that in 21 states the rural 
superintendents are appointed, and in 27 they are elected. Of the former 21 states, 17 
are east of the Mississippi River. Alabama has passed the necessary legislation, and by 
the addition of this state the number of states appointing their superintendents will become 
22 at the expiration of the terms of her present officers. 

We have found other interesting facts in our study of county supervision. There 
are 547 women county superintendents, or 19.4 per cent of the total number. Our figures 
seem to show that the women superintendents as a class have had better general education 
and more professional training than the men; that they devote a larger. percentage of 
their time to visiting schools; that the prevailing number of visits to each school is greater 
and the length of time spent with each teacher is longer. The women county superinten- 
dents, it would seem, have fewer things outside of the regular work to engage their time. 


ROUND TABLE OF SUPERINTENDENTS OF CITIES WITH A 
POPULATION OF OVER 250,000 


A FIRST STEP IN ESTABLISHING THE SIX-THREE-THREE ORGANIZATION 
HERBERT S. WEET, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, ROCHESTER, N. Y. 


Last September the city of Rochester opened its first school under the six-three-three 
plan. This plan was chosen primarily because school authorities believed that it presented 
possibilities of meeting the needs of the seventh- and eighth-grade boys and girls toa 
far greater extent than we have been able to meet them heretofore. No one today denies 
the value of manual training for boys and household arts work for girls, at least in the 
seventh and eighth grades. There are many, however, who argue, and we believe argue 
soundly, that there is doubtful value in much of this work as it is usually given in the 
regular grammar school. In the first place, the time is insufficient. This objection is 
raised even more by parents than by school men. But by far the more serious objection 
is to the nature of the work itself. For boys it is usually general and disciplinary, is limited 
to simple forms of woodwork only, and lacks the purpose and motivation necessary to 
awaken either cultural or vocational interest. If the time element were the only one 
involved, it would be possible to lengthen the grammar-school days, but the expense 
incurred in any attempt to offer, in connection with each grammar school, the range and 
kind of manual-training facilities needed for these boys is absolutely prohibitive. This 
expense is not only for original equipment, but it is for the necessarily high per capita 





= 


a=<=s Eee ss & STP SERA ER PERE SS 


Te 
es 
on 
of 
er 
n- 
Ie. 


e &8 


Beas ea SAS ua SS FB 


superintendence] THE SIX-THREE-THREE ORGANIZATION 147 


Se ee 


"gost of instruction, considering the comparatively small number of boys found in even 


our largest grammar schools. 

Furthermore, few people doubt today that the boys and girls who are to study a 

oreign language ought to begin this study before the usual high-school period. Is it a fair 

ition to say that at the eighth year the boy who has an interest in and an ability 
for language should have the opportunity of spending more of his time on this subject, 
while the boy who has an interest in and an ability for the industrial arts should have 
the opportunity of spending in this department the additional time that the former pupil 
spends on a foreign language? We believed that such an arrangement should be possible. 
But the limited numbers involved in even the largest grammar school in Rochester made 
this limited difference impracticable. Any attempt at it would at the best be but a 
makeshift. The fact is that in the last analysis the junior-high-school problem is essen- 
tially one of numbers. 

Of course the value of what has been said thus far rests upon the assumption that 
there are needs among these seventh- and eighth-grade boys and girls that we have not 
been meeting under the usual grammar-grade organization. To deny this it is necessary 
to show that those pupils who withdrew from school, at least upon the completion of the 
eighth-grade work, withdrew largely because of economic pressure in the home. Our 
evidence is quite to the contrary. Of those who completed the eighth-year work last 
January under the junior-high-school organization, 944 per cent have remained for the 
ninth-year work. A year ago, in exactly the same community, but under the grammar- 
school organization, only 51 per cent remained for ninth-year work. This unmistakably 
suggests that there were needs among these upper-grade pupils that were not being met, 
and that the present junior-high-school type of work is meeting these needs. 

In this attempt, however, to meet more adequately the needs of these upper-grade 
pupils, there is danger of forcing or encouraging vocational selection at such an early age 
that it may result in the lifelong injury of the pupil. The average age of the eighth-grade 
graduates in the city of Rochester is fourteen and one-half years. Certainly any influence 
that encourages choice of a specific vocation earlier than this cannot be defended by the 
publicschool. This is an educational principle upon which there has been much discussion 
from time to time. This objection to what was regarded as early specialization was the 
one most urgently used against the extension of regular high-school courses beyond the 
lines of literary, pure science, and mathematics work. 

On the other hand, any form of school organization that affords no opportunity for 
awakening vocational interests and encouraging vocational abilities before the time when 
vocational selection actually is made would seem to err in the other direction. We be- 
lieved this to be a pronounced weakness in our former organization. Both parent and pupil 
were forced to make some sort of selection of decided vocational importance to the pupil at 
the completion of this eighth-grade work. In this particular community, nearly half, of 
the pupils who remained for the completion of these eight years of work were withdrawing 
from school, With these the selection was of vital vocational importance, and yet chance 
rather than intelligence was to determine the outcome. The major part of these eighth- 
grade graduates who did continue in school, furthermore, were selecting the general or 
college preparatory courses of the upper high school; a smaller percentage, the trade 
courses for boys and girls of secondary grade. The distribution of our high-school pupils 
is suggestive on this point. Of the total number, 66 per cent are in the general or college 
preparatory courses, 27 per cent in the commercial courses, and 7 per cent in the trade 
courses. To the extent that the distribution of high-school pupils might be expected to 
reflect the vocational activities of the community, one would infer that two-thirds of all 
the working people of Rochester are engaged in professional vocations, while only one- 
third are carrying on the business and industrial enterprises of the city. Of course no 
one would expect or desire to find only those taking the college-preparatory courses of 
the upper high school who anticipate going to college and later entering upon professional 





148 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 
eC eee 
careers.’ There are many in this course who are there for purposes of general education 
and no one will deny that this is a highly defensible purpose for every pupil who has ap 
interest in and the ability to profit by these literary, pure science, and mathematics courses, 
But how many of those who are actually familiar with our upper high schools would care 
to defend the proposition that for two-thirds of all our grammar-school graduates the 
general or college preparatory courses are the most helpful courses which they could 
possibly take during these four years of the high-school period? There is ample evidence 
to any person familiar with the facts that this general education only too often means 
aimless and ineffective education. And yet this is the traditional high-school course ang 
consequently, in the judgment of so many parents, quite the course to take. By no 
means infrequently does the parent of a boy who is making a signal failure of his work 
in this course in high school plead that the boy be allowed to go on, because the general 
cultural benefits of the high-school atmosphere will be of so much help to him in later 
life—and this at the time in a boy’s life when neither true culture nor real training cap 
come thru any medium that does not bring forth sustained effort on the part of the 
individual. To the extent then that these two-thirds who are taking general or college 
preparatory courses represent those who will not gain results commensurate with the 
time and energy spent, a continuance of the system is resulting in lifelong injury to pupils 
quite as effectively as is the learning of any particular trade at too early an age, provided 
the learning of such a trade has been accomplished by hard and conscientious application, 

But how are these interests and abilities to be determined? It is true that every 
eighth-grade teacher has watched certain of her graduates go on into the literary, pure 
science, and mathematics courses of the high school, knowing that they were doomed to 
failure in these lines. Her counsels availed little, however, when opposed by the tradi- 
tional emphasis upon those high-school courses which may lead ultimately into professional 
life. But even in these cases the teacher has based her judgment more upon what the 
pupil has failed to do in courses given than upon what he has accomplished in other direc- 
tions, This is obviously true because the grammar school has no facilities with which 
to make any adequate test along lines other than those which do lead to the general courses 
of the upper high school. 

School authorities in Rochester believed that so long as these broader facilities for 
evoking the pupils’ interest and abilities in the great field of manual arts were not madea 
reasonably adequate part of their lives before the compulsory education law had been 
satisfied, the steady withdrawal of such a large percentage of the eighth-grade graduates 
from this community and the traditional selection of the literary high-school courses on 
the part of so many others who would gain but meager profit from such courses would 
inevitably continue. The only way to guarantee these facilities was to make them a part 
of the pupils’ school work before the compulsory attendance requirement had released 
its hold upon the child. The problem then lay in preserving a sensible balance between 
the one extreme represented by the single-teacher plan of grammar-school organization, 
and the other extreme of premature specialization. This could be done only by insistence 
that the courses for seventh- and eighth-grade pupils under the junior-high-school organ- 
ization should provide so far as possible a range of activities sufficiently broad to bring 
out individual interests and capacities, and that they should be emphatically preparatory 
and prevocational. The following statement of the work given to these seventh- and 
eighth-grade pupils under this organization will best show how this attempt has been 
made. 

Manual training and household arts—A minimum of three hours per week is required 
of every pupil during the first two years. A maximum of twelve hours per week is allowed 
during the latter half of the first year and during the second year. For the boys there 
are the following shops, each in charge of a master mechanic: printing, sheet-metal, 
plumbing, gas-engine, joinery, cabinet-assembly, pattern-making, mill-work, painting, 
and decorating. For the girls the work includes plain sewing, millinery, dressmaking, 





it 
on 
an 
es, 
are 
he 
ild 
ce 
ins 
nd 
no 
tk 
ral 
ter 
an 
he 
“Be 
the 
ils 
led 
on. 
ry 
ure 
to 
di- 
nal 
the 
ec- 
ich 
ses 
for 


SSFsaeBRR SSEIRFRSRBRARESEB 


Superintendence] THE SIX-THREE-THREE ORGANIZATION 149 


laundry work, and cookery. Those boys who take the minimum time for this work during 
these two years are given the choice of shops, so far as conditions will permit. The same 
principle holds with those who take the maximum amount, except that no pupil is allowed 
to spend more than ten weeks in any one of these shops during this period. The aim here 
is to test special interest and ability, to give some insight into the trade field, and to give 
such hand training as is consistent with the maturity of the pupil. In so far as this aim 
is realized, such a pupil, if obliged to leave school at the end of his eighth year, will have 
received some training for his work that will be comparable in value to the preparation 
given the boy who is to have the advantages of a full high-school course. If on the other 
hand he is to continue in school along trade lines, he will be much more able to select 
intelligently his special trade. 

English, including spelling, writing, grammar, composition, and literature —This work 
is required of all pupils during the first two years. Those pupils, however, who give the 
maximum time to the manual training and the household arts after the first half-year, 
spend less school time on technical grammar and literature than do the other pupils. 
Such pupils are required, however, to read outside of school hours a certain amount of 
good literature. The texts for this are assigned by the teacher, who guides and directs 
the reading, and who at certain intervals discusses with these pupils the significant points 
in the literature read. It is interesting to note how already these pupils are associating 
the reading of a good book with the leisure time in the home. 

Arithmetic.—This subject is required of all pupils during the first two years. After 
the first half-year, those who are taking the maximum time in the manual training and 
household arts find their application of the principles in connection with this manual 
work. In like manner those who are interested rather in business or commercial lines 
find their special application in the different phases of business arithmetic. 

’  Drawing.—This is required of all pupils during the first two years. The emphasis 
is put upon the mechanical or freehand drawing, according to the nature of the other 
work of the pupil. 

Geography.—This is required of all pupils during the first year. Commercial geog- 
raphy is also taken during the entire second year by those who are putting special emphasis 
upon the business or commercial work. 

United States history, civics, and current topics—These are required of all pupils 
during the first two years. 

Elementary science and physical education.—These are required of all pupils during 
the first two years. 

Music.—This is required of all pupils during the first half-year; of all except those 
who are taking the maximum time in the manual training and household arts during 
the second half-year; and of those pupils only who plan to go on to the upper high school 
during the second year. 

Foreign language, Latin, or German.—This is allowed at the beginning of the second 
year for those pupils who plan to enter the language courses of the upper high school. 

General mathematics.—This course includes arithmetic, concrete geometry, and ele- 
mentary principles in algebra. It is taken during the second year and is designed to pre- 
pare more helpfully for the specialized courses of mathematics of the upper high school. 

The school day begins at 8:30 and closes at 4:15, with one and one-quarter hours for 
noon intermission. This gives a school day of six and one-half hours, which is an increase 
of more than 20 per cent over the usual length of the school day in the elementary school. 
This day is divided into four periods of one hour and thirty minutes each. This length of 
period has two advantages. In the first place i t allows time for definite training in the 
preparation of lessons. In the second place,it makes possible a less abrupt transition 
from the single-teacher plan of the elementary grades to the fully departmentalized work 
of the upper high school, by having subject groups rather than single subjects taught 
by certain teachers. For example, Latin, English grammar, and composition are taught 





150 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


by the same teacher, while English literature, United States history, civics, and current 
topics are taught by another teacher. 

A review of the above requirements for the first two years of this junior high schoo] 
corresponding to the seventh and eighth grades of the regular grammar school, makes 
clear the following: 

1. That during the first half-year all pupils are required to take the same course. 
This gives a half-year in which to consult the home and study the entire elementary. 
school record of each pupil before making any attempt to meet individual needs thry 
differentiated courses. 

2. That during the remainder of the first year a very conservative differentiation js 
made. This affords a half-year in which to verify the assignment before the sharper 
differentiation of the second year takes place. 

3. That the final choice as to course does not come until the completion of the second 
year. This is the time when precisely this kind of a choice must be made by the pupil 
who completes the grammar-grade work. At this time the pupils who have emphasized 
the manual-training or the household-arts work under the differentiations previously 
allowed are free to enter the college-preparatory courses of the upper high school if they 
so desire. They will not have had the foreign-language nor the general mathematics 
courses of the eighth year, but even so they will be quite as well prepared for this work 
as are the graduates of the regular grammar schools. This is not an opinion, but a state- 
ment of fact based upon five years of experience in the Rochester Shop School for Boys, 

4. That aside from the foreign language of the second year all subjects are substan- 
tially those now commonly offered to seventh- and eighth-grade pupils. 

5. That no specialized commercial subjects, such as shorthand and bookkeeping, 
are offered during the first two years. Those pupils who show special interest in the com- 
mercial work offered are simply given a preparation for later specialized commercial 
subjects thru a partial application of arithmetic and English, for example, to business 
practice. This is regarded as most helpful for the pupil whether he goes into the commer- 
cial courses of the upper high school or into the business office upon the completion of 
the junior high-school work. 

6. That no pupil is allowed to center his interest upon any specialized trade during 
the first two years. The maximum time spent in this line necessitates work in at least 
six different shops. Such a provision is designed’to bring out vocational interest, to give 
some insight into the trade field, and to give such elementary hand training as is consist- 
ent with the maturity of the pupil. 

7. That all boys during the first two years are receiving their manual training thru 
the working out of practical problems in various shops. This gives a purpose or a motive 
to the work which is of value in awakening both vocational and cultural interests. The 
boys who later are to go on to the language courses of the upper high school are working 
in the same shops as are the boys who are to go later into the trades. They are simply 
spending less time in these shops, because they have less need for this work. The same 
principle holds with the girls in the household-arts work. 

8. That in short the whole work of these two years is preparatory and prevocational. 
The simple attempt is made to provide a range of facilities and a sufficient amount of 
time to bring out special aptitudes and then to give such development of these aptitudes 
as is consistent. Thus when the time comes for the pupil to decide upon his high-school 
course or upon his course in the world he will have received some insight into the vocational 
sphere, whether professional, business, or industrial, in which he will later find himself. 

The attempt to avoid premature specialization and yet bring out and develop indi- 
vidual aptitudes has not been confined to courses of study. It has been applied to the 
task of selecting and training teachers as well as to the methods of organizing the school. 

The selection of teachers for such a school is at the same time the most important 
and the most difficult problem which presents itself. Assuming that teaching experience 





, ee. a) “a, ae 


i hinipendtencel THE SIX-THREE-THREE ORGANIZATION ISI 


is indispensable, the choice lies between the experienced high-school teachers with college 
training and the experienced grade teachers, usually without such training. The former 
will be strong in subject knowledge but not so strong in their knowledge of seventh- and 
eighth-grade boys and girls. They will furthermore be inclined to regard work in the 
junior high school as offering less advanced positions, even tho salary conditions are the 
same. The latter will be less strong in subject knowledge but stronger in their practical 
knowledge of. upper-grade children. They will furthermore regard work in the junior 
high school as an advancement, and will be conscious of the need of supplementary 
training. This attitude of mind speaks volumes in favor of the experienced grade teachers. 

Once it was decided to select experienced grade teachers, the problem of intelligent 
selection presented itself. Accordingly, one year before the junior high school was to 
open, a series of Saturday morning institutes was begun. Classes were organized in 
Latin, German, English, elementary science, and mathematics. These were for applicants 
for teaching positions in the academic course. Specially trained teachers were available 
for the commercial and household- and industrial-arts courses, tho Saturday morning 
institutes were organized and carried on thru the year in these courses also. The major 
emphasis in these latter was on courses of study. 

To these courses every experienced grade teacher in the system who met the minimum 
requirements and who cared to apply was admitted. Every applicant for a position as 
teacher of mathematics in the junior high school was required to have had, for example, 
the full mathematics courses of the upper high school. To continue with this subject of 
mathematics as illustrative of the principle which prevailed in these institutes, three 
definite things were accomplished. In the first place, an opportunity was given for 
drawing up in outline a course of study in general mathematics for the eighth grade or 
second-year junior-high-school pupils of the academic course. It was exceedingly impor- 
tant that this should be done and that it should be done with great care, since this course 
was to prepare the pupil for the specialized mathematics courses of the upper high school. 
Furthermore, no textbook had been written to meet this particular condition. Had we 
confined ourselves to the arithmetic, or taken the straight high-school course in algebra, 
the task would have been simple. The institute was in charge of the head of the depart- 
ment of mathematics in the high school to which the pupils of this particular junior 
high school would later go. He knew the high-school needs and was naturally in a position 
to indicate the best line of preparation. In the institute class, on the other hand, were 
the experienced grade teachers with their knowledge of the capacity and limitations of 
upper-grade pupils. These seemed to be favorable conditions for working out courses 
of study. The working-out of such courses, therefore, was one important thing to be done 
in these institutes. In the second place, these institutes gave to the grade teachers an 
opportunity for subject-matter review in algebra and geometry. And, lastly, the work 
of the teachers in these institutes constituted one important factor in the ultimate selec- 
tion of teachers. What has been said of this course in general mathematics was equally 
true in principle of each of the other courses. 

The general organization of the school can be presented with comparative brevity. 
There are no departmental heads as we know them in the usual high-school organization. 
At the head of the school stands the principal, a strong, experienced grammar-school 
man. Associated with him and giving his whole time to the instructional side is a director 
of junior-high-school academic work. He also is an experienced grammar-school principal 
of exceptional ability in this particular field. His task is to relate and co-ordinate the 
academic work of the entire school, regardless of the department in which it is given. 
This makes for unity and it greatly facilitates the transfer of pupils from one course to 
another when there is a demonstrated need. One man is in general charge of the shops, 
one woman has the corresponding place in the household-arts work, and the director of 
commercial education for the entire system is taking immediate charge of the commercial 
department. The high-school departmental heads who carried thru the institute work 

















152 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 






of last year are consulting engineers. Their interest has been pronounced and their con. 
tributions important. In fact, in the main they are coming to the school for a regular 
period each day, there to teach a class of eighth-grade pupils, while the regular teacher 
and often the director of academic work are present also to offer their contributions 
and assistance: such is the desire of these high-school men to know at first hand the 
powers and limitations of the grade pupil. This ought to contribute much to the soly- 
tion of another commonly recognized problem, that of securing a closer working relation 
between the upper grades and the high schools. 

This is an exceedingly simple type of organization and it will doubtless impress some 
as being too simple. On the other hand, those who are familiar with the usual depart. 
mental work of the upper high school, which only too often becomes compartmental, will 
find at least a partial defense for the plan outlined above. As later junior high schools 
are organized in Rochester, this director of academic work will extend his field as the 
unifying force for all, and such additional sub-directors will be assigned as experience 
proves desirable. 

In conclusion, Rochester submits the following defense for this junior high school: 

1. It has thus far increased by 15 per cent the number of pupils who have remained 
for eight years of work. This argues well for the reduction of eliminations from the seventh 
and eighth grades. 

2. It has increased from 51 per cent to 944 per cent the number of pupils who have 
completed the eight years of work and who are still remaining in school. 

3. It has, thus far, produced a much saner distribution of high-school pupils. Whereas 
the distribution of all our high-school pupils is 66 per cent in the general or college- 
preparatory courses, 27 per cent in commercial courses, and only 7 per cent in the industrial 
and household-arts courses, the distribution of ninth-year pupils in the junior high school 
is 33 per cent in the general or college-preparatory courses, 33 per cent in the commercial 
courses, and 34 per cent in the industrial- and household-arts courses. We believe this 
to be a significant change, whether viewed from the standpoint of the distribution of voca- 
tional activities in the community or from the standpoint of a distribution that will give 
maximum training benefits to the pupils themselves. No one can say that this one-third 
in the general or college-preparatory course includes all pupils who might gain the maxi- 
mum benefit from this course. On the other hand, no one familiar with the great mortality 
among first-year pupils in this course under the traditional distribution, and also familiar 
with the number of those who do remain and who seemingly fail to derive benefits com- 
mensurate with the time and energy spent in these courses, can be very apprehensive 
lest general culture will suffer under this changed distribution. 

It would obviously be unreasonable to draw any conclusions concerning the merits 
of this school with less than a year of actual experience upon which to base such conclu- 
sions. Furthermore, one could not defend tracing the greatly increased number of pupils 
who are remaining for ninth-year work to any single cause, such, for example, as the 
differentiated courses. Changed economic conditions in the community may be an 
important factor here. The least that can be said, however, is that the experience thus 
far indicates that this junior high school will prove to be an educational investment that 
will pay abundant returns. 


THE DETERMINATION OF EDUCATIONAL POLICIES 
HENRY SNYDER, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, JERSEY CITY, N. J. 


The prevalence of public discussion of the aims and work of the public schools, dis- 
cussion, by the way, which is often needlessly virulent, is due not only to the demands 
of changing social and industrial conditions, as has often been observed, but to what 
has not always been kept in mind by school men, that is, to the wider diffusion of education 








Superintendence) DETERMINATION OF EDUCATIONAL POLICIES 153 

A TI TL TET aT ES ET LT Na 

among the people and to the consequently larger body of individuals who are capable of 
ting and advocating progressive educational policies. 

These discussions necessarily take the form of criticism of the school policies which 
have been followed and of those who have approved of or presented them. It is true that 
in the past those who have been connected with the professional staffs, the superintendents 
and teachers, have been largely responsible for the policies which have governed educa- 
tional departments, simply and solely because their professional knowledge and experience 
have led their communities to expect and require this leadership of them. A consideration 
of the provisions of state school codes and of the laws governing the management of 
school districts discloses the fact, remarkable in view of the practice which has been 
followed and which has been mentioned, that state school laws do not, except in a very 
few cases, give superintendents power to fix policies. When such power is given, it is 
generally bestowed by means of local rules, which can be revoked at any time. I need 
cite only such familiar but important illustrations as the determination and modification 
of courses of study, the fixing of the standard of the qualifications of teachers, and of the 
methods of selecting teachers. The responsibility of the superintendent may therefore 
be said to be one that is not imposed by law, but one that is personal and informal. 
In spite of this limitation of their statutory powers, and in spite of their well-known and 
justifiable conservatism, it is undoubtedly true that superintendents and teachers have 
generally responded quickly and effectively to progressive public demands, and that, 
where such demands have not met with favorable response, they have met irremovable 
financial or other obstructions, or have been opposed by the traditional views of those 
who remembered the details of their own training and who were influential in educational 
counsels. Then, too, it must be remembered that communities are not tolerant of educa- 
tional mistakes, particularly if they involve financial expense. The great industrial 
concerns of the country and the great business houses do not hesitate to spend thousands 
of dollars in experimentation, involving oftentimes the relentless consignment to the 
scrap-heap of machinery, of devices, and plans, and schemes, all of which have been costly, 
which have been demonstrated by experiment to be failures, but which have also been 
the steps which have led to progress. No such freedom is permitted to the superintendent, 
nor should there be complaint that this is so, for he is dealing, not with lifeless material, 
but with the future lives of human beings; yet the contrast is cited here to indicate the 
limitation upon his opportunities for educational usefulness. His progress must neces- 
sarily be safe and slow. In view of all the circumstances, is it not a tribute to the capa- 
bilities of the superintendents and teachers of the country, and, at the same time, evidence 
of the confidence of the people in them, that they have been permitted to lead in fixing 
and maintaining educational policies ? 

Circumstances of their employment have forced school men to study changing condi- 
tions which surround the young, and to watch for signs which indicated the necessity of 
changes in policy. Consequently most of the important changes whose aim has been the 
linking up of school work with the practical affairs of life have been the result of their 
initiative. On the other hand, many of the so-called fads have found their way into the 
schools because of external pressure. 

In the study of the formulation or determination of educational policies, there is 
one truth which we cannot escape. School men are not only employed and paid to instruct 
the young or to direct such instruction, but are required by the very terms of their 
employment to keep themselves accurately informed regarding the external conditions 
which necessitate changes in the character, extent, duration of instruction, and operation 
of the schools. It is as inevitable, therefore, as it is appropriate, that they should always 
participate in fixing school policies. On the other hand, the layman, who, tho he may 
be interested in the work of the schools, is deeply and vitally interested in his own personal 
and professional interests, has not generally the time to study educational problems, and 
is not and cannot be required to co-operate. 





154 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


And yet, it is very desirable that the co-operation of the intelligent, observant citizen 
be secured. This adaptation of school work to the subsequent living and industria] 
conditions of the pupil, of which so much is said and which is so important, calls for a 
careful study of occupations, of the qualifications which parents and employers and the 
future careers of children demand. So diverse are occupations, and so intricate are the 
interrelations of industrial and professional pursuits, that it is not safe for the school 
man to rely wholly upon his own reasoning or observation for his conclusions. He js 
fortunate if he has the aid of an educational investigation or survey which has been made 
in a thoro and systematic way. Even in this event he cannot always feel secure, because 
the surveyors, whether they are experienced in teaching or supervision or not, must base 
their conclusions on their own standards, which are not the same in all cases, and which 
frequently provoke as many protests from different sources as the subjects of the investj- 
gations themselves. In such cases one is tempted to ask: ‘Who will survey the survey- 
ors?” If he has not such aid, and this is usually the case, he must invoke the suggestions 
of interested citizens, but must be sure that those who co-operate have as broad a view 
of the educational field, are as enthusiastic in purpose, and as eager to secure full and 
accurate information, as he. 

In this part of the discussion, I have had in mind largely the policies. which concern 
matters of instruction; but there are others which concern the general operation or 
management of schools, in the determination of which the layman must assist. They 
may be national in scope, such as policies regarding compulsory school attendance, and 
the closely allied question of child labor—policies which are so involved in the industries 
and in the interests of employers, and which so affect not only the lives of children but 
the prices of commodities, that it is desirable that the laws regarding them should be 
uniform. There are others which are of state-wide application, such as the financial 
support of the state school system. Others still are only of local application. It is obvious 
that the school man cannot alone satisfactorily decide the many questions involved. It 
is obvious, also, that the citizens consulted in the discussion of these questions must 
possess widely different, but thoro qualifications. 

It is not necessary for me to say that we must seek the aid of the educational theorist, 
whom it is as popular for the layman to decry as it is common for us to applaud him. 
He has always been, and still is, of incalculable value to schools and school systems. 
I need not cite historical illustrations. They are4amiliar to all. All must remember that 
there must be a theory before there can be a policy. 

State school codes are only bundles of school policies. Most of them are accumula- 
tions, made gradually in the development and expansion of school systems, and dictated 
by experience. A few are the products of prolonged and deliberate study conducted by 
persons specially selected for the purpose, who consulted many kinds of interested indi- 
viduals. In these cases the methods followed were quite similar. When I read these 
and at the same time remember that the method of their formulation was practically 
the same, I wonder why they differ in so many important respects. It may be said that 
the conditions in the several states concerned demanded different policies, or that there 
were customs or traditions which could not be obliterated. While these explanations 
may apply in some cases, they cannot apply in all. I fear that in many cases the policies 
adopted represent the preponderating views of the framers of the codes, and it may be 
said that this is, to some extent at least, inevitable. This consideration would lead one 
to the conclusion that it is hopeless to expect a uniformity in statement or application 
in respect even to policies in which there should be no variation. It may be said that 
it does not matter if there is wide difference, but there is actually much error and conse- 
quent injury to the schools. When we consider the present rapid progress in the work 
of the schools, the intense attention which the people are devoting to tiem, the spirit of 
inquiry which permeates them, the many thoro and profitable educational investigations 
which are in progress, is it too much to hope that it will be possible for a body of well- 





Superintendencel) EDUCATION OF FOREIGNERS FOR CITIZENSHIP 155 


qualified persons representing the schools and all other important interests, school men 
and laymen, to create a school code for the states which in general may be considered best 
for all, and which may make provision for exceptions demanded by local conditions and 
unalterable customs or traditions ? 

We are all familiar with the ideal schools and school systems which the imaginations 
of educational theorists have created, and know how impossible it has been to achieve 
them practically; but they have served a valuable purpose in furnishing ideals. So also a 
school code constructed as suggested and embodying the views and reflecting the experi- 
ence, not of a single individual, but of many, would have the merit of expressing sound 
educational and public policy, would combine in one performance the labor and expense 
which otherwise would be duplicated many times, and would furnish an ideal which 
many might not reach, but which all would strive to approach. 

At present there is an unnecessary clashing of interests and opinions. There must 
be some effective way of reaching correct conclusions in educational matters, of adopting 
sound policies, of checking up the school man’s opinions and conclusions with those of 
the layman, the man who is directly interested, as parent or employer, in the product 
of the schools. Just now, where there is collision and controversy, the question is usually, 
“Who shall determine educational policy ?”’ An unnecessary question! The question 
ought to be, “How can the efforts of all thoughtful people be so combined as to lead to 
reliable conclusions ?”’ 


THE EDUCATION OF FOREIGNERS FOR AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP 


RAYMOND F. CRIST, DEPUTY COMMISSIONER OF NATURALIZATION, BUREAU OF NATURALIZA- 
TION, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, WASHINGTON, D.C. 


You superintendents represent 19 cities, each of over 250,000 population. Your 
cities contained, at the time of the last census, 4,832,150 foreigners, while in the states 
including the cities there was a population of 15,561,680. Since that time, 3,000,000 
foreigners have taken up permanent residence in this country. The bulk of these for- 
eigners will be found in your cities. From this you can see that the burden of the work, 
judged by numbers, is upon you. The burden of the work in its complexity, in addition 
to its numbers, is also upon you. For example, when I learned that in one of the large 
cities of this country one school district covers 90 square miles; that the people live in 
vans; that in one school with an annual registration of 4,000 there were more than 4,000 
transferees to and out of the school; that it takes hours to go from one part of the school 
district to another; that even in the largest cities the school authorities are hampered 
for lack of funds—when I learned these and many other startling facts regarding the 
conditions under which you are all laboring, and against which you are struggling, I 
coramenced to realize that upon you, in the largest cities, rests the greatest burden. The 
largest cities, with their inherent power, are really more unprepared to deal with the 
school probiems than many of the smaller cities and towns. For example, the super- 
intendent of schools of a small town was visited by one of our chief examiners, and they 
discussed this plan of national preparedness. Without any hesitation the superintendent 
of schools got out into the community and in forty-eight hours had secured an enrolment 
of over sixty adult foreigners—almost the entire adult foreign population—had obtained 
the volunteer service of the teachers in sufficient numbers to carry on this work, and funds 
from private sources to finance the work; and now Gulfport, Miss., is in line with the 
other 600 cities and towns thruout the country that are teaching citizenship preparedness, 
while the Bureau of Naturalization is each month sending to them the names of all for- 
eigners who apply for citizenship. 

In Clarksburg, W.Va., without any funds, without any teachers, without any specific 
authority for the opening of night schools, the superintendent, after a conference with one 
of our chief examiners, started a local campaign, and in an incredibly short time secured 





156 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION |Detroit 


the volunteer teachers, secured the funds, and opened the night schools; and now the 
night schools for adult foreigners in that city are working full blast teaching citizenship 
preparedness. They also, under the plan of the Bureau of Naturalization, have secured 
the attendance of the immigrants who are not candidates for citizenship. 

These things may be done in the smaHer cities, but for you—you in the larger cities— 
your position is thoroly understood by us in the federal government. The national] 
government can do all things incumbent upon it; but, when the time comes to do ap 
individual thing, it is never accomplished except by the hardest struggles and fights, and 
most complete mastery of every detail of it. Congress opposes us until we show absolute 
gilt-edge cause for an appropriation to be made, and so it is with you. You are part ofa 
tremendous municipal organization. You may have to show two hundred cents of returns 
for every dollar that you get. You are not contractors for, or builders of, public build. 
ings; you are not those who can display, as the result of their efforts, public monuments, 
You belong to that underpaid, overworked, most intelligent, loyal, and faithful body of 
men and women who are striving to build ideals, intangible, indefinite, but nevertheless 
personal, ideals. Your results, tho not as visible as the city skyscrapers, are, neverthe- 
less, far more forceful in maintaining the integrity of our social, political, moral, and 
industrial fabric. 

A call has been made from various parts of the country for contributions from the 
government to maintain this work. While I have not given much thought to this, it 
occurs to me that if there should be any financial relief afforded it shouid be to the large 
cities. First, in your cities the foreign element is a menace. Vice grows up in its midst. 
There the influences of foreign sovereignties, institutions, ideas, and ideals are strongest. 
Hence, I say, any governmental aid should first be directed to the large centers which are 
teeming with foreign population. 

You have 4,832,150 of the total foreign population. Generally speaking, 80 per 
cent of the students in the foreign classes owe no allegiance to this country. We have 
been advised that, of the 4,000 enrolled in this city of Detroit, 95 per cent are non-citizens, 
The greatest work that you can do in citizenship preparedness is to enlarge the intel- 
lectual capacity of these foreigners, and give them a better understanding of our insti- 
tutions; in this way you will arouse in them a desire for American citizenship to such an 
extent that they will come forward and make their applications. 

The course in citizenship which the Bureauwof Naturalization has placed in the hands 
of each school teacher in the United States, where it has been possible to do so, has been 
prepared largely by you indirectly, but directly in the Bureau of Naturalization on the 
basis of your written reports of the work and of the courses of instruction which you have 
been giving to the foreigners for years past. It is intended to give to each individual for- 
eigner a most intimate understanding of our government. 

Your teachers will tell you that each foreigner is intensely eager to learn everything 
and anything about America. You should have your teachers discuss citizenship. 
Bring it into the limelight of the public-school curriculum. Keep it ever before the 
student body. Let them understand that the teacher is ready at any moment to assist 
the foreigner who desires aid in filling out his preliminary naturalization papers. 

The bureau has furnished a syllabus of the naturalization law to each school teacher 
wherever it knows that a foreign class exists. It has also furnished them with the pre- 
liminary naturalization forms. Now we want you to see to it that all teachers who have 
failed to receive these forms are supplied with them. We want you to get into this 
work and arouse their interest to the utmost. 

From one of the cities represented here today, word came to the Bureau of Natural- 
ization that co-operation would be deferred until next year. After a conference with one 
of the representatives of the Bureau of Naturalization, however, the superintendent of 
schools agreed to co-operate immediately, and the newspaper reports received from that 
city show that over 5,000 foreigners are enrolled in its citizenship classes. What has been 


—_ — on oo ao ac & 2 > 





oT @ 


~~ am  Taeaenw Fr =e I 


Superintendence] EDUCATION OF FOREIGNERS FOR CITIZENSHIP 157 
I nem 
done in one city can be done in all cities, if the same interest, the same determination, the 
same farsighted vision actuates you. 

Superintendent Roberts, of Chicago, who is here today, recently stated that the 
greatest difficulty in dealing with the education of adult foreigners was to get them into 
the schools. Let me strongly emphasize the advantage to be gained from the free use 
of the student body in bringing into the night classes their compatriots and friends. Here 
the common bond of one tongue will be found most effective and efficient. Thru them 
the candidates for citizenship who do not respond because of timidity, diffidence, ignorance, 
and other reasons leading them to ignore the call of the United States government upon 
them for their betterment, may be reached. Not only may they be reached by the 
method outlined, but also the immigrant who never has heretofore been reached by any 
concerted action upon the part of the public-school authorities. 

The Bureau of Naturalization sends the names of candidates for citizenship, upon 
individual cards, to the superintendents of schools in every city and town co-operating 
with it. At the same time, it sends a personally addressed letter to each candidate and 
another to his wife, whose name has also been sent to the school authorities on a separate 
card. The face of the card affords an opportunity for an educational rating for the use 
of the Bureau of Naturalization as well as for the public schools, and spaces are provided 
for information with regard to the candidate and his wife. The card [shown below] will 
be seen upon examination to afford a complete means for a full record regarding each 


candidate. 


NATURALIZATION EDUCATIONAL RECORD 


Form Nat. Ed. 1 
United States Department of Labor 
Bureau of Naturalization 


PO Be MIs 2 wh dee on derers 
Decln. of Int 


Date of school entrance{ *4 vo 


Name of wife 


EpvucaTIONAL RATING OF DECLARANT 


At Entrance End of rst Year End of 2d Year 


Speaks English 
(See note) 


Reads English 
(See note) 


Writes English 
(See note) 


Nore.—Show Well =W., Fair=F., Poor=P., None=N. 


When the cards are received from the Bureau of Naturalization, they should be 
distributed according to the addresses which they show to the local buildings in the most 
appropriate way, according to the local conditions. When received in the school build- 
ings, they should be circulated thru the classrooms until each teacher has taken all of the 
cards which relate to the students in his class. The names on the remaining cards will 





158 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 
a 
be those ‘of the candidates for citizenship who have failed to respond to the call made to 
them by the United States government to go to school. They should be read to the 
student body, the names of acquaintances assigned to the various members, and assign. 
ments made by nationalities of the remaining names. The teachers should inspire the 
students in their classes with enthusiasm in securing the attendance of their friends ang 
compatriots whose names are upon the cards. They should also be inspired to bring in 
their friends of the immigrant body who do not come forward either for citizenship o, 
for education. By following out this system persistently to the last analysis, the contact 
and the influence for good of the public schools will be broadened in a way never hereto. 
fore felt, and extended into a field never before entered. 

The public schools in the large cities generally run not more than nine months in the 
year. The Bureau of Naturalization believes that the highest co-operation with the 
public schools only can be obtained when the schools remain open the year round. Super. 
intendent Condon, of Cincinnati, told me recently that the public schools under his super. 
vision would maintain citizenship classes thruout the year. 

The citizenship classes are the ones in which the Bureau of Naturalization is, of 
course, primarily interested. The Bureau contains experts on all citizenship matters, 
It is the duly constituted authority upon these matters, by act of Congress. It has been 
called upon by the superintendents of schools, including those of the largest cities, to 
prepare a course, and take the lead in this citizenship educational work. I have personally 
had this appeal made to me in various parts of the country by superintendents of schools 
in the largest cities. 

We do not intend to become educators ourselves, for that is a task which is well 
placed with the public schools of the entire country. But we are offering the support 
of the national government, and its expert knowledge and acquaintance with the foreign 
elements of the country, as it relates to citizenship. The Department of Labor and the 
Bureau of Immigration, with its thoro familiarity with and authority in all matters 
relating to the immigrant, offers this aid likewise. 

This is a gigantic task, but it can be accomplished, and accomplished in accordance 
with the highest expectations, if we secure your co-operation. It can be extended and 
should be extended into the day work in the upper-grade schools and the high schools, 
so that the native-born Americans may be given an opportunity, for the first time in the 
history of the country, to receive training in that highest of all professions, the profession of 
self-government. As you well know, all other professions open to men and women have 
been given the best consideration in training that it is possible for the best minds to 
produce; but it remains for you of the public schools of the entire country to co-operate 
with the United States government in perfecting a training for this great profession and 
calling of self-government. 

The course which the Bureau of Naturalization has submitted to you is admitted to 
have imperfections. It is open to criticism. We desire and want your criticism. We 
want the best results to be obtained. We want you to apply it thoroly in the public 
schools under your supervision, and then we wish to have the benefit of your experience 
in constructive criticism of it. It is new in its application to the adult. It comes 
from the United States government to you. You have been asking for governmental 
help. It is offered to you, and the subject of which it treats is indeed well worth while. 

We are planning to hold a convention of you superintendents, officers, and teachers 
of the public schools, not only from the largest cities but from all of the cities and towns 
where the public schools are co-operating with the national government. We expect 
to have this convention in Washington during the week immediately following the National 
Education Association convention in New York. The great purpose of this convention 
is to afford you an opportunity to perfect a textbook for the use of the student body and, 
if the plans of the Bureau of Naturalization carry, it will present a copy of this book to 
each alien student who is a candidate for citizenship and attends the public schools. 





7 7 @e THR BSB AAT aAS 1! KF 


@eewoB fe 


ll 
rt 
mn 
1 
rs 


eawsoete sm 8&2” a 


oo 


seo w.rRrpPree ew Pe HS A 


Superintendence] COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES 159 


es ei eet a eae ee ee ee ee Te ee ee 


ROUND TABLE OF SUPERINTENDENTS OF CITIES WITH 
A POPULATION BETWEEN 25,000 AND 250,000 


COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES AS A MEANS OF MOTIVATION 
FRED M. HUNTER, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, LINCOLN, NEBR. 


Dr. Ayres says that the mortality from the ninth grade to the twelfth grade in 386 
cities of the country averages over 70 per cent, that for every 1,000 pupils entering, 56 
complete the prescribed course of the school system. The survey of the Massachusetts 
Industrial Commission concluded that over 70 per cent of those who leave school at an 
early age in the industrial cities of Massachusetts do so because of indifference toward 
school and not because of poverty or economic necessity. Alice P. Burrows finds, in a sur- 
vey made in the Borough of Manhattan, below Fourteenth Street, of the families of children 
leaving school at an early age, that 67 per cent leave because of dislike of school, not 
because of poverty. It is evident that some unit of the school organization must adapt 
itself to bring the new generation of each needy group to the fullest and best ideals of 
American life and citizenship. This is the meaning of the revolution taking place before 
our very eyes. Why the establishment of an elaborate and expensive system of industrial 
education? Why the growth of those testing laboratories of taste and inclination—the 
prevocational groups and schools? Why a system of vocational guidance? Why special 
treatment for the subnormals and retarded? Why systems of double promotion and 
varying rates of progress from class to class, breaking up the old lockstep system? Why 
differentiated courses and special schools? All because the doctrine of social service is 
becoming the underlying principle of our educational philosophy. 

The question is clearly before the classroom teacher. There is a creed of service— 
let me give it in the words of the great Dewey: 

I believe that all education proceeds by participation of the individual in the social 
consciousness of the race. 

I believe that the only true education comes thru the stimulation of the child’s 
powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself. 

I believe that the school must represent present life—life as real and vital to the child 
as that which he carries on in his home, in the neighborhood, or on the playground. 

I believe that, education being a social process, the school is simply that form of 
community life in which all those agencies are concentrated that will be most effective 


in bringing the child to share in the inherited resources of the race and to use his own 
powers for social ends. 


The apostle of this creed measures success by asking: “‘How much do I know about 
this group of children? What are their physical characteristics, home environment, 
and social inheritance? What are their previous records and natural tendencies? How 
can I make the school of most service to them? What can I do that I have not done 
that will bring out the best there is in them and lead them to be efficient men and 
women ?” 

The adoption by the classroom teacher of this socialized creed means the socialization 
of the classroom processes. The over-activity and over-talkativeness of the teacher is 
no longer the chief stimulus to individual growth. The skill of the teacher shows itself 
rather in the resourceful guidance of a group of minds actively engaged in solving a real 
life-problem; in directing these minds in research and the collection of data; in leading 
their criticism of one another to correct estimation of values, and to formation of sound 
judgments and conclusions. The major activity of the classroom becomes an inter- 
play of the minds of the pupils, instead of a stereotyped test of memory of subject-matter, 
with the predominant initiative and activity on the part of the teacher. A belief in the 
creed of service and its adoption by the teacher is synonymous with the socialization of 
the classroom process. 





160 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


The life of any community is teeming with activities about which children think, 
talk, and form conclusions in their life outside of the schoolroom. They use their ow 
initiative in handling such problems as apply to their own welfare or happiness; their 
estimate of values and their judgments are truly their own. Thus practice which later 
life demands as a preparation for its weightier questions is furnished. 

Dr. Dewey tells of a swimming-school in which the pupils learned the process 
going thru the motions of swimming in a perfect manner. A graduate of this school was 
asked what he did when he got into the water. His laconic reply was “Sunk.” If we 
are to do more than the swimming instructor, our classrooms must come to represent 
something more than they ever have in the past. They must use as the chief material of 
instruction the problems of real community life which surround the school on every side. 
The real basis of instruction must be participation in these activities. Thinking as it js 
done in later life must be begun in the schoolroom in the consideration of these problems 
and activities; in collection and organization of data upon phases of them; in the choice 
of the real values to be used in their solution; and in the formation of right conclusions 
concerning them. The formal subject-matter must have only an incidental relationship 
to this main end; it must be used as a factor and an active aid in the process, but it can 
never take a real place as a fundamental factor if it is regarded as merely a store of informa- 
tion laid up for future use. 

Two types of motivation problems should enter prominently into our classroom 
activities: first, those which have to do directly with the life and career of the individual 
child; second, those which have to do with the co-operation of a large number of children 
thinking, acting, and working out their ideals in a group. 

The proper use of the first type of problem derived from outside life constitutes 
vocational or educational guidance; the second, training for citizenship. No schoolroom, 
no school system, can realize the modern ideal of service, can apply the Christian doctrine 
of the Good Samaritan, without the universal use of both. 

Let me suggest a few examples of the way in which motivation has affected the 
individual child. The following paragraph is a sample written in connection with the 
daily practice paragraph writing in English composition by a sixth-grade boy, the son 
of a Russo-German barkeeper. The study of the businesses of the town surrounding his 
school community inspired the ideal expressed by this boy. 


My Am 


My aim for the future is to have a business some day and to be useful to my city, 
Therefore, I am 4 ng to prepare for that now. That is what everybody should aim for. 
One should know how to handle his business. This comes only in one’s school days— 
youth’s precious days—and everybody can get a good education, become well trained, 
and become a reliable man some day. 

As an example of English expression, this does not rate exactly as a classic, but it 
does represent a type of vital stimulation of thought which in this particular case resulted 
in this boy’s remaining in school for a high-school career. He is now working his way 
thru the high school, and bids fair, as he says in his paragraph, to become useful to his 
city some day. 

Listen to this paragraph from a thirteen-year-old girl in the seventh grade, who has 
been thinking along right lines without the slightest suggestion of squeamish sentimen- 
talism: 

Wuat I Want To BE wHEN I Am A WoMAN 


When I become a woman, I want to be a housewife. I have two main reasons. 
First, I love a home and enjoy caring for one; second, I enjoy children and also like to 
care for them. 

This sort of motivation from one of the great and vital activities of life is surely 
worthy of a place in our schoolrooms. 





5, we wo aoeen nt =r Oo BOO” 


Superintendence} COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES 161 


Here is one from an eighth-grade boy, to whom a profession has become an object 


serious thought. : 
of My VocaTION 


I think I would like to be a doctor so I could help other people. I would work so 
thought my work was worth what I asked forit. In this way I think a person could 

a good citizen and serve his country. There is much suffering because people have 
not the money to spend. In this case, I would follow my grandfather’s idea and treat them 
for nothing. He never became rich, but everybody loved him. Love is better than riches. 


What a world of possibilities presents itself to the social-minded teacher in the 
transcription of this little oral composition given by a twelve-year-old boy in an English 
class of a prevocational school in a city with a well-developed system of motivation. 


Tue First Money I Ever EARNED 


About seven years ago my father was an engineer on the railroad. One night in a 
fierce snowstorm, he ran his train into another train and killed a man. They said that he 
was not guilty because it was not his fault. He felt so bad and it worried him so that he 
gave up his job. He bought a ten-acre tract of land and we raised vegetables. In about 
two years, my father died. Mother says he died of a broken heart. After this my mother, 
my little sister, and I worked very hard to raise the vegetables and my biggest brother 
peddied them. One evening mother called us all to her and told us we would have to give 

the place and do something else as we could not go to school and keep up the place. 
She said we had best sell and go downtown. We bought a home and mother takes in 
washing and we children help her all we can. 

Last fall at fair time, as I was passing the fair grounds, I thought maybe if I asked 
the manager for a job he would give me one. So I did. He told me to come the next 
morning. I worked all week and made ten dollars. That was the first money I ever 
earned. I bought these clothes and my books and gave the little I had left to mother. 

I want to grow up to be an honest man. I want to earn enough to make me comfort- 
able but not enough to make me unhappy. I would like to be an engineer, but every 
time I mention it mother cries so I do not know for sure what I will do. 


Would it be safe to guess that a boy with an ideal of this kind would become a worthy 
citizen? Do you think it would be safe to risk this boy, grown to manhood, as a neighbor 
and fellow-townsman ? 

In our town group-motivation has taken place largely thru two general methods of 
attack: first, thru some project undertaken in the classrooms of the junior-high-school 
organization; second, thru external organizations having to do with all of the schools of 
the city. The classroom-project type of motivation is well represented by this paragraph 
upon arithmetic work and its relation to other subjects by an eighth-grade girl of one of 
our schools. This school is located near a large addition to the city of Lincoln recently 
platted and sold by real-estate promoters. The project was inspired by a visit of the class 
to this rapidly growing portion of the town. 


A new and practical plan has been developed in the arithmetic class of the Eighth A 
under the direction of Miss Cooley and continued with Miss Snyder. The work is that 
of planning and building our own homes. 

The first step of the work was that of choosing the lot and finding out the cost of it. 
The size suggested by the teacher was 100 feet by 150 feet. In the English class, composi- 
tions were written on the subjects: “Why I Chose This Lot,” and “Facts to Consider 
When Choosing a Lot.” 

The second step was making or copying plans for the house and “lot arrangement.” 
At the same time a composition was written about “The Value of Landscape Gardening,” 
which showed the advantage of planning the arrangement of the lot compared with that 
of arranging the lot with little thought. 

_ In the art class, the floor and side elevations will be made in the blueprint and the 
interior elevations will be in water colors. 

When the Eighth A’s were figuring on excavation in the arithmetic class, the principal 
and the pupils visited a new building near the school where the excavation had just been 
completed. It was there the less important facts were acquired about the construction 


The next step was the finding of pictures to illustrate the yard and interior views. 





162 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


When the plans are finished, all compositions completed, and the cost of all estj. 
mated, these articles will be put in book form, thus giving a complete semester’s work 
in the arithmetic class. 

This class is the first to start such a practical plan which is believed will help the 
men and women of tomorrow in their home-building problems. 

The other type of motivation is represented by our school- and home-garden activities, 
Spring and summer gardening offer an endless resource, not only for the classroom but 
for a multitude of educational activities outside of the classroom. The system which 
has developed with us has included community gardens in eight of our schools and some 
1,000 to 1,200 home gardens constructed by the pupils. The stimulus of this sort of moti. 
vation is shown by the group earnings at various occupations during the past summer ip 
eight of these schools: 


Schools Earnings 


$2,284.49 
105.63 
3,454.42 
2,709.83 
1,927.45 
3,582.82 
5,184.32 
2,046.58 


$21,385.54 


The more pronounced contribution, however, to our motivation has been our Junior 
Civic and Industrial League, which was organized February 5, 1914, in accordance witha 
report submitted by a special committee appointed by the Board of Directors of the 
Lincoln Commercial Club. 

Each school having grades above the fifth has a club. All of these clubs constitute 
the league. 

The purposes of the organization are : (1) to study the civic and industrial life of 
the city by first-hand observation; (2) to learn what opportunities the industrial life of 
the city offers to young men; (3) to teach its members to think seriously and wisely con- 
cerning the various vocations studied; (4) to assist in preparing its members to take an 
active and efficient place in these vocations; ( 5) to connect more closely the work of the 
public schools with the life of the community; (6) to teach its members to aid effectively 
in meeting the civic needs of the community and to assist every civic institution in pro- 
moting the general welfare of our city. 

Any boy in the fifth grade or above may become a member of the club in his school 
upon committing to memory and reciting to his teacher the “‘ephebic oath,” which is 
as follows: 


We will never bring disgrace to this our city by any act of dishonesty or cowardice. 
We will fight for the ideals and sacred things of the city both alone and with many. We 
will revere and obey the city’s laws and do our best to incite a like respect and reverence 
in those above us who are prone to annul or set them at naught. We will strive unceas- 
ingly to quicken the public’s sense of civic duty. Thus in all these ways we will transmit 
this city not only not less but greater, better, and more beautiful than it was transmitted 
to us. 


Each Thursday morning at 9:30, some one of the clubs holds a half-hour meeting 
at the Commercial Club rooms. Such topics as “The Clean-up Campaign,” “Play- 
grounds,” and other movements of public interest were taken up and supported by the 
various clubs during the past year. Fifteen of the prominent business and professional 
men have addressed the boys at these meetings. The character of the talks is indicated 
by the following list of topics: 

1. What constitutes a good citizen ? 


2. How boys may become good citizens. 
3. How boys may help to make the city better, more beautiful, and more prosperous. 





ae & 


BERETS 8257858 


Superintendence] COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES 163 
a amma a Bel 


4. Necessity for some useful work. 

5. Respect for hard and useful work. 

6. Opportunity for boys in his (this particular business man’s) line of business. 
7. What this line of business requires in the way of preparation. 

8. How to go about preparing specifically for this line of work. 


During the school year, the various clubs of the league made 122 visits to 36 of 
Lincoln’s business houses and civic institutions. These visits were distributed as follows: 


State Capitol (sessions of state legislature) 
Post-office 
Court House 
City Hall 
Fire Department 
University Farm 
University Museum 
United States Weather Bureau 
Nebraska Daily State Journal Office 
Lincoln Daily Star Office 
Lincoln Telephone Company 
First National Bank 
Lincoln Safe Deposit Company (Lincoln Clearing House) 
Bankers Life Insurance Company 
Cushman Motor Works 
Havelock Railroad Shops 
Lee Broom and Duster Company 
Harpham Brothers Company 
International Harvester Company 
ss Planing Mill Company 
Lincoln Flour Mills 
Gooch Milling Company 
Lincoln Packing Company 
H. P. Lau, wholesale grocery 
Curtis, Towle & Paine factory 
Beatrice Creamery Company 
Roberts Dairy Company 
Woodruff Bank Note Company 
Western Glass and Paint Company 

acob North & Company 

ebraska Buick Auto Company 
Van Sickle Glass and Paint Company 
Lincoln Paint and Color Company 
Lincoln Box Factory 
Capitol Grocery 
Lincoln Hotel 





164 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 
: i> a a 

An organization among the girls similar to that of the boys held its meetings at the 
city Y.W.C.A. The membership of the girls’ league was 1,474. Their visits to civic and 
industrial institutions numbered tos, distributed like the visits of the boys. 

The projects undertaken by the clubs of these two leagues afforded genuine practice 
of the philosophy of good citizenship. During clean-up week the work of the Woman’s 
Club, Commercial Club, and City Health Department committees was based upon a 
survey of the city made by the members of these leagues. Many of the unsightly and 
ill-kept places of the city were cleaned up as a result of the work and the recommendations 
of these boys and girls. 


Tue EFFicrency LIst 


The Lincoln Commercial Club, under the leadership of Secretary W. S. Whitten, 
and President C. C. Quiggle, (1913-14), H. K. Burket (1914-15), and Frank Richards 
(1915-16), has not only fathered and promoted the Junior Civic and Industrial League, 
but has instituted within that organization a system of recognizing and rewarding merit 
in boyish education and accomplishment. Early in the year the following letter was 
sent to the business men of the city: 


LIncoLn, NEBRASKA 


December 26, 1914 
Mr. John Smith, 


Lincoln, Nebraska 


Dear Mr. SmirH: As an employer of young men, you are interested in securing 
those who can make themselves of most value to you and your business or profession, 
It is likewise of vital interest not only to such young men themselves but to the city asa 
whole that they be able to give the best possible service to their employers and prepare 
themselves for continued efficiency and promotion. 

There are in our schools many young men who must begin work at an early age. 
It is the purpose of the public schools in connection with the Lincoln Commercial Club 
to keep a permanent “Efficiency List” of such of these young men as may be able to 
reach a definite standard of reliability and efficiency. The list will be always available 
and will be sent from time to time to any business or professional man who desires it. 
Only such boys as have on their merits shown the following qualifications are placed on 
the list: 


1. An age of fourteen years 
2. Good Character 
As shown by: 
a) Truthfulness 
b) Obedience 
c) Industry 
d) Good Habits 
Note:—No boy shall be eligible who smokes or drinks. If a boy has been 
a smoker, he shall show by a year’s abstinence from this habit 
that he has permanently given it up. 
3. Knowledge of Lincoln and Nebraska. 
As shown by his ability to pass with a standing of 90 per cent a test given 
upon Lincoln and Nebraska. 
4. Ability to write a good business letter of one ordinary page in legible hand without 
error in spelling. : 
5. Ability to express himself in courteous yet concise and businesslike terms to his 
employer and business associates. 
6. Ability to perform the four fundamental operations and simple fractions in arith- 
metic with speed and accuracy. 


We trust such a recommendation as this efficiency list contemplates will be of 
service to you, for it is the desire of both the Commercial Club and the schools to be 
of the broadest possible usefulness to the community which supports them. 





Superintendence] TEACHING TENURE 165 
I 
If you have suggestions as to the qualifications to be desired in young men whom 
employ, they will be very highly apprecitaed if sent to either the secretary of the 
Commercial Club or to the superintendent of schools. 
Most respectfully yours, 


[Signed by the Secretary of the Commercial 
Club and the Superintendent of Schools.] 


Members of the League who qualified by the end of the school year and were rec- 
ommended as indicated in the above letter were placed on the “Efficiency List” of the 
Lincoln Commercial Club and this list was sent to all large employers at the opening of 
the summer vacation. These boys were likewise given an “Efficiency Certificate” by 
Secretary Whitten of the Commercial Club as evidence of their qualifications. 


TEACHING TENURE 
JOHN F. KEATING, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, PUEBLO, COLO. 


The problem of the tenure of teachers, principals, and superintendents is not new in 
the educational world, but it is an increasingly vital problem awaiting solution. 

The ways and means, or methods, of securing permanency of tenure are matters of 
detail to be worked out thru committees or groups of educational and business experts. 
What is first needed is a nation-wide appreciation of the wastefulness of the present 
method of “hiring and firing” teachers, principals, and superintendents, and a realiza- 
tion that there must be found a way of eliminating this waste. 

It may be urged that these wasteful methods are necessary in a democracy. They 
may have been unavoidable in the beginnings of our democracy, but the perpetuity of all 
that is best in the institutions of our democracy will depend upon the substituting of 
refined and efficient methods for the crude and wasteful ones. This should be and I 
believe now is in a large measure the tendency in our whole national life. 

Already in a few of the large cities permanency of tenure for teachers and principals is 

an established fact, and for superintendents has become almost established. Also in a 
few states of the Union the state department of public instruction has been taken out of 
politics. The former crude and thriftless method is no longer followed, but men of 
experience, training, and known fitness are appointed to the headship of the state’s educa- 
tional interests, and greater permanency, conditioned only on good behavior and efficient 
service, is assured these men. The success of this plan must ultimately commend it to all 
states. 
It is not in the province of this paper to discuss tenure of state superintendents, 
but is not the question pertinent by way of illustration? Of what possible advantage 
can it be to the schools of any state to elect every two or even four years a new and untried 
man in the place of the one who has mastered the situation and has reached the place of 
high efficiency in his work? Why retire this efficient public servant in so vital a field as 
education, just when he has really become useful? Undoubtedly in our democracy 
there must be some place left for the battledore and shuttlecock of politics, but God 
forbid that it continue in our schools, where it can be most harmful and least helpful. 

In the election of city superintendents, there seems to be a relation between the 
manner of selecting them and permanency of tenure. There is the hit-or-miss manner 
of choosing a superintendent. Neither educational nor professional standards are 
employed by the board in making its selection. Board members are not in the nature 
of things experts in things educational, but they are intensely practical, and they choose 
by the standards they know—personal impressions made by the candidate, the weight of 
some influential citizen who may or may not have a personal ax to grind. All this because 
We, as educators, have not yet worked out a series of standards or norms that would serve 








166 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 
cities 
to assist boards in determining the fitness of the candidate for the place. In these days 
of measurements and surveys these are being worked out, and the future is bright with 
hope. 

Probably the most used method is known as the “trial and failure method.” This js 
in the absence of guiding standards. The board decides to elect for a year on trial. Aga 
rule this probation is too short and failure to satisfy the board or the community is invited, 
The selecting for short periods is a prominent cause of uncertainty of tenure for superin. 
tendents. Hence in the smaller cities we see a veritable procession of superintendents, 
They scarcely dare unpack their trunks. Indeed, the wise ones keep their trunks packed 
and checked, ready to move on at a moment’s notice. 

As an illustration of the prevalence of short tenure among superintendents, the state 
of Michigan is as nearly typical as any. As reported to the Bureau of Education, Michi- 
gan had, in 1913, 51 cities with between 4,000 and 25,000 inhabitants. In these 51 
superintendencies, 25 superintendents served less than 5 years; 39, or 76 per cent, out of 
51 were elected for one-year terms. 

With the exercise of greater care in selecting these officials, there would be little reason 
for removal. The fact that teachers, principals, and superintendents can be so easily re. 
moved creates a feeling of unrest in a community and a wish at the first criticism to 
remedy the situation by a change. Permanent tenure for an average teacher, principal, 
or superintendent is better for the schools than the hazards of frequent changes. Dif- 
ficulty of removal would throw on the board and community the necessity of co-operating 
with the school management. 

In any discussion of teacher tenure, the story of the progress of civil service in the 
administering of many of the most vital departments of our national government is most 
interesting and enlightening. So successfully has the civil-service plan worked that no 
political party hoping to gain control of the government dares advocate in its platform 
a return to the spoils system. Yet there was a time when a national election meant an 
almost complete change of federal officials. The practical sense of the American people 
rescued the government from much of this folly and consequent inefficiency. Why in the 
name of the interests of the school children of America should their teacher, principal, 
or superintendent be more affected by a spring school election than is a letter-carrier by a 
national election ? 

It should not be possible for a board of education to dismiss for other than well- 
defined reasons, and not then until the superintendent has had due notice, and has had 
an opportunity to appeal his case to an impartial board or committee on the matter. This, 
I am aware, deprives the employing board of the power to discharge a superintendent, but 
as we are now organized it should be deprived of this power. 

When there have been worked out standards of efficiency for superintendents, whereby 
boards may be guided, and possibly a legalized system of demerits, as in the civil service 
of the government, the power to discharge may be restored to the board with these legal 
safeguards. 

But you say this is not Germany, this is not France, this is democratic America, and 
such methods are impracticable. Are they? Did not a great state university recently 
decide that it would not again discharge a member of its faculty thru its board of regents 
acting alone? That board in its own defense has seen fit to have the university faculty 
assist in determining whether a professor shall be discharged or not. Even our great 
corporations are taking advanced ground. In some of our great industrial plants the 
“‘straw boss” or foreman cannot summarily discharge a workman. The workman has 
the right to appeal. Of course many of the changes annually occurring in superintenden- 
cies in smaller cities are due to small salaries and the desire of the superintendents to 
better their condition. 

These small salaries in turn are often due to the feeling on the part of the board 
members that by letting the present incumbent go out, no matter how efficient he is, they 





n 
e 
to 
al, 
if. 
ng 
he 
st 
no 
m 
an 
ale 
he 
al, 


= 
a 


RFR 


sPERFEGeSa BRS 


$8 


superintendence] TEACHING TENURE 167 
a 
can secure a new man at a lower salary for the first year and so establish for themselves, 
among the taxpayers, a reputation for money-saving. 

Again, many superintendents leave because of the feeling of unrest, due to the lack 
of appreciation for their services and the possibility of being dismissed thru a mere whim 
of the board or thru the political connivance of a disgruntled minority. The superin- 
tendent’s first term should be for three years, probation years. During this time he 
should be rigidly tested, his work surveyed by experts, and, if he makes good, he should 
then be given an indeterminate contract, with reasonable hope of increased remuneration 
for efficient service, to the full ability of the district to pay. Then will superintendents 
cease to be birds of passage, restless not so much because of larger pay and wider fields 
ahead, but because of the uncertainty of their present positions. 

As a concrete illustration of how school politics works, I know and you know a city of 
between 25,000 and 250,000 inhabitants—and the city I know may or may not be the 
city you know—where within the last year or two, owing to school politics, the city and 
the school system have been turned topsy-turvy by a spring school election. The newly 
elected board members felt that they had a commission straight from the people to reform 
at one fell swoop the imperfections and shortcomings of the city’s schools. The board 
proceeded almost immediately to dismiss teachers, principals, and even the superintendent, 
without warning, without any plan of co-operation for the making of efficient public 
servants out of these teachers. The teachers were not warned, and were not given an 
epportunity to offer a defense or a chance to make good. We are better organized in 
behalf of our criminals than we are in behalf of our teachers. We will give the average 
criminal another chance. I submit that what occurred in this city was unethical, unbusi- 
nesslike, even brutal. Please understand that I do not condemn the board members as 
individuals. They are gertlemen by nature and training, courteous, honest, and kind, 
and among their neighbors have a reputation for sincerity and fairness. That is, they 
did have before they were elected to the board of education. The fault lies largely in the 
system. Boards, like the teachers, are at the mercy of the system. Politics and personal 
favoritism had undoubtedly been at work in the schools before their election, and no 
machinery had been provided for the standardizing of the schools and the measuring of 
teaching and inspectional efficiency. ‘Teachers had been appointed by pull. Why not 
discharge them in due and ancient form? 

Such things will not happen when we have thoroly systematized our school adminis- 
tration and have made legal the custom of selecting one head for the school system and 
holding him responsible for the work of the schools; when he is directed by order of the 
board of education to appoint all principals, teachers, janitors, and engineers, with 
authority to see that each employee lives up to the established standards of service. And 
they will live up to them when they know that politics has been eliminated, that pull 
counts for nothing, and that a trained and competent superintendent is the real executive 
head of the schools. 

Keeping up the efficiency of teachers in service is a real problem. Many efforts have 
been made to solve it, with many consequent partial failures. But a long step will be 
taken towards its solution when boards of education generally take the position of the 
San Antonio board in stating clearly the board’s relation to the superintendent: 

Teachers, once you have been elected by us, our direct relation with you as teachers 


ceases to exist. Whatever we have to say in regard to your work will be said thru the 
superintendent; a7 whatever you have to say to us in this same regard should go thru 


the same 

Thus far in this discussion reference has been chiefly to tenure of superintendents and 
principals, while little has been said except by implication in regard to the tenure of 
teachers. Little will need to be said when superintendents and principals against whom 
the political winds beat hardest are assured permanency of tenure. Permanency of 
tenure at the top will make for permanency of tenure thruout the system. 





168 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 
ee ry. 

When boards of education can by law insure permanency of tenure to the superip. 
tendent and clearly define his powers and duties, the efficient, growing teacher, nominated 
and practically appointed by the superintendent (in an organized city system of schools 
the board should never nominate teachers) will be secure in her position. She will haye 
increased pride in her work as she realizes that she holds her position thru efficient service 
and not thru personal, social, religious, racial, fraternal, or political pull. 

I am aware that in that most excellent report, the Portland Survey, criticism is made 
of the law making it difficult to dismiss teachers even for inefficiency and failure to grow, 
It is indicated in that report that some of the poor teaching in that city is due to the 
feeling of security of tenure on the part of some teachers. No doubt the law, arising in 
the manner that it did, established while the schools were in the condition shown in the 
report, should be repealed, or, better, amended. Apparently either no standards or very 
low standards had been established in these schools for the measuring of the teachers’ 
work, 

That permanency of tenure and feeling of security are the sole or impelling causes 
of inefficiency among teachers is difficult to believe. Permanency of tenure in our great 
and truly beneficial postal system has made for efficiency. Has the fact that the federal 
Supreme Court appointments are for life in any wise impaired the efficiency of that 
tribunal? The contrary is true. Fearlessly does this court render its decisions and the 
nation uncomplainingly abides by its verdicts. Will all this not be true of the teacher 
when she is as carefully selected and as favorably environed as these ? 


A STUDY OF DEVIATE CHILDREN—THE PROBLEM OF DELINQUENCY 
AND SUBNORMALITY 


C. EDWARD JONES, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, ALBANY, N.Y. 


To what extent has the feeble-minded pupil been recognized as a part of the school 
system? No one doubts his existence, not as a rare specimen, but as a part of the com- 
munity; whether he be 2, 4, or 6 per cent of that community matters little. Investi- 
gators read of him, psychiatrists classify him, and legislatures pass laws in regard to his 
Segregation into classes for instruction. So beneficial has it been to the school and to the 
community to be free of him that comparatively little attention has been given to him as 
an individual member of society, or to his possible specific function in society. The 
superintendent of schools must recognize him, however, not as an evil of which he is freed 
by placement in special classes, but as an individual for whom he must provide in school, 
whom he must recognize and prepare for life with the same sincerity as that with which 
he meets his grade, his high-school, or vocational classes. 

This must be done from two standpoints—conduct and scholarship. For several 
years in the city of Albany we have maintained a truant school. The regulation was that 
a delincuent or incorrigible should be committed to such an institution for fifty days. If 
his conduct there was good he was returned to his grade, and if he again transgressed 
he was committed for another fifty days. At the end of this period, he was again sent 
back to the grades. If for the third time he was in trouble, he was committed to an 
institution. That is, the truant school was regarded as a place of punishment for incipient 
criminals—practically the same plan as that followed in police courts in the case of minor 
offenses. What saved the school was the humane and intelligent instruction given therein, 
for, without theory, the instructor realized the needs of this class. 

Some two years ago we submitted to the Binet tests all of the pupils of this school, 
with the following result: 9 per cent were found to be imbecile cases; 46 moron; 30 border- 
line; 1 epileptic delinquent; 1 backward boy with no delinquent tendencies evident; and 
13 backward delinquents. 








@ 42 aeagnpa" & owen he T 


Saesk&e B 


oY 


BES SSSSS8R nS SERRE R EEE S 





Superintendence] STUDY OF DEVIATE CHILDREN 169 
np 

So much for the mental condition. In addition to that we found in regard to the 
family relationships that while 40 per cent had not had relatives in this school, 44 had had 
at least one relative and sixteen more than one. Therefore, 60 per cent had had one or 
more relatives in this school. Had the school been running longer this ratio would prob- 
ably have been materially increased. 

Then, to extend the investigation beyond our own administration, the test was applied 
to some fifty girls in a house of detention, with the result that nearly all of them were 
found to be either borderline cases or actually feeble-minded. This is in accord with the 
results of tests in the Hudson Training School, an institution for delinquent girls, also 
with those of the investigation of Bluemel in regard to the girls of the State Industrial 
School of Colorado, whom he finds to average four and a half years retarded. 

This gave us the basis for our conclusion that delinquency, truancy, and feeble- 
mindedness were closely related. In the meantime, we had organized special classes for 
our sub-normals in several schools, but entirely separate from the truant school. After 
this investigation, we began to organize our work with this as a basis—that all of these 
are but different phases of the same problem of deviate cases. Delinquents and sub 
normals were sent to the class where they could be helped the most, and in no case were 
they sent for a definite period. In a large proportion, possibly 90 per cent, of the cases 
of serious discipline in school, mental retardation is present. It may be the girl of sixteen 
with the mentality of ten years, struggling with the desires of the adolescent; it may be 
the boy of twelve who stopped growing at eight years of age; or the more serious case of 
the boy of sixteen or over who knows no mental experience beyond that of eleven years. 
Dr. Goddard, in his recent book, The Criminal Imbecile, has shown this to be one of the 
most serious types; from it may develop the insane lover, the docile dupe of the intelligent 
leader, the brutal criminal, or, in the case of girls, almost inevitably the immoral woman. 
None of this is new to the institution worker, and, while it has been theoretically recog- 
nized, it has as yet in few cases been seriously acted upon by school authorities. 

This brings us to the conviction that the purposes and character of discipline must be 
radically changed. Its primary purpose in school is no longer to punish the individual, 
nor even to set an example for society; but the problem is one of finding the activity fitted 
to train this individual who is mentally dwarfed and retarded. This brings us then to the 
actual consideration of school work. It is not enough that these feeble-minded and 
delinquents be segregated and placed in the special class, where special class means the 
ungraded dump for the schools of a particular section: but these unfortunates, these 
children of the one talent, require expert grading. This does not mean that the class 
teacher is, or in any probability every will be, fitted to do this work. It requires the skill 
and experience of a highly trained specialist. One serious reason for the failure or indiffer- 
ent success of these classes has been the fact that the so-called grading has been done by 
those who know practically nothing of the underlying principles that govern it. Then 
we must realize that not only are these pupils below age, but also that their bodies and 
minds are not of the same maturity, that in almost every case the mental age is permanent, 
and that at that age they must be prepared for life. In this connection the recent article 
by C. §. Bluemel on the Binet tests applied to juvenile court delinquents in Denver is 
particularly interesting. He finds that the older the child, the greater is the retardation. 

In regard to the book work, the teachers must be taught to recognize definitely that it 
is useless to force a child mentally five years old to read, and that if he is only ten years 
old technical grammar and advanced arithmetic are impossibilities. But the book work 
is not the most difficult problem, provided we actually recognize the age limit. It is on 
the side of manual training that the resources of an educational system will be most 
severely taxed. This work must be selected and graded with all the skill that experience 
cancommand. There is a place for book work, but it must be determined by the age 
of the pupil. What can we teach the boy who will always be five or even ten years of 
age? It must be simply rough shopwork under direction, or for the girl the most 


170 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


elementary work about the house. And even the eleven-year-old, while he may do some 
skilful work, it must always be under supervision. 

When as superintendents we recognize and do our duty as such, we realize that the 
larger part of the work is still left undone. In most of our cities, even with compulsory 
education, these boys and girls leave us as soon as the law permits. It is sad that the lay 
permits this class of people to commit crime and then punishes them for it. In morality 
as in material things, the ounce of prevention is of value. Here our duty to society 
beyond that of our profession begins. The state has provided for its insane and for its 
criminal classes, yet it waits till these classes are produced. It is a higher duty, and one 
that demands the intelligence and help of every man knowing the problem, as far ag 
possible to provide for the restraint and to prevent the reproduction of these classes, At 
the present time, it is an established fact that 85 per cent of the feeble-minded are at large 
in society. Only the lowest-grade cases are confined, and these because of their very 
nature are the least harmful. The greater number are still free in the community, 
debased and debasing society. Of far more danger is the adult of only eleven years who 
may be led into crime, the deluded youth seeking revenge upon some innocent woman 
or the girl coming inevitably into a life of vice. These are the ones who for society's 
sake need care and supervision, a home where they may be made happy and at the same 
time so restricted that they cannot reproduce their kind. In our own work as superin. 
tendents we are making the start. It is our duty to find these pupils, to classify them, 
to carry their training out to the very borderline of their possibilities and powers, to bend 
every effort which as trained men and women we can command to make it possible 
for them to earn a living and live within their cramped restrictions a life as happy and 
healthful as possible. But as men we need to be at the fore in urging our state, city, or 
district to provide wisely for these after they have gone beyond our final control. They 
are in society and they are a part of it. If prison problems are to be solved with intelli- 
gence, if punishment is to be remodeled and vice and immorality are actually to be checked, 
we must face this problem from its foundation, look to its causes, just as we have done in 
regard to the great white plague—tuberculosis. It is a long, long road, but when we start 
at the beginning there is a possibility of real progress. 


4 


VACATION-CLUB WORK 


J. H. BEVERIDGE, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, COUNCIL BLUFFS, IOWA 


For the most part vacation-club work for boys and girls has been a county rather 

than a city activity. The purpose of this address will be to deal with the movement as 
a city activity. It should be understood in the beginning that a middle-western city- 
school district, usually called an independent school district, often embraces a large amount 
of territory that may be used for agricultural purposes and other activities of a similar 
nature. 
Our specialist in the Department of Agriculture at Washington, D.C., in charge 
of such club work, has defined it as “‘the performance of a definite farm, garden, or farm- 
house interest enterprise.” It aims to teach better methods of agriculture and home 
economics. The work may be extended so as to include almost every home activity 
which is of interest to boys and girls. It finds its best support thru the extension 
departments of the agricultural colleges working in conjunction with the public 
schools. 

In the state of Iowa, during the past year, eighteen different activities were more or 
less encouraged by the extension departments of the Iowa agricultural colleges. These 
activities are as follows: 





ime 
rin- 
em, 
end 
ible 
and 
e 
hey 
elli- 
ced, 
ein 
tart 


FeSa9a FESe k 


% 3 


superintendence] VACATION-CLUB WORK 


aaa aia aaa ace 


Acre of Corn Club Grain and Seed Club 

Garden and Canning (Tomato) Club Baby Beef Club 

Poultry Club Baby Pork Club 

Potato Club Bee Club 

Gardening Club (1 sq. rd.) Home Work and Play Club 
Cooking Club Farmer-Boy Club 

Sewing Club Home-Girl Club 
Manual-Training Club Father and Son Corn Club 
Canning and Marketing Club Home Work—School Credit Club 


The purposes of such work are: 


1. To provide wholesome activities for boys and girls during the long vacation period 
that will supplement the regular school work so as to reinforce principles already learned in 
the school and to teach other things seldom thought of or considered in schoolroom activities. 

2. To socialize education. At the present time most progressive educators believe 
in the socialized curriculum. They believe that the school work should be closely asso- 
ciated “with the actual life and interest of the pupil and also with his future life as a work- 
ing member of society.” Vacation-club work furnishes ample opportunity for socializing 
education. In summer gardening, for example, the child comes to understand the value 
of soil, the principles of plant growth, and the beauty of flowers. He learns to appreciate 
something of the relationship existing between himself and his environment. The girl 
sees something real in sewing, in cooking, and in canning. When the boy cultivates his 
own garden, feeds and cares for his own animals, makes and spends his own money, he 
reacts to a real situation in life. 

3. To teach the boys and girls industry, thrift, economy, persistence, and application 
to things that are worth while. 

4. To motivate effort. The boy is given an opportunity to enrol himself for that 
particular activity in which he has, for some reason, become interested. He has the 
privilege of engaging in the activity that is in line with his particular bent. He is encour- 
aged to compete with others on an equal footing and is encouraged to produce the best 
result possible. He sees, in the concrete, some material reward which he may attain thru 
his efforts. Some have objected to the giving of prizes, especially money prizes, for such 
work. But so long as these prizes are comparatively small, it seems to the writer that 
such a criticism is not valid, at least until society is constructed on a more spiritual basis 
than it is at present. 

5. To encourage children to look forward to that which ought to be in education. 
The thing that ought to be is that which draws us on beyond the thing that is, to the higher 
ideal. It is this which causes one to put forth his best effort. It encourages the children 
to look forward toward better training in higher institutions of learning. It undoubtedly 
stimulates a better citizenship by encouraging the child to render service not only to 
himself but to his family and to the community of which he is a part. Especially in the 
garden work, children are encouraged to make waste places not only useful but at the 
same time beautiful. It furnishes children with profitable recreation and acquaints them 
with some of nature’s secrets. 

Having given some of the objects to be attained thru vacation-club work, we will give 
our attention to the way in which this work was carried forward in a middle-western city 
in the summer of 1915. 

At the invitation of the city superintendent, co-operating with active leaders in the 
mothers’ clubs of the city, E. C. Bishop, of the Extension Department of the Iowa State 
College, Ames, Iowa, was asked to visit the Council Bluffs schools and give short talks 
in the various school districts of the city relative to boys’ and girls’ club work as carried 
on in the state and as to how this work might be carried on in the city. 

The principals of the several schools and members of the parent-teacher organiza- 
tion followed up this work by presenting the matter to the pupils from various standpoints, 








172 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


encouraging the children to enrol in such clubs as they might be interested in, always with 
this precaution, that pupils should enrol when they were sure they had the continuity 
of purpose to stick to the undertaking to the end. 
It was thought best for our city to undertake the work in only eight of the eighteen 
different clubs suggested by the agricultural colleges, as follows: 
1. Vegetable and Flower Gardening 5. Poultry 
2. Canning 6. Baby Pork 


3. Cooking 7. Acre of Corn 
4. Sewing 8. Manual Training 


This is a sample of the enrolment card: 


Councit Biurrs Iowa STATE EXTENSION CLUB FOR Boys AND GIRLS 


I desire to become a member of the Boys’ and Girls’ Club Work in the following 
department: 
(Indicate by X and underscore.) 
. Acre of Corn Club 
. Gardening and Canning (Tomato) Club 
. Gardening Club (1 sq. rd.) 
. Cooking Club 
. Sewing Club 
. Baby Pork Club 
. Manual Training 
. Poultry 


My purpose is to do my work well. 


A specific date was set for the completion of the enrolment and cards of enrolment 
were filed in the office of the superintendent of city schools. 

The extension department of the state college met the members of the mothers’ 
clubs of the several school districts of the city and gave instruction in the cold-pack 
method of canning fruits and vegetables. Further instruction was given to those girls 
who enrolled in this department of the work. 

Thru an expert, our high-school teacher of agriculture employed for that purpose, 
and thru the assistance of the teachers and parents interested in the work, it was possible 
to have instruction given in every activity undertaken. The instructor in domestic art 
in the grade school was employed by the mothers’ clubs of the city to give instruction in 
sewing to such girls enrolled in sewing as had had no particular instruction in school in 
this work. 

We were fortunate in securing the services of a capable and experienced man to 
supervise the club work—one who had had previous experience in county club work. 
But in securing him it was necessary for the city to extend the work of the Acre of Com 
Club contest over the county. One advantage of this endeavor was slight financial aid 
secured from the government. The Board of Education gave $250 for the support of 
the work. The remainder of the funds were secured thru the energy and activity of the 
mothers’ clubs and the administrative department of the public schools, principally thru 
two endeavors: the May Festival, and a high-class musical. The receipts of these two 
entertainments were about $1,600. 

An executive board for carrying forward the club work was formed. This board 
consisted of the superintendent of city schools, one member from the Board of Education, 
and three representatives from the Parent-Teacher Association. 

Parents and teachers, working together, had charge of the work in each of the twelve 
school districts in the city (three not being represented), but the burden of the work was 
with the club expert who visited all gardens, instructed the children in preparation of the 





S 


Rr FRE 


: 
a — 


SEs BA SAR LES KS 


Superintendence] SHORT-UNIT INDUSTRIAL COURSES 173 
I gipneeecsenesitenact asennad lnetaspeiseeesiennstgantian 
soil, the care and cultivation of plants and flowers, the care of animals, and other things 
too numerous to mention. 

Every child was required to keep account of time spent in the activity in which he 
was engaged, the money spent for all purposes, the amount of his sales, and the gain or 
loss entailed. Two exhibits of the work of the children were held. 

At the first exhibit, of garden products alone, 103 children exhibited products and 
$32 was given in prizes for this work. Only about one-fifth of the children engaged in 
gardening made exhibits. 

In the second exhibit, representing all departments, 784 different children took part. 
There were over three thousand exhibits. The value of products produced during the 
summer was slightly over $5,000, so far as data has been collected. Cash prizes were 
given amounting to $140, but this did not include the expense of thirteen short courses in 
the Iowa agricultural colleges, three Y.M.C.A. and three Y.W.C.A. memberships, and a 
trip to the exhibition at San Francisco, won by a boy in the Acre of Corn Club contest. 

The September exhibit was held in the city auditorium, a building 95112 feet. 
Booths were built by each school after a design made by the mothers’ club of each school 
district. Each booth was 12X20 feet. These booths were decorated by the mothers, 
each differently, but all attractively. The outer space was reserved for the exhibits of 
live stock and complete garden displays. 

Altho there was a downpour of rain for the entire day, six thousand people attended 
the exhibit. 

It cost the Parent-Teacher Association $326 to hold this exhibit, but it was worth 
much more than this to the city. In fact, the worth cannot be measured, for the co- 
operation secured, the interest awakened, the enthusiasm for better things made manifest, 
the intellectual and spiritual uplift stimulated, are not measurable quantities. 

What were the results attained ? 

Some of the results have already been indicated. Every purpose of boys’ and girls’ 
club work stated in the beginning of the discussion was attained. 

One girl, Christine Larson, won the state prize in canning. She had ror varieties 
of products. A boy in the independent school district won the county prize in the Acre 
of Corn Club contest, indicating that city boys may become more efficient in farming 
than farm boys. Three children, one a girl, won state prizes in the Baby Pork Club con- 
test. 

In every activity, the record kept was made an important feature of the work, thus 
giving the child a motive for effort in expression and in accounting. Parents who had 
up to this time manifested little interest in school became enthusiastic workers. Those 
who had never had social contact with one another learned to confer with and make conces- 
to one another, and thus the most democratic institution of our country, the public 
school, became really democratic for parents as well as for pupils. 


SHORT-UNIT INDUSTRIAL COURSES 


MILLARD B. KING, EXPERT ASSISTANT IN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION, DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC 
INSTRUCTION, HARRISBURG, PA. 


The purpose of this paper is to describe the short-unit course, to explain some of the 
results which have been secured in industrial schools by the use of the short-unit course, 
and how the conclusion was reached that the short-unit course was the one best adapted 
to meet the needs of the worker. 

The conditions which confront the giving of instruction in a part-time or an evening 
trade-extension school are many. The majority of the pupils enrolled in the part-time 
or evening industrial school are wage-earners who have families to support. They must 











174 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


increase their earning capacity, and they turn to the evening industrial schools for the 
instruction upon which they may realize in a comparatively short time. In most instances 
they know what they need. Their time is limited. In many industries the hours are 
long. “Overtime” work, sickness, holidays, and lodge and union meetings frequently 
interfere with the regular attendance at the evening school. Instructors who are masters 
of their subjects are hard to secure. All these conditions make it impossible to lay out 
a fixed course of study that will give the help the worker needs. These varying conditions 
can be met only by having a very flexible course, or a number of courses. 

The short-unit course is based upon the proposition that if all the subject-matter of 
the courses commonly offered in evening industrial schools be broken up and reorganized 
into a number of units so that definite instruction in a particular subject can be given in 
a short length of time, the flexibility so desirable and necessary in a course of study for 
an industrial school is secured, and the school can better meet the varying and changing 
conditions in an industrial community. 

As a concrete example of what can be accomplished by the use of short-unit courses, 
I propose to discuss the evening mining school and the manner in which the short-unit 
courses were applied to this particular type of school. 

In 1905, mining courses were first given under the auspices of the Y.M.C.A., anda 
year or so later mining institutes were organized for the purpose of encouraging its mem- 
bers to study and also to afford a sort of a clearing-house whereby the members could 
tell their associates of the things they had learned while working in the mines. 

While a large number of mine workers enrolled for the Y.M.C.A. courses, by the 
end of the year the enrolment had dropped to a very small percentage of what it had 
been at the opening. The institutes then attempted to run schools for the workers, and, 
after a precarious existence, the public-school authorities were finally asked to be respon- 
sible for these schools. 

The first attempt upon the part of any of the public schools in Pennsylvania to teach 
branches allied to the anthracite-mining industry was in the year 1911, when the Newport 
Township school board opened evening schools. This example was followed the next 
year by Nanticoke and the following year by Shamokin and other school districts. 

The public schools were now confronted with the problem of caring for mature 
workers—men who had worked from six to twenty years in the mines, and realized that 
they could go no farther until they were bettef prepared. 

Unfortunately, the first year the public-school system conducted the evening mining 
schools, the same courses and methods of teaching were used as were formerly used, and 
the results were not encouraging. The question of how best to meet the needs of mine 
workers had not been answered. 

Two statements frequently made by responsible persons were that the public schools 
could not conduct the evening schools for workers as successfully as the Y.M.C.A. or the 
institutes, and that there was no use in wasting public money for something which the 
public schools could not do. To silence this criticism of the public schools, it was neces- 
sary to show by actual results that the schools could cope with the situation. With this 
in mind, the organization and methods then in use, which had been in use in the schools 
when conducted by the mining institutes and by the Y.M.C.A., were studied and a 
number of causes for their lack of success were found, among which may be mentioned: 
(x) the lack of knowledge of the needs of the workers on the part of the teachers and of 
the school authorities; (2) the lack of the right kind of material for presentation to the 
class; (3) the fact that the courses were extended over too great a length of time before 
anything definite was accomplished. It was necessary for a man to enrol in October, 
and to wait until probably the first day of April, before he could receive instruction in 
some one thing which he needed. 

To remedy these three conditions was the next step. It was much easier to discover 
why the schools had not been a success than to replace the existing teachers, courses of 





aazaee lf 


- 


Superintendence] SHORT-UNIT INDUSTRIAL COURSES 175 


study, and organization, with something altogether new and untried in Pennsylvania. 
It was impossible to change everything at one time, so new courses were organized and 
men who had a background of practical experience were employed as teachers; in fact, 
men were employed as teachers who worked during the day as mine foreman, assistant 
mine foreman, fire bosses, or inside bosses. New courses of study were organized in which 
the following subjects were taught: shot firing; timbering; haulage; drainage; safety 
lamps; mining arithmetic; mining law; mine accidents; methods of mining; ventilation 
and gases. 

In spite of the fact that practical men had been employed as teachers and new 
courses had been planned, the attendance of the schools did not materially increase. 
Of course, the practical men knew nothing of teaching, and this was, of course, a draw- 
back to the schools. However, the experienced teachers who had no first-hand knowledge 
of mines could not hold the men. Finally it was decided to place an experienced science 
teacher in the classroom together with the practical man. Even with this combination, 
the average attendance was not gratifying. 

As a last resort, the entire subject-matter of the course was reorganized. In order 
to do this, it was necessary that the mining industry be analyzed to determine what was 
required of each man employed in or about the mines. In this analysis it was discovered 
that there were 51 classified inside and 27 classified outside jobs. At a first glance the 
situation confronting the school was appalling, because no school could hope to give 
training for 78 different jobs. The teaching force alone would have been as large as the 
student body and the courses would have been years in length. 

The situation was made more complex by the fact that from the industrial history 
of 75 men, selected in a haphazard manner from 4,000 mine workers, it was discovered 
that no two of these 75 men who had started in as slate-pickers or door-boys had traveled 
the same route as they advanced step by step to the positions of petty officials and bosses. 

From a closer analysis of the conditions in the mining industry, and of the require- 
ments of each man for his particular job, it was learned that all of the men who worked 
inside of the mines needed a knowledge of gases, ventilation, electricity, map reading, 
and arithmetic. Courses were outlined and lessons prepared by a mine inspector who 
had had a number of years of practical experience in the mines. Yet even after the 
introduction of these new courses, dealing directly with the mining industry, with the 
employment of practical teachers, and the use of the lessons prepared by a practical miner, 
the schools did not advance as was expected. The best material available for teachers 
had been secured, there was no question as to the value of the subject-matter presented, 
and yet the workers were not being reached. 

Inquiry of these men who were attending school and of those who had enrolled but 
did not stay brought forth a volley of replies such as “ Want help for tomorrow, not five 
years from now,” “Have to go too long to get anything I need,” “‘Can’t see any use in 
taking so much stuff.” The men knew what they wanted and needed better than the 
school people, and finally after many blunders the schools gave them what they needed: 
definite instruction adapted to one or more of the many needs of the miners, and given 
in a short length of time. 

The subject-matter was broken up into short-unit courses, such as five lessons in 
safety lamps; sixteen lessons in ventilation; five lessons in mine gases; ten lessons in 
timbering; and twenty lessons in mining arithmetic, divided into five lessons in decimals, 
five lessons in proportion, five in percentage, and five in powers and routes, as applied to 
the mining industry. These courses were then put in operation, and inside of two months 
a change was noticeable in the attendance of the schools. By the end of the year, we were 
able to maintain as high as a 65 per cent average attendance in the schools, which was a 
thing unheard of up until that time. 

In the course of conversation with the men, you no longer heard the criticism of the 
schools that they could not get what they needed. Some of the schools are now organized 








176 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 
| RAE RES Sk AE RG Ane Dh EE See 
on such a basis that a man may attend school and receive instruction in gases; if he feels 
that he does not need any of the other courses given, he need not continue his work, 
It is now possible for a man to secure instruction in a subject on one night and put it 
directly to use the next day. This was not possible before, as he had to attend for as 
many as 50 or 60 nights before he received the information he most needed. These courses 
have been arranged in two ways: sequential and non-sequential. In the majority of 
cases, the sequential organization of the courses is used; that is, the various units are 
given in order of their sequence. Yet this does not destroy the positive effect of the 
short-unit course. On the other hand, in schools where there is a large corps of teachers, 
it is possible to give the short-unit courses in a non-sequential way; that is, the courses 
are given without any regard whatever to what precedes or what follows. 

A school has been organized in a town of 1,500 population in the bituminous region 
of Pennsylvania in which instruction is given in the following short-unit courses: timber- 
ing, 5 lessons; haulage, 4 lessons; drainage, 4 lessons; mine gases, 10 lessons; explosives, 
4 lessons; mine accidents, 4 lessons; methods of mining, 10 lessons; and ventilation, 
11 lessons. 

These courses have been arranged in a sequential order, because there are not a 
sufficient number of men attending the school to justify the holding of more than one 
course ata time. Some of the men have taken all of the short-unit courses. However, 
there will be some who will not take the course in timbering, but will take the course in 
mine gases and explosives; others who take the course in mine gases will not take that 
in mine accidents or methods of mining, and so on. 

In this particular case, the short-unit course has a great advantage, inasmuch as it 
makes it possible to employ men who are the best informed men in the region in haulage, 
timbering, mine accidents, explosives, mine gases, drainage, and methods of mining; 
whereas, if the courses were not broken up into these smaller units, it would be necessary 
to employ a man who has had some experience in all of these different branches but who 
is not a specialist in any particular one. 

This same course for a larger community could be arranged in a non-sequential man- 
ner; that is, the courses in timbering, haulage, and mine gases would probably be given 
on the same evening, a teacher being employed for each one of these particular subjects, 
while the men would take only the courses which they needed. Under the old system, 
John Smith, who desired a course in drainage, would have enrolled on the 24th day of 
September, and, after studying timbering and haulage, he would eventually have received 
some instruction in drainage. With the course of study organized in short-unit courses, 
he would not need to attend until the 2d day of November, at which time the work in 
drainage would be given in this school. 

From the results which have been obtained in the evening school since the short- 
unit courses were put in operation, we are convinced that they offer a practical solution for 
meeting directly the needs of the worker, for the following reasons: (1) it is now possible 
to give definite instruction to the worker when he needs the help; (2) it eliminates all 
the material which does not bear definitely upon the worker’s occupation; (3) it is possible 
to procure specialists in the industry to give the courses. This is especially valuable, as 
it eliminates the “‘jack-of-all-trades” teacher in the small community, and in the large 
community reduces the total number of hours to be paid for by the school authorities; 
(4) it is possible for the worker to use at once the instruction which he receives; (5) it is 
now possible for men to take any of the courses which they need at the time they are 
given; (6) it is possible to reach a larger number of workers than formerly. The per- 
sonnel of the school has, in many instances, been quite different at the close of the term 
from what it was at the beginning. 

During the last two years more men have attended the evening mining schools and 
successfully passed the state examination for mine papers than ever before in the history 
of the schools. The enrolment this year has increased and more schools have been 





 uperintendencel) © MEASUREMENTS OF A SCHOOL SYSTEM 177 


ized on the strength of the results of the schools which were in operation last year. 
The mine workers, the teachers, and the employers are in hearty accord as to the efficiency 
of this method of organization. 

While the mining schools alone have been dealt with in this paper, unit courses are 
- peing introduced as rapidly as possible in the other evening and continuation industrial 
schools and household-arts schools of the state. 

Possibly the statements which I have made concerning the operation of the short- 
unit courses in the mining schools would have more weight if some idea concerning the 
size of the mining industry were given. In the year 1912, there were 245,257,361 tons 
of coal produced in 220 working days. To mine and prepare this coal, valued at 
$350,000,000, required the services of 368,340 men. 

While a great deal of material which does not deal with the short-unit course is given 
in this paper, it is given with the purpose of showing that the short-unit courses were not 
adopted before other methods had been tried, and that their adoption was due to a 
gradual evolution of the methods of teaching the mature workers. 


ROUND TABLE OF SUPERINTENDENTS OF CITIES WITH 
A POPULATION UNDER 25,000 


RELIABLE MEASUREMENTS OF A SCHOOL SYSTEM 
OTIS G. WILSON, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, FAIRMONT, W.VA. 


Of the numerous factors that should be considered in measuring a school system, I 
propose to discuss, all too briefly, three: the school census, medical supervision, and 
business accounting. 

A reasonably tangible factor in measuring a school system is the annual school 
census. The school census as an enumeration of children of legal school age within the 
district is not a measurement. The census should be more than a list of the names, a 
record of the ages and nationalities of school youth within the district for the purpose 
primarily of establishing a basis for securing state revenue. Boards of education are 
legally bound to see that every child of compulsory school age goes to school somewhere. 
How may boards intelligently discharge this obligation unless they know with reasonable 
certainty how many children there are of legal school age, who they are, and where they 
are,if notin school? It should be a matter of vital concern to school officials to know the 
whereabouts of children not only of compulsory school age, but of those beyond the 
compulsory age. It should be known what becomes of children under twenty-one years 
of age when they stop school. Do they become workers or loafers? Is the school 
attractive enough to hold children regardless of their legal freedom, or is it so unattractive 
that reaching the compulsory-age limit is a signal for leaving school, whether employment 
isin sight or not? And, if employed, are they legally employed? If in school are they 
in the public school, private school, parochial school? The census figures should answer 
these questions with readiness and precision. Only in this way may a community know 
where the children are whom it aims to educate, and whether its aims are being realized. 
School officials should concern themselves with the question of the ratio of school enrol- 
ment to the school census, with the ratio of school attendance to the school census, and 
with the ratio of what is being done to what it is aimed to do. The answers to these 
questions will determine at least one factor in measuring the efficiency of a school system. 
The census affords the key to the answers. 

The returns of the annual census should be tabulated and should be compared with 
school attendance. Herein lies the value of the census. It should be used after it is 











178 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


made as a necessary instrument of any school administration that seeks to know in ful] 
measure the scope of its responsibility to the community. 

The important uses of the census warrant boards of education in establishing a depart. 
ment of school census, placing in charge a competent census clerk. A competent clerk, 
with the co-operation of the truant officers, school nurses, city police, and other interested 
persons, may make the annual census continuous and at all times reliably accurate. As 
suggested by the Cleveland survey committee: ‘The school census should also record the 
results of each new enumeration on maps of the city in such ways as to show for all of 
the districts the amount of increase or decrease of child population. This information 
could then be utilized as an aid in shaping the building policy of the school system,” 

A second important factor in measuring the efficiency of a school system is the nature 
and scope of health or medical supervision. For the most part, we have passed thru the 
stage of medical supervision known as medical inspection, the primary purpose of which 
was to discover existing physical defects of the child and report the same to the parents, 
with the request that the defect be brought to the attention of the family physician, 
With this important tho incomplete service of inspection performed, the child was free 
as before to continue his attendance at school, regardless of the attention paid to the 
school physician’s notice and recommendation. 

With all its imperfections, this type of medical inspection served its day very well, 
But with the awakening of the physical conscience thruout the United States in recent 
years, the demand for follow-up procedure in the inspection of children has broadened 
the scope of medical inspection and given us medical supervision. Medical inspection 
locates and reports physical defects of children; but medical supervision locates, reports, 
and follows up defects. It does more than that; it seeks to prevent defects by treating 
symptoms. The one is corrective, the other is preventive as well as corrective. 

Investigations have disclosed that, without a definite plan for the following up of 
notifications to parents by school physicians, only about 5 to 30 per cent of the recom- 
mendations will be acted upon. An efficient follow-up plan brings the figures to 85 or 90 
per cent. The most effective plan for securing the desired result is the employment of 
the school nurse, who goes into the home and sympathetically and tactfully presents the 
child’s case to the parents. If one visit of the nurse is not sufficient, then another and 
and another is made. As a general proposition, a good nurse in medical supervision of 
schools is as valuable as a good physician. The practice in schools having the best regu- 
lated medical supervision is to have a limited service of competent school physicians and 
plenty of nurse help. The physicians should be experts in child hygiene and should be 
tactful enough in directing the health work thru the nurses to secure the co-operation not 
only of teachers and parents but of local physicians, hospitals, charity organizations, and 
other helpful agencies whose co-operation is needed. 

Medical supervision should extend in some measure to the different varieties of school- 
health agencies that have been organized as a result of the recent development of public- 
health opinion. Play and playgrounds, physical training, open-air schools, schools for 
delinquent children, and probably the teaching of hygiene in the school curriculum are 
agencies that to some extent should come under the control of an efficient health supervisor. 

For each pupil enrolled in school, there should be kept an individual health card 
which shows clearly his health history. The card should contain specific data of the physi- 
cal examinations, and note should be made of all recommendations that have been acted 
upon. Such a record would reveal the need of health supervision and would test the 
efficiency of the medical supervision as it applies to the follow-up procedure, 

A third reasonably tangible factor in reliably measuring a school system is the method 
of business accounting employed by school officials. 

The evident tendency in recent years toward better business efficiency in all lines of 
activity involving investment and returns has created a demand, more or less insistent, 
for business efficiency in matters affecting the expenditure of public money. The amount 





& | 


Round 


Baan 8 


ll. 
nt 
ed 
ion 
ts, 
ing 

of 
m- 
90 
of 
the 
nd 
of 
zu- 
nd 
be 
1ot 
nd 
ol- 
ic- 
for 
are 
or. 
urd 
‘si- 
ted 
the 
od 


Rr 2 


Superintendence] TRAINING FOR EFFICIENT CITIZENSHIP 179 








of money spent for education during the past few years has increased out of all proportion 
to the number of children to be educated. School taxes have risen enormously, and still 
the cry is for more money. And the increase in taxes creates a demand upon boards for 
facts and figures concerning expenditures. Communities want to know how money 
derived from public taxation is spent, why it is spent, and what the returns are. To this 
end many boards of education have been making an earnest effort to give the public full 
knowledge of the manner in which the work of the board and schools is carried on. 

The tendency is toward standardization in business transactions, in school costs and 
accounts. Merely keeping an account of the revenue received and expended is no longer 
adequate. Statements of the amounts spent for fuel, light, janitor service, teachers’ 
salaries, textbooks, insurance, and other items are valuable as aids in making the annual 
estimate or budget, but from the standpoint of estimating units of service they are too 

and too vague to be valuable. School boards and superintendents should know 
how much the performance of any service costs and how it compares with like costs 
elsewhere. It is very important, therefore, if modern business methods of efficiency are 
to be practiced by boards of education, that school costs and accounts be standardized 
to the end that units of service be intelligently and definitely established. 

For all schools and for each kind of school the costs should be determined. Further- 
more, the cost per pupil in all subjects of instruction should be computed and compared 
with similar previous costs and like costs elsewhere. So, also, should units of service be 
established for expenditures for fuel, light, apparatus, supplies, insurance, textbooks, 
medical supervision, and the like. With these specific tests in matters of cost, together 
with other tests to determine pupils’ abilities along various lines and hence to determine 
the ratio between cost and returns, a wise administrator has sufficient data’to enable him 
to measure the efficiency of his schools along certain definite lines. 

Further discussion of measurements that should be employed in determining the 
efficiency of a school system would include, among others, these additional topics: the 
progress of pupils thru the school system; standards of qualifications of teachers; improve- 
ment of teachers in service; quality of instruction; the course of study; nature and scope 
of supervision; provision for delinquent and exceptional children; co-operative agencies; 
vocational guidance; the school plant and school equipment. 


THE ETHICAL AS THE ESSENTIAL FACTOR IN TRAINING FOR 
EFFICIENT CITIZENSHIP IN A DEMOCRACY 


CHARLES W. COOKSON, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, TROY, OHIO 


“The times that try men’s souls are over,’’ said Tom Paine when he heard of the 
Treaty of Paris in 1783. Subsequent history has proved the folly of this conclusion. 
The struggle of the individual and of the nation for greater efficiency, whether we call 
it education or evolution, is the problem of the ages. With the growth of a complex 
society, adequate educational processes become more abstract. To prepare for efficient 
citizenship in the democracy is the task of the schools, for the school is the only agent 
under the control of the state and the nation by which the young may be trained for the 
responsibilities of adult life. 

Often it has been said that the home and the church must do many things in the train- 
ing for citizenship, and certain specific duties are assigned to each of these institutions. 
However beautiful the theory may be, the principle does not hold good. In the first 
place, that part of the home which has survived the innovations oi the club and the 
factory often creates conditions which the school must regulate. The adoption of 
compulsory-education laws and strenuous efforts in many places to enforce them warrant 
the above statements. The churches, with their multiplicity of organizations, are not 
reaching the masses. The state and the school cannot solace themselves in the presence of 











So a Sg AB 


PM APD De I IEE BS a, 


180 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


this condition and assure themselves that their share of the educational process is being 
adequately carried out. Education is a public policy, and the American government 
stands for the entire separation of church and state. It will be fatal, therefore, for the 
state and the nation to depend upon an institution outside of their jurisdiction to give to 
the new generation the spiritual training without which efficient citizenship is impossible. 
That the homes which still exist, the churches—for such persons as they do reach—ang 
society are aids, no one will gainsay; but the point of contention is the inadequacy of the 
results as determined by the number reached. 

There are many great problems ahead of us as a nation, but the really greatest prob. 
lem is how to make better men and better women of us all. John Stewart Mill says: 
“The worth of the nation is the worth of the individual.” It may be said, then, that no 
institution or organization for the advancement of public uprightness has any assurance of 
success that is not based on personal integrity and personal courage. No scheme of 
socialism, no punishment for fraud or graft, no legislative enactments or governmental 
edicts can be of service in making efficient citizenship unless they are based upon con- 
siderations of the influence these courses will have upon the individual. 

In the discussion of any question, there is often a necessity for the establishment 
of limits and boundaries by definitions, in order that no misunderstanding may arise in 
the use of the terms employed. Ethics in this discussion is to have the broad general 
definition of moral duty. It is to mean “the outward sign of harmonious spiritual devel- 
opment.” It will refer to the discipline or training in those elemental virtues of truthful- 
ness, honesty, sobriety, and self-sacrifice; it will mean moral reactions manifested in joy, 
peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, which are the fruits 
of the spirit and which are necessary traits of character for citizenship in a democracy, 

My thesis, then, is that the things of the spirit must not only be taught, but that they 
must be tested by moral reactions in order to insure to posterity those characteristics of 
mind and heart which are necessary for the maintenance of the republic, that universal 
righteousness necessary in order that the individual may make the proper application 
of his opportunities to his duties and so adjust his life that he will meet the needs of 
citizenship and national perpetuity. 

It has been said, and said repeatedly, by the most thoughtful that the education which 
neglects the spiritual is a farce. Notwithstanding this fact, the intellectual predomi- 
nates in the school measurements. Teachers dre rated very largely by marks in scholar- 
ship; pupils are promoted on the basis of their ability to pass certain mental tests; students 
are graduated from college and university when they have gained definite intellectual 
accomplishments; yet all recognize that intellectual education alone never has and 
never will save a nation, uplift a people, sanctify a home, purify a ballot, aid in law- 
respecting or law-enforcing, or cause an individual to be transfigured into the likeness 
of Him who spake as never man spake. A single illustration will suffice. Dr. Gunsaulus, 
president of Armour Institute, was walking with a friend in State Street, Chicago, one 
Sunday afternoon when they noticed a crowd thronging about a public assembly room. 
Curiosity led them to go in. Just as they entered, the speaker on the platform was 
thrilling his audience by saying, ‘‘I am learning to make deadly explosives at Philip 
Armour’s expense.” Dr. Gunsaulus recognized the most talented, most intellectual 
student in the institution. It only confirms what Ralph Waldo Trine says: “The edu- 
cation of the head without the softening and refining influence of the heart only increases 
one’s power for evil.” 

It is a crime to teach a child to read unless at the same time he is taught to read that 
which will be uplifting, purifying, ennobling. It is criminal to teach the intellect unless, 
at the same time, those principles are taught which will inculcate a practical knowledge 
of the universal brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God. It is a farce to give a 
man high ideals without furnishing the means whereby those ideals may function in action 
worthy of the best in an American citizen. 





1& 


FPRaasetet FT SaEaP SZ Ree 


ey 
of 
al 
mn 
of 
ch 
ii- 


Brew hbrFaeavreraks 


Be GSA 


Superintendence] TRAINING FOR EFFICIENT CITIZENSHIP 181 


The application is easily understood. In this present time, the unlettered may be 
apart of an unorganized band in guerrilla warfare, shooting from ambush at a venturesome 
frontiersman and driving his cattle from the ranch. The educated are a part of vast 
armies with forty-two-centimeter guns, bomb-dropping aerial navies, submarines, with 
deadly projectiles, dreadnaughts and superdreadnaughts; and all the world is put under 
tribute for savages to carry on a war of annihilation. Poisoned bullets, suffocation gases, 
and blockades to starve the non-combatants are some of the results of intellectual and 
scholastic culture. 

Note the contrast. When the government opened Oklahoma to settlers, in the mad 
rush for advantageous positions, a little girl was lost. The cry of a child lost went out 


_ thru the rabble struggling for homes. The selection of locations was abandoned and 


search was made for the little one who was supposedly without protection. During the 
afternoon, on thru the night, into the next day went the searching party, when some of 
the members came upon a wolf which had been killed in a sanguine struggle. A little 
farther on a second wolf was found with it vitals torn from its body; and nearby in a little 
clump of bushes was the child unharmed, sweetly sleeping, with the family dog lying 
dead across her body. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his 
life for his friend. In our day, when civilization across the water seems to have collapsed, 
it is refreshing to turn to the brute creation for examples of the destruction of self for the 
preservation of others. 

In the study of those elements which should be emphasized in the making of citizen- 
ship, there are no differences with those who are working along the line of vocational train- 
ing as a solution for national efficiency. In fact, all will agree that vocational education 
is a necessity growing out of the character of our social order. Manual skill will not save 
a tepublic, moreover. Men in America are not starving for bread, but they are starving 
for the good, the true, the beautiful. To make two blades of grass grow where one grew 
before is a valuable contribution to the wealth of the country, but to make boys and 
girls exercise self-restraint, practice the virtues, recognize every man as a brother, is a 
Godlike performance. The need of bread may cause a man to commit a crime, but the 
absence of the attributes of the soul makes him a criminal whether he ever breaks the 
statutes or not. 

The schools have glorified knowledge. ‘Knowledge is power’ has been carved in 
stone and placed over the doors of school buildings. It has been used as copy for practice 
in penmanship. It has been a gem for memory work. It has been the text for addresses 
before student bodies on all kinds of occasions. True knowledge is power, but power is 
selfish, and selfishness is antagonistic to efficient citizenship in a republic. Education will 
take on a new aspect when knowledge is regarded as the by-product of the schools, and 
character-building becomes the goal of the vision which prompts the levying of vast sums 
of money for educational purposes. When the acquisition of knowledge is secondary and 
the training for citizenship is fundamental, then scrutinizing surveys and statistical 
reports will give records of self-sacrifice, of service, of devotion to duty. 

Many methods have been presented for the teaching of ethics. There are just two 
which are applicable to this discussion; two methods of instruction which, if made a part 
of the school policy, will result in better manhood mentally and physically as well as 
spiritually. Considering that less than ro per cent of the young men who offered them- 
selves to the marine corps last year were accepted, it is perfectly clear that some methods 
must be devised by which the unfit 90 per cent may be prepared to fill a place of use- 
fulness in our common country. 

The first and most important method for the creation of ethical concepts is thru the 
personality of the teacher. It must be understood, however, that the individual who 
stands behind the desk is not always the teacher. It may be an older pupil in the room 
or one in the alley who is shaping the life of the school much more forcibly than the 
so-called teacher. 





182 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 
A iecrcreesieneeniasae emt ansansisieaemnecerenseensnes 

The school, like a great mirror, reflects the soul of the teacher. “As is the teacher, so 
is the school,” is truer than usually supposed. Children imitate; they copy; they take 
on the master spirit of the environment in which they live, be it good or bad. The 
orientals have a proverb that the grapes turned purple by looking at their fellows, and an 
English naturalist asserts that he has heard a sparrow singing the nightingale’s song, 
On one occasion a gentleman was telling me about his canary and described him as an 
organ canary. The qualifying word attracted attention and led to inquiry as to the 
meaning of the term. The explanation was logical. A trainer had devised a mechanical 
contrivance which would produce certain musical tones. The birds to be trained were 
placed in little boxes in the room with the musical toy, and there, hour after hour, day 
after day, week after week, they heard no sound except the song to be learned, My 
informant remarked that they often sing no notes other than those they learned in their 
training school, their college of music. With proper humility we might say: If the throat 
of the little yellow songster can be so changed that he will sing a different song than 
nature intended him to sing, how much more ought we to be able to teach the boys and 
girls of America so that there would be no minor strains of despair because of misspent 
and unprofitable lives, and no discords, in the great chorus of human endeavor! 

James J. Hill, the wizard in railroad organization, in addressing some Y.M.C.A. 
boys said: ‘We have tried athletics, social recreation, music, education, and all have 
failed. The only thing that will better our railroad men is religion. If you have lots of 
that, bring it along and put your associations on the Great Northern.” If a cool, cal- 
culating, impassionate business man in a moment of careful investigation could declare 
that the railroad system needed more religion, as it was the only thing which had not been 
tried to increase the efficiency of the men, with equal propriety we may confidently say 
that we have tried many devices with marked success, but the one element that we all 
need is more of the religion of life that is worthy of imitation. 

The adoption of a religious creed does not necessarily function in the practice of 
ethical virtues. Men have dropped munificent sums into the collection box on Sunday 
for sweet charity, or to spread the gospel of their faith among the benighted; but on any 
other day of the week they may drive a dishonest bargain and rob the innocent. Men 
have bowed on Sunday at the altar of the church in which they worshiped, and on Mon- 
day have gone blood-mad, unwilling to trust the law’s delay, and taken one of their 
fellow-citizens from the bastile and hung his bullet-riddled body to a near-by tree. 
Thus it has been shown that little reliance can be placed in unrestrained and untrained 
human nature, subject to specific temptations no matter what may be their profession; 
but with the practice of self-sacrifice, self-restraint, self-abnegation, with systematic 
drill in integrity, honesty, sobriety, truthfulness, temperance, purity, we may hope to 
blot out from the body politic those who will trade their franchise for a mess of pottage 
or sell themselves and their constituencies for thirty pieces of silver. 

The teacher must be spiritual as well as intellectual. He must give up self for 
others, if a boy or a girl is to receive a new birth. Arithmetic, algebra, Latin may be 
taught without any diminution or destruction of self, but boys and girls never. 

The second method to be presented in this discussion is the emphasis of the spiritual 
in literature. The Scriptures present the basic principles for instruction in the things of 
the spirit. There are communities where the adoption of the Testaments for this work 
would be objectionable; yet there are few school units that would offer criticism against 
the teaching of Abraham’s faith, Solomon’s wisdom, Ruth’s filial devotion. If there be 
objections to the Bible, then the material in the textbooks will serve the double purpose 
of literary standards and spiritual stimuli. 

A few examples will help to make my meaning clear. We find fault with Long- 
fellow’s the “Psalm of Life” as literature, but there can be no criticism of his clear, 
unequivocal faith in the immortality of the soul as expressed in the poem. 





BRa<S< aA REEF ESSE !E 


ee 


or 


Soperintendence) EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH AND EFFICIENCY 183 


William Cullen Bryant had failed in some of his ambitions. The future looked dark 
to him, and, as he crossed the country seeking a new situation, a solitary wild duck, with 
its form “darkly painted on the crimson sky,” crossed before him. He mused upon 
“the Power’’ which guided its course, and his apostrophe to the bird, when it had entirely 
disappeared from sight, contains his unswerving faith in divine justice: 

Thou’rt gone, the abyss of heaven 

Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart 
Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given, 
And shall not soon depart. 

He who, from zone to zone, 

Guides thru the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone, 

Will lead my steps aright. 

The self-crucifixion of Enoch Arden for those he loved, in that beautiful story without 
sin, has made many a high-school boy and high-school girl live a more unselfish life. 

The universal brotherhood of man, irrespective “of race, color, or previous conditions 
of servitude” is portrayed in “The Vision of Sir Launfal.” Phoebe Cary’s awakening 
in “Nearer Home,” the nearness of the spirit world in ‘“‘The Ancient Mariner,” and Long- 
fellow’s return to faith in “The Bridge,” are a few of the many illustrations which may 
be put into the hands of the pupils; and then, with the magic touch of the spiritual in 
the teacher, the young life reflects the moral reactions from the ethical concepts 
acquired. 

When the teachers of America with uncovered heads stand within the threshold of 
the office, the recitation room, the laboratory, the gymnasium, before the pupils appear 
in the morning, and, no matter what creed they profess, petition the Great Jehovah for 
wisdom and power to do the work by example and by precept which is necessary to be 
done in order to make for universal brotherhood and fatherhood; and when, after the 
day’s work is over and the children are gone, with the devotion of kinship they say: 
“Father, I thank Thee that I am permitted to be an American teacher and have a part 
in building and fortifying a great nation’; and when the children catch the master 
spirit, we will cease to be troubled about unpreparedness and inefficiency in national 
crises in this democractic government. 


ROUND TABLE OF DIRECTORS OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH 


THE TWO PHASES OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH AND EFFICIENCY IN 
THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 


GEORGE MELCHER, DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF RESEARCH AND EFFICIENCY, KANSAS CITY, MO. 

For generations schools have been conducted on opinion. All other forms of business 
of great magnitude that involve the expenditure of vast sums of money and affect the 
welfare of thousands of people are being reduced to a basis of fact. The present tendency 
in the educational world is to substitute fact for opinion. Effective supervision must be 
based on fact, not on theory and opinion. In order to secure the necessary facts on 
which to base wise and efficient supervision, careful and scientific inquiries must be made 
and definite tests and standards must be established and used in measuring educational 
eficiency. By the application of such tests, we may reach facts—conclusions free from 
personal opinion or bias. Should not schools render accounts, both financial and educa- 
tional, as trustworthy and systematic as the accounts of any other business? Professor 
Hanus, of Harvard College, one of the best authorities on school administration in America, 
Says that efficient management of a school system depends upon “habitual and well- 





184 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 
EEA INE AT RT OSE a: 
organized self-examination within the school system, including adequate appraisal by the 
staff of the results achieved, and well-conducted experiments to confirm or refute educa. 
tional opinion within and without the school system.” 

The two important phases of research and efficiency in the public schools are the 
financial and the educational. Let us first consider the financial aspect of the question, 
From one-sixth to one-third of the current maintenance fund in the public-school system 
is devoted to other purposes than paying for the personal service of instruction and super. 
vision. The expenditure of all this money should be supervised by the superintendent. 
These expenditures may be under the immediate direction of such officers as the chief 
engineer or superintendent of buildings, the architect, the purchasing agent, the chief 
attendance officer, and the secretary of the board of directors. 

In order that the expenditure in these various departments may be wisely made, it is 
necessary that standards of cost be established. There are so many factors that enter 
into the determining of the cost of any item that it is not an easy matter to establish stand- 
ards in school finances. For example, in studying the cost of heating school buildings in 
different school systems, or school buildings in the same system, cost may be compared 
on the basis of the cost per pupil, or the cost per thousand cubic feet of space to be heated, 
or the percentage of the entire cost invested in fuel. So many factors enter into the 
determining of this cost that any single basis of comparison may be unfair. Some of the 
factors that must be considered are: (1) the kind of fuel and the relative cost of the various 
kinds of fuel; (2) the amount of air space per pupil to be heated; this item will be greatly 
influenced by the presence in the school building, or the absence, of gymnasiums, audi- 
toriums, and playrooms, and it must also be known whether these auditoriums are used 
full time or part time; (3) the character of the building; (4) the kind of heating plant; 
(5) in comparison with other cities, temperature and climate must be considered. 

At a glance, one can see that comparisons based on the cost per pupil may be unfair, 
since one building may have playrooms, auditoriums, and gymnasiums to be heated, while 
others have only the schoolrooms. Again, one building may place 30 pupils in a room 
24X30 feet and another may place so in a room of the same size. Comparisons based on 
the cost per thousand cubic feet of air space to be heated may be unfair because the kind 
of heating plants in the buildings may be entirely different or the amount of ventilation 
may vary from building to building. Furthermore, the percentage of the entire cost, a 
method of comparison often used in comparing one city with another, is a very unfair basis, 
since this percentage is apparently low in cities that pay high salaries for teachers. It 
costs just as much to heat a given room for a teacher receiving $500 per year as it does to 
heat the room when the teacher is receiving $1,000 per year. The cost per thousand 
cubic feet of air space to be heated is possibly the fairest of all means of comparison when a 
single basis must be used. 

Not only should the cost of heating be carefully standardized, but also the cost of 
light and water, cost of janitor service, cost of janitor’s supplies, and the cost of supplies 
for instruction. A school system should know the cost per pupil of writing-paper, pencils 
drawing-material, pens, regular textbooks, and supplementary books. It is true that 
certain factors will cause variations in these items, but if it is known by the persons respon- 
sible for the expenditure that there will be careful checking on each item of expense, and 
that comparisons of the various buildings will be made, greater economy will be exercised 
in the use of materials. The economy brought about by the mere knowledge that the 
checking will be made pays several times for the expense of checking. 

Furthermore, as regards the matter of cost accounting, a school system should know 
the cost of each subject of instruction. It should know the cost per pupil hour in the high 
school for each subject, the cost per pupil hour of elementary-school work, the cost per 
pupil hour of special subjects, such as manual training and domestic science, and the cost 
per pupil hour of kindergarten work. In the erection of new buildings, the cost per 





= 


Po 


RAr tar we 


BaRrFPSCRESaEPASSE SE a 


= 
& 


ir, 
ile 
ym 
on 
nd 
on 
a 


SAaAaFP EF BS 


RA2RGa 


Guperintendencel EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH AND EFFICIENCY 185 
TT TE ST TT TT ee ee 
voom or the cost according to cubical contents should be known. The cost of repairs on 
buildings should be carefully checked and studied. 

The second phase of research and efficiency relates directly to the department of 
instruction. The research work in the department of instruction may be considered under 
five heads: (1) measuring general school results in terms of school progress; (2) measuring 
and standardizing achievements in school subjects; (3) conducting experiments and 
making measurements to test the value of methods of teaching or plans of organization; 
(4) testing the suitability of the material suggested in courses of study for the various 

, and standardizing the subject-matter for each grade; (5) contributing to the 
educational world. as a final result of this other work, a body of scientifically tested educa- 
tional principles. 

Bureaus of efficiency are now engaged very largely in checking up general results 
and measuring school achievements objectively. It is probable that, in a few years, the 
most important work of these bureaus will be centered on the last three phases mentioned 
above. Up to the present time, however, so little work has been done along these lines 
that only this mention will be made of them here. 

Under the first division are studied such topics as retardation, over-ageness, 
promotions, non-promotions, causes of retardation and over-ageness, causes of non- 
promotion, and opportunity in the school for individual progress. Accurate data on 
these points can be obtained only when the school has a system of cumulative record 
cards so that the progress of pupils thru the various grades can be known accurately. 
For example, in Kansas City we have a seven-year elementary-school course. At the 
present time, cumulative record cards are used in the system, but they have been in use 
only two years. In June, 1915, it was desired to know the length of time required by the 
graduates of the elementary school to complete the course. In Part I of the Fifteenth 
Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, pages 126 to 130, there is an 
account of the method used to determine this important point. The results of this investi- 
gation showed that 6 per cent of the class completed the elementary-school course in six 
years or less, and 40 per cent in seven years, making a total of 46 per cent who completed the 
course in seven years or less. Forty per cent required eight years to complete the course, 
and only 14 per cent required more than eight years. In the same Yearbook, page 143, 
Dr. Starch, of the University of Wisconsin, has suggested that one-third of the elementary- 
school pupils should complete the elementary-school course in seven years, one-third in 
eight years, and one-third should require more than eight years. Assuming that our 
figures in Kansas City are practically correct at the present time, nearly one-half of our 
pupils complete the elementary-school course in less than seven years, and only one-seventh 
require more than eight years. This splendid showing is made with an elementary-school 
course of study that embraces an excessive amount of technical grammar, abstract arith- 
metic, and rigid work in other subjects, and would seem to indicate that, by the elimination 
of much useless, non-functioning material now in the elementary-school course, it would 
be possible so to organize the course of study that at least one-fifth of the elementary- 
school pupils would complete the elementary-school course in six years, three-fifths in 
seven years, and one-fifth in eight years, or in an average period of seven years. Since 
the average time required to complete the elementary-school course in eight-grade 
systems is almost eight and one-half years, this organization would save one and one- 
half years. 

It is the consensus of opinion that there is generally too much retardation in the 
elementary schools. Hence, the subject of school progress is worthy of continued and 
careful consideration by school administrators. On pages 130 to 132, of the Fifteenth 
Yearbook, is found a discussion of opportunity for individuals in the Kansas City ele- 
mentary schools. This study indicates that in the Kansas City as in other school sys- 
tems too little opportunity is given the bright pupil for individual progress. 





186 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


A study was made, during the past year, of the causes of non-promotion. This 
subject was studied from two angles: (1) for each case of non-promotion the opinion of 
the teacher was ascertained; (2) the regularity of attendance of the promoted and nop. 
promoted pupils was compared. According to the teachers’ estimates, 52 per cent of the 
non-promotions were due to non-attendance. Assuming that a pupil cannot complete 
a given course satisfactorily unless he attends at least 80 per cent of the time, it was found 
that 60 per cent of the non-promotions were caused by non-attendance. Of the pupils 
who were not promoted, only 4o per cent had attended more than four-fifths of the time 
school was in session; but 60 per cent had attended less than four-fifths of the time, or 
had been absent more than 20 per cent of the time. Of the pupils who were promoted, 
11 per cent had been absent more than 20 per cent of the time. 

This study makes it evident that the most serious problem in non-promotion is non- 
attendance. This is a proper problem for solution, but it must be met by the co-operative 
efforts of the school, the home, and society. In fact, the chief burden falls upon society, 
for most of the causes of non-attendance are social or economic and cannot be overcome 
by the school alone. 

As regards the second division of the subject, it may be said that only a beginning has 
been made in measuring school achievements objectively. Many types of school work 
lend themselves readily to objective measurement, and for some such types of school work 
scales have been devised. For other such types of school work, scales and standards are 
now in process of formulation and definition. However, many forms of school achieve- 
ment do not lend themselves readily to objective measurement, since they are so highly 
spiritual and so elusive that it has not yet been possible to devise scales for estimating 
their value. Such achievements are often almost by-products of the educational processes, 
but, like the by-products of many manufacturing operations, these results are sometimes 
the most valuable part of the product. While many forms of school achievement cannot 
yet be measured objectively, it is confidently believed that in the future more scales will 
be devised, so that ultimately it will be possible to measure objectively, either directly or 
indirectly, most of the principal types of school achievement. 

While only a few subjects have been measured, these measurements have revealed 
many valuable facts for the use of teachers and supervisors. The results of the measure- 
ments have shown that not only do the pupils in the same grade vary more than teachers 
and principals have realized, but also that rooms in the different schools in the city vary 
more than was believed possible before the application of such accurate scales. While it was 
known that rooms vary from building to building, the magnitude of this variation has been 
made clear by such measurements. Even in the same school, the variations between rooms 
is often greater than has been realized by the principal or teachers. For example, in 
Kansas City entire third-grade rooms were found that wrote better than seventh-grade 
rooms in other schools, and better than sixth-, fifth-, and fourth-grade rooms. In hand- 
writing, some buildings made an average gain during the year of nearly two Thorndike 
points. However, other buildings made practically no gain. In accurate copying, some 
buildings were seven times as good as other buildings. Similar differences were found in 
spelling and arithmetic. In fact, it was found that almost one-fourth of the pupils of the 
city in the fourth grade did better in the fundamental operations of arithmetic, on exactly 
the same test, than did the poorest fourth of the seventh-grade pupils. Similar striking 
differences were noted in the results of the tests in the various subjects. 

Some will properly ask: “Were not these differences due to variations in nationality, 
in community life, and in social conditions, etc.?’’? Some of them were, but the majority 
were not. For example, two schools of similar foreign population are about at opposite 
ends of the scale in certain of these tests. Of two schools consisting of similar American 
population, one stands in the highest group of schools and the other in the lowest group 
in certain tests. A school sometimes ranks high in one test and low in another. These 





$ 
t 
l 
r 


+1 Oo wn CBRorerea™ we + *~ 


amo Fe Om 8 


eure“ 


Superintendence) EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH AND EFFICIENCY 187 


results are in harmony with the results that have been secured in every large city system 
that has been tested. 

The more one studies the results at first hand, the more convinced he is that this great 
yariation is largely a question of teachers and wise direction of teachers. When trained 
teachers are guided by clear and definite purposes, the teaching is most effective. School 
principals and school superintendents may render valuable service to the schools by giving 
definite purpose to each teacher’s work. Many teachers already have a clear conception 
of the end to be attained and are securing valuable and tangible results. Many others are 
working just as earnestly, seriously, and industriously, and failing to secure satisfactory 
results. Why? I shall give Mr. Bobbitt’s answer: 

The taproot of effective teaching is to know in specific terms what one is after. The 
central cause of ineffective teaching is lack of knowledge of specific ends and a substitute 
conception that what one is to do is teach certain textbooks that somebody else has 
selected; to teach certain Somes laid down in the course of study, also arranged by some- 
body else; to follow in unthinking fashion the dictates of others in all these matters; 
not to be guilty of living, responsible thought; and, in general, to grind away at the 
course of study and textbook machinery without any other thought as to the outcome than 
that pupils may be able to pass the examinations that belong with this type of school 
machinery. 

The greatest service that principals and supervisors can render their teachers is to 
give them clear-cut specific ends to be reached in each grade in each kind of work. We 
have had too much generalization. The generalizations should be only the summaries 
of particulars and should not be given to teachers; but each teacher should make his own 
generalizations from the details that come under his observation and into his experience. 

Accurate objective measuring of school results will aid materially in giving more 
definite and specific aims to our teachers in conducting their work. Some of the distinct 
advantages of the use of scales and objective measures are: (1) they eliminate personal 
opinion and bias and give impartial results; (2) they make possible an accurate comparison 
of the progress of each pupil from grade to grade; (3) they enable school principals and 
teachers to determine the progress made by groups of pupils as they pass from grade to 
grade thru the school; (4) they enable impartial comparisons to be made of the work of 
rooms in the same buildings, and also of rooms or grades in one building with correspond- 
ing rooms or grades in other buildings; (5) they enable comparisons of the work in the 
different buildings to be made; (6) they enable accurate comparisons of work in different 
cities to be made; (7) they give an accurate scheme for comparing the results of different 
methods of teaching given subjects and also of different plans of school organization; 
(8) they give the teacher a very accurate means of measuring his own pupils, which is 
possibly the most important result. Teachers are now learning that these new viewpoints 
enable them to improve very materially their classroom work. 

Objective measurements bring out individual differences and class differences that 
are surprising. For example, in accurate copying, the best seventh-grade class in the 
Kansas City schools made only one-seventh as many errors per pupil as the poorest 
seventh-grade class. In the Courtis research tests in arithmetic, the best fourth-grade 
class had five times the medium speed of the poorest one, and seven times the median in 
accuracy. Such differences raise important questions in the minds of principals and 
teachers. 

Our supervisor of writing has been collecting specimens of writing at the beginning 
of each year and at the end of each year. Until our bureau undertook the study of pen- 
manship, he had not fully realized that some buildings actually made almost no progress 
in the quality of writing during the year, and that other buildings made a progress of two 
Thorndike points, and that as a result of this great variation in progress in the quality of 
handwriting there were several third-grade rooms in the city that last May wrote better 
than several seventh-grade rooms. 





188 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


A comparison of the October papers with the May papers in writing revealed the fact 
that the different schools had no common aim in teaching handwriting and that they had 
no standard for speed and quality for the different grades. Some schools reduced their 
speed during the year and improved the quality of their handwriting; others aimed to 
secure speed, and did so at the sacrifice of the quality of the handwriting. Often in the 
same building the aims of the teachers seemed at variance. 

Without question, definite standards of quality and speed in handwriting should be 
established for each grade and the teachers given specific goals to be reached. In genera] 
in Kansas City, when both quality and speed are considered, the greatest progress in writing 
was made in the fourth grade; the sixth grade ranked second, the fifth grade ranked third, 
the seventh grade came fourth, and the third grade ranked fifth. However, if speed alone 
is considered, the third grade made the greatest progress, but, in making progress in speed, 
it made almost no progress in quality; and many rooms lost in quality. 

This study in writing only indicates a condition that is general in our school systems, 
and shows the need of more accurate measurements and more definite aims on the part of 
our teachers. 


STANDARDIZATION OF TEACHERS’ EXAMINATIONS 
STUART A. COURTIS, SUPERVISOR OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, DETROIT, MICH. 


It is hardly necessary to remind this audience of the rapid growth of the movement 
for the use of measurement in education. Five years ago, had anyone suggested the 
possibility of a meeting of this kind, he would have been looked upon as a person of unsound 
mind; but today, from one end of this country to the other, measurement has an estab- 
lished place. It is true that, so far, measurement has been used mainly by those interested 
in survey work, by students of education, or by superintendents and teachers doing a 
little experimental work out of mere curiosity. Yet, during the meetings this week, the 
point has been emphasized over and over again that measurement should be of direct 
value to the teacher, and again and again the warning has been sounded that, if steps 
are not taken by those interested in the movement to make standard tests and scales 
practicable for daily use in the classroom, a reaction against measurement is bound to 
set in. I wish this afternoon to emphasize this warning and to indicate the steps taken 
here in Detroit to meet this need. As Director of Educational Research in a large city 
system, I am more directly interested in the improvement of the efficiency of teaching 
effort than I am in the more general problems of purely scientific research. 

In all forms of educational measurement the standard test is an essential feature. 
Now, standard tests are little more than standard examinations. It is true that they 
measure single and very simple abilities, and that the conditions under which they are 
given and scored are very carefully controlled. Nevertheless, in all their essential features 
they are primarily examinations. They become “standard” tests only in two ways. 
One type of test is called “‘standard,”’ because the text itself has been standardized by 
giving it to a large number of children, so that norms of performance have been established. 
The other type may be called “standard” for a different reason. Where the abilities 
measured are very simple and the factors involved few in number, the analysis of the 
testing material may be so complete and so perfect as to make it possible to construct 
duplicate tests exactly equal in value to the first. It is, of course, just as necessary to 
standardize such tests as it is to standardize those of the first type, but when such a test 
has been used in one extensive investigation, the scores that will be obtained in the use 
of all subsequent editions of it can be predicted with certainty. 

At the present time almost all standard tests are of the first type, for the simple 
reason that very little knowledge exists in regard to the factors which determine the difi- 





- 


€ 
d 
- 
d 
a 
ie 
t 
S 
S 
0 
n 
y 
8 


eoeeoeeanwm™=<s *aas 


nit 


Guperintendencel) STANDARDIZATION OF TEACHERS’ EXAMINATIONS 189 
iT TE eT ea SS ae 
culty of such tests. For instance, the Ayres spelling scale is constructed on the basis of 
the actual performances of many children; Thorndike’s handwriting scale is based upon 
the judgment of many teachers. So Kelly’s reading tests and many other tests of the 
same kind are useful measures only after standard values have been assigned to every 
question in accordance with the performances of many children. The other type of test, 
however, is much more to be desired, and it is possible but difficult to make. For instance, 
the paragraphs of Gray’s reading scale gradually increase in difficulty. This fact is proved 
by the failure of first-grade children to read successfully more than the first paragraph 
or two of this scale. The second grade is able to penetrate farther into the paragraphs of 
the scale. No one knows, however, just what it is that makes paragraph three more 
difficult than paragraph two and less difficult than paragraph four. In addition, which 
isa much simpler ability, the various factors to be controlled are definitely known. Test 1, 
Series B, of the Standard Research Tests, for instance, can be duplicated endlessly without 
changing in the slightest the difficulty of the test itself. At the present time, three such 
editions of the tests have been issued, and a fourth is to be constructed soon. 

The value of Gray’s reading scale would be very greatly increased were it possible 
to duplicate at will the various paragraphs of the scale; and as an illustration of the kind 
of research work which must be completed before this type of standard test in reading 
can be constructed, I wish to present a consideration of the factors whose effect must be 
determined. 

As I see it, the factors to be considered are of three kinds. The first of these is purely 
mechanical, dealing with such qualities as size of type, form of letters, spacing of letters 
and words, etc.; the second series of factors are those which depend upon the content, or 
thought elements, of the paragraph or sentence; the third series of factors are those which 
must be controlled in the giving and scoring of the tests. I shall discuss each of these in 
tura. 

To make my discussion concrete, consider as a basic sentence (Fig. 1), 


The girl is running down the street. (29 letters) 


Fig. 1 


Printed in eight-point type with conventional spacing, this sentence, which contains 29 
letters, makes a line 2} inches long. The problem, then, is to construct a second sentence 
which shall be equal, in difficulty of reading, to the first. 

Let us consider the mechanical features involved, the first of which is structure. 
The sentence, ‘The boy is climbing up the tree,” parallels in number of words and in 
general structure the basic sentence. It is three letters shorter, to be sure, but as far as 
structure is concerned is nearly the equal of the first. If, however, the sentence were 
changed to “Which girl ran upstairs ?”’ it would be impossible to say without trial whether 
the new sentence is more or less difficult than the original sentence. We need, therefore, 
careful evaluation of the differences in difficulty, if any, which are due to the structure 
of the sentence alone. 

I have already referred to a second factor which must be considered, “length.” 
For, if instead of the basic sentence, “The girl is running down the street,” we were to 
use “The pretty little girl is running down the street, chasing her black dog,” we know 
without trial that the sentence would take more time to read and would involve a greater 
number of eye movements. We need to determine very accurately, however, what the 
effect of such an increase in length from 29 to 59 letters would be. Is the longer sentence 
twice as difficult as the first, or only once and a half? For in the duplication of any para- 


gtaph of a set form, there is bound to be some variation in the length of constituent 
sentences. 





190 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


So in the printing of our tests, we must be careful as to the size of the type and as 
to the spacing. For instance, in Fig. 2, notice that in one case our basic sentence is printed 
in large primer and in the other in six-point type. 


a. The girl is running 
down the street. 


b. The girl is running down the street. 
Fig. 2 


Even to the adult, the difference in difficulty of reading is evident. The exact value 
of this factor also must be determined before we can measure the degree of development 
in reading in passing from the readers of the elementary grades to those of the later years, 

Similarly, in Fig. 3, there is given an illustration of the basic sentence printed in 
condensed type closely spaced, and in type widely spaced. 


a. The girl is running down the street. 


b. The girl is running down the 
street. 


Fig. 3 


Not only are there differences in the distance the eye must travel, which would affect 
the time of reading and, therefore, the relative difficulty of the two sentences, but the 
psychological effect of the two styles of printing upon even the adult mind is marked, 
In similar fashion, any change in length or character of the actual line of type, entirely 
aside from the length of the sentence, also produces a change in difficulty. Those who 
have worked with children in the first and second grades know that a distinct step in 
advance has been made when a child can read a sentence in the forms given in Fig. 4, 


a. The girl b. The girl is running 
is run- down the street. 
ning down 
the street. 

Fig. 4 


instead of in the form in which the basic sentence is first given (Fig. 1). These changes 
in mechanical features seem trivial to those who have given them no attention, but to 
those whose work lies in this field they are known to be of the very greatest importance. 
The average teacher is astonished to find that trivial changes in conditions cause children 
to appear to have forgotten all they have ever learned. But if the reader will look at Fig. 5, 
in which the basic sentence is printed upside down, 


*J901}S 94} UMOP Buruuns st [113 sy], 
Fig. 5 


he will realize that so slight a thing as a change of position may throw his reading habits 
almost entirely out of gear. 

In addition to all the factors mentioned, there is the diffiulty due to differences in 
the ease of word recognition. In changing from the sentence, “The girl is running down 
the street,” to the sentence, ‘‘The boy is climbing up the tree,”’ if “boy” is easier to recog- 
nize than “girl,” if “running” is easier to recognize than “climb,” if “street” is easier 
to recognize than “tree,” the resultant value of the second sentence may be less than 
that of the first, altho every other factor has been kept carefully the same. This, how- 








= 


Superintendence]) STANDARDIZATION OF TEACHERS’ EXAMINATIONS 191 




























































ever, is a point about which we have no information whatever, and even on the mechanical 

side it is impossible at present to construct, with any certainty of the result, two sentences 

of equal value. 

If we now leave the mechanical factors and turn to the content factors, we shall 
find an even more serious situation. Consider, for instance, the three sentences: “The 
girl is running down the street,” ‘The boy is climbing up the tree,” “The misanthrope 
js sulking in his den.”” These sentences in structure, size of type, number of letters, etc., 

are of nearly the same value, but even for the adult reader there will be differences in 
difficulty, due to the fact that in the third sentence the thought element, aroused by the 
stimulus of the printed words, is very different. 

The major element in the content situation is probably the familiarity of the reader 
with the particular word forms used; a second important element is the incentive which 
leads to the act of reading. All content difficulties are to be evaluated in terms of expe- 
rience. The difficulty of a word for a reader is probably determined by the frequency 

_ and recency of its use and by the interest and emotional atmosphere surrounding the 
conditions of its use. It is, of course, hopeless to attempt to evaluate completely the 
relative difficulties of different words for individual children; but it would be perfectly 
possible to analyze the vocabularies of children in terms of average frequency and con- 
ditions of use. Such an analysis of the English language for different ages and types of 
life is urgently needed. If such data were available, tests of nearly equal value could be 
constructed, and the process of determining the exact value of the various units by the 
reactions of unselected groups of children would be very greatly shortened. 

; The third set of factors governing the equality of tests are those which have to do 
with the testing conditions themselves. The incentive of the children to put forth their 
best efforts will be determined largely by the instructions, personality, and general manner 
of the examiner. Teachers, as a rule, try to secure from each child the utmost possible 
performance, and are very quick to resent the efforts of scientific men to control conditions 
under which tests are given, in order to keep them uniform. The results from child to 
child, however, are not comparable, unless the instructions and general procedure are 
the same for all. The factor of personality is a difficult one to control, but there is some 
evidence tending to show that the differences produced by this factor are not large, pro- 
viding conscientious care is taken to fulfil standard conditions. A far more important 
factor is the question of the timing of the test. Scrupulous care must be taken to keep 
exact time. In a test of one minute’s duration, a variation of one second at the beginning 
and at the end will make a total variation of 3 per cent in the result. So with the length 
of the test. If a test is so short that all are able to finish in a given time, the subjects 
measured will appear to be of equal ability. On the other hand, if the test had been long 
enough to keep all occupied for a longer interval, large individual differences in scores 
would have been revealed. So, too; a test of short duration in addition is a different thing 
from a test, with exactly the same type of examples, of long duration, because of the 
variation in results caused by differences in the effects of practice and fatigue. 

In similar fashion, we need much more information in regard to the effects of physical 
conditions. We all understand that in a test in reading a proper degree in illumination 
is essential for the best work, that the most gifted person would make the same score as 
the imbecile if both were required to read in absolute darkness; but we have not paid 
enough attention to the effects of small differences in light, temperature, humidity, etc., 
and we have not evaluated at all the effects of the position and physiological condition 
of the subject under examination. 

Even after all the elements in the tests themselves, or in the conditions under which 
the tests are given, have been accurately measured and controlled, the results secured 
will be influenced by the methods of scoring and tabulating. The primary need, of course, 
is for standard marking. It is essential that a given unit have the same value for all, 

but it is equally essential that the tabulations of the results be made in the same manner 


ab 


FRsose ef 


Bs 8 


FERS SS 





192 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


for all. If one city defines efficiency of a test in addition on the basis of the percentage 
of the children who can work at average speed with perfect accuracy, while another city 
defines efficiency on the basis of the percentage of the children able to work at average 
speed with 80 per cent accuracy or better, it is evident that, altho the actual data secured 
in the two cities may be precisely the same, the statement in regard to efficiency in the 
respective cities would differ widely. In this connection, let me make a plea for approxi. 
mate methods and greater simplicity of procedure. We know at the present time that 
the results of any single test, no matter how carefully controlled, contain a large gross 
error of approximately 1o per cent caused by the variability which is a constant charac. 
teristic of all human performances. It would seem foolish, therefore, to carry correlation 


Test A. (Lesson 13) 
Form A Form B. 


Lesson No._____. Form 


E 


Jvoeowvww 
Jovrnnmae 
JveowmnsV2m 
[rawmwanwoe 
Jenanwne 
[-avnoune 


43555 


34)2708 71)3982 24)1488 


SCORES DETROIT PUBLIC SCHOOLS TRIAL cmap DETROIT PUBLIC SCHOOLS TRL 
Tet. STANDARD PRACTICE TESTS "— ted STANDARD PRACTICE TESTS m— 
Right LESSON No. 13 TEST A (Lemons 1-12) Ferm A Right LESSON No. 13 TEST A (Litvees I-12) Fem 


= eee 
COrtRGnt (ee 88 BY OMG BOOE COMPANY errr ari #08. 0 O84 Commane 


Fig. 6 


coefficients to the fourth decimal place with data which are reliable only for the first digit. 
It seems foolish to try to determine whether a given specimen of handwriting is to be 
graded 11.2 or 11.8 on the Thorndike scale, when the average variation in the judgment 
from which the scale values were determined amounts to many units of the scale. In 
this connection, it is interesting to note the very great change in value of all such judg- 
ments when the same sets of samples are submitted to judges with very different training. 
In Detroit we use muscular-movement writing, and it is very difficult for teachers trained 
to consider the merits of handwriting from the point of view of muscular movement to 
use accurately such scales as the Ayres and Thorndike handwriting scales, no samples 
of which conform to their standards of judgment. 

From all that has been said, it will be evident that the actual construction of tests 
and the planning of testing conditions is a scientific activity, calling for a large amount 
of technical skill and experience. When a test has been constructed and the conditions 
under which it is to be given have been determined, administering, scoring, and tabulating 
are purely mechanical steps, which may be carried out by any person of average intel 





SEEGER PSRSe oh et 


superintendence] STANDARDIZATION OF TEACHERS’ EXAMINATIONS 193 
ae a ee ee ee ee " 
and a small amount of special training. The real problem confronting directors 
of educational research, therefore, is that of devising tests or examinations which will 
be valid according to the most rigorous scientific standards, but which can be administered 
by classroom teachers and which will yield definite knowledge, of value to the ordinary 
dassroom teacher. In my judgment, measurement is certain to prove ineffective in school 
work, except for purposes of supervisory control, unless it is possible to put into the hands 
of all our teachers instruments designed primarily to aid them in measuring the effects 
of their own efforts. 
By way of a concrete illustration of the type of test referred to, I present in Fig. 6 a 


SRG RREAETS |e 


test in arithmetic. 

In Detroit we use the Standard Prac- 
tice Tests. The assignment for the term 
consists of lessons ranging from very simple 
examples in the four fundamental opera- 
tions to the longest examples that a child 
in the grades is likely to be called upon to 
solve. There are 48 lessons of equal diffi- 
culty, and they are so arranged that it is 
possible for each child to progress at his 
own rate and work in his own way without 
interfering in any way with the group 
formation. Our experimental work in the 
past has proved conclusively that the chil- 
dren most likely to be injured by such drill 
work are those who at the beginning of the 
year already possess those habits of speed 
and accuracy which the practice lessons are 
designed to generate. An attempt has been 
made, therefore, to imbed in the practice 
work a form of standard test which will 
enable a teacher both to eliminate those 
who are up to standard and to measure the 
effects of her teaching. The test shown in 
the illustration covers the abilities repre- 
sented in the first 12 lessons. The factors 


“which determine the difficulty of this test 


Class Record 


DETROIT PUBLIC SCHOOLS 


DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONAL REsEZARCH 
PRACTICE TESTS IN ARITHMETIC 


Report or Tesr_ A. Bracw 43 
Teacher ang 9. Forres 


we 5 TE CF 300m eS 
TFT peed F Pbancce Form../ ¥ s3 


Ist Trial 2nd Trial 


Total number of children in class... . 

Number having perfect papers ............ 

Per cent. having perfect papers 

piers 


Number excused from Lesson Nos. Z=Z 2. 


Number missing but one example... 


Per cent. missing but one example ~~... 


Per cent. excused from Lesson Nos. /=.2 —. 


Efficiency /.2. . Efficiency Previous Trial - Gain —- 


City Results: —Efficiency Gain Per cent excused... 


One copy of this report is to be sent to the Departmen: of Edu ational 
Research and the other is to be kept oo fue is the school. 


Fig. 7 


are so completely known that it is possible 

to construct as many editions of the test as may be desired, so that a teacher may 
measure a child over and over again and yet be sure that a change in the scores is 
not due to a change in the measuring instrument itself. In the illustration two forms of 
this test are shown. 

During the first week of the term all the children are measured twice with this test. 
Those who are up to standard are excused from drill and have the time for study in more 
important work. The others take the practice lessons, and at the end of six or seven 
weeks of drill the tests are repeated. 

Upon completing a test, the teacher fills out a record sheet which is sent to the depart- 
ment and from which tabulations of city-wide results are made. In Fig. 7 an actual 
record for an eighth-grade class is shown. The tests were given on February 8 and 9. 
There were 25 children in the class, and on the first day three had perfect papers, on 
the second day two. The average number having perfect papers was, therefore, ro per 
cent of the class, and the figure for efficiency’ at the bottom of the report should have 


*The reader should note that “efficiency” as here defined means merely the percentage of the children 
who have completed their training. 





194 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 
Se 
been 10 per cent instead of 12 per cent as written by the teacher. On the first day there 
were in this group of 25 children two children who came within one example of hayj 
perfect papers. Altogether there were five children who were excused from drill Upon 
lessons 1 to12. This means that the three children who were perfect the first day were 
not the same as the two children who were perfect the second day. Under the cop. 
ditions under which these tests are used, children perfect either day are excused from 
drill, so that in this class one-fifth of the children had the dri!l time free to spend upon 
other lessons. 

These practice tests are in use in 50 schools with 13,000 children and some 434 classes, 
The median efficiency for the entire city is 2.3 per cent; the median per cent of the classes 
excused for the entire city is 2.8 per cent. These results, when reported to the teacher, 
will be written in on the last line of the class-record sheet, and in this particular case the 
teacher will see at once that the material in her class is superior to that of the city at large 
At the end of seven weeks, the teachers of the city, on a given date, will repeat these 
measurements. From the reports sent in at that time, a second city-wide tabulation wil] 
be made, and, from a comparison of the two results, it will be possible to determine the 

, average gain for the different grades, 
Teachers’ Record These will be reported back to the 
TEACHER'S RECORD SHEET teachers and each one will be able to tell 
at once whether her teaching efforts have 
Neme A Ht pow Schestohinaales Grode 7 produced a greater or less effect than 
those of other teachers. 

Each teacher, also, keeps 9 daily 

record like that shown in Fig. 8. 
This record is to be interpreted as 
follows: John Smith in the first test 
worked correctly only 24 of the a 
examples in Test A. He was, therefore, 
required to take the drills. He was able to complete Lesson 1 in three trials, Lesson 2in 
two trials, and so on. In the second test his score was 29 examples, proving that he had 
benefited by his drills. May Brown, on the other hand, had in the initial test a scor 
of only 10 examples correctly worked, and required a very large number of trials to 
complete each lesson. Her score in the second test (24) shows that, while her training 
has helped her greatly, it is not yet complete. Tom Black had an initial score of 12, 
and after ten weeks of work, in which apparently he was completing each lesson in 4 or 
5 trials, his score in the final test was 12, indicating that there was no transfer from the 
practice work to the examination. Such a child is at once reported to the department 

for investigation and special assistance. 

The illustration which has been given represents the attempt to control the con- 
struction of tests and the conditions under which they are given and scored so completely 
that the results obtained by different teachers are comparable. Our experiment in Detroit 
—which is, of course, very limited, as the tests were used for the first time this year— 
seems to indicate that our efforts have been successful. But it is also certain that for very 
many years the ordinary teacher’s examination will be the chief instrument by which the 
teacher may measure both the development of the child and the success of her own effort. 
Accordingly, there is a third type of standardization possible, which Detroit is also 
attempting. 

At the beginning of the year, principals were asked to hand in copies of all examina- 
tions that were given in their schools. An analysis of these was begun, to determine the 
essential elements of a standard examination for a given grade. A sixth-grade examination 
in arithmetic was standardized by C. W. Stone. Why should not Detroit standardize 
examinations for every grade and every subject? This does not mean at all that every 
teacher must give the same examinations, but that a book of standard examinations may 





PEARSERHR ZESTBEE Ie 


superintendence] STANDARDIZATION OF TEACHERS’ EXAMINATIONS 195 


ee ee ee 


_ he issued later, in which typical examinations for every grade may be shown, with detailed 


directions for giving and rating the various questions. A teacher would be free to select 
model questions from any grade or type, or to make up new questions at will. But for 
each type of question, or for an examination as a whole, the standard models would 
furnish a guide as to method of rating and as to relative difficulty. 

The construction of the standard models will, of course, require many years of work, 
but the most essential step is making a beginning, and that step has been taken in Detroit. 
Already significant results have been secured and suggestions developed for future experi- 
mental work and for the construction of tests. For instance, questions on the writing 
of numbers occur in every grade. In the B-2 grade, 39 per cent of the questions deal 
with this point, in the A-2 grade but 5 per cent. In the A-4 grade, the number has 
dropped to 2 per cent of the total questions asked, and the percentage for this topic remains 
at about this figure, being also 2 per cent of the total number of questions asked in the 
eighth grade. Evidently a standard test covering this one point is needed, and the con- 
truction of such a test will be undertaken in the immediate future. 

In precisely similar fashion, it has been found that questions dealing with the mere 
mechanics of addition of fractions are about 2 per cent of the total number of questions 
in the A-3 examinations, about 10 per cent of the B-4 questions, 9 per cent of the B-5 
questions, 6 per cent of the A-s, and 1 per cent of the B-6. From this point on they 
occur less frequently than once in one hundred questions. It is very evident from these 
figures that the addition of fractions is learned in grades B-4 to A-s. An examination 
of the questions themselves shows a certain increase in difficulty in these grades. The 
department, therefore, will formulate in a very definite way typical questions in the 
addition of fractions for these grades. It will determine, by the direct giving and scoring 
of these standard questions, their relative difficulty. Finally, both the questions them- 
selves, and the standards derived from them, together with the information secured as 
to the factors to be controlled in the construction of questions of equal difficulty, will 
be issued in such form that the information will be available for all the teachers of the city. 
Similar analysis of the questions in the history, geography, and English-composition 
papers is now under way. 

The most important conclusion so far drawn from this work is that a very large 
number of elements are ordinarily covered in a conventional examination. Questions 
involving thought and the use of knowledge occur with questions involving purely mechan- 
ical skills. Moreover, it is the general custom to divide the credits equally among the 
questions in the examinations without regard to their real character or difficulty. Under 
these conditions, a mark of 75 per cent has no meaning, for it is not 75 per cent of a 
given desired ability, but of a complex of abilities, and may indicate merely that the 
child has neither the information nor the skill to do any of the work adequately. In the 
opinion of the writer, questions involving the development of skills, such, for instance, 
as the addition of whole numbers, or the addition of fractions, or the reading of Arabic 
numbers, should not occur in final examinations. Each specific skill can be adequately 
measured only by a test composed wholly of examples of a single type. The best exam- 
ination, also, is not that represented by the score of a single performance on a certain day. 
Human effort is too variable and human skill too easily upset to make it fair to have 
promotions depend upon such chance scores. For these mechanical skills promotions 
should depend upon the median performance of a large number of trials thru the term; i.e., 
they should depend upon the daily increase in amount and quality of scores toward the 
standard, thru a long period of time. If a child has shown consistent development in 
repeated tests during the term, a single poor performance on a certain day has little sig- 
nificance. 

On the other hand, questions involving thought and power to do are of quite a 
different character. We are today in desperate need of a measuring scale for ability in 
thinking and reasoning. The department is undertaking the measurement of reasoning 





196 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


problems in arithmetic, following the general plans of Buckingham and Ayres in spelling, 
How rapidly this work can proceed no one can tell, but in this, as in the other types of 
standardization suggested above, progress will depend greatly upon the co-operative 
efforts of many workers; and if this paper stimulates the efforts of other members of this 
organization along these same lines, it will have served its purpose. 


IMPROVING INSTRUCTION THRU EDUCATIONAL MEASUREMENT 


FRANK W. BALLOU, DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION AND 
MEASUREMENT, PUBLIC SCHOOLS, BOSTON, MASS. 


The Department of Educational Investigation and Measurement in Boston is under- 
taking its measurement work on the theory that “the ultimate purpose of all educational 
measurement is to increase the effectiveness of the instruction which the child receives,” 


THREE STEPS IN THE PROCESS OF IMPROVEMENT 


In the process of improving educational results thru educational measurement, three 
quite distinct steps are involved: 

1. The quality of the educational results now being obtained must be measured by 
the best available standard tests as a basis for determining just what the present educa- 
tional achievement is. This involves also analyzing that achievement and judging it in 
the light of what, for a better term, may be called a standard achievement. 

2. After the present educational achievement has been thus analyzed, suggestions 
must be made for improvement where results are unsatisfactory. These suggestions may 
be given in informal conferences with individual teachers or with groups, or they may 
be presented to teachers in the form of printed reports. The sagacious superintendent 
or school official will not put them into the form of official orders. 

3. When a reasonable time has elapsed after the suggestions have been made, similar 
standard tests must be repeated to determine what effect, if any, the suggestions have had 
on the instruction. These second tests should not be given until the teachers have had 
ample time in which to put the suggestions into operation. The suggestions cannot be 
made today and the tests given tomorrow, or even next week. 


PRESENT STATUS OF EDUCATIONAL MEASUREMENT IN BOSTON 


In Boston, as elsewhere, the measurement of educational results is in its initial 
stages. In Boston the first step in the above program has been taken in several sub- 
jects; the second step has been taken in a few cases; but the third step has not as yet 
been taken in any subject except for the four fundamental operations in arithmetic. It 
is the purpose of this paper to outline, briefly, the educational-measurement work which 
has been started in Boston, and to review more fully the results which have been achieved 
for the four fundamental operations in arithmetic, because that is the subject which has 
received special attention for a sufficient length of time to warrant the expectation of 
measurable results. 

The work which has already been undertaken in Boston to determine the present 
educational achievements will now be briefly described. 

1. Accurate copying.—One of the eight requirements in English for graduation from 
an elementary school, defined by the committee on standards in English and approved 
and put into effect by the Board of Superintendents, reads: 


A graduate of an elementary school should be able to copy at least twelve lines of 
simple prose or poetry and a bill of at least seven items. Copying is not an end in itself, 
but a means to an end. The pupils should be made to see that accuracy in ari 
language, and other subjects may depend largely on accuracy in copying. 





2 REr ATE 


asp 8 


Bee 


superintendence) IMPROVING INSTRUCTION THRU MEASUREMENT 197 


A standard test was prepared by the department and given to 4,944 first-year high- 
school pupils in November after they had been in the high school only about two months. 
For our purpose they were considered only elementary-school graduates. In this test 
the department was concerned with finding out to what extent elementary-school gradu- 
ates measure up to this theoretical standard. 

The standard for accurate copying, based on the median achievement of those 4,944 
pupils, is stated as follows: 

A boy graduating from the elementary school should be able to copy fifteen and a 
half te tour and a half inches long, or thirty ems of ten-point type) of ordinary prose 
in fifteen minutes, making not more than five errors of any kind (spelling, punctuation, 


capitalization, words added, words omitted, wrong words used, misplaced words, uncrossed 
f’s, and undotted 7’s). 


A girl graduating from the elementary school should be able to copy sixteen lines of 
ordinary prose in fifteen minutes, making not more than three errors of any kind. (Length 
of line and kinds of errors same as above.) 


A mixed class of boys and girls should be able to copy sixteen lines of ordinary prose 
in fifteen minutes, making not more than four errors of any kind. (Length of line and 
kinds of errors same as above.) 

In due time, after teachers have had opportunity to study the successes and failures 
of pupils in this test, and also have had opportunity to improve their instruction, another 
test of the same kind will be given to measure the improvement. 

2. Spelling —The department is proceeding on the assumption that one of the 
reasons for the lack of ability to spell on the part of some pupils lies in the fact that 
teachers are spreading their instruction over too many words, many of which are prac- 
tically useless to the pupil. As a means of economizing the time of teacher and pupil, 
and improving the pupil’s ability to spell, the department is preparing a course of study 
for each grade, which shall consist primarily of words used voluntarily by normal pupils 
in their written work. 

In making up the lists of words for each grade, teachers were asked to furnish lists of 
alleged difficult words. The teachers’ lists have revealed two things: first, that mere 
opinion or a priori reasoning is not an adequate basis for determining the degree of diffi- 
culty of spelling for given words, because many of the alleged difficult words were spelled 
correctly by 990 out of 1,000 pupils in a rigid test given last May; secondly, that many 
of the words which teachers have reported as being difficult to spell are words which 
elementary-school pupils should not be expected to spell. Teachers have been trying 
to teach such words as convalescence, coupé, crochet, diaphragm, dilatory, equilibrium, 
fictitious, hypotenuse, impenetrability, knuckles, licorice, malleable, mayonnaise, naphtha, 
phlegm, quadrilateral, reminiscence, sovereignty, and zephyr when the children are 
misspelling such common words as business, divide, either, enough, fourth, library, 
ninety, similar, straight, their, there, and which. Limiting instruction to a reasonable 
list of words, and thereby economizing the time and energy of both teacher and pupil, 
is the first step which Boston has taken toward improvement in spelling. 

Boston has also taken another step to promote better spelling. As a result of the 
tests given last May, the degree of difficulty of each word in the spelling-lists for the 
various grades has been determined according to the ability of 1,000 pupils to spell it. 
Each word has thus been standardized, so that each teacher knows what words are most 
difficult for the children of her grade. She likewise knows with what degree of accuracy 
the children of her class ought to spell the assigned words. 

One further step has been taken in Boston. A committee of Boston teachers has been 
organized to study the various methods of teaching spelling. This committee has 
reviewed all the periodical and other literature touching on this subject which has been 
published during the last several years. The recommendations of each educational 
writer on methods in spelling were discussed by the committee, and each teacher during 
the next ten weeks is to carry on in her school an experiment involving some phase of the 








198 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


methods of teaching spelling. At the close of this year’s work a printed report for teachers 
will set forth the results of these experiments. 

3. Geography.—The first and second steps in the above program have also been taken 
in the subject of geography. A test was recently given covering certain phases of the 
geography of the United States and Europe. Exactly the same test was given to so 
eighth-grade pupils, to 166 third-year high-school pupils, and to 83 first-year pupils in 
the Boston Normal School. The most surprising result shown by this test is that go 
little of what has been taught in the sixth grade remains in the minds of eighth-grade, 
high-school, or normal-school pupils. This test has indicated the urgent need of defining 
the minimum essentials in the course of study, if pupils graduating from the elementary 
school are to carry with them a knowledge of those common facts of geography which 
should be the intellectual possession of every person. 

4. Penmanship.—The quality of the handwriting of elementary-school graduates has 
also been studied. A random selection of 600 papers was made from the 4,944 papers 
written in the test in accurate copying. These papers were studied by a committee of 
six Boston teachers who are especially proficient in the teaching of penmanship. The 
papers were rated according to the Ayres scale for adult handwriting, disregarding the 
even-numbered specimens in that scale. 

The committee has also analyzed the merits and defects of these specimens of hand- 
writing, and a report is being prepared for distribution among the teachers of the city, 
The department believes that merely calling the attention of teachers to the merits and 
defects of the handwriting of the children is to promote systematic improvement. 

5. Addition of fractions.—In December a test in the addition of fractions, prepared 
by the department, was given in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades of the elementary 
schools. The usual procedure of analyzing the results and printing a report for the use of 
teachers will be followed. 

6. Four fundamentals in arithmetic.—Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and 
division are the only phases of any subject in which educational measurement has been 
carried on for a sufficient length of time to make it reasonable to expect any tangible 
results therefrom. The remaining portion of this paper will describe the methods 
employed to utilize the results of the Courtis tests in Boston, and the improved results 
which have been obtained for the four fundamental operations. 

The Courtis standard tests were introduced into Boston in October, 1912, when Mr. 
Courtis was employed by the School Committee to make a study of the results of arith- 
metic instruction. Since that time the Courtis standard tests have been given five times 
in Boston. 

The introduction of the tests into the city has been gradual. They were first given 
in twenty-one of the seventy elementary schools of the city. Gradually from ten to 
fifteen more schools have been added in the five successive testing periods, until in May, 
1915, all of the seventy elementary schools were tested, involving 214 buildings and 
551277 pupils. 

METHODS EMPLOYED TO IMPROVE INSTRUCTION 

Before taking up a detailed account of the results of testing work in arithmetic, it 
will be well to consider the use which has been made from time to time of the results of 
that testing work. This will illustrate not only how the improvement in the four funda- 
mental operations in arithmetic has been brought about, but it will also show the methods 
by which the department undertakes the improvement of instruction in any subject. 

1. Standards have been established.—Objective standards of achievement in the four 
fundamental operations in arithmetic have been established for Grades IV to VIII in 
the elementary schools. These standards have been established on the basis of the median 
achievement of all the pupils in all the schools tested. These standards not only represent 
the present educational achievement of the elementary schools in the four fundamental 
operations, but they indicate a reasonable achievement for any class of normal pupils. 





| 


238 22532 FresiR Saeresek Fs 2 


and 
een 
ible 
ods 
ults 
Mr. 
‘ith- 
mes 
iven 


Bes 


 &fen 


_ 
S 


"ERE 


Superintendencel IMPROVING INSTRUCTION THRU MEASUREMENT 199 
hh LT TTT LTTE tis 

. As in other cities, Boston finds great variation in the achievement of pupils and 
classes—a condition which appears to a considerable extent as unnecessary as it is educa- 
tionally disadvantageous. The lower 29 per cent of the eighth-grade pupils have no 
more ability than the upper 29 per cent of the fourth-grade pupils. Ultimately this 
variation should be reduced thru a better educational classification of pupils. If these 
objective standards become the end to be attained by pupil and teacher, and if they 
become an incentive for both to put forth their best efforts or to economize time, as the 
case may be, the results cannot be other than a more homogeneous group of pupils in each 
class and grade. 

2. Formal reports have been made.—The report made to each teacher places her in a 
position to know how her class stands in comparison with the established standard for 
that grade. What is still more important, these reports tell her which pupils made low 
scores and probably need special attention and which pupils made high scores, and hence 
should not be subjected to any unnecessary further drill. 

A report has been made to each principal after each test, showing the relative stand- 
ing of his school in the city and of each class in his school. Every principal may find from 
these reports which classes stand relatively low and should have special attention in his 
supervision. These reports have been made as professional and more or less confidential 
reports from the director of the department to the principal of the school. Detailed 
comparison of the work of one teacher with that of another, which is likely to arouse 
controversy or hard feeling, has been studiously avoided. The form of the report has 
been such as to protect the individual teacher, and no publicity has attended it. What 
official use is made of the report is left entirely to the discretion of each principal. 

The superintendent has been furnished with copies of all statistical tabulations and 
reports for his information and for such individual use as he cares to make of them. 

Inasmuch as educational measurement is at present fairly well begun in Boston, the 
Board of Superintendents and the department are now engaged in working out a plan for 
placing the results of educational measurement in the hands of each assistant superin- 
tendent, to be used in his supervision of schools and teachers. When such a plan has 
been perfected, the necessary official machinery will have been set up for securing the 
most effective and far-reaching benefits from the work of the department. 

From the above description it is clear that the results thus far achieved in educational 
measurement have been brought about without administrative pressure of any kind. 
The department has no authority whatever over principals, and has not undertaken to 
direct them. Whatever has been accomplished has been brought about thru the pro- 
fessional attitude of principals and teachers toward this problem of economizing time and 
effort in the obtaining of a satisfactory result. The credit for the achievement belongs, 
therefore, to the principals and teachers rather than to the department of which the 
writer is director. 

3. Printed bulletins have been distributed.—In addition to the reports just described, the 
department has prepared bulletins analyzing the statistical results, explaining their signifi- 
cance, and suggesting methods of improving unsatisfactory results. These bulletins have 
been published as School Committee documents and a copy has been given to each teacher. 

4. Systematic practice material has been introduced.—Undoubtedly the most important 
means of improving instruction in the four fundamental operations in arithmetic has 
been the introduction of systematic practice material or exercises which take the place 
of the former general class drill in which every child practiced on the same exercise. The 
Courtis tests have demonstrated conclusively that the mass or class-drill exercises in 
addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division are ineffective and uneconomical. 
Mass drills provide unnecessary practice for the more capable third of the class, and hence 
are uneconomical; they do not provide enough practice for the less capable third of the 
class, and hence are ineffective. An economic distribution of drill requires that it provide 
a means of reaching the individual needs of the forty pupils of the class. 





200 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 
————— 

The department has not insisted on the use of any particular kind of practice material, 
Reports from the principals show that over 80 per cent are using one or more of five 
different kinds. The department has felt that each principal should be left to use that 
educational material which he and his teachers believe to be most effective, but the 
department then expects these principals and teachers to produce satisfactory results, 

This brief sketch will give a general notion of the methods by which the department 
believes the educational results in various subjects can be improved. Undoubtedly the 
objective standards of achievement, the various reports made to teachers, to principals 
and to the superintendent, the printing of bulletins for general distribution, the Pay 
duction of scientific practice material, have all contributed something toward the improve. 
ment of results in arithmetic. Of more pronounced effect probably than any of these 
factors, however, has been the stimulation among teachers of an inquiring attitude toward 
the whole problem of arithmetic instruction. The results of the tests have shown the 
need of improvement; they have shown that the problem of arithmetic teaching is not 
yet solved, and they have prompted many teachers to study their own work as the first 
step toward improving methods of instruction. 


MEASURING IMPROVEMENT IN ARITHMETICAL RESULTS 


Courtis standard tests, Series A, were given during the first year the Courtis tests 
were used in Boston, three years ago; and Series B has been used since then. Unforty- 
nately, for our purpose, this makes it impossible to compare the achievement of pupils in 
1912, when the tests were first given, with the achievement in 1915, after three years’ use, 

A most significant comparison can be made, however, between the results achieved 
in May, 1915, in the schools where the tests had been given for a period of three years 
and the results obtained in schools where the tests were given in May, 1915, for the first 
time. This comparison will show the cumulative effect of giving the tests in a group 
of schools over a three-year period. To make this comparison, the seventy elementary 
schools of Boston were divided into three groups and the results tabulated accordingly. 

Group A schools in. the following discussion are those in which the tests have been 
given since 1912. In Group A there are twenty-nine schools and 18,391 pupils represented, 

Group B schools are those which were added during the second year or the first half 
of the third year of testing. They are schools which have been tested for periods of from 
one to two years, schools in which the effects of the testing may legitimately vary. In 
Group B there are seventeen schools and 15,241 pupils represented. 

Group C schools are those in which the tests were given for the first time in May, 
1915. They are schools which have not been affected by the Courtis testing work in the 
city, except in so far as general discussion of the work has affected individual teachers 
or principals. It should be said, however, that principals of these schools have had oppor- 
tunity to introduce the practice material, and that several of them have done so. If these 
schools had not been at all affected by the system of educational measurement in the city, 
the superiority of the schools tested would have been even greater than it is. In GroupC 
there are seventeen districts and 11,836 pupils represented. 

In the following comparisons particular attention will be directed to the achievements 
of Group A schools and Group C schools, because these two groups represent the two 
extremes, the former having received the full effect of the testing work and the latter 
supposedly not any. 

It should be understood that the schools tested by Mr. Courtis in 1912-13 were 80 
selected as to represent the varying conditions found in the city. This same care has 
been taken in adding schools from year to year, so that one group of schools possesses no 
inherent superiority over another group. 

By way of summary let it be noted: (1) that all the public elementary schools of 
the city are involved in this comparison; (2) that each group (A-B-C) is representative 





ree ee FF TF” @ 


6 T & 


e. 
d 
rs 
st 
ip 
y 
y. 
n 
d. 
If 
m 
in 


Superintendencel) IMPROVING INSTRUCTION THRU MEASUREMENT 201 


aaa a a ea aa aN A it I a i el 
of the varying conditions in the city; and (3) that the number of pupils involved is 
sufficiently large to constitute a reliable basis of comparison. 


COMPARISON OF MEDIAN SCORES OF GROUP A, GROUP B, AND GROUP C 
SCHOOLS BY SUBJECTS. MAY, IgI5 


TABLE I 


ADDITION 





Group A Group C 


Accuracy 


79.07 per cent 
77.50 per cent 
78.17 per cent 
72.93 per cent 
70.00 per cent 


77.84 per cent 
74.15 per cent 
72.72 per cent 
71.61 per cent 
65.15 per cent 


76.41 per cent 


74.24 per cent 
74.14 per cent 

.64 per cent 
63.11 per cent 


The arrangement of the above table makes a comparison easy. For example, in the 
addition tests in Grade VIII, Group A schools achieved a median score of 14.4 examples 
attempted, with an accuracy of 79.07 per cent; Group C schools achieved a median 
score of 12.6 examples attempted, with an accuracy of 76.41 percent. From a compari- 
son of these scores we find that in addition Group A schools show a superiority over 
Group C schools of 1.8 examples attempted. This is a superiority of 14.3 per cent in 
amount of work done, and the table also shows a superiority of 2.66 per cent in accuracy 
for Group A schools. 

TABLE II 


SUBTRACTION 








Group A Group B Group C 


Accuracy 


89.73 per cent 
87.57 per cent 
88.01 per cent 
85.14 per cent 
83.63 per cent 


88.77 per cent 
86.26 per cent 
85.69 per cent 
84.44 per cent 
81.56 per cent 


86.92 per cent 


84.92 per cent 
88.73 per cent 
80.64 per cent 
78.28 per cent 


This comparison shows that, in subtraction, Group A schools possess a superiority 
over Group C schools of 2.2 examples attempted, or of 17.7 per cent. In achieving this 
increase of 17.7 per cent in the amount of work done, Group A schools have also at the 
same time surpassed Group C schools in accuracy by 2.81 per cent. 


TABLE III 


MULTIPLICATION 


Group A Group B 


Accuracy 


82.58 per cent : 81.19 per cent 
81.58 per cent ; 79.28 per cent 


78.45 per cent 
75.69 per cent 
70.95 per cent 


76.67 per cent 
76.01 per cent 
67.45 per cent 


This comparison shows that, in multiplication, Group A schools possess a superiority 
over Group C schools of 1.3 examples attempted, or of 12 per cent. Group A schools 
surpass Group C schools in accuracy by 2.16 per cent. 





NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION 


NT 
TABLE IV 
DIvIsIon 
fr a a rn 
Group B Group C 


92.08 per cent 
87.63 per cent 
85.02 per cent 
80.05 per cent 
59.11 per cent 


This comparison shows that, in division, Group A schools possess a superiority over 
Group C schools of 1.7 examples attempted, or of 15.5 per cent in amount of work done, 
In doing this increased amount of work, Group A schools have at the same time increased 
the accuracy with which the work has been done, so that they now surpass Group C schools 
in accuracy by 3.74 per cent. 

In the preceding discussion comparisons have been limited to Group A and Group C 
schools and to the results in Grade VIII. The following table, based on the preceding 
tables, institutes a comparison concerning all three groups of schools and the five grades 
from the fourth to the eighth, inclusive. The table shows the difference between the 
speed median and accuracy median achieved in Group A and in Group B and Group C 
schools respectively. 

The following table is to be interpreted as follows: In Grade VIII the pupils in 
Group A schools exceed in ability the pupils in Group B schools by a median score of 1.3 


TABLE V 


ADDITION 


Group B ScHOOoLs Group C ScHOOLS 


3.26 per cent 

4.03 per cent 

é 4.29 per cent 

.85 per cent : 6.89 per cent 


SUBTRACTION 


.96 per cent 2.81 per cent 
1.31 per cent 2.65 per cent 
2.32 per cent ‘ —.72 per cent 

-70 per cent é 4.50 per cent 
2.07 per cent p 5.35 per cent 


MULTIPLICATION 


.16 per cent 
.50 per cent 
.48 per cent 
.72 per cent 


.38 per cent 


3 
7 
0 
° 
7 


-74 per cent 





Superintendencel) JMPROVING INSTRUCTION THRU MEASUREMENT 203 


examples attempted and by 1.23 per cent in the accuracy with which they do their work; 
the same pupils surpass the pupils in Group C schools by a median score of 1.8 examples 
attempted and by 2.66 per cent in the accuracy with which they do their work. 

In the ten cases where the number is preceded by a minus sign the median for Group A 
schools is lower than the median for the group given. In the seventy cases where no sign 
precedes the figure the advantage is in favor of Group A schools. 

A few brief statements, without discussion, will summarize the conclusions to be drawn 
from this comparative table: 

1. In the amount of work done in the four fundamental operations, Group A schools 
show superiority over Group B schools in sixteen out of twenty comparisons and over 
Group C schools in eighteen out of twenty comparisons. 

2. In the accuracy with which the work is done, Group A schools show superiority 
over both Group B and Group C schools in seventeen out of twenty comparisons. 

3. The ten cases in which Group A schools are surpassed in speed or accuracy by 
Group B or Group C schools are distributed as follows: 


TABLE VI 


Group B Group C 


“as nO 0 


° 


4 


It is to be expected that in the earlier grades the differences between those schools 
tested and those not tested will be found to be small, because the cumulative effect of 
testing work can be hoped for only after several years of effort, and hence must always 
be found largely in the upper grades. 


SIGNIFICANT OBSERVATIONS 


1. The difference in amount of work done as shown in a comparison of Group A, 
Group B, and Group C schools is slight in the earlier grades and gradually grows more 
pronounced, until in the eighth grade the superiority of Group A schools over Group C 
schools is from 12 to 17.7 per cent. 

2. This gain of from 12 to 17.7 per cent in the amount of work done has also been 
accompanied by an actual increase in the accuracy with which that work is done. Altho 
the idea has not been developed in this paper, it is proper to point out that in all testing 
work undertaken by the department those pupils who do most work do it most accurately. 
This is a refutation of the contention of would-be critics that pupils are inaccurate in the 
Courtis tests because they are hurried in their work. 

3. The fact that the 18,391 pupils represented in Group A schools are graduating 
from the elementary school or are going into the next grade with varying degrees of 
superiority up to 17.7 per cent over the 11,839 pupils who have not been tested is alto- 
gether due directly or indirectly to the system of educational measurement in Boston. 

4. It is also a significant fact that this achievement has been brought about without 
the exercise of any administrative pressure of any kind whatsoever. The results are 
wholly due to the desire of principals and teachers to make the best possible use of the 
time of teachers and pupils in securing a reasonably satisfactory educational result. 

5. These results seem to prove two important propositions: (1) that the scientific 
measurement of educational results is possible and practicable in a large city school 
system; and (2) that educational measurement may be a means of improving those 
educational results. 





204 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Detroit 


ROUND TABLE OF COMPULSORY EDUCATION, SCHOOL 
CENSUS, AND CHILD WELFARE 


DOES A STRICT ENFORCEMENT OF THE COMPULSORY-EDUCATION Law 
ASSIST TEACHERS AND SUPERVISORS IN THEIR WORK? 


EDWARD B. SHALLOW, ASSOCIATE CITY SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, NEW YORK, Wy, 


On May 1, 1914, a Bureau of Attendance, School Census, and Child Welfare was 
organized in the city of New York. In the work of this bureau, an attempt is made to 
have an up-to-date record of every child of school age within the city, to see that all such 
children are kept regularly in school, if they are fit to attend, and to bring to the aid of 
children who need help the assistance of social welfare agencies. Thru the work of this 
bureau, we have gathered much useful information while enforcing the law. 

In the brief time at my disposal, I shall try to tell you how a strict enforcement of 
the compulsory-education law helps the work of teachers by increasing attendance, 
reducing retardation, and conserving a teacher’s nervous energy. 

1. Increasing attendance.—The 327 square miles of territory in the city of New York 
are divided into attendance districts, for the purposes of taking the school census and of 
enforcing the compulsory-education law. In this territory, there are approximately 
1,326,500 persons between five and eighteen years of age; 850,000 of these are enrolled in 
public schools. During the past year, the percentage of attendance on the register was 
go per cent. 

The following regulations governing the admission, transfer, and discharge of pupils 
in the city of New York may be of interest. Before these regulations were in force, 
thousands of children disappeared while transferring from one school to another. 

The regulations provide that: 

No pupil enrolled in a public school shall be discharged except by order of the prin- 
cipal for one of the following causes, which must be well established in each case: (1) proper 
and known admission to another school or to an institution; (2) the issuance of a duly 
authorized transfer; (3) commitment to a truant school or other reformatory institution; 
(4) transfer or expulsion in accordance with subdivisions 3, 4, and 5 of section 48 of the 
by-laws; (5) commitment to a charitable institution by a parent or guardian, a court, ora 
public officer; (6) notice from the director of attendance that an employment certificate 
has been issued and that the name of the child has been placed on the general suspense 
register; (7) death; (8) marriage; (9) graduation; in such case, the principal shall 
report the name of the child to the bureau of attendance, if it has not received a transfer 
to another school, or at the time of graduation has not obtained an employment certificate; 
(10) withdrawal by parent for any one of the following reasons: (a) instruction at home by 
a competent teacher, provided the district superintendent of the district in which the 
child lives has been notified and has approved the amount and the character of instruction; 
(b) physical disability certified as to cause and duration by a physician or other person 
duly recognized by the regents of the state of New York, provided the duration of such 
physical disability shall amount to one month; (c) mental disability when duly certified. 
as sufficient for discharge by the city superintendent of schools; (11) permanent removal 
from the city; (12) inability to locate the residence of the pupil, when such fact shall have 
been duly reported to the principal of the school by the director of attendance. 

The director of attendance shall maintain a general suspense register on which shall 
be placed the names of children residing in the city of New York, under sixteen years of 
age, who have been discharged and who are not regularly enrolled in a recognized school. 
He may require reports concerning the admission, transfer, and discharge of children from 
the public schools, and may arrange with schools not under the control of the board of 
education for similar reports. 





BE 


Q2BFaAE 


SERBRBSBREREQIRRE RSS FRESE SE 


Superintendence] THE COMPULSORY EDUCATION LAW 205 


Immigrant children admitted under bond by the immigration authorities to attend 
school for a given time shall not be discharged before the expiration of that time, except 
by permission of the director of attendance, nor shall a school record of attendance be 
jssued to any such immigrant child to enable it to obtain an employment certificate, 
except by permission of the director of attendance. 

When a pupil leaves school thru promotion or authorized transfer, a duplicate of his 
or her record card at the time of promotion or transfer shall be forwarded to the principal 
of the school to which such pupil is transferred. 

The date and cause of discharge shall be entered immediately on the original and the 
duplicate of the record card of such pupil discharged as hereinbefore provided. 

Every child is required to attend a school situated in the school district in which he 
resides. Within said district he shall attend the school nearest his residence. These 
requirements may be suspended by the city superintendent of schools. 

The better method of enforcing the compulsory-education law, made affective in 
May, 1914, in the city of New York, and a stricter accountability of each attendance 
officer for the amount of work done each day, have done much, not only in increasing 
attendance at school but in preventing juvenile delinquency. Yet the law is not 
strictly enforced; this is not due to the method provided for doing the work, but 
rather to the inadequate financial support which the departments gets from the city 

t. 

An evidence that a better enforcement of the compulsory-education law has increased 
attendance in the city of New York, may be seen in the fact that twelve years ago the 
attendance was only 86 per cent of the average register in public schools, whereas last year 
it was 90 per cent. A difference of 4 per cent less attendance in the enrolment of the 
New York schools for the past year would mean that 34,000 enrolled children had not 
attended school regularly. 

The most notable example of a city which is fairly successful in accounting for all the 

children of school age within its limits is the city of London. There the compulsory-school 
age is from five to fourteen years, and there the teachers are relieved from the anxiety of 
looking after absentees. The Bureau of School Attendance inspects the registers of every 
school to find out who is absent. The teaching staff has only to note the fact of 
absence. : 
The attendance department in the public schools of London accounts for all children 
of compulsory-school age within the city. Within the six years from 1905 to 1910, there 
were on the rolls of London schools from 97.3 per cent to 97.5 per cent of all the children 
of compulsory-school age. 

Under a strict enforcement of the compulsory-education law in London, the per- 
centage of attendance in public schools steadily increased for ten years, and showed a 
gain of nearly 10 percent. Under the same public supervision, the gain in attendance was 
at the same rate in private and parochial schools. An effort is made to account for every 
child of compulsory-school age, and, if such a child is not in school, to give a satisfactory 
reason for his absence. 

But how can any city, large or small, have a proper supervision of the school attend- 
ance of its children without an effective organization and a suitable force of agents for 
taking a school census and compelling attendance? In most American cities hitherto, the 
work of attendance officers has been largely a laughing-stock. The statistics of six years 
ago showed the following facts: 

New York had 9,300 school children for each attendance officer 

Boston had 5,800 school children for each attendance officer 

Philadelphia had 4,700 school children for each attendance officer 

Dublin had 2,600 school children for each attendance officer 

Glasgow had 2,104 school children for each attendance officer 

London had 2,086 school children for each attendance officer 








206 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


In keeping with the careless way in which American school boards generally look upon 
the matter of keeping children of compulsory-school age in school is the attitude of magis. 
trates in enforcing parental responsibility. 

In towns where there are no children’s courts, the same magistrate or justice of the 
peace before whom adults charged with felonies are arraigned is also called upon to hear 
charges against “hookey-players” and their negligent parents, and against those who 
employ children illegally. The magistrate’s view of these, to him, minor affairs is generally 
one of justice tempered with too much mercy, and parents are not held to a proper account. 
ability. Why, the dignified man on the bench may have “played hookey”’ himself forty 
or fifty years ago! The question comes to his mind: “Is non-attendance at school such 
a serious offense?’’ But the London magistrates think it is, because in one year they 
punished 10,600 adults for keeping children out of school. In the same year, New York— 
with about the same school enrolment—punished 1,500 adults for the same offense, 
Philadelphia in the same year enforced a greater responsibility than New York. Ip 
Germany, the punishment for keeping children from school during the compulsory. 
school age is accepted as almost certain, unless a valid reason can be given for absence, 

But illegal absence from school, and especially truancy, meant much less fifty years 
ago in this country. Then, when the population was more largely rural, if a boy wasa 
truant he usually went a-fishing, or played games in open fields, or went for a day toa 
circus in his own or a neighboring town. Now, if he plays truant in a large city, he is 
likely to fall into the worst of companionship, to consort with loafers and juvenile criminals, 
and to learn vice and crime. Statistics show that most of the juvenile criminals haye 
been at some time truants. 

The following excerpt from Bulletin No. 573 of the United States Bureau of Education, 
entitled Compulsory School Attendance, is also significant as showing the effect of a strict 
enforcement of the compulsory-education law in increasing attendance: 

An experiment was conducted by the truancy department of the Indianapolis schools 
several years ago by having the truant officer visit the school daily and obtain the names 
of all absentees. All cases of absence were visited, even tho a good excuse, such as sick- 
ness, was known to exist. Altho many children were excluded at that time, as medical 
inspection had been recently introduced, the absentees during the four-months’ period 
were 20 per cent less than for the corresponding period of the preceding year. The method 
was discontinued, as it imposed too much work upon the officer, whose duties were already 


heavy. Money so expended would, however, bear dividends far beyond those accruing to 
the more or less haphazard method under present conditions. 


As stated in this report, money expended in a strict enforcement of the compulsory- 
education law would bear good dividends. But if we are to account for every child of 
school age and see that he is in school, cities should do more in providing suitable special 
classes and schools for the physically and mentally defective, for the blind, the deaf, 
the crippled, and the mentally abnormal. Some cities have made good beginnings along 
these lines. Such efforts would do much in saving ultimate expense for charitable and 
correctional institutions for adults. 

In one attendance district in the city of New York, comprising 35 schools, the per- 
centage of attendance has increased in every school during the past two years, since the 
work of the attendance Bureau has been brought under an efficient system. Where 
formerly there was uncertainty and speculation as to how much work each attendance 
officer was actually doing each day, now it is a matter of definiteness and responsibility. 
If a pupil is detained from school temporarily thru sickness, poverty, or neglect, his case 
is not neglected. He is returned to school at the earliest possible time. 

2. Reduction of retardation in studies—When we consider the waste in money and 
time, both to the individual and to the community, occasioned by the retardation of 
children in school, and realize that much of such retardation is due to unnecessary and 
preventable absence, it will be seen that money expended in a strict enforcement of 
compulsory-education laws is largely offset by money saved in teachers’ salaries and 





a FES (SRSSSPRF FS ie 


ion, 
rict 
vols 
nes 
ck- 
ical 
iod 
10d 
ady 
z to 


B&B oS 


B &8SR SEES 


2. 


a28 


Superintendence] THE COMPULSORY EDUCATION LAW 207 

Tr ciemernestperneressestenmstsonsnnemaigencetreetneibaliineetarraniiiigieettiainatiinibimany mtnenconnatinssineuiieaiaio 

school equipment. The truth of this statement is, it would seem, axiomatic. An appeal 

to common experience is sufficient to justify it. A proper record of promotions and non- 
omotions in almost any community will show this. 

The following extracts from the records of the bureau of attendance in the city of 
New York are pertinent: 

The significance of the practice of extending the attendance service beyond the mere 
control of truancy by police methods is further emphasized by the summary of facts 

ing the relation of absence to non-promotion. 

In a study made of non-promotions in New York a few years ago, nearly one-half of 
the pupils who failed of promotion were absent over two-fifths of the school term, and 
70 per cent were absent from school at least 30 days during the half-year. These data, 
furthermore, take account only of the pupils who failed of promotion on June 30. 

Important as it unquestionably is to discover and control truancy in its incipiency, 
it is obvious that the occasional truant is not the only problem-maker. A conservative 
pr of attendance control must find effective means for dealing with the very large 
number of children who by sporadic absence for trivial causes not only lessen their own 
chances for making satisfactory progress in school, but, by requiring an undue amount of 
the attention of teachers, handicap those pupils who are regular in attendance. 


3. Saving in nervous energy of teachers and supervisors —That well-planned and 
enthusiastic teaching is facilitated by the regularity of the attendance of pupils needs no 
demonstration. A school organization which works smoothly naturally makes no extra 
draughts on the nervous energy of the teacher. But where irregularity in the attendance 
of the pupils is common, it is difficult to plan and difficult to execute. Where a teacher’s 
time is divided between teaching and acting as attendance officer, energy which should 
be given to teaching is lost. 

It was seriously proposed in one of our large cities last year that the attendance- 
officer force should be reduced or dispensed with, and that the teachers should, before 
and after school hours, investigate all absences of pupils by visits to their homes. 

That a teacher should visit homes of pupils in a rural community, or even in a smaller 

city, is advisable. Such visits often help the teacher in knowing how to deal with certain 
pupils and in getting in touch with parents. But in a large cosmopolitan city, I would 
not ask teachers to visit homes. The disadvantages of the practice in such places are too 
great for the results obtained. Attendance officers should be engaged, if possible, who 
have both the spirit and the earnestness of the teacher and of the missionary. Such 
officers’ visits to homes may result in as much, or possibly more, good than the visit of a 
teacher. 
In conclusion, let me urge upon the officials of every large city-school system the 
importance of having an efficient bureau, both for the taking of an up-to-date school 
census, and for a prompt, strict, and efficient enforcement of the compulsory-education law. 
And let me add that, in my judgment, the time is not far distant when the large American 
cities will have to know, at all times, not only who the school children are, and where they 
are, but also who the adult residents of the city are, what their occupations are, and where 
they may be found. Then such cities may be able to know what percentage of their 
children of school age are in school. 


DISCUSSION 


Henry D. HERVEY, superintendent of schools, Auburn, N. Y.—As applied to the 
field of education, democracy demands absolute equality of educational opportunity for 
all, It demands that every human being capable of being educated shall be given his fair 
and equal chance to attain the largest measure of self-development. We have made 
progress toward the realization of this ideal in the past. Schools have been made free and 
accessible toall. The principle that schools supported by all should meet the needs of all 
has been fairly well established, tho progress in the discovery of varying types to be 





208 NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION [Detroit 


educated, and in the adaptation of courses and methods to meet the needs of these vary. 
ing types when discovered, has been slow and is as yet far from complete. Whether 
the faith which the people now fondly place in the public schools will continue unshaken 
depends largely upon the sincerity, the vigor, and the skill with which this supreme 
task of discovery and adaptation is prosecuted. No greater calamity could befall the 
schools and the nation than to have that faith destroyed. 

But the policy of free education in a democracy demands not only that there shal] 
be a school for every child with instruction skilfully adapted to meet his individual need; 
it demands also and equally that every child shall be in school and in fit condition to 
receive and to profit by the instruction offered. A free school is a mockery to the child 
who is not free to enter. It is a mockery to the child who, by reason of physical or mental 
limitations, cannot assimilate what is taught. The democratic ideal demands a school 
offering to each what is best for each, with freedom for each to take what is offered, 
With increasing energy, intelligence, and efficiency, the majority of the states have pro- 
tected each child in his right to attend the school—the majority of the states, but not 
all; hence the Keating-Owen bill. 

What justification or necessity is there for this bill? The Keating-Owen bill is based 
on the belief that self-preservation is the first law of a nation; that good citizens are 
necessary to the welfare, to the very life, of the state; that good citizens are as necessary 
in one section of the nation as in another; that good citizens can be produced only thru 
education; that child labor interferes with education, spoils the future citizen in the 
making, rendering him alike unfit for full productive efficiency in his maturer years and 
for future education; that the children of the nation have as much right to protection 
in one section of the nation as in another; that the nation has no right to permit the 
wanton waste of the physical and mental capital of the coming generation in any part 
of its domain; that the prerequisite and fundamental condition of all preparedness is 
intelligent citizenship; that Macaulay was right when over sixty years ago, speaking in 
the House of Parliament on the evils of child labor, he said: “If ever we are forced to yield 
the foremost place among commercial nations, we shall yield it to some people pre- 
eminently vigorous in mind and body’”’; that the moral law should be nationalized; that 
the feeling of human brotherhood is not a matter of geography; that the personal responsi- 
bility of a citizen for the rights, the welfare, and the happiness of the nation’s children 
does not end with the boundary lines of his own state; that the enlightened and patriotic 
consumer who abhors child labor because he knows the cost to the child and to the state 
has a right to be freed from the possibility of buying unwittingly goods that bear the taint 
of such labor; that the manufacturer doing business in a state that protects its children 
should not be forced to compete with a manufacturer in a state that delivers its children 
over to destruction; in a word, that what affects the peace, the prosperity, the happiness, 
and the greatness of the nation as a whole is the supreme concern of the whole nation; 
that if the protection of the childhood of the nation is the supreme duty of the nation, 
then the nation must perform that duty in the only way open to it, namely, by national 
legislation along the lines indicated in the Keating-Owen bill. 

Who that knows conditions as they exist in certain portions of our country today 
can longer doubt the wisdom, the justice, and the necessity of immediate federal 
legislation? If there be such a doubter, let him consider what it means in terms of physical 
and mental deterioration, loss of youth, loss of educational opportunity, and loss of future 
economic efficiency that 27,000 children between ten and fourteen years of age are at 
this moment working in factories; that 17,000 more between ten and sixteen years of 
age are working in mines; that 122,000 between ten and sixteen years of age are working 
in factories in states where they may work nine, ten, or eleven hours a day; that 29,000 
between ten and sixteen years of age work in factories in states where they may work 
at night; and that hundreds of thousands more, tho working in states that have placed 





= 


eo on 


oarTrrmrReeaonw= 


od 
re 
ry 
nu 
1€ 
id 
on 
1€ 
rt 
is 
in 
id 
e- 
at 
i- 
n 
ic 
te 


o = 


_—_ @ 
-_- =< 


eo roermmhne om es 


Superintendence} THE COMPULSORY EDUCATION LAW 209 


enlightened child-labor laws on their statute-books, are not being sufficiently protected 
because of lax enforcement or non-enforcement of these laws. 

A single word, in closing, with reference to the Lockwood continuing census bill 
now before the New York legislature. In my judgment, this bill should become law, and 
should serve as a model in other states, for the following reasons: 

1. A continuing census is the only kind that is either serviceable or sensible. A 
school census that is up to date only once a year or once in four years is on a par with an 
attendance officer who is on the job once a week or once a month. 

2. A school census as ordinarily taken by a few hungry ward heelers who are thereby 
rewarded for loyalty to the “grand old party” is inaccurate at best, is wasteful of public 
money, and is out of date before the figures can be compiled. 

3. The Lockwood bill groups together the agencies that belong together—the census- 
taking agencies, the compulsory-attendance agencies, and the child-welfare agencies. 
Child-welfare work must go hand in hand with the enforcement of the compulsory-educa- 
tion law. Few children stay away from school from choice. Back of almost every case 
of chronic truancy is the enfeebled home, or the home divided against itself, or no home 
atall. The child is a victim not a transgressor. 

4. Under this bill all these agencies are centered in the board of education and the 
superintendent of schools, and all employees are appointed by the board and are made 
directly and solely responsible to it. 

5. The home is given its fair share of responsibility. The parent must report promptly 
to the census bureau when his child becomes of school age, when he moves from one school 
to another, when he goes to work; and, upon moving to another city in the state, he must 
report immediately the names of all children in his family under eighteen years of age. 

6. The census bureau is empowered to collect data with reference to illiteracy and 
the enforcement of the child-labor laws and is given power to enforce these laws. 

7. A parent who fails in his duty under the law may be fined and imprisoned, and a 
city that fails in its duty may forfeit its entire state appropriation. 








SUPPLEMENTARY LIST OF ACTIVE MEMBERS 


1916 


1916 


1914 


1915 


1916 


1915 


1901 


1916 


1915 


ENROLLED SINCE THE PUBLICATION OF THE YEARBOOK FOR 1915-16, 
DECEMBER 31, I915 


ARKANSAS 
Ury McKenzie, A.B., ’oo. 
Superintendent of Schools; 604 Locust St., Texarkana. 


CALIFORNIA 


Errie Bette McFappen, A.B., ’oo, Stanford Univ. 
1900, Supervisor of English, State Normal School, Waller and Buchanan Sts., San Francisco. 
THERESE DormeveR, Life Dip. a 
1914, Teacher, Barnes District School, Kern County; Box 75, Lost Hills; exp. off., 
McKittrick. 
INSTITUTIONS 


Scnoot Women’s CLUB OF OAKLAND. 

President, Rose Beaty, 390 Alcatraz Ave., Oakland. 
San BERNARDINO COUNTY FREE LrBRarRy. 

Librarian, Caroline S. Waters, San Bernardino. 


CONNECTICUT 


Epwarp Hersert CAMERON, Ph.D., ’06, Yale Univ. 
Assistant Professor of Education, Yale University; 848 Orange St., New Haven. 
C. Witpur Cary. 
Cary-Stuart Teachers’ Agency, Hartford. 
Hersert O. CLrovucs, A.B., Bowdoin Coll. 
1912, Inspector, State Board of Education, Deep River. 
W. S. Daxtn, B.Sc., Tchrs. Coll., Columbia Univ. ; 
Superintendent of Schools, Canton; Inspector, State Board of Education; 31 
Norfolk St., Hartford. 
N. SEARLE Licat, A.B., ’08, Yale Univ. 
1910, Agent, State Board of Education, Capitol, Hartford. 


INSTITUTION 
Pusiic Lrprary OF BRISTOL. 
Librarian, Charles L. Wooding, Bristol. 


DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 


Lucy Etta Moren, Grad., ’75, Mass. St. Nor. Sch., ’83, Spencerian Bus. Coll.; M.D., ’97, Med. 
Coll., Howard Univ. 
1883, Principal of Myrtilla Miner Normal; 1839 Vernon St., Washington. 


IDAHO 
Hat G. Bive. 
1914, Superintendent of Schools; 410, 3d Ave., North, Twin Falls. 
Curnton Emmett Rose, A.B., ’99, Univ. of Kans.; A.M., ’13, Columbia Univ. 
1915, Superintendent of Schools, Boise. 


ILLINOIS 


Witt S. Gray, A.M., ’14, Columbia Univ. 

1915s, instructor in Education, School of Education, University of Chicago, Chicago. 
Vernon L. Mancun, A.B., ’08, Cornell Coll.; A.M., ’13, St. Univ. of Iowa. 

1915, Superintendent of ools; 522 S. Randolph St., Macomb. 
Ricuarp E. BarpweE Lt, A.B., Univ. of Ill. 

Superintendent of Schools; 322 Lake Ave., Woodstock. 

ALFRep O. Brown. 

1912, With Public School Publishing Co., 1211 N. Prairie St., Bloomington. 
Ernest E. Cote, LL.D., ’99. 
Distric' Repashatendent of Schools; 2548 Smalley Ct., Chicago. 
DeWitt Etwoop, B.Sc., ’95, Lawrence Coll. 

1893, Superintendent of Schools, Charleston. 


2ir 





NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION 





ILLINOIS—Continued 
1916 Lou M. Hargis. 
1913, County Superintendent of Schools; 610, 18th St., Rock Island. 
WALTER J. HARROWER. 
Principal of School; 413 E. 6oth St., Chicago. 
Exizaseta B. Harvey. 
1914, Superintendent of County Schools; 1025 Pearl St., Belvidere. 
Dett R. Henry., A.B., ’13, Ind. Univ.; A.M., ’16, Univ. of Chicago. 
1915, "Superintendent of Schools, Jerseyville. 
W. E. HERBERT. 
1901, Superintendent of County Scheels, Pontiac. 
JoserH Henry Jounston, A.B., ’10, A.M., ’15, Univ. of Chicago. 
ellow in Education, University of Illinois; 702 W. Nevada St., Urbana. 
Cuagies C. Krauskopr, A.B., ’93, A.M., ’94, Ind. Univ. 
1904, Principal of Chicago School; res., goo N. 8th Ave., Maywood. 
F. M. Muatic. . 
Superintendent of County Schools, Joliet. 
EvizaBeto W. Murpay. 
1915, District Superintendent of Schools; 5120 Sheridan Rd., Chicago. 
E. Haprer Payne. 
With Henry Holt & Co., 623 S. Wabash Ave., Chicago. 
Wittram C. Payne. 
Principal of Healy School, Chicago. 
Lewis ALPHEUS REISNER, B.Sc., ’07, Northwestern Univ. 
1913, Superintendent of Schools; 633 Whitney St., Belvidere. 
Harortp Orpway Rue, B.Sc., ’08, C.E., ’09, Dartmouth Coll.; Ph.D., ’15, Univ. of Il. 
Instructor in Education, University of Chicago; 5813 Dorchester Ave., Chicago. 
RALEIGH ScHORLING, A.B., ’11, Univ. of Mich. 
1g11, Instructor, University High School, University of Chicago; Quadrangle Club 
Chicago. . 
Harry W. SHROYER. 
Agent, Charles Scribner’s Sons; 843 Lakeside Pl., Chicago. 
Jenny H. Snow, se Sc., (i Univ. of Chicago 
1913, ead of — Arts Depectment, Chicago Normal College, 68th St. and Stewart 
Ave., 
Merton A. Sturces, LL. : a 
1909, Chief Naturalization Examiner, United States Bureau of N aturalization, 776 Federal 
Bldg., Chicago. 
Cuar.es H. Watts. 
1902, Superintendent of County Schools; 513 W. Oregon St., Urbana. 
Rosert I. Waite, A.B., ’02, Albion Coll.; A.M., ’03, Univ. of Mich. 
1907, Superintendent of Schools; 127 Hinsdell Pl., Elgin. 
A. L. WaITTENBERG. 
wo mer act pate Examining Board, Office, Superintendent of Public Instruc- 
tion, Springfield 
Joun Frepericx Witey, Ph.B., ’02, DePauw Univ.; A.M., ’14, Univ. of Ill. 
1916, Superintendent of Schools; 2700 Prairie Ave., Mattoon. 
Crark G. WRIGHT. 
<< ~ me of Schools, District 108, Lake County; 436 Oakwood Ave., Highland 
ark. 


Arvin P. ZetTerBerG, A.B., ’os5, A.M., ’12, Knox Coll. 
1915, Superintendent of Lockport Township High School, 13th St., Lockport. 


INSTITUTION 


Mr. Morris COoLLece. 
President, J. S. Noffsinger, Mt. Morris. 


PUBLIC SCHOOL (CHICAGO) 


FRANCIS PARKMAN SCHOOL, s5tst St. and sth Ave. 
Principal, John B. McGinty. 


INDIANA 
BELLE CAFFEE. 
1916, Supervisor of Kindergartens and Primary Grades, Evansville. 


Artuur Deamer, A.B., Ind. Univ.; A.M., Columbia Univ. 
1909, Superintendent of Schools; 1307 Clay St., Laporte. 


Emma DONNAN. 


Supervising Principal, Public Schools; 232 N. Capitol Ave., Indianapolis. 


Mertin M. Dounzar, A.B., LL.B., ’12, Ind. Univ. 
191s, Superintendent of Schools, Hartford City. 


Epcar NELSON MENDENHALL. 
Superintendent of Schools, Goshen. 


Wa ter S. Painter, A.M., Columbia Univ. 
IgII, Superintendent of Schools; 150 N. Court St., Crown Point. 





Superintendence) SUPPLEMENTARY LIST OF ACTIVE MEMBERS 
ee el 


IOWA 
. H. BLAKELy. 
116 W 1909, Principal of High School; 815 Forest Ave., Fort Dodge. 


ESTELLE Coon. 
Superintendent of County Schools, Brooklyn. 
Eva M. FLEMING. . 
Superintendent of Schools, Decorah. 
L. E. GoopYyEar. 
With Goodyear-Marshall Publishing Co., 224, 29th St., E., Cedar Rapids. 
E. T. Housn, Ph.B.,’04; A.B.,’12, Highland Park Coll. 
Superintendent of Schools; 618 N. Carroll St., Carroll. 
M. L. Howe tt. ‘ t 
1910, Superintendent of Wright County Schools, Clarion. 
Anson T. Hux11t, Ph.B., ’87; A.M., ’go. 
1898, Superintendent of Schools; 820 W. 4th St., Waterloo. 
J. S. McCowan, A.M., ’oo, Grinnell Coll. 
President, Iowa State Teachers Association; (1911) Principal of High School; 
1502 Jones St., Sioux City. 
WrttraM F. McFArRvanp. 
1913, Member, Board of Education, Burlington. 
H. C. MOELLER. 
1915, Superintendent of County Schools, Waterloo. 
Wru1am W. OVERMYER. 
1912, Superintendent of Schools; 316 S. sth St., Lyons. 
Joun R. Stacks, B. Didac, ’o1, Iowa St. Tchrs. Coll. 
1909, Superintendent of Sac County Schools; 331 S. 11th St., Sac City. 


BLANCHE STODDARD. | 
1913, Superintendent of County Schools, Eldora. 


J. P. Street, A.B., ’14, Highland Park Coll. 
1915, Superintendent of Schools, Elkader. 


F. H. SuUNDERLIN. 
Superintendent of Schools; 821 E. Main St., Estherville. 


Bruce W. TALLMAN, Ph.D., Simpson Coll. 
1914, Superintendent of Schools, Hampton. 


INSTITUTION 


ELLsworTtH COLLEGE. 
President, I. F. Meyer, Iowa Falls. 


KANSAS 


Lee Harrison. igh 
Secretary, Board of Administration, State House, Topeka. 


Joun B. Herrevrincer, A.B.,’07, Baker Univ. 
Superintendent of Schools, Arkansas City. 


CLARENCE T. Rice, A.B., B.Sc., ’11, Univ. of Kans. 
191s, Principal of Argentine High School; 934 Barnett St., Kansas City. 


KENTUCKY 


Heneretta V. Race, A.M., Columbia Univ. 
oo = of Psychological Laboratory, City of Louisville, care of Board of Education, 
uisville. 


LOUISIANA 


James Maurice BARHAM. | 
1913, Parish Superintendent of Education, Marksville. 


R. G. CorKERN. 


Superintendent of Education, Allen Parish, Oberlin. 
W. McG. Dotiernine, B.Sc.,’97, La. St. Univ.; M.D., ’o04, Univ. of Ky. 
Parish Superintendent of Schools, Pioneer. 
Artuur C. Lewis. 
1906, Superintendent of County Schools, Amite. 


L. H. STEVENs. 
1913, Superintendent of Education, Morehouse Parish; Box 38, Bastrop. 


MAINE 


Dennis J. CALLAHAN, A.B., ’76, Bates Coll. 

191s, Superintendent of Schools; ror Pine St., Lewiston. 
Cuartes N. Perkins, A.B., ’93, A.M., ’96, Colby Coll. 

1912, Superintendent of Schools, Waterville. 


C. A. Recorp, A.B., ’92. 
1915, Superintendent of Schools, Sanford. 





NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION 


MARYLAND 


1916 Sretia L. Brown. 
1910, Principal of Fullerton School, Overlea. 


MASSACHUSETTS 


1910 Joun C. Pacxarp, A.M., ’89, Wesleyan Univ. 
1890, Head of Science Department, High School; 14 Searle Ave., Brookline. 
1916 CAROLINE D. ABoRN. 
1906, Director of Public Kindergartens, School Committee Rooms, Mason St., Boston, 
Apert L. Barsour, A.B., A.M., Brown Univ. 
1909, Superintendent of Schools; 14 Linden Pl., Quincy. 
Joun T. Gycer, B.Sc., ’13, Tchrs. Coll., Columbia Univ. 
1913, Princi "of Phillip School; Box 51, Wellesley Hills. 
Cart Horman, A.B., ’o9, Bates Coll. 
1914, Superintendent of Schools, Falmouth. 
CaRROLL R. REED, A.B.,’06, A.M., ’15, Harvard Univ. 
Superintendent of Schools, Amherst. 


MICHIGAN 
Mary EpirHa O’Brien. 
_ Teacher, Public Schools; 239 Van Dyke St., Detroit. 
J. A. Lancston, A.B., ’or, Earlham Coll. 
Superintendent of Schools, Belding. 
O. R. Cooper, M.D., ’03, Rush Med. Coll. 
1910, Head of Science Department, Emmanuel Missionary College, Berrien Springs. 
Marion D. FArrBarrn. 
Principal of Gillies School; 1216 Cass Ave., Detroit. 
Sapre M. ALLEY. 
Grade Principal, Northwestern High School; 356 W. Fort St., Detroit. 
Cecit J. Barnum, B.Sc., Mich. Agri. Coll.; B.Pd., Mich. St. Nor. Coll. 
IgIS, Commissioner + Schools, Beaverton. 
CLARA BEVERLEY. 
Supervisor of English, Elementary Schools; 48 W. Ferry Ave., Detroit. 
C. J. Borcuarpt, A.B.,’99, Univ. of Mich. 
19I5, Superintendent of Schools, ‘ eomee 
W. C. Bucuanan, A.B., ’14, Kalamazoo C 
191s, Superintendent of Schools, Nxalkasks. 
Frank Peyton Buck, A.B., ’04, Univ. of Mich. 
IgIo, Superintendent of Schools; P.O. Box 295, St. Johns. 
Norman W. Cameron, A.B., Washington Univ.; Ph.D., Univ. of Pa. 
Department of Education, Western State Normal School; 308 Douglas Ave, 


Ivan E. Cuapman, A.B., ’os, LL.B., ’07, Univ. of Mich. 
— of Business ‘Department, Northwestern High School; 850 Ferry Park Ave., 
etroit. 


P. R. CLEARY. 
President, Cleary Business College, Ypsilanti. 
BENJAMIN D. Epwarps, Ph.B., ’10, Mount Union Coll. 
1910, Director of Education, Detroit Technical Institute, 303, Y.M.C.A., Detroit. 
Heten A. FIELp, B.Sc., ’13, Columbia Univ. 
1913, Instructor in Kindergarten Supervision, and Critic Teacher, Michigan State Normal 
College, Ypsilanti. 
Suretey Ernest Frexp, A.B., ’12, Univ. of Mich. 
1915, Superintendent of Schools, Williamston. 
Frances A. Foster, B.L., ’97, Univ. of Mich. 
1916, Northwestern High School; 124 Charlotte St., Detroit. 
Grant W. Gorpon. 
Principal of Franklin School; 144 Commonwealth Ave., Detroit. 
Orto J. Grar, A.B., ’04, Union Coll.; A.M., ’10, Univ. of Nebr. 
1908, President, Emmanuel Missionary College, Berrien Springs. 
C. H. Grirrey, A.B., ’10 
1915, Superintendent of Schools; 21 State St., Adrian. 


Mercy JANE Hayes. 
1913, Principal of Crosman School; 2294 Jefferson Ave., E., Detroit. 


Recenta R. HELLER. 
1906, a of Kindergartens, First and Second Grades, Public Schools; 493, 2d Ave., 
etroit 


J. Crarence Howe tt. 
1913, Detroit High School of Commerce; 268 Oregon Ave., Detroit. 
Scart Inouis, A.B., ’14, Olivet Coll. 
Superintendent of Schools, Dryden. 
Vircrmnia M. Jackson, Pratt Inst., ’13. ‘ 
1916, Northeastern High School; 317 E. Jefferson Ave., Detroit. 
Austin F. Jones, A.B., ’06, Hillsdale Coll. 
House Principal, Northwestern High School, Detroit. 





Guperintendencel) SUPPLEMENTARY LIST OF ACTIVE MEMBERS 


a a aa ac Ea a ar 
MICHIGAN—Continued 


1916 JACOB W. Ketper, A.M., 34, Tchrs. Coll., Columbia Univ. 
191s, Superinten ent of Schools; 714 Grove St., Petoskey. 
Mrs. CHRISTIANA KINNEY. 
Principal ‘of Hancock School; 86 Commonwealth Ave., Detroit. 
Harry D. Lee, A.B., ’o9 
1913, Supucienendent of Schools; 637 Quincy St., Hancock. 
CuarLes W. LuDKE. 
Commercial Teacher; 456 Ferdinand Ave., Detroit. 
Hiram W. McInrtosa. 
Superintendent of Schools; 215 E. Pine St., Boyne City. 
DantreEL W. McMILLan. 
1914, Head of Commercial Department, Western High School; 70 LaSalle Blvd., Detroit. 
Joun Merritt, B.Pd., ’10, A.B., ’11, Mich. St. Nor. Coll. 
Igts, Principal of Joba F. Bennett School; 1637 Vinewood Ave., Detroit. 
Artour B. MoeuimMann, A.B., ’12, Univ. of Mich. 
1914, Assistant, Eastern High School; 415 Helen Ave., Detroit. 
J. A. Morse. 
1912, Supervisor of Substitutes and New Teachers, 50 Broadway, Detroit. 
Wituram A. Morse, A.B., ’06, Univ. of Mich. 
1903, Principal of Western High School; 395 Vinewood Ave., Detroit. 
Joun Ernest Porter, A.B., ’03, Harvard Univ. 
191s, Teacher o Algebra, Northwestern High School; 906 Lothrop Ave., Detroit. 
Maun A. PRIEsT. 
1902, Principal of Grammar School; 297 W. Hancock Ave., Detroit. 
Ricuarp Rwer Putnam, B.Sc., ’95, Univ. of Mich. 
1898, Head of Chemistry Department, Eastern High School; 528 Field Ave., Detroit. 
Cunton A. Rice, Life Dip., ’13, Mich. St. Nor. Coll. 
1913, Superintendent of Schools, North Branch. 
C. F. Switzer. 
Principal of Junior High School, Grand Rapids. 
Exits G. VAN DEVENTER. 
1903, Superintendent of Schools; 110 Denton St., Hamtramck. 
THEODORE E. Wacnenr. A.B., ’o5, Univ. of Mich. 
1914, Science Teacher, Northwestern High School; 56 Columbus Ave., Detroit. 
W. D. Wate. 
1915, Superintendent of Schools, Clio. 
CHARLOTTE A. WILLITs. 
1908, Vice-Principal, Detroit Day School for the Deaf; 114 Pasadena Ave., 
etroit. 
Wittarp W. Wrxson, A.B., ’15, Univ. of Mich. 
1915, District No. 3, Hamtramck; res., Davison Rd., R. No. 2, Highland Park. 


INSTITUTION 


EMMANUEL MissIONARY COLLEGE, LIBRARY. 
President, O. J. Graf; Librarian, Katherine Smith, Berrien Springs. 


MINNESOTA 


Joseraine T. Berry, A.B., ’93, Univ. of Kans.; A.M., ’10, Columbia Univ. 
1913, “— ¢ -~ je of Home Economics, University of Minnesota; 2176 Scudder 
t., St. Paul. 
C. E. Campton, A.B., Univ. of Minn. 
1915, Superintendent of Schools, Two Harbors. 
F. W. Dossyn. 
1912, Superintendent of Schools; 106, 7th St., S.E., Little Falls. 
Witiram J. Gutarie, A.B., ‘99 Univ. of Mich. 
IgIS, Superinten ent of Schools, Glenwood. 
James Wyre Ricwarpson, B.Sc., ’06, A.M., ’13 
Research Director, tedependent District No. 27, Office, care of Superintendent of 
Schools, Hibbing. 
NATALIE THORNTON, A.B., ’08, Beloit Coll. 
1914, Dean of ‘Women, State Normal School, Wheeler Hall, Moorhead. 
Grorce WALTER Wit.eETT, A.B., Des Moines Coll.; A.M., St. Univ. of Iowa. 
1915, Principal of High School, Hibbing. 


MISSISSIPPI 


1916 Benjamin H. Asuman, A.B., ts, Valparaiso Univ. 
1915, Principal of High School, Ocean Springs. 


MISSOURI 
igtt GerTRUDE E. GREENE. 


1912, Dean of Kansas City Normal School; Lyndhurst Hotel, 40th and McGee. Sts., 
Kansas City. 





NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION 


§ 
es “ 
MISSOURI—Continued 
1916 Wiiram B. Irtner, Special Cert., ’87, Cornell Univ. 
Architect, Board of Education, St. Louis. I 


Mary CLIFTON a= 
Supervisor ‘of Kindergartens; 5889 Cates Ave., St. Louis. 


Peter J. McKrntey, B.Pd., Mo. St. Nor. Sch. 
I9Is, Superintendent of County Schools; 803 Clay St., St. Charles. 


CHARLES FRANKLIN RipptE, B.Sc., Tchrs. Coll., Univ. of Mo. 
1909, Superintendent of Schools, Edina. 


MONTANA 


Grant E. Finca, Ph.B., ’90, A.M., ’93, D.Sc., ’07, Upper Iowa Univ. 
Director of Training, Montana State Normal College; 516 S. Atlantic St., Dillon. 


NEBRASKA 
Writiam CLIve Braprorp. 
With University Publishing Co., Lincoln. 


Hannau C. Jounson, B.Sc. 
1909, Superintendent of County Schools, Albion. 


NEW HAMPSHIRE 


cas a her of English and Arithm h Grade, Model 
1915, Teacher o! ish and Arithmetic, 7th Grade, el School; Penmanshi 
Normal School, Keene. ©, State 


NEW JERSEY 

Jesse T. GopFREy. 

1913, Superintendent of Schools; 45 Prospect St., Madison. 
J. CaysE Morrison, B.Sc., ’15, Tchrs. Coll. 

1915S, Superintendent of Schools, Chatham. 
Wituram D. SNYDER. 

1912, Supervising Principal of Schools, Penns Grove. 
James M. Stevens, A.M., ’90, Wes. Uni 

1903, en 3, of Schoois; 624, 8th St., Ocean City. 
CHARLES J. STRAHAN. 

Superintendent of County Schools, Freehold. 


Cartes C. Witson, B.Sc., ‘4. Harvard Univ. 
1912, Principal of Lincoln High School; 555 Bramhall Ave., Jersey City. 


NEW YORK 


Forp STrtMAN CLARKE, Ph.B., ’10, Alfred Univ. 
1914, —- Professor of Philosophy and Education, Alfred University; 33 S. Main St., 


LoratneE W. Bitts, B.Sc., ’07, Syracuse Uni 
Superintendent of Scly of Schools; rae 3d St., Waterford. 


Anne Dopey BLITz. 
tots, Dean, William Smith College, Geneva. 
KaTuarine M. Curistopuer, A.B., ’or, Univ. of Mich. 
1915, _— Julia Richman High School, 60 W. 13th St., New York. 


Ear.e CLARKE, L 
1916, Chie prstiotichen, New York City Department of Education, 500 Park Ave., New 
or! 
Frances ELLEN Dutrtinc. 
Assistant Professor of Music, Hunter College; 509 W. r21st St., New York. 
Grorce M. Etmenporr, Ph.B., ’o5, Union Coll. 
1910, Superintendent of Schools; 424 Margaret St., Herkimer. 
Expert K. FREtTWweELt. 
Teachers College, Columbia University, New York. 
Frank M. Hamitton, A.B., £2. Dip., ’08, Association Phonetique. 
tors, German and French Department, Nichols School, Amherst and Colvin Sts., Buffalo. 
GRANVILLE B. Jerrers, A.B., ’03, Stanford Univ. 
Principal of Teachers Training School, Schenectady. 
H. H. LamBerton, B.Sc., A.M., ’15, Columbia Univ. 
191s, Tak B, of Schools, Whitehall. 
Frep Tomas LENA, A.B., ’07, Dartmouth Coll.; A.M., ’15, Columbia Univ. 
1913, Teacher of Mathematics, Saunders Trades School; 78 Hamilton Ave., Yonkers. 
WrttraM J. Manton, A.B., ’11, Hamilton Coll.; A.M., ’15, Columbia Univ. 
Student, Teachers College; res., Ferndale 


ALDEN Jesse Merrett, A.M., ’88, A.M., ’or, Univ. of Rochester. 
1913, Superintendent of Schools, Geneva. 





superintendence) SUPPLEMENTARY LIST OF ACTIVE MEMBERS 


ee ee ee 
NEW YORK—Continued 


rtEs H. Munson, A.B., Syracuse Univ. 
it CHA Publisher, 111 West Ave., Fairport. 


Frank O. RANDALL, M.Didac., ’97, Iowa St. Tchrs. Coll.; A.M., ’16, Tchrs. Coll. 
Graduate Student, Teachers College; sor W. 124th 'St., New York. 


CAROLINE V. SINNAMON. 


Principal of Grammar Grades and Supervisor, State Normal School; 161 E. 4th 
St., Gowego. 


Marion REx TRaABvE, Ph.D., ’15, Columbia Univ. 
Instructor i in Educational Administration, Teachers College, Columbia University, 
ew Yor! 


INSTITUTIONS 


CATHEDRAL uanges. 
Dean of Faculty, William J. McAuliffe, New York. 


EvANDER CHILDS HicH ScHOOL. 
Principal, G. S. Blakely, Westchester Ave., New York. 


NORTH CAROLINA 
Barron CALDWELL, A.B., Erskine Coll. 
1914, Superintendent of Schools, Kinston. 


NORTH DAKOTA 


Frank W. REINOERL, A.B., ’07, Mt. Union Coll. 
1911, Superintendent of Schools, Larimore. 


Houitpan Lucite Winstep, A.B., ’11, A.M., ’12, Univ. of Minn. 
1913, Instructor of Geography, State Normal School, Minot. 


OHIO 


Josern S. Hunter, A.B., ’or, Ohio St. Univ. 
Igts, District Superintendent of Schools, Butler County, Miami St., Trenton. 


Joserpnine F. Leacu, Ph.B., ’14, Univ. of Chicago 
1914, Director of City Normal; Separviier of New Teachers; 1025 Grand Ave., Toledo. 


C. O. Attaman, A.B., ’99, Univ. of Wooster. 


Superintendent of Schools, Flushing. 
H. C. Auttman, A.B., Antioch Coll. 
1914, Superintendent of Clermont County Schools, Batavia. 
Harris V. Bear, A.B., ’03, Otterbein Univ.; A.M.,’10, Harvard Univ. 
1915, Superintendent of Schools, cor. sth and Montgomery Sts., Miamisburg. 
Frank H. Cuiose, Ph.B., ’10, Lebanon Univ. 
1914, Superintendent of Holmes County Schools, Millersburg. 
R. L. Core, A.B., Univ. of W.Va. 
1914, Superintendent of Schools; Box 5, Perrysburg. 
SeLpA Cook. 
1915, Principal of Waverly School; 5810 Clinton Ave., Cleveland. 
Watter S. Epmunp, A.B., Capital Univ. 
1912, Superintendent of Schools; 334 E. Liberty St., Medina. 
Emmet F. Etprepce, A.B., ’92, Mt. Union Coll.; A.B., ’02, A.M., ’03, Harvard Univ. 
Assistant ’ Principal of Glenville High School, Cleveland; res., 321 W. 20th St., 
rain 
Irvine C. Foss, A.B., ’02, Bates Coll. 
With Houghton Mifflin Co., Ashland. 
Cuartes Haywarp Futierton, Ph.B., ’98, A.M., ’11, Ohio St. Univ. 
Principal of East High School; 88, 18th Ave., Columbus. 
Amos L. Heer, B.Pd., Ind. St. Tchrs. Coll. 
1914, Superintendent of Schools, Edgerton. 
Cuartes Eimer HOottey, Ph.D., ’15, Univ. of Ill. 
1915, Instructor in Education and Psychology, Ohio Wesleyan University; 154 N. San- 
dusky St., mg 
Cuartes H. Lake, A.B..,’ 
1909, faecal 3 of Hinh 'Schoo!, Hamilton. 
Frank W. Miter, A.B.; A.M.; D.Pd. 
1916, Superintendent of Schools; 301 Ferguson Ave., Dayton. 
Onmer C. Minnicu, A.B., ’09, Miami Univ. 
1914, Superintendent of County Schools; 29 Norwood Ave., Norwalk. 
Cart B. Newton, A.B., ’13, Ind. Univ. 
1915, Principal of High School; 223 Jefferson St., Defiance. 
E. M. Sawyer. 
Principal of Sands School, Cincinnati. 
L. F. Sxeccs. 
1915, Superintendent of Schools, Huron. 





218 


1916 


1915 


1916 


1916 


1916 


NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION 


OKLAHOMA 


Joun T. Herwet, A.B., ’or, Univ. of Okla. 
1912, Superintendent of Schools; 306 Cummins St., Henryetta. 


PENNSYLVANIA 


CuARLEs Henry Fisuer, A.B., ’04, Lebanon Valley Coll.; A.M.,’14, Univ. of Pa. 
1915, Department of Pedagogy, State Normal School; 509 W. Miner St., West Chester. 
J. Donatp Geist, A.M., Lafayette Coll. 
1899, Principal of High School, Hazleton. 
Jennie M. ACKERMAN. 
1902, Head of Training van Seg Normal School, Indiana. 
Raps M. Arcuipatp, A.B., ’13, Grove Cit a oe 
1914, Supervising Principal of Schools, Waynesburg. 
Autce C. Boucuton, B.Sc., ’r4, A.M., ’15, Tchrs. Coll., Columbia Univ. 
4424 Larchwood Ave., ‘est Philadelphia. 
GrorcE GaILtey CHAMBERS, Ph.D., ’08, Univ. of Pa. 
Director of Admission, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. 
Hetca C. Corguist, A.B., ’13, Univ. of Pittsburgh. 
Instructor in German, Southwestern State Normal School, California. 
REvuBEN F. Corry. 
Manager, Thrift System of School Savings, 12th and Race Sts., Philadelphia. 
L. R. CRuMRINE. 
1914, Superintendent of County Schools; 115 N. Wade Ave., Washington. 
Howarp G. Disste, B.Pd., ’98, N.Y. St. Coll. for Tchrs.; A.M., ’12, Yale Univ. 
1915, Principal of Central High School; 2230 N. 2d St., Harrisburg. 
James H. DunuaM, A.B., ’91, A.M., ’94, Princeton Univ.; Ph.D., ’13, Univ. of Pa. 
1915, Dean of College, Temple University; Hamilton Ct., Philadelphia. 
ANDREW D. EnpsLEY, Ph.B., ’98, Wooster Coll. 
1905, Superintendent of Schools; 322 E. oth Ave., Tarentum. 
Howarp C. FETTEROLF. 
1915, State Supervisor of Agricultural Education, Bureau of Vocational Education, Depart- 
ment of Public Instruction, 22 Union Trust Bldg., Harrisburg. 
Gerorce W. GuLpEN, B.E., M.E., A.B., A.M., Penn. Coll. 
IgII, Supervising Principal of Schools, Pen Argyl. 
Dante W. Hamm, A.B., M.Sc., or, Muhlenberg Coll. 
Igrt, Principal of High h School; 510 Allen St., Allentown. 
Raymonp W. Herm, B.Sc., ’13, Pa. St. Coll. 
State Supervisor of Agricultural Education, Bureau of Vocational Education, 
Department of Public Instruction, 22 Union Trust Bldg., Harrisburg. 
H. N. HENNoN. 
1912, Principal of East McKeesport School, Broadway, East McKeesport. 
Joszeru W. Hurr, A.B., ’o5, A.M.,’ 06, Univ. of Pa. 
1909, Supervising Principal of School District of Haverford Township; 6035 Lansdowne 
ve., Philadelphia. 
Rosert B. Ketter, B.Sc., ’08, Purdue Univ. 
1915, Director of Johnson Manual Training School; 516 Spruce St., Scranton. 
WittraM D. Lewis, A.B., ’92, A.M., ’o5, Syracuse Univ. 
Principal of William Penn High School, 15th and Wallace Sts., Philadelphia. 
R. S. Penrretp, A.M., Grove City Coll. 
Igll, Superintendent of Schools; 2414 Woodstock St., Swissvale. 
Witu1aM C. Sampson, Ph.B., ’02, Dickinson Coll. 
1914, Superintendent of Schools; 643 Chestnut St., Columbia. 
Cuar.es F. Sermet, A.B., ’14, Muhlenberg Coll. 
1916, Assistant Superintendent of Schools; 37 N. sth St., Allentown. 
Hope STEWART. 
1900, Critic Teacher, State Normal School, Indiana. 
GerorGE Vaux, Jr., B.Sc., ’84, Haverford Coll.; LL.B., ’88, Univ. of Pa. 
1906, Chairman, United States Board of totes ‘Commission, Gulf Rd., Bryn Mawr. 
WittraM H. WeEntSsEL, B.Sc., ’08, M.Sc., ’11, Pa. St. C 
Vice- ‘Principal, Southwestern State a School, California. 
IsABEL WHITE. 
Principal of North Braddock Printon Avenue School, Braddock. 


RHODE ISLAND 


Witarp H. Bacon, A.B., ’00, Brown Uni 
1913, Superintendent of Schools, "Westerly. 


TENNESSEE 


Cuartotte M. Armstrone, Dip., ’12, Tchrs. Coll., Columbia Univ. 
1912, Supervisor of Elementary Training Department, Middle Tennessee Normal School; 
445 W. Main St., Murfreesboro. 





Superintendencel SUPPLEMENTARY LIST OF ACTIVE MEMBERS 


——— 


TENNESSEE—Continued 


y9t6 Marion Stuart HancxeL, B.Sc., Columbia Univ. 
191s, Kindergarten and Primary Supervisor; 1203 Frazee St., Knoxville. 
Wr11aM P. Morrison, A.B., Peabody Coll. 
Superintendent of Schools, Dickson. 
SAMUEL W. SHERRILL, A.M., ’92, Maryville Coll. 
1915, State Superintendent of Public Instruction; 714, 16th Ave., S., Nashville. 
Yetta S. SHONINGER, B.Sc., ’06, Tchrs. Coll., Columbia Univ. 
1914, Assistant. Professor of Primary Education, George Peabody College for Teachers, 
ashville 


TEXAS 
Apert M. Biacxmay, L.I. 
1913, Superintendent of Schools, Plano. 
G. Hartt. 
1912, Superintendent of Schools, Timpson. 
Louis HERMAN HuppBarp, B.Sc., Univ. of Tex. 
1910, Superintendent of Schools, Belton. 
Truman LEE KE ttey, A.B.,’09; A.M., ’11, Univ. of Ill.; Ph.D., ’14, Columbia Univ. 
1915, Adjunct Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Texas, Austin. 


Tom H. Smits 
With Rand McNally & Co., Sherman. 


UTAH 


D. C. Jensen, A.B., Brigham Young Coll. 
1912, Superintendent of Schools, Box Elder District; 627 S. Main St., Brigham City. 
Guy C. Witson, B.Pd., A.B. 
President, Latter Day Saints University; 750 E. 12th South St., Salt Lake City. 


VERMONT 
FioreENcE M. WELLMAN. 
Supervisor of Graded Schools; 30 Western Ave., Brattleboro. 


VIRGINIA 


Wituram Howtmes Davis, A.B., ’02, Randolph-Macon Coll. 
1908, Head Master, The Danville School, Danville. 
D. A. Dutrow, A.B., Wash. and Lee Univ. 
1915, Superintendent of Schools; 129, 28th St., Newport News. 


WEST VIRGINIA 
Cuartes H. ARCHER. 
District Superintendent of Schools, Gary. 
Henry K. Barbe, A.M., Susquehanna Univ. 
District Superintendent of Schools, McDowell County, Welch. 
J. E. Evans. 
1915, District Superintendent of Schools; 116, 19th St., Warwood, Wheeling. 
E. H. KNABENSHUE, A.B., of W.Va. Univ. 
Principal of Clay County High School, Clay. 
Ernest E. Knicut, A.B., ’15, W.Va. Univ. 
1915, Normal "Training High School, Sutton. 
Harvey V. Merrick, A.M., ’84, Mt. Union Coll. 
1913, Superintendent of Schools; 1215, 4th St., Moundsville. 
Lioyvp T. Tustin. 
1915, District Superintendent of Schools, Hundred. 
Maset Louise West, B.Sc., Tchrs. Coll., Columbia Univ. 
1912, Supervisor of Training School and Assistant in Education, Salem College, Salem. 
C. L. Wricut, A.B., 06, Ohio Wes. Univ. 
1915, Superintendent of Schools; 1046, 9th Ave., Huntington. 
Austin F. Youne, A.B., Bethany Coll. 
1911, Superintendent of Schools; Baufield Ave., Follansbee. 


WISCONSIN 


Wits P. Cotsurn, Ph.B., ’os, Univ. of Wis. 
1912, Superintendent of yt 4 N. Baird Ave., Rhinelander. 
J. E. Roserts, A.B., ’96, Bates Coll.; ’r0, Simpson Coll. 
1914, Superintendent of Schools; 246 Sheboygan St., Fond du Lac. 
H. A. WuHrppte. 
With Houghton, Mifflin Co., Waterloo. 


With D. C. Heath & Co., Owen. 





NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION 


WYOMING 
1916 J. B. Crasse, A.B., B.O. 
1915, Superintendent of Schools; 164, N. 4th St., Laramie. 


Georce Witper, B.Pd., M.Pd., A.B. 
1915, Superintendent of Schools; 256 N. Maple St., Casper. 


CANADA 


1912 SAMUEL B. —— — A.B., ’97, Univ. of Toronto. 


Science Department, Prince of Wales College, Charlottetown. 





ee ©: 


“ 


ators 


7 


Pentre = 


REPORTS OF SPECIAL COMMITTEES 

at Ses on ereetes Sees or 

of Fifteen on Elementary 

of Twelve on Rural Schools . 

on Normal Schools R 

on Taxation as Related to Public Edu K 

of Committee on Industrial Edu Loa in Schols for Rural Commanities p 
of Seventeen on Preparation of Receen Tees és 


: on Pro in Public Schools 
" a Committee on Tedestrial weation in Schools for Rural Communities 

: * Report of on Teachers’ Salaries and Cost of 4 

| Rpt Commits on Intraction i Libary Adminitaio n'Nornal Sehals - 


e SPECIAL MONOGRAPH 
The Eesential Place of Religion in Education ay Ca ena erry mm meee. SL 


:All orders for reprints should be accompanied by remittance; a discount of 20 per cent will be allowed 
ea stias tee ten or more copies to by prepaid express. 
' ofthe Department of Su Ecadonoe provtotin 08 stax were’ piinthd tip’ the Basecs a2 
Nong Pi toe coms of Ten and ofthe Commits of Fiten are pated nd wd by the 
inne Co. for 30 cents each, postage paid. 


; of 
of 


2 


The Anniversary Volume (cloth bound, 950 pages), which is one of the most valuable 
> of the entire Series, will be sent to any address, express prepaid, on receipt of $2.00. A 
“Tible of Contents of this volume will be supplied on application... 
_All reprints noted above are included in the bound volumes of Proceedings, except 
“Report of the Committee of Ten on Secondary Schools; Report of the Committee on 
Teachers’ Salaries and Cost of Living; Report of the Committee on Taxation as 
“Related to Public Education; First Report of the Committee on Industrial Education in | 
"Schools for Rural Communities; Report of the Committee on Teachers’ Salaries and 


Living. 
‘All publications listed above can be obtained of the undersigned. 


D. W. Sprincer, Secretary, N.E.A. 
Ann Arbor, Mich.