The New Education Part 17

So another meeting was held, and another to which the babies were brought--some women bringing as many as three, who were too young to go to school. At one Mothers' Meeting, after the club had been well organized, there were twenty women, listening, discussing and nursing babies, all at once.

If the beginnings of the experiment were discouraging the results have more than offset the original disappointment. At the last meeting (in January) seventy of the eighty-five paid up members were present, intelligent, eager, interested, partic.i.p.ating heartily in the discussions. It has cost years of labor, but these mothers have reached the point where they can talk intelligently about the children and their needs.

"Only yesterday," said Miss Phelps, Kindergarten Director, "one mother said to me: 'I used to be the most impatient woman with my children--I simply couldn't stand it when they refused to do what I told them. The other day my mother said to me, "You're about the most patient woman I ever saw. What's done it?" And I said to her: "Well, mother, I do not know of anything except those folks at the kindergarten, which all helped me to look at children in a very different way."'"

Through the Mothers' Meetings the mothers have come to feel that they are co-operating with the teacher and the school. Those mothers who have children in the upper grades as well as in the kindergarten go to the grade teachers too, seeking advice, or making suggestions. They have learned to feel that they are an essential part of the educational plan, and their enthusiastic interest tells of the advantages gained by this co-operation.

The Oyler Mothers' Club has been the center of the movement to clear up the community. Through them and through the grades refuse has been cleaned and kept from the streets. The club maintains, out of its fund, a medicine chest at the school, which is used by the visiting nurse. It has cleaned up the children, and that is no small item.

"Back in 1904," says Mr. Voorhes, "I had five hundred of the children vaccinated in my office, and such dirt and vermin I never saw! Nearly every child had the high water mark on his wrist, and their clothes and bodies were filthy. They didn't know a bathtub from a horse trough; they don't now for the matter of that, because there are scarcely a dozen houses in this section that have bathtubs, but the children are clean."

Each year the old members of the Mothers' Club bring in the new mothers, saying to Miss Phelps: "This is my mother, I brought her," "This is mine!" with a delighted satisfaction in having added something to the club. The kindergarten, filling two rooms, is thriving, and the kindergarten teachers, visiting and advising in the home, are cordially welcomed everywhere.

VIII The Disappearance of "Discipline"

"Discipline," smiled Mr. Voorhes, "no, we don't mention the word any more. Five years ago the discipline problem in this school was more serious than in any school in town. We couldn't handle it, not even with a club. To-day the discipline looks after itself."

The disciplining of an undisciplined school may sound like an immensely difficult task. Wrongly essayed it would be. Rightly directed it becomes the merest child's play. The teachers have disciplined the school--disciplined it through kindness--and here, again, the inspiration may be traced to the Mothers' Club and the kindergarten, for it was in the kindergarten that the first real attempt was made to bring this school into closer relations with the home by home visiting. Little by little the example told on the grade teachers, who went to see the children when they were absent; nor was it long before a custom grew up in the school, by virtue of which a teacher who wished to visit one absent child, might pick her own time to make her visit. If perchance the psychological moment was during school hours, she went then, while another teacher or the princ.i.p.al took her place.

Among the many ill.u.s.trations of the efficiency of this system one stands out strongly. A boy had been away for a week, sick with rheumatism, when his teacher decided to call and see him. She went hesitatingly, however, for this boy had been rough and troublesome all through school, but particularly to her. At last her mind was made up. She visited the boy and came away radiant, overjoyed at the cordial reception he had given her. Again she went, and the mother, opening the door with a glad face, said:

"Come right in, Tom's been looking for you."

"Is he better?" the teacher asked.

"Yes, pretty much, but he said that he would get well right quick when you came to see him again."

Does anyone wonder that the boy should feel so kindly over attentions to which he was not accustomed? Is it strange that he should have come back to school with a firm resolve to be decent to his teacher?

Discipline? There is no longer a problem of discipline. The teachers are enthusiastic over the work, because they can see its results in the changed homes and lives about them. The children engaged in occupations which they enjoy and sensing the efforts of the school in their behalf, discipline themselves by being frank and hearty in work or in play.

Mr. Voorhes is not surprised at this transformation. The plan on which he staked his reputation was a simple one, based on the idea of serving a community which he had studied carefully, by providing for it an education that met its needs. Though revolutionary from an educational viewpoint, the plan succeeded because it was socially sound--because it linked together the school and the community, of which the school is a logical part.

IX The Spirit of Oyler

Oyler has a motto, a very s.h.i.+bboleth, "The school for the community and the community for the school." Not only do its princ.i.p.al and teachers believe that the school must center its activities about the needs of the community in which it is located, but they put their belief into practice, studying the community diligently and seeking to find an answer for every need which it manifests. Out of this spirit of service has grown up a warmth of feeling and interest among the teachers seldom surpa.s.sed anywhere.

"When I came to Oyler I felt about it as Sherman felt about war," says Mr. Voorhes. "Now I would not trade places with any school man in Cincinnati. The teachers feel the same way. Never yet have we had a teacher who wanted to leave. Each one has her cla.s.s, that is enough. We have no problem of discipline now. The children and their parents are working for the school.["]

Sometimes people get the idea that Mr. Voorhes does not do very much.

One visitor spent half a day observing, and then sitting down in his office she said:

"Mr. Voorhes, I have been here half a day and I haven't seen you around at all. What do you do?"

"Madam," answered Mr. Voorhes, "I am a man of leisure. All I do is to sit here at this desk, ready to get behind any one of my teachers, with two hundred and fifty pounds from the shoulder, in order to prevent anybody or anything from getting in the way of her work."

Small wonder that the teachers like to stay. Small wonder that the work which the school does commands the respect of the people of Cincinnati.

In the school, as well as in the neighborhood, each person has a task and a fair chance to do it well.

From its position as "the worst school in Cincinnati" Oyler has risen, first in its own esteem, and then in the esteem of the city, until it is looked upon everywhere as a factor in the life of the west end, and an invaluable cog in the educational machinery of the city. Its tone has changed, too. Mr. Roberts, who came, a total stranger, to a.s.sist in the work while Mr. Voorhes was sick, says, "I have never heard a word of discourtesy or a bit of rudeness since I came to this school." That is strong testimony for a new man in a new place. Splendidly done, Oyler!

Mr. Voorhes has not stopped working. On the contrary, he is at it harder than ever, shaping his school to the ever-changing community needs. He has stopped disciplining, though, and he has stopped wondering about the success of his experiment. Time was when Oyler looked upon high school attendance much as a New York gunman looks at Sunday School. Last year of the thirty-three children in the eighth grade, eighteen--more than half--went to high school. The tradition against high school has been replaced by a healthy desire for more education. "One day a week in the shops," Mr. Voorhes says, "means interest and enthusiasm. Our children compete in high school with the children of grammar schools from the well-to-do sections, and with the best our boys and girls hold their own."

The community is interested. Parents and manufacturers alike come to the school, consult, advise, suggest, co-operate. The school boy is no longer sneered at by "the gang." The school has made its place in the community, and "the gang" is enthusiastically engaged in school work.

The complexion of the neighborhood has changed, too. It is less rough, the police have less to do. Houses are neater, children better clothed and cared for. Oyler has won the hearts of its people, improved the food on their tables and the clothes on their backs, sent the children to high school, and their mothers to Mothers' Clubs; and the people who once uttered their profanity indiscriminately in every direction now swear by Oyler.

CHAPTER IX

VITALIZING RURAL EDUCATION

I The Call of the Country

There is a call of the land just as there is a call of the city, though the call of the city has sounded so insistently during the past century that men innumerable, heeding it, have cast in their lot with the throngs of city dwellers. Yet the city proves so unsatisfying that thousands are turning from its rows of brick houses and lines of paved streets to the fruit trees, dairy herds, market gardens and broad acres of the countryside. The call of the city is answered by a call which is becoming equally distinct--the call "Back to the Land."

The ten-acre lot may not be any nearer paradise than the "Great White Way," but there is about it a breadth of quiet wholesomeness which cannot make its presence felt in the bustle of the clanging cars and the rus.h.i.+ng whirl of crowded streets. The unsmoked blue of the sky is over the country, as are the fragrance of flowers, woods and mown gra.s.s; the stars are brilliant by night, and by day the birds sing, and the cows and barnyard fowls talk philosophically together. The children have room to run and play between their periods of work, which is very near of kin to blessedness, because, aside from being instructive, it binds the child into the family group in a way that factory work can never do. The country cries health and enthusiasm to the world-weary soul as it does to the barefoot boy. Whittier was very near the heart of things when he wrote:

Blessings on thee, little man, Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!

With thy turned-up pantaloons, And thy merry whistled tunes; With thy red lips, redder still Kissed by strawberries on the hill.

Despite the loneliness, isolation and overwork in some country places, the rural life is, on the whole, very rich in--

Sleep that wakes in laughing day, Health that mocks the doctor's rules, Knowledge never learned of schools.

Country life holds a great promise for the future--a promise of vigorous manhood and womanhood, and of earnest, sane living. Through the rapidly progressing country school, more perhaps than through any other agency, this promise may be fulfilled. There are two possibilities in the development of the country school. On the one hand, several one-room schools may be consolidated into one central graded school, to which the children are transported at public expense; on the other hand, the old-time, one-room school may be reorganized and vitalized.

II Making Bricks with Straw

Even the doughtiest son of the soil must needs admit that the farmer of the past, living secluded in his house or village, was provincial, narrow, bigoted and individualistic. Times are rapidly changing, however, and out of the old desolation of rural individualism there is arising the spirit of wholesome, virile co-operation, which has transformed the face of many a country district almost in the twinkling of an eye. Nowhere is this co-operative spirit better expressed than in the consolidated country schools, which are organized, like the city school, by subjects and grades.

Considered from any viewpoint, the consolidated school is superior, as a form of organization, to the district school. Rather, the consolidated school permits organization, and the district school does not. Wherever it has been tried the testimony in favor of consolidation is overwhelming.

"Comparison," cried one county superintendent in consternation.

"Comparison! There is no comparison. The old one-room school, like the one-horse plough, has seen its day. The farmers in this country, after figuring it out, have reached the conclusion that the one-room school is in the same cla.s.s with a lot of other old-fas.h.i.+oned machinery--good in its day, but not good enough for them. That is why over eighty per cent of our schools have been consolidated. You see it's this way: The farmers need labor badly, and rather than see their sons go to a school where they are called on once or twice a day by a sadly overworked teacher they would put them to work on the farm. The consolidated school wins them with its good course of study and the boys stay in school."

That is the first, and perhaps the most vital, advantage of the consolidated school--it permits the enlargement of the course of study.

Sewing, cooking, agriculture, manual training, drawing and music, have all been introduced, because the teachers have time for them. High school work has been added, too. The consolidated school, in so far as the course of study is concerned, is very nearly on a par with the graded school of the city.

Have you ever attended a one-room country school? If you have not you can form but the faintest idea of what it means to the teacher. Her day is so split up with little periods of cla.s.s work that she can never do anything thoroughly. Here, for example, is an average schedule of work for a one-room cla.s.s in Indiana:

DAILY PROGRAM