The New Education Part 5

The most universal and by far the largest of the child's surroundings consist of the things about him. He lives in a world, a very little world to be sure, but to him it is great; and a knowledge of the world comes through a study of geography. Beginning with the geography of his native town (not with the basin of the Ganges) he can learn successively about the geography of the county, the state, the country, and then of the world.

Surrounding the child on every hand are plants and animals. Nature study gives him an intelligent interest in them. As he grows older general nature study may be subdivided into geology, botany, zoology; and the forces of nature may be examined in astronomy, chemistry, and physics: but most of these subjects are too specialized for the elementary grades, and should appear, if at all, in the high schools.

There is a group of courses which belongs in every school--elementary school as well as high school--namely, the courses which prepare children for life activity. Growth and training in the art of living enable children to fulfill the third function of their being--that of doing. Every man and every woman needs work in order to live, and it is a part of the duty of education to prepare them for that work.

First of all, as modern society has developed, every man and many women need an income-producing trade or occupation; hence it is the duty of the schools to provide trade and professional educations (really the same thing under different names). No child should be permitted to leave the schools until he is proficient in some income-giving work. The character of the teaching must be altered to suit the locality, but the principle is absolute.

Further, since men should not devote their entire lives to the same task, because they require a change of occupation, the school should aim to provide an avocation, or secondary occupation, which may occupy leisure hours. Manual training, agriculture, art work, and civics will supply different people with occupations for spare time.

Finally, since one of the chief duties of society is to insure a healthy and increasingly valuable supply of human beings, no one should leave the schools without a thorough domestic training, including training for parenthood. While this training should be given in a measure to boys, it should be intended primarily for girls, and should include biology, hygiene, chemistry, dietetics, psychology, and nursing. Although the elementary grades can provide only the simplest training along these lines that training should be given to every future housekeeper and mother.

V What Schools Must Provide to Meet Child Needs

If, up to this point, we have rightly described child needs, the school must be so organized as to provide for growth and play, for instructing the child in a knowledge of people, inst.i.tutions, things and ideas, and for preparing every child to do his work in life.

These subjects must be so apportioned over the grades that each child has the benefit of them. The high school is a continuation of the elementary school. It is in the high school that children should begin to specialize, because specialization before the beginning of adolescence is undesirable; but since, in many localities, almost all of the children leave before reaching the high school, these subjects must be taught in the elementary grades. Certain things every child must know. If he is going to drop school at fourteen, as three-quarters of the American school children do, he must be reached in the first eight school grades. If he goes to high school he may there be given an opportunity to complete and intensify the education which the elementary school has started.

We believe that these fundamental principles of education are sufficiently flexible to fit any community in the United States; they will apply to places of the most divergent school needs.

VI The Educational Work of the Small Town

Let us begin by applying the scheme to a mining village of three thousand inhabitants, a typical industrial community.

In this village more than nine-tenths of the children leave school at or before fourteen years of age, so that whatever school training they get must be secured between the ages of six and fourteen.

The kind of activities that the children will take up in life is fixed by the custom of the town. The great majority of the boys go into the mines or shops, while practically all of the girls help around the home until they marry. A small number work in stores and factories.

The life is rather primitive; the houses are set far apart; the children have an abundance of play s.p.a.ce; they are required to do ch.o.r.es in homes where they receive little home training. The town affords an unparalleled opportunity to learn nasty things in a nasty way.

Almost all of the educational work in such a town must be done in the elementary schools. While high school facilities may be afforded they will appeal to a vanis.h.i.+ngly small percentage of the children.

The elementary schools in such a village must provide organized games for the younger children and organized sports for the older ones; a sufficient amount of physical training to insure robust bodies; careful instruction in physiology, body hygiene, and s.e.x hygiene; simple manual training for the younger children; thorough preparation in the reading and writing of English; the fundamentals of numbers; geography with particular reference to the geographic conditions in the immediate locality; civics and history--particularly American history; a thorough drill in English and American literature; a minimum amount of instruction in fine art--drawing, painting, modeling; an extensive system of nature study, supplemented by field trips.

This course should be required of boys and girls alike. In addition to these studies the boys in a coal-mining village should receive careful instruction in geology, particularly in the mineralogy of the region in which the mine is located; technical training in mining, drafting, and shop work; and a sufficient training in agriculture to enable them to make good kitchen gardens, since gardening is one of the chief avocations of men in such a community.

Parallel to this special training for boys the schools should provide for girls a thorough course in domestic science, with particular emphasis on economical purchasing, and an education for parenthood, including hygiene, dietetics, psychology, and nursing.

Such a course of study given in a typical mining village would tend to make of the boys educated, trained workmen, and of the girls educated, trained mothers. To be sure this course would not make of the boys railroad presidents or United States senators; but even that is not a drawback because, incredible as it may sound to many old-fas.h.i.+oned ears, the vast majority of these boys will be miners and mechanics. The question is, therefore, Shall they be good miners or bad ones? United States senators.h.i.+ps bother them not a whit.

If there are, as there always will be in such a village, a few exceptional children who desire more advanced work, the teacher can do exactly what he does now--namely, give them special instruction.

Such an educational system as that outlined would require more training in the teachers, and an additional outlay for tools and school-rooms, but it would train the boys and girls of the village to live their lives effectively.

The mine-village educational problem is rendered especially easy of solution because the community is small in size, and because there are only two occupations, mining and homekeeping, into which the children go.

A similar situation may be found in most of the agricultural districts, except that the boys take up farming instead of mining, while the girls are called upon to partic.i.p.ate in farm work to the extent of caring for chickens and pigs, and sometimes for milk. In such an agricultural community the same outline for study might apply, except that in training for occupations boys should be taught the facts regarding soil fertility, fruit culture, dairying, market gardening, and other agricultural problems, while girls need instruction which will fit them for domestic life and for parenthood.

In New York State a number of agricultural high schools giving a course such as the one just hinted at, have met with marked success. Most country children do not go to high school, however--although they are doing so in increasing numbers--and hence the necessity for shaping the elementary course along similar lines.

VII The Educational Problems of an Industrial Community

When the mining village and the farming district are replaced by the industrial town and the city, the school problem is greatly complicated by the crowding of many people into a small s.p.a.ce and by the great diversity of occupations which the people pursue. The larger the town the worse the crowding and the greater the variety of jobs. Otherwise the problem of education remains largely the same.

The most apparent need of the town child is a place to play, and the plainest duty of the town elementary school is to provide play s.p.a.ce. In thinly settled places there is no such need. In towns and cities there is no more imperative duty resting on the school than the furnis.h.i.+ng of playgrounds and gymnasiums for children. The practice of building school houses without gymnasiums and without play s.p.a.ces cannot be too strongly condemned. It is robbing children of the chance to grow into normal human beings.

The other side of the town problem--the question of occupations--has been settled in Germany, and more recently in certain American cities, by the "continuation" school, which unties the Gordian knot by cutting it. Instead of allowing children to stop school at fourteen the "continuation" system requires partial school attendance until they are eighteen.

Under this system, when children reach the end of the elementary schools they may either go on with a high school course for four years, or else they may take a "continuation" course for four years.

For example, if a boy elects to be a carpenter he spends forty hours a week as a carpenter's apprentice. Then for fourteen hours a week he goes to a school where he is taught mechanical drawing, designing, the testing of materials, and any other subjects which bear on carpentering.

The time he spends in school is credited on the time sheets of his employer.

So at the end of four years the boy, at eighteen, has been well trained in the practice of carpentering by working at his job, and well schooled in its theory by taking a "continuation" course which bore directly on his work. Thus wage-earning and education are united to produce a well-trained man.

The school problem of the city suburb is very different from that of the mining village, the rural community, the industrial town, or the city.

The children have s.p.a.ce, good homes, and abundant opportunity to go through high school and even through college. Under these conditions the elementary grades can be directly preparatory for high school work, since six or even seven out of ten children will go to high school.

In the city suburb there need be little specialization in the elementary grades. The high school, with a general course and two or three special courses, can be relied upon for all necessary specific training.

VIII Beginning with Child Needs

In the industrial town, in the city, and in the city suburb the high school is being looked to as the place where specialized training must be given. The trade school can succeed a little, but its effectiveness will always be limited by the narrow technical character of its instruction, which makes the "continuation" school generally preferable.

The high school is not a separate inst.i.tution, but an integral part of the school system. In a high school, therefore, the children should move naturally from the studies of the elementary grades to more advanced studies, but the purpose of both elementary and high schools is the same--the preparation of children for living.

Children have needs which the schools are here to supply. Certain of these needs are common to all children, and to that extent all schools must provide similar training. Other needs, varying with the size and character of the community, call for a like variation in the course of study.

CHAPTER IV

PROGRESSIVE NOTES IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION

I The Kindergarten

No single chapter can contain all of the progressive notes that are being sounded in American Elementary Education; yet it is possible, after some arbitrary picking and choosing, to describe a number of the most typical and most successful educational innovations. At the bottom of most up-to-date elementary school systems is the kindergarten. Not so often as it might be, but still frequently, the child begins school work there. The games, the songs, the children's sports of these kindergarten years, make a joyous entry-way into the grades. In Gary the kindergarten child sees life. The flowers, leaves, gra.s.ses, lichens, fruits, b.u.t.terflies, moths, and birds are usually brought to the cla.s.sroom. The Gary children go on expeditions to explore nature's wonderland, besides making excursions to squares, parks, and to the open country. The kindergartners of Cincinnati plant tulip bulbs in the city parks, and visit farms in order to have a chance to meet the farm animals. Singing, visiting, playing, shaping, building, the kindergarten child sees life on many sides. Perhaps, finally, other cities following the lead of Cincinnati will introduce the kindergarten spirit and kindergarten activities into the lower grades where they will clarify an atmosphere, fetid and dank with concepts which to the six-year-old are meaningless abstractions.

II Translating the Three R's

At best the kindergarten reaches but a few. Even in cities which boast of a system of organized kindergartens, only a small portion of the children attend them. On the other hand, since practically all school children enter the grades, it is on them that an inquiry into elementary education must be focused.

The time has pa.s.sed when reading, writing, and arithmetic made up the entirety of a satisfactory elementary education. Like the kindergarten, the elementary school must touch life; like the kindergarten, it must provide for child needs. Everywhere schools are turning from the old methods of teaching spelling, multiplication, and syntax to the new methods of teaching children,--yes, and teaching them those things which they need, irrespective of name. Three R's no longer suffice. The child requires training from the Alpha to the Omega of life.