done. The slow worker may be a more thorough scholar than the rapid worker. The classification is used not to distinguish between the abilities of scholars, but to take advantage of the natural growth of the child by letting his work keep abreast with it. The rapid child moves as quickly as possible from grade to grade instead of being held back until his work has no stimulus for him, and the slow worker is not pushed into work before he is ready for it. Does this flexible system work successfully or does it result in easy-going, slap-dash methods?
We have only to visit the schools and see the pupils hard at work, each one responsible for his own movements through the day, to be convinced that the children are happy and interested; while from the point of view of the teacher and educator, the answer is even more positively favorable, when we consult the school records. Fifty-seven per cent.
of all the school children in Gary who are thirteen years old are in the seventh grade or above it. This is a better showing than most industrial communities can make, and means that the majority of all the Gary school children go through school at about the same rate as the average pupil who is preparing for college. Even more remarkable than this are the figures regarding the pupils who have gone on to higher schools or colleges after leaving the Gary schools. One-third of all the pupils that have left the Gary schools during the eight years of their existence are now in the state university, in an engineering school, or a business college. When we remember that the population of Gary is made up principally of laborers in the steel mills, and is sixty per cent. foreign born, and compare with this the usual school history of the second generation in this country, we realize how successful Mr. Wirt has been in making a system which meets the needs of the pupils, a system that appeals to the community as so good that they want to go on and get more education than mere necessity requires.
The motive back of these changes from the routine curriculum is always a social one. Mr. Wirt believes that if the social end of the school is properly emphasized the pedagogical will take care of itself. The public schools must study the needs and qualities of its pupils, the needs of the community and the opportunities that the community contributes to the schools’ welfare. We have seen how the physical life of the child and the health of the community are used in the school curriculum, so as to make the curriculum more interesting, and for the good of the community as well. This same close connection is kept up between the school work and other community interests and matters of daily life. Every advantage is taken of the social instincts of children in the teaching. Instead of isolating each grade and cutting off the younger children from the older, the two are thrown together as much as possible. The younger grades use the laboratories and shops which would be an unwarranted extravagance if the high-school pupils were not in the same buildings and using them also for technical training. They use them not only for beginning lessons in science or manual training, but they go into them when the older classes are working there to act as helpers or as an audience for the higher grades. Fourth and fifth grade pupils thus assist seventh, eighth, and ninth grade students in shops, studios, and laboratories.
The older children learn responsibility and coöperation from having to look out for the little people, and the latter learn an astonishing amount about the subject from waiting on, watching, and asking questions of the older pupils. Both grades find out what is going on in the school and get thereby a large feeling of fellowship, while the interest of the lower one grows and finds reasons for staying in school. The work of the older children is used, wherever it is feasible, in teaching the lower grades. Maps and charts made in drawing are used for less advanced pupils in nature study or geography; the printing shop makes the spelling lists and problem sheets for the whole school; the doctor in his health campaigns calls in the art and English workers to make posters and pamphlets. The halls of the schools are hung with notices of what is going on in the school, with especially good and interesting drawings or maps, with information about what is being made in the different shops, or about anything that the whole school ought to see or know.
Another strong element in making public opinion is the auditorium, where every pupil in the school spends one hour each day, sometimes for choral singing, sometimes to hear an older grade tell about an interesting experiment in physics, to find out from a cooking class about cheap and nutritious bills of fare, or to hear the doctor tell how the school can improve the health conditions in its home neighborhoods. The auditorium period is for the use of the general community as well. Ministers, politicians, any one in the city who is doing anything interesting, may come in and tell the children about it.
The school invites all social agencies in the neighborhood to come in in this way.
The hour for “application” contributes to the same end. The children go to the nearest public library to read or to look up references for their class work, or simply for a lesson on the use of library books; or they may go to the neighboring Y. M. C. A. building to use the gymnasium or to listen to a lecture; or they may go to any church or club that offers religious instruction desired by the parents. The school is a social clearing house for the neighborhood. The application period is also used to supplement the regular classroom studies by means of practical work in the shops or on the playground. Thus an arithmetic class may get a lesson in applied mathematics by laying out the foundation for a house on the playground, or by spending an hour in the school store, a room fitted up like a grocery store, where the children get practice in mental and oral arithmetic and in English by playing “store.” The application period may also be spent in doing work for the school building. Thus an older pupil, studying stenography and typewriting or bookkeeping, might go to the school office and do an hour of real work, helping one of the clerks. The boys in the fifth grade put in this time in tending the school storeroom. They take entire charge of the school supplies, check up all the material sent in by the board and distributing it through the building to the teachers and janitors. The records of the pupils in the different shops are kept by other pupils in their application time. One paid bookkeeper has general charge of an office, where the pupils come with printed slips filled out by the shop teacher, giving them credit for so much time at a certain rate of skill; the pupil clerks give the pupils credit on their record for this work and keep all the records.
Pupils also run a post office for the building, and the writer saw a sixth grade boy delivering salary checks and collecting receipts for them through the building. Children who do this kind of work are not only learning arithmetic and bookkeeping, they are learning as well responsibility and reliability. They get an appreciation of what their school means, and are made wide-awake to its welfare; they learn that they are the real school, identical with its interests.
The school lunch room is conducted by the cooking department. When the Emerson School was first built it was equipped with the regulation cooking school desks, individual gas burners, tables and lockers.
All this has since been turned into a serving table where student waiters serve the food they have cooked--real lunches to their fellow students, who pay a student cashier. The younger girls get their cooking lessons by going to the older girls’ cooking lessons as helpers and watchers. The girls do all the menu planning and buying for the lunch room and keep the accounts. They have to pay expenses and serve menus that come up to the standard set by the chemistry department, where they have analyzed food and made tables of comparative values.
The result is steaming hot food, nourishing and well cooked, sold very cheaply. The daily menu is posted with the price of each article and its food value, and the walls of the lunch room are hung with posters and charts showing the relative values of foodstuffs, sample menus for cheap and nourishing meals, and the extravagance of poor food. These have all been made by the cooking school students and are the result of actual experimentation.
Gary schools do not teach civics out of a textbook. Pupils learn civics by helping to take care of their own school building, by making the rules for their own conduct in the halls and on the playgrounds, by going into the public library, and by listening to the stories of what Gary is doing as told by the people who are doing it. They learn by a mock campaign, with parties, primaries, booths and ballots for the election of their own student council. Pupils who have made the furniture and the cement walks with their own hands, and who know how much it cost, are slow to destroy walks or furniture, nor are they going to be very easily fooled as to the value they get in service and improvements when they themselves become taxpayers. The health campaigns, the application work which takes them to the social agencies, of the city, the auditorium periods when they learn more about their city, all give civics lessons that make their own appeal.
The children can see the things with their own eyes; they are learning citizenship by being good citizens.
The value of this practical civics is doubly great because of the large number of children with foreign parents, who know nothing about the government or organization of the city in which they are living, and who, because they do not understand what they see about them, cannot know its possibilities and limitations. The parents learn nothing of the laws until they break them, of public health until they endanger it, nor of social resources until they want something.
They are naturally suspicious of government and social authority in consequence, and it is very important that their children should have some real knowledge on which to base a sounder judgment. Besides giving them this, the schools try to teach American standards of living to the pupils and so to their parents. On entering school every pupil gives the school office, besides the usual name, age, and address, certain information about his family, its size, its resources, and the character of the home he lives in. This record is kept in the school and transferred if the child moves out of the school district. Every grade teacher takes a certain number of squares in the school district, and they make plans of this area. The children make a large scale map, with streets, walks, lamp posts and mail boxes, locating every house, barn, or shed and every empty lot. This is altered as changes are made.
Every child brings measurements of the rooms in his home and draws a floor plan of his house. These plans are kept with the teacher’s map of her district, so that she has a complete map of the neighborhood and home of every child living in it. By comparing these with any family record, it is a simple matter to tell if the family are living under proper moral and hygienic conditions.
The teacher has a district small enough to know it thoroughly, and as far as possible she gets acquainted with all the children living in it. If bad conditions are due to ignorance or poverty, the teacher finds out what can be done to remedy them, and sees to it that the family learn how they can better themselves. If conditions are very bad, neighborhood public opinion is worked up through the other children on the block. From time to time an auditorium period is devoted to showing these maps and pointing out the good and bad features of blocks and neighborhoods. Children always carry the news home to their parents, and as rents and accommodations are freely discussed, these reports are often acted upon. The parents are encouraged to come to the school and ask for information, and on more than one occasion some newly arrived family has moved from an overcrowded rear shack to a comfortable flat with the same rent because through the children they found out that their bad quarters were unnecessary. Because the school does this work to help, and as part of its regular program, it is accepted by the children and their parents as a matter of course. Information about improvements, sanitation, the size and comfort of the houses, and the rents, is given to the parents.
If a block is poor a good block near by where conditions are better and the rents the same, is shown them. Thus the schools not only teach the theory of good citizenship and social conditions, they give the children actual facts and conditions, so that they can see what is wrong and how it can be bettered.
Gary schools use the community as much as possible as a contributor to the educational facilities, and in so doing they give good return in immediate results, besides the larger return in alert and intelligent citizens. Conditions in Gary are not ideal. The schools have no larger sums to spend than any city of its size, the teachers might be found in any other town, and the pupils come for the most part from homes that offer their children no training, while the parents are trying to adjust themselves to entirely new surroundings. But these schools have done much by showing a good business management, by spending the taxpayers’ money in an economical way so as to give the younger generation the largest possible facilities for spending their time profitably. The results of the system as seen in the school buildings and playgrounds, the alert and happy students, and the statistics of their progress through school as well as their careers afterwards, are doubly inspiring just because they have been accomplished with the resources available in any public school.
CHAPTER VIII THE SCHOOL AS A SOCIAL SETTLEMENT Schools all over the country are finding that the most direct way of vitalizing their work is through closer relations with local interests and occupations. That period of American school history which was devoted to building up uniformity of subject-matter, method, and administration, was obliged to neglect everything characteristic of the local environment, for attention to that meant deviation from uniformity. Things remote in time and space, and things of an abstract nature, are most readily reduced to uniformity and doled out in doses to children in a mass. Unfortunately the consequences were too often that in aiming to hit all children by exactly the same educational ammunition, none of them were really deeply touched. Efforts to bring the work into vital connection with pupils’ experiences necessarily began to vary school materials to meet the special needs and definite features of local life.
This closer contact with immediate neighborhood conditions not only enriches school work and strengthens motive force in the pupils, but it increases the service rendered to the community. No school can make use of the activities of the neighborhood for purposes of instruction without this use influencing, in turn, the people of the neighborhood. Pupils, for example, who learn civics by making local surveys and working for local improvements, are certain to influence the life of the locality, while lessons in civics learned from the purely general statements of a text-book are much less likely to have either applicability or application. In turn, the community perceives the local efficiency of the schools. It realizes that the service rendered to welfare is not remote, to appear when the pupils become adults, but a part of the regular, daily course of education. The statement that the schools exist for a democratic purpose, for the good of citizenship, becomes an obvious fact and not a formula. A community which perceives what a strong factor its school is in civic activities, is quick to give support and assistance in return, either by extending the use of its own facilities (as happens in Gary) or by the direct assistance of labor, money, or material when these are needed.
The supervising principal of public school No. 26 in Indianapolis is trying an experiment unlike any other known to us in an effort to make his plant a true school; that is, a place where the children of his neighborhood shall become healthy, happy, and competent both economically and socially, and where the connection of instruction with the life of the community shall be directly recognized both by children and parents. Mr. Valentine’s school is located in the poor, crowded colored district of the city and has only colored pupils. It is not an attempt to solve the “race question” nor yet an experiment suited only to colored people. There is nothing in the school not entirely practical in any district where the children come from homes with limited resources and meager surroundings. A visitor when leaving this school can not fail to wish that such ventures might be started in all our great cities,--indeed in any community where people need to be aroused to a sense of their needs, including the fact that if they are to contribute to the best interests of the community, they must be taught how to earn a living, and how to use their resources for themselves and their neighbors both in leisure time and in working hours. Mr. Valentine’s school is a school for colored children only in the sense that the work has been arranged in relation to the conditions in the neighborhood; these modify the needs of the particular children who are the pupils. Yet the success of the experiment would mean a real step forward in solving the “race question” and peculiar problems of any immigrant district as well.
Mr. Valentine is not interested in illustrating any theories on these points, but in making up for gaps in the home life of the pupils; giving them opportunities to prepare for a better future; in supplying plenty of healthy occupation and recreation; and in seeing to it that their school work reacts at once to improve neighborhood conditions.
Mr. Valentine’s school is really a social settlement for the neighborhood, but it has a decided advantage over the average settlement, for it comes in contact with all the children living within its district for a number of hours each day, while most settlements reach the children for only a few scattered hours each week. The school has a larger influence than most settlements because it is a public institution for which the people who use it are paying their share; they feel that their relation to it is a business one, not a matter of philanthropy. Because of this businesslike relation the school is able really to teach the doctrines of social welfare. In any settlement the work is always handicapped by the fact that the people who make use of it feel that they are receiving something for which they do not pay, that something is being done for them by people who are better off financially than they are. But giving a community facilities that it lacks for special classes and recreation through the public school of the district put the work on a different basis. The school is really the property of the people of the district; they feel that they are more or less responsible for what is done there. Any wider activities that a school may undertake are to a certain extent the work of the people themselves; they are simply making use of the school plant for their own needs.
The neighborhood around Mr. Valentine’s school is one of the poorest in Indianapolis, and once had a bad reputation for lawlessness and disorder as well. The school had struggled along for years with little or no support from the community as a whole or from individual parents.
The per cent. of truancy was high, and a large number of cases were sent to the juvenile court each year. The children took no interest in their work as a whole, and cases of extreme disorder were not infrequent; one pupil tried to revenge himself on his teacher for a merited punishment with a butcher’s knife, in another case it was necessary to arrest a boy’s father as a lesson to the neighborhood.
Besides this attitude of hostility and of unwilling attendance, the school had to contend with immoral surroundings which finally made it necessary to do something to isolate the school building from neighboring houses. Finally the school board bought the tract of land and wooden tenements around the school building. It was at first proposed to tear down the old buildings, but the authorities were persuaded to turn them over to the school for its use. The school now found itself the possessor of a large playground and of three frame tenements in the worst possible condition, the board having stipulated that this added property should mean no further expense to the city after its purchase and the cleaning up of the grounds. It was decided to use the buildings for social and industrial purposes. One of them was fitted up by the pupils and neighbors interested as a manual training building. In this there is a carpenter shop, a sewing room, and a room for the class in shoemaking. Each grade devotes a regular number of hours a week to hand work, and has an opportunity to join other industrial classes after school. The immediate practical appeal of the work is never lost sight of, and the work is arranged to fit the needs of the individual pupil.
The carpenter shop is open all day, and there are classes for the girls as well as for the boys. Pupils are at liberty to go into the shop and work whenever they have any free time. The work is not confined to exercises to train the child in the use of tools, but each pupil makes something that he needs or wants, something that will be of real use to him. Processes and control of tools are taught the pupil by means of the piece of work he is doing. This is the keynote to all the industrial work done in the school. The more remote end of teaching the child processes which will be useful to him later is not lost sight of, but material is always used which has some immediate value to the child or to the school. The boys have learned carpentry work by making things that were needed in the school building--tables, cupboards, and bookcases--and by doing some of the repairing on the building.
The girls have learned to sew by making clothes for themselves, for their brothers and sisters, and by making curtains and linen for the school. They have learned to cook by making soup for hot lunches for the school and the neighbors, and by cooking a whole meal for their own class. Besides the cooking and sewing department for the girls, there is a class in millinery and in crocheting. These two classes are conducted from the commercial point of view, to teach the girls to do something that will enable them to earn some money. In the millinery class the pupils start by making and trimming hats for themselves, so that they learn the different processes in the trade. The girls in the class who show the most skill are then allowed to take orders from friends and neighbors and trim or make hats for them. Besides the cost of the material the buyer pays a very small sum for the work, and this goes into the school treasury. The millinery class has done quite a business in the neighborhood, and turned out some very successful hats.
Crocheting is taught as a trade, and any girl who wishes to make some money has an opportunity to learn how to make lace, table doilies, and all sorts of crocheted articles, like hoods, etc., which will sell. As the girls are learning, they are working on something which they can use for themselves or in their homes.
The work for the boys is arranged in the same way. Besides the carpenter work and the repairing there is a boys’ cooking class, a shoe-repairing department, and a tailoring shop. The cooking class is even more popular with the boys than with the girls. In the shoe-repairing shop, which holds classes after school hours, the boys learn to mend their own shoes. A professional cobbler is the teacher, and the mending must be neatly done. The boys begin work on their own old shoes and as they progress in skill, are allowed to bring shoes from home to be repaired, or to mend for the girls and for the younger boys in the school, who, however, pay a small sum for the work. The tailoring department is run on the same plan, to teach habits of personal neatness and of industry through giving the pupils work that results in neatness and gives some manual skill and control of tools.
The class is taught by a tailor, and the boys learn to patch and mend their own clothes, as well as to sponge and press them. Attendance is entirely voluntary, and the class meets after the regular school work is over. Knowing how to keep themselves tidy has resulted in a very marked improvement in the appearance and habits of the boys in the class, and has had an influence not only on the whole school, but on the neighborhood as well. The boys no longer resent the attempts of the teachers to influence them towards cleanliness and neatness, for they have become conscious of the advantages of these habits.
The cooking and domestic science classes are taught in one of the tenements turned over to the school without having been repaired, although the cooking equipment was supplied by the city. All the other work on the building--cleaning, painting, repairing, furnishing, and decorating--was done and paid for by the pupils of the school with help from the neighborhood clubs that use the building. There is a large cooking room, a demonstration dining and sitting room, and two bedrooms. The girls not only learn to cook real meals, but they learn how to serve them, and then how to take care of the demonstration house. The domestic science classes include lessons in buying, the comparative costs and values of food, something of food chemistry and values, and large quantity cooking. This work is done in connection with the soup kitchen. A group of girls have charge of the kitchen long enough to really learn about the work. They plan the menu and do the buying, cooking and serving of the soup, selling it for three cents a bowl to the pupils of the school and to neighbors. They keep all the accounts and not only have to make all their expenses, but are expected to make some profit for the use of the school as well.
They have made enough profit in one year to furnish most of the demonstration house. Aside from teaching how to do housework thoroughly and easily, the purpose of the house is to furnish an example of what can be done to make one of the regular frame tenements of the district comfortable and attractive, without more expense than most of the people now put into their homes. The house is very simply furnished, with cheap and strong things, in plain colors that are easily kept clean; the painting and papering was done by the pupils. The sewing class has made all the curtains and linen for the house, and made furniture by covering boxes, etc. Besides the class work that goes on in the building, the rooms are also used as a social center for the girls of the school.
The third building left standing on the ground purchased by the school authorities has been turned into a boys’ club house. There is a gymnasium, two club rooms, and a shower bath room. This house was in exceedingly bad condition when it became part of the school property, and there was no money and not much lumber available to repair it. But the boys of the school wanted the club house, and were not discouraged because it was not given to them all finished. They started out, as they had done in the manual training and domestic science buildings, to do the work themselves. Under the direction of the manual training teacher, they pulled off old paper and broken plaster, tore up uneven floors and took out partitions. Then they laid floors, put in woodwork and painted it, rehung doors, mended windows, and made furniture and gymnastic apparatus. When there was a job they could not do, such as the plastering and plumbing, they went among their friends and asked for money or help in work. Plumbers and plasterers who lived near the school came in and gave their time and work to help the boys get their building in order, and other friends gave enough money to finish the work. Men in the neighborhood dug a long ditch through the school grounds for sewerage connections. Gradually they are adding to the gymnasium apparatus and to the simple bathing facilities, while cleaning and keeping up the painting continue to supply opportunities for useful work.
As already indicated, the reflex effect upon homes in the vicinity has been marked. The school board had intended to wreck the three tenement houses when they bought the land; but Mr. Valentine saw the opportunity to give the community something which they needed, and at the same time to arouse a spirit of coöperation and interest among both parents and pupils in place of the old spirit of distrust and antagonism, when he persuaded the board to turn the buildings over to the school. He told the pupils what could be done with them and asked for their help in doing it. He got a hearty response at once, and so went out into the district with the children and told their parents what he proposed to do and asked for help. He got the same generous response for the first building, the manual training shops, as for the boys’ club. Besides the time and material which the skilled workers of the community have contributed, the community has given $350 in cash, no small sum for people as poor as they are. The value of the work being done in these buildings and of the training the boys have had in making them over, is proved by the fact that the community and the boys themselves wanted the work badly enough to pay for getting it in money and work. While it has undoubtedly been a struggle for the school and the district to contribute so much, the benefit to the school and to the community has been greater just because of these sacrifices and struggles. The work has made over the relations between the school and the pupils. The children like to go to school now, where before they had to be forced to go with threats of the truant officer, and their behavior is better when they get to school. The children’s parents have changed their attitude in the same way. They not only see that the children go to school, but they want them to go because they appreciate that the school is giving them things they need to make them self-supporting; but they also see that they have their own share to do if the work is to be successful. The school has been the cause of the growth of community spirit in increased civic and social activities of the district. With improved attendance and discipline, the number of cases sent to the juvenile court has decreased one-half in proportion to the number of pupils in school. Meanwhile the educational value of the work done has undoubtedly been greater than that of work done in disconnected shops and kitchens.
The school is also carrying on definite work to arouse the pupils to a sense of responsibility for their community and neighbors. Giving the pupils as much liberty and responsibility as possible around the school buildings is an important factor. Each pupil in the higher grades is given some small child in one of the lower grades to look out for. On the playground they see to it that the charge has a fair chance to play, and that he behaves himself; they see that the little boy or girl comes to school clean and tidy, if necessary doing the washing or mending themselves. This work has proved especially successful in doing away with bullying and in arousing personal pride and a sense of responsibility in the older children; the younger ones are better looked after than before and have many opportunities to learn things from the older and more advanced pupils. The older pupils are also encouraged in every way to help in carrying on the outside activities of the school. They make calls and write notes to keep up the attendance at the night school; they see to the order of the principal’s office and keep the boys’ club house in order. All the teachers of the school are agreed upon a policy of frank discussion of the poverty of the district, and of urging the pupils to earn money to help their parents by becoming as nearly self-supporting as possible.
Each grade keeps track of what its members earn and how they earn it, and the grade with the largest sum to its credit feels that it has accomplished something worth while during the year.
There is a savings bank in the school to teach the children habits of thrift and economy; here a pupil may deposit any sum from a penny up. The pupil receives a bank book in which stamps are pasted for his deposits, the money being kept in a city savings bank. The school also has a branch library, and the pupils are taught how to use it. Part of the playground has been made into a school garden, and here every pupil in the higher grades has a garden plot, also instruction which enables him to grow successfully some of the commoner fruits and flowers. This work is made very practical; the children have the sort of garden that would be useful and ornamental if it were in their own back yard. The school carries on a neighborhood campaign for home gardens, and the pupils with school gardens do much of this work, telling the people who want gardens what to plant, and giving them practical help with their plot until it is well established. In all these ways the teachers are trying to make ambitious, responsible citizens out of the student body. Inside the school pupils are taught higher standards of living than prevail in their homes, and they are taught as well trades and processes which will at least give them a start towards prosperity, and then, too, they are aroused to a feeling of responsibility for the welfare of the whole community.
All these things are done as part of the regular work of the school, and to a large extent during regular school hours. But there are many other activities which, while not contributing so directly to the education of the children, are important for the general welfare of the whole community. There is a night school for the adults of the neighborhood who want to go on learning, the shops being used as well as the schoolrooms. A group of people especially interested in the school have formed a club to promote the interest of the night school, and to see that the men of the community understand the opportunities it offers for them to perfect themselves in a trade or in their knowledge and use of English. This club is made up of men who live near the school and who are sufficiently alive to the needs of the school