There is an endless, and perhaps worldwide, controversy as to what
constitutes the "essentials" of education; and as to the steps to be
taken in the teaching of these essentials. The safe plan for constructive
workers appears to be to avoid personal educational philosophies and to read
all the essentials of education within the needs and processes of the community
itself. Since we are using this social point of view in making curriculum
suggestions for Cleveland , it seems desirable first to explain just what we mean.
Some of the matters set down may appear so obvious as not to require
expression. They need, however, to be presented again because of the frequency
with which they are lost sight of in actual school practice.
Children
and youth are expected as they grow up to take on by easy stages the
characteristics of adulthood. At the end of the process it is expected that
they will be able to do the things that adults do; to think as they think; to
bear adult responsibilities; to be efficient in work; to be thoughtful
public-spirited citizens; and the like. The individual who reaches this level
of attainment is educated, even though he may never have attended school. The
one who falls below this level is not truly educated, even though he may have
had a surplus of schooling.
To
bring one's nature to full maturity, as represented by the best of the adult
community in which one grows up, is true education for life in that community.
Anything less than this falls short of its purpose. Anything other than this is
education misdirected.
In
very early days, when community life was simple, practically all of one's
education was obtained through participating in community activities, and
without systematic teaching. From that day to this, however, the social world
has been growing more complex. Adults have developed kinds of activities so
complicated that youth cannot adequately enter into them and learn them without
systematic teaching. At first these things were few; with the years they have
grown very numerous.
One of
the earliest of these too-complicated activities was written language—reading,
writing, spelling. These matters became necessities to the adult world; but
youth under ordinary circumstances could not participate in them as performed
by adults sufficiently to master them. They had to be taught; and the school
thereby came into existence. A second thing developed about the same time was
the complicated number system used by adults. It was too difficult for youth to
master through participation only. It too had to be taught, and it offered a
second task for the schools. In the early schools this teaching of the
so-called Three R's was all that was needed, because these were the only adult
activities that had become so complicated as to require systematized teaching.
Other things were still simple enough, so that young people could enter into
them sufficiently for all necessary education.
As
community vision widened and men's affairs came to extend far beyond the
horizon, a need arose for knowledge of the outlying world. This knowledge could
rarely be obtained sufficiently through travel and observation. There arose the
new need for the systematic teaching of geography. What had hitherto not been a
human necessity and therefore not an educational essential became both because
of changed social conditions.
Looking
at education from this social point of view it is easy to see that there was a
time when no particular need existed for history, drawing, science, vocational
studies, civics, etc., beyond what one could acquire by mingling with one's
associates in the community. These were therefore not then essentials for
education. It is just as easy to see that changed social conditions of the
present make necessary for every one a fuller and more systematic range of
ideas in each of these fields than one can pick up incidentally. These things
have thereby become educational essentials. Whether a thing today is an
educational "essential" or not seems to depend upon two things:
whether it is a human necessity today; and whether it is so complex or
inaccessible as to require systematic teaching. The number of
"essentials" changes from generation to generation. Those today who
proclaim the Three R's as the sole "essentials" appear to be calling
from out the rather distant past. Many things have since become essential; and
other things are being added year by year. The normal method of education in
things not yet put into the schools, is participation in those things. One gets
his ideas from watching others and then learns to do by doing. There is no
reason to believe that as the school lends its help to some of the more
difficult things, this normal plan of learning can be set aside and another
substituted. Of course the schools must take in hand the difficult portions of
the process. Where complicated knowledge is needed, the schools must teach that
knowledge. Where drill is required, they must give the drill. But the knowledge
and the drill should be given in their relation to the human activities in which
they are used. As the school helps young people to take on the nature of
adulthood, it will still do so by helping them to enter adequately into the
activities of adulthood. Youth will learn to think, to judge, and to do, by
thinking, judging, and doing. They will acquire a sense of responsibility by
bearing responsibility. They will take on serious forms of thought by doing the
serious things which require serious thought.
It
cannot be urged that young people have a life of their own which is to be lived
only for youth's sake and without reference to the adult world about them. As a
matter of fact children and youth are a part of the total community of which
the mature adults are the natural and responsible leaders. At an early age they
begin to perform adult activities, to take on adult points of view, to bear
adult responsibilities. Naturally it is done in ways appropriate to their
natures. At first it is imitative play, constructive play, etc.—nature's method
of bringing children to observe the serious world about them, and to gird
themselves for entering into it. The next stage, if normal opportunities are
provided, is playful participation in the activities of their elders. This
changes gradually into serious participation as they grow older, becoming at
the end of the process responsible adult action. It is not possible to
determine the educational materials and processes at any stage of growth
without looking at the same time to that entire world of which youth forms a
part, and in which the nature and abilities of their elders point the goal of
their training.
The
social point of view herein expressed is sometimes characterized as being
utilitarian. It may be so; but not in any narrow or undesirable sense. It
demands that training be as wide as life itself. It looks to human activities
of every type: religious activities; civic activities; the duties of one's
calling; one's family duties; one's recreations; one's reading and meditation;
and the rest of the things that are done by the complete man or woman.
READING AND LITERATURE
The amount of time given to reading in the elementary schools of Cleveland , and the average time in 50 other
cities[A] are shown in the following table:
TABLE
1.—TIME GIVEN TO READING AND LITERATURE
========================================================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
|———————————-|————————————
Grade | Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
————————————————————————————
1 | 317 | 266 | 43 | 31
2 | 317 | 235 | 36 | 26
3 | 279 | 188 | 32 | 21
4 | 196 | 153 | 22 | 16
5 | 161 | 126 | 18 | 13
6 | 136 | 117 | 15 | 12
7 | 152 | 98 | 17 | 10
8 | 152 | 97 | 17 | 10
========================================================
Total | 1710 | 1280 | 25 | 17
————————————————————————————
========================================================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
|———————————-|————————————
Grade | Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
————————————————————————————
1 | 317 | 266 | 43 | 31
2 | 317 | 235 | 36 | 26
3 | 279 | 188 | 32 | 21
4 | 196 | 153 | 22 | 16
5 | 161 | 126 | 18 | 13
6 | 136 | 117 | 15 | 12
7 | 152 | 98 | 17 | 10
8 | 152 | 97 | 17 | 10
========================================================
Total | 1710 | 1280 | 25 | 17
————————————————————————————
During
the course of his school life, each pupil who finishes the elementary grades in
Cleveland receives 1710 hours of recitation and
directed study in reading as against an average of 1280 hours in progressive
cities in general. This is an excess of 430 hours, or 34 per cent. The annual
cost of teaching reading being about $600,000, this represents an excess annual
investment in this subject of some $150,000. Whether or not this excess
investment in reading is justified depends, of course, upon the way the time is
used. If the city is aiming only at the usual mastery of the mechanics of
reading and the usual introductory acquaintance with simple works of literary
art, it appears that Cleveland is using more time and labor than other cities consider
needful. If, on the other hand, this city is using the excess time for widely
diversified reading chosen for its content value in revealing the great fields
of history, industry, applied science, manners and customs in other lands,
travel, exploration, inventions, biography, etc., and in fixing life-long
habits of intelligent reading, then it is possible that it is just this excess
time that produces the largest educational returns upon the investment.
[Footnote
A: Henry W. Holmes, "Time Distribution by Subjects and
Grades in Representative Cities." In the Fourteenth Year Book of the
National Society for the Study of Education, Part I, 1915.University
ofChicago Press.]
Grades in Representative Cities." In the Fourteenth Year Book of the
National Society for the Study of Education, Part I, 1915.
of
It
would seem, however, from a careful study of the actual work and an examination
of the printed documents, that the chief purpose of teaching reading in this
city is, to use the terminology of its latest manual, "easy expressive
oral reading in rich, well-modulated tone." It is true that other aims are
mentioned, such as enlargement of vocabulary, word-study, understanding of
expressions and allusions, acquaintance with the leading authors, appreciation
of "beautiful expressions," etc. Properly emphasized, each of these
purposes is valid; but there are other equally valid ends to be achieved
through proper choice of the reading-content that are not mentioned. There is
here no criticism of the purposes long accepted, but of the apparent failure to
recognize other equally important ones. The character of the reading-content is
referred to only in the recommendation that in certain grades it should relate
to the seasons and to special occasions. Even in reference to the supplementary
reading, where content should be the first concern, the only statement of purpose
is that "children should read for the joy of it." Unfortunately, this
mistaken emphasis is not at all uncommon among the schools of the nation. How
one reads has received an undue amount of attention; what one reads in the
school courses must and will receive an increasingly large share of time and
thought, in the new evaluation. The use of interesting and valuable books for
other educational purposes at the same time that they are used for drill in the
mechanics of reading is coming more and more to be recognized as an improved
mode of procedure. The mechanical side of reading is not thereby neglected. It
is given its proper function and relation, and can therefore be better taught.
So far
as one can see, Cleveland is attempting in the reading work little more than the
traditional thing. The thirty-four per cent excess time may be justified by the
city on the theory that the schools are commissioned to get the work done
one-third better than in the average city. The reading tests made by the Survey
fail to reveal any such superiority. The city appears to be getting no better
than average results.
Certainly
people should read well and effectively in all ways in which they will be
called upon to read in their adult affairs. For the most part this means reading
for ideas, suggestions, and information in connection with the things involved
in their several callings; in connection with their civic problems; for
recreation; and for such general social enlightenment as comes from newspapers,
magazines, and books. Most reading will be for the content. It is desirable
that the reading be easy and rapid, and that one gather in all the ideas as one
reads. Because of the fact that oral reading is slower, more laborious for both
reader and listener, and because of the present easy accessibility of printed
matter, oral reading is becoming of steadily diminishing importance to adults.
No longer should the central educational purpose be the development of
expressive oral reading. It should be rapid and effective silent reading for
the sake of the thought read.
To
train an adult generation to read for the thought, schools must give children
full practice in reading for the thought in the ways in which later as adults
they should read. After the primary teachers have taught the elements, the work
should be mainly voluminous reading for the sake of entering into as much of
the world's thought and experience as possible. The work ought to be rather
more extensive than intensive. The chief end should be the development of that wide
social vision and understanding which is so much needed in this complicated
cosmopolitan age. While works of literary art should constitute a considerable
portion of the reading program, they should not monopolize the program, nor
indeed should they be regarded as the most important part of it. It is history,
travel, current news, biography, advance in the world of industry and applied
science, discussions of social relations, political adjustments, etc., which
adults need mostly to read; and it is by the reading of these things that
children form desirable and valuable reading habits.
The
reading curriculum needs to be looked after in two important ways. First,
social standards of judgment should determine the nature of the reading. The
texts beyond the primary grades are now for the most part selections of
literary art. Very little of it has any conscious relation, immediate or
remote, to present-day problems and conditions or with their historical
background. Probably children should read many more selections of literary art
than are found in the textbooks and the supplementary sets now owned by the
schools. But certainly such cultural literary experience ought not to crowd out
kinds of reading that are of much greater practical value. Illumination of the
things of serious importance in the everyday world of human affairs should have
a large place in reading work of every school.
It is
true that the supplementary sets of books have been chosen chiefly for their
content value. Many are historical, biographical, geographical, scientific,
civic, etc., in character. On the side of content, they have advanced much
farther than the textbooks toward what should constitute a proper reading
course. Unfortunately, the schools are very incompletely supplied with these
sets. If we consider all the sets of supplementary readers found in 10 or more
schools, we find that few of those assigned for fourth-grade reading are found
in one-quarter of the buildings and none are in half of them. The same is true
of the books for use in the fifth and seventh grades. Some of the books for the
sixth and eighth grades are found in more than half of the buildings, but there
is none that is found in as many as three-quarters of them.
The
second thing greatly needed to improve the reading course is more reading
practice. One learns to do a thing easily, rapidly, and effectively by
practice. The course of study in reading should therefore provide the
opportunity for much practice. At present the reading texts used aggregate for
the eight grades some 2100 pages. A third-grade child ought to read matter
suitable for its intelligence at 20 pages per hour, and a grammar-grade child
at 30 to 40 pages per hour. Since rapidity of reading is one of the desired
ends, the practice reading should be rapid. At the moderate rates mentioned,
the entire series of reading texts ought to be read in some 80 hours. This is
10 hours' practice for each of the eight school years, an altogether
insufficient amount of rapid reading practice. Of course the texts can be read
twice, or let us say three times, aggregating 30 hours of practice per year.
But even this is not more than could easily be accomplished in two or three
weeks of each of the years—always presuming that the reading materials are
rightly adapted to the mental maturity of the pupils. This leaves 35 weeks of
the year unprovided for. To make good this deficit, the buildings are furnished
with supplementary books in sets sufficiently large to supply entire classes.
The average number of such sets per building is shown in the following table:
TABLE 2.—SETS OF
SUPPLEMENTARY READING BOOKS PER BUILDING
Grade
Average number of sets 1 10.0 2 6.3 3 5.1 4 5.5 5 6.3 6 5.3 7 5.5 8 6.0
A
fifth, sixth, seventh, or eighth-grade student ought to be able to read all the
materials supplied his grade, both reading texts and all kinds of supplementary
reading, in 40 or 50 hours. He ought to do it easily in six weeks' work,
without encroaching on recitation time. He can read all of it twice in 10
weeks; and three times in 14 weeks. After reading everything three times over,
there still remain 24 weeks of each year unprovided for.
The
reply of teachers is that the work is so difficult that it has to be slowed
down enough to consume these 24 weeks. But is not this to admit that the hill
is too steep, that there is too much dead pull, and that the materials are
ill-chosen for practice in habits of rapid intelligent reading? It is not by
going slow that one learns to go fast. Quite the reverse. Too often the school
runs on low speed gear when it ought to be running on high. The low may be
necessary for the starting, but not for the running. It may be necessary in the
primary grades, but not thereafter for those who have had a normal start.
Reading practice should certainly make for increased speed in effective
reading.
The
actual work in the grades is very different from the plan suggested. In taking
up any selection for reading, the plan in most schools is about as follows:
1. A
list of the unusual words met with is written on the blackboard.
2.
Teacher and pupils discuss the meaning of these words; but unfortunately words
out of the context often carry no meaning.
3. The
words are marked diacritically, and pronounced.
4.
Pupils "use the words in sentences." The pupil frequently has nothing
to say that involves the word. It is only given an imitation of a real use by
being put into an artificial sentence.
5. The
oral reading is begun. One pupil reads a paragraph.
6.
With the book removed, the meaning of the paragraph is then reproduced either
by the reader or some other pupil. This work is necessarily perfunctory because
the pupil knows he is not giving information to anybody. Everybody within
hearing already has the meaning fresh in mind from the previous reading. The
normal child cannot work up enthusiasm for oral reproduction under such
conditions.
7. The
paragraph is analyzed into its various elements, and these in turn are
discussed in detail.
Such
work is not reading. It is analysis. A selection is not read, it is analyzed.
The purpose of real reading is to enter into the thought and emotional
experience of the writer; not to study the methods by which the author
expressed himself. The net result when the work is done as described is to
develop a critical consciousness of methods, without helping the children to
enter normally and rightly into the experience of the writer. The children of Cleveland need this genuine training in reading.
The
training, however, should be mainly in reading and not in analysis. The former
is of surpassing importance to all people; the latter is important only to
certain specialists. And, what is more, fullness of reading and right ways of
reading will accomplish incidentally most of the things aimed at in the
analysis.
The
following table of the reading outline of the High School of Commerce is a fair sample of what the city is
doing. Note how much time is given to the reading and analysis of the few
selections covered in four years.
TABLE 3.—WEEKS GIVEN
TO READING OF DIFFERENT BOOKS IN HIGH SCHOOL OF COMMERCE
Weeks
to read
First Year
Ashmun's Prose Selections 9
Cricket on the Hearth 5
Sohrab and Rustum 3
Midsummer Night's Dream 6
Ivanhoe 11
First Year
Ashmun's Prose Selections 9
Cricket on the Hearth 5
Sohrab and Rustum 3
Midsummer Night's Dream 6
Ivanhoe 11
Second
Year
Autobiography ofFranklin 7
Idylls of the King 10
Treasure Island 7
Sketch Book 7
Vision of Sir Launfal 3
Autobiography of
Idylls of the King 10
Sketch Book 7
Vision of Sir Launfal 3
Third
Year
Silas Marner 7
Iliad (Bryant's—4 books) 5
Washington 's Farewell Address 5
First Bunker Hill Oration 6
Emerson's Compensation 5
Roosevelt Book 6
Silas Marner 7
Iliad (Bryant's—4 books) 5
First Bunker Hill Oration 6
Emerson's Compensation 5
Roosevelt Book 6
Fourth
Year
Markham 's The Man with the Hoe 2
Tale of Two Cities 10
Public Duty of the Educated Man 4
Macbeth 11
Self-Reliance 6
Tale of Two Cities 10
Public Duty of the Educated Man 4
Macbeth 11
Self-Reliance 6
When a
short play of a hundred pages like Macbeth requires nearly three months for
reading, when almost two months are given to Treasure Island and nearly three months to Ivanhoe,
clearly it is something other than reading that is being attempted. It is
perfectly obvious that the high schools are attending principally to the
mechanics of expression and not to the content of the expression. The relative
emphasis should be reversed.
The
amount of reading in the high schools should be greatly increased. Those who
object that rapid work is superficial believe that work must be slow to be
thorough. It should be remembered, however, that slow work is often superficial
and that rapid work is often excellent. In fact the world's best workers are
generally rapid, accurate, and thorough. Ask any business man of wide
experience. Now leaving aside pupils who are slow by nature, it can be affirmed
that pupils will acquire slow, thorough habits or rapid, thorough habits
according to the way they are taught. If they are brought up by the slow plan,
naturally when speeded up suddenly, the quality of their work declines. They
can be rapid, accurate, and thorough only if such strenuous work begins early
and is continued consistently. Slow habits are undesirable if better ones can
just as well be implanted.
To
avoid possible misunderstanding, it ought to be stated that the plan
recommended does not mean less drill upon the mechanical side of reading. We
are recommending a somewhat more modernized kind of mechanics, and a much more
strenuous kind of drill. The plan looks both toward more reading and improved
habits of reading.
One
final suggestion finds here its logical place. Before the reading work of
elementary or high schools can be modernized, the city must purchase the books
used in the work. Leaving the supplying of books to private purchase is the
largest single obstacle in the way of progress. Men in the business world will
have no difficulty in seeing the logic of this. When shoes, for example, were
made by hand, each workman could easily supply his own tools; but now that
elaborate machinery has been devised for their manufacture, it has become so
expensive that a machine factory must supply the tools. It is so in almost
every field of labor where efficiency has been introduced. Now the books to be
read are the tools in the teaching of reading. In a former day when a mastery
of the mechanics of reading was all that seemed to be needed, the privately
purchased textbook could suffice. In our day when other ends are set up beyond
and above those of former days, a far more elaborate and expensive equipment is
required. The city must now supply the educational tools. It is well to face
this issue candidly and to state the facts plainly. Relative failure can be the
only possible lot of reluctant communities. They can count on it with the same
assurance as that of a manufacturer of shoes who attempts to employ the methods
of former days in competition with modern methods.
In
this city the expenditures for supplementary textbooks have amounted to
something more than $31,000 in the past 10 years. Approximately one-third of
this sum was spent in the first seven years of the decade and more than $20,000
in the past three years. This indicates the rapid advance in this direction
made under the present school administration but the supply of books still
falls far short of the needs of the schools. A fair start has been made but
nothing should be permitted to obstruct rapid progress in this direction.
SPELLING
TABLE
4.—TIME GIVEN TO SPELLING
========================================================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
|———————————-|————————————
Grade | Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
————————————————————————————
1 | 47 | 54 | 6.5 | 6.3
2 | 63 | 66 | 7.2 | 7.3
3 | 79 | 73 | 9.0 | 8.0
4 | 63 | 67 | 7.1 | 6.9
5 | 51 | 61 | 5.7 | 6.3
6 | 47 | 58 | 5.4 | 5.9
7 | 47 | 52 | 5.4 | 5.3
8 | 47 | 51 | 5.4 | 5.1
========================================================
Total | 444 | 482 | 6.5 | 6.4
————————————————————————————
========================================================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
|———————————-|————————————
Grade | Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
————————————————————————————
1 | 47 | 54 | 6.5 | 6.3
2 | 63 | 66 | 7.2 | 7.3
3 | 79 | 73 | 9.0 | 8.0
4 | 63 | 67 | 7.1 | 6.9
5 | 51 | 61 | 5.7 | 6.3
6 | 47 | 58 | 5.4 | 5.9
7 | 47 | 52 | 5.4 | 5.3
8 | 47 | 51 | 5.4 | 5.1
========================================================
Total | 444 | 482 | 6.5 | 6.4
————————————————————————————
The
general plan of the course is indicated in the syllabus:
"Two
words are made prominent in each lesson. Their pronunciation, division into
syllables, derivation, phonetic properties, oral and written spelling and
meaning, are all to be made clear to pupils.
"The
teaching of a new word may be done by using it in a sentence; by definition or
description; by giving a synonym or the antonym; by illustration with object,
action or drawing; and by etymology.
"Each
lesson should have also from eight to 20 subordinate words taken from textbook
or composition exercises…. Frequent supplementary dictation, word-building and
phonic exercises should be given. Spell much orally…. Teach a little daily,
test thoroughly, drill intensively, and follow up words misspelled
persistently."
In
most respects the work agrees with the usual practice in progressive cities:
the teaching of a few words in each lesson; the frequent and continuous review
of words already taught; taking the words to be taught from the language
experience of the pupils; following up words actually misspelled; studying the
words from many angles, etc.
In
some respects the work needs further modernization. The words chosen for the
work are not always the ones most needed. Whether children or adults, people
need to spell only when they write. They need to spell correctly the words of
their writing vocabulary, and they need to spell no others. More important
still, they need to acquire the habit of watching their spelling as they write;
the habit of spelling every word with certainty that it is correct, and the
habit of going to word-lists or dictionary when there is any doubt.
This
development of the habit of watchfulness over their spelling as they write is
the principal thing. One who has it will always spell well. In case he has much
writing to do, it automatically leads to a constant renewing of his memory for
words used and prevents forgetting. The one who has only memorized word-lists,
even though they have been rigorously drilled, inevitably forgets, whether
rapidly or slowly; and in proportion as he lacks this general habit of
watchfulness, degenerates in his spelling. The reason why schools fail to
overcome the frequent criticism that young people do not spell well, is because
of the fact that they have been trying to teach specific words rather than to
develop a general and constant watchfulness.
The
fundamental training in spelling is accomplished in connection with
composition, letter-writing, etc. Direct word-list study should have only a
secondary and supplemental place. It is needed, first, for making people
conscious of the letter elements of words which are seen as wholes in their
reading, and for bringing them to look closely into the relations of these
letter elements; second, for developing a preliminary understanding of the
spelling of words used; and third, for drill upon words commonly misspelled.
While a necessary portion of the entire process, it probably should not require
so much time as is now given to it and the time saved should be devoted to the
major task of teaching spelling watchfulness in connection with writing letters
and compositions.
The
great majority of the population of Cleveland will spell only as they write letters,
receipts, and simple memoranda. They do not need to spell a wide vocabulary
with complete accuracy. On the other hand, there are classes of people to whom
a high degree of spelling accuracy covering a fairly wide vocabulary is an
indispensable vocational necessity: clerks, copyists, stenographers,
correspondents, compositors, proof-readers, etc. These people need an intensive
specialized training in spelling that is not needed by the mass of the
population. Such specialized vocational training should be taken care of by the
Cleveland schools, but it should not be forced upon
all simply because the few need it. The attempt to bring all to the high level
needed by the few, and the failure to reach this level, is responsible for the
justifiable criticism of the schools that those few who need to spell unusually
well are imperfectly trained.
The
spelling practice should continue through the high school. It is only necessary
for teachers to refuse to accept written work that contains any misspelled word
to force upon students the habit of watchfulness over every word written. The High School of Commerce is to be commended for making spelling a
required portion of the training. The course needs to be more closely knit with
composition and business letter-writing.
HANDWRITING
TABLE
5.—TIME GIVEN TO HANDWRITING
======================================================== | Hours per year | Per
cent of grade time |———————————-|———————————— Grade | Cleveland | 50 cities |
Cleveland | 50 cities ———————————————————————————— 1 | 47 | 50 | 6.5 | 6.7 2 |
63 | 60 | 7.2 | 6.7 3 | 63 | 52 | 7.2 | 5.7 4 | 63 | 53 | 7.2 | 5.5 5 | 67 | 50
| 6.4 | 5.1 6 | 47 | 47 | 5.4 | 4.8 7 | 47 | 39 | 5.4 | 3.9 8 | 32 | 37 | 3.6 |
3.7 ======================================================== Total | 419 | 388
| 6.1 | 5.1 ————————————————————————————
The
curriculum of handwriting resolves itself mainly into questions of method, and
of standards to be achieved in each of the grades. These matters are treated
intensively in the section of the survey report entitled "Measuring the
Work of the Public Schools."
LANGUAGE,
COMPOSITION, GRAMMAR
The schools devote about the usual amount of time to training for
the correct use of the mother tongue. Most of the time in intermediate and
grammar grades is devoted to English grammar. Composition receives only minor
attention.
TABLE
6.—TIME GIVEN TO LANGUAGE, COMPOSITION, AND GRAMMAR
========================================================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
|———————————-|————————————
Grade | Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
————————————————————————————
1 | 79 | 75 | 10.9 | 8.6
2 | 95 | 79 | 10.8 | 8.7
3 | 79 | 94 | 9.0 | 10.3
4 | 104 | 106 | 11.8 | 10.9
5 | 120 | 116 | 13.6 | 12.0
6 | 120 | 118 | 13.6 | 12.2
7 | 125 | 134 | 14.3 | 13.7
8 | 125 | 142 | 14.3 | 14.1
========================================================
Total | 847 | 864 | 12.3 | 11.4
————————————————————————————
========================================================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
|———————————-|————————————
Grade | Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
————————————————————————————
1 | 79 | 75 | 10.9 | 8.6
2 | 95 | 79 | 10.8 | 8.7
3 | 79 | 94 | 9.0 | 10.3
4 | 104 | 106 | 11.8 | 10.9
5 | 120 | 116 | 13.6 | 12.0
6 | 120 | 118 | 13.6 | 12.2
7 | 125 | 134 | 14.3 | 13.7
8 | 125 | 142 | 14.3 | 14.1
========================================================
Total | 847 | 864 | 12.3 | 11.4
————————————————————————————
In the
teaching of grammar too much stress is placed on forms and relations. Of course
it is expected that this knowledge will be of service to the pupils in their
everyday expression. But such practical application of the knowledge is not the
thing toward which the work actually looks. The end really achieved is rather
the ability to recite well on textbook grammar, and to pass good examinations in
the subject. In classes visited the thing attempted was being done in a
relatively effective way. And when judged in the light of the kind of education
considered best 20 years ago, the work is of a superior character.
As a
matter of fact, facility in oral and written expression is, like everything
else, mainly developed through much practice. The form and style of expression
are perfected mainly through the conscious and unconscious imitation of good
models. Technical grammar plays, or should play, the relatively minor role of
assisting students to eliminate and to avoid certain types of error. Since
grammar has this perfectly practical function to perform, probably only those
things needed should be taught; but more important still, everything taught should
be constantly put to use by the pupils in their oversight of their own speech
and writing. Only as knowledge is put to work, is it really learned or
assimilated. The schools should require much oral and written expression of the
pupils, and should enforce constant watchfulness of their own speech on the
part of the pupils. It is possible to require pupils to go over all of their
written work and to examine it, before handing it in, in the light of all the
grammatical rules they have learned. It is also possible for pupils to guard
consciously against known types of error which they are accustomed to make in
their oral recitations. Every recitation in whatever subject provides
opportunity for such training in habits of watchfulness. Only as the pupil is brought
to do it himself, without prompting on the part of the teacher, is his
education accomplished.
A
limited amount of systematic grammatical teaching is a necessary preliminary
step. The purpose is an introductory acquaintance with certain basic forms, terminology,
relationships, and grammatical perspective. This should be accomplished
rapidly. Like the preliminary survey in any field, this stage of the work will
be relatively superficial. Fullness and depth of understanding will come with
application. This preliminary understanding can not be learned
"incidentally." Such a plan fails on the side of perspective and
relationship, which are precisely the things in which the preparatory teaching
of the subject should be strong.
This
preliminary training in technical grammar need not be either so extensive or so
intensive as it is at present. An altogether disproportionate amount of time is
now given to it. The time saved ought to go to oral and written
expression,—composition, we might call it, except that the word has been
spoiled because of the artificiality of the exercises.
The
composition or expression most to be recommended consists of reports on the
supplementary reading in connection with history, geography, industrial
studies, civics, sanitation, etc.; and reports of observations on related
matters in the community. Topics of interest and of value are practically
numberless. Such reports will usually be oral; but often they will be written.
Expression occurs naturally and normally only where there is something to be
discussed. The present manual suggests compositions based upon "changes in
trees, dissemination of seeds, migration of birds, snow, ice, clouds, trees,
leaves, and flowers." This type of composition program under present
conditions cannot be a vital one. Elementary science is not taught in the
schools of Cleveland ; and so the subject matter of these topics is not
developed. Further, it is the world of human action, revealed in history,
geography, travels, accounts of industry, commerce, manufacture,
transportation, etc., that possesses the greater value for the purposes of
education, as well as far greater interest for the student.
Probably
little time should be set apart on the program for composition. The expression
side of all the school work, both in the elementary school and in the high
school, should be used to give the necessary practice. The technical matters
needed can be taught in occasional periods set aside for that specific purpose.
The
isolation of the composition work continues through the academic high schools
and in considerable degree through the technical high schools also. In the high
schools the expression work probably needs to be developed chiefly in the
classes in science, history, industrial studies, commercial and industrial
geography, physics, etc., where the students have an abundance of things to
discuss. Probably four-fifths of all of the training in English expression in
the high schools should be accomplished in connection with the oral and written
work of the other subjects.
MATHEMATICS
To arithmetic, the Cleveland schools are devoting a somewhat larger
proportion of time than the average of cities.
TABLE
7.—TIME GIVEN TO ARITHMETIC
===========================================================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time|
Grade |———————————————————————-
| Cleveland | 50 cities| Cleveland | 50 cities |
—————————————————————————————-
1 | 38 | 60 | 5.2 | 6.9 |
2 | 136 | 96 | 15.5 | 10.7 |
3 | 142 | 131 | 16.3 | 14.4 |
4 | 152 | 149 | 17.2 | 15.4 |
5 | 142 | 144 | 17.1 | 14.9 |
6 | 155 | 146 | 17.5 | 15.0 |
7 | 142 | 140 | 16.1 | 14.4 |
8 | 158 | 142 | 17.9 | 14.1 |
===========================================================
Total | 1065 | 1008 | 15.5 | 13.3 |
—————————————————————————————-
===========================================================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time|
Grade |———————————————————————-
| Cleveland | 50 cities| Cleveland | 50 cities |
—————————————————————————————-
1 | 38 | 60 | 5.2 | 6.9 |
2 | 136 | 96 | 15.5 | 10.7 |
3 | 142 | 131 | 16.3 | 14.4 |
4 | 152 | 149 | 17.2 | 15.4 |
5 | 142 | 144 | 17.1 | 14.9 |
6 | 155 | 146 | 17.5 | 15.0 |
7 | 142 | 140 | 16.1 | 14.4 |
8 | 158 | 142 | 17.9 | 14.1 |
===========================================================
Total | 1065 | 1008 | 15.5 | 13.3 |
—————————————————————————————-
That
everybody should be well grounded in the fundamental operations of arithmetic
is so obvious as to require no discussion. Beyond this point, however,
difficult problems arise. The probabilities are that the social and vocational
conditions of the coming generation will require that everybody be more
mathematical-minded than at present.
The
content of mathematics courses is to be determined by human needs. One of the
fundamental needs of the age upon which we are now entering is accurate
quantitative thinking in the fields of one's vocation, in the supervision of
our many co-operative governmental labors, in our economic thinking with
reference to taxation, expenditures, insurance, public utilities, civic
improvements, pensions, corporations, and the multitude of other civic and
vocational matters.
Just
as the thought involved in physics, astronomy, or engineering needs to be put
in mathematical terms in order that it may be used effectively, so must it be
with effective vocational, civic, and economic thinking in general. Our chief
need is not so much the ability to do calculations as it is the ability to
think in figures and the habit of thinking in figures. Calculations, while indispensable,
are incidental to more important matters.
Naturally
before one is prepared to use mathematical forms of thought in considering the
many social and vocational problems, he must have mastered the fundamentals.
The elementary school, at as early an age as practicable, should certainly give
the necessary preliminary knowledge of and practice in the fundamental
operations of arithmetic. This should be done with a high degree of
thoroughness, but it should always be kept in mind that this is only a preliminary
mastery of the alphabet of mathematical thinking. The other part of our problem
is a development of the quantitative aspects of the vocational, economic, and
civic subjects. One finds clear recognition of this in Cleveland in the new arithmetic manual. The
following quotations are typical:
"The
important problem of the seventh and eighth grades is to enable the pupils to
understand and deal intelligently with the most important social institutions
with which arithmetical processes are associated."
In
discussing the teaching of the mathematical aspect of insurance, we find this
statement: "Owing to the important place this subject holds in life, we
should emphasize its informational value rather than its mathematical
content."
Under
taxation and revenue: "If the general features of this subject are
presented from the standpoint of civics, the pupils should have no difficulty
in solving the problems as no new principle is introduced."
Under
stocks and bonds: "Pupils should be taught to know what a corporation is,
its chief officers, how it is organized, what stocks and bonds are, and how
dividends are declared and paid, in so far as such knowledge is needed by the
general public."
These
statements indicate a recognition of the most important principle that should
control in the development of all of the mathematics, elementary and secondary,
beyond the preliminary training needed for accuracy and rapidity in the
fundamental operations.
When
this principle is carried through to its logical conclusion, it will be
observed that most of these developments will not take place within the
arithmetic class, but in the various other subjects. Arithmetic teaching, like
the teaching of penmanship, etc., is for the purpose of giving tools that are
to be used in matters that lie beyond. The full development will take place
within these various other fields. For the present, it probably will be well
for the schools to develop the matters both within the arithmetic classes and
in the other classes. Neither being complete at present, each will tend to
complete the other.
On the
side of the preliminary training in the fundamental operations, the present
arithmetic course of study is on the whole of a superior character. It provides
for much drill, and for a great variety of drill. It emphasizes rapidity,
accuracy, and the confidence that comes to pupils from checking up their
results. It holds fast to fundamentals, dispensing with most of the things of
little practical use. It provides easy advances from the simple to the complicated.
The field of number is explored in a great variety of directions so that pupils
are made to feel at home in the subject. One large defect is the lack of
printed exercise materials, the use of which would result in greatly increased
effectiveness. Such printed materials ought to be furnished in great abundance.
ALGEBRA
In the
report of the Educational Commission of Cleveland, 1906, we find the following
very significant sentences relative to the course of study for the proposed
high school of commerce:
"An
entirely new course of study should be made out for this school. Subjects which
have been considered necessary in a high school, because they tend to develop
the mind, should not for this reason only be placed in a commercial course.
Subjects should not be given because they strengthen the mind, but the subjects
which are necessary in this course should be given in such a way as to
strengthen the mind. The mathematics in this school should consist of business
arithmetic and mensuration. We can see no reason for giving these students
either algebra or geometry. But they should be taught short and practical
methods of working business problems."
We
find here a recommendation since carried out that indicates a clear recognition
of the principle of adaptation of the course of study to actual needs. Carried
out to its logical conclusion, and applied to the entire city system, it raises
questions as to the advisability of requiring algebra of girls in any of the
high school courses; or of requiring it of that large number of boys looking
forward to vocations that do not involve the generalized mathematics of
algebra. Now either the commercial students do need algebra or a large
proportion of these others do not need it. It seems advisable here to do nothing
more than to present the question as one which the city needs to investigate.
The present practice, in Cleveland as elsewhere, reveals inconsistency. In one
or the other of the schools a wrong course is probably being followed. The
current tendency in public education is toward agreement with the principle
enunciated by the Cleveland Educational Commission, and toward a growing and
consistent application of it.
Differentiation
in the mathematics of different classes of pupils is necessary. The public schools
ought to give the same mathematics to all up to that level where the need is
common to all. Beyond that point, mathematics needs to be adapted to the
probable future activities of the individual. There are those who will need to
reach the higher levels of mathematical ability. Others will have no such need.
There
is a growing belief that even for those who are in need of algebra the subject
is not at present organized in desirable ways. It is thought that, on the one
hand, it should be knit up in far larger measure with practical matters, and on
the other, it should be developed in connection with geometry and trigonometry.
The technical high schools of Cleveland have adopted this form of organization.
Their mathematics is probably greatly in advance of that of the academic
schools.
GEOMETRY
Form
study should begin in the kindergarten, and it should develop through the
grades and high school in ways similar to the arithmetic, and in conjunction
with the arithmetic, drawing, and construction work. Since geometrical forms
involve numerical relations, they supply good materials to use in making number
relations concrete and clear. This is now done in developing ideas of
fractions, multiplication, division, ratio, per cent, etc. It should be done
much more fully and variously than at present and for the double purpose of
practising the form-ideas as well as the number-ideas. Arithmetic study and
form-study can well grow up together, gradually merging into the combined
algebra and geometry so far as students need to reach the higher levels of
mathematical generalization.
At the
same time that this is being developed in the mathematics classes, development
should also be going on in the classes of drawing, design, and construction.
The alphabet of form-study will thus be taught in several of the studies. The
application will be made in practical design, in mechanical and free-hand
drawing, in constructive labor, in the graphical representation of social,
economic, and other facts of life. The application comes not so much in the
development of practical problems in the mathematics classes as in the
development of the form aspect of those other activities that involve form.
We
have here pointed to what appears to be in progressive schools a growing
program of work. Everywhere it is yet somewhat vague and inchoate. In
connection with the arithmetic, the drawing, the construction and art work, and
the mathematics of the technical high schools, it appears to be developing in
Cleveland in a vigorous and healthy manner.
HISTORY
The curriculum makers for elementary education do not seem to have
placed a high valuation upon history. Apparently it has not been considered an
essential study of high worth, like reading, writing, spelling, grammar, and
arithmetic. To history are allotted but 290 hours in Cleveland, as against 496
hours in the average of 50 progressive American cities. This discrepancy should
give the city pause and concern. If a mistake is being made, it is more likely
to be on the part of an individual city than upon that of 50 cities. The
probability is that Cleveland is giving too little time to this subject.
TABLE
8.—TIME GIVEN TO HISTORY
===========================================================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time|
Grade |———————————————————————-
| Cleveland | 50 cities| Cleveland | 50 cities |
—————————————————————————————-
1 | 0 | 27 | 0.0 | 3.1 |
2 | 0 | 31 | 0.0 | 3.4 |
3 | 19 | 35 | 2.1 | 3.8 |
4 | 25 | 57 | 2.9 | 5.8 |
5 | 25 | 67 | 2.9 | 6.9 |
6 | 51 | 71 | 5.7 | 7.3 |
7 | 85 | 91 | 9.7 | 9.2 |
8 | 85 | 117 | 9.7 | 11.6 |
===========================================================
Total | 290 | 496 | 4.2 | 6.5 |
—————————————————————————————-
===========================================================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time|
Grade |———————————————————————-
| Cleveland | 50 cities| Cleveland | 50 cities |
—————————————————————————————-
1 | 0 | 27 | 0.0 | 3.1 |
2 | 0 | 31 | 0.0 | 3.4 |
3 | 19 | 35 | 2.1 | 3.8 |
4 | 25 | 57 | 2.9 | 5.8 |
5 | 25 | 67 | 2.9 | 6.9 |
6 | 51 | 71 | 5.7 | 7.3 |
7 | 85 | 91 | 9.7 | 9.2 |
8 | 85 | 117 | 9.7 | 11.6 |
===========================================================
Total | 290 | 496 | 4.2 | 6.5 |
—————————————————————————————-
The
treatment in the course of study manual indicates that it is a neglected
subject. Of the 108 pages, it receives an aggregate of less than two. The
perfunctory assignment of work for the seventh grade is typical:
"UNITED STATES
HISTORY
"B
Assignment.
Mace's History, pp. 1-124 inclusive.
Questions and suggested collateral reading
found in Appendix may be used as teacher directs.
Mace's History, pp. 1-124 inclusive.
Questions and suggested collateral reading
found in Appendix may be used as teacher directs.
"A
Assignment.
Mace's History, pp. 125-197.
Make use of questions and suggested collateral
reading at your own option."
Mace's History, pp. 125-197.
Make use of questions and suggested collateral
reading at your own option."
For
fifth and sixth grades there is assigned a small history text of 200 pages for
one or two lessons per week. The two years of the seventh and eighth grades are
devoted to the mastery of about 500 pages of text. While there is incidental
reference to collateral reading, as a matter of fact the schools are not
supplied with the necessary materials for this collateral reading in the
grammar grades. The true character of the work is really indicated by the last
sentence of the eighth-grade history assignment: "The text of our book
should be thoroughly mastered."
In
discussing the situation, the first thing to which we must call attention is
the great value of history for an understanding of the multitude of complicated
social problems met with by all people in a democracy. In a country where all
people are the rulers, all need a good understanding of the social, political,
economic, industrial, and other problems with which we are continually
confronted. It is true the thing needed is an understanding of present
conditions, but there is no better key to a right understanding of our present
conditions than history furnishes. One comes to understand a present situation
by observing how it has come to be. History is one of the most important
methods of social analysis.
The
history should be so taught that it will have a demonstrably practical purpose.
In drawing up courses of study in the subject for the grammar grades and the
high school, the first task should be an analysis of present-day social conditions,
the proper understanding of which requires historical background. Once having
discovered the list of social topics, it is possible to find historical
readings which will show how present conditions have grown up out of earlier
ones. Looked at from a practical point of view, the history should be developed
on the basis of topics, a great abundance of reading being provided for each of
the topics. We have in mind such topics as the following:
Sociological
Aspects of War
Territorial Expansion
Race Problems
Tariff and Free Trade
Transportation
Money Systems
Our Insular Possessions
Growth of Population
Trusts
Banks and Banking
Immigration
Capital and Labor
Education
Inventions
Suffrage
Centralization of Government
Strikes and Lockouts
Panics and Business Depressions
Commerce
Taxation
Manufacturing
Labor Unions
Foreign Commerce
Agriculture
Postal Service
Army
Government Control of Corporations
Municipal Government
Navy
Factory Labor
Wages
Courts of Law
Charities
Crime
Fire Protection
Roads and Road Transportation
Newspapers and Magazines
National Defense
Conservation of Natural Resources
Liquor Problems
Parks and Playgrounds
Housing Conditions
Mining
Health, Sanitation, etc.
Pensions
Unemployment
Child Labor
Women in Industry
Cost of Living
Pure Food Control
Savings Banks
Water Supply of Cities
Prisons
Recreations and Amusements
Co-operative Buying and Selling
Insurance
Hospitals
Territorial Expansion
Race Problems
Tariff and Free Trade
Transportation
Money Systems
Our Insular Possessions
Growth of Population
Trusts
Banks and Banking
Immigration
Capital and Labor
Education
Inventions
Suffrage
Centralization of Government
Strikes and Lockouts
Panics and Business Depressions
Commerce
Taxation
Manufacturing
Labor Unions
Foreign Commerce
Agriculture
Postal Service
Army
Government Control of Corporations
Municipal Government
Navy
Factory Labor
Wages
Courts of Law
Charities
Crime
Fire Protection
Roads and Road Transportation
Newspapers and Magazines
National Defense
Conservation of Natural Resources
Liquor Problems
Parks and Playgrounds
Housing Conditions
Mining
Health, Sanitation, etc.
Pensions
Unemployment
Child Labor
Women in Industry
Cost of Living
Pure Food Control
Savings Banks
Water Supply of Cities
Prisons
Recreations and Amusements
Co-operative Buying and Selling
Insurance
Hospitals
After
drawing up such lists of topics for study, they should be assigned to grammar
grades and high school according to the degree of maturity necessary for their
comprehension. Naturally as much as possible should be covered in the grammar
grades. Such as cannot be covered there should be covered as early as
practicable in the high school, since so large a number of students drop out,
and all need the work. Of course, this would involve a radical revision of the
high school courses in history. It is not here recommended that any such
changes be attempted abruptly. There are too many other conditions that require
readjustment at the same time. It must all be a gradual growth.
Naturally,
students must have some familiarity with the general time relations of history
and the general chronological movements of affairs before they can understand
the more or less specialized treatment of individual topics. Preliminary
studies are therefore both necessary and desirable in the intermediate and
grammar grades for the purpose of giving the general background. During these
grades a great wealth of historical materials should be stored up. Pupils
should acquire much familiarity with the history of the ancient oriental
nations, Judea, Greece, Rome, the states of modern Europe and America. The
purpose should be to give a general, and in the beginning a relatively
superficial, overview of the world's history for the sake of perspective. The
reading should be biographical, anecdotal, thrilling dramas of human
achievement, rich with human interest. It should be at every stage of the work
on the level with the understanding and degree of maturity of the pupils, so
that much reading can be covered rapidly. Given the proper conditions—chiefly
an abundance of the proper books supplied in sets large enough for
classes—pupils can cover a large amount of ground, obtain a wealth of
historical experience, and acquire a great quantity of useful information, the
main outlines of which are remembered without much difficulty. They can in this
manner lay a broad historical foundation for the study of the social topics
that should begin by the seventh grade and continue throughout the high school.
The
textbooks of the present type can be employed as a part of this preliminary
training. Read in their entirety and read rapidly, they give one that
perspective which comes from a comprehensive view of the entire field. But they
are too brief, abstract, and barren to afford valuable concrete historical
experience. They are excellent reference books for gaining and keeping
historical perspective.
Reading
of the character that we have here called preliminary should not cease as the
other historical studies are taken up. The general studies should certainly
continue for some portion of the time through the grammar grades and high
school, but it probably should be mainly supervised reading of interesting
materials rather than recitation and examination work.
We
would recommend that the high schools give careful attention to the
recommendation of the National Education Association Committee on the
Reorganization of the Secondary Course of Study in History.
CIVICS
Civic training scarcely finds a place upon the elementary school
program. The manual suggests that one-quarter of the history time—10 to 20
minutes per week—in the fifth and sixth grades should be given to a discussion
of such civic topics as the department of public service, street cleaning,
garbage disposal, health and sanitation, the city water supply, the mayor and
the council, the treasurer, and the auditor. The topics are important, but the
time allowed is inadequate and the pupils of these grades are so immature that
no final treatment of such complicated matters is possible. For seventh and
eighth grades, the manual makes no reference to civics. This is the more surprising
because Cleveland is a city in which there has been no end of civic discussion
and progressive human-welfare effort. The extraordinary value of civic
education in the elementary school, as a means of furthering civic welfare,
should have received more decided recognition.
The
elementary teachers and principals of Cleveland might profitably make such a
civic survey as that made in Cincinnati as the method of discovering the topics
that should enter into a grammar grade course. The heavy emphasis upon this
subject should be reserved for the later grades of the elementary school.
In the
high schools, a little is being accomplished. In the academic high schools,
those who take the classical course receive no civics whatever. It is not even
elective for them. Those who take the scientific or English courses may take
civics as a half-year elective. In the technical high schools it is required of
all for a half-year. The course is offered only in the senior year, except in
the High School of Commerce, where it is offered in the third. As a result of
these various circumstances, the majority of students who enter and complete
the course in the high schools of Cleveland receive no civic training
whatever—not even the inadequate half-year of work that is available for a few.
Whether
the deficiencies here pointed out are serious or not depends in large measure
upon the character of the other social subjects, such as history and geography.
If these are developed in full and concrete ways, they illumine large numbers
of our difficult social problems. It is probable that the larger part of the
informational portions of civic training should be imparted through these other
social subjects. Whether very much of this is actually done at present is
doubtful; for the history teaching, as has already been noted, is much
underdeveloped, and while somewhat further advanced, geography work is still
far from adequate at the time this report is written.
GEOGRAPHY
Geography in Cleveland is given the customary amount of time, though
it is distributed over the grades in a somewhat unusual way. It is
exceptionally heavy in the intermediate grades and correspondingly light in the
grammar grades. As geography, like all other subjects, is more and more
humanized and socialized in its reference, much more time will be called for in
the last two grammar grades.
TABLE
9.—-TIME GIVEN TO GEOGRAPHY
===========================================================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time|
Grade |———————————————————————-
| Cleveland | 50 cities| Cleveland | 50 cities |
—————————————————————————————-
1 | 0 | 16 | 0.0 | 1.8 |
2 | 0 | 7 | 0.0 | 0.8 |
3 | 28 | 50 | 3.2 | 5.4 |
4 | 101 | 83 | 11.4 | 8.5 |
5 | 125 | 102 | 14.3 | 11.2 |
6 | 125 | 107 | 14.3 | 11.0 |
7 | 57 | 98 | 6.4 | 9.9 |
8 | 57 | 76 | 6.4 | 7.6 |
===========================================================
Total | 493 | 539 | 7.2 | 7.1 |
—————————————————————————————-
===========================================================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time|
Grade |———————————————————————-
| Cleveland | 50 cities| Cleveland | 50 cities |
—————————————————————————————-
1 | 0 | 16 | 0.0 | 1.8 |
2 | 0 | 7 | 0.0 | 0.8 |
3 | 28 | 50 | 3.2 | 5.4 |
4 | 101 | 83 | 11.4 | 8.5 |
5 | 125 | 102 | 14.3 | 11.2 |
6 | 125 | 107 | 14.3 | 11.0 |
7 | 57 | 98 | 6.4 | 9.9 |
8 | 57 | 76 | 6.4 | 7.6 |
===========================================================
Total | 493 | 539 | 7.2 | 7.1 |
—————————————————————————————-
As
laid out in the manual now superseded, and as observed in the regular
classrooms, the work has been forbiddingly formal. In the main it has consisted
of the teacher assigning to the pupils a certain number of paragraphs or pages
in the textbook as the next lesson, and then questioning them next day to
ascertain how much of this printed material they have remembered and how well.
It has not consisted of stimulating and guiding the children toward intelligent
inquisitiveness and inquiring interest as to the world, and the skies above,
and waters round about, and the conditions of nature that limit and shape the
development of mankind.
That
the latter is the proper end of geographical teaching is being recognized in
developing the new course of study in this subject. Industries, commerce,
agriculture, and modes of living are becoming the centers about which
geographic thought and experience are gathered. The best work now being done
here is thoroughly modern. Unfortunately it is not yet great in amount in even
the best of the schools, still less in the majority. But the direction of
progress is unmistakable and unquestionably correct.
As in
the reading, so in geography, right development of the course of study must
depend in large measure upon the material equipment that is at the same time
provided. It sounds like a legitimate evasion to say that education is a
spiritual process, and that good teachers and willing, obedient, and
industrious pupils are about all that is required. As a matter of fact, just as
modern business has found it necessary to install one-hundred-dollar
typewriters to take the place of the penny quill pens, so must education, to be
efficient, develop and employ the elaborate tools needed by new and complex
modern conditions, and set aside the tools that were adequate in a simpler age.
The proper teaching of geography requires an abundance of reading materials of
the type that will permit pupils to enter vividly into the varied experience of
all classes of people in all parts of the world. In the supplementary books now
furnished the schools, only a beginning has been made. The schools need 10
times as much geographical reading as that now found in the best equipped
school.
It
would be well to drop the term "supplementary." This reading should
be the basic geographic experience, the fundamental instrument of the teaching.
All else is supplementary. The textbook then becomes a reference book of maps,
charts, summaries, and a treatment for the sake of perspective. Maps, globes,
pictures, stereoscopes, stereopticon, moving-picture machine, models, diagrams,
and museum materials, are all for the purpose of developing ideas and imagery
of details. The reading should become and remain fundamental and central. The
quantity required is so great as to make it necessary for the city to furnish
the books. While the various other things enumerated are necessary for complete
effectiveness, many of them could well wait until the reading materials are
sufficiently supplied.
In the
high schools the clear tendency is to introduce more of the industrial and
commercial geography and to diminish the time given to the less valuable
physiography. The development is not yet vigorous. The high school geography
departments, so far as observed, have not yet altogether attained the social
point of view. But they are moving in that direction. On the one hand, they now
need stimulation; and on the other, to be supplied with the more advanced kinds
of such material equipment as already suggested for the elementary schools.
DRAWING
AND APPLIED ART
The elementary schools are giving the usual proportion of time to
drawing and applied art. The time is distributed, however, in a somewhat
unusual, but probably justifiable, manner. Whereas the subject usually receives
more time in the primary grades than in the grammar grades, in Cleveland, in
quite the reverse way, the subject receives its greatest emphasis in the higher
grades.
TABLE
10.—TIME GIVEN TO DRAWING
===========================================================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time|
Grade |———————————————————————-
| Cleveland | 50 cities| Cleveland | 50 cities |
—————————————————————————————-
1 | 47 | 98 | 6.5 | 11.3 |
2 | 47 | 54 | 5.3 | 6.0 |
3 | 47 | 56 | 5.3 | 6.2 |
4 | 47 | 53 | 5.3 | 5.5 |
5 | 57 | 50 | 6.4 | 5.2 |
6 | 57 | 50 | 6.4 | 5.1 |
7 | 57 | 50 | 6.4 | 5.0 |
8 | 57 | 49 | 6.4 | 4.9 |
===========================================================
Total | 416 | 460 | 6.1 | 6.1 |
—————————————————————————————-
===========================================================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time|
Grade |———————————————————————-
| Cleveland | 50 cities| Cleveland | 50 cities |
—————————————————————————————-
1 | 47 | 98 | 6.5 | 11.3 |
2 | 47 | 54 | 5.3 | 6.0 |
3 | 47 | 56 | 5.3 | 6.2 |
4 | 47 | 53 | 5.3 | 5.5 |
5 | 57 | 50 | 6.4 | 5.2 |
6 | 57 | 50 | 6.4 | 5.1 |
7 | 57 | 50 | 6.4 | 5.0 |
8 | 57 | 49 | 6.4 | 4.9 |
===========================================================
Total | 416 | 460 | 6.1 | 6.1 |
—————————————————————————————-
Drawing
has been taught in Cleveland as a regular portion of the curriculum since 1849.
It has therefore had time for substantial growth; and it appears to have been
successful. Recent developments in the main have been wholesome and in line
with best modern progress. The course throughout attempts to develop an
understanding and appreciation of the principles of graphic art plus ability to
use these principles through practical application in constructive activities
of an endlessly varied sort.
Occasionally
the work appears falsetto and even sentimental. It is often applied in
artificial schoolroom ways to things without significance. General grade
teachers cannot be specialists in the multiplicity of things demanded of them;
it is not therefore surprising that they sometimes lack skill, insight,
ingenuity, and resourcefulness. Too often the teachers do not realize that the
study of drawing and design is for the serious purpose of giving to pupils a
language and form of thought of the greatest practical significance in our
present age. The result is a not infrequent use of schoolroom exercises that do
not greatly aid the pupils as they enter the busy world of practical affairs.
These
shortcomings indicate incompleteness in the development. Where the teaching is
at its best in both the elementary and high schools of Cleveland, the work
exhibits balanced understanding and complete modernness. The thing needed is
further expansion of the best, and the extension of this type of work through
specially trained departmental teachers to all parts of the city.
There
should be a larger amount of active co-operation between the teachers of art
and design and the teachers of manual training; also between both sets of
teachers and the general community.
MANUAL
TRAINING AND HOUSEHOLD ARTS
In the grammar grades manual and household training receives an
average proportion of the time. In the grades before the seventh, the subject
receives considerably less than the usual amount of time.
TABLE
11.—TIME GIVEN TO MANUAL TRAINING
======+=======================+========================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
Grade +—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
| Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
1 | 32 | 42 | 4.3 | 4.8
2 | 32 | 47 | 3.5 | 5.1
3 | 32 | 40 | 3.5 | 4.5
4 | 32 | 45 | 3.5 | 4.6
5 | 38 | 50 | 4.3 | 5.2
6 | 38 | 57 | 4.3 | 5.8
7 | 63 | 72 | 7.1 | 7.1
8 | 63 | 74 | 7.1 | 7.4
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
Total | 330 | 427 | 4.8 | 5.6
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
======+=======================+========================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
Grade +—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
| Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
1 | 32 | 42 | 4.3 | 4.8
2 | 32 | 47 | 3.5 | 5.1
3 | 32 | 40 | 3.5 | 4.5
4 | 32 | 45 | 3.5 | 4.6
5 | 38 | 50 | 4.3 | 5.2
6 | 38 | 57 | 4.3 | 5.8
7 | 63 | 72 | 7.1 | 7.1
8 | 63 | 74 | 7.1 | 7.4
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
Total | 330 | 427 | 4.8 | 5.6
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
It is
easy to see the social and educational justification of courses in sewing,
cooking, household sanitation, household decoration, etc., for the girls. They
assist in the training for complicated vocational activities performed in some
degree at least by most women. Where women are so situated that they do not
actually perform them, they need, for properly supervising others and for
making intelligible and appreciative use of the labors of others, a
considerable understanding of these various matters.
Where
this work for girls is at its best in Cleveland, it appears to be of a superior
character. Those who are in charge of the best are in a position to advise as
to further extensions and developments. It is not difficult to discern certain
of these. It would appear, for example, that sewing should find some place at
least in the work of seventh and eighth grades. The girl who does not go on to
high school is greatly in need of more advanced training in sewing than can be
given in the sixth grade. Each building having a household arts room should
possess a sewing machine or two, at the very least. The academic high schools
are now planning to offer courses in domestic science. As in the technical high
schools, all of this work should involve as large a degree of normal
responsibility as possible.
We
omit discussion here of the specialized vocational training of women, since
this is handled in other reports of the Survey.
When
we turn to the manual training of the boys, we are confronted with problems of
much greater difficulty. Women's household occupations, so far as retained in
the home, are unspecialized. Each well-trained household worker does or
supervises much the same range of things as every other. To give the entire
range of household occupations to all girls is a simple and logical
arrangement.
But
man's labor is greatly specialized throughout. There is no large remnant of
unspecialized labor common to all, as in the case of women. To all girls we
give simply this unspecialized remnant, since it is large and important. But in
the case of men the unspecialized field has disappeared. There is nothing of
labor to give to boys except that which has become specialized.
A
fundamental problem arises. Shall we give boys access to a variety of
specialized occupations so that they may become acquainted, through responsible
performance, with the wide and diversified field of man's labor? Or shall we
give them some less specialized sample out of that diversified field so that
they may obtain, through contact and experience, some knowledge of the things
that make up the world of productive labor?
Cleveland's
reply, to judge from actual practices, is that a single sample will be sufficient
for all except those who attend technical and special schools. The city has
therefore chosen joinery and cabinet-making as this sample. In the fifth and
sixth grades work begins in simple knife-work for an hour a week under the
direction of women teachers. In the seventh and eighth grades it becomes
benchwork for an hour and a half per week, and is taught by a special manual
training teacher, always a man. In the academic high schools the courses in
joinery and cabinet-making bring the pupils to greater proficiency, but do not
greatly extend the course in width.
Much
of this work is of a rather formal character, apparently looking toward that
manual discipline formerly called "training of eye and hand," instead
of consciously answering to the demands of social purposes. The regular
teachers look upon the fifth and sixth grade sloyd[*sic] which they teach with
no great enthusiasm. Seventh and eighth grade teachers do not greatly value the
work.
The
household arts courses for the girls have social purposes in view. As a result
they are kept vitalized, and are growing increasingly vital in the work of the
city. Is it not possible also to vitalize the manual training of the
boys—unspecialized pre-vocational training, we ought to call it—by giving it social
purpose?
The
principal of one of the academic high schools emphasized in conversation the
value of manual training for vocational guidance—a social purpose. It permitted
boys, he said, to try themselves out and to find their vocational tastes and
aptitudes. The purpose is undoubtedly a valid one. The limitation of the method
is that joinery and cabinet-making cannot help a boy to try himself out for
metal work, printing, gardening, tailoring, or commercial work.
If
vocational guidance is to be a controlling social purpose, the manual training
work will have to be made more diversified so that one can try out his tastes
and abilities in a number of lines. And, moreover, each kind of work must be
kept as much like responsible work out in the world as possible. In keeping
work normal, the main thing is that the pupils bear actual responsibility for
the doing of actual work. This is rather difficult to arrange; but it is
necessary before the activities can be lifted above the level of the usual
manual training shop. The earliest stages of the training will naturally be
upon what is little more than a play level. It is well for schools to give free
rein to the constructive instinct and to provide the fullest and widest
possible opportunities for its exercise. But if boys are to try out their
aptitudes for work and their ability to bear responsibility in work, then they
must try themselves out on the work level. Let the manual training actually
look toward vocational guidance; the social purpose involved will vitalize the
work.
There
is a still more comprehensive social purpose which the city should consider.
Owing to the interdependence of human affairs, men need to be broadly informed
as to the great world of productive labor. Most of our civic and social problems
are at bottom industrial problems. Just as we use industrial history and
industrial geography as means of giving youth a wide vision of the fields of
man's work, so must we also use actual practical activities as means of making
him familiar in a concrete way with materials and processes in their details,
with the nature of work, and with the nature of responsibility. On the play
level, therefore, constructive activities should be richly diversified. This
diversity of opportunity should continue to the work level. One cannot really
know the nature of work or of work responsibility except as it is learned
through experience. Let the manual training adopt the social purpose here
mentioned, provide the opportunities, means, and processes that it demands, and
the work will be wondrously vitalized.
It is
well to mention that the program suggested is a complicated one on the side of
its theory and a difficult one on the side of its practice. In the planning it
is well to look to the whole program. In the work itself it is well to remember
that one step at a time, and that secure, is a good way to avoid stumbling.
Printing
and gardening are two things that might well be added to the manual training
program. Both are already in the schools in some degree. They might well be
considered as desirable portions of the manual training of all. They lend
themselves rather easily to responsible performance on the work level. There
are innumerable things that a school can print for use in its work. In so
doing, pupils can be given something other than play. Also in the home
gardening, supervised for educational purposes, it is possible to introduce
normal work-motives. By the time the city has developed these two things it
will have at the same time developed the insight necessary for attacking more
difficult problems.
ELEMENTARY
SCIENCE
This subject finds no place upon the program. No elaborate
argument should be required to convince the authorities in charge of the school
system of a modern city like Cleveland that in this ultra-scientific age the
children who do not go beyond the elementary school—and they constitute a
majority—need to possess a working knowledge of the rudiments of science if
they are to make their lives effective.
The
future citizens of Cleveland need to know something about electricity, heat,
expansion and contraction of gases and solids, the mechanics of machines,
distillation, common chemical reactions and a host of other things about
science that are bound to come up in the day's work in their various activities.
Considered
from the practical standpoint of actual human needs, the present almost
complete neglect of elementary science is indefensible. The minute amount of
such teaching now introduced in the language lessons for composition purposes
is so small as to be almost negligible. The topics are not chosen for their
bearing upon human needs. There is no laboratory work.
Naturally
much of the elementary science to be taught should be introduced in connection
with practical situations in kitchen, school garden, shop, sanitation, etc.
Certainly the applied science should be as full as possible. But preliminary to
this there ought to be systematic presentation of the elements of various
sciences in rapid ways for overview and perspective.
To try
to teach the elements only "incidentally" as they are applied is to
fail to see them in their relations, and therefore to fail in understanding
them. Intensive studies by way of filling in the details may well be in part
incidental. But systematic superficial introductory work is needed by way of
giving pupils their bearings in the various fields of science. The term
"superficial" is used advisedly. There is an introductory stage in
the teaching of every such subject when the work should be superficial and
extensive. This stage paves the way for depth and intensity, which must be
reached before education is accomplished.
HIGH
SCHOOL SCIENCE
Having no elementary science in the grades, one naturally expects
to find in the high school a good introductory course in general science,
similar in organization to that suggested for the elementary stage. But nowhere
is there anything that even remotely suggests such a course. Students who take
the classical course get their first glimpse of modern science in the third or
fourth high school year, when they have an opportunity to elect a course in
physics or chemistry of the usual traditional stamp. No opportunity is given
them for so much as a glimpse of the world's biological background. Those who
take the scientific or English course have access to physical geography and to
an anemic biological course entitled, "Physiology and Botany," which
few take. Students of the High School of Commerce have their first contacts
with modern science in a required course in chemistry in the third year, and
elective physics in the fourth year. In the technical high schools the first
science for the boys is systematic chemistry in the second year and physics in
the third. They have no opportunity of contact with any biological science. The
girls have "botany and physiology" in their first year.
The
city needs to organize preliminary work in general science for the purpose of
paving the way to the more intensive science work of the later years. A portion
of this should be found in the elementary school and taught by departmental
science teachers; and a portion in the first year of the high school. As junior
high schools are developed, most of this work should be included in their
courses.
As to
the later organization of the work, the two technical high schools clearly
indicate the modern trend of relating the science teaching to practical labors.
What is needed is a wider expansion of this phase of the work without losing
sight of the need at the same time for a systematic and general teaching of the
sciences. It is a difficult task to make the science teaching vital and modern
for the academic high schools, since they have so few contacts with the
practical labors of the world. Cleveland needs to see its schools more as a
part of the world of affairs, and not so much as a hothouse nursery isolated
from the world and its vital interests.
PHYSIOLOGY
AND HYGIENE
Teaching in matters pertaining to health is given but a meagre
amount of time in the elementary schools. While the school program shows one
15-minute period each week in the first four grades, and one 30-minute period
each week in the four upper grades, it appears that in actual practice the
subject receives even less time than this. In the attempt to observe the class
work in physiology and hygiene, a member of the Survey staff went on one day to
four different classrooms at the hour scheduled on the program. In two cases
the time was given over to grammar, in one to arithmetic, and in one to music.
This represents practice that is not unusual. The subject gets pushed off the
program by one of the so-called "essentials." It is difficult to see
why health-training is not an essential. In a letter to the School Board,
February 8, 1915, Superintendent Frederick wrote:
"The
teaching of physiology and hygiene should become a matter of serious moment in
our course of study. At present it is not systematically presented in the
elementary schools: and in the high schools it is an elective study only in the
senior year. My judgment is that it should become a definite part of the
program, as a required study in the seventh and eighth grades."
The
small nominal amount of time as compared with the time usually expended is
partially shown in Table 12. Professor Holmes' figures for the 50 cities
include elementary science along with the physiology and hygiene.
TABLE
12.—TIME GIVEN TO SCIENCE, PHYSIOLOGY, HYGIENE
======+=======================+========================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
Grade +—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
| Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
1 | 10 | 37 | 1.3 | 4.3
2 | 10 | 41 | 1.1 | 4.5
3 | 10 | 40 | 1.1 | 4.4
4 | 10 | 37 | 1.1 | 3.8
5 | 19 | 34 | 2.1 | 3.5
6 | 19 | 40 | 2.1 | 4.2
7 | 19 | 45 | 2.1 | 4.5
8 | 19 | 57 | 2.1 | 5.7
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
Total | 116 | 331 | 1.7 | 4.4
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
======+=======================+========================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
Grade +—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
| Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
1 | 10 | 37 | 1.3 | 4.3
2 | 10 | 41 | 1.1 | 4.5
3 | 10 | 40 | 1.1 | 4.4
4 | 10 | 37 | 1.1 | 3.8
5 | 19 | 34 | 2.1 | 3.5
6 | 19 | 40 | 2.1 | 4.2
7 | 19 | 45 | 2.1 | 4.5
8 | 19 | 57 | 2.1 | 5.7
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
Total | 116 | 331 | 1.7 | 4.4
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
In
addition to the work of the regular teachers in this subject, a certain amount
of instruction is given by the school physicians and nurses. In his report to
the Board, 1913, Dr. Peterson writes:
"Health
instruction is given by doctors and nurses in personal talks to pupils, talks
to whole schools, tooth-brush drills conducted in many schools, and in visits into
the homes by the nurses. Conscious effort is continually made by all doctors
and nurses to inspire to right living all of the children with whom they come
in contact."
Looking
somewhat to the future, it can be affirmed that the school physicians and nurses
are the ones who ought to give the teaching in this subject. After giving the
preliminary ideas in the classrooms, they alone are in position to follow up
the various matters and see that the ideas are assimilated through being put
into practice both at school and at home. At present, however, 16 physicians
and 27 nurses have 75,000 children to inspect, of whom more than half have
defects that require following up. It is a physical impossibility for them to
do much teaching until the force of school nurses is greatly increased.
For
the present certain things may well be done:
1. A
course in hygiene and sanitation, based upon an abundance of reading, should be
drawn up and taught by the regular teachers in the grammar school grades. This
course should be looked upon as merely preliminary to the more substantial
portions of education in this field. The physicians and nurses should select
the readings and supervise the course to see that the materials are covered
conscientiously and not slighted.
2. The
schools should arrange for practical applications of the preparatory knowledge
in as many ways as possible. Children in relays can look after the ventilation,
temperature, humidity, dust, light, and other sanitary conditions of
school-rooms and grounds. They can make sanitary surveys of their home
district; engage in anti-fly, anti-mosquito, anti-dirt, and other campaigns;
and report—for credit possibly—practical sanitary and hygienic activities
carried on outside of school. Only as knowledge is put to work is it
assimilated and the prime purpose of education accomplished.
3. The
corps of school nurses should be gradually enlarged, and after a time they can
be given any needed training for teaching that will enable them, as the work is
departmentalized in the grammar grades, to become departmental teachers in this
subject for a portion of their time. Their "follow-up" work will
always give them their chief educational opportunity; but to prepare for this
the classwork must give some systematized preparatory ideas.
In the
high schools, training of boys in hygiene and sanitation is little developed.
The only thing offered them is an elective half-year course in physiology in
the senior year of the scientific and English courses in the academic high
schools. In the classical course, and in the technical and commercial schools,
they have not even this. Physiology is required of girls in the technical
schools, and is elective in all but the classical course in the others. While
in one or two of the high schools there is training in actual hygiene and
sanitation, in most cases it is physiology and anatomy of a superficial
preliminary type which is not put to use and which therefore mostly fails of
normal assimilation.
The
things recommended for the elementary schools need to be carried out in the
high schools also.
PHYSICAL
TRAINING
The city gives slightly more than the usual amount of time to
physical training in the elementary schools. Except for first and second
grades, where a slightly larger amount is set aside for the purpose, pupils are
expected to receive one hour per week.
TABLE
13.—TIME GIVEN TO PHYSICAL TRAINING
======+=======================+========================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
Grade +—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
| Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
1 | 63 | 46 | 8.7 | 5.4
2 | 54 | 41 | 6.2 | 4.5
3 | 38 | 40 | 4.4 | 4.5
4 | 38 | 40 | 4.3 | 4.2
5 | 38 | 38 | 4.3 | 4.0
6 | 38 | 40 | 4.3 | 4.2
7 | 38 | 38 | 4.3 | 3.7
8 | 38 | 39 | 4.3 | 4.0
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
Total | 345 | 322 | 5.0 | 4.2
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
======+=======================+========================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
Grade +—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
| Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
1 | 63 | 46 | 8.7 | 5.4
2 | 54 | 41 | 6.2 | 4.5
3 | 38 | 40 | 4.4 | 4.5
4 | 38 | 40 | 4.3 | 4.2
5 | 38 | 38 | 4.3 | 4.0
6 | 38 | 40 | 4.3 | 4.2
7 | 38 | 38 | 4.3 | 3.7
8 | 38 | 39 | 4.3 | 4.0
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
Total | 345 | 322 | 5.0 | 4.2
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
Even
though it is a little above the average amount of time, it is nevertheless too
little. A week consists of 168 hours. After deducting 12 hours a day for sleep,
meals, etc., there remain 84 hours per week to be used. In a state of nature
this was largely used for physical play. Under the artificial conditions of
modern city life, the nature of children is not changed. They still need huge
amounts of active physical play for wholesome development. Most of this they
will get away from the school, but as urban conditions take away proper play
opportunities, the loss in large degree has to be made good by systematic
community effort in establishing and maintaining playgrounds and playrooms for
12 months in the year. The school and its immediate environment is the logical
place for this development.
The
course of study lays out a series of obsolescent Swedish gymnastics for each of
the years. The work observed was mechanical, perfunctory, and lacking in
vitality. Sandwiched in between exhausting intellectual drill, it has the value
of giving a little relief and rest. This is good, but it is not sufficiently positive
to be called physical training.
Very
desirable improvements in the course are being advocated by the directors and
supervisors of the work. They are recommending, and introducing where
conditions will permit, the use of games, athletics, folk dances, etc. The
movements should be promoted by the city in every possible way. At present the
regular teachers as a rule have not the necessary point of view and do not
sufficiently value the work. Special teachers and play leaders need to be
employed. Material facilities should be extended and improved. Some of the
school grounds are too small; the surfacing is not always well adapted to play;
often apparatus is not supplied; indoor playrooms are insufficient in number,
etc. These various things need to be supplied before the physical training
curriculum can be modernized.
In the
high schools two periods of physical training per week in academic and
commercial schools, and three or four periods per week in the technical
schools, are prescribed for the first two years of the course. In the last two
years it is omitted from the program in all but the High School of Commerce,
where it is optional. With one or two exceptions, the little given is mainly
indoor gymnastics of a formal sort owing to the general lack of sufficiently
large athletic fields, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, and other necessary
facilities.
Special
commendation must be accorded the home-room basis of organizing the athletics
of the technical high schools. Probably no plan anywhere employed comes nearer
to reaching the entire student body in a vital way.
With
the exceptions referred to, it seems that the city has not sufficiently
considered the indispensable need of huge amounts of physical play on the part
of adolescents as the basis of full and life-long physical vitality. High
school students represent the best youth of the community. Their efficiency is
certainly the greatest single asset of the new generation. There are scores of
other expensive things that the city can better afford to neglect. The one
thing it can least afford to sacrifice on the altar of economy is the vitality
of its citizens of tomorrow.
MUSIC
In the elementary schools Cleveland is giving considerably more
than the average amount of time to music. In the high schools, except for a
one-hour optional course in the High School of Commerce, the subject is
developed only incidentally and given no credit. It is entirely pertinent to
inquire why music should be so important for the grammar school age and then
lose all of this importance as soon as the high school is reached.
TABLE
14.—TIME GIVEN TO MUSIC
======+=======================+========================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
Grade +—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
| Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
1 | 47 | 45 | 6.5 | 5.2
2 | 54 | 48 | 6.1 | 5.3
3 | 54 | 47 | 6.1 | 5.1
4 | 54 | 48 | 6.1 | 4.9
5 | 51 | 45 | 5.7 | 4.7
6 | 51 | 45 | 5.7 | 4.6
7 | 51 | 45 | 5.7 | 4.4
8 | 51 | 44 | 5.7 | 4.4
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
Total | 413 | 367 | 6.0 | 4.8
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
======+=======================+========================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
Grade +—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
| Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
1 | 47 | 45 | 6.5 | 5.2
2 | 54 | 48 | 6.1 | 5.3
3 | 54 | 47 | 6.1 | 5.1
4 | 54 | 48 | 6.1 | 4.9
5 | 51 | 45 | 5.7 | 4.7
6 | 51 | 45 | 5.7 | 4.6
7 | 51 | 45 | 5.7 | 4.4
8 | 51 | 44 | 5.7 | 4.4
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
Total | 413 | 367 | 6.0 | 4.8
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
The
probability is either that it is over-valued for the elementary school and
should receive diminished time; or it is under-valued for the high school and
should be given the dignity and the consideration of a credit course, as it is
in many progressive high schools. It cannot be urged that the subject is
finished in the elementary schools. Pupils in fact receive only an introductory
training in vocal music. The whole field of instrumental music remains
untouched. It seems the city ought to consider the question of whether the
course ought not to be much expanded and continued throughout the high school
period as an elective subject. However, in considering the question it should
be kept in mind that there are very many things of more importance and of far
more pressing immediate necessity.
FOREIGN
LANGUAGES
German has long been taught in the elementary schools. Until less
than 10 years ago it was taught in all grades beginning with the first. More
recently it has been confined to the four upper grades. Beginning with the
present year, it is taught only in the seventh and eighth grades. The situation
is so well presented in the report of the Educational Commission of 1906 that
further discussion here is unnecessary. They summarize their discussion of the
teaching of German in the elementary schools as follows:
"Such
teaching originated in a nationalistic feeling and demand on the part of German
immigrants, and not in any educational or pedagogical necessity.
"It
aimed to induce the children of Germans to attend the public schools, where
they would learn English and be sooner Americanized.
"For
15 years [now 25 years] past, German immigration has almost ceased, and other
European nationalities, as the Bohemians, Poles, and Italians, have taken their
place numerically.
"The
children of the earlier German immigrants are already
Americanized and use the English language freely, and those later
born, of the second and third generations, no longer need to be taught
German in the schools beginning at six years of age.
Americanized and use the English language freely, and those later
born, of the second and third generations, no longer need to be taught
German in the schools beginning at six years of age.
"It
is demonstrated by experience and by abundant testimony that children neither
from German nor from English-speaking families really learn much German in the
primary and grammar grades, that is, from six to 13 years of age.
"Hence
the Commission recommends that the teaching of German in these grades be
discontinued and that the German language be taught only in the high schools.
"It
is admitted that those who begin German in the high school, after the second
year, can keep up with and do as good work in the same classes as those who
have had eight years of German in the primary and grammar grades and two years
in the high schools."
The
form of argument that once was valid for including German in the elementary
course of study may now be valid for Polish, Hungarian, Bohemian and Italian,
for the children of the first generation of these nationalities. Properly done,
it is a means of preventing the children's drifting from the parental moorings.
After the first generation, it would not be needed.
It is
impossible, in the limited space at our disposal, to discuss comprehensively so
complicated a topic as foreign languages in the high school. One group of
educators sturdily defends the traditional classical course, with its great
emphasis on Greek and Latin, while another group as urgently insists that if
any foreign languages are taught, they must be the modern ones. These opposing
schools of thought are profoundly sincere in their conflicting beliefs. Each
side is absolutely certain that it is right and is unalterably of the opinion
that there is no other side of the question to be even so much as considered.
Anything that agrees with its own side is based on reason; anything opposed is
but ignorant prejudice. Under the circumstances the disinterested outsider may
well suspect that where there is so much sincerity and conviction, there must
be much truth on both sides. And undoubtedly this is the case.
Latin
is a living language in our country in that it provides half of our vocabulary.
Pupils who would know English well should have a good knowledge of this living
Latin. If the Latinists would shift their ground to this living Latin and provide
means of teaching it fully and effectively for modern purposes, it is possible
that the opposing schools of thought might here find common ground upon which
all could stand with some degree of comfort and toleration. When Latin study of
the character here suggested is devised, it ought to be opened up to the
students of all courses as an elective, so that it could be taken by all who
wish a full appreciation and understanding of their semi-Latin mother tongue.
Such a study ought to be required of the clerical students of the High School
of Commerce. In the meantime, however, all will have to wait until the
Latinists have provided the plans and the materials.
In the
new so-called English course in the academic high schools required foreign
languages are omitted entirely. In the third and fourth years German or Spanish
is made elective. This gives rise to several questions. If the foreign language
is studied simply as preparation for the leisure occupation of reading its
literature—the only value of the course in the case of most who take it—why
should not French be elective also? By far the largest of the world's
literatures, outside of the English, is the French. The Spanish has but a small
literature; and while Germany has excelled in many things, belles-lettres is
not one of them. Another question relates to the placing of these electives. If
one is to study a foreign language at all, it is usually thought best to begin
earlier than the third year of the high school, so as to finish these simple
matters that can be done by children and gain time in the later years for the
more complicated matters that require mature judgment.
DIFFERENTIATION
OF COURSES
Courses of training based upon human needs should be diversified
where conditions are diversified. Uniform courses of study for all schools
within a city were justifiable in a former simpler age, when the schools were
caring only for needs that were common to all classes. But as needs have
differentiated in our large industrial cities, courses of training must also
become differentiated. In Cleveland this principle has been recognized in
organizing the work of the special schools and classes. For all the regular
elementary schools, however, a uniform course of study has been used. Under the
present administration, principals and teachers are nominally permitted wide
latitude in its administration.
A
large part of this freedom is taken away by two things. One is the use by the
city of the plan of leaving textbooks to private purchase. For perfectly
obvious reasons, so long as textbooks are privately purchased, a uniform series
of textbooks must be definitely prescribed for the entire city. Uniform
textbooks do not necessarily enforce a uniform curriculum. In usual practice,
however, they do enforce it as completely as a prescribed uniform course of
study manual. As the schools of different sections of the city are allowed to
experiment and to develop variations from the course of study, they should be
allowed greater freedom in choosing the textbooks that will best serve in
teaching their courses.
The
second condition enforcing a uniform course of study in certain subjects is the
use of uniform examinations in those subjects. We would merely suggest here
that it is possible to use supervisory examinations without making them uniform
for all schools. Different types of school may well have different types of
examination.
Different
social classes often exist within the same school. Administrative limitations
probably must prevent the use of more than one course of study in a single
elementary school. But as the work of the grammar grades is departmentalized,
and as junior high schools are developed, it will become possible to offer
alternative courses in these grades. Those practically certain of going on to
higher educational work requiring foreign languages and higher mathematics
should probably be permitted to begin these studies by the sixth or seventh
grade. On the other hand, those who are practically certain to drop out of
school at the end of the grammar grades or junior high school should have full
opportunities for applied science, applied design, practical mathematics,
civics, hygiene, vocational studies, etc. When the necessary studies are once
organized and departmental work introduced, it is not difficult to arrange for
the necessary differentiation of courses in the same school.
Finally,
courses of study should provide for children of differing natural ability.
Extra materials and opportunities should be provided for children of large
capacity; and abbreviated courses for those of less than normal ability. In
departmentalized grammar grades and junior high schools this can be taken care
of rather easily by permitting the brighter pupils to carry more studies than
normal, and the backward ones a smaller number than normal. Under the present
elementary school organization with classes so large and with so many things
for the teachers to do, it is practically impossible to effect such desirable
differentiations.
SUMMARY
1. The fundamental social point of view of this discussion of the
courses of study of the Cleveland schools is that effective teaching is
preparation for adult life through participation in the activities of life.
2. The
schools of Cleveland devote far more time to reading than do those of the average
city. In too large measure this time is employed in mastering the mechanics of
reading and in the analytical study of the manner in which the words are
combined in sentences and the sentences in paragraphs. The main object of the
reading should be the mastery of the thought rather than the study of the
construction. Through it the children should gain life-long habits of
exploring, through reading, the great fields of history, industry, applied
science, life in other lands, travel, invention, biography, and wholesome
fiction. To this end the work should be made more extensive and less intensive.
As an indispensable means toward this end the books should be supplied by the
schools instead of being purchased by the parents.
3. The
teaching of spelling should aim to give the pupils complete mastery over those
words which they need to use in writing and it should instil in them the
permanent habit of watching their spelling as they write. Drill on lists of
isolated words should give way to practice in spelling correctly every word in
everything written. The dictionary habit should be cultivated, and every
written lesson should be a spelling lesson.
4. The
time devoted to language, composition, and grammar is about the same as in the
average city. The chief result of the work as done in Cleveland is to enable
the pupil to recite well on textbook grammar and to pass examinations in the
subject. The work in technical grammar should be continued for the purpose of
giving the pupils a foundation acquaintance with forms, terms, relations, and
grammatical perspective, but this training need not be so extensive and
intensive as at present. The time saved should be given to oral and written
expression in connection with the reading of history, geography, industrial studies,
civics, sanitation, and the like. Facility and accuracy in oral and written
expression are developed through practice rather than through precept. They are
perfected through the conscious and unconscious imitation of good models rather
than through the advanced study of technical grammar. Only as knowledge is put
to work is it really learned or assimilated.
5.
Cleveland gives more time to mathematics than does the average city. The
content of courses in mathematics is to be determined by human needs. A
fundamental need of our scientific age is more accurate quantitative thinking
about our vocations, civic problems, taxation, income, insurance, expenditures,
public improvements, and the multitude of other public and private problems
involving quantities. We need to think accurately and easily in quantities,
proportions, forms, and relationships. Arithmetic teaching, like the teaching
of penmanship, is for the purpose of providing tools to be used in matters that
lie beyond. The present course of study is of superior character, providing for
efficient elementary training and dispensing with most of the things of little
practical use. The greatest improvement in the work is to be found in its
further carrying over into the other fields of school work and in applying it
in other classes as well as in the arithmetic class. In the advanced classes
mathematics should be differentiated according to the needs of different
pupils. Algebra should be more closely related to practical matters and
developed in connection with geometry and trigonometry.
6.
History receives much less attention in this city than in the average city. The
character of the work is really indicated by the last sentence of the
eighth-grade history assignment: "The text of our book should be thoroughly
mastered." The work is too brief, abstract, and barren to help the pupils
toward an understanding of the social, political, economic, and industrial
problems with which we are confronted. It should be amply supplemented by a
wide range of reading on social welfare topics. This reading should be
biographical, anecdotal, thrilling dramas of human achievement, rich with human
interest. It should be at every stage on the level with the understanding and
degree of maturity of the pupils so that much reading can be covered rapidly.
7. In
Cleveland, where there has been an almost unequalled amount of civic discussion
and progressive human-welfare effort, the teaching of civics in the public
schools receives too little attention. It is recommended that the principals
and teachers make such a civic survey as that made in Cincinnati as the method
of discovering the topics that should enter into a grammar-grade course. Not
much civics teaching should be attempted in the intermediate grades, but it
should be given in the higher grades.
8. A
new course of study in geography is now being put into use. The work as laid
out in the old manual and as seen in the classrooms has been forbiddingly
formal. It has mainly consisted of the teacher assigning to the pupils a certain
number of paragraphs or pages in the textbook as the next lesson, and then
questioning them next day to ascertain how much of this printed material they
have remembered and how well. The new course of study recognizes, on the
contrary, that the proper end of geographical teaching is rather to stimulate
and guide the children toward an inquiring interest as to how the world is
made, and the skies above, and the waters round about, and the conditions of
nature that limit and determine in a measure the development of mankind. To
attain this ideal will require in every school 10 times as adequate provision
of geographical reading and geographical material as is now found in the best
equipped school.
9.
Drawing and applied art have been taught in Cleveland since 1849. The object of
the teaching is to develop an understanding and appreciation of the principles
of graphic art and ability to use these principles in practical applications.
Where this work is done best, it shows, in both the elementary and high schools,
balanced understanding and complete modernness. What is needed is extension of
this best type of work to all parts of the city through specially trained
departmental teachers.
10.
Where teaching of household arts is at its best in Cleveland, it is of a
superior character and should be extended along lines now being followed.
Manual training for boys should be extended and broadened with a view to giving
the pupils real contact with more types of industry than those represented by
the present woodwork.
11.
Elementary science finds no place in the course of study of Cleveland. The
future citizens of Cleveland will need an understanding of electricity, heat,
expansion and contraction of gases and solids, the mechanics of machines,
distillations, common chemical reactions, and the multitude of other matters of
science met with daily in their activities. The schools should help supply this
need.
12.
Teaching in matters pertaining to health is assigned little time in the
elementary schools, and the time that is assigned to it is frequently given to
something else. The subject gets pushed off the program by one of the so-called
"essentials." A course in hygiene should be drawn up, and practical
applications of the work should be arranged through having pupils look after
the sanitary conditions of rooms and grounds. The school doctors and nurses
should help in this teaching and practice.
13.
Physical training is given about as much time as in the average city, but
without adequate facilities for outdoor and indoor plays and games. At present
the work is too largely of the formal gymnastic type. Desirable improvements in
the course are being advocated by the directors and supervisors of the work.
They are recommending and introducing, where conditions will permit, the use of
games, athletics, folk dances, and the like. The movement should be promoted in
every possible way.
14. In
the elementary schools Cleveland gives more than the average amount of time to music, but
in the high schools the subject is developed only incidentally and is given no
credit. It is a question whether this arrangement is the right one, and in
considering possible extensions it should be remembered that there are other
subjects of far more pressing immediate necessity.
15. It
is impossible in this brief report to discuss adequately so complicated a
matter as that of the teaching of foreign languages in the high schools, but
some of the most important of the questions at issue have been indicated as
matters which the school authorities should continue to study until
satisfactory solutions are reached.
16.
Where school work in Cleveland is backward, it is because it has not yet taken on the
social point of view. Where it is progressive, it is being developed on the
basis of human needs. There is much of both kinds of work in Cleveland .
17. In
a city with a population so diversified as is that of Cleveland , progress should be made steadily and
consciously away from city-wide uniformity in courses of study and methods of
teaching. There should be progressive differentiation of courses to meet the
widely varying needs of the different sorts of children in different sections
of the city.
CLEVELAND EDUCATION SURVEY REPORTS
These
reports can be secured from the Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation, Cleveland , Ohio . They will be sent postpaid for 25 cents
per volume with the exception of "Measuring the Work of the Public
Schools" by Judd, "The Cleveland School Survey" by Ayres, and
"Wage Earning and Education" by Lutz. These three volumes will be
sent for 50 cents each. All of these reports may be secured at the same rates
from the Division of Education of the Russell Sage Foundation, New York City .
Child
Accounting in the Public Schools—Ayres.
Educational Extension—Perry.
Education through Recreation—Johnson.
Financing the Public Schools—Clark .
Health Work in the Public Schools—Ayres.
Household Arts and School Lunches—Boughton.
Measuring the Work of the Public Schools—Judd.
Overcrowded Schools and the Platoon Plan—Hartwell.
School Buildings and Equipment—Ayres.
Schools and Classes for Exceptional Children—Mitchell.
School Organization and Administration—Ayres.
The Public Library and the Public Schools—Ayres and McKinnie.
The School and the Immigrant—Miller.
The Teaching Staff—Jessup.
What the Schools Teach and Might Teach—Bobbitt.
TheCleveland School Survey (Summary)—Ayres.
Educational Extension—Perry.
Education through Recreation—Johnson.
Financing the Public Schools—
Health Work in the Public Schools—Ayres.
Household Arts and School Lunches—Boughton.
Measuring the Work of the Public Schools—Judd.
Overcrowded Schools and the Platoon Plan—Hartwell.
Schools and Classes for Exceptional Children—Mitchell.
School Organization and Administration—Ayres.
The Public Library and the Public Schools—Ayres and McKinnie.
The School and the Immigrant—Miller.
The Teaching Staff—Jessup.
What the Schools Teach and Might Teach—Bobbitt.
The
* * *
* *
Boys
and Girls in Commercial Work—Stevens.
Department Store Occupations—O'Leary.
Dressmaking and Millinery—Bryner.
Railroad and Street Transportation—Fleming.
The Building Trades—Shaw.
The Garment Trades—Bryner.
The Metal Trades—Lutz.
The Printing Trades—Shaw.
Wage Earning and Education (Summary)—Lutz.
Department Store Occupations—O'Leary.
Dressmaking and Millinery—Bryner.
Railroad and Street Transportation—Fleming.
The Building Trades—Shaw.
The Garment Trades—Bryner.
The Metal Trades—Lutz.
The Printing Trades—Shaw.
Wage Earning and Education (Summary)—Lutz.
n � AK i hXQ cS physicians and nurses should select the readings and supervise the course to see that the materials are covered conscientiously and not slighted.
2. The schools should arrange for practical applications of the preparatory knowledge in as many ways as possible. Children in relays can look after the ventilation, temperature, humidity, dust, light, and other sanitary conditions of school-rooms and grounds. They can make sanitary surveys of their home district; engage in anti-fly, anti-mosquito, anti-dirt, and other campaigns; and report—for credit possibly—practical sanitary and hygienic activities carried on outside of school. Only as knowledge is put to work is it assimilated and the prime purpose of education accomplished.
3. The corps of school nurses should be gradually enlarged, and after a time they can be given any needed training for teaching that will enable them, as the work is departmentalized in the grammar grades, to become departmental teachers in this subject for a portion of their time. Their "follow-up" work will always give them their chief educational opportunity; but to prepare for this the classwork must give some systematized preparatory ideas.
In the high schools, training of boys in hygiene and sanitation is little developed. The only thing offered them is an elective half-year course in physiology in the senior year of the scientific and English courses in the academic high schools. In the classical course, and in the technical and commercial schools, they have not even this. Physiology is required of girls in the technical schools, and is elective in all but the classical course in the others. While in one or two of the high schools there is training in actual hygiene and sanitation, in most cases it is physiology and anatomy of a superficial preliminary type which is not put to use and which therefore mostly fails of normal assimilation.
The things recommended for the elementary schools need to be carried out in the high schools also.
PHYSICAL TRAINING
The city gives slightly more than the usual amount of time to physical training in the elementary schools. Except for first and second grades, where a slightly larger amount is set aside for the purpose, pupils are expected to receive one hour per week.
TABLE 13.—TIME GIVEN TO PHYSICAL TRAINING
======+=======================+========================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
Grade +—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
| Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
1 | 63 | 46 | 8.7 | 5.4
2 | 54 | 41 | 6.2 | 4.5
3 | 38 | 40 | 4.4 | 4.5
4 | 38 | 40 | 4.3 | 4.2
5 | 38 | 38 | 4.3 | 4.0
6 | 38 | 40 | 4.3 | 4.2
7 | 38 | 38 | 4.3 | 3.7
8 | 38 | 39 | 4.3 | 4.0
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
Total | 345 | 322 | 5.0 | 4.2
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
Even though it is a little above the average amount of time, it is nevertheless too little. A week consists of 168 hours. After deducting 12 hours a day for sleep, meals, etc., there remain 84 hours per week to be used. In a state of nature this was largely used for physical play. Under the artificial conditions of modern city life, the nature of children is not changed. They still need huge amounts of active physical play for wholesome development. Most of this they will get away from the school, but as urban conditions take away proper play opportunities, the loss in large degree has to be made good by systematic community effort in establishing and maintaining playgrounds and playrooms for 12 months in the year. The school and its immediate environment is the logical place for this development.
The course of study lays out a series of obsolescent Swedish gymnastics for each of the years. The work observed was mechanical, perfunctory, and lacking in vitality. Sandwiched in between exhausting intellectual drill, it has the value of giving a little relief and rest. This is good, but it is not sufficiently positive to be called physical training.
Very desirable improvements in the course are being advocated by the directors and supervisors of the work. They are recommending, and introducing where conditions will permit, the use of games, athletics, folk dances, etc. The movements should be promoted by the city in every possible way. At present the regular teachers as a rule have not the necessary point of view and do not sufficiently value the work. Special teachers and play leaders need to be employed. Material facilities should be extended and improved. Some of the school grounds are too small; the surfacing is not always well adapted to play; often apparatus is not supplied; indoor playrooms are insufficient in number, etc. These various things need to be supplied before the physical training curriculum can be modernized.
In the high schools two periods of physical training per week in academic and commercial schools, and three or four periods per week in the technical schools, are prescribed for the first two years of the course. In the last two years it is omitted from the program in all but the High School of Commerce, where it is optional. With one or two exceptions, the little given is mainly indoor gymnastics of a formal sort owing to the general lack of sufficiently large athletic fields, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, and other necessary facilities.
Special commendation must be accorded the home-room basis of organizing the athletics of the technical high schools. Probably no plan anywhere employed comes nearer to reaching the entire student body in a vital way.
With the exceptions referred to, it seems that the city has not sufficiently considered the indispensable need of huge amounts of physical play on the part of adolescents as the basis of full and life-long physical vitality. High school students represent the best youth of the community. Their efficiency is certainly the greatest single asset of the new generation. There are scores of other expensive things that the city can better afford to neglect. The one thing it can least afford to sacrifice on the altar of economy is the vitality of its citizens of tomorrow.
MUSIC
In the elementary schools Cleveland is giving considerably more than the average amount of time to music. In the high schools, except for a one-hour optional course in the High School of Commerce, the subject is developed only incidentally and given no credit. It is entirely pertinent to inquire why music should be so important for the grammar school age and then lose all of this importance as soon as the high school is reached.
TABLE 14.—TIME GIVEN TO MUSIC
======+=======================+========================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
Grade +—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
| Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
1 | 47 | 45 | 6.5 | 5.2
2 | 54 | 48 | 6.1 | 5.3
3 | 54 | 47 | 6.1 | 5.1
4 | 54 | 48 | 6.1 | 4.9
5 | 51 | 45 | 5.7 | 4.7
6 | 51 | 45 | 5.7 | 4.6
7 | 51 | 45 | 5.7 | 4.4
8 | 51 | 44 | 5.7 | 4.4
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
Total | 413 | 367 | 6.0 | 4.8
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
The probability is either that it is over-valued for the elementary school and should receive diminished time; or it is under-valued for the high school and should be given the dignity and the consideration of a credit course, as it is in many progressive high schools. It cannot be urged that the subject is finished in the elementary schools. Pupils in fact receive only an introductory training in vocal music. The whole field of instrumental music remains untouched. It seems the city ought to consider the question of whether the course ought not to be much expanded and continued throughout the high school period as an elective subject. However, in considering the question it should be kept in mind that there are very many things of more importance and of far more pressing immediate necessity.
FOREIGN LANGUAGES
German has long been taught in the elementary schools. Until less than 10 years ago it was taught in all grades beginning with the first. More recently it has been confined to the four upper grades. Beginning with the present year, it is taught only in the seventh and eighth grades. The situation is so well presented in the report of the Educational Commission of 1906 that further discussion here is unnecessary. They summarize their discussion of the teaching of German in the elementary schools as follows:
"Such teaching originated in a nationalistic feeling and demand on the part of German immigrants, and not in any educational or pedagogical necessity.
"It aimed to induce the children of Germans to attend the public schools, where they would learn English and be sooner Americanized.
"For 15 years [now 25 years] past, German immigration has almost ceased, and other European nationalities, as the Bohemians, Poles, and Italians, have taken their place numerically.
"The children of the earlier German immigrants are already
Americanized and use the English language freely, and those later
born, of the second and third generations, no longer need to be taught
German in the schools beginning at six years of age.
"It is demonstrated by experience and by abundant testimony that children neither from German nor from English-speaking families really learn much German in the primary and grammar grades, that is, from six to 13 years of age.
"Hence the Commission recommends that the teaching of German in these grades be discontinued and that the German language be taught only in the high schools.
"It is admitted that those who begin German in the high school, after the second year, can keep up with and do as good work in the same classes as those who have had eight years of German in the primary and grammar grades and two years in the high schools."
The form of argument that once was valid for including German in the elementary course of study may now be valid for Polish, Hungarian, Bohemian and Italian, for the children of the first generation of these nationalities. Properly done, it is a means of preventing the children's drifting from the parental moorings. After the first generation, it would not be needed.
It is impossible, in the limited space at our disposal, to discuss comprehensively so complicated a topic as foreign languages in the high school. One group of educators sturdily defends the traditional classical course, with its great emphasis on Greek and Latin, while another group as urgently insists that if any foreign languages are taught, they must be the modern ones. These opposing schools of thought are profoundly sincere in their conflicting beliefs. Each side is absolutely certain that it is right and is unalterably of the opinion that there is no other side of the question to be even so much as considered. Anything that agrees with its own side is based on reason; anything opposed is but ignorant prejudice. Under the circumstances the disinterested outsider may well suspect that where there is so much sincerity and conviction, there must be much truth on both sides. And undoubtedly this is the case.
Latin is a living language in our country in that it provides half of our vocabulary. Pupils who would know English well should have a good knowledge of this living Latin. If the Latinists would shift their ground to this living Latin and provide means of teaching it fully and effectively for modern purposes, it is possible that the opposing schools of thought might here find common ground upon which all could stand with some degree of comfort and toleration. When Latin study of the character here suggested is devised, it ought to be opened up to the students of all courses as an elective, so that it could be taken by all who wish a full appreciation and understanding of their semi-Latin mother tongue. Such a study ought to be required of the clerical students of the High School of Commerce. In the meantime, however, all will have to wait until the Latinists have provided the plans and the materials.
In the new so-called English course in the academic high schools required foreign languages are omitted entirely. In the third and fourth years German or Spanish is made elective. This gives rise to several questions. If the foreign language is studied simply as preparation for the leisure occupation of reading its literature—the only value of the course in the case of most who take it—why should not French be elective also? By far the largest of the world's literatures, outside of the English, is the French. The Spanish has but a small literature; and while Germany has excelled in many things, belles-lettres is not one of them. Another question relates to the placing of these electives. If one is to study a foreign language at all, it is usually thought best to begin earlier than the third year of the high school, so as to finish these simple matters that can be done by children and gain time in the later years for the more complicated matters that require mature judgment.
DIFFERENTIATION OF COURSES
Courses of training based upon human needs should be diversified where conditions are diversified. Uniform courses of study for all schools within a city were justifiable in a former simpler age, when the schools were caring only for needs that were common to all classes. But as needs have differentiated in our large industrial cities, courses of training must also become differentiated. In Cleveland this principle has been recognized in organizing the work of the special schools and classes. For all the regular elementary schools, however, a uniform course of study has been used. Under the present administration, principals and teachers are nominally permitted wide latitude in its administration.
A large part of this freedom is taken away by two things. One is the use by the city of the plan of leaving textbooks to private purchase. For perfectly obvious reasons, so long as textbooks are privately purchased, a uniform series of textbooks must be definitely prescribed for the entire city. Uniform textbooks do not necessarily enforce a uniform curriculum. In usual practice, however, they do enforce it as completely as a prescribed uniform course of study manual. As the schools of different sections of the city are allowed to experiment and to develop variations from the course of study, they should be allowed greater freedom in choosing the textbooks that will best serve in teaching their courses.
The second condition enforcing a uniform course of study in certain subjects is the use of uniform examinations in those subjects. We would merely suggest here that it is possible to use supervisory examinations without making them uniform for all schools. Different types of school may well have different types of examination.
Different social classes often exist within the same school. Administrative limitations probably must prevent the use of more than one course of study in a single elementary school. But as the work of the grammar grades is departmentalized, and as junior high schools are developed, it will become possible to offer alternative courses in these grades. Those practically certain of going on to higher educational work requiring foreign languages and higher mathematics should probably be permitted to begin these studies by the sixth or seventh grade. On the other hand, those who are practically certain to drop out of school at the end of the grammar grades or junior high school should have full opportunities for applied science, applied design, practical mathematics, civics, hygiene, vocational studies, etc. When the necessary studies are once organized and departmental work introduced, it is not difficult to arrange for the necessary differentiation of courses in the same school.
Finally, courses of study should provide for children of differing natural ability. Extra materials and opportunities should be provided for children of large capacity; and abbreviated courses for those of less than normal ability. In departmentalized grammar grades and junior high schools this can be taken care of rather easily by permitting the brighter pupils to carry more studies than normal, and the backward ones a smaller number than normal. Under the present elementary school organization with classes so large and with so many things for the teachers to do, it is practically impossible to effect such desirable differentiations.
SUMMARY
1. The fundamental social point of view of this discussion of the courses of study of the Cleveland schools is that effective teaching is preparation for adult life through participation in the activities of life.
2. The schools of Cleveland devote far more time to reading than do those of the average city. In too large measure this time is employed in mastering the mechanics of reading and in the analytical study of the manner in which the words are combined in sentences and the sentences in paragraphs. The main object of the reading should be the mastery of the thought rather than the study of the construction. Through it the children should gain life-long habits of exploring, through reading, the great fields of history, industry, applied science, life in other lands, travel, invention, biography, and wholesome fiction. To this end the work should be made more extensive and less intensive. As an indispensable means toward this end the books should be supplied by the schools instead of being purchased by the parents.
3. The teaching of spelling should aim to give the pupils complete mastery over those words which they need to use in writing and it should instil in them the permanent habit of watching their spelling as they write. Drill on lists of isolated words should give way to practice in spelling correctly every word in everything written. The dictionary habit should be cultivated, and every written lesson should be a spelling lesson.
4. The time devoted to language, composition, and grammar is about the same as in the average city. The chief result of the work as done in Cleveland is to enable the pupil to recite well on textbook grammar and to pass examinations in the subject. The work in technical grammar should be continued for the purpose of giving the pupils a foundation acquaintance with forms, terms, relations, and grammatical perspective, but this training need not be so extensive and intensive as at present. The time saved should be given to oral and written expression in connection with the reading of history, geography, industrial studies, civics, sanitation, and the like. Facility and accuracy in oral and written expression are developed through practice rather than through precept. They are perfected through the conscious and unconscious imitation of good models rather than through the advanced study of technical grammar. Only as knowledge is put to work is it really learned or assimilated.
5. Cleveland gives more time to mathematics than does the average city. The content of courses in mathematics is to be determined by human needs. A fundamental need of our scientific age is more accurate quantitative thinking about our vocations, civic problems, taxation, income, insurance, expenditures, public improvements, and the multitude of other public and private problems involving quantities. We need to think accurately and easily in quantities, proportions, forms, and relationships. Arithmetic teaching, like the teaching of penmanship, is for the purpose of providing tools to be used in matters that lie beyond. The present course of study is of superior character, providing for efficient elementary training and dispensing with most of the things of little practical use. The greatest improvement in the work is to be found in its further carrying over into the other fields of school work and in applying it in other classes as well as in the arithmetic class. In the advanced classes mathematics should be differentiated according to the needs of different pupils. Algebra should be more closely related to practical matters and developed in connection with geometry and trigonometry.
6. History receives much less attention in this city than in the average city. The character of the work is really indicated by the last sentence of the eighth-grade history assignment: "The text of our book should be thoroughly mastered." The work is too brief, abstract, and barren to help the pupils toward an understanding of the social, political, economic, and industrial problems with which we are confronted. It should be amply supplemented by a wide range of reading on social welfare topics. This reading should be biographical, anecdotal, thrilling dramas of human achievement, rich with human interest. It should be at every stage on the level with the understanding and degree of maturity of the pupils so that much reading can be covered rapidly.
7. In Cleveland, where there has been an almost unequalled amount of civic discussion and progressive human-welfare effort, the teaching of civics in the public schools receives too little attention. It is recommended that the principals and teachers make such a civic survey as that made in Cincinnati as the method of discovering the topics that should enter into a grammar-grade course. Not much civics teaching should be attempted in the intermediate grades, but it should be given in the higher grades.
8. A new course of study in geography is now being put into use. The work as laid out in the old manual and as seen in the classrooms has been forbiddingly formal. It has mainly consisted of the teacher assigning to the pupils a certain number of paragraphs or pages in the textbook as the next lesson, and then questioning them next day to ascertain how much of this printed material they have remembered and how well. The new course of study recognizes, on the contrary, that the proper end of geographical teaching is rather to stimulate and guide the children toward an inquiring interest as to how the world is made, and the skies above, and the waters round about, and the conditions of nature that limit and determine in a measure the development of mankind. To attain this ideal will require in every school 10 times as adequate provision of geographical reading and geographical material as is now found in the best equipped school.
9. Drawing and applied art have been taught in Cleveland since 1849. The object of the teaching is to develop an understanding and appreciation of the principles of graphic art and ability to use these principles in practical applications. Where this work is done best, it shows, in both the elementary and high schools, balanced understanding and complete modernness. What is needed is extension of this best type of work to all parts of the city through specially trained departmental teachers.
10. Where teaching of household arts is at its best in Cleveland, it is of a superior character and should be extended along lines now being followed. Manual training for boys should be extended and broadened with a view to giving the pupils real contact with more types of industry than those represented by the present woodwork.
11. Elementary science finds no place in the course of study of Cleveland. The future citizens of Cleveland will need an understanding of electricity, heat, expansion and contraction of gases and solids, the mechanics of machines, distillations, common chemical reactions, and the multitude of other matters of science met with daily in their activities. The schools should help supply this need.
12. Teaching in matters pertaining to health is assigned little time in the elementary schools, and the time that is assigned to it is frequently given to something else. The subject gets pushed off the program by one of the so-called "essentials." A course in hygiene should be drawn up, and practical applications of the work should be arranged through having pupils look after the sanitary conditions of rooms and grounds. The school doctors and nurses should help in this teaching and practice.
13. Physical training is given about as much time as in the average city, but without adequate facilities for outdoor and indoor plays and games. At present the work is too largely of the formal gymnastic type. Desirable improvements in the course are being advocated by the directors and supervisors of the work. They are recommending and introducing, where conditions will permit, the use of games, athletics, folk dances, and the like. The movement should be promoted in every possible way.
14. In the elementary schools Cleveland gives more than the average amount of time to music, but in the high schools the subject is developed only incidentally and is given no credit. It is a question whether this arrangement is the right one, and in considering possible extensions it should be remembered that there are other subjects of far more pressing immediate necessity.
15. It is impossible in this brief report to discuss adequately so complicated a matter as that of the teaching of foreign languages in the high schools, but some of the most important of the questions at issue have been indicated as matters which the school authorities should continue to study until satisfactory solutions are reached.
16. Where school work in Cleveland is backward, it is because it has not yet taken on the social point of view. Where it is progressive, it is being developed on the basis of human needs. There is much of both kinds of work in Cleveland.
17. In a city with a population so diversified as is that of Cleveland, progress should be made steadily and consciously away from city-wide uniformity in courses of study and methods of teaching. There should be progressive differentiation of courses to meet the widely varying needs of the different sorts of children in different sections of the city.
CLEVELAND EDUCATION SURVEY REPORTS
These reports can be secured from the Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio. They will be sent postpaid for 25 cents per volume with the exception of "Measuring the Work of the Public Schools" by Judd, "The Cleveland School Survey" by Ayres, and "Wage Earning and Education" by Lutz. These three volumes will be sent for 50 cents each. All of these reports may be secured at the same rates from the Division of Education of the Russell Sage Foundation, New York City.
Child Accounting in the Public Schools—Ayres.
Educational Extension—Perry.
Education through Recreation—Johnson.
Financing the Public Schools—Clark.
Health Work in the Public Schools—Ayres.
Household Arts and School Lunches—Boughton.
Measuring the Work of the Public Schools—Judd.
Overcrowded Schools and the Platoon Plan—Hartwell.
School Buildings and Equipment—Ayres.
Schools and Classes for Exceptional Children—Mitchell.
School Organization and Administration—Ayres.
The Public Library and the Public Schools—Ayres and McKinnie.
The School and the Immigrant—Miller.
The Teaching Staff—Jessup.
What the Schools Teach and Might Teach—Bobbitt.
The Cleveland School Survey (Summary)—Ayres.
* * * * *
Boys and Girls in Commercial Work—Stevens.
Department Store Occupations—O'Leary.
Dressmaking and Millinery—Bryner.
Railroad and Street Transportation—Fleming.
The Building Trades—Shaw.
The Garment Trades—Bryner.
The Metal Trades—Lutz.
The Printing Trades—Shaw.
Wage Earning and Education (Summary)—Lutz.
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