IV Field Work as Education

Pursuant to such philosophy, the boys began their shop-work by equipping the shop, building benches, tool-chests, cabinets, and saw horses; putting lath and plaster on the ceiling; setting up the simple tools and putting the shop in running order. Meanwhile, the agricultural students set up two cream separators and a milk-tester, and arranged their laboratory. Then the school was ready for applied work, or rather, the students having graduated from a course in shop equipment, were ready for shop practice.

The entire class in agriculture makes inspection of nearby farms—here to see a well-managed orchard, there a new type of cow-barn or silo. Again they inspect the soil of a district, going carefully over it, picking samples and testing them on return to the school. In fruit-packing season, the students visit the packing houses, or else, in the case of some of the boys, they take a week of employment with a good fruit packer. In season they practice tree pruning, grafting, budding, transplanting and spraying. Whenever possible, the applied work of the school is done in connection with the real applied work of life.

The physics and chemistry are both related to the agriculture and the mechanics courses in the most intimate manner. From the earliest lessons in physics through analyses of heat, light and the principles of mechanics, the theories are constantly interpreted in practical problems which arise in the daily work of the Lowville farmer. The physics teacher, enthusiastic over his students and his work, builds machines and testing devices, which the boys and girls use in solving the problems which they bring from their homes. No less close to the life of the place is the chemical laboratory, which offers opportunity for the analysis of soil, the chemistry of fertilizers, experiments in testing food and milk, and a number of other matters pertaining to agriculture and domestic life.

The mechanical courses are closely related to the work in agriculture, since most of the boys who take up the mechanical work are to go on the farms. The course in mechanics passes quickly over the elements of the work—most boys have learned to use saw, plane, chisel, auger, and hammer years before. The smithing work of tempering, annealing, welding, soldering and removing rust, all leads up to the real work of the shops,—the making of products. The boys make pruning knives, squares and drawing boards, grafting hooks, nail boxes, apple-boxing devices (for this is an apple country), cement rollers, mallets, whiffle-trees, bob-sleds, holders for saw filing, bag-holders, chicken-coops, poultry exhibit boxes, hammer handles, greenhouse flats. Besides, they have exercises in belt-lacing, in cement work, and reinforced concrete. Then, too, they make models of barns and bridges, computing strains, lumber-costs, labor-costs, floor spacing and arrangement.

The agricultural course deals, in some detail, with fruit-growing, animal husbandry, grain-growing, and related topics. Though the scope of such a course is necessarily limited in a high school, it forms an invaluable addition to the knowledge of the boy who cannot go to an agricultural college before he begins his life on the farm. Taught by an agricultural expert, the work assumes real importance to the prospective farmer.

Nor are the girls of Lowville neglected.

V Real Domestic Science

The domestic science department, in charge of an expert, takes up household economics, sewing, dietetics and cooking. The work throughout is practical, the girls learning the principles of sanitation, and their application to the household; domestic art and home decoration; lighting, heating and ventilation. The sewing classes cover the usual exercises in simple hemming and darning, making towels, hemming napkins, and the like; then underclothes, and later dresses are made.

In the cooking laboratory the girls learn food values and food combinations, the cooking of simple dishes, the preparation of entire meals. The girl who finishes the domestic science course in the Lowville Academy is competent to organize a home, cook, sew, keep house and make as efficient use of her opportunities as does her brother who has been trained in mechanics or agriculture.

It is not in the applied courses alone that an extraordinary amount of co-operation has been attained. The academic branches, likewise, are so adjusted as to bear directly upon the work of the remaining courses. The Academic co-ordination is particularly noticeable in the English work, which is required of everyone during the entire high school course. English composition is made to serve as a connecting, co-ordinating study—related to all of the other courses in the school.

The student in agriculture writes reports on various phases of agricultural work, collecting them in a folder and arranging them in order, according to subject. Chemistry reports, history reports, all are made a legitimate part of the work in English.

The results of this system have been more than satisfactory to Mr. Breeze and his staff of co-workers. Students who would have left at the end of the grammar school, are attracted by the high school program, and "saved" by a high school course. The appeal of the school is a wide one. There are no class of boys and girls in Lowville who cannot find something worth while in the high school. Often a student otherwise not brilliant will succeed remarkably in a particular line. Of one such boy in particular Mr. Breeze spoke.

VI One Instance of Success

"He had no taste for Greek, but his reports and analysis in agriculture and mechanics were brilliant. The excellent drawing and sketching and the careful work showed how much appeal the applied course had made to his mind; yet but for the agricultural course he would never have come to high school. A farmer's son with little taste for the ordinary academic studies was inspired by the idea of improved, scientific farming and was getting a thorough insight into the principles of agriculture, chemistry, physics, and mechanics, which will be of the greatest service to him when he takes up farming. Such topics as judging the age of cows, breed of cattle, cost of milk production, the cost of cow-barn construction, grain, hay, cattle rations, silage, and nutrition will all bear directly on the work of the farm in which he is so deeply interested.["]

So much for the contribution of the Lowville High School to the students who have gone out of its class-rooms and class excursions, stronger in body and more alert of mind. No less remarkable has been its service to the community. At the suggestion of the school authorities acting in co-operation with the Grange, the State, and several other agencies, Lowville has secured an agricultural specialist, whose business it is to travel through the countryside, advising farmers, discussing their problems and suggesting better methods of operating the farms, or of experimenting in new directions. Each winter for one week, a school for adults is held, with courses in agriculture for the men and courses in domestic science for the women. The teachers,—experts from the Cornell School of Agriculture,—are exceptionally well prepared to deal with the problems of New York State farmers.

Higher education at Lowville is education for everyone in Lowville and vicinity who wants it. With one eye on community needs and the other on the best means of supplying them, the Lowville Academy is giving to the citizens of Lowville a twentieth century higher education.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 20: Much of the material in this chapter appeared originally in the Journal of Education.]



CHAPTER VII

A GREAT CITY SCHOOL SYSTEM[21]

I "Co-operation" and "Progressivism"

If any two words in the English language can express the spirit of the Cincinnati schools, they are "co-operation" and "progressivism." The people of Cincinnati, high and low, have banded themselves together in an endeavor to make good schools. Cincinnati schools are not a monument to any individual or group of individuals, rather they are the handiwork of the citizenship. In their eagerness for educational progress, the people are not hypnotized by every cry of "lo here! lo there!" nor do they live in terror of new educational ideas. Their one aim, the education of Cincinnati's children, takes precedence over every other consideration. Perhaps that fact explains both the co-operation and the progressivism.

Co-operation in the educational work of Cincinnati has been developed to a remarkable degree. "There is not a civic society in the whole town which is not working with the schools," says former Superintendent Dyer. Mr. Dyer might have left out the word "civic" and still have been very close to the truth.

Mr. Frederick A. Geier, a leader among the manufacturers who have made possible the "half time in shop, half time in school" system, says of his activity in co-operating with the school authorities: "As a citizen of Cincinnati, I am interested in the schools for two reasons: first, because good schools will bring under their influence the maximum number of pupils and parents, and it is the best agency I can conceive of for producing a high quality of citizenship; second, as a manufacturer I feel that the material prosperity of a community is directly related to the mental and manual equipment of its people." Showing his faith by his works, Mr. Geier has labored in season and out of season to make the schools of Cincinnati the most progressive in the country.

Speaking as "a woman and mother," Mrs. Isabella C. Pendleton, of the Civic League, which has played an active part in building up school sentiment, says: "I consider that the most important features of our school system are the manual training for boys and the domestic science for girls. I am happy to say that to-day a girl on graduating from our schools is capable of taking care of a home." As public schools go, that is not an insignificant achievement. No wonder Mrs. Pendleton, a woman and mother, is interested in schools which accomplish such vital results.

From what extraordinary sources do the schools in Cincinnati secure their support! "All of the local dentists have been brought into close contact with the school system by the efforts of the Dental Society to introduce mouth hygiene into the schools," says Dr. Sidney G. Rauh. "We dentists," adds Dr. Rauh, "are firm believers in general co-operation." No less cordial is the Board of Health in its endorsement of the schools, and in its efforts to raise the health standard of school children.

"I do not believe there is any city in the United States which offers as good an example of the spirit of co-operation as Cincinnati does," affirms Carl Dehoney, of the Chamber of Commerce. "Why are we so active in co-operating with the schools? Simply because we realize that good schools, and especially practical schools, which will fit young men and women for their real life work, have a tremendous bearing upon the efficiency of the people of the city." Mr. W. C. Cauldius, also of the Chamber of Commerce, says: "Our school development is the result of a few years of public support and sympathy." In similar enthusiastic words the leaders of every phase of Cincinnati life express their interest in educational progress.

II An Educational Creed

Let no one infer from what has been said that the people of Cincinnati are agreed upon all of the details of educational policy, nor upon the fundamentals either, for that matter, but they have adopted an educational creed which runs about as follows:

1. I believe in making the schools provide for the educational necessities of every child.

2. I believe that this can be done when all work together.

3. I believe that new ideas are the life-blood of educational advance.

That simple creed adopted by teachers, principals, mothers, manufacturers, dentists and trade unionists has become a great motive force in the upbuilding of the Cincinnati schools.

The most evident thing about the Cincinnati school organization is its democracy. The feudal spirit of lordship and serfdom existing in many schools between superintendents and principals on the one hand, and teachers on the other, is nowhere evident in the Cincinnati schools; instead, each teacher, thrown upon her own initiative, is a creative artist, solving her particular problem as she believes that it should be solved, and abiding by the consequence of her failure or success.

Early in his work Mr. Dyer made it clear that he would not tolerate a mechanical system of education. "Up here on the hill, in a wealthy suburban district, is a grammar school. Its organization, administration and course of study must necessarily differ from that other school, located in the heart of the factory district. The principal of each of these schools has a problem to face—each will succeed in proportion as he grasps the significance of his own problem and the readiest means for its solution." Is not that a refreshing sentiment from a superintendent of city schools? Note this other delightful touch: "My teachers soon learned that I regard the teacher who works exactly like another teacher as pretty poor stuff." Before the axe of such incisive radicalism, how the antiquated structure of the old school machinery came crashing to the ground, to be replaced by a system which recognized each teacher as an individual builder of manhood and womanhood, working to meet the needs of individual children. It is not an idle boast which the English make when they glory in the absence of a curriculum; for even the best curriculum, if mismanaged, is speedily converted into a noose, the knot of which adjusts itself mechanically under the left ear of teacher and child alike. The school authorities of Cincinnati destroyed both knot and rope by giving to their teachers and principals this injunction: "Make your school fit the needs of your children and your community."

The old-time, machine-minded school superintendent, filled with the spirit of co-operative coercion, assembles his teachers. "Now let's all work together," he exclaims, "Here, Susie Smith, this is what you are to teach your pupils, and this is the way in which you are to do it." It was in quite a different spirit that Mr. Dyer said to each one of his teachers: "You do your work, I'll do mine, and together we will make the schools go." It was in this spirit that the teachers were called together to confer on the reorganization of the course of study. Each teacher in each grade had her say in the matter. If the most insignificant teacher in Cincinnati said to Mr. Dyer: "I have an idea that I think would improve the work in my grade," his invariable reply was: "Then try it. There is no way to determine the value of ideas except to try them." By that policy Mr. Dyer surrounded himself with a group of vitally interested people, each one suited to the task in which he believed implicitly, and each one fully convinced that the success or failure of that part of the Cincinnati school system with which he was immediately concerned, depended directly upon his efforts. No wonder the schools succeeded!

III Vitalizing the Kindergarten

The kindergartens are at the basis of the educational system of Cincinnati, and they are in charge of a woman who believes in herself and in her work. Perhaps the people of Cincinnati are not justified in believing that their kindergartens are the very best in the whole United States, but Miss Julia Bothwell, who directs them, says, modestly enough, that she has visited kindergartens in many cities, adopting their schemes and improving in response to their suggestions, until she is convinced that no other city in the land can show a better kindergarten system than that of Cincinnati. In truth, her plan is ordinarily referred to as the "Cincinnati idea."

Cincinnati children begin their kindergarten work at four and a half or five, entering the first grade at six. While in the kindergarten they play the games and sing the songs that all kindergartens play and sing, but with this difference: their plays and songs are built around the things that they do.

The yellow October leaves of Cincinnati's parks half shadow the activity of the busy classes of little kindergarten folks who go there to work and to learn. The Park Commissioners, like every one else in Cincinnati, are in thorough sympathy with the work of the schools, so they allot to each kindergarten class a plot in the park, in which the children—using all of the tools themselves—plant tulip bulbs under the direction of the park gardeners.

"Tulips are the first thing up in the spring," Miss Both well explained, "so we have decided to use them. For years we tried gardens, but children of kindergarten age are not willing to give gardens as much attention as they require; then, too, the gardens ran wild during the summer, so we have settled on the tulip. After the children have planted the bulbs they sing and talk about their work. Then, early in the spring, they begin to visit their plots, watching the first shoots of green as they appear, looking eagerly for the buds, and then, at last, as the reward of their interest, picking the flowers and taking them home. Thus, each child, during his kindergarten course, sees the complete cycle from bulb to flower."

Besides this flower-culture in the park, the children grow hyacinths in the school rooms, visit the woods to collect autumn leaves and spring flowers, make excursions to the country, where they may see animals and crops, and always, for a few days after an excursion, talk about the things which they saw, draw them, sing about them and play games about them. In order to facilitate the work the Board of Education leases a farm, to which the kindergartens go in succession. By these means the life of the city kindergarten child is thoroughly linked with nature.

These things are not new in kindergartening, however. They have merely taken firm root in the fertile soil of Cincinnati's educational enthusiasm. The real excellence of Miss Bothwell's experiment consists in connecting the kindergarten with the early elementary grades on the one hand and with the community on the other.

The first grade children of Cincinnati come back to the kindergarten teachers for an hour's kindergartening once each week, in order to clinch the kindergarten influence on the lives of the first graders. The first grade teachers meet the director of kindergartening once each week, for a discussion of kindergarten methods, and an initiation into the kindergarten spirit. Thus the lump of first grade abstraction is leavened with the leaven of kindergarten concretes, and the grade teachers get the spirit of kindergarten work. In the near future Miss Bothwell hopes to have the kindergarten work extend to the second grade, in order that the spirit, rhythm, harmony and joy of the kindergarten may thoroughly permeate the roots of the Cincinnati school system.

Even more significant—if anything could be more significant than the breakdown of the ironclad, first grade traditions—is the grip which the kindergartens of Cincinnati have secured on the people. The Cincinnati kindergartener is more than a teacher—she serves many masters. In the morning she holds kindergarten classes. On two afternoons a week she does kindergarten work with first grade children; on one afternoon she holds a conference with the supervisor; on a fourth afternoon she visits the classes of first grade teachers or confers with mothers' clubs, and on her remaining afternoon she visits her children in their homes. Out of these varied duties has come: first, a group spirit among the kindergarteners, built upon frequent interchange of plans and ideas; second, an understanding of the relation between the problems of the kindergarten and the problems of the grades; third, a sympathetic grasp of the home conditions surrounding the life of many a difficult child; and fourth, sixty-one mothers' clubs, one organized in connection with each kindergarten, which furnish a social gathering-place for mothers, an opportunity to influence parental ideas, and a body of invaluable public sentiment.

The idea of a kindergarten, usually regarded as a small part of the school program, has been evolved until, in this one city, it is a potent influence, working on children, teachers, parents and public opinion.

IV Regenerating the Grades

The kindergarten is not alone in its appeal to the child and in its affiliation with the community. Traditional grade education has likewise been modified and rehabilitated until it makes an appeal to parent and child alike. In the first place, a consistent effort has been made to provide accommodations for the physical education in the grades of the fifty-seven elementary schools. Twenty-five now have fully equipped gymnasiums in which children have two or three periods of exercise each week. In the schools not so equipped the physical work is confined to calisthenics. Each year the Board of Education appropriates five hundred dollars for the Public School Athletic League, which organizes meets and games, open to all public school pupils free of charge. Besides field days, baseball, soccer and football there is an athletic badge awarded to all pupils who pass an "efficiency" test in athletic activities.

The academic work of the grades is alive with enthusiasm. History, so often made a mass of dead names and dates, is taught in terms of life. The children learn that history is in reality a record of the things which people did, and of the forces which were at work in their lives; furthermore, that the commonplace acts of to-day will be the history of to-morrow. Translated into ideas and social changes, history stimulates thought, turning the child's mind from the purely personal side of life to the social activities of which history is made.

Arithmetic and geography begin at home, in the things which the children know and do. Both are taught in terms of child experience. Both call to the child mind the things of daily life.

English, too, which is so important an element in education, is made to reflect child experiences. Teaching the reading lesson of "Eyes and No Eyes" one teacher asked her class: "Well, children, what did you see on your way to school this morning? What did you see, Elmer?"

"Well, I saw—I saw—" and Elmer sat down.

"I saw that it had been raining in the night by the mud in the streets," said Alice; while John had seen trolley cars, and remembered that the number on one of them was 647.

A seventh grade girl had read the Psalm beginning, "Who shall ascend unto the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in His holy place?" After asking what a psalm was, and who wrote the Psalms, the teacher asked:

"Who was David?"

"He was the king of Palestine," replied one boy promptly. After straightening out the history the teacher next asked:

"For what was David noted?"

"For being Solomon's father," ventured one little girl.

"Oh, no," protested a boy, "He was the fighter."

"Sure enough," said the teacher, "would the fact that he was a warrior naturally influence his thoughts?" After an affirmative answer from the class: "Where do we find any evidence of that in this Psalm, George?" asked the teacher.

George considered the reading a moment. "Oh, I see, it's where he says, 'The Lord mighty in battle.'"

After an elaboration of this idea the teacher went on to ask why David wrote, "Lift up your heads, oh ye gates, and the King of Glory shall come in." By careful questioning the class was led to see that cities had walls and gates; that David, who had won many victories, was accustomed to have the gates thrown wide to receive him, and that his triumphal entries had made a deep impression on his thoughts. After some more discussion the Psalm was read again, this time with surprising intelligence and feeling.

One eighth grade class in English was engaged in preparing a catalog of all of the pictures in the school, looking up the painters, their lives, their principal works, and the circumstances connected with the painting of the pictures which hung on the school wall. In the same room a girl had written a description of a sunset, in which she had said: "The western sky is illuminated with a fiery red, and the edges of the clouds are also tinted with a silvery hue."

"What would Corot say about that?" asked the teacher.

The girl thought a moment. "I guess he would say that there was too much color."

"Yes," smiled the teacher, "he would say, 'Let's go home and wait for a few moments.'"

The essay work in the upper grades is linked with all of the other school work. The children write about civics, architecture, localities, books and pictures. One girl of thirteen wrote on "The Reaper"—"As I enter my bedroom one picture especially catches my gaze. It hangs on the eastern wall. It is the picture of a large city by moonlight. The moon is bright and the stars are out. A beautiful lake borders the far end of the city, and the moon makes the lake look like a mirror. The church steeple stands out clear against the sky. It is a beautiful summer night, and while the city sleeps an angel descends and bears a little child to the heavens above. Some mother must have given up one of her beloved flowers."

No less valuable are the essays describing an ideal kitchen, a location for a house, a home, school life, and the various other things with which the child comes in contact.

Last among the academic branches, there is a carefully organized eighth grade course in civics, which, beginning with the geography and early history of Cincinnati, covers family relations and the tenement problem; the protection of public health—street cleaning, sewage, water, smoke abatement, and the activities of the Board of Health in providing for sanitation and the suppression of disease; the protection of life and property; the business life of the community—relation of the citizen to business life, the growth of commerce and industry in Cincinnati; Cincinnati as a manufacturing center, the labor problem, and the regulation of business by the government; the necessity for civic beauty; the educational forces of the community; the care of dependents and delinquents; the functions of government; and the collection and expenditure of city funds. In this way the child, before he leaves the elementary school, is given an idea of the real meaning of citizenship.

Beginning in the kindergarten, the art work extends through the high school, including in the lower elementary grades, paper-cutting and pasting related to school work, the seasons and the holidays. From the third grade on, the children make real products—trays, boxes, blotter pads, calendars, booklets and folios—work which is supplemented by object and constructive drawing and designing.

Shop-work is given to boys, and domestic science to girls, in all of the schools. The point at which these subjects are introduced and the amount of time devoted to them depends upon—what do you think? The regulations prescribed in the course of study? Not a bit of it! It depends upon the needs of the community and of the child.

Schools which are located in the poorer districts begin manual training and domestic science with the second grade, though ordinarily they are not introduced until the sixth. Normally the children are given one and one-half or two hours a week of such work, but over-age, backward and defective children may spend as much as half of their time upon it. For some of the girls a five-room flat has been rented, in which they are taught housekeeping in all of its phases. Otherwise the domestic science consists of hand and machine sewing, the designing and making of simple garments, the planning and preparation of food, and the organization and care of a household. Wherever possible, the boys make useful products in their shop-work, instead of constructing show pieces which have no value.

From top to bottom the grades are shaped to meet the needs of children. Each class and each school is built around this central idea. The school system, instead of taking the usual form of a cumbrous machine, is a delicate mechanism adjusted to the wants of Cincinnati children.

V Popularizing High School Education

Not content with making the grades interesting, the school authorities of Cincinnati have made the high schools so profitable and popular that ninety-five out of each one hundred children who complete the eighth grade go to the Cincinnati high schools. Furthermore, during the past six years the high school attendance in Cincinnati has doubled. These two noteworthy conditions are the product of carefully matured and efficiently executed plans, and of infinite labor. Yet the results have more than repaid the labor which they cost.

"Our first task," explained Dr. E. D. Lyon, principal of the Hughes High School, "was to persuade the community that it needed high school training. Next we secured two fine new high school buildings. Then those of us who are engaged in high school work faced the supreme task. We had to prove to the people that their expenditures on high schools were worth while, by providing a high school education that would mean something to the pupils and to the community." Note the spirit of social obligation—a feeling prevalent throughout the Cincinnati schools.

"Most parents fail to see the importance of the high school problem," said Assistant Superintendent Roberts, "because they never make consistent efforts to have their children choose their vocations intelligently. We began our work right there, at the bottom, by telling the parents of grade children about the high school courses, and what they meant. Eighth grade teachers, under the guidance of Mr. F. P. Goodwin, are expected to talk to their classes regularly on the vocational opportunities in Cincinnati and elsewhere, and to help the children get started right in high school careers. Besides that, we take the grade children on trips to the high schools, showing them on each trip some striking feature of high school work. Parents' meetings are held, in which the high schools are explained and discussed, and we send circulars to the parents of sixth, seventh and eighth grade pupils, explaining the high school work as simply as may be."

After arousing such expectations, the high school cannot fulfill its obligations in any way other than by the provision of a thorough course of study adapted to the needs of all types of pupils. The preparation for this in Cincinnati has been made with consummate skill. The pupil, on entering the high school, may select any one of the nine general courses, in which there are twenty-three possible combinations of subjects.

Four of the courses—General, Classical, Domestic Science and Manual Training—prepare for various colleges and technical schools. The other five courses—Commercial, Technical Co-operative Course for Boys; Technical Co-operative Course for Girls; Art and Music, lead to vocations. Housed in the same high school building is this range of work, which permits boys and girls to select a course which will bear directly on almost any line of work that they may care to follow in later life.

Each course is shaped to give the children who select it a definite training in the line of their interest. The General Course prepares pupils for college; the Domestic Science Course shows girls how to make and keep a home; the Commercial Course turns out bookkeepers; the Technical Co-operative Courses, enabling boys and girls to spend part of their time in the school and part in the factory, are arranged in co-operation with the principal industries of Cincinnati. The Art and Music Courses, like the other special work, are in the hands of experts who are competent to give a practical direction to the activity of their pupils.

In passing, it is interesting to note that the people of Cincinnati are getting the best possible use out of their splendid high school equipment. In addition to the regular classes which fill the Woodward High School from 8:30 to 3:00, the pupils in the continuation courses occupy the building every afternoon and all day Saturday. Five nights a week it is filled by an enthusiastic night school, three thousand strong, and during six weeks of the summer vacation a summer school holds its sessions there. It would be difficult to find a school plant which comes nearer to being used one hundred per cent of its time. To be sure, such things were not done "in father's time," but then the people of Cincinnati have a theory that while a good thing is worth all it costs, it does not pay to let even the best of things decay for lack of use. That is why the school system tingles from end to end with vigor and enthusiasm.

VI A City University

Besides the kindergarten, elementary schools, and high schools, the city of Cincinnati has a university, which, like all of the other educational forces of the city, is tied up with the general educational program. Those graduates of the Cincinnati high schools who desire to go to college, may pass from the high school of Cincinnati into the University of Cincinnati without a break in the continuity of their education.

The University of Cincinnati is a municipal university. The city appropriates one-half of one mill on the general assessment, for university purposes. The board of education appropriates ten thousand dollars a year toward the maintenance of the Teachers' College, the school in which the city teachers are trained. The training school for kindergarteners is affiliated with the university, having the same entrance requirements as the other university courses. In explanation of this close connection between the city and the university, President Dabney begins his 1911 report to the board of directors by saying: "An effort has been made in this report to explain the service of the university to the city and people of Cincinnati. It is therefore not only an official report to the directors, but is also a statement for the information of all citizens." Begun in this spirit of public obligation, the report details the services of the Teachers' College in supplying teachers; of the School of Economics and Political Science in supplying municipal experts; and of the Engineering School for its inauguration of the widely-known industrial co-operative courses—for be it known to the uninitiated that the five hundred students of the University Engineering School spend alternately two weeks in the school and two weeks in a shop. More than that, the Engineering School furnishes experts for municipal engineering work.

That the students of the University may feel the interest of the city in their work, preference is given to the University graduates in appointments of teachers, of municipal engineers, and of employees on such municipal work as testing food, inspecting construction, and the like. University students may thus occupy their spare time in practical municipal work.

"The University should lead the progressive thought of the community," says President Dabney, and by way of making good his proposition he avails himself of every opportunity to turn his students into municipal activities, or to co-operate in any way with the forces that are making for a greater Cincinnati.

VII Special Schools for Special Classes

There are children in Cincinnati, as in every other city, who cannot afford to go to the high school. The easiest answer to such children is, "Well, then, don't." The fairest answer is a system of schools which will enable them to secure an education even though they are at work. Cincinnati in selecting the latter course has opened a school for the education of every important group unable to attend the high schools who wish to avail themselves of advanced educational opportunities.

First there is the night school work, which, in addition to the ordinary academic courses, offers special opportunities in machine shop practice, blacksmithing, mechanical and architectural drawing, and domestic science. As these courses are carried forward in the Woodward High School building the students have all of the advantages of high school equipment.

Night school, coming after a day's exertion, is so trying that only the most robust can profit by it. No small importance therefore attaches to the operation of the compulsory continuation schools under the Ohio law, which empowers cities to compel working children between fourteen and sixteen years of age to attend school for not more than eight hours a week between the hours of 8:00 A. M. and 5:00 P. M.—hours which will presumably be subtracted from shop time. By means of this adaptation of the German system even those children who must leave school at fourteen are guaranteed school work for the next two years at least. Although this is but a minimum requirement, it represents a beginning in the right direction.

No less significant than this compulsory system are the voluntary continuation schools for those over sixteen years of age, which have been established for machinists' apprentices, for printers' apprentices, for saleswomen, and for housewives. The first two courses are conducted under the direction of a genius named Renshaw, who takes from the machine shop boys of every age, nationality and experience, fits them somewhere into his four-year course; gives them a numbered time check from his time board; teaches them reading, writing, arithmetic, mechanical drawing, geometry, algebra and trigonometry by means of an ingenious series of blueprints, which constitute their sole text-book; visits them in their shops, giving suggestions and advice about the shop work, and finally sends them out finished craftsmen, with an excellent foundation in the theoretical side of the trades. The work is entirely voluntary, yet so excellent is it that a number of Cincinnati manufacturers send their apprentices to Mr. Renshaw, paying them regular wages for the four hours of credit which the said Renshaw registers weekly on the boys' time-cards. "One firm sends sixty boys here each week," commented Mr. Renshaw's assistant. "That makes two hundred and forty hours of school work each week for which they pay regular wages. Well, sir, the superintendent there told me that they didn't so much as notice the loss."

"I tried to explain my system to one superintendent," said Mr. Renshaw, "but he wouldn't even listen. 'It makes no difference how you do it,' he grumbled, 'I don't care about that. I know that the boys are neater, more careful, more accurate, and better all-around workmen after they have been with you for a while. That's enough explanation for me.'"

Acting on such sentiments the manufacturer peremptorily dismisses the boy who does not do his school tasks satisfactorily. The responsibility is in the school, whose growing enrollment and influence tell their own story. Firms send their boys to the school with the comment that the hours of school time, for which they are paid, do not add to the cost of shop management, but do add to the value of the boys to the shop. Increased efficiency pays.

A school of salesmanship for women has met with a like success. The leading stores, glad of an opportunity to raise the standard of their employees, grant the saleswomen a half day each week, without loss of pay, during which they take the salesmanship course. The course has the hearty backing of the best Cincinnati merchants, who see in it an opportunity, as Mr. Dyer put it, "to make their employees the most skilled and intelligent, the most obliging and trustworthy, the best treated and best paid—in short, the very best type of saleswomen in the country."

That this work may keep pace with the demand for it the school authorities offer industrial instruction in any pursuit for which a class of twenty-five can be organized.

"A large number of women were born too soon to get the advantage of the courses in domestic science now being offered in our high schools," comments Mr. Dyer in his dry way. Scores of such women anxious to learn all that was known about domestic arts constituted a class for which the school was well equipped to provide. "Then suppose we give them what they need," said Mr. Dyer. Just fancy—a continuous course in domestic science! Yet there it is, in Cincinnati, with an enrollment of more than eleven hundred women, attending the public schools to learn domestic arts. What could be more rational than this Cincinnati system of making a school—even though it be a continuation school—to fit the educational needs of Cincinnati people—grown-ups and children alike?

VIII Special Schools for Special Children

The Cincinnati schools provide for special children as well as for special classes of people. First there are the unusually bright children, who "mark-time" in the ordinary classes. These children were placed in "rapidly moving classes." While omitting none of the work, they were allowed to go as fast as their mental development would allow them, instead of as slowly as the other members of the class made it necessary to move. At the beginning the teacher found these exceptionally able children lacking in effort and attention, qualities which they had not needed to keep their place in the grades. "The extra work and responsibility stimulated their mental activity, increased their power of attention, fostered thoroughness and accuracy, developed resourcefulness and initiative, and those other qualities necessary for leadership." Why should it not be so? Why should not the specially able child be taught as thoroughly as the defective one? Yet Mr. Dyer, speaking from experience, remarks: "Strange to say, it is harder to establish such classes than defective and retarded ones." Strange indeed!

For the sub-normal or retarded children Cincinnati has made ample provision. Spending from a quarter to a half of their time in manual work, the children are no longer tortured with the doing of things beyond their powers. The overgrown boys have instruction in shop work. The overgrown girls have a furnished flat in which they learn the arts of home-making at first hand. There are in all over four hundred children in these schools.

Similar accommodations are provided for other special groups. The anaemic and tubercular children are taught in two open-air schools; six teachers are detailed to instruct the deaf children; one teacher devotes her time to the blind children, and ten teachers are employed to take charge of those children who are mentally defective. Thus, by adjusting the schools to the needs of special groups of people, and of special individuals, Cincinnati is providing an education which reaches the individual members of the community.

IX Playground and Summer Schools

The vacation school is planned to meet the needs of the children in the crowded districts during the hot summer months. "For that reason," says Mr. Dyer, "it provides industrial work of all kinds unassociated with book instruction, but mingled with a great amount of recreational activity—excursions, stories, folk-dancing, and a wide variety of games."

The field of industrial activity is a broad one, including cooking, nursing, housekeeping, sewing, knitting, crocheting, weaving and basketry; drawing and color work, brush and plastic work; bench work with tools, making useful articles; sports and games, including folk-dancing for girls and ball for boys. The primary and kindergarten classes offer a delightful round of song, story, games, excursions, paper work and other forms of construction. For the girls who have to take care of babies there are special classes. The boys make useful articles in the shops, and the girls, in sewing-room and cooking laboratory, learn to do the things around which the interests of the home always center. By co-operation with the park commissioners, the playgrounds were made an integral part of the summer school work.

Besides the recreational summer school Cincinnati has maintained for the past five years an academic summer school, in which children might make up back work in school, or do special work in any line which was of particular interest to them. In these schools "the very best instructors that can be secured" are employed, and their recommendations are accepted by the school principals when the fall term opens. "This school is one of the means taken to deal with the problem of repeaters in our schools," says Mr. Dyer. "Instead of requiring children who are behind to fall back a year, they may, if they are not hopeless failures, but only deficient in a few studies, remove their deficiencies in the summer school and go on with their class. We have followed up these pupils," Mr. Dyer adds, "and found that a normal percentage keep up with the class in succeeding years."

X Mr. Dyer and the Men Who Stood With Him

A spirit of comradeship and hearty co-operation breathes from every nook and cranny of the Cincinnati schools. Principals and teachers alike sense the fact. Alike they aim toward the upbuilding of the schools.

"Never in my life have I found such a spirit of mutual helpfulness," says Assistant Superintendent Roberts. "Every teacher has felt that she had a part to play, that she counted, that her suggestions were worth while, and she has worked earnestly toward this end."

"Everywhere I encounter the same willingness to co-operate with the schools," said Superintendent Condon, after spending three months in the place that Mr. Dyer vacated when he became superintendent of the Boston schools. "There is a heartiness in it, too, that grips a man."

"There is always the jolliest good-fellowship in the Schoolman's Club," exclaimed a grammar school principal. "It's always 'Roberts' and 'Lyon' and 'Dyer' there. They're as good as the rest, no better. We all go there to work, and to work hard for the schools."

On such a spirit is the school system of Cincinnati founded. From its point of vantage, set upon its high hill of ministry to child needs, it flashes like a searchlight through the storm of nineteenth century pedagogical obscurity. The optimist sings a new, glad song; the pessimist is confounded; the searcher after educational truth uncovers reverently before this masterpiece of educational organization, this practical demonstration of the wonders that may be accomplished where head and heart work together through the schools, for the children.

Such is the triumph, but whose the glory?

"It is not mine," protests Mr. Dyer, "I did only my part." "Nor mine," "Nor mine," echo his assistants. Truly, wisely, bravely spoken. The glory is not to Mr. Dyer, nor to any other one man or woman—the glory is to Mr. Dyer and the men and women who worked with him for the Cincinnati schools.

"My predecessor was an able organizer," explained Mr. Dyer. "He left things in splendid condition, and we took up his work. There were five things which marked great epochs in the upbuilding of the Cincinnati schools:

"First, we established the merit system for the appointment of teachers.

"Second, we improved the school buildings and equipment.

"Third, we organized special courses for children who were not able to profit by the regular work.

"Fourth, by putting applied work in the grades we gave the children a chance to use their hands as well as their heads.

"Fifth, we enlarged the school system by adding buildings and courses until there was a place in the schools for every boy and girl, man and woman in Cincinnati who wanted an education.

"That was the sum total of our work. It was a long and difficult task." Mr. Dyer's tall form straightened a trifle. His earnest, determined face relaxed. From under his bushy eyebrows flashed a gleam of triumph—the triumph of a strong, purposeful, successful man. "But when it was all over," he concluded, "and when the things for which we had striven were accomplished we knew that they were worth while."

When Mr. Dyer left his position in Cincinnati to become Superintendent of the Boston schools, there was, on every hand, a feeling of loss and of uncertainty among those most interested in the city's educational problems. During those months which elapsed between Mr. Dyer's departure for Boston and the election of his successor there was a feeling that, after all, perhaps he was not replaceable.

Then the successor came,—a quiet man, with a constructive imagination that enabled him to grasp, readily and completely, Cincinnati's educational need. There had been an era of radical educational adjustment in the city. The school system had been changed,—artfully changed, it is true—but changed, nevertheless, in all of the essential elements of its being. Some of the changes had been made with such rapidity that their foundations had not been fully completed. The brilliant school policy which Mr. Dyer had inaugurated needed rounding out for fulfilment and completion. Randall J. Condon saw these things; and he saw, furthermore, that in a community so awakened as Cincinnati, almost any educational program was feasible, so long as it remained reasonable.

The Cincinnati school people who went to Providence for the purpose of inviting Mr. Condon to take charge of the Cincinnati schools, felt the constructive power of his leadership. Providence had been educationally transformed, and Mr. Condon was the man responsible for the transformation.

The people of Cincinnati have every cause to congratulate themselves upon the new school head. At the outset Mr. Condon said,—"I purpose, to the best of my ability, to live up to and follow out the policies inaugurated by Mr. Dyer." With the utmost fidelity he has kept his word.

There is far more in Mr. Condon's administration than a mere follow-up policy. Everywhere he is building. In the face of a difficult financial situation which compels a serious curtailment of expenses for the time being, he is insisting upon additional kindergartens, extended high school accommodations, a more intimate correlation of the elementary and high school system, and an extensive system of recreation and social centers. It is upon the latter point that Mr. Condon is laying the greatest emphasis at the outset of his administration.

The Cincinnati policy which Mr. Condon has inaugurated with regard to civic centers is admirably summed up in his statement of the case. "A larger use of the school house for social, recreational and civic purposes should be encouraged. The school house belongs to all of the people, and should be open to all the people upon equal terms,—as civic centers for the free discussion of all matters relating to local and city government, and for the non-partisan consideration of all civic questions; as recreational centers, especially for the younger members of the community, to include the use of the baths and gymnasiums for games and sports, and other physical recreations, the use of class-rooms and halls for music, dramatics, and other recreational activities, and for more distinct social purposes; as educational centers in which the more specific educational facilities and equipment may be used by classes or groups of younger or older people, in any direction which makes for increased intelligence, and for greater economic and educational efficiency; as social centers in which the community may undertake a larger social service in behalf of its members,—stations from which groups and organizations of social workers may prosecute any non-partisan and non-sectarian work for the improvement of the social and economic conditions of the neighborhood, rendering any service which may help to improve the condition of the homes, giving assistance to the needy, disseminating information, helping to employment, and in general affording the community in its organized capacity an opportunity to serve in a larger measure the needs of the individual members." Here is, indeed, a broad-gauge social school policy, to which the administrative authorities of the Cincinnati schools are fully committed.

The movement for social centers in the schools is to be under the direction of a social secretary appointed by the superintendent. Until the organization is more highly perfected, principals are free, under certain restrictions, to open their schools for classes, groups, and all other legitimate community activities.

Mr. Condon's activities in the direction of socialized school buildings finds a ready response. "There was already a large use of a number of the schools for community meetings—for welfare associations, for boys' and girls' study clubs, and for musical and social gatherings." The program is a program of extension, rather than of innovation. It has already won the approval of the citizenship.

Spontaneity must be the soul of such a movement. "It was my strong conviction that the development of such a social movement should come from the people themselves, not that a ready-made program or plan should be given them, but that they should develop their own." One by one centers are being formed. The Board of Education furnishes the building, the local social center organization pays the immediate expenses which its activities incur. The movement has been started right. "I am a great believer in democracy," Mr. Condon says. "The people can be trusted to settle social questions as they should be settled, provided all sides can be fully presented and time taken for deliberation. The school house affords the one opportunity where all can meet on common ground as American citizens and as good neighbors, where the question of wealth and position may be forgotten, and where what a man is in himself, and what he is willing to do for the common good, counts most."

Such is the spirit in which Mr. Dyer, the men and women who worked with him, and the men and women who succeeded him, have striven for the advancement of education; such the spirit of co-operation and progressiveism which dominates this great city school system.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 21: Much of this material appeared originally in Educational Foundations.]



CHAPTER VIII

THE OYLER SCHOOL OF CINCINNATI

I An Experiment in Social Education

On the west side of Cincinnati, separated from the main part of the town by railroad yards, waste land and stagnant water, surrounded by factories and a myriad of little homes, stands the Oyler School. "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" queried a doubter. Answers, in bell tones, the philosopher, "If a man can build a better house or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he fix his home in the woods, the world will find a path to his door." Because Oyler has built a better school in a better community the world sits at Oyler's feet to learn of its experiment in social education.

The first time that I went to the Oyler School I encountered a Committee of Manufacturers. A Committee of Manufacturers in a public school during business hours! These men had met to talk with the school principal over the location of a library, which the entire community had worked to secure. When the time came to go before the Park Board over in the center of the city, to secure a playground near the Oyler School, the local bank furnished automobiles, and dozens of business men, leaving their offices, took the opportunity to endorse the work of the school, and to second its demands that play space be given to West End children. The manufacturers have become interested because in less than a decade the Oyler School has changed the face of the community, creating harmony out of discord, and order out of chaos.

The struggle of Oyler is the story of a man, a delivered message, a thriving, enthusiastic school and a reborn neighborhood. Many years ago—about twenty to be exact—a young man named Voorhes was made first assistant in a West End school. Like other young men who go into school work he applied himself earnestly to his tasks, but unlike most of them he did some hard thinking at the same time. Among other things he thought about the relation between the school and the community, wondering why the two were so completely divorced from one another. Then the problem was focused on one concrete example—a boy named John, nearly sixteen years old, who had succeeded in getting only as far as the eighth grade. John, who had never taken kindly to language or grammar, began thinking pretty seriously toward the end of his last year in the grammar school. He tried, he struggled, but the syntax was too much for him. After all, it was not his fault, and he complained bitterly against a punishment in the form of "leaving down" for something which he could not help. His training was so inadequate that he was entirely unable to pass the high school examinations which, in those days, were like the laws of the Medes and the Persians.

"I am safe in saying that he did not know the difference between a verb and a preposition," said Mr. Voorhes, "but during the grammar lesson he could make a drawing of the face of the teacher that was in no sense a caricature. This phase of his ability gave me a cue to what might be done for him. Knowing both the superintendent and the principal of the Technical School, I talked the situation over with them, begging them, with all the persuasive power at my command, to take the boy, forgetting his shortcomings, and magnifying his peculiar talents, which I felt sure were considerable along mechanical lines. They acceded to my request, giving John a place in the school, to which he walked three miles back and forth daily for three years. For many years John has been superintendent of the lighting plant of a large city, and his experience has always stood out before me as a terrible rebuke to the then dominant educational regime, which could offer John nothing but a sneer. These facts took such a vital hold on me, seeming to reinforce so fully the thought that the industrial abilities which I had acquired back on the farm proved of incalculable value to me, that the resolution to promote industrial education became a fixed part of my educational creed. The memory of that lesson in educational equity kept the need for industrial training constantly in my mind, till I had opportunity to give it expression in the Oyler School."

John bespoke the needs of the community by which Oyler was surrounded. It was so different from other communities. There were the ugly straggling factory buildings, the miserable homes, their squalid tenants, and worst of all there were the rough, boisterous, over-age, uninterested, incorrigible boys and girls, who flitted from school to home, to street, to jail, and then, gripped by the infirm hand of the law, in the form of a Juvenile Court probation officer, or a truant officer, they came back to school unwillingly enough to begin the cycle all over again.

"As for discipline," remarked one of the city school officials, "the school hadn't known it for years, the probation officer couldn't keep the children in school and the Juvenile Court couldn't keep them out of jail. Even the majesty of the law is lost on children, you know." The children taunted the police; the police hated the children; the home repelled; the factory called, grimly; child labor flourished, and the school despaired.

II An Appeal for Applied Education

Such were the conditions when Mr. Voorhes became school principal. Grinding factories, wretched homes, parental ignorance, social neglect, educational impotence—few men could enter such a field of battle with a light heart, but Mr. Voorhes did.

What, think you, was his first move? He addressed to the heads of all of the factories in the neighborhood a letter, suggesting the establishment of a manual training department in connection with the grade work of the Oyler School. "As I become more and more familiar with existing conditions in our school district," he wrote, "I am convinced that a Manual Training Department would be of vital importance to the school and to the general welfare of the community. Such departments are being looked upon to-day as necessary adjuncts to modern school equipment.

"Our school is being drained constantly of its life force by the adjacent factory demands, and if we could send pupils forth with trained hands as well as trained minds they could render a much more useful service, which, in time, would not only show itself in more profitable returns to employers, but must also tend toward a higher standard of culture in the neighborhood, and a longer continuance in school by our pupils.

"I know of no other section of the city where the actual need should make a stronger appeal for support than here. Anything you may do will be greatly appreciated."

"You can imagine my surprise," says Mr. Voorhes, "when during the next few days my mail brought me a hearty response of checks and pledges amounting to nearly a thousand dollars." Manual training was assured! No! Not yet. The Board of Education reached the conclusion that manual training in the grades was undesirable. "With the exception of $85 which I was told to use as I saw fit the checks and pledges were alike returned to the donors. That $85 gave a piano to our kindergarten."

That failure back in 1903 was the seed-ground of later success. The community was interested to the extent of a thousand dollars at least. The manufacturers were not only interested in education, but were willing to support it financially. There was a change of administration. Mr. F. B. Dyer became Superintendent of Schools and at once met the situation by establishing a manual training center in the Oyler School.

III Solving a Local Problem

The end was not yet, however. The truant officers and the Juvenile Court were still busy keeping Oyler children out of mischief and in school. The conventional type of manual training—one period per week in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades—was not holding the pupils.

"The children were not getting enough manual work to establish either habit or efficiency," Mr. Voorhes comments, "besides, this work reached only to the sixth grade. At this time there were in the school fifty boys and girls below the fifth grade who were from two to five years behind their normal classes. That is to say, they were—most of them—of that unfortunate class that has seen more trouble in a few years than most of us see in a lifetime. I was constantly asking myself: 'Where do these folks come in?' 'What is our school doing to help their function in life?' 'Are we really of any assistance to them after all?' 'Is it worth their while to come to our school?' My sympathy for the pupils was constantly growing, and I went at last in desperation to the superintendent with a plan for a revolution in the organization of my school, a revolution that I was sure would meet the needs of the community and one upon which I was willing to stake my reputation if I had any."

At this point it is worth remembering, parenthetically, that Cincinnati school men have a habit of going about their school problems in very much that spirit, beginning by sizing up the needs of the community, continuing by becoming imbued with an idea of the community needs and ending by presenting this idea to the school authorities and getting—within bounds—carte blanche to make their schools serve the locality in which they are situated.

This was Mr. Voorhes's experience. He was told to go ahead and make good—a permission of which he availed himself in an astoundingly short space of time by introducing a system of applied education, aimed to meet the needs of the children who attended the Oyler School.

"There is a peculiar situation," said Mr. Dyer, "and it needs peculiar handling. You have only one problem to solve—that of the west end. Go ahead!" Mr. Voorhes did go ahead with a plan under which all children in the sixth and seventh grades were given three periods a week in laboratories and shops. Subnormal pupils in the third, fourth and fifth grades were to have four and one-half hours (one school day) for applied work each week. In order to give special help to backward pupils they were sent in small groups to the seventh and eighth grade teachers while their classes were doing applied work. Below-grade children go to the eighth grade teacher for special work in arithmetic and geography, and the seventh grade teacher for English and history. In this way the backward children from the lower grades have special training by the best equipped teachers in the school.

The eighth grade pupils give one-fifth of their time to applied work. During the year the boys have, in addition to the shop-work, twenty lessons in preparing and cooking plain, substantial meals. To make this "siss" work palatable to the sterner sex much of it takes the form of instruction in camp life—cooking in tin cans and other handy home-made devices. In a community where boys have always been trained to regard home work as menial, but where the absence of servants makes a "lift" from the husband or brother such a Godsend to the wife at odd times, the value of giving grade boys a taste for cooking can hardly be over-estimated.

The boys also receive twenty lessons in the simpler forms of sewing—darning, hemming, sewing on buttons. At the same time the girls are taught the use of simple tools.

IV Domestic Science Which Domesticates

Beginning with the second grade the girls have domestic science while the boys are at manual training. This domestic science has a truer ring to it than most of the teaching which passes under that name. The children at Oyler have a peculiar need for domestic science, because in many of the homes mother works out, and even when she is not away her knowledge of domestic arts is so rudimentary that she can impart little to her daughters. So it comes about that the Oyler School seeks to teach the girls all that they would have under intelligent direction in a normal home.

Once each week they cook and once they sew, devoting from one-eighth to one-fifth of their entire time to these activities. By way of preparation for both cooking and sewing they are carefully trained in buying. They must make the dollar go a long way—buying in season the things cheapest at that time and preparing them in a way to yield the maximum of return. For example, they are called upon in January to buy a 50 cent dinner for six persons. Laura Wickersham's cost list is:

Soup meat $0.20 Can of tomatoes .10 Spaghetti .05 Cheese .05 Bread .05 Butter, etc. .08 —— $0.53

Gus Potts, a mere boy, makes this suggestion:

Meat $0.20 Potatoes .05 Cabbage .05 Bread .05 Milk .04 Butter .05 Coffee .05 —— $0.49

In their cooking laboratory they learn to cook simple foods, one thing at a time, until they reach the upper grades, where they must prepare entire meals on limited allowances.

The sewing is equally practical. The girls learn to patch, darn, hem and make underclothing and dresses. Then, going into homes where no intelligent needlework has ever been done—where frequently a darning needle is unknown—they teach the mother and older sisters how to sew, until whole families, under the influence of one school child, improve their wardrobe and reduce their cost for clothing. Certain sewing days in school, called darning days, are sacred to the renovation of worn-out garments which the girls bring from home.

The Oyler system may not turn out artists in dress design—it has no such aim. The children who come to its class-rooms are ignorant of the simplest devices known to civilization for the making of comfortable homes. The domestic science courses are organized to take care of their children by teaching them to be intelligent home-makers.

V Making Commercial Products in the Grades

No less practical is the work of the boys in the shops, since the great majority of them will enter factories. The shop-work is designed to familiarize them with the ideas underlying shop practice. Instead of making useless joints and surfaces the boys turn out finished, marketable products. The eighth grade boys, with the aid of the instructor, have built a drill-press from the scraps of machinery which were found lying about. Now they are at work on an engine. Elaborate products you will say, for eighth grade boys, yet these boys are likely interested, they do their task with zest, and linger about the shop after school hours are over—anxious to complete the jobs which the day's work has begun.

Boys in grades two to six made three dozen hammer handles for use in the high school machine shops. Of forty-two pieces of rough stock there were produced thirty-six handles, a record which some commercial shops might envy. These same boys made a book and magazine rack, of rather elaborate design, and an umbrella rack for each of the schools in Cincinnati. These racks, displayed in the offices of the various principals, would stand comparison with a high grade factory product. The boys are now engaged in making a desk book-rack (a scroll saw exercise) for every school teacher in Cincinnati. When they have finished there will be more than a thousand.

Besides these routine class exercises the Oyler boys are privileged to make anything which appeals to them and for which they can supply the material. The school machines are theirs, subject to their use at any time. Taking advantage of this, the boys sharpen the home knives and hatchets, make axe handles, umbrella racks, hall stands, stools, sleds, cane chairs, and repair or make any product which fancy or home necessity may dictate.

VI A Real Interest in School

Let no one infer that the academic branches are neglected at Oyler. Far from it, they are taught with consummate skill by a corps of teachers who enjoy the work because they find the children interested. Strange to relate, an interest in school came in at the front door with Mr. Voorhes' new plan for applied education. The wild boys and dishevelled girls of the West End, who had erstwhile hated school, came now to participate in school activities with an interest seldom surpassed in public or private schools.

"You see," Mr. Voorhes remarked, "a day a week in the shop or laboratories is just about enough to keep down the high spirits of the older ones, and at the same time give them an applied education of which they feel the value. That one day of practical work did the trick. It made the other four days of academic work taste just as good as pie."

Mr. Voorhes' plan arrived. It won the interest of the children and later with the assistance of the Mothers' Club and the kindergarten it won the sympathy of the community.

VII The Mothers' Club

Like all of the other school centers in Cincinnati, Oyler has a kindergarten and a Mothers' Club, around which the change in community feeling has centered, until Mr. Voorhes describes them as "the most important influence that ever came into our school." Yet the kindergarten here, as elsewhere, has had a life and death grapple for existence. In the West End, dominated by its conservative, German atmosphere, the pleas for kindergartens fell on deaf ears. At last, after much preparation, a meeting of mothers and children was held for the purpose of forming an organization; at the meeting there were thirteen children and five mothers, and all antagonistic, or at best suspicious.

"I went around and played with every one of those children," said Mr. Voorhes, "talking to the mothers, and trying to persuade them that this was not failure, but merely the forerunner of success. The next day I went into every grade, saying to the children:

"'What was the matter? Mother did not come to the Mothers' Meeting yesterday.'

"'Oh, she couldn't leave the baby.'

"'Leave the baby! Why, of course not. No one expected her to leave the baby. Tell her to come and bring the baby along.'"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VIII The Disappearance of "Discipline"

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

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

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

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

"Is he better?" the teacher asked.

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

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

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

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

IX The Spirit of Oyler

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

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

Sometimes people get the idea that Mr. Voorhes does not do very much. One visitor spent half a day observing, and then sitting down in his office she said:

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

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

Small wonder that the teachers like to stay. Small wonder that the work which the school does commands the respect of the people of Cincinnati. In the school, as well as in the neighborhood, each person has a task and a fair chance to do it well.

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

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

The community is interested. Parents and manufacturers alike come to the school, consult, advise, suggest, co-operate. The school boy is no longer sneered at by "the gang." The school has made its place in the community, and "the gang" is enthusiastically engaged in school work. The complexion of the neighborhood has changed, too. It is less rough, the police have less to do. Houses are neater, children better clothed and cared for. Oyler has won the hearts of its people, improved the food on their tables and the clothes on their backs, sent the children to high school, and their mothers to Mothers' Clubs; and the people who once uttered their profanity indiscriminately in every direction now swear by Oyler.



CHAPTER IX

VITALIZING RURAL EDUCATION

I The Call of the Country

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

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

Blessings on thee, little man, Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan! With thy turned-up pantaloons, And thy merry whistled tunes; With thy red lips, redder still Kissed by strawberries on the hill.

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

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

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

II Making Bricks with Straw

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

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

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

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

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

DAILY PROGRAM

FORENOON

Time Class Grade

8:30 Opening Exercises All 8:40 Reading Primary 8:45 Reading First 8:50 Reading Second 8:55 Reading Third 9:00 Reading Sixth 9:10 Grammar Fourth 9:20 Grammar Fifth 9:30 Grammar Sixth 9:40 Grammar Seventh 9:50 Grammar Eighth 10:00 Reading Fourth 10:10 Reading Seventh 10:20 Recess All 10:30 Reading Primary 10:40 Reading First 10:50 Numbers Second 11:00 Numbers Third 11:05 Arithmetic Fourth 11:15 Arithmetic Fifth 11:25 Arithmetic Seventh 11:35 Arithmetic Eighth 11:50 Reading Fifth Noon Noon All

Appalling, do you say? What other word describes it adequately? There are twenty-one teaching periods in the morning; twenty-four in the afternoon. Forty-five times each day that teacher must call up and teach a new class. The college professor is "overloaded" with fourteen classes a week. This woman had two hundred and twenty-five. Will any one be so absurd as to suppose that she can do them or herself justice?

Consolidation, among its many advantages, reduces the number of classes per day, and increases the time which the teacher may devote to each class. Note the contrast between that schedule of a one-room teacher and the teaching schedule of a consolidated school teacher in the same county:

TEACHER'S DAILY PROGRAM

FORENOON

Time Class Grade

8:30 Opening Exercises All 8:45 Desk 1-B 8:50 Phonetics 1-A 9:00 Phonetics 1-B 9:15 Reading 1-A 9:30 Reading Second 9:45 Rest Exercise All 10:00 Nature All 10:15 Rest All 10:30 Words 1-B 10:50 Words 1-A 11:10 Numbers Second 11:30 History 1-A

The "district," or one-room, schools in Montgomery County, Indiana, have twenty-three pupils per teacher, scattered over six grades. The consolidated schools in the same county show sixteen pupils per teacher, in three grades. While the teacher in the district school averages twenty-seven recitations a day, the teacher in the consolidated school has eleven; but the time per recitation is: district, thirteen minutes; consolidated, twenty-nine minutes. The number of minutes which the district teacher may give to each grade is fifty minutes; the consolidated teacher has one hundred and seventeen minutes per grade. Badly sprinkled with figures as that statement is, it gives some idea of the increased opportunities for effective teaching in the consolidated school. No teacher can do justice to twenty-seven classes per day, and an average recitation period of thirteen minutes is so short as to be almost unworthy of mention.

Most consolidated schools, in addition to the ordinary rooms, have an assembly room in which lectures, festivals, socials, public meetings, and farmers' institutes are held. Acting as a center for community life, the consolidated school takes a real place in the instruction of the community. The big brick or stone building, well constructed and surrounded, as it usually is, by well-kept grounds, furnishes the same kind of local monument that the court house supplies in the county seat. People point proudly to it as "their" public building. It is an experience of note in traveling across an open farming country to come suddenly upon a splendidly-equipped, two-story school, set down, at a point of vantage, several miles away from the nearest railroad.

The consolidated school at Linden, Montgomery County, Indiana, for example, situated in a town of scarcely three hundred inhabitants, is equipped with gas from its own gas-plant; with steam heat; ample toilet accommodations; an assembly room; and halls so broad that the primary children may play some of their games there in bad weather.

One of the most widely discussed among consolidated schools is the John Swaney Consolidated School, of Putnam County, Illinois.[22] The John Swaney School occupies a twenty-four acre campus, lying a mile and a half from the nearest village, and ten miles from the nearest town. The agitation for consolidation in Putnam County led John Swaney and his wife to give twenty-four acres as a campus for a local consolidated school. Hence the name and much of the success which has attended the work of the school.

The school cost $15,000, equipped. It is of brick with four class-rooms, two laboratories, a library, offices, a manual training shop, a domestic science kitchen, and a basement play-room. The building is lighted, heated, and ventilated in the most modern fashion. The John Swaney School thus came into existence with an equipment adequate for any school and elaborate for a school situated far from the channels of trade and industry.

The course of study organized includes all of the modern specialized work which the effective city school is able to do. Securing good teachers and possessing unique facilities, the school carries boys and girls through a series of years, in which intellectual, experimental, manual, recreational, and social activities combine to make the school the center of community life and community influence.

The school campus is used as a laboratory and a play ground. The trees provide subject matter for a course in horticulture. The fertile land is turned to agricultural use, and the broad expanse of twenty-four acres furnishes additional space for games and sports.

The social life of this school is no less effective than is its location and equipment. The teachers' cottage, an old school building converted for this purpose, furnishes a center for the life of the teaching staff, and makes a background for the social life of the entire school. There are two strong literary societies, including all of the pupils in the school. Each year plays are presented on the school stage. There are musical organizations, parents' conferences, entertainments, and community gatherings of all descriptions. In every sense, the John Swaney School is a community center.

Prosperity has followed in the wake of this educational development. The John Swaney School is known far and wide, and consequently farm renters and farm buyers alike seek the locality because of the educational opportunities which the school affords for their children, and because of the social opportunities which the community around the school affords for them.

The movement for school consolidation, like many another good movement, originated in Massachusetts. From that state it has spread extensively to Indiana, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, Idaho, Washington, and a number of other states,—East, West, and South. In every progressive rural community, wherever prosperous farmers and comfortable farm homes are found, there the consolidation movement is being discussed, agitated, or operated.

The movement toward consolidation has been particularly active during the past few years in the South. The Southern States are, for the most part, largely agricultural communities. The rural population far outnumbers the urban population, and it is in these districts, therefore, that the consolidated school can have its greatest influence. By 1912, the state of Louisiana alone was able to report over 250 consolidated county schools. Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina show themselves almost equally active in forwarding this generally accepted progressive educational movement.

The difficulties involved in consolidation may be summed up under two heads. There is, first of all, the conservatism and prejudice of those people who believe that the things which were good enough for their fathers, are still good enough for them. Secondly, there are the technical difficulties involved in transporting pupils from distant localities to the school center. Roads are bad at certain times of the year. Wagons are costly. Desirable drivers are difficult to secure. These factors, taken together, make the administrative difficulties of the consolidated school far greater than those of the old-time one-room country school.

The forces operating to overcome these difficulties are destined ultimately to triumph. The widespread acceptance of an agricultural education that followed upon the work of experiment stations, universities and high schools, has convinced even the most reactionary of the old-time group that there are, at least, certain things in the new generation which surpass, in their economic and social value, the like things of the old. The inroads of scientific agriculture have played havoc with agricultural tradition and conservatism. The obvious merits of the new scheme are destined to overcome the prejudices which the long continuance of the old scheme created.