John Franklin Bobbitt

“ Pupils should acquire much familiarity with the history of the ancient oriental nations, Judea, Greece, Rome, the states of modern Europe and America. The purpose should be to give a general, and in the beginning a relatively superficial, overview of the world's history for the sake of perspective. The reading should be biographical, anecdotal, thrilling dramas of human achievement, rich with human interest. It should be at every stage of the work on the level with the understanding and degree of maturity of the pupils, so that much reading can be covered rapidly. ”

“ Shall we give boys access to a variety of specialized occupations so that they may become acquainted, through responsible performance, with the wide and diversified field of man's labor? Or shall we give them some less specialized sample out of that diversified field so that they may obtain, through contact and experience, some knowledge of the things that make up the world of productive labor? ”

“ The teaching of spelling should aim to give the pupils complete mastery over those words which they need to use in writing and it should instil in them the permanent habit of watching their spelling as they write. Drill on lists of isolated words should give way to practice in spelling correctly every word in everything written. The dictionary habit should be cultivated, and every written lesson should be a spelling lesson. ”

“ In a country where all people are the rulers, all need a good understanding of the social, political, economic, industrial, and other problems with which we are continually confronted. It is true the thing needed is an understanding of present conditions, but there is no better key to a right understanding of our present conditions than history furnishes. One comes to understand a present situation by observing how it has come to be. ”

“ The amount of reading in the high schools should be greatly increased. Those who object that rapid work is superficial believe that work must be slow to be thorough. It should be remembered, however, that slow work is often superficial and that rapid work is often excellent. In fact the world's best workers are generally rapid, accurate, and thorough. Ask any business man of wide experience. Now leaving aside pupils who are slow by nature, it can be affirmed that pupils will acquire slow, thorough habits or rapid, thorough habits according to the way they are taught. ”

“ These opposing schools of thought are profoundly sincere in their conflicting beliefs. Each side is absolutely certain that it is right and is unalterably of the opinion that there is no other side of the question to be even so much as considered. Anything that agrees with its own side is based on reason; anything opposed is but ignorant prejudice. ”

“ Since grammar has this perfectly practical function to perform, probably only those things needed should be taught; but more important still, everything taught should be constantly put to use by the pupils in their oversight of their own speech and writing. Only as knowledge is put to work, is it really learned or assimilated. The schools should require much oral and written expression of the pupils, and should enforce constant watchfulness of their own speech on the part of the pupils. ”

“ If, on the other hand, this city is using the excess time for widely diversified reading chosen for its content value in revealing the great fields of history, industry, applied science, manners and customs in other lands, travel, exploration, inventions, biography, etc., and in fixing life-long habits of intelligent reading, then it is possible that it is just this excess time that produces the largest educational returns upon the investment. ”

“ Just as we use industrial history and industrial geography as means of giving youth a wide vision of the fields of man's work, so must we also use actual practical activities as means of making him familiar in a concrete way with materials and processes in their details, with the nature of work, and with the nature of responsibility. ”

“ The normal method of education in things not yet put into the schools, is participation in those things. One gets his ideas from watching others and then learns to do by doing. There is no reason to believe that as the school lends its help to some of the more difficult things, this normal plan of learning can be set aside and another substituted. Of course the schools must take in hand the difficult portions of the process. Where complicated knowledge is needed, the schools must teach that knowledge. Where drill is required, they must give the drill. ”

“ The content of courses in mathematics is to be determined by human needs. A fundamental need of our scientific age is more accurate quantitative thinking about our vocations, civic problems, taxation, income, insurance, expenditures, public improvements, and the multitude of other public and private problems involving quantities. We need to think accurately and easily in quantities, proportions, forms, and relationships. Arithmetic teaching, like the teaching of penmanship, is for the purpose of providing tools to be used in matters that lie beyond. ”

“ When a short play of a hundred pages like Macbeth requires nearly three months for reading, when almost two months are given to Treasure Island and nearly three months to Ivanhoe, clearly it is something other than reading that is being attempted. It is perfectly obvious that the high schools are attending principally to the mechanics of expression and not to the content of the expression. ”

“ Printing and gardening are two things that might well be added to the manual training program. Both are already in the schools in some degree. They might well be considered as desirable portions of the manual training of all. They lend themselves rather easily to responsible performance on the work level. There are innumerable things that a school can print for use in its work. In so doing, pupils can be given something other than play. Also in the home gardening, supervised for educational purposes, it is possible to introduce normal work-motives. ”

“ Such work is not reading. It is analysis. A selection is not read, it is analyzed. The purpose of real reading is to enter into the thought and emotional experience of the writer; not to study the methods by which the author expressed himself. The net result when the work is done as described is to develop a critical consciousness of methods, without helping the children to enter normally and rightly into the experience of the writer. The children of Cleveland need this genuine training in reading.
Reading in the high schools needs very much the same sort of modernization. ”

“ Very little of it has any conscious relation, immediate or remote, to present-day problems and conditions or with their historical background. Probably children should read many more selections of literary art than are found in the textbooks and the supplementary sets now owned by the schools. But certainly such cultural literary experience ought not to crowd out kinds of reading that are of much greater practical value. Illumination of the things of serious importance in the everyday world of human affairs should have a large place in reading work of every school. ”

“ Whether a thing today is an educational "essential" or not seems to depend upon two things: whether it is a human necessity today; and whether it is so complex or inaccessible as to require systematic teaching. The number of "essentials" changes from generation to generation. Those today who proclaim the Three R's as the sole "essentials" appear to be calling from out the rather distant past. ”

“ But if boys are to try out their aptitudes for work and their ability to bear responsibility in work, then they must try themselves out on the work level. Let the manual training actually look toward vocational guidance; the social purpose involved will vitalize the work.
There is a still more comprehensive social purpose which the city should consider. Owing to the interdependence of human affairs, men need to be broadly informed as to the great world of productive labor. Most of our civic and social problems are at bottom industrial problems. ”

“ Considered from the practical standpoint of actual human needs, the present almost complete neglect of elementary science is indefensible. The minute amount of such teaching now introduced in the language lessons for composition purposes is so small as to be almost negligible. The topics are not chosen for their bearing upon human needs. There is no laboratory work.
Naturally much of the elementary science to be taught should be introduced in connection with practical situations in kitchen, school garden, shop, sanitation, etc. Certainly the applied science should be as full as possible. ”

“ DIFFERENTIATION OF COURSES Courses of training based upon human needs should be diversified where conditions are diversified. Uniform courses of study for all schools within a city were justifiable in a former simpler age, when the schools were caring only for needs that were common to all classes. But as needs have differentiated in our large industrial cities, courses of training must also become differentiated. In Cleveland this principle has been recognized in organizing the work of the special schools and classes. ”

“ The individual who reaches this level of attainment is educated, even though he may never have attended school. The one who falls below this level is not truly educated, even though he may have had a surplus of schooling.
To bring one's nature to full maturity, as represented by the best of the adult community in which one grows up, is true education for life in that community. ”

“ In drawing up courses of study in the subject for the grammar grades and the high school, the first task should be an analysis of present-day social conditions, the proper understanding of which requires historical background. Once having discovered the list of social topics, it is possible to find historical readings which will show how present conditions have grown up out of earlier ones. Looked at from a practical point of view, the history should be developed on the basis of topics, a great abundance of reading being provided for each of the topics. ”

“ These people need an intensive specialized training in spelling that is not needed by the mass of the population. Such specialized vocational training should be taken care of by the Cleveland schools, but it should not be forced upon all simply because the few need it. The attempt to bring all to the high level needed by the few, and the failure to reach this level, is responsible for the justifiable criticism of the schools that those few who need to spell unusually well are imperfectly trained. ”

“ HIGH SCHOOL SCIENCE Having no elementary science in the grades, one naturally expects to find in the high school a good introductory course in general science, similar in organization to that suggested for the elementary stage. But nowhere is there anything that even remotely suggests such a course. Students who take the classical course get their first glimpse of modern science in the third or fourth high school year, when they have an opportunity to elect a course in physics or chemistry of the usual traditional stamp. ”

“ When shoes, for example, were made by hand, each workman could easily supply his own tools; but now that elaborate machinery has been devised for their manufacture, it has become so expensive that a machine factory must supply the tools. It is so in almost every field of labor where efficiency has been introduced. Now the books to be read are the tools in the teaching of reading. In a former day when a mastery of the mechanics of reading was all that seemed to be needed, the privately purchased textbook could suffice. ”

“ The limitation of the method is that joinery and cabinet-making cannot help a boy to try himself out for metal work, printing, gardening, tailoring, or commercial work.
If vocational guidance is to be a controlling social purpose, the manual training work will have to be made more diversified so that one can try out his tastes and abilities in a number of lines. And, moreover, each kind of work must be kept as much like responsible work out in the world as possible. ”

“ Subjects which have been considered necessary in a high school, because they tend to develop the mind, should not for this reason only be placed in a commercial course. Subjects should not be given because they strengthen the mind, but the subjects which are necessary in this course should be given in such a way as to strengthen the mind. The mathematics in this school should consist of business arithmetic and mensuration. We can see no reason for giving these students either algebra or geometry. But they should be taught short and practical methods of working business problems. ”