City school

“ It should be merely an outline of the metes and bounds in the processes and the progress of pupils through the grades. The course of study should be a means, not an end; it should be a servant and not a master. It should not entail upon the school or upon the teacher a vast complicated machinery or an endless routine of red tape. If it does this it defeats its true aim. Here again the country schools have attempted to imitate the city schools. In all cities grading is much more systematized, and is pushed to a greater extent than it is or should be in the country. ”

“ We add socializing efforts without removing the individual viewpoint that has gotten into school studies and professional habits. The failures of the city schools are less [Pg 159] apparent because the atmosphere of urban life is itself socializing. The walk or ride to the city school is likely to make some contribution of socializing character even to the unobservant child. It is still true that the education outside of the schools, the spontaneous instruction provided by the children themselves in addition to the publicly constructed school, impresses itself most upon the childish mind. ”

“ This is undoubtedly due in the main to the better facilities for education in our cities, and it is here chiefly that we find the bright side of city life; for the cities are not only centers of the evil tendencies of our civilization but are also the centers of all that is best and uplifting. The urban schools in general are open much longer than the rural school, the attendance in them is better, and the teaching is much more efficient. ”

“ The cities, in the American State school system, under State law, by means of local levies, limited to the property of the city or district, with scarcely an exception, have built up this class of schools. The common school, with its corps of teachers, is followed by the high-school, with higher instructors and added supervision, and this again by the university, either for the city or the State, with a still higher order of instruction and supervision; and the organism is complete, each element in the series working apart but in harmony with the whole. ”

“ The normal schools incline to the smallest proportion for practice-teaching, the city training-schools to the largest. It should be borne in mind, however, that city training-schools are a close continuation, usually, of high schools, and that the high-school courses give a more uniform and probably a more adequate preparation than the students entering normal schools have usually had. Their facilities for practice-teaching are much greater than normal schools can secure, and for this reason also practice is made relatively more important. ”

“ Very similar to the State Normal Schools in organization and curriculum are those maintained by certain cities. Of these the Philadelphia, New York and Boston schools may be taken as representatives. Such schools belong to the City School systems, and are under the supervision of the City Superintendent. Graduates from these schools are supposed to teach in the public schools of the city. ”

“ The Schools of the City.—An important function of city government and of other institutions is the education of the people who make their home in the city or come to it to broaden their culture. The city provides for its young people as the country community does, by locating school-buildings within convenient reach of the people of every district, but on a much larger and usually a more efficient scale. ”

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

“ The curriculum and the methods of the city school have not been sufficiently modified to meet the requirements of children, living in a crowded city, with little opportunity for constructive work or healthful recreation. ”

“ In the same city there is an unusual number of pianos in the schools, school playgrounds are being established, parents’ associations are active in coöperation with the teachers to improve school conditions. If one were asked to explain why the schools in this city are better, why they are so loyally supported and so proudly spoken of by all classes of people, the answer would be found, I believe, in the fact that there is a closer relationship between the school and activities outside the school in home and city than in most other places. ”

“ The city has a very efficient public-school system. There are 15 buildings, one for high-school purposes with a capacity for 800 pupils, and 14 other buildings for primary and grammar schools. The school enrollment has reached 7,500. ”

“ It should be remembered that the character of the school work of a city is not merely a matter of local interest, and that the maintenance of the schools does not rest merely or mainly upon local authority. ”

“ Their grand ambition for their children, is to send them to school in some eastern city, the measure most likely to make them useless and unhappy at home. I earnestly hope that, ere long, the existence of good schools near themselves, planned by persons of sufficient thought to meet the wants of the place and time, instead of copying New York or Boston, will correct this mania. ”

“ The public school system is admirable, and includes evening schools for the employed. Other institutions of which the city is justly proud are the high school, the free public library, the Orphan Asylum and a Home for Aged People. ”

“ Besides these, there are fifteen evening schools, for those who cannot avail themselves of the other public schools, and whose only leisure time is after the close of the labors of the day. The ages of the scholars in these schools vary from twelve to forty-five years.
This magnificent offer of instruction by the city to her children is confined to no class, country, sect, nor fortune. Every child, without exception, is received, taught, and furnished with all the requisites for a good school education. ”

“ For childhood, or from six to twelve, was to be organized the ‘vernacular school,’ which should appear in every hamlet and village. From that time up to eighteen comes the ‘Latin school,’ to be maintained in every city; and, finally, for youth from eighteen to twenty-four, there should be a university in every kingdom or province. Such an organization would have made education universal, and would tend to bring about the custom of education according to ability, rather than social status, which was a suggestion some three centuries in advance of the times. ”

“ The investigators cannot, of course, explain how it is that one of the wealthiest and most comfortable of American cities, a city at once entirely modern and homogeneously American, should have the most mechanical and formalistic school system these educators had ever seen. ”

“ The Boys' High School, a semi-ecclesiastical building, pertaining more to the Domestic Tudor style of mediæval architecture, stands up prominently on the western outskirts, overlooking the harbour. Its interior arrangements consist of a large hall with galleries, surrounded with class-rooms providing accommodation for 450 scholars.
The other school buildings, known as Government schools, of which there are five in the city and several in the suburbs, very much resemble each other in outward appearance and in internal arrangements ”

“ Thus wage-earning and education are united to produce a well-trained man.
The school problem of the city suburb is very different from that of the mining village, the rural community, the industrial town, or the city. The children have space, good homes, and abundant opportunity to go through high school and even through college. Under these conditions the elementary grades can be directly preparatory for high school work, since six or even seven out of ten children will go to high school. ”

“ What the people of New York did propose, upward of thirty years ago, was to organize a sort of polytechnic or practical high-school, connected with the school-system of the city, to give a little extra preparation to boys, who expected to devote themselves to some form of mechanical industry, and not to the learned professions. ”

“ The New York public school system culminates in the Normal College, which trains women as teachers, and the College of the City of New York, which offers courses to young men in the profession of law, engineering, teaching, and, besides, a course in business training. The commencement at these institutions brings strangely contrasted parents together in a common interest and a common pride. The students seem much like one another, but the parents are so widely dissimilar as to make the similarity of their offspring an amazing fact for contemplation. ”

“ The public school began with the one central school in the community, but it soon found that it must establish branches if it reached all of the children of the city. To-day there is no town of any considerable size but has its central school with a high school usually, and its branches on the north, east, south and west sides. ”

“ Twenty or more of the regular school buildings in the city have been fitted up with carpenter shops and cooking and sewing rooms as well as laboratories for work in science. Each one of these schools has a garden where the pupils learn how to do practical city gardening. From one-fourth to even a half of the children’s time is spent on manual training instead of one-eighth as in the other schools of the city, and in other respects the regular curriculum is being followed. ”

“ New York Free Academy.—In the public schools of the city of New York, two hundred in number, six hundred teachers are employed, and one hundred thousand children annually receive instruction. The Free Academy, which is a public school of the highest grade, and which is represented in our frontispiece, was established by the Board of Education in 1847. ”

“ She has carried us with her in her zeal for them, and we have come to see that it is because the public conscience has been sluggish that means and methods have not been more speedily devised toward an intelligent solution of this serious social problem.
From the small beginnings of the experimental class in Henry Street a separate department in the public schools was created in 1908, and this year (1915) there are 3,000 children throughout the city under the care of specially trained teachers who have liberty to adapt the school work to the children’s peculiar needs. ”

“ Having said so much of education in other cities, I will only observe, that in regard to common schools, New York is on a par with most of her rivals in this noble strife for superiority; but I must ask those who are interested in the subject to give me their attention while I enter into a few details connected with their admirable Free Academy. The object of this institution is to combine—under one system and under one roof—high school, academy, polytechnic, and college, and to furnish as good an education as can be obtained by passing through each of those places of instruction separately. ”

“ The academy and college take young men from the district and high schools, and furnish them with additional aids for the business of life; but the Normal School is truly the helper of the common schools. It receives its pupils from them, fits these pupils for teachers, and sends them back to superintend where a few months before they were scholars. ”

“ To establish such a school in any large business establishment requires little additional expense beyond the salaries of teachers. The École Communale is a most valuable experiment, and shows with what slender outlay some useful instruction in manual labor can be added to the resources of an elementary school. The École Municipale, with its kindred schools at Lyons and Havre, enable us to realize what an apprenticeship school may become if taken in hand by a rich and powerful municipality. ”

“ The high schools of the cities constitute to-day one of the most efficient forms of school organization. At the present time the better high schools of the cities are veritable colleges—in fact their curricula are as extensive as were those of the colleges of sixty years ago. Vast numbers attend them; their faculties are composed of college graduates or better; they have, as a rule, various departments, such as manual training, domestic science, agriculture, commercial subjects, normal courses, etc. ”

“ There must always be a place for classical schools, scientific schools, professional schools, which, in their respective courses of study, either anticipate or follow, in the career of the student, his four years of college life. With these conditions and limitations stated, the point I seek to establish is that a public high school can do the work usually done in such institutions more faithfully, thoroughly, and economically, than it can be done anywhere else. ”

“ The urban school is greatly strengthened in its social function by this by-product of school attendance. It is aided also by the fact that the public is more critical respecting its service. In the country we find the reverse. ”

“ For years it was difficult in many localities for a young man to secure proper preparation, and the total of poorly prepared students applying for admission to the colleges increased. The number of towns and cities which have established high schools or high school departments has since increased rapidly, 189 and today a larger and larger proportion of college students comes from public schools. ”

“ Better trained teachers, better grading, a more modern equipment and well-proved methods give an advantage in education to the city child, though there are drawbacks in overcrowded buildings and narrow yards for play. The opportunities for social education are broader in the city, for the child comes into contact with many types of people, with a great variety of social institutions, and with all sorts of activities. It is these advantages, together with the higher institutions for study, that attract hundreds and sometimes thousands of students to the prominent social centres. ”