Eighth grade

“ Today the school offers and compels a boy to get certain related courses of study which will make him a better citizen by fitting him in a measure for the procuring of an intelligent and adequate livelihood. The school by no means is perfect in this matter, and as long as over fifty per cent. of the boys fail to graduate even from the eighth grade in the grammar school, and but one per cent. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus "the maximum amount of reading is done in every instance between the sixth and eighth grades, the average being in the seventh grade at an average age of fourteen and one-tenth years." Seventy-five per cent of all discuss their reading with some one, and the writer urges that "when ninety-five per cent of the boys prefer adventure or seventy-five per cent of the girls prefer love stories, that is what they are going to read," and the duty of the teacher or librarian is to see that they have both in the highest, purest form. ”

“ Pupils who complete the eighth grade at fourteen or fifteen years, and then go to a normal school, would complete this elementary course at the age of seventeen or eighteen; and no person who has not reached this age should assume the responsibility for the care and instruction of children in any school. ”

“ War stories seem popular with third grade boys, and that liking seems well marked through the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. Stories of adventure are popular all through the heroic period, reaching their maximum in the eighth and ninth grades. The liking for biography and travel or exploration grows gradually to a climax in the ninth grade, and remains well up through the course. ”

“ The important problem of the seventh and eighth grades is to enable the pupils to understand and deal intelligently with the most important social institutions with which arithmetical processes are associated. ”

“ When the child has reached the fourth grade, he already has an idea of what activity interests 110him, and what he would like to try. Fourth- and fifth-grade children then go in as helpers to the seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-grade students in shops, studios, and laboratories. ”

“ He needs to be brought into contact with the ways and languages of other peoples. Fortunately, the keener educational insights of the present day are bringing us to a recognition of these needs. The school for the adolescent is beginning to emerge out of the current reorganizations of the seventh and eighth grades. ”

“ Indeed, it seems that an estimate of a pupil's ability to carry high school work when the pupil is in the fourth grade may be nearly as accurate as a judgment given when the pupil is in the seventh grade. ”

“ Every child on attaining the age of six must now attend a Common Elementary School, where during a four years' course instruction is given in morals, reading, writing, arithmetic, the rudiments of technical work, gymnastics, and poetry. ”

“ The Commissioner of Education of New York State writes of the schools,— [1] “A child is worse off in a graded school than in an ungraded one, if the work of a grade is not capable of some specific valuation, and if each added grade does not provide some added power. The first two grades run much to entertainment and amusement. The third and fourth grades repeat the work supposed to have been done in the first two. Too many unimportant and unrelated facts are taught. ”

“ Even if your boy has never seen the inside of a school-book, before the age of thirteen or fourteen, that need not prevent him from being prepared for college, just as well and at about the same time, as the average boy who has been attending school from the age of five, or six. ”

“ In any graded course of study the pupils are expected to earn promotion from grade to grade by attaining a certain required average in their work. In the Junior Course the Pupil’s Book for Work and Study is, as the name implies, both a guide in study, and a means of fixing in mind the knowledge which has been gained. To meet the requirements of this book the pupil must do the daily Bible readings, learn the memory text or texts each week, do whatever reading is required, and learn the hymns that are printed in the book. ”

“ In the fourth grade of a certain elementary school of a Western city there are three backward boys who have been in this grade for two years, though they are bright enough in the things of the street. ”

“ They remind their pupils daily of the 263on-coming examination and remind them of the dire consequences following their failure to attain the passing grade of seventy. They ask what answer the pupil would give to a certain question if it should appear in the examination. If they can somehow get their pupils to surmount that barrier of seventy at promotion time, they seem quite willing to turn their backs upon them and let the teacher in the next grade make what she can of such unprofitable baggage. ”

“ The child is usually started in number in the first grade, and continues it the full eight years of the elementary course, finally devoting three or more years of the high school course to its continued study. Thus, nearly one fourth of the entire school time of the pupil is demanded by the various phases of the number concept. ”

“ The first life class ends between the eighth and ninth years; the second between the eleventh and twelfth, and since an even more marked change of interests and tastes occurs at the period of adolescence, there are distinct high-school classes. The work within the group is then arranged to give the pupils the experiences which are needed at that age for the development of their bodies, minds, and spirits. ”

“ As far as possible the girls are taught by male and the boys by female teachers. Each class contains six or eight pupils, who sit around a little table, the drawer of which holds their order of exercises and singing books. The pupils remain in this department five years, or until they are sixteen years of age. These classes are divided into five sections, representing the five years of study in this grade. ”

“ All the classes are selected in the same way, a class of boys, then a class of girls, and the names of the scholars placed on the diagram as illustrated.
Scholars above fourteen and under seventeen are comprised in another department, and should be grouped in the same way, only into much larger classes. Where separate rooms can be had fifteen or twenty will not be too many—young ladies and gentlemen separate. In small schools, of course, the classes would be less in number. The age will largely govern in this grade; only such as are advanced ahead of their class will go into higher grades. ”

“ But, in the school, the teachers rejoice and congratulate one another when their pupils achieve a grade of seventy-five. It matters nothing, apparently, that this grade of seventy-five is a fictitious thing with no basis in logic or reason, in short a mere habit that has no justification save in tradition, and that, in very truth, it is a concession to inaccuracy and ignorance. When we promote the boy for solving three out of four problems we virtually say to him that the fourth problem is negligible and he may as well forget all about it. ”

“ Accepting the pedagogical age as a fair equivalent of mental development, the first noteworthy fact of general significance is that among these children those of normal school age or younger maintain a better school standing both as to grade and mark than those age for grade. ”

“ For example, one of the efforts of the elementary school is to teach pupils to write. It is entirely possible after the school has done its work to find out by an examination of the results how well pupils can write. It is never expected that pupils in the second grade will write as well as pupils in the upper grades. ”

“ It is worth the trouble to inquire whether it is possible to select subjects for school study which will prove essentially attractive and interesting from the age of six on. Are there materials for school study which are adapted fully to interest first grade children? We know that fairy stories appeal directly to them, and they love to reproduce them. Reading and spelling in connection with these tales are also stirring studies. ”

“ The students may come at 15 or 16 years of age and be examined in English, Latin, Greek history, geography, mathematics and the elements of science, the course being just a grade higher than that of our high schools, and get a degree or certificate showing their proficiency. ”

“ But accepting our colleges and universities as they are, at the same time discarding the results of tradition and of half-hearted experiment, what should the high school do? By high school we mean the instruction in the public school for four years of school life from the age of 13 or 14 to that of 17 or 18, resting on the primary and grammar school on the one hand and presumably leading to the college on the other—in most cases the last of the years in which a student lives at home and goes to school. ”

“ For all too long a time we have held a boy in grade four until he mastered what we have called his grade four arithmetic, spelling, geography, grammar, history, etc. As a matter of fact, many a boy who is a fourth-grader in grammar may be only a second-grader in arithmetic—a girl, for whom fourth grade arithmetic is an impossibility, because of her special liking for reading, may be seventh grade in her capacity in that subject. In the specific subjects, individual differences have been found to be most marked. ”

“ “What’s the matter?” asked the teacher, seeing her bewildered face.
“Why—why,” said Elizabeth Ann, “I don’t know what I am at all. If I’m second-grade arithmetic and seventh-grade reading and third-grade spelling, what grade am I?”
The teacher laughed at the turn of her phrase. “you aren’t any grade at all, no matter where you are in school. You’re just yourself, aren’t you? What difference does it make what grade you’re in! And what’s the use of your reading little baby things too easy for you just because you don’t know your multiplication table?” ”

“ I take it that your boy is an average boy, as bright or brighter than his father was at his age. If he is an average boy, this will represent his chances. Fools and dudes are exceptions to all rules.
4. A good high school course will give a broader field of activity to your boy.—In every walk of life the demands are more and more for men and women with more than a common school education. ”

“ With the teachers came some of their former pupils, and when they were examined it was amusing to note that in several cases the pupil entered a higher class than did his former teacher. It was also interesting to note how many big books some of them had studied, and how many high-sounding subjects some of them claimed to have mastered. The bigger the book and the longer the name of the subject, the prouder they felt of their accomplishment. ”

“ The complaint of a fifth-grade teacher that the work in long division was not properly taught in the fourth grade may be due in considerable measure to the fact that she has neglected at the beginning of the fifth grade's work to spend a week or two in careful or systematic review of the work covered in the previous year. ”

“ In the elementary school the pupil is a child, with the mind, the tastes, the ambitions of a child, and he should be allowed to remain a child. The ends in view are right habits, [Pg 231] right ideals, and knowledge facts. In the secondary school the student is an adolescent, with the mind of an adolescent, having peculiar and erratic tastes, changing ambitions, and conflicting emotions. ”

“ Now, our public school system is, for the most part, so constructed that the normal age for a boy to finish his high school course is in his nineteenth year, making his age of graduation from college between 22 years and 22 years, 11 months, inclusive. ”

“ The child is pushed through grade after grade, and, according to the statistics, a little more than ninety per cent, of the children drop out of school before they are old enough to decide educational questions for themselves. ”

“ You will not have much difficulty, in a school of three or four hundred scholars, to find several class lists all in the same grade and same age. This will also permit the selection of certain scholars somewhat in accordance with their social standing. ”

“ Another forward step is graded Bible study, graded athletics, graded service, graded social life, and graded mental activities. The work of the school, to hold the boy, must be new and diverse in its interests, and big enough and broad enough to command his constantly changing attention. ”

“ Some boys and girls at six are found wholly incapable of doing what is required in grade one. One of the most promising prospects ahead educationally is that we shall be able to find out just the capacity of a child regardless of his age, and fit him into what he can do well, making provisions for his passing on as he shows capability for higher work. Not only has this matter of individual differences been found to apply generally in the various grades of our schools— [56] it has been found to have significant bearing upon achievements in particular subjects. ”

“ The members of this grade should be promoted at the age of sixteen to the Senior Grade. It may be on some examination, but I believe it not best, for this is the point where the boy and girl have gone away from school because they thought they were no longer children and a child's school was not the place for them. Recognize the fact that they are young people as soon as they do, and promote them because they are, into an element that is congenial. At once they are bound to the school by personal pride and by social influences that they are not quick to abandon. ”