Elementary school

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The elementary school is for all the people and aims to do for all three things: first, exercise a positive directive influence over the child's physical development; second, carry on, in a more systematic, scientific manner the training of the sense organs already begun by the home, thus opening up the life to the beauties of nature, art, and other forms of truth, and so providing for the development of the inner life of each in accordance with inherent leaning and capability ”

“ Elementary school.—The term `elementary school' means a nonprofit institutional day or residential school, including a public elementary charter school, that provides elementary education, as determined under State law. ”

“ The evolution of the elementary-school teacher of to-day out of the church sexton, bell- ringer, or grave-digger, [14] or out of the artisan, cripple, or old dame who added school teaching to other employment in order to live, forms one of the interesting as well as one of the yet-to-be-written chapters in the history of the evolution of the elementary school.
Teachers in elementary schools everywhere in the eighteenth century were few in number, poor in quality, and occupied but a lowly position in the social scale. ”

“ THE TRANSITION AND THE JUNIOR SCHOOL PROGRAMME Even after the Nursery School period much of the curriculum and subject matter is in the hands of the children themselves, though the relative proportions will vary according to the children's experiences. It is pretty evident to the honest-minded teacher that the subjects are, in school terms, nature work and elementary science, mathematics, constructive and expressive work, literature, music, language, physical exercise and religion. ”

“ Elementary schools, out of which our present schools have grown, began about a century ago. Many and great changes have taken place since then, and knowledge is within the reach of every boy or girl to-day. ”

“ THE SCHOOL is for boys and girls, and includes under the same management an elementary school, comprising primary and grammar grades, and a secondary school, or academy proper, which fits boys and girls for Eastern and Western colleges. ”

“ THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE KINDERGARTEN. Wholly aside from the specific training given children during the year, year and a half, or two years they spend in this type of school, the addition of the kindergarten to elementary-school work has been a force of very large significance and usefulness. The idea that the child is primarily an active and not a learning animal has been given new emphasis, and that education comes chiefly by doing has been given new force. The idea that a child's chief business is play has been a new conception of large educational value. ”

“ The present sequence in our older communities runs somewhat as follows: the kindergarten up to six years; the elementary school for about eight years; the high school, four years; the college, four years; the graduate, technical, or professional course, from three to six years. The educational process begins with very tender baby flesh, and ends with pretty solid men and women. It is not one day too long if it lead irresistibly to the radiant life. ”

“ The entire elementary school could be [Pg 192] a general, free, spontaneous, amateur pre-vocational school, where in direct contact with machines and industrial processes as well as books, with gardens and gymnasiums as well as laboratories and kitchens, with tools and print and pottery shops and drawing and music studios, children might have their imaginations stirred, try out their busy hands on things, and gradually sift out of the variety the interests that they can lay hold on with some promise of creative use. ”

“ I would not be understood as passing strictures upon the vast and excellent educational work nearly all teachers are doing; it is impossible to go into an Elementary School without being impressed by the competence of the teachers and the intelligence of the children ”

“ 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. ”

“ The high schools with a million students, and the universities, colleges, professional and normal schools with three hundred thousand more, constitute an increasingly important factor in education; at the same time, for every seven students in these higher schools, there are ninety-three children in the elementary grades. The proportion is so unexpected that it staggers us—more than nine-tenths of the children who attend school in the United States are in the elementary grades! ”

“ The complaint of high school teachers that children are not properly taught in the elementary school would often be obviated if in each of the fields in question some systematic review were given from time to time, especially at the beginning of the work undertaken, in any particular subject which involves work previously done in the elementary school. ”

“ Teaching (class and individual) .Beginning in the kindergarten, modelling should continue without a break through the ordinary term of school life. In the elementary stage class teaching is of the greatest value, but no such class should contain more than eighteen pupils. The advanced stage will require most individual teaching. ”

“ The heavy emphasis upon this subject should be reserved for the later grades of the elementary school.
In the high schools, a little is being accomplished. In the academic high schools, those who take the classical course receive no civics whatever. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The school, for its intellectual function, causes the pupil to learn certain arts, such as reading and writing, which make possible communication with one's fellow-men, and impart certain rudimentary insights or general elementary ideas with which practical thinking may be done, and the pupil be set on the way to comprehend his environment of nature, and of humanity and history. ”

“ Does elementary education, as at present conducted in this country, tend to foster the growth of the child's faculties? If my sketch is even approximately faithful to its original, the answer to the question, so far at least as thousands of schools are concerned, must be an emphatic No. For in the school, as I have sketched it, the one end and aim of the teacher is to prevent the child from doing anything whatever for himself ”

“ While in some ways better suited to the middle grades of the elementary schools, selection may be made from the lessons here outlined which will give excellent training to the upper grades in those schools where the curriculum does not include shop-work, cooking, or sewing. ”

“ Put in positive terms, the pre-school training may be described as training in language and in personal independence of a very elementary type.
This statement can be applied to the kindergarten, where the purposes of the pre-school training have been brought to fairly clear consciousness. The kindergarten gives the child much opportunity to play with things that are given to him. He must learn to distinguish objects for himself; he must learn to handle them with enough skill so that he becomes an independent individual. ”

“ Recognizing the significant amount of time our children spend in school, we have also created partnerships with States under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to assist school districts in developing curriculum materials, providing teacher training, and integrating character education into the curriculum. ”

“ This is equally important for teachers and heads of departments in elementary schools. It is now admitted by most educators that elementary schools and young children present more pedagogical difficulties and pressing biological problems than higher schools. ”

“ To all children, so soon as they can be promoted from the kinder garten—perhaps even to the higher grades therein—instruction in the conditions of human well-being, and in the phenomena and arrangements of social life should be given, and should be continued throughout their school career. ”

“ The children enter the kindergarten at the end of the toddling age, and the little lads and lassies sit side by side in their delightful rooms and make their first songs of life, as they end them, together, their little arms and hands making the first efforts at rhythm together, awkward movements full of grace. They pass at eight years to the primary department and begin the toilsome upward pull of real study, and here their ways part,—the boys for the Peers’ School and the ruder ways of masculine effort. ”

“ I heard a lady say that she had taken her child to the kindergarten, "but he is so bright that he saw through it immediately." Too many school children 'see' as immediately 'through' the namby-pamby attempts of the softer pedagogy to lubricate things for them, and make them interesting. ”

“ The greatest need of the primary school to-day is some positive content or subject matter of instruction. The popular conception of such a school is that its main function is to teach the young child to read, write, and cipher. ”

“ But I would mingle education with their joy and with their pleasures—health and lessons with their play—and affection and forgiveness in their little bands. Thus their joys or their pleasures, their play and their companions, become their teachers. By an infant school I would not mean a room where a hundred children may be crowded together in an unhealthy atmosphere. The situation and comforts of the school are almost as important as the nature of the instruction, or the character and disposition of the teacher. ”

“ Even an ordinary child has her peculiarities, which should be allowed for, but, in the main, it is the regularity and uniformity of the school routine which make the most valuable part of her education. ”

“ What is the character of the education given in the home or the kindergarten preliminary to the work of the primary school? The answer to this question can be given negatively by saying it is not of a type which belongs to a public institution. When the pupil comes to primary school he must be reasonably prepared to live with people who are comparative strangers. ”

“ We are apt to look at the school from an individualistic standpoint, as something between teacher and pupil, or between teacher and parent. That which interests us most is naturally the progress made by the individual child of our acquaintance, his normal physical development, his advance in ability to read, write, and figure, his growth in the knowledge of geography and history, improvement in manners, habits of promptness, order, and industry—it is from such standards as these that we judge the work of the school. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Teachers are beginning to see that education has its beginning in, and that it is always conditioned by, the life of the child outside of the school building. The possibilities of the school as an institution for the education of children are just beginning to be realized. ”

“ The Mother the best Kindergärtnerin.—​It is hardly necessary, here, to discuss the merits of the Kindergarten School. The success of such a school demands rare qualities in the teacher—high culture, some knowledge of psychology and of the art of education; intense sympathy with the children, much tact, much common sense, much common information, much ‘joyousness of nature’ and much governing power;—in a word, the Kindergarten method is nicely contrived to bring the child en rapport with a superior intelligence. ”

“ There it is first sought to develop the child's intellectual faculties, prepare it for school, inculcate habits of cleanliness and morality, and instruct it in the rudiments of reading and writing. Between the ages of six and fourteen children are admitted into the schools, and, nominally at least, go through the plan of study drawn up by the board of primary education, and which is as follows: Reading, writing, geography, spelling, arithmetic, compendium of sacred and French history, linear drawing, singing, the rudiments of physics, geometry and natural history, and calligraphy. ”

“ Beautifying the schoolhouse and schoolroom, having a library and a few pictures and casts, and making school life attractive are suggestions to be worked out, and the value of teaching sewing, cooking, the care of babies to girls, and manual training to boys.
IV—HIGH SCHOOLS
The subject of the high schools will naturally succeed this and the first paper may take up the question, Why do so few boys and girls go to high school? Is it only because so many go into business life? Is the preparation for college adequate? ”