Reform school

“ Now we know that reform school is essential, and that particular attention must be given to special curricula, adequate to correct the inculcation of false moral principles. We have realized that the educational program must be devised not by local politicians but by academic authorities of the highest standing the International University.
Having observed that an environment of poverty and hopelessness prevents a psychology of penitence and reform, we have provided for a favorable economic conditioning of the defective. ”

“ The reform is easily seen to be a many-sided one. It is educational—our teachers should come to know that the book is only one, and not the chief one, of the many sources of knowledge open to the child; it is physiological—we should all know the eye better than we do, its normal use and its limitations; the reform is architectural—our architects and boards of education should realize that the seating and the lighting of school houses should receive most careful consideration ”

“ Through this injustice, the school has been burdened with faults that are not its own, and teachers, genuine educators, have been confused with the pedantic drill-masters that are the negation of intelligent education and of inspired ethical discipline. In order to see whether education really limits the free activity of the pupil, we must not consider abstractly any school, which may not be after all a school. We must examine an institution at the moment and in the act which 60 realises its significance—when the instructor teaches and the pupils are learning. ”

“ Reason, indeed, is beginning to find its way by gradual infiltration even into English schools, and to maintain a contest, though as yet a very unequal one, against routine. A few practical reformers of school tuition, of whom Arnold was the most eminent, have made a beginning of amendment in many things: but reforms, worthy of the name, are always slow, and reform even of governments and churches is not so slow as that of schools, for there is the great preliminary difficulty of fashioning the instruments: of teaching the teachers. ”

“ It is not contemplated to swing too far the pendulum of school reform, or to present a panacea. It is proposed to supplement the older scholastic culture with that which will make it take a firmer hold upon men’s minds, and will bring the school into closer harmony with the time-spirit. ”

“ They ought to meet the inspiring young people who overcame so much, and worked so hard, to earn their diplomas – in a school that believed in their promise and gave them the opportunity to succeed. We need to give every child in America that chance. That’s why education reform matters. ”

“ I have my own plan which would help children in persistently failing schools to go to another public, private or charter school. Others suggest different approaches, and I am willing to listen. But all reform must be based on a principle: Children and parents, who have had only bad choices need better choices. ”

“ Across America, states and school districts are working hard to implement these reforms. They are developing accountability plans and beginning innovative tutoring plans. The path to real reform and better results is not easy, but it is essential. ”

“ This reform has made possible a more efficient coordination of school finances and the full utilization of the services of teachers, and has offered increased opportunity for elementary education throughout the country. ”

“ There were then sharp struggles for the control of the schools, and these struggles continue to-day in every civilised country; sometimes the republican middle-class triumphs, sometimes the clergy. All parties appreciate the importance of the issue, and they shrink from no sacrifice to win the victory. “The school” is the cry of every party. The public good must be recognised in this zeal. Everybody seeks to raise himself and improve his condition by education. ”

“ In the matter of education especially, what errors have not been committed, of what usurpations has not the civil power incurred the guilt? By the creation of an official, pattern university, monopolizing instruction, and subject exclusively to the direction of the government, all the authorities to whom belonged formerly the instruction and education of youth have been suppressed at one blow. There is no longer any right recognized, any action suffered, but that of the state, master both of school and pay. ”

“ Happy times, when youths are clever and cultured enough to teach themselves how to walk! Unsurpassable public schools, which succeed in implanting independence in the place of the dependence, discipline, subordination, and obedience implanted by former generations that thought it their duty to drive away all the bumptiousness of independence! Do you clearly see, my good friends, why I, from the standpoint of culture, regard the present type of university as a mere appendage to the public school? ”

“ Though there is much interest in all these higher institutions of learning, as well as in the normal schools and academies, many of which are prosperous and important, yet the common schools more particularly engage the attention of the people and of the successive legislatures, resulting in a complication of school laws scarcely balanced by the improvement in the school system. ”

“ Yet the public schools flourish, and give a better training than most private schools, in spite of this inert practical resistance from those "in society." The natural inference would seem to be, that if an institution so well established as the public schools, and so generally recognized, can afford to be ignored by "society," then certainly a wholly new reform must expect no better fate. ”

“ Then, supported and fed by, and inspiring all below, should be the college, the school of higher education. Justice to a race long oppressed, obligation to meet more than half way those states that make generous appropriations to this end, and safety to the nation, demand that these should be liberally furnished with such buildings and grounds as health and comfort require, with libraries and apparatus equal to the best, and an efficient corps of teachers, so paid that their best energies may be given to instruction. ”

“ We must also be content to see the high privilege of general education seized by boys and girls whose easy lives make them careless of its value and inconstant in its pursuit. These conditions schools themselves cannot change. But by public provision and by scholarships the opportunity for prolonged education may be kept open to the able and ambitious. The spirit of teaching and school administration may help to prevent the formation of social caste. ”

“ That an intelligent public such as ours should entertain a profound concern for its common schools, and strive incessantly for their amendment, is nothing more than might be expected; but, that vast multitudes of people should be stirred with intense solicitude about the result of the latest reform in collegiate education is no less remarkable than encouraging. ”

“ How much has been, and is, expected of education! Most progressive people expect everything of it, and, until recent years, many did not understand that instruction alone leads to illusions. Much of the knowledge actually imparted in schools is useless; and the hope of reformers has been void because the organisation of the school, instead of serving an ideal purpose, has become one of the most powerful instruments of servitude in the [49] hands of the ruling class. The teachers are merely conscious or unconscious organs of their will, and have been trained on their principles. ”

“ But while it would be madness to abolish such an institution as our normal school, and undesirable if not impossible to graft it on the new university, our school, like its elder sister in Paris, should be enabled to gain by each increase in the teaching power of the university. ”

“ Having established this principle, the four leaders called upon all classes of teachers to work with them, and professors who had devoted their life to the promotion of superior instruction brought their experience and their powers of organization to bear upon schools for all classes, from the richest to the poorest. ... But to reform and to reconstruct a system of instruction is not a small task. It is not easy to change at once the old methods, to give a new spirit to the masters, to teach those who think that what had been sufficient for them need not be altered and is sufficient forever. ”

“ The way to improve education for all our children is to increase standards, accountability, and choice within the public schools. I urge the Congress to send me legislation I have proposed to reduce class size, modernize our schools, end social promotions, raise academic standards for all students, and hold school systems, schools, and staff accountable for results. ”

“ The Elementary Education Act, while it thus indicated the nature of the reform required, also furnished the most urgent reason for the immediate adoption of that reform at the universities. If primary education ought to be the care of the State, secondary education is not less its duty. ”

“ It is through these that life works and character develops, and to this development and instigation of life the school and college should work more assiduously, minimizing for the moment the problems of curricula and pedagogic methods. If I am right in this there is no place for the "correspondence school," while the college or university that numbers its students by thousands becomes at least of doubtful value, and perhaps impossible. ”

“ Instead, therefore, of engaging the Federal Government to establish more schools, we would engage the whole community to place the schools that now exist upon a higher moral plane, and to render them more effectual in their working by a higher quality of home influence. It is in the home above all that reform is needed ”

“ Parents and children would regulate the course of study according to their own crude notions; and, instead of having institutions which agree in carrying on a similar course of study, each school would have its own peculiar system, and compete and conflict with every other. Meantime, the public would have no means of deciding which was best, nor any opportunity for learning when a professional man was properly qualified for his duties. ”

“ One word will suffice to characterise it—Violence. The school dominates the children physically, morally, and intellectually, in order to control the development of their faculties in the way desired, and deprives them of contact with nature in order to modify them as required. This is the explanation of the failure; the eagerness of the ruling class to control education and the bankruptcy of the hopes of reformers. “Education” means in practice domination or domestication. I do not imagine that these systems have been put together with the deliberate aim of securing the desired results. ”

“ In the end we should get much the larger harvest of intellectual power, and much the larger man.”
We cannot hope to achieve the reconstructed school until our notion of teaching and teachers has been reconstructed. When we secure teachers who have education and not mere knowledge, we may begin to hope. We must look to the colleges and normal schools to furnish such teachers. If they cannot do so, our schools must plod along on the path of tradition without hope of finding the better way. ”

“ The establishment of the free public high school and the state university represent the crowning achievements of those who struggled to found a state-supported educational system fitted to the needs of great democratic States. Probably no other influences have done more to unify the American People, reconcile diverse points of view, eliminate state jealousies, set ideals for the people, and train leaders for the service of the States and of the Nation than the academies, high schools, and colleges scattered over the land. ”

“ Answering along this line, the protagonists of salvation through education pretty well agree that the thing itself means the widest possible extension of our public school system, with free state universities and technical schools, and the extension of the educational period, with laws so rigid, and enforcement so pervasive and impartial, that no child between the ages of six and sixteen can possibly escape. ”

“ The struggle should be perpetual and in the right direction. First, elevate your common schools so that the education there may be a sufficient basis for a course of training here. If the Normal School and the public schools shall each and all do their duty, candidates for admission will be so well qualified in the branches required, that the art of teaching will be the only art taught here. ”

“ For this purpose school children should be taught all kinds of manual labour in the schools. The doors of the high schools should be open to all. The priests should be turned out of the schools; let them, if they wish to, fool the children anywhere they like, but not in a Government institution: schools should be secular and not religious. The organs of the local government of the workers have control over the schools, and should not be parsimonious where public instruction and the supply of all the requisites for successful teaching for boys and girls is concerned. ”