Schoolroom

“ Convert the statements about doing school duties in good fashion into a form of coöperation between pupils and teacher. Drop out the first personal pronoun and put the entire school behind the plans for a clean schoolroom floor, about home study and all the other hundred things that need to be done.
Taking up the matter of the disposal of wraps:
“All we want is to make ourselves as little trouble as possible. Do you all understand? We are all going to hang our wraps up in the cloak-room as we march into this room instead of coming in just before the bell rings to form line. ”

“ The picture of several dozen boys and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression upon me, and I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in this way would be about the same as getting into paradise. ”

“ Any City shows signs of embarrassment and discomfiture, but does not answer.
Education. Come with me. We will visit a sixth-year grade of to-day.
Education leads Any City behind curtain.
[36]
Ninth Glimmer: Training for Democracy
The light bums brightly over a modern schoolroom. The pupils are seated in chairs or at movable desks, well grouped. Miss White, the teacher, is seated near her desk, or table, which is neatly arranged and is brightened by some flowers. She is dressed in a pretty, serviceable frock, with white collar and cuffs. ”

“ And then the narrow cloakroom, haunted with limp, hanging coats and caps and hats, and finally the entry into the schoolroom, seated rank on rank with priggishly complacent schoolmates, looking up from their books with unfriendly eyes of blame at the figure of the late-comer.
AH over that section of La Chance, during the hour between half-past seven and half-past eight in the morning, the families of school children were undergoing a most rigorous discipline in regularity and promptness. ”

“ But you can tell by looking at this picture that all is very quiet in the schoolroom.
It will soon be time for the older girls to recite, and then this beginners’ class can study. Probably there are some smaller benches for them on the other side of the room. We hope the little girl who is looking out of the window will work and not bother her neighbor, as that big girl at the right-hand side of the picture is doing. ”

“ Through the open schoolroom windows I can hear the two eldest babies at their lessons. The village schoolmaster comes over every afternoon and teaches them for two hours, so that we are free from governesses in the house, and once those two hours are over they are free for twenty-four from anything in the shape of learning. ”

“ Now, from where I am, let me add something about the social side of school work. The schoolroom enables us to have evening entertainments, easily organized, as my experience of a goldfield community is that it always includes a good deal of musical talent; and in the matter of the ordinary school treat we have hit on a thoroughly popular plan. ”

“ I, too, would gladly help you with your studies, but I agree with Uncle about the proper time for such things. If there were no good schools for you to attend, we should engage a governess for you; but such an arrangement is not always best, either. In a schoolroom, a child learns much from hearing the others recite, and is taught many, many things not in books. At school, too, she has playmates of her own age. ”

“ The schoolroom is purposely screened off from the view of what is going on outside; while all internal incidents that hold out pleasurable diversion are carefully restrained, at least during the crisis of a difficult lesson. ”

“ The exercises of practical life are designed to teach the child to be independent, to supply his own wants, and to perform the actions of daily life with skill and grace. The pupils keep the schoolroom in order, dusting and arranging the furniture, and putting away each piece of material as soon as they are through with it. ”

“ I suppose the craze for competitive examination in every department of life may account for this new development; anyhow, there were the matches to come off—so the bills assured us—in the village schoolroom, of all places, which was thrown open for this purpose, and for dancing, at sunset. Hither, then, I repaired from the vicar’s fields, where the sports had been held, in the wake of a number of rustic couples and toffee-sucking children. The school is a lofty room, fifty feet long, with a smaller class-room as transept at the upper end, along which ran a temporary platform. ”

“ We look forward with [136] confidence to an increase of the school. Our present number of scholars, however, occupy all the room we can possibly spare; if we increase we must build not only sleeping rooms, but a large schoolroom. ”

“ There are two parts of a college education—the part that you get in the schoolroom from the professors, and the part that you get outside of it from the boys. That’s the really important part. For the first can only make you a scholar, while the second can make you a man. ”

“ Just as the biologist can take a bone or two and reconstruct the whole animal, so, if we put before the mind’s eye the ordinary schoolroom, with its rows of ugly desks placed in geometrical order, crowded together so that there shall be as little moving room as possible, desks almost all of the same size, with just space enough to hold books, pencils and paper, and add a table, some chairs, the bare walls, and possibly a few pictures, we can reconstruct the only educational activity that can possibly go on in such a place. ”

“ School began in earnest next day. A profound impression was made upon me, I remember, by the roar of voices in the schoolroom suddenly becoming hushed as death when Mr. Creakle entered after breakfast, and stood in the doorway looking round upon us like a giant in a story-book surveying his captives. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And another thing along the classroom venue, the classroom environment, where I don't work full-time, just now and then. The classroom, in my opinion, should be a beautiful place. It should be a gleaming place. It should be a place that everyone wants to be. The schools, in my opinion, should be the most striking architecture, the most handsome buildings, in the community. And that is the way, in my view, to attract good people to become teachers. ”

“ The kindergarten system is largely used in the school-room when, as is sometimes necessary, children are sent at an earlier age than five, to learn obedience and habits of discipline, which cannot be observed so strictly in the nursery. In the well-to-do English home the school-room is a delightful spot. It is generally one of the best rooms in the house, chosen for its brightness, its pleasant aspect, and general convenience, and in the lives of most children it is a place of real happiness, and to the girls of the family full of delightful memories. ”

“ Once in the school building they feel at home and take the same interest and responsibility in the work that they take in their own homes. Each child knows186 what all the other children and classes are doing, for all the children are constantly meeting in the locker rooms or as they pass through the halls for their change of classroom at the end of every hour. The auditorium and the system of visiting classes, and the repairing and manufacturing of school equipment by the students, are strong factors in creating the spirit that prevails among the scholars. ”

“ The school-room is a large new building, erected near the mills. The firm provide, at considerable expense, a schoolmaster and schoolmistress, who are brother and. sister; also books, slates, maps, pens, ink, &c. The children under thirteen years of age, to the number of between 300 and 400, are divided into sections, each attending school at least two hours per day. The boys learn reading, writing, arithmetic, geography and singing; and the girls learn knitting and sewing, in addition to the above. ”

“ There should also be one or more rooms for recitation, apparatus, library, etc., according to the size of the school and the number of scholars to be accommodated.
Every school-room should be so constructed that each scholar may pass to and from his seat without disturbing or in the least incommoding any other one. A house thus arranged will enable the teacher to pass at all times to any part of the room, and to approach each scholar in his seat whenever it may be desirable to do so for purposes of instruction or otherwise. ”

“ There are, of course, certain usages peculiar to a school-room which would not be considered in order elsewhere, because unnecessary; but, generally speaking, good manners in a school-room and in a parlor are the same.
3. Pupils should be kind and thoughtful in assisting teachers whenever it is possible, by handing anything needed, or by waiting upon them in any way. Boys, especially, should be quick to offer help in erasing blackboards, in lifting heavy articles, or in picking up anything accidentally dropped. ”

“ Each pupil is standing opposite a black-board, with his eyes turned to the teacher; questions and answers are written by the instructor, and then copied by the pupils. In this room are assembled classes, each under the charge of a separate teacher, studying geography, grammar, history; and in one room is a small class just beginning to read. The chirography of some of the pupils is really beautiful; and we leave the room feeling that though God has deprived them of two senses, yet, in his loving kindness, he has bestowed upon them unusual capacities in the others. ”

“ The school-room at home is always the school-room, it has no higher moods, no sentiment of its own.
There are diversities of gifts for school and for home education; for impressiveness a large school has the advantage. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They may move about, talk to each other, place their tables and chairs where they please, and, what is of more significance, each pupil may choose what work he will do, and may work at one thing as long or as short a time as he wishes. She says, “A room in which all the children move about usefully, intelligently, and voluntarily, without committing any rough or rude act, would seem to me a classroom very well disciplined indeed.” ”

“ Given a well-aired, sunny room, where every child [109] has enough fresh air to breathe, where he can see without strain, where he has a desk fitted to his body and work fitted to his maximum abilities, a teacher who is physically strong and mentally inspiring, and plenty of play space and play time, there will be no nervousness. One who visits vacation schools is struck with the difference in the atmosphere from that of the winter day schools. Here are the same rooms, the same children, and in many cases the same teachers, but different work. ”

“ In each room is a high narrow cupboard about one quarter of the necessary size for all that education demands; most education authorities provide some good pictures, but the best are usually hung on the class-room wall behind the children, and all are above the children's eye level. "Oh, teacher, my neck do ache!" ”

“ The schoolhouse is an unoccupied room in a private house, an ancestral, or other temple, or any other available place borrowed for the purpose. Renting a place for a school seems to be almost or quite unknown. The teacher does his own cooking, or if he is unequal to this task, he is assisted by one of his pupils, perhaps his own son, whom he often brings with him, albeit, as already mentioned, there is classical authority against having a son taught by a father. ”

“ When this cannot be done, the teachers must so arrange matters, as to have everything ready for every change; that no time may be lost and no confusion arise. In my own Kindergarten, I arrange beforehand the chairs in the play-room in a solid square, into which the children march at the commencement of the exercises. Sitting in them, they sing their morning prayer or hymn, hear the reading, and take a singing lesson on the scale. Then they rise, and, taking up their chairs, march into the other room for their reading lessons, which are always in two classes, sometimes in three. ”

“ We have seen placed side by side, in the same burgh town, an English school, in which what are deemed the branches suitable for mechanics and their children, such as reading, writing, and arithmetic, were energetically taught, and a grammar school in which a university-bred schoolmaster laboured, with really not much energy, especially in those lower departments in which his rival excelled, but who was fitted to prepare his pupils for college, and not devoid of the classical enthusiasm. ”

“ Running, jumping, or boisterous conduct in the school-room is never in place.—The school-room should be looked upon as a pleasant workshop, not a skating rink or vaudeville theater. Best results always come where pupils are decorous in the room at all times. Quiet, homelike conversation is in place, but no rude or boisterous conduct at any time unless you expect to pay the penalty with interest in days to come. ”

“ The school life is a unit, into which each department fits and in which it works. The spelling lesson is covered in the classroom and set in type in the print shop. The grammar lesson consists in revising compositions with regulation proofreaders’ corrections. The art department designs clothes which are made in the sewing classes. The drawing room furnishes plans for the wood and iron work and designs for basketry and pottery. In the English classes, the problems of caning and weaving are written and discussed. The mathematical problems are problems of the school. ”