Schoolwork

“ The Place of Active Occupations in Education.—In consequence partly of the efforts of educational reformers, partly of increased interest in child-psychology, and partly of the direct experience of the schoolroom, the course of study has in the past generation undergone considerable modification. The desirability of starting from and with the experience and capacities of learners, a lesson enforced from all three quarters, has led to the introduction of forms of activity, in play and work, similar to those in which children and youth engage outside of school. ”

“ This problem will be treated in considerable detail when we come to consider the study lesson.
Pupils at work forming habits of thought, feeling, and action; acquiring knowledge of nature and of society; forming ideals which make for social well-being; and learning in all of this work to act independently, to function in the society of which they are a part: this is education, and these are the goals which we should strive to achieve every day and every hour that we teach. ”

“ Education. No school? You have visited the hardest school in the world, the school ruled by the sternest teacher in the world—the School of Experience. Fortunate are they who learn from the experience of the past and the experience of others.
As Education speaks, her light is cast for a moment on the tax paper. Any City glances at the paper and tries to conceal it. With a beckoning gesture Education leads him again behind the curtain. ”

“ In a public school, therefore, when all classes of the community are to be taught, the truths and exercises should be selected in such a manner, that they shall, if possible, be equally useful to all; leaving the navigator and the agriculturist, the surgeon and the lawyer, to supplement their general education, by the study of those special branches of learning which their several professions require. ”

“ 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? ”

“ By a study of the child himself, combined with a knowledge of the objective results of his physical and mental measurements, the teacher of the future may hope to be able to give him most valuable advice regarding the choice of an occupation. [6] The elementary school will not itself teach occupational subjects. It will be a School of Discovery, whose task it is to understand the child and find out the particular line of his propensities and capacities. ”

“ Now seeing this difference, how much education is there in school or college? In the classrooms there is none. All that is given in classes is instruction, which may be useful or detrimental inasmuch as it helps personality or not. ”

“ In the administrative, external side of the school there are five main subjects, which are so closely connected with the school business itself that on their good or bad structure depend to a great extent the success and dissemination of popular education. These five subjects are: (1) the school building, (2) the schedule of instruction, (3) the distribution of the schools according to localities, (4) the choice of the [Pg 301] teacher, and—what is most important— (5) the material means, the remuneration of the teachers. ”

“ The education of all classes of workpeople begins in the public elementary schools; and, in view of the future occupation of the children, it may be taken for granted that primary instruction should be practical, and should include drawing and elementary science. It should indeed be closely associated with manual training, consisting of workshop exercises and field work in the case of boys in urban and rural schools respectively, and of instruction in the domestic arts in the case of girls. ”

“ In the educational excitement of to-day we scarcely realize how far the modern school is passing out of that era when the program for work and study was carefully constructed with a view to the child’s “preparation for life.” Educators saw the world as divided into two radically different classes, adults and school-children. The adults were functioning in a definite sphere, using a certain self-contained and common body of knowledge to do their work and make their way in the world. ”

“ Such training prepares for a special vocation; but our system tends to hand that over to the secondary school, reserving for the elementary school only that preparatory and liberal training that enables one to get some appreciation of the various lines of human culture before entering upon a course calculated to prepare for a trade, business or a profession. See Education, History of; Education, Modern; Normal Schools; Schools, Rural and Schools, Secondary. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He may call upon a few families, especially those which furnish a large number of scholars for the school, and make as many minute inquiries of them as he can respecting all the interior arrangements to which they have been accustomed, what reading-books and other text-books have been used, what are the principal classes in all the several departments of instruction, and what is the system of discipline, and of rewards and punishments, to which the school has been accustomed. ”

“ Much attention was given to training children in good personal habits, cleanliness, tidiness, punctuality, etc., and to moral training. Great stress was laid on information.... The curriculum included reading, writing, arithmetic, geometry, lessons on common objects, geography, singing and religion, and an effort was made to make the work interesting and 'concrete.' To this end much importance was attached to object-lessons, to the use of illustrations, to questioning and exposition, while the memory was aided by means of didactic verse.... ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So the function of the teacher must change from that of a cicerone and dictator to that of a watcher and helper. As teachers come to watch their individual pupils with a view to allowing each one the fullest development of his thinking and reasoning powers, and to use the tables of reading, writing, and arithmetic as means of training the child’s abilities to judge and act, the rôle of the child necessarily changes too. It becomes active instead of passive, the child becomes the questioner and experimenter. ”

“ Some of the teachers have gone so far as to attempt to make every lesson in geography or history a problem lesson regardless of the nature of the topics to be covered or the reference material or textbook assistance that is available. The results from such a procedure are certain to lead to a poorly connected, piecemeal knowledge by the pupil of the subject as a whole. A semester of practical study of the problem method for any given subject before introducing it would give the teachers, and I dare say the supervisors, a better knowledge of what can reasonably be expected to be accomplished. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Taking a general view of the present school, one gets the impression of a constant change of activity on the part of the children, but very little change of position, a good deal of provision for general class interest, but little for individual interest; of less demand than formerly for uniformity of results, but the existence of a good deal of uniformity of method, arresting the teacher's own initiative; of very constant teaching on the part of the teacher and a good deal of listening and oral expression on the part of the children, of many lessons and little independent individual work. ”

“ A National System of Industrial and Vocational Education Should Be Established
The school is a social institution whose functions are becoming daily more widely understood and more clearly defined. In the history of civilization, the school, as we know it, is a very recent institution. ”

“ The school also educates the will through its discipline. It demands of the pupil that he shall be obedient to the rules of order, and adopt habits that make it possible to combine with one's fellows. ”

“ A traditional school founded on the bookish education of a leisure class can never [Pg 191] be made into a pre-vocational school that will give power and dignity to labor, without a fundamental transformation of the present spirit, subject matter and teaching methods. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But bring these industries into school as 'handwork,' and we find only so many more 'subjects of study' that in some way must be juggled into an already overcrowded program; only so many more teachers that are to increase the wear and tear in already overwrought children. ”

“ The notion is gradually gaining ground that common-school education is as good as college education; that extension lectures and summer classes are acceptable substitutes for continuous study and mental discipline; that reading translations of the classics is better, because easier, than reading the classics themselves ”

“ In short, it means that the school-system should be adapted to the boy and not the boy to the system, and, further, that education authorities should regard it as part of their function to guide into proper channels the special abilities which the teachers have reared. ”

“ A boy in a telegraph or a lawyer's office has a better opportunity to reach influence than a boy in a workshop. The scholastic requirement for such advancement as these vocations contemplate, is provided for in the established school program of the lower grades. A certain display of a few historical and literary facts beside a facility in reading, writing, and arithmetic are the qualifications which average parents believe are the necessary ones for their children's advancement. ”

“ Education to fit the child to earn a better living, to command a higher wage,—- this myopic view of the function of the school could do but little to make the work of teaching anything but drudgery; and yet it is this narrow and materialistic view that has dominated our educational system to within a comparatively few years. ”

“ In other words, to what extent does the conviction pervade the ranks of the fraternity of teachers, whether of public-schools, private schools, colleges, or universities, that the employment of the hands in the useful arts is more highly educative than the acquisition of the rules of reading, writing, and arithmetic? ”

“ It is for you, wherever you are placed, to seek to establish schools, and to make these schools as efficient as possible, and to help by your example and by your work to make the people believe that what is being done for the education of their children is for their good, that school training sharpens the intellect, strengthens the reason, and produces better manners. ”

“ Into the hands of the working people the guidance and control of education is bound to fall in an ever-growing degree as the years pass. They will be drawn into this work through their own children attending school, and sharing the life of the school. ”

“ One hears, for instance, of an adolescent school with some nine thousand pupils who come in batches of a few hundreds, each batch to learn one or other of a score or so of admirable crafts and accomplishments; but not one hour is spent in a three or four years’ course in this people’s university on any sort of humane knowledge, in any reading or thinking which should make the pupils better men and women and better citizens. ”