Schoolyard

“ The garden is becoming the outer classroom of the school, and the plots are its blackboards. The garden is not an innovation, or an excrescence, or an addendum, or a diversion: it is a happy field of expression, an organic part of the school, in which the boys and girls work among growing things, and grow themselves in body and mind and spiritual outlook.
'The good influence of the school garden on the discipline and moral tone of the school is remarked by all the teachers. Pupils hitherto troublesome have become orderly and docile. ”

“ The schoolhouse is set on the top of a little hill. There are about twenty pupils in the school. At recess and noon we often play baseball. We have a fine teeter and swing. At noons all of the girls and sometimes the boys take their dinners and go out and find some pretty spot in the woods to eat. In the spring-time we often go flower hunting. I never get home in the afternoon until about half past four. After school I play, sew, or help in the garden till supper time. After supper I do the supper dishes, then we all have a nice time sewing, reading, or playing games around the fireplace. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And even the schoolhouse, when one thinks of the uses to which it was to be put—kitchen, nursery, kindergarten, banquet-hall, theater, moving-picture hall, classrooms, manual training rooms, laboratory and counting-room and what-not, was wonderfully small—Colonel Woodruff said far too small—though it was necessarily so large as to be rather astonishing to the unexpectant passer-by. ”

“ When you consider that between six and eight hundred children play in this yard at the same recess time every day, you can appreciate what it means to yield a portion of the limited space to vegetables and flowers; and, since these plants are never molested, how much the children are pleased to have their playground so decorated.
Nearly all the garden products may be correlated with the classroom work. The kindergarten children use peas in construction. The peas raised in the garden may be applied here. The first-grade children use lentils in construction. ”

“ In the schoolroom here we sit,
Hour by hour, and day by day;
Can you tell me, schoolmates, why we hither come?
Why not glad, and free and gay,
Spend the time in sport and play,
On the street, or in each happy, happy home? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now, however, we have made a decided stride, for by means of school gardens, which gradually replace the dreary bit of asphalt playground, we go out to seek objects in their natural surroundings. Soon, teachers in our elementary schools, possessing the Froebel and kindergarten certificate and a Government teacher’s certificate, will doubtless [32] be fired with ambition; will vie with each other in improving upon this system of education. ”

“ The kindergarten department playground has piles of sand for the little folks, and they begin their engineering and their landscape gardening in the bright sunshine there. In the halls we saw two ping-pong tables, and certainly the physical side of the young ladies’ training is not neglected. ”

“ This home school is—after all which has been said of schools and education—not only the first and best school, especially for females, but emphatically the school. It is the nursery from which are to be transplanted, by and by, the plants which are to fill, and beautify, and perfect—if any perfection in the matter is attained—all our gardens and fields, and render them the fields and gardens of the Lord. ”

“ And if the school premises are now too small in extent to admit of such a use, let the pupils make an earnest plea for additional ground. As a general fact our school-grounds have been shamefully limited in extent and neglected as to their use and keeping. The school-house, in itself and in its surroundings, ought to be one of the most beautiful and attractive objects to be seen in any community. The approach from the street should be like that to any dwelling house, over well kept walks bordered by green turf, with trees and shrubs and flowers offering their adornment. ”

“ Now and then they came upon a desolate schoolhouse, approached by little winding paths, over which bare-footed children had run for weary miles. For they prized their schooling beyond all words to express. ”

“ Happy is he when he enters definitely into community life by taking his place in the district school. The schoolhouse may be at the village centre or it may stand aloof among the trees or stark on a barren hillside along the country road; physical environment is of small consequence as compared with the new social environment of the schoolroom itself. ”

“ The schoolhouse should be used by the community as the place for many of its social acts and performances. Almost every night, and throughout the summer as well as in the winter, the people, young and old, should meet at the school for some sort of social work or play. ”

“ In such a schoolhouse one could get along very well, if he could keep his pupils close enough to him, but the chances are, as I have found, that they will put bugs down one another's collars, and while you are hearing one class the other children will chase one another about. Their buoyant spirits will not permit them to keep quiet while they are in the open. ”

“ A striking contrast was this to the kindergarten of the twentieth century!
Our picture shows us a corner of a dame school where a naughty child is in a fit of temper. The rough board walls, with great projecting beams, show how little thought was given to schoolroom adornment in those days. The high bench, without back, is as uncomfortable a seat as one could imagine. ”

“ Special Rooms in Public Schools.—The special rooms in the schools and the special schools in the school system and the school nurses and school doctors and the visiting teacher, with her power of making connection between the home and the school and playground, all show that we are coming to a point where every child will have a better chance for having his mental and moral as well as his physical diagnosis correctly made. ”

“ The school building should be in a dry, sunny, sightly spot. Ordinarily it should face the southern compass. This would move seven tenths of our rural schoolhouses, and turn more than half of them end for end. It is not at all necessary that a school building should face the road, or be very near it. Light, warmth, horizon, room to play, these are the important considerations in locating a schoolhouse. ”

“ No single chapter can contain all of the progressive notes that are being sounded in American Elementary Education; yet it is possible, after some arbitrary picking and choosing, to describe a number of the most typical and most successful educational innovations. At the bottom of most up-to-date elementary school systems is the kindergarten. Not so often as it might be, but still frequently, the child begins school work there. The games, the songs, the children’s sports of these kindergarten years, make a joyous entry-way into the grades. ”

“ The Kindergarten itself, with its response to the natural desire of childhood to make things and to do things and to act together in the play rehearsal of activities of later life, was a testimony that the school was to be called upon from henceforth to do what in the older time was done within the home and to do it better than the home had succeeded in doing. ”

“ The kindergarten department of a school is a thing added to the old conception of schooling, a conversion of the all too ample school hours to complete and rectify the work of the home, to make sure of the foundation of sense impressions and elementary capabilities upon which the edifice of schooling is to rise. In America it has grown, as a wild flower transferred to the unaccustomed richness of garden soil will sometimes do, rankly and in relation to the more essential schooling, aggressively, and become a highly vigorous and picturesque weed. ”

“ Children are very happy in their board schools. They hurry away as early in the morning as possible, from comfortless stuffy cottages to the well-warmed, well-aired school-room, where they find the joys of emulation and intelligent companionship. ”

“ Securing good teachers and possessing unique facilities, the school carries boys and girls through a series of years, in which intellectual, experimental, manual, recreational, and social activities combine to make the school the center of community life and community influence.
The school campus is used as a laboratory and a play ground. The trees provide subject matter for a course in horticulture. The fertile land is turned to agricultural use, and the broad expanse of twenty-four acres furnishes additional space for games and sports. ”

“ In cities and populous districts, particular attention should be paid to the play-ground, as connected with the physical education of children. In the best-conducted schools, the play-ground is now regarded as the uncovered school-room, where the real dispositions and [403] habits of the pupils are more palpably developed, and can be more wisely trained, than under the restraint of an ordinary school-room. ”

“ The idea of a kindergarten, usually regarded as a small part of the school program, has been evolved until, in this one city, it is a potent influence, working on children, teachers, parents and public opinion. ”

“ All of the schools except one small one where there are no high school pupils, have a lunch room where the girls learn to cook, and a sewing room where they learn to make their own clothes; a printing shop, and carpenter, electrical, machine, pattern, forging, and molding shops, where boys, and girls if they wish, can learn how most of the things that they see about them every day are made. There are painting departments, and a metal working room, and also bookkeeping and stenography classes. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ The result is that the classrooms of the Wirt schools have a character of their own, quite different from the colorless and depressing effect of the ordinary classroom. They are not merely rooms where children study together and tamely recite, but essentially workshops where children do interesting things with their minds, just as in the shops they do interesting things with their hands. The history room is a real history laboratory. ”

“ For us the bell upon the Old Red School-house calls in vain. We heed it not, we that hearkened for it years ago. The living tide of youth flows toward the school-house, and we are not of it. Never again shall we sit at those old desks, whittled and carved with rude initials, and snap our fingers, eager to tell the answer. ”

“ An interesting application of the play motive is being tried at the Teachers’ College playground, by the same teachers who are conducting the kindergarten. There is an outdoor playground for the use of the younger grades after school hours. Instead of spending their time doing gymnastic exercises or playing group games the children are making a town. ”

“ 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!" ”