Slike strani
PDF
ePub

to do the work required at one stage of progress to take up the next task. Nevertheless, the ability to do is not always shown by the amount accomplished, and with rare exceptions, of doubtful existence, every pupil who gains admission to a secondary school whose entrance is properly guarded can secure compensating advantages from attendance upon such school, if it be worthy of the name. The opportunities are so abundant, the equipment so extensive, the personality and example of teachers so suggestive and helpful, the environment so healthful and invigorating, the spirit so pervasive, the atmosphere so charged with vitalizing, energizing forces, that it is hard to conceive of insulation so complete as to preclude the possibilities of effective influence.

DISCUSSION

J. W. CRABTREE, president State Normal School, Peru, Neb.-Principal Bryan has taken the wider view of this question. He has not only considered the value of secondary education in its commercial aspects, but in regard to its physical, intellectual, and moral influence on pupils. Permit me to emphasize some of the points made in this excellent paper by presenting an imperfect study of a typical small high school in a somewhat typical environment, thus reducing the question for the moment to a concrete problem. I will limit my part in the discussion still further by considering it only from the standpoint of the pupil's welfare.

I must admit that I have spent some time in trying to draw upon my own experience for data that would enable me to find the fraction of pupils in one secondary school at least who have not derived compensating advantages therefrom. I could see no other way of getting actual figures.

I have gone for this data to a high school, which was located in a small town where I was very well acquainted with every pupil in the school, and, as a matter of fact, with everybody in town. There was a total enrollment of 328 different pupils in the high school during the six years covered by this investigation. I went over this list very carefully, picking out names for two lists: First, those who should have derived greater compensating advantages; and second, those whom we knew at the time to be getting no benefit whatever from the high school.

There were 63 names in the first list, that is those who ought to have gotten a good deal more out of the school than they succeeded in getting. I went over this list carefully to see if I had included in it any who should have stopped school at the end of the eighth grade. Finding none, I gave my attention to the second list-those who according to general belief had failed to get value received while in the high school. I found this list much shorter than I expected it would be. It contained these names: Isabel Jackson, Jared Splasher, Sara Spooner, and Charley Meeker-four names-giving one out of every 82 pupils, or the fraction.

Then I wondered whether the twelve or fifteen years intervening since then would throw any light on the situation. While these boys and girls were without question a menace to the school, possibly they, themselves, profited more from the high-school environment than we were aware of at the time. I investigated the cases of two of the most hopeless, Isabel Jackson and Charley Meeker. I wrote Isabel's mother, calling her attention to my having advised her to take her daughter out of school. I explained that I was anxious to know whether I was right in my belief that it was a waste of time for her daughter to be in school above the eighth grade. If she felt that Isabel had profited from her high-school attendance, I would be glad to know what advantages were actually

obtained. I wrote a similar letter to Charley's father. Mrs. Jackson replied as follows: "I don't know just what Isabel got out of the high school, but I have just been over to her as she lives next door to me, and we both believe that the high school done more for her than the grades. She is in the society of people who have a good education, which is, I think, a right smart."

Charley Meeker was absolutely hopeless. He had already spent two years in the seventh grade, two years in the eighth grade, and two years in the high school, when I became acquainted with him. He spent five years in the high school without passing a single difficult subject, except the term that Mary Smith gave him passing grades, as she said, to get rid of him. He was always much attached to his lady teachers. He was usually in love with at least one of them. His sickening love glances were a source of much annoyance to his choice teachers. He proposed to three or four of the best-looking ones.

His father replied to my letter as follows: "I am glad you allowed Charley to stay in school as long as you did. It did him good I am sure. Now my daughter Kate was bright and gained a year in school, but I was as well satisfied with Charley's standing of 40 as I was with hers of 95. She never got below that. You see he didn't have much talent and she did that is the difference. I guess it paid all right. He is doing well now on the Fowler place near town."

I happen to know that Sara Spooner married a farmer and that the family stands well in the community. She teaches a class in Sunday school; she seems to be a sensible woman. I rather think that she, too, must have gotten greater value out of the school than we were aware of. I have lost track of Jared Splasher. I have therefore reduced my fraction to, and were I able to find Jared Splasher, quite likely I would discover that he, too, had derived compensating advantages from that school, and I might be able to reduce the fraction still farther.

This was an average high school with average teachers in a community of average intelligence. It is likely that any such investigation in any other place would lead to about these same conclusions stated briefly as follows: A failure to make a passing grade does not mean that the pupil has failed to derive compensating advantages from the school.

It is just as unreasonable to expect large results when the pupil's talent is limited as to expect as large a return from a small amount of capital as from a large amount of capital. There are few, indeed, who, if capable of deriving profit from the eighth grade, would not also be benefited by attending a high school, possibly none at all. The high school has a much wider range of value to young people than teachers are in the habit of recognizing.

Whatever else determines the extent of the value of the school to the individual pupil, it is clear that the central vital fact is in the pupil's attitude toward the influence of the school. The degree of good that the pupil receives from the school depends almost wholly on the inspiration that the school puts into his life.

FRANCIS G. BLAIR, state superintendent of public instruction, Springfield, Ill.— Injustice is done in our secondary schools as frequently to the bright third of the students as to the dull and average two-thirds. The agricultural college is showing us that the fertile, rich acres of Illinois have been sorely abused and maltreated because the farmers had gotten the notion that these acres would yield a crop with almost any sort of treatment. Scientific agriculture is showing these farmers that it requires the closest attention and the most detailed knowledge of the character of the soil in order to make these rich acres yield their maximum of productivity. I am inclined to think that it requires a higher grade of scholarship and teaching ability to develop the mind of the bright pupil up to its fullest capacity than to bring the mediocre child into his largest possibility. The function of education is to develop leaders. Out of this brighter third it is fair to suppose will come most of such leaders. The high school should see to it that the bright pupil gets a "square deal."

WHAT HAS BEEN THE EFFECT UPON THE INDIVIDUAL PUPIL OF THE MULTIPLICITY OF SUBJECTS OF STUDY AND THE REFINEMENT OF METHODS?

EDMUND A. JONES, STATE COMMISSIONER OF COMMON SCHOOLS, COLUMBUS,

OHIO

The subject assigned me has been classed, by our worthy president, with the knotty problems proposed for this conference, and such I have found it to be. It suggests a comparison of results obtained in the old-time schools, when the pupils devoted their entire attention to a comparatively few subjects, and the schools of today, with their greatly enriched courses of study covering twice the number of subjects—a comparison of results between the schools of a generation or more ago when, without much regard to gradation, examinaation, or promotion, the largest liberty was allowed to both teacher and pupil, with the carefully graded and closely supervised schools of the present time, such as we find in some of our city systems of education where a daily program is prepared for each grade teacher and the superintendent can tell from his office what recitation is in progress in each room at any hour of the day and what particular portion of any subject is under consideration.

The change in these respects has been very great, more so perhaps than we are wont to realize. I well remember the school of my boyhood days. The three R's had the most prominent place. Colburn's Mental Arithmetic was mastered from the first question to the last problem in the book. No time was given to language lessons or the diagramming of sentences, but we studied technical grammar and had a thorough drill in parsing words found in the most difficult parts of Milton's Paradise Lost and Young's Night Thoughts. The older pupils learned political geography without a thought that it had any connection with the earth upon which they lived, and memorized Quackenbos's United States History by the page, four pages at a lesson, without any reference to the relative importance or value of different portions of the subject. We never dreamed of nature-study, and we were not instructed in music or drawing, physiology, or civics.

We had a kind of manual training in full and rounded measure on the farm, mornings and evenings and on Saturdays, with frequent touches of physical culture in the schoolroom that produced a series of movements that were not of the Delsarte type.

This common-school course has been gradually extended and "enriched" until it now includes in many of our elementary schools, in addition to the fundamental branches already named, with but little elimination from any of them, four or more years of language lessons, a good deal of literature, a much more extended course in geography, physiology, civics, music, drawing, artstudy, physical culture, manual training, and domestic science, and in some schools the elements of algebra and geometry and a year of Latin.

With this extension of the work, there has been in many instances a shorten

ing of the time. The school day has been reduced from six hours to five and one-half, and in some cases to five hours, and the year shortened from forty weeks to thirty-eight. A loss of one-half hour a day means ten hours a month, or ninety-five hours for the school year. This, in connection with the two weeks, or forty-four hours, means a shortening of the year by one hundred and thirty-nine hours. Is it possible that this has something to do with the poor preparation of pupils for the high shcool and the college about which we hear so much?

Our high schools, largely to meet the demand of the colleges, have extended their curricula until now the first-grade high school includes sixteen units of high-school work, which means four branches for each of the four years of the course. A large number of the high schools in our cities are now offering to the student advantages superior to many of the colleges in the early days of the republic. In laboratory equipment and in teaching force they are superior to a good many of our colleges of a quarter of a century ago.

The colleges in recent years have added largely to their requirements for admission and have greatly modified their courses. They are giving far less prominence to Latin and Greek and more to science and modern languages.

In my college days the faculty prescribed the course to be pursued for the first three years and the student was allowed some choice only in the senior year. At the present time the work is largely elective after the first year, and in some collegiate institutions, throughout the entire course.

In order to meet the demands of individual students, the courses have been multiplied until, according to a recent number of the Educational Review, the number of semester courses, open to undergraduates at Cornell University, is 510; at the University of Michigan, 698, and at the University of Wisconsin, 681.

I am aware of the fact that these changes have come about largely as a result of the demands of the times. The old curricula would not answer for today. We are living in a wonderful age. New discoveries and new inventions have revolutionized the industrial and business world. The adaptation of electricity to the service and comfort of man, the telephone, the rapid extension of interurban lines and rural delivery have materially changed lifeconditions in the last quarter of a century. Business is transacted very differently from what it was in former years. The business methods of our fathers would not answer at all in this day and generation. And yet, when one reads of the dishonesty that has been brought to light as the result of investigations into municipal and governmental affairs, and the lack of fidelity to the most sacred obligations on the part of officials in insurance circles and bankinginstitutions, one cannot help wishing that more of the old-time honesty and integrity might have been transmitted to the present generation.

It is well for the pupils in our public schools today to commit to memory and appreciate fully the meaning of those lines of Robert Burns:

Is there, for honest poverty,

Who hangs his head, and a' that?
The coward slave, we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, and a' that,

Our toils obscure, and a' that;
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hodden gray, and a' that;

Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,

A man's a man, for a' that.

For a' that, and a' that,

Their tinsel show, and a' that;

The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,

Is king o' men for a' that.

It is an age of great business activity and commercial enterprise. A spirit. of commercialism and money-getting seems to pervade the atmosphere. That many are willing to acquire riches without giving any sort of an equivalent is evidenced by the numerous patrons of the great number of get-rich-quick schemes that have been launched in the past few years. Secure a fortune and all the comforts and luxuries that come therewith, and get it by the shortest possible route, is a present-day maxim. The young man wants to begin in business where his father leaves off, forgetful of the fact that the father has attained his present position by years of honest industry, frugality, and persevering effort. It is an age of hurry and get-there; short-cuts are in demand; men are impatient of delay. The Pennsylvania Flyer must cover the distance between New York and Chicago in eighteen hours, no matter if a hundred lives are sacrificed every year by the fast schedule.

This spirit of haste has to a greater or less extent influenced our students and affected our educational institutions. The student is anxious to find a short route to knowledge; to enter as soon as possible upon his professional or business career. There is a willingness to sacrifice thoroughness in order to gain time. Oftentimes the student is anxious to receive assistance from any source that will help him in time of examination, and he is willing to be lifted over any obstacle that may lie in his pathway rather than take the time and put forth the individual effort necessary to remove it. In this way his intellectual vigor is impaired and his power to produce results is weakened.

While it is true that this is an age of wonderful development and the introduction of new and varied forms of machinery has wrought many changes in the industrial world, and even in farm life, there are some things that have not changed. The farmer by the aid of the mower and harvester and other farm machinery can cut and harvest the hay and the grain much more comfortably and expeditiously than he could when dependent upon the scythe, the sickle, and the cradle. But the crops themselves do not take root, grow, and mature any more rapidly today than they did half a century ago. Nature takes time

« PrejšnjaNaprej »