Slike strani
PDF
ePub
[blocks in formation]

When compared with New England standards, however, Brookline is observed to be more distinctly American. Of the 20 cities in Massachusetts having in 1910 a population of from 25,000 to 100,000 only Haverhill and Pittsfield have a larger proportion of native whites born of native parents. Then, too, the percentage of foreign born decreased 2 per cent. in Brookline during the decade 1900-1910, while in Massachusetts it increased 1.3 per cent. The American stock in Brookline, moreover, increased during the decade 1900-1910, while in Massachusetts as a whole it decreased. It is evident that the immigration of foreigners into New England has not invaded Brookline to so great an extent as the typical New England city.

An analysis of the foreign-born population reveals a more favorable situation than exists in most cities. But three per cent. of its foreign. born are from eastern and southern Europe as opposed to twenty per cent. for New England, and about twenty-five per cent. for the United States. Approximately five-sixths of this group of its population are from English-speaking nationalities.

[blocks in formation]

birth. The per cent. (47) that are native born of foreign or mixed parentage is greater than those of native parentage, forty-two per cent.

The school population of Brookline has ten per cent. more children of foreign birth or whose parents, one or both, are of foreign birth than cities as a whole. But when comparison is made with cities in New England Brookline makes a more favorable showing as regards per cent. of native American stock by as much as nine per

cent.

One of the striking things about the people of Brookline is the large number of females in proportion to the number of males. Of the 27,792 people in the town in 1910, 16,754 were women or girls a proportion of only 65.9 males to 100 females. This is the smallest of all cities of from 25,000 to 31,000 population in the United States, and also of all cities in the selective group. Wellesley is the nearest city, with a proportion of 74.4, but there is none other less than 80 in the two groups. The United States urban standard is 101.7, while that for New England urban is 97.8. This marked deficiency in males does not obtain, however, with those of school age. The school census, five to fifteen years inclusive, for 1915 shows 2,226 boys, 2,263 girls, a proportion of 98.4. Another interesting feature is the very large per cent. of unmarried females-53.9; again a larger per cent. than in either of the groups of cities chosen for comparison. The nearest city is Newton, with 46.1 per cent., but none other is higher than 40. The United States. urban standard is 32.8.

No less striking is the small number of children. Brookline is again at the extreme. No other city in either group has so small a percentage of its total population between the ages of five and fourteen, inclusive, or below fifteen years of age. Some cities have almost twice as large a proportion as Brookline, which are 12.9 and 19.3 per cent. respectively. It is a town in which the number of people below twenty-five is small and the number above twenty-five is large as compared with cities in general in the United States.

FROM TEACHER TO TRENCH

BY CHARLES W. HOLMES

Washington, D. C.

Little teacher of the one-room school, are you on the firing line? In this big work of food conservation what is your part? Are you going to help win the war by giving your own daily service?

If this message reaches you, and you stand up, face front, and join the "Soldiers of the Commissary," write to the Food Administration at Wash6 ington to say you have enlisted.

36

4,203

43

10

527

131

29 113

The Children: Turning next to those of school age we find that ten per cent. of the population from six to twenty years are of foreign

Do you remember the President's April message calling you to the "Service Army”—that "notable and honored host"? This message has gone to you in many ways. Did you receive it? Perhaps you got it in the ten lessons on food conservation given at the summer normal. If not, you can get the booklet from the Conservation. Bureau, Food Administration, Washington, D. C.

Study these lessons carefully and re-arrange them if necessary, to meet conditions where you will teach this winter.

Here is your part: You are to see that this message reaches every woman in your school district. First, get it by heart yourself. Then see that it reaches the home through school rallies, afternoon courses on food conservation timed to suit the women, and individual work in the home.

Many first aids are ready for you. The Department of Agriculture at Washington will send you, if you ask, a number of bulletins that will help you to teach your community food saving, food preserving and economical use of available foods. Other bulletins can be secured from your state agricultural college. Next, get all the help you can from your state and local organizations for food conservation, and organize community work under their direction. Study all your material carefully before you begin work and determine just what should be the line of attack in your neighborhood. A rally and speeches will make a good start; but yours will be the hard follow-up work.

2. Save by using something just as good for the family but not so much needed by our armies and allies for instance, the use of other fats than butter in cooking, the use of other cereals for part of the wheat in bread, the free use of game, fish, poultry, eggs and cheese to reduce the demand for beef, pork and mutton.

3. Conserve all perishable foodstuffs of the farm by eating freely in season, and saving for out of season by canning, drying and preserving.

E. U. GRAFF

Superintendent, Indianapolis

The course of lessons issued by the Food Administration will tell you definite and immediate things to do. Stick to fundamentals:

1. The wise and careful use of wheat, meat, butter fat, and milk.

this fight.

Another valuable field of work lies before you in organizing all available agencies to stimulate the production of cattle, sheep, hogs and fowls. The question is not only to make the present food supply go around, but to increase production in 1918.

In taking the lead in your community, you will not be doing something easy; but the men in the trenches have a tougher job. Go at it, and help will spring to your side. Call in all the aids-the county superintendent, the county demonstrator, the president of the nearest bank, the preacher, and especially the women of your district-but depend on your own determination to help win

[graphic]

Every American teacher is needed as a volunteer member of the Food Administration. Your country calls you and will call until you answer, "Here am I.”

BOARDS OF EDUCATION AND SUPERINTENDENTS

[The following Resolutions, as recommended by the committee of which Dr. Charles E. Chadsey was chairman, were adopted at the Kansas City meeting of the Department of Superintendence.]

The impression which a careful study makes on one's mind is the painful one that most administrative situations are undefined and shifting. Schools are administered, sometimes well, sometimes badly, but in most cases without clear definition of responsibility or authority. Public interests are fortunately protected in most instances, but the machinery is the primitive machinery of the vigilance committee, with now the superintendent, now the board of education, now the city council, now a parents' association, trying to determine what steps shall be taken to promote public welfare.

In such a situation the accidents of personal influence play an unjustifiable part. Several of the letters from successful superintendents state explicitly or show between the lines that they are entirely in control of the policies of the schools. Some go so far as to say that any effort to define the responsibilities and authority of the superintendents would curtail their influence and would therefore be undesirable. At the other end of the scale are reports which show that the superintendent is shorn of all influence. In many cases he is little more than a clerk, dependent

from day to day on the accidents of the board's attitude for the meagre authority which he tries to exercise. In some cases he goes to the board meeting only when especially invited. He has teachers sent to him by the board, and he knows nothing about the financial management of the system. Such a superintendent usually recommends the adoption of a state law endowing his office with rights.

The extreme situation referred to above may occur within a single state, showing that there is no such thing as a typical and clearly defined American school administration.

The origin of the present situation is not far to seek. American schools were first controlled by the citizens of the district. They met in intimate neighborhood groups and settled the problems relating to their children. Communities were fairly homogeneous, the course of study was simple, school buildings were all about equally unsanitary, and teachers were equally untrained. A majority vote was a democratic and accepted method of carrying the community through these undesirables.

What we have today is a series of experiments of every variety that can be set up through the exercise of human imagination. Most of these

Continued on page 242.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

On a quiet August day in his lovely Ypsilanti home with his only daughter and her family. with him, after a refreshing ride and the family mid-day meal Lewis H. Jones passed without a tremor of pain into the world beyond. Thus closed ideally a life that evolved beautifully out of an apparently hopeless boyhood.

A friendless orphan in early childhood he felt the burdens of the tragedy of his life before he I was in his teens. In a home where the son and heir had a care-free life Lewis was made responsible for the care of the cows, and so intense was his appreciation of the responsibility that while a mere child he would awaken twice every night and, while the family slept, would steal out to the barn in the dead of winter to see if each cow was still all right.

The cows repaid his extra thoughtfulness by their health and yield so that he received real pay thereafter. It was not large, but it was more than any other boy of his years received for "working out.”

His school opportunities were slight until he was out of his minority. He taught small schools and as a man went to the Oswego Normal School and was rewarded for his rapid progress by a position as teacher. He returned to Indiana and taught in Indianapolis, where his efficiency in subordinate positions carried him

upward rapidly to the superintendency, and un

der his administration the schools attained a national reputation and were credited in educational circles as being the best in the United States. It was the first time any such recognition had ever come to a city beyond the Alleghanies.

A large salary increase tempted him to Cleveland, where he was one of three superintendents in ten in the past forty years who resigned to accept a better position.

From Cleveland he went to Ypsilanti Normal School, where trouble had long reigned supreme, but where peace and prosperity made their abode during the years of his leadership.

The devotion of the poor twelve-year-old or= phan boy to the safety and comfort of dairy cows on the Indiana farm characterized his interest in students at Oswego, in teachers and children in Indianapolis and Cleveland, and in faculty and students at Ypsilanti.

When he was making the series of School Readers which brought him the income for his retired life, he spent all vacations and other days in Boston, and our offices were then in the building of his publishers, and we enjoyed his confidence as to the way in which he obtained some concessions on copyright material which had never before been granted. It was after one of those triumphs that he told me the story of his life and credited his success in the making of the Readers in no small measure to his midnight watchfulness of the cows for whose care he was responsible.

When his income was adequate he retired from the responsibility of administration and lived with his daughter a life as ideal as that of anyone we have ever known. Not a day of illness or of care in all the later years, and he died as triumphantly and peacefully as he had lived.

MENTAL CONFLICTS AND MISCONDUCT*

The modern juvenile court is rendering the country, the homes, and especially the schools, a service that cannot be overestimated.

As compared with many school surveys, the studies of the juvenile psycopathists are as a rainbow to a soap bubble.

Dr. Augusta F. Bronner's notable work on "The Psychology of Special Abilities and Disabilities," and Dr. William Healy's four books; "The Individual Delinquent," "Pathological Lying, Accusation, and Swindling," "Honesty," and the present volume on "Mental Conflicts and Misconduct" are an invaluable library presenting a body of psychological facts far beyond, in value, much of the psychological theorizing with which we have been served.

Dr. Healy is genuinely scientific in spirit and in method, and his opportunities are beyond those of anyone not connected with the Psychopathic Institute of Chicago, which has dealt scientifically with more misbehaved children and more

*Mental Conflicts and Misconduct." By William Healy, director Psychopathic Institute, Juvenile Court, Chicago. Brown & Company. Cloth. 330 pages. Price, $2.50. Boston: Little,

1

varieties of misbehavior than has any other institution in America.

Few men have had the educationally scientific training which Dr. Healy has had, and it has been along modern lines. He is less than fifty years of age, is a graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Medical School, has studied in Rush Medical School in Chicago, in Vienna, in Berlin, and London, and his practice as a physician, and his connection with various institutions before he became director of the Psychopathic Institute, nine years ago, have all prepared him for this special service.

Dr. Healy has carefully registered all significant facts about the misbehaved boys who have come to his institute for observation. He has made. an especial study of sex-effect on misbehavior. His reports on "Conflicts Arising from Sex Experiences" and "Conflicts Arising from Sex Knowledge" are of inestimable value educationally as well as parentally. These two chapters of thirty pages are of great value.

ANNA TOLMAN SMITH

Anna Tolman Smith died at her home in Washington on August 28, 1917. This announcement will mean much to those who have been interested in American education during the past half century. No other man or woman who has been active in education in 1917 has had anything comparable with her experience in educational affairs.

We knew Miss Smith professionally and personally intimately for a third of a century. She was an adviser in whom our confidence was supreme. Circumstances led to more frequent conferences with her personally and by correspondence in the past year than ever before.

On one of those visits she brilliantly characterized the administration of Commissioners Eaton, Dawson, Harris, Brown and Claxton, with each of whom she was associated.

No one else could have given such a moving picture of the bureau of education for forty

seven years as she gave, and we suspect there was no one else to whom she would have given just such a true-to-life recital. We had known all of those men with her. It is now a precious memory.

Anna Tolman Smith was born in Boston and graduated from the Boston Normal School in 1860. In 1867 she identified herself with Park Seminary, Washington, a highly classical girls' school. When General John Eaton became commissioner of education in 1870 Miss Smith became his confidential and inspiring adviser and in 1879 she accepted a position in the bureau of education.

Her knowledge of education and educators, American and foreign, was unapproached by any one. Her writings were always reliable as to fact, clear in statement, and readable as literature. Her opportunities were matchless, her scholarship extended, her literary industry intense.

Miss Smith's labors were as valuable in the last weeks of her life as at any other period. In no wise was she failing until the end came.

· Anna Tolman Smith was a great asset to the bureau of education, a notable figure in American education, a noble inspiration to educational leaders for half a century.

TEACHERS' PENSIONS IN RHODE ISLAND

Consistently with the policy inaugurated by Roger Williams in 1636 of doing things in its own way, Rhode Island has accumulated in the past nine years an experience with teachers' pensions which so far by no means conforms to the laws laid down by the Carnegie Foundation. We are using in this issue a table embodying the latest pension statistics. The teachers' pension has proved to be unqualifiedly successful in Rhode Island, although the teachers of the state have not been asked or permitted to contribute even a penny to its maintenance. It is absolutely non-contributory, and it is also universal in the sense that every teacher in Rhode Island, from the highest paid superintendent in a city school system, to the teacher receiving the minimum salary in the smallest rural town, is protected by it. The total annual cost to the state is less than one per cent. of total public expenditures for public education-surely not an exorbitant charge upon the public revenue. The costs of administration are almost negligible, because there are no assessments to collect, no funds to hoard, and no accumulations to invest.

This whole achievement is but one of many demonstrations of the vision and efficiency of the State Commissioner of Education, Hon. Walter E. Ranger, of the legislative and administrative sanity of Rhode Island.

MAKING SCHOOLS SAFE FROM FIRE

A book that should be of real value to all just been published by the Pyrene Manufacturschool officials-both private and public-has ing Company of New York. It is entitled "Making Schools Safe from Fire" and has been written by Chief Guerin, chairman of the Engineering Bureau of that organization.

There has

never been a book of any character to cover this held. There are many books on fire prevention and protection, but most of them are far too technical for general use.

Chief Guerin, who spent twenty-five years in the New York fire department, rising from the position of fireman to second in command of the department, knows his subject thoroughly. He has handled the subject with great care and has been at no little pains to write it in language easily understood.

The highly technical material which is generally found in a manual of this character has been entirely eliminated. The book tells how to conduct a fire drill; how to render the old schools safer; how to plan new schools; how to keep the school clean; how fire exits and windows.

should be protected; how fires can be prevented by special care being taken, etc.

The book is illustrated from photographs and the directions which are given are so simple that there will be no trouble for any school official to understand them.

Chief Guerin founded, in 1911, the Fire Prevention Bureau of the city of New York and was head of the bureau for more than two years. The work which he then instituted has resulted in saving to the city of New York more than $15,000,000 through the prevention of fire.

The chief attained much publicity recently when he went to the town of Monroe, La., and there extinguished a gas well fire which had been buning for a week, consuming more than 40,000,000 cubic feet of gas a day.

In an ingenious way Chief Guerin succeeded in extinguishing the flanies after only five minutes' work. The method which he devised is looked upon as revolutionary in the gas field, for hitherto gas wells have burned for long periods of time, some of them more than three years.

CHILD LABOR DECISIONS

The National Child Labor Laws went into effect on September first and two days earlier the friends of the Keating-Owen law were distressed by a decision of a North Carolina court that the law is unconstitutional. We give the facts as given by the Associated Press on September 1:

Washington, D. C., August 31.-Official notice was given by the department of justice today that appeal would be instituted at once on the decision of Federal Judge James E. Boyd of North Carolina today, holding the child labor law unconstitutional.

The decision of the North Carolina court enjoining the operation of the law in the western federal district of North Carolina, it was explained tonight by Assistant Secretary of Labor Louis F. Post, does not hold legally outside that federal judicial district.

Greensboro, N. C., August 31.-Federal Judge Boyd of the western district of North Carolina today held the Keating-Owen child labor law unconstitutional and enjoined the United States district attorney, William C. Hammer, and his "successors, assistants, deputies, and agents" from enforcing in the district the provisions of the act of congress which becomes effective tomorrow.

The decision of Judge Boyd came at the conclusion of three days of argument on the constitutionality of the act. The case came before the court on injunction proceedings brought in the name of Roland H. Dagenhart and his minor sons, Reuben and John, of Charlotte, who sought to restrain a Charlotte cotton mill company from discharging the two boys.

In announcing his decision Judge Boyd said he was gratified by the candor of Professor Thomas I. Parkinson of Columbia University, representing the department of justice, who asserted that Congress had used its power over interstate commerce for the object of regulation of local conditions within the state and the discouragement of child labor. This admission, said the judge, left the issue clear and brought forward the question: “Can Congress do by indirection that which it undoubtedly can not do directly?"

"Congress," he said, "can regulate trade among the states, but not the internal conditions of labor."

It is devoutly to be hoped that this ruling will prove not to be good law.

GRAFF TO INDIANAPOLIS

The election of E. U. Graff of Omaha to the superintendency of Indianapolis is as satisfactory an outcome of a long campaign as has occurred in many a day.

Indianapolis is one of the best positions in the country and Mr. Graff is every way deserving of the honor that thus comes to him.

We have never known a greater mystery in regard to any important vacancy than in the case of Indianapolis. There have been complications which were absolutely baffling, but all is well that ends well, and the selection of Mr. Graff makes an excellent ending and he will give Indianapolis a good administration.

HOLLIS BURKE FRISSELL

In the passing of the principal of Hampton Institute American education loses one of the ablest leaders in the civilization of the Indian and the transformation of the negro from the effects of slavery to the possibilities of freedom through education and Christianization.

The Brookline School Survey is a work of art, masterful in conception and in the perfection of detail. It has not stooped to inconsequential matters, has not dodged important problems.

Superintendent Charles S. Foos of Reading, Pennsylvania, lined up the school children for 7,000 gardens with the slogan: "An hour a day for my country."

"A community music director for every town in Kansas" is the state slogan.

Sons of wealth asking no exemption are winning admiration.

STATEMENT OF STATE OF RHODE IS-
LAND TEACHERS' PENSIONS
[Report on July 9, 1917.]
Number of state pensions granted since 1908
Number terminated by death.
Number in force....

Highest annual pension in force.
Lowest annual pension in force.
Average annual pension in force..

Amount of 22 pensions granted in 1908...
Amount of 38 pensions granted in 1909..
Amount of 22 pensions granted in 1910..
Amount of 13 pensions granted in 1911.
Amount of 11 pensions granted in 1912.
Amount of 8 pensions granted in 1913.
Amount of 15 pensions granted in 1914.
Amount of 21 pensions granted in 1915.
Amount of 15 pensions granted in 1916.
Amount of 10 pensions already granted in
1917

175

35

140

$500.00

$114.50

$346.86

$7,331.28

11,897.61

8.002.30

5,127.40

3,703.60

3,000.20

5,438.11

6,569.66

4,607.63

3,959.40

[blocks in formation]
« PrejšnjaNaprej »