This book is DUE on the last date stamped below iML Sku- u M lUG 3 1926 JUL 1 4 t93V' ^sat ^^U »a4i m 22 ^^^^ JUN II ^ t9.-5T^ ' )CT3 19ft I^UG 1 J 195A MUN 13 ^^-^^ Form L 0-1 - ,-.'•■->- 3UN 8197(1 ,M JUL 176 / U-- THE SCHOOL CITY WILLIAM TORREY HARRIS, LL.D. Commissioner or Education SYRACUSE p C. W. BARDEEN, PUBLISHER The following article appeared in The School Bulletin for March, 1906. (3) THE SCHOOL CITY The "School City" proposes that the chil- dren shall enter a civic organization and govern themselves just as adults do in a municipal organization. In order to have a true basis for a civic organization in the C^ mental make up of the pupils there should ' be on their part a considerable development 'vj of insight into institutions, their sacredness and their function in civilization. There should be an insight into the substantiality of the family and also into civil society as based 6 THE SCHOOL f ITY Oil the division of labor and the specializa- tion of economic functions in the social whole. Children in school are still within the family and are just coming to survey the social world outside of the family. They are not out of the family and in civil society far enough to separate themselves from the standpoint of the family ; therefore what they do is tinged with family obedience and is mostly a matter of use and wont or even of mere imitation and there is not possible as yet any true independence. THE SCHOOL CITY This being the case, all " school cities " will show a constant tendency to decadence; that is to say the history of a " school city " will be full of lapses into the evils which come in adult human society from the presence among us of people who lack thrift, or who lack business honesty, or who lack worldly wisdom, in short of the civic weak- lings who furnish us our slum population — our paupers and our criminals. If I wanted a child to be taught the tricks of the demagogue and the devices of the unscrupu- lous politicians, I should by all means place 8 THE SCHOOL CITY him in a " school city " as organized by Mr. Gill's plan, and expect that the child would learn how to bribe his superiors and to undervalue honest and truthful straightfor- wardness of conduct. When a man becomes the head of a family and has, on the one hand to exercise a par- ent's supervision over children and knows how important it is for these children to be trained in obedience to a wise patriarchal government which gives way gradually to self-government on the part of the child in so far as he comes to get insight into the THE SCHOOL CITY 9 difference between his own caprices and the moral order — and when the man acts as a citizen in the community, subordinating himself to the civil laws, and at the same time pursues a useful vocation in society, following some occupation thriftily and lay- ing up a competency for himself while he conscientiously produces something valuable for his community and the world market, then he comes to a basis where he takes civic order seriously. I think that before this period it is only a child's play at best, and that the child's play of civic^lifej is not 10 THE SCHOOL riTT a good form in wliich to develop the real civic spirit. Cunning and trickery, bribery and secret conspiracy cannot well be kept out of the management of the " school city " because while the members of the " school city " are all members of families, they are not yet in sight of the great universal necessity of the State, grounded on the indispensable need for the protection to life and property. I'ro- tection of life and property is not yet in sight of the school organization. The school is an organization for purposes of instruction THE SCHOOL CITY ll of the mind and training of the will, but not so serious a matter as the protection of life and property ; and to expect that within the family there shall develop the serious atti- tude of the citizen is a fatal mistake, in my mind. The point that I have urged on Mr. Gill is that the " school city " can be supported and freed from its dangers only by the dom- inating will of the teacher of the school who contrives to secure at every turn the adop- tion of his own council in place of sugges- tions made by the pupils themselves. The H THE SCHOOL CITY teacher contrives to make the pupils follow his counsels while they think they are fol- lowing tlieir own counsels, and he has to check and hold back those who undertake to carry out logically their own narrow views, based upon the relation between the mem- bers of the family rather than upon the re- lation of one free citizen to another in the realm of productive industry. In pedagogy we distinguish between corrective punish- ment which is proper for children as chil- dren, and retributive punishment which be- longs to the state and is the return of his THE SCHOOL CITY 13 deed in a symbolical manner upon the citi- zen who commits a crime. There are two kinds of teachers as regards school discipline. One teacher keeps the children under a severe restraint by.a spirit- ual power which I compare to the power of the hypnotizer. I have seen teachers who could hypnotize, as it were, the children in- to a most vivid consciousness of the teacher's will, subordinating their own likes and dis- likes to the teacher, sometimes in dread of the teacher's power and sometimes out of awe and respect or even affection for the i4 THE srnooi, city personality of the teaclier. 1 do not con- sider the discipline of such teachers lo be a health-giving effect in a school. I prefer the other kind of teacher who does not tyran- nize, so to speak, over the child's mind either by fear or by alfection and does not insist on the self-effacement of the child in the presence of the school. The teacher should encourage step by step self-activity on the part of the pupil, but he should not go so far as to undertake to make the child as- sume dramatically the role of free citizen, for this is to learn to play a part, conform- THE SCHOOL CITY 15 ing one's self to an external model as an ideal. The empty declamation of a speech by Chat- ham or Burke or Daniel Webster, dramati- cally adopting the supposed manner and reproducing the situation, is not a process of cultivating the true individuality of the child but of cultivating only the ability to imitate and to play a role for the sake of producing an appearance rather than the reality of earnestness and wisdom. All phases of self-government in schools, such for instance as self -reporting and civic self-government, require the^ utmost vigi- 16 THE SCHOOL CITY lance of a teacher wlio posaeases what I call, for want of a better name, this hypnotic power or weight of immediate personal influence sufficient to sway his pupils, and such a teacher cannot loosen for a moment his hold over his pupils without letting into the organization these evil influences which I have described above. The teacher who gets very much interested in the literary and scientific progress of his pupils is very apt to relax his hold on the organization of his school, especially in cases where the organ- THE SCHOOL CITY 17 ization is so complex as it is iu the " school city ", where the teacher secures his control not by immediate authority but by author- ity vested in elected civil officers. The teacher is obliged to secure the realization of his ideals of organization but at the same time to make them seem to emanate from the free impulses and reasonable devices of the pupils themselves. I should not wish to have one of my grandchildren sent to a school where the teacher swayed the pupils by a sort of hyp- notic power — caused the children to behave 18 Tin-: SCHOOL city like puppets, suppressing ail their sponta- neous inpulses out of respect for the authority of the teacher. It would be a step toward making those children spiritual parasites. It is the opposite of the spirit of Froebel, but still I have known many kin- dergarten teachers who ruled by this hyp- notic power. Bronson Alcott, a man of great wisdom in education, used to say that the true spiritual preacher appeals to the freedom in the child and holds back those he teaches from becoming his disciples; he wishes them to find an utterance to their THE SCHOOL CITY 19 ■own individuality and not a mere imitative or dramatic representation of his own ideas and actions. J^i^ Ac V lA. UNIVERSI n ()l ( \I.II<)KM\ IIHK\I<S I.os .\iii;«-l<-s Thi<iia|ok is DUE on lh<- l,<si dale stamped below. 6^77 orm L9-Series 4939 L 009 535 yr U6 6