International EDITED BY WILLIAM T. HARRIS, A.M., LL. D. VOLUME LIT INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES AN IDEAL SCHOOL OE, LOOKING FORWARD BY PEESTON W. SEAECH HONORARY FELLOW IN CLARK UNIVERSITY ; SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, WEST LIBERTY, OHIO, 1877-'83 J SIDNEY, OHIO, 1883-'88; PUEBLO, COLO., i888-'94; LOS ANGELES, CAL., 1894-'95; HOLYOKE, MASS, 1896-'99 ' Oh, that mine adversary had written a book.' NEW YORK AND LONDON D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1915 COPYRIGHT, 1901, D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. Printed in the United States of America TO PRESIDENT G. STANLEY HALL, AMERICA'S GREATEST EDUCATOR, ' AND TO HUNDREDS OF EARNEST COLLABORATORS, SOME HUMBLE, SOME BETTER KNOWN, IN DIVERSE SCHOOLS, WHOSE WORK HAS CONTRIBUTED TO MY OWN SUCCESS, THIS LITTLE WORK IN CONSTRUCTIVE PEDAGOGY IS APPRECIATIVELY DEDICATED. 360463 EDITOR'S PREFACE. IN the original classification adopted for this series of books, educational criticism occupies the second place; it includes the works relating to educational reform, criticisms on the present system, and books to a greater or less degree revolutionary in their tenden- cies. Some books of this class propose only what may be strictly called reform. The recommendations of other books, if carried out, would produce little less than a revolution in school matters. But all books written by earnest thinVers in the way of criticism on existing systems have their use in excit- ing thought in the minds of teachers who for the most part are following routine methods. It is not likely that more than five per cent of new experiments ini- tiated in education will succeed in establishing them- selves as of value to educational methods; the remain- ing ninety-five per cent will fail. It is so in new business ventures; even less than five per cent of new business ventures can be said to prove financial suc- cesses. But the five per cent of new experiments which succeed may add, and do add, enough of value to compensate for the waste involved in the other ninety-five per cent of experiments. vii yiii AN IDEAL SCHOOL. Even if we grant that of all criticisms and sugges- tions of reformers, only five per cent bring fruit in the form of experiments that prove anything either positive or negative, it still remains an important fact that criticisms and new experiments keep alive the work of education, just as in other matters. The reader of the book of criticism will generally come prepared to refute and discard one half of the suggestions made by the reformer. He has in his experi- ence or he thinks that he has in his experience enough to demonstrate the futility of a large majority of the suggestions, especially if the book of criticism covers a wide ground and attacks the existing methods of edu- cation all along the line. It is evident that every usage found in our schools can be attacked as well as defended. Take the matter of school buildings. It is known in every city and vil- lage that school buildings have improved vastly in the last thirty years, at least in respect to the amount of money invested in them. The talent of architects has been more freely employed in drawing up the plans, but, on the other hand, any one familiar with the subject will retort., Yet there does not seem to be any well- digested body of knowledge in regard to the lighting of the schoolroom. Take Chicago, take Boston, take any of our large cities, look at the school buildings that have been constructed in the past twenty years and see how many study rooms in them are lighted on one side only; and the side that is lighted often fronts the south, getting the sun between ten and two o^clock; or fronts the west, getting the sun between two and four o'clock; or the east in the morning, requiring EDITOR'S PREFACE. ix the window shades to be closed, and resulting in a dim side light for the pupils sitting farthest from the win- dow. Again, in the winter days, in cities and towns burning soft coal, the light from one side of the room is insufficient. The result is, that children farthest from the windows hold the books nearer the eyes, and very soon a near-sighted habit is contracted. School- rooms should be lighted from the back of the pupil as well as from the left side. Again, it is often recommended that school build- ings should be only one story in height. Strong argu- ments are brought forward for it; but the reply is equally in earnest, which says the air in the lower rooms of a building is not so pure as the air of the second or third story, and that the light on the ground floor is far inferior to the light of the upper stories. Even those who argue that all out-of-door air is purer, and that all air confined in the house is neces- sarily impure, are met with the argument, based on observation, that in malarious countries the night air out of doors is less wholesome than the air confined in the house. Experience on the Romana Campagna, or on the lowlands of the South Atlantic section of our own country, proves this. Some people would have the school yard open as a playground for the children after school; but this measure is opposed on the ground that the child ought to get the thoughts of the school and the school building and the school yard entirely out of his head for at least sixteen hours of the day. If he has been in a school called a play-school, he will wish to vary x AN IDEAL SCHOOL. his plays and games and wish different surroundings, and he ought to have them. Some of the reformers favour such a treatment of school architecture and school surroundings as would imply that the school is the single and sole social centre of the community. On the other hand, there are those who claim that the church and its auxiliary organiza- tions have a stronger claim to be the centre. And those who have the political state most at heart will expect the public library, the town hall, the courts of law, or some other public institution to be the centre. A still larger number will claim that each of these great cardinal institutions the church, the state, the school have a reasonable claim to be in their turn, but inter- mittently, the centres of the citizens' life. It seems to these last-mentioned people that the citizen is kept in his sanity and sweet reasonableness by this variety of institutions. Each one of the cardinal institutions has a great, a rational purpose, but it can claim only a share of the attention of the life of the civilized man. Passing to another subject, there is the question of class recitation, and the grading of schools. It is claimed on the one hand that the recitation class-exer- cise should occupy from twenty to forty minutes, accord- ing to the age of the pupil, and that the class is an instrument in the hands of a good teacher by which he can make an impression on each individual of his school, such as he could not make if the pupil recited by him- self and did not form with others a class. It is said, for instance, that one pupil after another reciting his lesson shows- to his fellow-pupils that he has mastered some thoughts and facts which they had failed to notice EDITOR'S PREFACE. xi in their preparation of the lesson; likewise that he has missed other thoughts and facts which they have mas- tered. A critical attention given during the recitation, therefore enables the pupil to observe the successes and failures of his fellows, and also to profit by the corrections and critical observations which the teacher offers. Each pupil, therefore, in a well-conducted recitation, views the lesson through the minds of all his fellow-pupils and also through the mind of the teacher, and thereby enlarges his own relatively feeble under- standing of the subject, and also arms him with critical attention for the points in the next lesson similar to those which he had missed in to-day's lesson. Instruc- tion by private tutor would be, according to this point of view, far less efficient than instruction in a large class conducted by a competent teacher. The teacher's view of the subject is not quite so easy for the pupil to grasp as the view offered by his fellow-pupil, but the pupil will arrive at a much broader view when he attains that of the teacher. On the other hand, the advocates of the ungraded school and of the private tutor claim that better results as to individuality are secured by their system. Again, as to what is desirable in the cultivation of individuality: there are two sides, two sets of reformers. One reformer insists on individuality, and means by it that the pupil as he is, with his peculiarities and limita- tions, his likes and dislikes, his prejudices and his reasonable conclusions, should be kept as he is, or even made more so i. e., more peculiar. On the other hand, another reformer thinks that his school is valu- able because it assists the pupil to repress his narrow- xii AN IDEAL SCHOOL. ness and weakness, which he brings from his heredity and from his merely natural environment, and learn to hold in check such peculiarities as are considered de- fects of character, while he should learn to put the force of his will upon realizing the good traits that he possesses. In other words, they claim that the school should do what it can to produce good citizenship according to a common type good behaviour, civil manners, the virtues of industry and earnestness and kindness toward others, and such things. But upon the statement of this view, usually the persons who argue in behalf of individualism hasten to concede its rationality. They explain their position to mean only that they do not wish to have the pupil so graded and classified that he is not allowed to develop certain lines in his intellect and will in which he is unusually gifted. Then the party of the opposition accepts the amended state- ment. Individualism is good when it makes for the good of the community. But how can individualism be cultivated or increased? Certainly the individuality is strongest which knows best how to avail itself of the strength of the community how to combine one's fellow-men in the interest of a great cause. Now, the school gives precisely the studies which enable the indi- vidual to combine with his fellow-men. Therefore, the school by so much enhances the individuality of its pupil. Again, one educational reformer wishes to modify the course of study and devote much more attention to botany or to zoology under the name of nature study; he wishes to have less time devoted to reading and writing and arithmetic. He has only to listen to hear a choruu EDITOR'S PREFACE. xiii of opposition to this. An opposite reformer tells him that it is better to study the feelings, thoughts, and deeds of the human race, as depicted in the lessons of the school readers, and to give a comparatively small portion of the school programme to botany or to zo- ology. He argues in behalf of this on the ground that a knowledge of human nature is most important to the future citizen. Another reformer argues that writing and drawing should be postponed until somewhere between the tenth and fifteenth year of life. He alleges that the brain tracts which have to do with the finger, hand, arm, eye, and tongue movements, and movements of the face, develop later. An opponent is ready with this reply: that while it is true that the areas that deal with accessory movements come later than those of the fundamental movements, yet that the former areas develop prenatally in the child and become active, some in a few weeks, others in a few months after birth, and are pretty fully developed by the third year of the child's life, and that he is positively hungry for exer- cises of the various accessory muscles and their corre- sponding brain tracts for at least two years before he enters the kindergarten. Another reformer claims that it is the chief business of the school to develop these small accessory brain tracts; still another reformer holds that the school should limit itself to the fundamental muscles, because the brain tracts used for the fundamental movements occupy a so much larger portion of the brain. But an opponent of the latter reformer immediately attacks this alleged ground on a question of fact, and says that xiv AN IDEAL SCHOOL. the brain of man has a far greater proportion of its surface used for accessory muscles, and that the full arm movements, for instance, and the movements of the lower limbs, do not require so much brain as the move- ments of the muscles of the eyes and the adjoining muscles of the face. And still another opponent ob- jects altogether to the settling of the question of time and place of a branch of study on the ground that the brain tract is large or small. It calls attention to the fact that almost all education deals with inhibiting animal impulse or transmuting it by ethical impulse; and it hints, too, that the ablest investigators of the human brain think that all of the gray matter is devoted to inhibition, or, in other words, to action which forms new lines of activity out of the raw stuff of mere animal impulse and makes them to be civilized habits. It is clear on reflection that the child begins almost at birth to inhibit certain spontaneous actions, and that he gradually builds up an inhibited life in securing for himself that great network of customs and usages which etiquette, the vocation in life, the laws of the state, and the ordinances of religion demand. No wonder that the human brain has such a large development of cortex or gray matter if it is used for this purpose. Another reformer wishes to have department in- struction in the primary grades, say, with children of the eighth, ninth, and tenth year, and later. His heated opponent says that this would convert the ordinary elementary school into an orphan asylum; and he de- scribes the dreariness of the upper primary school of forty years ago, when a semi-Lancasterial plan prevailed and the children were all together in a large assembly EDITOR'S PREFACE. XV room and sent to special teachers in small recitation rooms. In some cases the children recited wholly to these assistant teachers, but they did not conduct their study under them, and there was a lack of that home feeling which should be preserved to some extent for several years, say until the twelfth year, in the elemen- tary school. Another objector urges the point that a struggle will result between the special teachers, each one wishing to absorb most of the time and intellect of the pupils for his or her specialty. Another person calls to mind the opening of the Quincy School in Boston in 1847, and the great humanizing that has resulted in methods of discipline in school by the adoption of the plan of having each room with its pupils under charge of a teacher who supervises both their work of preparation of the lessons, and also their work in recitation. On the other hand, a new advocate of the department sys- tem of teaching urges that it furnishes teachers who are expert each in his own branch. This alternate contention may follow throughout the entire lines of special methods and measures of school instruction, and such contention must be ad- mitted to be on the whole enlightening to the teacher who follows use and wont. He begins to arouse his critical faculties into activity and to think for himself, and to observe many defects of his own teaching and of the teaching of others that had entirely escaped his attention. It is well to enter upon the reading of books of edu- cational reform. Nothing is more stimulating to the teacher; but he should supplement this reading by a xvi AN IDEAL SCHOOL. reading of the history of education, for it is only in the history of education that he sees the outcome of reforms and can understand their strong and weak points. Nearly all present practices that have become established have a history of trials and experiments, and one who studies their growth in the past is taking the best way to discover what reforms should be taken up as the next best step in the present. W. T. HARRIS. WASHINGTON, D. C., August, 1901. mTKODUCTIOK I HAVE carefully read the manuscript of this book with great and growing interest to the close. While some of the practical points it treats are beyond my ken, and while there are a few minor matters in which I differ from the author, it is, on the whole, a book I wish I could have written myself; and I can think of no single educational volume in the whole wide range of literature in this field that I believe so well calcu- lated to do so much good at the present time and which I could so heartily advise every teacher in the land, of whatever grade, to read and ponder. The author, who has had an unusually wide, varied, and successful experience, has deliberately laid aside the burden of administration, refused I know not how many attractive openings, and taken a year off to state, with more deliberation and completeness than before, the educational faith that is in him, and has done so in a way that is sure to place him before the public as the leader of individualism in the sub-collegiate grades a movement comparable only with the work of Presi- dent Eliot in the collegiate stages of education. The work of each of these pioneers supplements and would 2 xvii xviii AN IDEAL SCHOOL. be incomplete without that of the other, for each has been tunnelling the mountain from opposite sides, one working down and the other up the grades. Here they meet, and for the first time the full scope of the move- ment is plain, and the through line that is to short-cir- cuit and economize so many of the old ways is open. The change from the scholiocentric to the paidocen- tric standpoint is comparable not so much to that from the geocentric to the heliocentric view as to the refor- mation which made it plain that church, Bible, Sab- bath, etc., were made for man and not man for them. We who are in the midst of it can hardly realize the magnitude of the changes involved, which must be seen in historic perspective to reveal their epoch-making sig- nificance. Superintendent Search understands that true ideals are the most practical working methods, and has found many, if not most, of these embodied, feature by feature, in the schools of many cities and countries. Part of his work consists in gathering these items from where they lay scattered and ineffective, and combining them into a unitary working plan which might be real- ized wherever conditions favoured. Even if in its en- tirety it is realized nowhere, it should be a stimulus and inspiration everywhere. As not the least of its merits I count its fitness to polarize educational forces into conservative and pro- gressive, the healthiest and most vitalizing of all party divisions. Younger and abler men and women, who feel that the best is yet to come in education, because of their own power of faith and enthusiasm, are sure to applaud and adopt; while those who are chiefly con- cerned that nothing the past has given be lost, will look INTRODUCTION. xix with some concern upon a prophet so clear-sighted and confident of a new pedagogic dispensation. Yet there is not a word of animosity, and criticism was never more amiable and even where most radical is most kindly and indeed almost regretful. Of the writer's absolute sincerity and depth of con- victions, of his honesty and readiness for utter self- effacement, if personal interest ever seems to militate against the advancement of his ideals, his career and his entire personality leave no shadow of doubt. His method is conservative, his spirit a happy combination of the suaviter in modo with the fort it er in re, and he is eminently a practical idealist a rare combination of qualities seldom united. No one would be less disposed to attempt such reconstruction by revolutionary meth- ods, and none more contented with very gradual ap- proximation to his ideals. As we know more of child nature and the nascent periods of growth we shall be able to make adjustments more and more accurate and economic ; but the general principles here laid down are basal for the new educa- tion, and their far-off fruitage will be seen in more completely developed and more diversified personali- ties, in broader conceptions of what education means, and in a correlation of educational forces of the home, church, and state, and in higher and sounder ideas of parenthood itself. G g TANLEY HALL. CLARK UNIVERSITY, June, 1901. AUTHOK'S PKEFACE. " Hitch your wagon to a star." (Emerson.) I BELIEVE in ideals, and in ideals which can not be easily reached; for the man who raises his ideals high- est is the one who lifts his work most. Therefore, I am not concerned that the things presented in this little constructive endeavour will not find bodily incorpora- tion in schools; for it is cross-fertilization and not grafting which has given us our richest varieties of fruits and flowers. This work is an attempt at spirit, not letter; at principle, not method. I do not come to this presentation with merely a theoretical knowledge of schools, but from the rich, active, versatile experience of one who has made a faithful attempt to solve for his own schools some of the great, burning questions of child life. A service as teacher for three years in the ungraded schools, as tutor in college, as teacher in the lower-grade schools and in the commercial school, as principal of a classical academy and normal school, as specialist in and prin- cipal of a high school, as supervisor of a large system of evening schools, as superintendent in the village, the town, the smaller city, and the larger city schools, xxi xxii AN IDEAL SCHOOL. in every case with rare opportunity for experimental endeavour, supplemented with wide observation in every part of the country, entitles me to speak with some confidence, and I trust with acceptance, concerning re- forms most needed in the schools of the day. The man who once presents his ideals to the world makes his own life work difficult; for he is ever after- ward, more than other men, measured by these same standards, the realization of which conditions limit. Under such circumstances, it is best for him to offer freely the accumulations of hard-earned experience and long years of toil in order that others may carry for- ward the work which an impatient world would fain deny him. It is also true that an expressed ideal soon loses its original identity, working its way often uncon- sciously into the products of others, who perhaps were hostile to its original utterance. It is in this way the world moves forward. Evolution appropriates as its own everything which can enrich ; but no one factor can be better expended than to be thus absorbed. It is per- haps well that it is so. That these ideals may not seem beyond practical application, I have attempted to illustrate each point as presented by citations from the actual experiences of schools. A long, active, personal experience in ex- ceedingly rich fields, a wide observation of the best schools in every part of the land, and an accumulation of data perhaps in kind not the possession of any other person, enable me to do this a hundred times beyond the limits of these pages. There is scarcely a single feature of all these ideals presented, no matter how inaccessible they may seem, which is not supported by AUTHOR'S PREFACE. xxiii something tested and proven, to a greater or less de- gree, in the experience of schools. If these fragments of success can be found, no matter how scattered, then an ideal school is the direct product of their co- ordination in a single system. If only one teacher can reach the results herein described, then the pos- sibilities of the whole plan are completely demon- strated. The ideal school will never be the product of any one person; nor is this little work in exposition. The treasured contributions of a still living past and the willing co-operation of many collaborators in various parts of the country have been freely utilized. To these earnest associates, so closely related to my own work, but whose names are too many for mention, I desire to express my personal appreciation and indebtedness. If any one thing has ever made my own work success- ful, it has been the noble co-operation of a great coterie of workers whose zeal for better things grows with the passing years. My thanks are especially due to President G. Stanley Hall for his great interest in urging the production of this work, and to Dr. A. F. Chamberlain and Librarian L. N. Wilson for helpful kindness in proof-readings during the author's absence in Europe. The questions presented in the discussions of this work are largely those which have come to my table in earnest inquiries from all over the country. They type very well practical difficulties concerning which, in an enormous correspondence, and by lecture audi- ences, I have been repeatedly asked to give information; and they are offered largely in the personal form in xxiv AN IDEAL SCHOOL. which they have appeared. Perhaps their discussion here may be helpful. If this discussion seems to be over-critical, I trust it will be remembered the criticism largely applies to my own work as well as that of others. I love the public schools, in the service of which my life has been spent; but my experience with the one hundred thou- sand boys and girls who have been under my charge, supplemented by a wide observation of schools in almost every state of the Union, tells me there are radical defects in our school practices which must be remedied. The best things in education are not yet. It is in this spirit, which comprehends my own responsibility as well as that of others, that this little attempt in construc- tion is offered. May I not hope to be understood? PRESTON W. SEARCH. CLARK UNIVERSITY, WORCESTER, MASS. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE EDITOR'S PREFACE . vii INTRODUCTION BY PRESIDENT G. STANLEY HALJ . xvii AUTHOR'S PREFACE xxi I. THE PROPOSITION STATED INTRODUCTORY QUERIES 1 II. THE LOSSES OF THE SCHOOL 11 III. THE LOSSES OF THE SCHOOL (continued) THE HEALTH OF SCHOOL CHILDREN .... 38 IV. FUNDAMENTALS IN PLANNING A SCHOOL . . 58 V. THE SCHOOL PLANT 74 VI. THE SCOPE OF THE SCHOOL 104 VII. THE COURSE OF STUDY Ill VIII. INDIVIDUAL VARIATIONS 158 IX. ILLUSTRATIVE METHODS 177 X. APPLICABILITY TO DIFFERENT GRADES OF INSTRUC- TION 240 XI. THE CHILD'S OPPORTUNITY TRACED THROUGH THE SCHOOL 273 XII. THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER . . . .289 XIII. THE RE-ENFORCEMENT OF EVOLUTION . . .307 XIV. MUNICIPAL DIFFICULTIES AND ORGANIZATION . . 316 XV. SOMETHING FOR THE PHYSICIANS TO THINK ABOUT . 332 XVI. THE ETHICAL BASIS OF THE SCHOOL . . . 344. . XVII. IN CONCLUSION . .... 353 xxv AN IDEAL SCHOOL. CHAPTER I. THE PROPOSITION STATED INTRODUCTORY QUERIES; AT the very beginning of this discussion I wish to advance a fundamental proposition: we must recon- struct our educational system. Not that it has not ac- complished much good in the past, but because the time has come when we should rise to something better. We have been travelling at a rapid rate in these latter days in science, invention, economics, and art. The school- man must keep pace with the world's demands. His methods have been too passive, too profligate, and too inert. The school must be built fundamentally for the pupil. It must be more democratic and afford coequal opportunity to all children. It must accord with Na- ture. It must conduct its work by the active method. It must recognise heredity, environment, innate faculty and trend, and give opportunity for spontaneity, crea- tion, choice, and self-government. It must depart from uniform requirement and recognise the supreme impor- tance of an education of differences. There must be the removal of all false incentive and the substitution of the performance of work from pure love for work and because it is right. The school must be the promoter 1 2 AF IDEAL SCHOOL. cf heai -;h physical, intellectual, and moral. Given its constituency, it must be responsible for results. The product of the school must be the free, enkindled soul, alive to observation, trained to habits of industry, original inquiry, and artistic enjoyment a creator in the world of action a self-governing, independent- thinking, and wealth-contributing citizen. Has the school been built fundamentally for the individual pupil? It must be admitted that it has not been. The central principle in gradation has been that the child must fit the school and not the school fit the child. The work has been planned for the class, con- ducted for the class, with promotions made at class in- tervals. The thought that the child is a personal unit, potential in his individuality and fitness for a distinc- tive mission in life, has to no considerable extent ever entered into the constructive policy and plans of schools. The school can not rise to its best until it fits the individual needs of each and every pupil, and these needs are not merely the superficial ones of the pres- ent, but they take hold of a futurity wherein man is never so strong as when, in science, invention, litera- ture, or art, he has created something of value because of his strength as an individual. Has the school been sufficiently democratic? It has not been. Built for an impossible factor wherein an imaginary average pupil was the fallacious unit, it has failed to give just opportunity to either the "born long " or the " born short." The bright, capable pupil has been retarded in his progress, has spent time in life- less reviews and valueless repetition of lessons, and has had his ambition stunted; while the slow-going pupil, THE PROPOSITION STATED. 3 who often fruits best in later life, has been hurried forward at an unnatural pace, plunged prematurely into difficulties he does not understand, to flounder, to repeat grades, and to be discouraged, when education should have been to him just opportunity proportionate to his working ability. The school holds its constitu- ency by compulsory attendance and not primarily by merit; but it fails to give adequate advancement, as is shown by the preponderance of numbers * in the lower grades over those in the higher grades. Not, perhaps, in intention, but in practice, it conserves the interests of the aristocracy of the few who can rather than the democracy of the many who may. It is not built for the masses, to whom it should grant wide, differen- tiated, and fruitful opportunity. To be the school of a democratic people, it must plan for the strong and the weak, the rapid and the slow, the wealthy and the poor, the one whose whole energies may be given to the school and the one who must carry responsibilities at home. To be anything else, to crowd out the unfortunate in life and those of lesser degree in order that the privileged few may monopolize the benefits of educa- tion, is a direct perversion of the people's money. The school must open its doors to all classes and at all hours, and open them wide. Has the school placed its practices in accord with Nature? Not to any considerable extent. " The his- tory of human thought," says Compayre, " shows that there has ever been a tendency to separate form from content, or letter from spirit, and as constant a pre- * Table of Ages, Chapter II. 4 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. dilection for form or letter, as distinguished from con- tent or spirit." The child has gained his glimpses of Nature through the eyes of others. He sees " as through a glass darkly/' and not "face to face." "Study Nature in the house, and when you go out you canna find her." The primary school begins its work with dry, meaningless abstractions. It is taken for granted that the child can do little until he can read until he is equipped with the tools for second-hand acquisition. His after-education contains much of this same proce- dure form before content, letter before spirit, nomen- clature before idea, some one else's interpretation in- stead of personal knowledge, and attempt at expression of that which is not yet conceived. " Things! things! " exclaims Rousseau, " I shall never tire of saying that we ascribe too much importance to words. With our babbling education we make only babblers." Again, are the methods of the school natural? Is there recognition of the great fundamental nascent periods in child growth? Is there training to keen, alert observation, to logical thinking and to correct ex- pression? Does the school connect the innate germ of love for the beautiful and of wonder at the mysterious with the inspired and continuous student of the future? Where are the method of Socrates, the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, and the practices of Pestalozzi? Are the methods of the school sufficiently based on activity? They are not. There is too much repetition, too much of waiting for others to catch up, too much time lost while others are reciting. The ordinary form of recitation is too expensive. There is too much loss of time, dissipation of energy, and trying on of misfit THE PROPOSITION STATED. 5 clothes. It is this more than any one thing which has driven the pupil to the outside preparation of lessons. Within school the programme is all recitation; there is little time for the pupils to study. The teacher is too much a hearer of lessons. High art in teaching requires that the instructor should be submerged and the school be a place where, under unconscious direction and in- spiration, the pupil shall find results awaiting his own pleasurable investigations and personal creation. There may be virtue of a kind in the class room where the teacher carefully plans all the steps of procedure and insists on the performance of work according to her ideals; but, in educative worth, it can not compare with that where the pupil feels the glow w 7 hich comes from personal discovery and accomplishment. It is a little thing to be an imitator; a great thing to be a creator. The father who insists on his son holding the board while he drives the nail may drive the nail well, but he who holds the board while the son drives the nail does better. The nail may not be so well driven, but he educates the son. Even so in the school room the child must be permitted to do his own work. Dead time must give place to active endeavour. The child must be a discoverer, an originator, a creator. He must be permitted to drive the nail. Heredity, what place has it in the construction of school policies? Is there recognition of the fact that the child is more than post-natal, and that which Nature has been centuries in forming can not be changed in a day? The elements which constitute the personal equa- tion are not superficial, but " extend from 'way back/' and therefore must fundamentally determine the base 6 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. of approach in the education of the child. Not only in his inherited tendencies to weaknesses does the child appeal to us for sympathetic training, but his virtues and strengths are more than appear on the surface. The child is nearer God than is the man. Being has its past as well as its future. Evolution does not lift all its products equally. Hence, he who builds a graded course of instruction, thinking of origin as being only five or ten years back, does violence to an heredity which knows no uniformity and offers mankind the most in that the germs of immortality are not all alike. Then, too, environment presents its conditioning factors. Side by side in the same school room sit the wealthy and the poor, the child well fed and the one who seldom knows an adequate meal, the well-clothed and the one exposed to the storm, the child who has had normal hours of sleep and the one who has been hurried from his bed to sell the morning papers or to do other work, hours before school, the child of luxury and the one of heavy responsibilities at home, the one who is surrounded with culture and the one who has little opportunity even for reading at home, the child of growing strength and the one of increasing weakness, the sick and the well. Can any system of uniform re- quirement stand before the bar of justice and equity when charged with a responsibility of this kind? Who made the schoolman so omniscient and omnipotent that he can justly take into consideration all these con- ditioning elements of heredity and environment when he sits down to measure mind by a scale of per cents or other mechanical nomenclature, which too often THE PROPOSITION STATED. 7 measures himself and not the pupil whose infinitude he has failed to comprehend? The tests of an educational system are not those which obtain in the class examination, but in the op- portunity afforded for the spontaneous development of the ego which can not be measured. Undoubtedly there are certain favouring elements of health and balance which are the same for all pupils; but that all should have the same loves, the same bent, and the same heights to climb, is an educational absurdity. Great things in literature, in scientific discovery, and in in- vention, do not come where men move in solid phalanx, but are found along the heights where the individuals tread. Indeed, as a rule, the inventors have not come up through the schools. There is that born in the child which determines his predilection, and the great teacher is he who early discovers the innate germ and gives it opportunity for expression. Soul is not the product of the school. We need, then, a radical departure from the uni- formitization practised so much in schools. We need an education that will develop differences and conserve individuality. This will not render school work easy; it makes it hard and difficult, but it will certainly be more scientific. It is often argued that there is so much of total depravity by inheritance that the child needs require- ment and foreign incentive. Probably that which the soul inherits is not depravity, but liability to weakness. The soul itself bears the impress of divinity, and is born for great things. Zuchmann says, " If the babe could hear its mother sing in perfect voice, every child would 8 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. be a singer." Even so there is that in every child which will burst forth into life and beauty under the right favouring nurture; sometimes it will, any way. It is a mistake to think the child has no innate love for beauty, or concord or symmetry. The germs may be in embryo, or they may sleep, but they will respond to sunshine and culture. So, in the school, the soul will awaken to the beauty in Nature, the noble in literature, the heroic in history, the wonderful in science, and the delightful in art, and by related interests to other things of secondary importance. The discovery of ap- proach may sometimes be difficult, but the teacher can afford to run the whole gamut of possibilities in order to find the right key to interest; and through that door should be the entrance to other treasure-houses be- yond. To do this to any considerable extent, under the stress and strain of uniformity, is impossible; but there will never be a thorough test of the value of in- terest as an educating medium until it is done. The preciousness of a single soul, awakened from dormancy unto life, is worth more than the mechanical excellence of a world of schools. Have the schools been conservative of the health of school children? It must be admitted that they have not been. It seemed to me the finest-looking lot of school children I ever saw was in the city of Salt Lake. This was immediately after the inauguration of the public system in that city. Statistics are abundant to show the immense amount of physical impairment, and sometimes wreckage, attendant upon the pursuit of an education. If education is to mean anything, it must mean heajth; and unless the public schools are pro- THE PROPOSITION STATED. 9 moters of health, they are fundamentally wrong. Says President G. Stanley Hall: "Now, if this tremendous school engine, in which everybody believes with a catholic consensus of belief perhaps never before at- tained, is in the least degree tending to deteriorate mankind physically, it is bad. Knowledge bought at the expense of health, which is wholeness or holiness itself in its highest aspect, is not worth what it costs. Health conditions all the highest joys of life, means full maturity, national prosperity. May we not rever- ently ask, What shall it profit a child if he gain the whole world of knowledge and lose his health, or what shall he give in exchange for his health ? " Shall the school be held responsible for results? Most certainly. If it is found that myopia, hollow chests, spinal curvature, heart defects, and nervous and digestive diseases increase in schools, as expert exami- nations find to be the case, who is at fault? If a child continues a dullard, a drone, or a dunce, what shall be said of the person who has been employed to set the machinery of his life in operation? More than that, is there not responsibility for the moral elevation of those with wliom the teacher lives day after day? Most certainly there is. Fenelon had a similar task in his education of the irascible Duke of Burgundy. Are the children in the schools inspired with love for study? Do they love attendance upon a good lecture? Are they continuous students after they leave school? Are they trustworthy in their self-government? The school can not evade responsibility any more than can the physi- cian who assumes charge of the sick in the early stage of disease. It must be the mission of the school to pro- 10 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. mote health, to inspire to action, to inculcate a love for noble things, and to lift to the level of higher living. The card report sent from the school to the home is often a measure more of the teacher than of the child. That better results may obtain, there must be a radical reconstruction of schools. Happily, the dawn of the new era does not seem very far off. The enormous interest the better teachers of America are taking in child study, the many departures here and there from traditional and uniform method, an awakening con- science within and without the schools, the leavening in- fluence of earnest attempts at something higher these are all prophetic of the early coming of better things. The school of the twentieth century will be based on a better knowledge of children, and will mark a new era in education. CHAPTEE II. THE LOSSES OF THE SCHOOL. IT will probably be well to preface our constructive presentation by a closer examination into the condition of the present school, so that we may avoid many of its evils in our ideal school. Somehow there is such a uni- versal tendency to believe in that which we now have, attacks on its alleged merits are so zealously repelled by the executors of past educational estates, the school of mechanical excellence looks so well on its sur- face and runs with so little friction, that it is not easy to gain serious attention to that which is more complex and perhaps calls for more careful study and adminis- tration. It is said that the great dynamos at Niagara, which supply power for the entire city of Buffalo and adjacent places, run easily and noiselessly, and that only four men are required for their care. But smoothness of running and serenity are not the tests of a school of high ideals. Such a school may not look so well on the surface. It does not plan for immediate results. It will not run itself. Scientific education is no au- tomaton process, but requires endless adaptation, read- justment, and discovery. Unquestionably the school of individual differentiation will be more complex and more difficult to conduct than the one of Procrusl 12 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. method. It is infinitely harder to adapt one school to the needs of a thousand pupils than to adapt one thou- sand pupils to a single plan. Concerning the inadequacies of the graded school system, let us call up the testimony of a few competent witnesses. In 1880 Dr. Washington Gladden made a suggestive investigation * concerning the school training of one hundred representative successful men in the city of Springfield, Massachusetts. The one hundred men in- cluded " bank presidents, insurance company presidents, chief managers of railroads, heads of the most impor- tant manufacturing companies, leading merchants, lead- ing lawyers and physicians, chief editors, and principals of schools/' Letter inquiries were addressed to these persons, asking " Whether your home during the first fifteen years of your life was on a farm or in a village or city?" Of the 100 persons so addressed, 89 made replies. The reports of these 89 persons showed that 12 spent the first fifteen years in the city, 12 in the village, and 64 on the farm; but of the 24 who lived in villages and towns, 6 were practically farmer boys, for they lived in small villages or on the outskirts of cities. Seventy had such training as the farming boy usually received, f * St. Nicholas, March, 1880. f The writer has frequently asked approximately the same question of large and representative gatherings of educators, to find the same remarkable testimony that more than two thirds of these leaders have come up through the rigorous processes of the unconventional rural school. The lives of America's college presi- dents present even more corroborative evidence of the ungraded THE LOSSES OF THE SCHOOL. 13 To this implied criticism of Dr. Gladden the school- men have made a weak defence, their principal argu- ment being that this study brought out the differences in conditions of life as the great determining factor. This only goes to show the lack of adjustment of schools to the needs of changing times. Education to be sci-. entific must preserve to the world the great fundamental processes which all evolution has shown to be necessary for the best culture of vigorous life. President David Starr Jordan, in his vigorous utter- ances from Stanford University, has been doing much toward the reconstruction of schools. Says he: * " There is no virtue in educational systems unless the system meets the needs of the individual. It is not the ideal man, or the average man, who is to be trained; it is the particular man; as the forces of Na- ture have made him. His own qualities determine his needs. 'A child is better unborn than untaught/ A child is still untaught, if by his teaching we have not emphasized his individual character, if we have not strengthened his will and its guide and guardian the mind. . . . All education must be individual, fitted to individual needs. That which is not is unworthy of the name. A misfit education is no education at all. The rewards of investigation, the pleasures of high think- ing, the charms of harmony, have never yet been for the multitude. To the multitude they must be accessible in the future. ... If we are to make men and women out of boys and girls, it will be as individuals and not school's virility. Surely, soil and rough-shod opportunity hare well done their work in the making of men. * Jordan's Care and Culture of Men. U AN IDEAL SCHOOL. as classes. The best field of corn is that in which the individual stalks are most strong and most fruitful. Class legislation has always proved pernicious and in- effective, whether in the university or in a state. The strongest nation is that in which the individual man is most helpful and most independent. The best school is that which exists for the individual pupil." President Eliot, in his admirable article on The Function of Education in Democratic Society,* has said: " Another important function of the public school in a democracy is the discovery and development of the gift or capacity of each individual child. This discovery should be made at the earliest possible age, and, once made, should always influence, and sometimes deter- mine, the education of the individual. It is for the in- terest of society to make the most of every useful gift or faculty which any member may fortunately possess, and it is one of the main advantages of fluent and mo- bile society that it is more likely than any other society to secure the fruition of individual capacities. To make the most of any individual's peculiar power, it is impor- tant to discover it early, and then train it continuously and assiduously. It is wonderful what apparently small personal gifts may become the means of conspicuous service or achievement, if only they get discovered, trained, and applied. In the ideal democratic school no two children would follow the same course of study or have the same tasks, except that they would all need to learn the use of the elementary tools of education * Eliot's Educational Reform, p. 408. 'THE LOSSES OP TEE SCHOOL. 15 reading, writing, and ciphering. The different children would hardly have any identical needs. There might be a minimum standard of attainment in every branch of study, but no maximum. The perception or discov- ery of the individual gift or capacity would often be effected in the elementary school, but more generally in the secondary; and the making of these discoveries should be held one of the most important parts of the teacher's work. The vague desire for equality in a democracy has made great mischief in democratic schools. There is no such thing as equality of gifts, or powers, or faculties, among either children or adults. On the contrary, there is the utmost diversity; and edu- cation and all the experiences of life increase these diversities, because the school, and the earning of a livelihood, and the reaction of the individual upon his surroundings, all tend strongly to magnify innate diver- sities. The pretended democratic school with an in- flexible programme is fighting not only against Nature, but the interests of democratic society. Flexibility of programme should begin in the elementary school years before the period of secondary education is reached. There should be some choice of subjects of study by ten years of age, and much variety by fifteen years of age. On the other hand, the programmes of elementary as well as secondary schools should represent thoroughly the chief divisions of knowledge namely, language and literature, mathematics, natural science, and history, besides drawing, manual work, and music. If school programmes fail to represent the main varieties of intel- lectual activity, they will not afford the means of discov- ering the individual gifts and tendencies of the pupils." 16 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. Hold the public schools, as they are largely consti- tuted, up before this comprehensive mirror, and what do we see? Dr. Edward Everett Hale remarks, " My experience with schools and with the college teaches me to dis- trust all the mechanisms of education." * And again: " I do not lay much stress on the teacher. A great teacher, who will inspire you, is certainly a great blessing." f Says Prof. John Dewey,t " The school is not the place where the child lives," and, " There is very little place in the traditional school for the child to work." The Forum articles by Dr. J. M. Eice, on the public schools of the United States, have contained some pro- found criticisms which deserve the careful considera- tion of every person interested in the improvement of existing methods of education. Dr. E. Stuver, in making an investigation * as to the values in our present system of education as pre- sented in the requested opinions of one hundred and fifty of our leading educators and physicians, said con- cerning those who expressed themselves on this particu- lar point: " Twenty-nine out of sixty-three educators, and thirty out of thirty-five physicians, do not think our present course of study best calculated to develop the highest physical and intellectual powers of the child. Eighteen educators and one physician are doubtful." * Bale's How I was Educated, f Hale's What Career? J Dewey's The School and Society. * Stuver's How does our School System influence the Health and Development of the Child f THE LOSSES OF THE SCHOOL. 17 " It is not strange/' says Dr. Hall,* " that so grand an institution should become of itself an object of love, pride, and inspiration; that there should be rivalry in mechanical excellences like attendance, punctuality, order, percentages, etc.; that in Austria and Eussia teachers should wear uniforms as government officials; that reformers should be feared; that there should sometimes be tyranny and jobbery. Especially here, where supervision itself is little skilled, and where one fourth of our teachers leave the business each year, there is peculiar danger that the individual pupil will be sub- ordinated to the machine, for this is the chief vice of the 'prentice and of bad teachers generally." To these criticisms, made by earnest men in kindly spirit, the school people have made replies without ex- haustive examination. Now, let us see if their defence is well founded. Attention is called to the table on page 19, entitled A Study of School Ages. It is furnished by a super- intendent in a fairly representative city, and consti- tutes a section which, by the Board of Education, was ordered stricken out of the superintendent's annual re- port, because it was supposed to reflect on the schools of that city. A glance at the table will show that it represents a complete working school system of all grades from the kindergarten through the high school, and includes 5,801 pupils. The number of pupils of each year of age is shown for every grade with totals. Theoreti- cally, in a school supposed to be graded, if a child * Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1891. 18 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. enters school at five years of age, he should reach the second grade at six, the third grade at seven, the fourth grade at eight, the fifth grade at nine, the sixth grade at ten, the seventh grade at eleven, the eighth grade at twelve, the ninth grade at thirteen, the high school at fourteen, and he should graduate from the high school at the end of the four years' course at nineteen; or, at least, he should not be more than one year older in entering any given grade than is indicated by the respective ages stated. Practically he is noth- ing of the kind, as the study will show. In fact, the pupils are considerably older. In this table the full-faced figures indicate the num- ber of pupils of normal age; the figures to the right of these full-faced figures may be said to indicate pupils over age; figures to the left, pupils under age. " For instance, in grade four, 85 pupils are of normal age; 11 are one year under age; 3 are eight years over age; 2 plus 3, or 5, are seven years over age; 24 plus 5, or 29, are six years over age; 56 plus 29, or 85, are five years over age; 61 plus 85, or 146, are four years over age; 96 plus 146, or 242, are three years over age; 139 plus 242, or 381, are two years over age; 178 plus 381, or 559, are one year over age. In the same way figures are given for each of the other grades. A careful study of this table presents the following serious reflections: 1. Of the 5,801 pupils comprehended in this study, 1,254 (22 per cent) are of normal age for entering the various grades, 172 are one year under age, 3 are two years under age; 4,372 (75 per cent) are one year over proper entering age, 2,456 (43 per cent) are two li r* * 3,3. 3 a * 2 M i^' 3 Q i" gi 5 -a O Kinder- gartcn | t i a I 1 5 > i i > > i i > 1-4 > High Sch. I X High Sch. 11 XI High Sch. Ill) XII x~ %~ r Post Graduate 1 1 1 1 8 g 1 12 1 i 1 S | 8 55 i 5 ej ^ * 5? - - >n t- - - - CN - o D * t- ^ o ^< 00 co CJ T-l S S t- ?s ; - 5 fi 8 00 H i O 1- so 1-1 1-H so ^* ^J S? 03 t g o t^ e* in 00 S Gt JS ^ co o 1 3 ei ? 3 S S 3 10 o 1 CO e* o* S S S S o 8 H U3 os 1 s 8 3 I 1 ** kO o 00 1 3 o 8 S o ** 1 t 33 Si - to t-l > > > > M PSigh Sch. I X [High Sch. II XI [High Sch. Ill XII P 2 i! o i 20 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. years over age, 1,204 (21 per cent) are three years over age, 548 (9 per cent) are four years over age, 235 (4 per cent) are five years over age, 91 are six years over age, 28 are seven years over age, 8 are eight years over age, and 1 is eleven years over age. Some minor cor-- rections should perhaps be applied to these figures, as will be shown later on. 2. It will be observed that 41 per cent of these pupils enter the first grade at under six years of age (the normal age for entering this school's first grade is five); 29 per cent enter the second grade at under seven; 13 per cent, the third grade at under eight; 14.5 per cent, the fourth grade at under nine; 12 per cent, the fifth grade at under ten; 16 per cent, the sixth grade at under eleven; 19 per cent, the seventh grade at under twelve; 31 per cent, the eighth grade at under thirteen; 30 per cent, the ninth grade at under fourteen; 23 per cent enter the first year of the high school at under fifteen; 29 per cent, the second year of the high school at under sixteen; 39 per cent, the third year of the high school at under seventeen; and 29 per cent enter the fourth year of the high school at under eighteen. 3. This over age no doubt arises in small degree from irregularity in attendance, due to carelessness of par- ents or sickness of children. It is also partly due to the unfortunate necessity of some children to change from city to city where gradations are not the same. These, however, are minor factors in a healthy New England city where compulsory education is in force. 4. A principal factor in tending to this over age lies in the fact that instruction is not largely scien- tific that is, it is not to any extent built on a study of THE LOSSES OF THE SCHOOL. 21 the child with individual adaptation of nutrition and culture to make him individually strong. The opportu- nity to drop behind the class is always an individual op- portunity; the opportunity to get ahead is almost always limited by class environment. Between these two kinds of opportunity there is an abysmal difference. As schools usually go, it is ten times harder for a pupil to gain a grade than to lose one; ten times harder to rise than to fall. Never until the school is built fun- damentally for the individual will this element of loss disappear. 5. The table also illustrates in large degree the pov- erty of the teaching in the lower grades. This poverty is of two kinds: first, the poverty of the teacher; sec- ond, the poverty of the subject-matter. Unfortunate indeed is the practice in most schools which recognises no promotion of teachers excepting that which places them in the higher grade. The primary schools, in the average, are the rewards of incompetence and inexperi- ence. When in the garden does the growing plant need the best attention ? At a time when the child needs the best culture, the primary school is impoverished that the teacher may be advanced to higher salary, and the children languish while another apprentice weakling is being trained to her work. No one can estimate the fearful loss to the child from being compelled to lose a year under an incompetent teacher. This rotten work carried forward into other years becomes a foun- dation on which no subsequent teacher can build a solid superstructure. Fearfully expensive is poor teaching. The poverty of subject-matter is also responsible for much of the loss. While it is impossible to accu- 22 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. rately classify results according to these two factors, it is probable that much of the loss is due to the unfortu- nate subject-matter of beginning grades. Reading, for instance, in a primary school, is a poverty-laden study. It begins with abstraction, and prematurely consumes energies on very meagre results. The beginning pupil can study reading profitably only a small fraction of his time. Reading in the primary school can not be an ex- ercise of self-activity to any considerable extent, and therefore should be left to a subsequent period when results will obtain more rapidly. The fact, shown by the table, that there are 570 pupils of normal age for the first grade but 1,076 pupils in that grade, indi- cates the tremendous losses to which reference is made. Practically it must take, in the average, two years for a child to pass over the meagre work of this poverty- stricken grade. 6. The totals at the bottom of the table show the success of the operation of compulsory law in keeping children in school, at least until the age of fourteen, when the law permits outside employment. That is, 570 are five years of age, 590 are six years of age, 522 are seven years of age, 518 are eight years of age, 499 are nine years of age, 478 are ten years of age, 507 are eleven years of age, 500 are twelve years of age, 493 are thirteen years of age, 393 are fourteen years of age, 208 are fifteen years of age, 179 are sixteen years of age, 105 are seventeen years of age, 72 are eighteen years of age, 45 are nineteen years of age, 6 are twenty years of age, 7 are twenty-one years of age, and 15 are twenty- two years of age. The number is fairly constant until the age of optional attendance begins, the mortality THE LOSSES OF THE SCHOOL. 23 losses being about offset by the accessions from private schools. The totals at the right indicate the diminu- tion of opportunity. The pupils must spend, on the average, more than a year in any one grade. The com- pulsion of the law is not attended by the democratic opportunity which justice requires. An unfair advan- tage is taken of the imprisoned child. 7. Another element in this study presenting itself for reflection lies in the attempted enrichment of sub- ject-matter which has come in recent years in the lower- grade schools. Every year something new is added to the course of study. The high school is now doing the work of the college of fifty years ago; and the grammar school is covering much of the former work of the high school. There has been enrichment without elimina- tion; extension of work without extension of time, ex- cepting perhaps in the interpolation of the ninth grade in many schools. I do not say that there is not com- pensation in all this; but let not the devotee of the graded school disguise the fact he is gradually raising the age limit the course of study under his plan calls for more than thirteen years of time. Fundamentally, the principle of enrichment is cor- rect. The man who has seen much of the world is bet- ter educated than the one who has seen little. The child loses nothing by facing a wealth of Nature. But enrichment must have the enriched teacher. The standards and ideals of older work will not answer the requirements of the new. There must be correlation, elimination, and correct method. With the teacher of training and versatility there can be endless enrichment without loss; but it can not be by text requirement. 4 24 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. The showings of this study of ages should give cause for profound reflection. The course of study, in most schools, originally provided for twelve years of study. The kindergarten has been added and the ninth grade interpolated, making a nominal gradation covering fourteen years ; and yet the table shows that the course of study actually calls for two or three years of addi- tional time. This perhaps does not entirely show in the ages of those who finally graduate, but it would be abundantly manifest if those who from discouragement drop out of the school could be taken into consid- eration. There is a great loss in the detention of pupils too long in the elementary schools. The studies of the higher grammar grades and of the high school are so much richer and more culture-giving that pupils should have the earliest possible introduction to these schools. Indeed, it is a crime to keep younger children so long on the dry husks of most elementary education. For similar reasons it is important that students should reach the college not later than at eighteen years of age. It is discouraging to young people to come to the age of twenty or more to find there are still four years of the college and three years at the university between them and entrance on professional life. President Eliot's argument for the reduction of the college course to three years is therefore economically sound. Am- bitious students should reach the university earlier. The possible marriage age of the student is abnormally high; it should be lessened. President Jordan's creed of opportunity to the common man also has important bearing on the argument. We can not bring the rich THE LOSSES OF THE SCHOOL. 25 values of higher opportunity to the common man if we deny him early admittance. In like manner, the ele- mentary and the secondary schools must short-cut their methods and curriculum. There must be elimination of dead time and profitless tasks. The teacher must be more competent, the studies more enriched. The pupil must have unlimited opportunity to accomplish and to progress. We must find our way to enrichment and opportunity. Concerning the showings of the above table certain questions will probably arise. What is meant by the normal age of a grade pupil? I do not know that I clearly understand. The normal age of a grade pupil is a hypothetical term forced by the nomenclature and practices of the graded school. The graded school of Massachusetts, for instance, presupposes a course of thirteen graces, each grade being planned to require nominally one year of time. The pupil enters the first grade at five years of age; and therefore, in terms of gradation, five may be said to be the normal age of the first grade, six years of the second grade, seven of the third grade, etc. Are there no corrections to be applied to the show- ings of the table ? Has not the discussion already inti- mated that there might be some? The table does not show the fraction of the year. In many schools admittance to the first grade is only at the beginning of the year or semester; which, however, is no defence, for in the school of individual conserva- tion every day is a beginning day. The greatest cor- rection should probably be because pupils do not all come of age at the beginning of the school year; and 26 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. consequently the average age of pupils in a given grade may be half a year more than indicated in the table. Even with this correction the losses are enormously large, the corrected table showing more than two thirds of the pupils to be of over age. Attention is called to the dangerous custom of plan- ning so much for what is termed the average pupil, which r fallacy is exceptionally apparent from a study of this table. For instance, the average age of pupils in each grade, even in this table, in many instances is only one step removed from a normal age that is, the average age of the first grade is somewhere in the four- hundred group; but such customary manner of esti- mating by averages utterly loses sight of the immense number of individuals to the right of such average line. Says Dr. D. F. Lincoln, " The average does not justly represent the individual any more than the army ration corresponds to the appetite of each soldier." How do you account for the showing that the per- centage of loss is not so great in the higher grades as in the lower? From the table it seems that there is some recovery. That recovery is apparent, not real. The school from which this table was taken is in a Massachusetts city, where the law compels attendance until the age of fourteen. When this limit of restraint was passed, many pupils gradually dropped from the school, the losses being mostly of those who were most discouraged. The ones who remained in school represent largely the survival of the most favoured. Much criticism of the public schools has appeared because the pupils do not reach the high school. The THE LOSSES OP THE SCHOOL. 27 reply has almost universally been made, that it is because they do not remain in school. Does not this table show that it is because they are in the lower grades and can not reach the high school? Precisely so. The figures to the right of the normal line indicate largely the losses of the school, and demon- strate the inefficiency of the graded system. Its failure lies in the facts: 1. That the beginning time is at the convenience of a mechanical plan, and not at the convenience of the pupil. 2. It ignores the working strength and general experience which come with ma- turity. 3. Its progressions are by the class. Under its practices losses are easy, hut recovery is extremely difficult. It lacks easy adjustment. 4. It plans its work for the average pupil, which is an impersonal and impossible factor. 5. It does not hold its own by merit, but by compulsory enactment. Other details of its in- efficiency will appear as we proceed with this discussion. Is it not pretty generally claimed that the graded school system affects a great gain by its classification of pupils of fairly equal ability into the same school or room? Does not this effect economy in the teacher's effort and advantage to all concerned? There is no objection to classification, provided it is of flexible character. Certainly there is some advan- tage in gathering into working sections pupils of kin- dred interest and, to a certain extent, of the same gen- eral working strength. What is contended against is the assumption that the graded organization, as operated almost universally in the public schools, meets the re- quirements of the needs of individuals. I care not how well a school may appear to be graded at the beginning 28 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. of the year, it will always contain pupils who can do far more work than others, in addition to which are other potent factors which must not be disregarded. There is far more difference in the working abilities of the pupils of a given class in a graded school than is gen- erally estimated. The graded school does not grade. In illustration of this statement attention is called to the chart on the opposite page, presenting the results of a study of the differences in working abilities of an actual class of twenty pupils. This chart represents the units of work in Caesar accomplished individually by twenty free workers in one hundred and fifty aggregate hours of time. The class was in the Central High School of Pueblo, Colo- rado, the teacher being Miss Ida Brock Haslup. The work was distributed through one hundred days, which, however, included some holiday time ; the period was an hour and a half per day. All the work was done in the Latin laboratory, there being no home preparation of lessons. The reading of Cassar text was attended by the usual collateral work in grammar, composition, and his- torical reference. The method was individual, so that each pupil had practically the value of the entire period, there being no interruption of the general class while one individual was qualifying to his teacher. Each pupil not only studied the text, but qualified by recita- tion and quiz on every sentence of it. The test of ad- vancement was thoroughness in each unit, without which the pupil could not pass on to a succeeding chap- ter. It will therefore be seen that the amount of work accomplished, the work being done entirely in the teacher's presence, gives an unusually good opportu- [PUPIL BOOK I. 54 CHAPTERS. | BOOK II. 35 CHAPTERS. | BOOK III. 29 CHAPTERS. |BooxIV. SSCHAPTEKS. S 2 2 X X M s H X o H X 2 X M i X X 3 X X 3 M X X 8 X H X X X s X x X X X X X X x X X X X X X X X 1-2 X H X X X X X X X X X M X X X X X X X X X X X X S H H X X X X X X X X X X X X 3 X H X X X X X X X M X X X X X X S M X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X 3 X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X i? X H X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X H X X X X X X X X M X X X X X X X X X J? H X H X X X X X M H X X M X M X X X X X S M X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X 8 H X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X S X H X X X X X X M H X X X X X X X X X X JO X * H X X X X X X X M X X X X H X X X * X H X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X IQ X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X < S q S ft -J M M M I-J * h3 S fc ^ c? S 0) H 30 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. nity to measure the differences in working ability in this particular subject. The teacher's record of advancement was more ex- tended than this sheet, a pupil's record continuing for several pages, each chapter in the four books of Caesar being represented by its own column for marking the limits of advancement. On a chart like this it is im- possible to represent so many columns, therefore the chapters are grouped by fives. A check (x) in column 110 indicates that the pupil has qualified to the end of Chapter CX (Book III, Chapter XXI). It will be noticed that Pupil A covered 110 chap- ters; B, 90 chapters; C, 140 chapters; D, 95 chapters; E, 80 chapters; F, 85 chapters; G, 80 chapters; H, 75 chapters ; 1, 70 chapters ; J, 90 chapters ; K, 80 chapters ; L, 85 chapters; M, 65 chapters; N, 60 chapters; 0, 45 chapters; P, 45 chapters; Q, 45 chapters; E, 70 chapters; S, 60 chapters; T, 40 chapters. Do you mean to say that these twenty pupils repre- sent an average class in a graded school? I mean to imply just that, and, furthermore, a class where pupils study Latin not by requirement but by choice. There being no compulsion, the table does not represent other pupils, known in many schools, who would make the range even greater. Yes, the class is a representative one, excepting that the pupils here are given opportunity to accomplish what is best for each individual case. This table will be discussed more fully later on. It is presented here to demonstrate effectually that there is a much wider range in the differentiation of the working abilities of pupils than is generally supposed, THE LOSSES OF THE SCHOOL. 31 This differentiation of abilities represents a differentia- tion of needs which the graded school is not meeting. If one pupil in a working group can cover one hundred and forty chapters of Caesar in the same time required by another for the accomplishment of forty chapters, then equity demands that he be not held back to mark time for the slower pupil's benefit. Again, if the Pupil T requires one hundred and fifty hours to do his forty chapters well, then every principle of justice de- mands that he should not be prematurely hurried for- ward. Furthermore, he should not be degraded in the eyes of the school because he does need more time. There should be no tail of the class nor losses from the school's playing " Crack-the-Whip." The study shows conclusively that even in a " well-graded class " there are some pupils who can do three times as much work as others. Sanitarians will ask the question: How did this working plan meet the needs of pupils sick and well, to which reference has already been made? The plan met the physiological needs of the pupils far better than the graded school can. For instance, one of the girls was absent because of sickness for two months. While sick, she was not worried about keep- ing up with the class, and returning, took up the work just where she had left it. Another girl was at that critical period in adolescence when all the life ener- gies seem centred in vital organic changes. She needed accommodation and found it. Another pupil was of consumptive tendency, and had opportunity to do just what he could. The plan permitted some to gain an 32 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. education who otherwise would have been exiled from the school. Some of these pupils probably did not work the full one hundred and fifty hours, but as none of these are represented in the maximum or minimum accomplishments of work, their inclusion in this study does not affect the showing of extreme range of differ- ences in working abilities. The details of this method will be discussed in a subsequent chapter. Why in this study have you taken a class in Latin? Why not have taken a class in some other subject, say in a lower-grade school? A class in Latin has been taken for this representa- tion because no other subject of study gives us so well a fairly uniform unit of work. When a chapter in Caesar is mentioned, every one knows what is meant. This is not the case in arithmetic, where problems or sections or pages may vary greatly in difficulty and length of time required; nor would it be the case in grammar, geography, or many other branches. In Caesar, five or ten chapters represent fairly well that many units or norms, and therefore give a satisfactory standard for measurement and comparison. However, other tables will throw light on this ques- tion of differences in working ability. Indeed, almost every subject taught in the public schools can be abun- dantly illustrated by similar advancement sheets. On the opposite page is a table representing the com- parative advancements of twenty-four pupils working together in a class in the last grade of the grammar school, before admission to the high school. The study is arithmetic, the subjects covered being the more ad- DIFFERENTIATION OF WORKING ABILITIES IN ARITHMETIC. Class of 24 pupils another class also in room. 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 198 241 335 479 161 274 337 178 284 14T 277 215 170 218 197 155 479 140 192 292 479 278 361 34: AN IDEAL SCHOOL. vanced applications of percentage. In this case the ad- vancement of each pupil is represented by a line of lineal measurement, showing the number of pieces of work covered. The chart is planned to show a field of five hundred pieces of work. Do you mean to say that there is that much differ- ence in pupils in a well-graded grammar school? The showing is just that. The working sheets from which this table was compiled were furnished by Gram- mar Master Wilbur F. Nichols, then of Holyoke, Massa- chusetts, but now supervising principal at New Haven, Connecticut. The class represented was as well graded as classes usually are in any school. The pupils had all been working with uniform advancement until en- trance on this experimental test; then they were per- mitted to travel, under careful supervision, each at his own rate of speed. The study began at a uniform time and stopped at a uniform time. It will be seen that Pupil A made an advancement of 193 units; B, 241 units; C, 335 units; D, 161 units; E, 178 units; F, 274 units; G, 337 units; H, 284 units; I, 147 units; J, 277 units ; K, 215 units ; L, 170 units ; M, 197 units ; N, 218 units; 0, 479 units; P, 155 units; Q, 140 units; E, 192 units; S, 479 units; T, 292 units; U, 278 units; V, 479 units; W, 200 units; X, 361 units. This test was not simply one of quantity, for the school in which it was taken was well known for the high quality of its work in arithmetic, Mr. Nichols being the author of a series of arithmetics. It should be remarked once more that, while this table of work in arithmetic illustrates well the point being made, the comparisons are not so definite as in THE LOSSES OF THE SCHOOL. 35 the representation of the Latin class, because the unit is more variable. However, it is probable that this fact will only strengthen the showings in the gram- mar-school tables; because, in all probability, the stronger pupils covered more advanced and therefore more difficult work. The range in working abili- ties would therefore be greater than is shown in this table. Very few persons, even teachers, realize that there can be so great a difference in pupils in a well-graded school. This misconception is very common, and arises from the fact that very few tests have ever been made to determine results such as these. There is scarcely a so-called well-graded school in the land which, given opportunity to depart from uniformity, will not reach practically the same showing of the enormous differen- tiation in the working abilities of pupils; and this is just as true of the college and the university as of the public schools. If schoolmen would only cease a little from their profitless ordinary examination of children and turn the investigation on their own methods, they would reach some surprising results. A STUDY OF COLLEGE ENTRANCES. The table on page 36 shows the proportion of the regular students entering Harvard College, who have come from the public schools during the twenty-five years, 1871-1894. It will be contended that Harvard College repre- sents, in its major constituency, only a section of the country. Very well; it represents New England, and JSTew England is supposed by many people to represent 36 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. YEAR. Total entrances. From public schools. Percentages from public schools. 1871 203 70 34 48 1872 183 50 27 32 1873 .... 227 72 31 71 1874 200 54 27 00 1875 258 80 31.00 1876 225 51 22.66 1877 239 86 35 98 1878 232 80 34 48 1879 245 72 29 38 1880 233 69 29.61 1881 230 69 30.00 1882 281 82 29.18 1883 268 65 24.25 1884 286 63 22.03 1885 . 264 73 27 65 1886 302 96 31.79 1887 310 78 25.16 1888 331 94 28.40 1889 352 98 27 56 1890 -.. 402 95 23 63 1891 463 128 27.64 1892 506 135 26 67 1893 .... 469 142 30 37 1894 ! . 470 126 26.95 From report of President of Harvard University, 1894-'95, p. 11. the best of the public-school system. Nowhere else is so much money expended for schools; nowhere else is the course of study so long; and nowhere else have the high schools lent themselves so completely to college preparation. The result, at the present time, is that the high schools, as shown by this table, furnish less than twenty-seven per cent of those admitted to Harvard College. Notwithstanding that the high schools of New England for thirty years have been, more and more, making of themselves fitting schools, their con- tribution to Harvard College, during this time of great- est endeavour, has been declining. The average THE LOSSES OF THE SCHOOL. 37 young person who seeks the best training goes where he can find the greatest value. Either the high schools should qualify themselves to compete with private in- stitutions, or they should cease to bend everything to college preparation. CHAPTER III. THE LOSSES OF THE SCHOOL (continued) THE HEALTH OF SCHOOL CHILDREN. IF education is ever to aim at that which is com- plete and best, it must comprehend the entire child. Fundamental in this, it seems right to expect that the product of the school shall be the individual blessed with good health. To that end school provisions and practices must not be simply permissive of health, but they must contribute directly to its realization. Indeed, the moment the school begins to encroach on the sacred- ness of this domain, just then its usefulness is subject to serious question. The first test, then, of an educa- tional system is, To what extent does it confer degrees of conditioning good health? Certainly, the school as at present constituted can not be held responsible for the entire defective physical condition of a large percentage of school children; but our system of child culture, with all it comprehends, is responsible, and of this system a large factor is the school. Now what is the condition of the health of school children under the influence or protection of our present system of education? Let us consider first the eye, which is said to be a fair type of the general price which physical health must pay to defective culture. THE LOSSES OF THE SCHOOL. 39 Says Kotelmann: "I have examined a great many Lapps, Calmucks, Patagonians, Nubians, Somalis, and Singhalese, but I have never found a single near-sighted person either among the children or the adults. My- opia did not exist in New Zealand till it appeared among the natives after the introduction of civilization/' * In contrast with this remarkable statement, which is abundantly substantiated by other investigations among uncivilized peoples, how worthy to command our attention are the findings of eminent men like Cohn, Erismann, Conrad, Agnew, Loring, Derby, Callan, Smith, Allport, Allen, Swift, and others, who have made expert examination of the physical condition of school children! Probably the most extensive investigations that have been made are those reported by Dr. Hermann Cohn in his admirable Hygiene of the Eye. The ear- nest consideration given by the Germans to this matter is worthy of profound respect. Perhaps no discussion on this subject, since the publication of Dr. Cohn's, has been so thoroughly scientific. Dr. Cohn's original investigations covered 33 * " Short-sightedness is one of the evils of modern civilization, and in its distribution depends to no slight extent on the present modes of education. Congenital near-sightedness is probably quite rare, since in infants' eyes the myopic refraction is the exception." (Reference Hand-Book of the Medical Sciences, vol. v, p. 87.) " Myopia is seldom congenital. All experts remark that it is rarely found in children of less than five years of age. All agree that it arises from too steady application of the eyes to close objects, especially during the school age." (Dr. Hermann Cohn, in Popular Science Monthly, vol. xix, p. 54.) 5 40 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. schools enrolling 10,060 pupils in the city of Breslau. He found an average of 19.2 per cent of defective sight among the pupils of the town school. The percentage of increases in myopia through the several grades is shown by the following table: Percentages of Myopia in the City of Breslau.* (Cohn.) SCHOOL. Pupils. GRADES FROM LOWEST TO HIGHEST. Aver- age per cent. 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 l Five village schools. . Twenty city elemen- tary schools Twoadvancedschools for girls 1,486 4,978 834 426 502 630 532 663 1 3 16 13 27 23 31 30 2 4 12 9 25 28 48 35 3 10 19 15 59 29 65 47 1.4 6.7 7.7 10.3 [l9.7 [26.2 1 2 7 8 10 12 21 17 19 6 6 25 13 19 28 T wo grammar schools Realschule (z. heil. Geist) 7 11 11 14 Realschule (z. Zwin- der) . . Gymnasium (Eliza- beth) Gymnasium (Magda- lenen) Grade 1 is the highest in each school respectively. The different kinds of schools have not a continuous gradation, as in this country. Dr. Cohn says : f " It is evident "1. In village schools the percentage of short-sight is very low, while in the town school the number of * Reference Hand-Book of the Medical Sciences, vol. v, p. 86. t See Cohn's Hygiene of the Eye, wherein is given a valuable discussion of his findings, with reports of the examinations of the eyesight of fifty thousand school children. THE LOSSES OF THE SCHOOL. 41 near-sighted scholars constantly increases with the grade of the school, from the lowest to the highest. " 2. In every school the number of near-sighted pupils increases from class to class. More than half of the highest class are near-sighted. " 3. There is an increase in degree of myopia from class to class in all schools. The average degree differs but slightly for the two sexes." Unfortunately, examinations of this kind have never been made in the United States in so thorough and sci- entific a manner as is done in European countries. A few attempts have been made, which, while they have not followed the same pupils through a series of years, have nevertheless shown that the same general results are to be found in American schools. Dr. C. R. Agnew,* of New York, was led to an in- vestigation in this country by a feeling of distrust in the applicability of Cohn's conclusions to the conditions of American schools. He thought the findings of Cohn might be largely due to peculiarities of German dietary, differences in school buildings, school systems, school hours, and other factors. With competent assistance a careful examination was made of the eyes of 630 school children in Cincinnati, 549 in New York, and 300 in Brooklyn, with results which strikingly confirmed the conclusions of Dr. Cohn. Drs. Loring and Derby examined many children in the New York schools and found among scholars six to eight years of age 3.5 per cent of myopia; nine to ten years of age, 5 per cent; eleven to twelve years of age, 10 per cent; fifteen to sixteen years of age, 15 per * Medical Review, 1877, p. 34. AN IDEAL SCHOOL. cent; seventeen to eighteen years of age, 20 per cent; eighteen to nineteen years of age, 25 per cent; and twenty to twenty-one years of age, 26.8 per cent.* Dr. Ward McLean, referring to the examinations made by Dr. Edward G. Loring and Dr. Peter A. Callan, of New York, Dr. Lucian Howe, of Buffalo, and Dr. Hasket Derby, of Boston, says : f " The uniform drift of results in all the examina- tions here referred to, and relating to over 26,000 in- dividuals, may be regarded as sufficiently establishing the following proposition: " 1. That, as a rule, near-sightedness originates in school life. " 2. That a large percentage of the scholars are thus afflicted, the percentage progressing with the stage of advancement in study. " 3. That near-sight is progressive in degree accord- ing to the length of school experience." Dr. W. F. Smith, in reporting an examination of school children in Chicago, presents the following table : EYES EXAMINED. Age. Percentage of myopia. 220 6 to 8 4.09 230 8 to 10 5.65 346 10 to 12 10.98 814 12 to 14 12.89 204 14 to 15 16.17 242^1 2 ^l High school.... 48J 15 to 16 16 to 18 18 to 19 19 to 20 17.76 23.26 25.31 27.08 * Reference Hand-Book of the Medical Sciences, vol. v, p. 87. f Popular Science Monthly, vol. xii, p. 74. 1 Reference Hand-Book of the Medical Sciences, vol. v, p. 87. THE LOSSES OF THE SCHOOL. 43 Dr. Frank Allport, of Minneapolis, says : * " The report of our first annual examination (1898) shows that 25,696 children have been tested, of whom 8,166, or 32 per cent, were deemed defective. Among these, 6,451 eyes were found possessing a vision of |f, or a little worse than normal; 2,256 eyes had a vision of f#; 1,214 a vision of f; 1,130 a vision of ff ; 745 a vision of -j^; 447 a vision of ^; and 43 eyes were practically blind; 4,472 children could not use their eyes to a reasonable extent without eye-tire, head- ache, etc." An examination by Dr. H. P. Allen f of 4,700 pupils in the public schools of Columbus, Ohio, reveals 1,175 cases of defective vision (25 per cent), of whom 936 pupils (20 per cent) were afflicted in both eyes. The investigation also found a diminution of good eyes from 80 per cent in the primary grades to 66.6 per cent in the senior class of the high school. Edgar James Swift reports J the results of a valu- able examination of 340 students and pupils in the normal school and model school at Stevens Point, Wisconsin. Speaking of the 257 students in the nor- mal school, he says : " Of the 37 students with nor- mal vision of -|$, 5 have astigmatism without hyper- opia, 10 hyperopia without astigmatism, and 14 have both defects; while 19 have muscle trouble with or without other difficulties, and only 3 have no evident defects." * Educational Review, vol. xiv, pp. 150-159. f Science, vol. xii, p. 208. J Pedagogical Seminary, vol. v, p. 202. 44 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. Vision of Three Hundred and forty Students at Stevens Point, Wis. Interme- - T Normal Grammar diate and V ISION* dept. dept. primary dept. Per cent. Per cent. Per cent. f# or better 14.39 21.42 19.04 fft or better but not so good as fg. . . . 51.75 54.76 57.14 f$ or better but not so good as f$. . . . 12.06 9.52 14.28 $ or better but not so good as # 7.78 9.52 2.38 f$ or better but not so good as # 2.72 2.38 .... T^% or better but not so good as f^ ... 2.72 2.38 4.76 3$&- or better but not so good as $& . . 4.28 .... 2.38 Below / % 4.28 Dr. Swift further says, " The results of this inves- tigation would seem to justify the conclusion that about 50 per cent of all pupils have at least one eye whose vision is not normal." Compared with this table of Dr. Swift's, how sig- nificant is the statement made by Dr. P. A. Callan ! * "In 1874 I examined the eyes of the scholars attend- ing two negro schools over 500 pupils. Their ages ranged from five to nineteen years. One of these schools showed 3.4 per cent of near-sight, the other only 1.2 per cent near-sight." Says Dr. Donders, the eminent Dutch oculist: " I maintain then, without hesitation, that the short-sighted eye is the diseased eye. " It is then in youth that injurious exciting influ- ences must be most carefully guarded against. * Catholic World, vol. xl, p. 559. THE LOSSES OF THE SCHOOL. 45 " Progressive short-sight is in every case ominous of evil for the future. "Not unfrequently at the age of fifty or sixty, if not earlier, the power of sight, either from detachment of the retina, from haemorrhage, or, lastly from atrophy and degeneration of the yellow spot, is irretrievably lost/' Remarks the reference Hand-Book of the Medical Sciences : * " There are now on record the figures obtained from over 150,000 scholars. The results show that myopia increases steadily from the lower to the higher classes, both in percentage and in the average of its degree. The numerous reports of school examinations by others confirm, without exception, Cohn's results. They all show a steady increase in myopia on advancing from grade to grade. In this country, examinations have not been made so extensively as in Germany; but, as far as they go, they show a similar increase in myopia with advancing education." Says the Northwestern Monthly : f " There is a fixed conviction that the increase of near-sightedness during school life is due to the con- ditions of school life. After allowing for the influence of all other factors, there is undoubtedly much to be charged against the account of school education." " There seems to be no longer room," remarks the editor of the Journal of Education,! " to question the statement that near-sightedness increases alarmingly * Vol. v, p. 86. f Vol. viii, p. 36. j Journal of Education, November 30, 1899. 46 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. with school children. It should cease to be true. The lifetime affliction of near-sightedness is not to be com- pensated by any mental discipline the schools can ever give." Ingalls declares that "it is a waste of time to send a child to school when his eyes are not in proper condition to do the work assigned. This language is not one whit too strong. We have often felt the pro- foundest pity for children who, handicapped by any ocular defect, have been goaded by teacher, school- mates, and parents into nervous collapse." * Surely the remedy, as Callan so well puts it, must be something better than the " good old times when a boy complained of not seeing, and then his parents whipped him, and the master whipped him, and then he saw." Granted the excessive amount of near-sightedness which too often attends the getting of an education, How can we lessen the price which must be paid? Is not this unfortunate wreckage the result of the general conditions of life as well as of the school? Undoubtedly the conditions of the home and of mod- ern life are causes to a considerable degree of the defective vision of school children; but, in the light of the testimony given, the school can not escape respon- sibility for its part. Besides, it must forever be the mission of the school to bring about conditions favour- able to good health, in the home and elsewhere. In referring to the repeated examinations made by * The American Year-Book of Medicine and Surgery, 1897, p. 893. THE LOSSES OF THE SCHOOL. 47 Florchutz at Coburg, Dr. Cohn remarks, " The in- vestigations of this last are of the highest interest, be- cause they establish a decrease in the number of myopics in the newly built school palaces." This certainly con- firms the inference that the school building is respon- sible for much of the near-sightedness of children and adults. But Dr. Cohn's observation does not go far enough, for it does not include the unfortunate results of unhygienic methods of instruction, hours of study, order of exercises, and other conditioning factors. In what ways the school of the twentieth century may do some- thing toward the solution of this question will be taken up later on in our Construction of the School of Good Health. The first thing, however, in the solution of the problem is to face it; and this the schoolmen have never jet done in any very earnest and scientific manner. As has already been remarked, the schools can not be held accountable for the causation of all the physical impairment in their constituency; but they are respon- sible for permitting much of it to continue. It must be the first mission of the school to promote health. If this can not be done in the school as at present organ- ized, then we must reorganize. It would be better to go back to the child culture of Plato's Eepublic than to ask the child to lay down his good health as the price of a liberal education. If education is to mean anything at all it must mean everything. It must comprehend the whole man; and the whole man is built fundamen- tally on what he is physically. Undoubtedly much of the child's condition is due to his home environment; but even in this field it is the 48 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. mission of the school to suggest as much in the line of physical improvement as has been deemed its part in the intellectual. As far as concerns the child's inter- ests, the school and the home must be co-ordinated; and for this the home must look to the school for lead- ership. Education, then, must take on a much higher significance than is the case in the present. Great prob- lems are to be solved, and the solution must come largely from the school. When we consider the supe- rior physical childhood of Spartan education, of sav- agery, or even of Mormonism, the question presents itself, What has modern civilization to offer to help solve the problem of better health for the school chil- dren of America? There is also a very large amount of hypermetropia in the schools. Conrad at Konigsberg (47.47 per cent of 3,066 eyes examined), Kotelmann at Wandsbeck (48.23 per cent out of 566 eyes), and Erismann at St. Petersburg (67.8 per cent), have found a large percent- age of far-sightedness * among younger school children ; but this is not a matter of any great concern, as the natural condition of young eyes is hypermetropic. In- deed, it is better to find a large percentage of hyper- metropia in a school than emmetropia (normal condi- tion), owing to the correction that comes later on. SPINAL CURVATURE. During the period of school life the bones of the body are soft and yield themselves readily to the in- fluences of posture and habit, thus giving opportunity * Kotelmann's School Hygiene, p. 241. THE LOSSES OF THE SCHOOL. 49 for the correction of body defects under proper train- ing, or for the beginning and augmentation of mal- formations which may not show much in the present, but will be a source of distress and unhappiness in later life. If a boy's shoulder can be raised or low- ered three inches under two or three months of care- ful training in the school, how responsible is the school for failure to recognise and to correct the spinal curva- ture, which is so largely the result of unhygienic furni- ture, unfortunate hours of study and habits of sitting, rigid discipline, and methods of instruction ! A scien- tific examination will reveal a large amount of curva- ture of the spine which in some way has escaped detec- tion largely, perhaps, because the person so afflicted is not himself conscious of this beginning and unprom- ising difficulty. Dr. Stuart H. Kowe, in his excellent work on The Physical Nature of the Child, presents the following figures * showing the number of cases per thousand of a form of spinal curvature (scoliosis) found in school children of German schools by Eulenberg: From birth to 2 years 5 cases. " 2 years to 3 years 21 " " 3 ' to 4 " 9 4 * < to 5 " 10 M " 5 ' < to 6 " 33 tt t* s\ o to 7 " 216 M " 7 to 10 " . . . . 564 " 10 to 14 " . . . . 107 M " 14 to 20 " 28 U " 20 to 30 " 7 H * Rowe's Physical Nature of the Child, p. 154. 50 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. Says Dr. Howe, "It will thus be seen that 920 of the cases out of the thousand occur between the ages of six and fourteen, a tremendous evidence of the un- hygienic treatment of children by the school." The following representative table,* showing cases and percentages of spinal curvature among school chil- dren as found by Dr. Krug, will be of interest: Spinal Curvature. (Krug.) AGE. Boys examined. Cases. Percentages. 8- 9* 86 10 11.5 10-lOf 102 17 16.5 11-llf 102 29 28.0 12-12f 214 59 27.5 13-131 120 43 35.0 14_16f 71 23 32.5 Dr. Kotelmann, in his discussion of this subject, says : f " Many facts point rather to the conclusion that most scolioses are due to certain conditions of school life. Schildbach says directly from his own wide expe- riences, ' By far the greater number of scolioses origi- nate during the school period/ Klopsch reaches the same conclusion namely, that the majority of mal- formations are produced between the tenth and four- teenth years of life. Guillaume found, among 731 pupils in Neufchatel, 218 with incipient scoliosis. In Nuremberg, 15 per cent of the school population were afflicted with spinal curvature, and in Munich about 7 per cent of 2,128 school children. In Dresden, 344, or 24 per cent of 1,418 pupils in the common schools * Kotelmann's School Hygiene, p. 312. f Ibid., p. 311. THE LOSSES OF THE SCHOOL. 51 'between the ages of eight and seventeen, were found by Krug to have scoliosis." " The sitting posture, at best, is not a safe one for children and delicate individuals to occupy continu- ously. The influence of gravitation, however, applied to the spinal column, is one which it is difficult for so movable a structure to resist, so that the tendency to the production of abnormal curves is always great, and increasingly so the longer the posture obtains.* 7 * " More and more," says Baginsky,f " does the opin- ion gain ground, particularly among surgeons, as the result of their anatomical and physiological studies and practical observations, that the origin of the most serious of all curvatures of the spine the lateral curve is due, in the great majority of cases, to the influences of school life on youthful organisms." GENERAL PHYSICAL DEBILITY. The effects of bad posture in school and work under unfortunate conditions, of long hours and outside study, of unhygienic methods of instruction, of failure to rec- ognise the physiological needs of pupils at periods and times of special stress, undoubtedly tend to encourage physical degeneracy where the school should stand for health and strength. This gives rise not only to the large amount of defective vision and spinal curvature already considered, but also to lung weaknesses and heart irregularity, to nervous and digestive diseases, and many other incipient stages of physical deteriora- * Mosher. Educational Review, vol. iv, p. 346. f Deutsche Medizin. Zeitung, 1888, p. 529. 52 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. tion. Education can never be regarded as truly scien- tific until it guarantees to every child better health in consequence of his attendance upon the school. Has the pursuit of an education realized this in the past? In an examination of the schools of the better classes in Copenhagen in 1881, Dr. Hertel * found 31 per cent of 3,141 boys and 39 per cent of 1,211 girls suffering from chronic debilitating diseases, the acute diseases not being taken into consideration, the highest percent- age being reached at twelve years of age. A royal commission made an investigation of the schools of Denmark in 1882 and found f 29 per cent of 17,595 boys and 41 per cent of 11,646 girls to be in chronic ill health, the highest percentage (51) being reached at the age of thirteen. About the same time a commission was appointed to make a similar examination of health conditions in the schools of Sweden, with results as follows : J Of 11,210 boys in the higher common schools, 44.8 per cent were found to be sickly, the highest percentage (50.2) being in the Latin section. The proportion of particular complaints was: Headache, 13.5 per cent; anasmia, 12.7 per cent; nose bleed, 6.2 per cent; loss of appetite, 3.2 per cent; scrofula, 2.7 per cent; nerv- ousness, 2 per cent; curvature of the spine, 1.5 per cent; near-sightedness, 15.2 per cent; and unspecified, 9.9 per cent. In examining 3,072 pupils of the higher schools for girls, the commission found 65.7 per cent to be suffering from more or less chronic diseases or * Maine State Board of Health Report, 1892, p. 91. flbid. Jlbid., pp. 92, 93. THE LOSSES OP THE SCHOOL. 53 deviations from health, with percentages as follows: Anaemia, 36.6; nose bleed, 6.8; nervousness, 6.5; defi- cient appetite, 12; short-sightedness, 11.5; spinal curva- ture, 10.8; scrofula, 5, etc. Dr. James Crichton-Browne, in an examination of 187 high-school girls, well fed and clad and cared for, and ranging from ten to seventeen years of age, found as many as 137 complained of headaches, which in 65 instances occurred occasionally, in 48 frequently, and in 24 habitually. In his report * he says : " Two thirds of high-school girls will attest that the hardest part of their work preparation, which involves the opening of new ground, and advance on what has been already learned, and effort in surmounting obstacles has to be performed in the evening, when they are already worn out, at the very time when, in the cycle of daily life, their brains are least capable of exertion. And no inconsiderable number of high-school girls will at- test that this arduous work of preparation is often carried on until ten., sometimes even eleven o'clock at night." Remarks Sir Richard Owen : " Children have no business with headache at all ; and, if you find that these occur frequently in any school, you may depend on it there is something wrong there." A special committee appointed in 1881 by the Board of Education of the city of Cleveland to make some investigations concerning the health of the graduates and pupils of the high schools of that city, made a very suggestive report. * Sex in Education. Educational Review, vol. iv, p. 164. 54 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. Health Record of Forty Boys who left the High School, 1880-81* HEALTH CONDITIONS. When entered. At school. After leaving. Good 85 per cent. 45 per cent 70 per cent Fair 10 " 17.5 " 24 " Rather poor 5 " 5 " Poor 10 " 5 " Quite poor 15 " Very poor . . 7.5 " While in school the health of 50 per cent of the boys was not so good; 23 per cent lost appetite; 10 per cent lost sleep; 45 per cent had headache; 23 per cent had weak eyes; 23 per cent left school wholly or in part 011 account of ill health. Health Record of Eighty-five Girls who left the High School in 1880-81, and Eleven wfio left in 1879-80 Ninety-six in all.\ HEALTH CONDITIONS. When entered. At school. After leaving. Good 73 per cent. 17 per cent. 35 per cent. Fair 22 " 9 " Rather poor Poor 5 " 7 " 5 " 12 18 12 1 48 " 7 Two girls died while members of the school, account- ing for the loss of two per cent in the last and next to the last columns. While at school, the health of 80 per cent of the girls was not good; 46 per cent lost appetite; 27 per cent suffered from sleeplessness; 72 per cent had headache; * Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. cv, p. 486. f Ibid. THE LOSSES OF THE SCHOOL. 55 52 per cent had backache or sideache; 44 per cent had nervous troubles; 75 per cent left wholly or in part on account of ill health; 52 per cent complained of stair- climbing; 36 per cent were troubled with weak eyes. Says Eowe : * " Tuberculosis, rickets, bronchitis, ca- tarrh, and headaches are aggravated, if not brought on, by impure air ; chorea, by fatigue of the muscles ; spinal diseases, by bad posture in sitting or in writing; indi- gestion and constipation, by too much restraint and sedentary habits; bad eyes, by bad positions of books, paper or light; nervousness, by too much pressure, too much worry, and last, but by no means least, by nervousness in those about them, where it is possible that the teacher is at fault." Dr. Young, in his exceptionally valuable report, remarks : f " There can hardly be a doubt that the faulty sanitary conditions of many school buildings and unwise methods of teaching have much to do with laying the foundations of future disease. . . . Digestive diseases, initiated in the school, often render the individual an invalid or a semi-invalid for life. The combination of such influences as bad air, overheating, stooping posi- tion and pressure upon the abdominal regions, and mental strain, are entirely capable of introducing these troubles/' Dr. G. Stanley Hall also adds testimony: J "When a child begins to go to school the change of his en- vironment is very great. Instead of constant activity, * Rowe's Physical Nature of the Child, p. 89. f Maine State Board of Health Report, p. 99. J Report of Proceedings Department of Superintendence, 189?, p. 163. 6 56 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. he must now sit still and keep still; instead of moving his hands and arms freely, the strain of effort is now focussed upon the very few tiny, pen-wagging muscles. The eyes, instead of moving freely, are confined in the zigzag treadmill of the printed line. It is no wonder, therefore, that the child so commonly loses weight on first entering school; that short-sightedness and other eye troubles increase almost regularly through the school period ; that headaches, anaemia, scoliosis, defects in development if not signs of disease, appear in the stomach, heart, and lungs, and especially in the nervous system, the gradual deterioration of which is hard to recognise." Says Dr. Agnew, in concluding his excellent article in the New York Medical Eecord : * "It seems to me that the very etymology of the word education enforces the idea that the child is to grow better and stronger up through his life, and that by proper regulation of his diets and management at home, by properly lighted school rooms and properly constructed desks, and a bet- ter regulation of his hours of study, he should reach a much higher type of life when he has reached the age of twenty-five years than when he has just been taken in hand with a view of giving him book knowledge. We cer- tainly should not damage the eye in the process of edu- cation, and I believe that the damage done the eye is to be taken as an index of that which is done to other organs of the body." There are many other phases of the question of the effects of school life on the physical health of the child, * New York Medical Record, 1877, p. 36. THE LOSSES OF THE SCHOOL. 57 which demand serious attention ; but the data and argu- ments already presented will abundantly substantiate the statement that our present methods of education are too expensive. Health is a prime requisite in the school. It is the foundation on which everything else must be built. In the light of this discussion, does it not seem that a school should be constructed that would in no way rob man of any of his natural glory? There is absolutely nothing in the legitimate field of intellectual activities that need deteriorate physical health. Eemove the in- centives to cram and overtension, give the school chil- dren pure air, freedom of movement, good food, and plenty of sleep, vitalize their work by living interest, and it is simply remarkable how much mental activity the brain will sustain and how such activity will react in producing health. The longevity of our great scien- tists and literary men abundantly shows this. There is no reason whatever why the school should bring loss to the child. CHAPTER IV. FUNDAMENTALS IN PLANNING A SCHOOL. " Thrice happy is the country child, or the one who can spend part of his young life among living things near to Nature's heart. How blessed is the little toddling thing who can lie flat in the sunshine and drink in the beauty of the ' green things growing.' who can live among other little animals his brothers in feathers and fur who can put his hand in that of dear Mother Nature and learn his first baby lessons without any meddlesome middleman ! " (Kate Douglas Wiggin.) IN the planning of an ideal school there are certain fundamentals which must be conserved. Good Health. Basic to every other consideration, good health must be recognised as the essential condi- tion and fundamental aim of all education. The value, therefore, of every contributing factor the school building, the teacher, the studies, the programme of ex- ercises, and the methods of instruction is determined by the degree it promotes health of body, mind, and soul. That education in the past has been unnaturally expensive in this particular has been the shame of the school room ; that it can and must reach higher fruition in the ascent of man is the responsible charge of civili- zation. Good health calls for pure air, purifying sunshine, good companionship, correction of past weaknesses, adequate illumination, proper nutrition, regular habits, 58 FUNDAMENTALS IN PLANNING A SCHOOL. 59 correct posture, suitable studies, good tools, healthful mental stimuli, and normal procedure in work. As President Hall has so well put it, " Health is whole- ness or holiness itself in its highest aspect." The Value of Sunshine and Light. With all a child's love for the outer world of beauty and his in- stinct for sunshine and light, it is no wonder that he is glad when the intermission or vacation is at hand. It is taken for granted that the growing plant must be placed in the window for full appropriation of the light ; but no one thinks of the similar needs and soul-crav- ings of the human plant. Dr. Edward Everett Hale, in his own glorious health, never tires of speaking of the importance of the sun-bath, and, with great delight, quotes Dr. Everett in speaking of going outdoors as " coming in," and of coming indoors as " going out," because of relations to the great world of Nature and sunshine. Are our school rooms flooded with light as they should be? Is every room so situated as to re- ceive the daily purification of direct sunshine ? Is there realization that a disease germ can not live in the light of the sun? Are the school grounds ample for the gathering of as many young colts as there are children ; and are the children turned loose to romp and play in the bath of the sun; or is theirs the benighted portion of the modern recess in a darkened and air-polluted room? Sunshine is a prime requisite in the culture of children. The healthiest man or woman is the one who lives most in the sunshine; and the school will always be defective until it presents more and more of the conditions of normal life. An old Italian proverb says, " Where the sun does not go the doctor goes." 60 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. The Love for Nature. Nature is the mother of all life, and in her garden the healthiest plants are to be grown. Every child is a born naturalist. His eyes are open to the glory of the stars, the beauty of flowers, the charm of life, and his ears to the music of a world of song. His innate interests need little to awaken them into a world of activity and to link him to that which will lift him up through Nature to Nature's God; but, too often, he leaves all this to enter the for- mal school, where the curtains are gradually drawn over the windows of his soul. He exchanges the great fruit- ful, illimitable universe, where the teacher could have led him to soul expansion and the discovery of truth, for a box twelve feet by twenty-six by thirty-two, where his soul takes its shape from the limited surroundings, and he goes forth in time to wear goggles because he can not look at the light. Is there no education better than that of the box? Is it necessary that the child shall surrender all his natural instincts, so promising and satisfying, for the artificial life of the average school? Are man's best interests conserved by making him in toto a sitting animal, with his nose in a book and with the muscles of the neck lengthened in order that he may bend his head over a table ? Shall we not rather look forward to the nobler school of the great outer world, where Nature is the basic study for the school's purposes, and brings the child's work into rela- tion with the living interests of the soul ? To know Na- ture, what an inestimable privilege ! To love Nature, how full of inspiration and delight! To be in accord with Nature, how safe the child for all the purposes of life and of heaven! FUNDAMENTALS IN PLANNING A SCHOOL. <;i How beautifully sings Longfellow of the illimitable field of Nature and her effective place in the education of a child: " And Nature, the old nurse, took The child upon her knee, Saying, ' Here's a story-book Thy Father has written for thee. " ' Come, wander with me,' she said, * Into regions yet untrod ; And read what is still unread, In the manuscript of God.' " And he wandered away and away With Nature, the dear old nurse, Who sang to him, night and day, The rhymes of the universe. " And whenever the way seemed long, Or his heart began to fail, She would sing a more wonderful song, Or tell a more marvellous tale." Inspiration. The greatest thing a child ever gets in the school or the adult in the college is not subject- matter, but heart contact with great personality. To be given the key of interest and to be inspired to great deeds is the summum bonum of all the pupil can get from the teacher. There is more education in a single hour in the imparted touch from a great soul than in years of mechanical school-room grind. It is not a question of long hours of the formal school or of what studies, but with whom. The student, be he man or child, who has been lifted to the heroics of inspiration and purpose, possesses the fundamentals of his educa- tion, to which everything else is accessory. Uplift, 62 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. vision, and inspiration these are the master-keys which unlock the doors of all progress and delight. The Play Instincts. There is that in the heart of the child which makes work easy when it is related to play. There is little educative value in drudgery. The child has a divine right to a life of joy, to an abundance of time for play, to the doing of the work of the school in ways in accord with his own stages of life, and to express his work in exercises of living interest. Requirement, therefore, must give way to spontaneity; fatalism, to choice; drudgery, to play; execution of tasks, to individual initiative. Under the inspiration of the right teacher, and with proper suggestion, the child's own innate interests are all-sufficient for the ac- complishment of work. Individuality. Individuality is the most precious thing among the fruits of the world. Society is rich from the fact that people are not all alike. Science, industry, art, and literature all reach their illimitable creations through this same cardinal factor, which has been fundamental in the evolution of a world of beauty and achievement. That the child learns much from others is pre-eminently true ; that his greatest de- velopment is reached through giving himself for others is just as true; but both of these have their highest realization in that development of his individuality which enables him to appropriate most for his own culture, and to give that which others have not. He may gain from others, but it must be by his own imi- tation. He may be directed by his teachers, but it must be by suggestion. Individuality, with all it may contain, is the precious thing in his personal enrich- FUNDAMENTALS IN PLANNING A SCHOOL. 63 ment of the world; and, therefore, its culture is of first importance. This is the height of all education; the most natural and yet the most difficult. Its con- servation is the lever which must overturn the foun- dations of the formal school. Individuality must be king. Normal Growth. The healthy plant grows by that which it appropriates and makes its own. Any attempt to force it can only result in ultimate weakness. Firm- ness and endurance come also by self-made victory. No strong character ever yet was made by coddling. The whole realm of divine economy is built fundamentally on the principle that growth is the result of self-appro- priation, and that strength is the product of struggle. The reward is " to him that overcometh." In the same way the child in the school must do his own work. There is little virtue in an exercise where the steps are all marked out for him. He must be given opportunity for choice, and to find his own way to results. He also must be an investigator and a creator. The best help is self-help. To be well helped, the child must be taught to help himself. This emphasizes the necessity for individual opportunity. No two children are exactly alike. Each must have that which is best for his own growth. Repetition of the History of the Race. That the child repeats the history of the race is undoubtedly true in the normal individual. This is evidenced in his natural interests, in his plays, and in that which seems to be best for his own growth and development. What, then, are the elements which should be incorporated in a scheme of consistent education? 64 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. 1. Love for Nature. Nature is the mother of all life, and it is in her cradle that the infant finds his growing strength and the convalescent is nourished back to life. To the untutored mind she expresses her- self in visible forms, and the soul of man finds fellow- ship in her kindred pastimes. The child's eternal query concerning the stars of the night and the flowers of the day, his love for the beauty of meadows green and grow- ing trees, and his delight in the presence of the running stream, the singing bird, and animal life are akin to the richest instincts in the history of primitive man. Happy is that child who, in his contact with artificial life, still has preserved to him his early love for the beautiful in the natural world. 2. Religion. The belief in immortality is instinc- tive in every soul. To primitive man the phenomena of Nature are the visible expressions of the infinite God. Man reaches his first realization of the ex- istence of deity and divine goodness not through a creed, but through the manifestations of the beauty, adaptation, and manifest design in the world about him. The immanent God has been, in the history of man in his struggle from infancy unto light, the basic consciousness which has rendered acceptable the doctrines of higher faith. Because of this historic fact of the manner which God deemed best for the develop- ment of racial man, is there not abundant suggestion for the normal education of the child? Is it not a good thing for a child to reach the early development of his religious consciousness through the growing realiza- tion of the evidence of design in all the beauty, correla- tion, and unity of the world about him and by living FUNDAMENTALS IN PLANNING A SCHOOL. 65 more in the presence ol the immanent God ? With such grounding of consciousness would not his belief be firmer because of the living " reason for the faith that is in him " ? Contemplation of Nature must lead to the evidence of design, and design must presuppose a designer. Contact with superior souls, through hero worship, leads to the realization of might and good- ness; and in the ground-work of might and goodness arise the loftiest ideals of a personal God. No creed ever yet spoke to the sons of men with the convincing power of the voice of Nature, " which cries aloud in all her works." Later on the doctrines of theology may well be taught, but the little child should be led to his funda- mental consciousness of God by contact with the mani- festations of God. There is that in the heroics of the mountains, in the majesty of the ocean surf, in the peacefulness of graceful landscape and limpid lake, in the eternal query of the stars, in the grandeur of the forests, in the exquisite beauty of the flowers, in the music of the birds, and in the adaptation and perfect unity of all life, which cradles the soul for indisputable belief in God and for the breathings of the " peace that passeth all understanding." 3. Contact with Soil. " God made the country, but man made the town." Happy is he who spent his early life on the farm in contact with soil and growing things. The child who has never dug the rich ground and crum- bled the nutrient soil with his hands, nor planted the seed which, under his fostering care, is to unfold into growing life, has been unfortunate indeed. To dig, to plant, and to nourish a plant as one's own child, what a necessary part in one's education! How seldom the por- 66 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. tion of direct contact with these things in the life of the city child, and yet how fundamentally necessary in the natural education of every individual, as it has ever been in the development of the race ! With all the movement of life more and more away from the country toward the artificiality of the city, it becomes the mis- sion of the school to bring back this touch with basal ele- ments, which have ever been the rich food of the soul. The healthy child must live in the sunshine, must touch the soil and grow things of life. We must not forget the garden which was man's first Eden. 4. Dominion over Life. "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and ove:f the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." Pets and animal companions are absolutely necessary in the education of a child. The affection existing between a boy and his faithful dog has no parallel in the whole realm of pure friendship. The fidelity of the dog, the companionship of the cat, and the musical song of the bird are all essential to the life of the normal child. The taming of the birds, the raising of little chickens, the feeding of the rabbits and squirrels, are fruitful exercises in the inculcation of gen- tleness, care for others, and good citizenship. The child who knows nothing of the delights of such comradeship is unfortunate indeed. There is wanting a very im- portant part of his wholesome life. The school can well afford the presence of the singing bird, the nimble squirrel, the graceful fish, and kindred forms of life that make the school room a miniature world and open up FUNDAMENTALS IN PLANNING A SCHOOL. 67 the rich study of animated Nature and its contribution to the dominion of man. 5. Fellowship. Individuality has its safeguard in the companionship of others. Never should a child be brought up in isolation, or in the exclusive companion- ship of his elders. He needs playmates and school- mates of his own age. The delights of having a chum, of belonging to a gang or team, must be vouchsafed to every child as his growing nature may seek to assert itself. Individualism and altruism are handmaids, and the more perfect the one is, the more it has to offer the other. The gang spirit, under proper direction, be- comes a fruitful factor in the establishment of good order, good government, and higher patriotism. The child who is reared by himself, for fear of pollution by touch with others, may attain to a doubtful degree of purity ; but he is a sickly plant, coddled in his weakness and unnatural in his imagination. The normal child needs fellowship for his own protection. 6. Construction. To invent, to design, and to con- struct have been the promising factors in the rise of man. In expression of the dormant potentialities of the race the child seeks to repeat his ancestral history. The high educative values of activity, order, and crea- tion establish the claim of design and construction to a major place in the exercises of the school. The child should be encouraged to make things for his plays and games and toys; instruments for his experiments, for the school, and for the home. The exercises in manual training must be related to service in play or work, to help the individual and to make happy his friends. The development of creative faculty is the highest mission 68 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. of the school. As the genius of man has always ex- pressed itself in constructive exercises, so must the child in like ways climb to the higher levels. The edu- cation which ignores creation makes man a servile creature of imitation, dependent in his every movement upon the fancy of others. 7. Mythland. In his love for story hearing, the child repeats the long and well-tried experiences of the world before the age of the alphabet and books. As primitive man reached a glorious elevation in his rise through story-telling to the heights of Athenian cul- ture, so the child should gain his first inspiration, his first love for heroic life, from the story-teller. It is difficult to overestimate the great value of this noble exercise in the inspiration of the younger child an exercise but poorly utilized in the schools. There is much in the great world of Nature which the child must find out for himself ; there is much also which he should gain from the story-teller and later on through the lec- turer. These exercises inspire to great determination, and give ofttimes the larger view which is essential in the proper accomplishment of individualistic endeavour. The story-teller is the children's friend, and their means of getting, by short-cut and in a nutshell, far-reaching glimpses into the world which others have trod. A most useless person in the school room is the teacher who tells everything ; " a consummation devoutly to be wished " is the story-teller of discrimination, who can unlock the portals of the great unknown and in- spire to enter, without herself gathering the rich fruits and flowers which must be the privilege of the inter- ested child. As in the early history of the race there FUNDAMENTALS IN PLANNING A SCHOOL. 60 was a time when the treasures of precious learning were handed down by story-telling, so in the early years of individual life is the period of greatest possibilities for gathering up, from mythland and narrative history, the elemental keys to a great world of inspiration and investigation. 8. Language. From the hearing of the story- teller the child himself has stories to tell. Effective speech is always the natural resultant of definite con- cept. When the child has something to say the art of expression is easy. The early language of the child should have little technique. The attentive ear to what is interesting leads to its own worthy imitation. Gram- mar, spelling, and writing may be necessary at their proper times, but the fundamental requisite is the en- kindled soul, the vivid imagination, and the definite concept something to say before the saying, and in- spiration to say the saying. Later on, the technicalities of speech and form have their places, but it is not early. To gain the most from the school, the child must be fresh for each stage of endeavour, must feel that each exercise fits the time and must be inspired to the doing. Speech is ever the product of something to say; and beauty of diction comes, not from grammatical analy- sis, but largely by imitation and soul expression. 9. The Widening Horizon. As man in the early stages of his race made his excursions from home over areas of constantly widening circles, so the child in his culture should have the wide angle which sweeps the entire realm commanded from his point of view. At each successive stage his vision comprehends the same things as in the preceding, but farther and more mi- 70 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. nutely and more relatedly. His central position is still the same, but his experience is wider, his comprehen- sion more extended, and his generalization more grasp- ing. If this is true, then the child is not hurt by travel through much of the world, by contact with the ele- ments of all Nature as they appear to him, or by rich association with those who will lift him into higher industry and invention. From the centre outward must be the inquiring look. The horizon is constantly wid- ening. The gaze may not cover the entire circle, but it sees over the same territory as before, but farther and better. 10. Tools. As with the race, so with the child, the tools for accomplishment must be proportionate in sim- plicity to his stages of growth. Never should that which can count for only a tool be taken for an end. Doubtless the early work of the formal school must have considerable to do with the acquisition of cer- tain alphabets of learning and the mastery of cr working tools; but the opening up of the nature" ..orld and its needs should suggest the need of the tool for the child's use. From contact with his own immedi- ate world of Nature and from concept formed by story- hearing, the child through imitation tells his own tale with vivid speech. He tells his story well, because he has something to say. He is finding his way to speech because there is need for that which is overflowing from within. In time he needs to communicate his thoughts to others in written form. This he can do best of all through drawing and, later on, by attempt at represen- tation of words by means of writing. The representa- tion of words by spelling then becomes necessary, but FUNDAMENTALS IN PLANNING A SCHOOL. 71 here also comes into play imitation. To do his work best the child should reproduce words elsewhere seen and recognised, just as far as he can; but never in his early years should he be limited to the use of words in the spelling determined proper for adults. Given the written representation of elemental sounds, the child should be encouraged to grapple with a word and represent it as best he can, as he also represents in drawing. To limit a child, in his attempt to record his stronger concepts, to the exact spelling of the few forms with which he is familiar, is to deny him all freedom in written expression. It is far better for him to express himself with unbridled liberty, and with many inaccuracies in spelling, than to be discouraged from attempt at all. Correct spelling is not a prime test, nor essential in the language of young children. Freedom, fluency, and expression demand that the child should have opportunity to represent himself as ^and uniquely as he may. There should be no ap- pliccw ftn of close laws in the determination of primary written language any more than there should be in elementary music composition. The growing strength, the self-evident need, the continued attempt, the lifting imitation, all need the natural growth which is the best safeguard of the expression of vigorous thought. So also in drawing, the child prefers the outline figure rather than the shaded relief. The pictorial representations of ancient drawings appeal more to the infant imagination than the beauty of rounded form. Even in his love for colour the child reaches back to an- cestral traits. It is said that aboriginal peoples do 7 72 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. not easily recognise a representation in black and white; to them the form in colour is more intelligible. So also with the child: colour appeals to him more, and he should have much of it in his early personal repre- sentation. Thus, through the child's own expression, through written language and drawing, he is led up to the stage where interpretation of the representations of others is to him necessary. Then that which by premature pres- entation might have appeared to him as mechanical and abstruse, becomes a living, meaningful exercise, and he responds with vivid interest to his profitable task. Even so must all the abstractions and difficulties of technical representation be subordinated to their true sequence in a scheme of scientific education. From Fundamentals to Accessories. So, therefore, in a fruitful education the things which are funda- mental must take precedence over the things which are purely accessory. Good health, the invigoration of sunshine, the uplift of personality, contact with Na- ture, love for the beautiful and true, individuality, and harmony with the laws of growth, are the prime es- sentials in the conservation of the school. The natu- ral sequence is from the soul outward, utilizing those media which are best for its own growth and the exer- cises which are the most fruitful in soul expansion. To reverse this universal law of being and growth, by plac- ing technicality first and Nature last, gives an arrest of development in all healthy interest and innate faculty. Technicalities have their places and times, but not in the early life of a race or an individual, where divine economy has established the necessity of unlimited vis- FUNDAMENTALS IN PLANNING A SCHOOL. 73 ion, living things, liberty in action, and fruitful growth. The fundamentals must precede. The accessories have their proper places. Details in penmanship, exact spelling, theoretical mathematics, the technique of grammar, the philosophy of history, mechanical drawing, trade industries and preparation, technical science, and second-hand information are all very important; but they are not fundamental, and therefore are empty husks on which to feed a young child. Even when they are introduced into the school they must be subordinated to the primeval laws which demand that contributory things should forever be ac- cessory to the fundamental. CHAPTER V. THE SCHOOL PLANT. DB. RICHAKDSON, in his Hygeia, a City of Health, has given us a beautiful description of a model city, believing, with Chadwick, that a city could be con- structed with any given mortality. His Hygeia is a city of 100,000 people, living in 20,000 houses, built on 4,000 acres of land, an average of 25 persons to an acre. Tall houses, overshadowing the streets and massing peo- ple at given points, are nowhere permitted, excepting in sections devoted to business. The substratum of the city is of two kinds: clay in the northern and highest part, and gravel in the southern and southeastern. The houses are all built on arches of solid masonry, and there are no underground rooms of any kind. Through these subways currents of water continually flow; and into these are the washings of the city. The streets are everywhere paved with asphalt, so that there is no dust or dirt and but little noise. The houses are built of glazed brick, impermeable to water, and the bricks are perforated transversely with a wedge-shaped opening at each end, so that the walls, while continuous in surface without, are honeycombed within, and through these openings ventilation is effected. The inner surface of the walls is left in the natural brick but finished in different colours, generally gray. There are no layers 74 THE SCHOOL PLANT. 75 of poisonous papers and mouldy paste; and the walls can be washed at any time. As with the brick, so also with the mortar and wood employed in building: they are rendered, as far as possible, free from moisture. Sea sand containing salt, and wood saturated with salt, are nowhere used. The chimneys are all connected with central shafts, into which the smoke is drawn, and, after passing through a gas furnace to destroy the free car- bon, is discharged colourless into the open air. Every room is warmed by a fireplace which also heats the air moving freely through the honeycombed walls. The roofs are almost flat, and, covered with asphalt and barricaded with tastefully painted iron palisades, make outdoor grounds or flower gardens. The floors of the kitchens, sleeping rooms, and bath- rooms are slightly raised in the centre and are of smooth gray tile. In the living rooms the floors are of hard wood, kept bright and clean by beeswax and turpentine. There are no carpets. In the sleeping rooms twelve hundred cubic feet of space is allowed for each sleeper; and from these rooms all unnecessary articles of furni- ture and clothing are excluded. The buildings being all of one story, there are no stairs. Wherever, for special reasons, there must be two stories, the bath-room is on the midway landing. The houses front both ways. Be- tween the fronts on the interior is an open space for playground and garden. The house-drains are con- stantly flushed into the subways, which are ventilated through tall shafts by pneumatic engines. All the gas and water pipes enter the houses from the subways. Tobacco and spirituous liquors are banished from the city. There are no massing of makers of clothing, etc., 76 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. into large factories, but each class of workers is accom- modated with convenient quarters similar to those en- joyed by the professional classes. The laundries are placed outside of the city and are under official in- spection. The sick are cared for in hospitals. The city is well provided with baths, swimming pools, play- grounds, gymnasia, libraries, lyceum and concert halls, etc. Pure water is supplied to each house, but through iron pipes. Leaden pipes are forbidden. Transporta- tion is effected by a subway system under central avenues ; so the streets are always free from dirt, noise, and the massing of people. For the few persons who die from natural causes the burial process is retained. The bodies are buried in artificially prepared carbonifer- ous earth, in which the growing of rapid vegetation soon appropriates to itself the elements of the bodies. There being in a short 'time no bodies whose resting- places are to be marked, the monumental slabs are placed in a temple of historic records. Such, in brief, are the cardinal outlines of Dr. Eich- ardson's City of Health. Does it not contain many suggestions for the planning of an ideal school? Let us consider some of the specifications suggested also by other ideals here and there throughout the world. An ideal school should be built in a park. At least, it should have adequate grounds, preferably not in the heart of the city. There is probably no other assem- blage of animals, cared for by man, which in their culture are accorded so little ground, play and breathing space, as children. No one would think of building a college without ample surrounding grounds. Why should there be less provision for the children? THE SCHOOL PLANT. 77 SOME SUGGESTIVE SCHOOLS. The school children of Andover, Massachusetts, are exceptionally blessed in this particular. Here is a mag- nificent campus of perhaps twenty acres, with extended frontage and oblong shape. The school children, about six or seven hundred in all, are accommodated in three buildings the primary school, the grammar school, the high school so situated that each school has approxi- mately a third of the ground for air, light, play, and gardens. How can a city better appropriate its parks? The Pestalozzi-Froebel House, of Berlin, is worthy of careful consideration. Here, practically in the heart of the city, is a magnificent park of four or five acres, with noble forest trees, playgrounds, gardens, animal yards, fountains, and other effective adjuncts to the school. The school is a garden home, and, from lodge gate to the attractive centre, is delightfully planned to give the children their education under cir- cumstances in contact with Nature. One of the suggestive schools of the world is the Abbotsholme, near Rocester, Derbyshire, England. The school buildings, surrounded by gardens and or- chards, are in the middle of 133 acres of magnificent school property. The Abbotsholme stands 320 feet above sea level on the western slope of the Dove, which it overlooks. The surrounding country is remarkably fine and open, and, being nearly all wooded hillside and meadows, is like a vast park. Here are commodious sunlit buildings, shops, beautiful gardens, grounds for tennis, cricket, football, and tobogganing, a fine river for swimming a school of Nature in the midst 78 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. of Nature. Certainly this is a private school, made self- sustaining by its own ideals and enterprise; but when, in great economic industries, and even in university training, did the state ever admit that it can not com- pete with private enterprise? In these days, when the smaller farms fail to bring compensating returns, why not utilize them once again for the culture of children? In Wales there is a farm school of four thousand acres for the training of the sons of noblemen who are to become landholders. Almost every kind of industry related to the farm has its place in the work of this school. What a magnificent place this would be for the application of President Hall's seventy different trades and occupations which he describes as belonging to the education of the New England farm boys a quar- ter of a century ago ! Indeed, it is said that President HalFs suggestions are being utilized in the operations of this training school. The George Junior Kepublic, of Freeville, New York, is certainly a very interesting institution. From a summer camp the little school has grown to be a permanent community. The site is a farm, which con- tains an administration building; the " Eepublic " build- ing, containing kitchen, restaurants, hotel, and lodging- house; the school-house, containing also banks and stores; the court-house and community offices, cottages for boys and girls, a hospital, a barn, a bath-house and laundry, carpenter and machine shops, and the garden. The high educational value of the plan is shown from the fact that the citizenship is composed of boys and girls, of ages twelve to eighteen, many of whom might THE SCHOOL PLANT. 79 be said to have had previously a strong criminal ten- dency. Here, nearly two hundred in number, they are organized into a practical business community, with their own officers, laws, penalties, and participations. Each citizen must work for his living at some selected vocation, and is paid for his services in community money, from which he must support himself. Those who are the most industrious and prosperous may live at their " Hotel Waldorf/' while others may find what they can pay for at the ordinary hotel, or at the lodging- houses and restaurants. Every offender is promptly dealt with by trial in the court-house, and with fine or confinement in the jail. Competent directors are at hand to render guidance and assistance as may be needed. The institution is largely supported by the earnings from the farm. Under the, limited revenues certainly the plan can not be ideal; but its successful career, now for seven years, shows what can be done, even in reformation, by giving boys and girls responsi- bility and self-interest in work which is not entirely artificial. A very unique school is the McDonogh Farm School, located eight miles from Baltimore. The school is situated on a fine old colonial estate containing 835 acres. Forests of nut-bearing trees for birds and squir- rels and boys, meadows, clear-running brooks, fertile soil, gardens, vineyards, and orchards of fruit trees make this a rare spot. The property represents $1,500,- 000, and is a noble monument to John McDonogh, who fifty years ago closed his will with this pathetic expres- sion: "I was near forgetting that I had one small re- quest to make, one little favour to ask, and it shall be 80 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. the last. It is that it may be permitted annually to the children of the schools to plant and water a few flowers round my grave." One hundred and fifty boys, of ages ten to sixteen, are here enrolled. Their usual school studies are not neglected; but they are also trained in the exercises of the farm. Gardening, care of animals, bee-keeping, carpentry, wood-carving, draft- ing, broom-making, military drill, music all offer their valuable contributions. The Rudimentary Society for boys is a very interesting part of the schooling. The rights of the individual are always to be respected. A boy's name placed near a bird's nest or a squirrel's hole protects it sacredly. This little community with its peculiar features is certainly very suggestive. At the Casa de Piedra Ranch, in the Ojai Valley, among the mountains of southern California, may be found a school of exceptional interest, under the direc- tion of Sherman Day Thacher, of Yale, and his capable assistants. Some thirty boys, largely from the East and preparing for the better colleges, are received. Each one, on admittance, is given a horse to be his prop- erty and for which he must care. The school is semi- military in its conduct. The boys all rise early and attend to their part of the ranch life. Then the morn- ing is spent in hard, fruitful study. When the after- noon signal comes, every boy mounts his horse and away ove* the mountains in gallop and fun. The early even- ing has its cultured social life, until the retiring bell closes the day's activity. Notwithstanding the large amount of time given to field and mountain sports, this school has no difficulty in preparing its students for the best of Eastern colleges. THE SCHOOL PLANT. 81 But how, says some one, shall we secure to the chil- dren this abundance of air and playground in our mod- ern concentrated life in cities ? By building the schools in central parks or on suburban farms, as will be shown further on. One of the unfortunate tendencies of American life is that man is becoming less and less a walking animal. It is said that in Switzerland, where the children spend excessively long hours in the school, the physical health is exceptionally good, and that this has it's explanation in the long walks over the moun- tains, which the children must take in order to get to school.* It is to be regretted that this magnificent exer- cise is rapidly becoming a lost art in America. The child who, because of physical weakness, can not go to school unless the school is in the immediate neighbour- hood, is hurt more by school-room confinement than he is benefited in his education. The Jacob Tome Institute, at Port Deposit, Mary- land, is to be one of the most promising model schools of America. Here private endowment is offering a worthy substitute for the usual system of public educa- tion. In Port Deposit there are no schools supported at public expense; there is no school board of changing constituency to limit the reaching of lofty ideals. The Institute has recently purchased a magnificent campus of one hundred acres or more, a hundred feet above the Susquehanna, the beautiful windings of which it overlooks, and there it is now proceeding to erect a million dollars' worth of buildings, with all their de- lightful surroundings and opportunities, for the accom- * Educational Review, vol. xxix, p. 92. 82 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. modation of two thousand pupils. The fact that this site is on a bluff, above the town, which it overhangs, and some distance away, presents no engineering diffi- culties to the vigorous management of this school, which seeks the best in education. In 1894 Mr. W. F. Wheeler, a graduate of Harvard and an educator of many years' experience, submitted to the citizens of Los Angeles, California, a plan for the centralization of all the schools of that city (popu- lation then 100,000) in a general school park. What appears at first thought perhaps impracticable resolves itself on maturer consideration into a scheme of high economic and suggestive value. Mr. Wheeler's article * * " The recent appointment of Professor Search as Superin- tendent of Public Schools in Los Angeles, and the delivery of his address An Ideal Public School System at a reception given in his honour, September 17, 1894, at Hazard's Pavilion, also his neces* sary demands for more accommodations to seat two thousand or more scholars and to establish an industrial high school, all involving the necessity of issuing school bonds to a great amount, make it a fit opportunity to present to the public my long-cher- ished plan of a school park, to carry out, in accordance with the spirit and progress of present civilization, more successfully, practically, and economically the very same theories of teaching that Professor Search so justly advocates. "The plan is this: There shall be established by the city a park of suitable dimensions, say not less than two hundred acres, in a healthful locality near the city limits, say the west side, in which shall be located all the public schools of the city grouped according to their different grades primary, secondary, and so on. These school barracks should be made fire, wind, flood, and earthquake proof, of simple architecture, say Doric, only one story high, with no side windows, but lighted from above. They should be so constructed that they would connect closely with a central audience-room. Each grade of schools would be a community by THE SCHOOL PLANT. 83 supplies a very valuable link in this chain of construc- tion. I take pleasure in quoting largely from his con- tribution. itself and under one management. Playgrounds would be at- tached to each group of buildings. Broad verandas on either side of the school barracks would afford ample shelter from sun and rain. Closely adjoining each group of barracks would be the industrial barracks, which, of course, would include the indus- trial, kitchen to provide the noon lunch for the scholars, complete in its equipment for industrial education suitable to each school department. u All these school barracks throughout the park should be lighted, heated, ventilated, swept, dusted, and disinfected by one source of power, probably electricity applied to machinery and labor-saving devices. " The grounds of this school park should be laid out aestheti- cally, yet be one grand kindergarten adapted to the needs of the schools in all the grades, with broad and extensive walks and avenues for exercise, observation, and military drill, with abun- dance of room for field sports for the older scholars, with arbore- tum, herbarium, zoological garden, museum, and, last but not least, a miniature ranch or garden complete in detail, systemati- cally and scientifically conducted. " All the labour in the industrial department and in the park should be done, as far as possible and practicable, by details of scholars under qualified instructors in outdoor work and play, especially the play, when the unconscious instruction should be omnipresent and omnipotent a great desideratum in our public schools to-day. " This school park should be made accessible to the whole city by a system of electric railways that would gridiron the city at suitable distances apart. This system of free transportation of scholars must be an exclusive annex of the school park and belong exclusively to the city. These school cars will be especially adapted to school work, lighted from above and not on the sides, which are closed. These cars, when they reach the barracks, can, if necessary, be turned into an annex to the school barracks as 84 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. We are now ready to put together many co-ordi- nating parts from these described ideals in our gen- eral specifications for the building of an ideal school. Plans for an Ideal School Building. The school site should be high and dry, with perfect natural drain- age for its own waters, but receiving nothing from higher land. The sub-soil should be natural and not artificial, containing no organic matter. It should be in character of gravel, marl, lime, and sand ingredient, and recitation rooms or as the school room itself. They could be used in the evening foriree night schools all over the city in a word, they are a school room on wheels. The central power for moving the cars should be located in the park, which also would furnish the power required within the park. The conductors and motor- men should be qualified by education and character to be instruc- tors in the school room or outside of it when the schools are in session. " All the official business of the Board of Education would be done in the park or immediately adjoining, also the boarding houses for teachers and outside instructors. Of course, the police regulations must necessarily be very strict; no use of tobacco, intoxicating liquor, profanity, obscenity, or immorality of any kind that would furnish in any way a demoralizing object-lesson to scholars or teachers, could possibly be allowed. " With regard to the expense of such a change, if the school- park system were adopted, the present school buildings could be sold. The proceeds, together with the increased values of the school park and of surrounding properties resulting from improve- ments made in the park, would be more than adequate for cost of park, buildings, cars, and school-railway system. Whatever the first cost, current expenses of public schools would be greatly reduced, better health of pupils would result from improved hygienic plans, and the problem of industrial public schools would be solved." (W. F. Wheeler, in Los Angeles Evening Express, October 20, 1894.) THE SCHOOL PLANT. 85 should be tested by boring. In the language of Dr. Galton,* " A porous sub-soil not encumbered with vegetation and protected from impurities, with a good fall for drainage, not receiving or retaining the water from any higher ground, and the prevailing winds blow- ing over no marshy or unwholesome ground, will, as a general rule, afford the greatest amount of protection from disease of which the climate will admit." The exposure should be to the southeast. On such a site should be the buildings, the play- grounds, and the gardens of the school. The building itself should face the southeast,! as this arrangement carries the sun-bath to every room, and, with the changes of the day, gives the degrees of direct light and shade adapted to the usual school hours. The foundations could not be better built than on arches of solid masonry, as proposed by Dr. Eichardson.J The walls of the building should be of brick, imper- vious to moisture or absorption of organic refuse. The porosity of ordinary building materials is much greater than is generally supposed. If to a large block of sandstone two pieces of gas pipe are attached, but on opposite sides and perpendicular to the sides, and the exterior of the sandstone is coated with thick paint, so that the paint forms an air-tight box with the only openings through the gas pipes, and one pipe is con- nected with a supply of gas, the porosity of the stone is * Gallon's Healthy Hospitals, p. 29. f Kotelmann's School Hygiene, p. 36. J Richardson's Hygeia, a City of Health. 86 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. sufficient to permit a Very good burning flame on the other side of the block, even if the intervening thick- ness measures a foot or more. It is also possible to affect the flame of a candle by blowing with a small bellows through a dry brick wall. Galton tells of an experiment made in New York by Putnam, which " showed that with every means taken to prevent porosity or cracks, the inflow through the walls amounted to nearly 5,400 cubic feet per hour in a room containing only a little over 3,000 cubic feet of air space, when the outside air was about 36 Fahr., and that inside varied 72 to 90 Fahr." * This in itself would not be bad, because of its help to ventilation; but, when these porous walls become filled with stagnant moisture, effluvia, and other un- wholesome absorptions, their use for school-houses of health becomes questionable. The walls, therefore, might well be of glazed brick without, and of vitrified tile, of soft pleasing tint, within. All the wood-work should be of hard wood, and the floors in particular be close in grain, with no cracks, and rendered sanitary and easily cleansed by treatment with beeswax and turpentine. For rooms like those here described i. e., of one story f a metallic ceiling, properly painted, would answer very well. There should be no stud partitions, but wherever the same might be unavoidable they should be made of metallic lath and non-porous cement. * Gallon's Healthy Hospitals, p. 56. f For intermediate ceilings of buildings of more than one story special deadening must be used, or the ordinary metallic ceiling will make a noisy sounding-board. THE SCHOOL PLANT. 87 All sharp angles in corners and edges should be avoided by using concave surfaces, in order to facilitate perfect cleaning. The jambs of windows and doors should also be rounded. The doors should be equipped with transoms and glass panels and open toward the cor- ridors. A room so constructed would present no ab- sorbing surfaces, and could be easily cleansed in en- tirety. When we reflect that, according to Hesse,* 35,000 bacteria have been found in every cubic metre of air of a school room at the end of the session; and, ac- cording to Ignatieff,f that a pupil would thus in a five hours' session inhale 44,655 germs; and that Eris- mann J has found many kinds of micro-organisms and moulds in the school room; and that the death of cer- tain animals has been produced* by injection of liquids saturated with condensed vapours carrying the toxic products of the school room it seems rational that we should adopt, for the preservation of the health of the children, the same measures deemed necessary in our better hospitals. Accumulations of carbonic-acid gas are certainly to be avoided; but even these are not nearly so dangerous to certain susceptible children as other toxic products not so easily detected. The buildings should be of one story only. There should be no basement rooms of any kind; but the superstructure should rest on solid arches of masonry, thoroughly ventilated, warmed, and kept perfectly dry. The ceilings, for a building of this character, * Kotelmann's School Hygiene, pp. 65-73. t Ibid. t Ibid. ' * Ibid. 8 88 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. should be, in general, fourteen feet high, or more if the size of the room will permit good acoustic prop- erties.* The room should open into a continuous outer cor- ridor or colonnade, inclosed with glass during the win- ter time, but open during the spring, summer, and autumn. The illumination of the school room should be from above, which is the plan decreed by Nature and to which the eye is adjusted. Through milk-white, translucent glass the light should be flooded into the room by ceil- ing areas sufficiently large and well-distributed to reach equally every portion of the room and without possibil- ity of shadow. This is rendered possible by the build- ings being of one story only. The walls should be entirely without reflection, and carry a soft shade of light green. f If because of any necessity the room can not be so well flooded with light, the shade of the wall colour might well be a light buff. The crayon boards should be of dark-green composi- tion, or of natural slate, blue-black, J with fine texture and without grit. The height above the floor should be from two feet four inches in the primary rooms to * The height of ceiling must also be largely dependent on the character of the warming apparatus and air circulation. Archi- tects usually estimate that a room of sixteen feet ceiling requires twice as much heat as a room of twelve feet ceiling, or even more. f The Brickbuilder, vol. vi, p. 267. j Kotelmann's School Hygiene, p. 162. Hall's Health of School Children, p. 17, THE SCHOOL PLANT. 89 three feet in the higher rooms; the width should be four feet six inches. The chalk receiver should be two inches wide, and should not filtrate the dust into hid- den receptacles, unless connected with exhaust. No crayon should be used which will create dust. The slate should be cleansed with a wet sponge. Kotel- mann prefers crayon of a pale yellow,* which would be very good for the dark-green surface. The teacher's crayon board should be balanced by weights, and rise and fall in order to preserve the line of writing at shoulder level, as in many excellent schools of Conti- nental Europe, particularly the new Cantonal Normal School of Lausanne, Switzerland. There should be no side windows in the room for illuminating purposes, but on the side opening into the corridor or colonnade there should be windows through which the children can look out on the school gardens. There might also be overhead openings on opposite sides of the room for natural ventilation in very warm weather, but these should be closed and screened at other times. In rooms requiring direct sunlight for projection, there should certainly be window openings or other apertures on the side of proper exposure. By this plan of illumination it will be seen that the light is entirely from overhead, which is Nature's plan. There is no direct sunlight, and yet the room is flooded with pure white light, well distributed and nearly free from conflicting shadows. Through views commanding the gardens the child still looks out on the natural world, but these corridor * Kotelmann's School Hygiene, p. 168. 90 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. windows are shaded, and are overcome by the superior flood of light from above. The ventilation of the room should be effected through walls that breathe. The walls in Richard- son's Hygeia are honeycombed by the bricks, imperme- able to water, being perforated transversely with a wedge-shaped opening at each end into which no mortar is inserted, and with all openings communicating into each other. The outer layer of brick is glazed and pre- sents an unbroken surface. The air admitted into this honeycomb should be taken from higher levels and not from the ground, as in all ordinary methods. The warming of the building should be by tempering the honeycombed air by electric heaters in the walls.* The air, admitted through all walls at heights above the head level, should be removed by equally well-dis- tributed openings in the floor by mechanical exhaust. In summer time the air should be cooled by mechanical process, giving the negative of our present winter ne- cessities. The corridors also should be mechanically warmed and ventilated during the time of their winter inclosure. Each room should have its adjacent cloak-room, thor- oughly warmed and subject to exhaust. In like manner the closet and lavatory system should be by accommo- dations in near-at-hand parts of the building. The * The wonderful development of electricity and the ease of its distribution by wires render perfectly feasible this means of uni- form distribution of warmth in buildings. The marvellous dis- coveries in liquid air and its application are very suggestive for expedients in the reversal in summer of our present methods of tempering the winter air. THE SCHOOL PLANT. 91 usual method of herding children into closets is objec- tionable. Children are entitled to some privacy as well as {heir elders, and besides such places should be for their use at any desired time and not at the general recess, when the inclination to play and to avoid pub- licity tempts them to neglect and to irregularity in habits. The lavatories and closets should be finished in white marble with white enamelled upper walls, and should be flooded with direct sunshine and thoroughly ventilated. They should open into the cloak-rooms. The lavatories should contain drinking water, distilled, free from lead, and supplied at proper temperature. The cloak-rooms should be separated for boys and girls and be equipped with individual lockers. The building should have its studios, laboratories, and workshops grouped, adapted, and equipped for their respective purposes; its teachers' rooms; its play room and open court; gymnasium and drill hall; libraries ; auditorium ; art corridor ; lunch rooms ; plant and animal room. Without, it should have its gardens, playgrounds, and model park. As far as possible the school premises should constitute a miniature world. The equipment of each room should be adapted to its specific function. Why should all rooms be equipped alike? Certainly it should not be because of the pov- erty of inventive mind. In any given school room the furniture should not be such as to demand uniformity of posture. If a child must have much of his school indoors, he should be permitted to stand up, or sit down, or to move, as Nature prompts him. This question of furnishings will be discussed at greater length fur- ther on. 92 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. The building and its appurtenances should be such as to appeal to the artistic sense. The architecture should be simple but effective. Within, restful colour- ing, pictures of art, artistic decorations and curios, aquaria, and graceful flowers; without, the climbing vine, the fountain and its living life, here and there an heroic statue. These, with the graceful hills, the native forests, the growing fields, the limpid streams, and miniature lake, and their abounding life, and all the surroundings of the park, should make the school a place of beauty and imparted ideals. " Yes," remarks Mr. Taxpayer, " but how about get- ting so much ground for the school? It seems to me your park calls for the expenditure of a good deal of money." Perhaps it may, but we have no difficulty in getting sufficient acreage for our stock farms, and that too often very close to our cities. However, further on it will be shown that the expense would be really not as great as it may seem. Even if the full plan of the larger school park can not be realized, there are many ways of reaching these ideals on a smaller scale right in the heart of our cities. Many delightful schools of this kind are already in operation. Reference has already been made to the schools of Andover, Mass. Madame Claverie's beautiful Casa de Rosas at Los Angeles, Cal., is a delightful exam- ple of what may be done in this way. Here, perhaps, was the most artistic school ever designed in America. The building was largely one story, and in architecture an adaptation of the Moorish, which has expressed itself so well in southern California. Within, the rooms were THE SCHOOL PLANT. 93 chaste in soft colouring, in graceful outlines, adapted furnishings and suggestive decorations. The building faced both outward and inward, a delightful inner court of beautiful outlines, fountain, and semi-tropical vegeta- tion being formed by the surrounding buildings. With- out the building were the children's gardens and a cano- pied playground, with climbing vines almost covering the outer walls, while the boundaries of the school premises were walks of beautiful pepper-trees, hedges of roses, and orange orchards. The whole school, in all its correlating parts and effective unity, was the dream of a poet, the ideal of an educator, and the reali- zation of years of sacrifice and toil. The name Casa de Eosas is no more beautiful and effective than was this delightful school in glorious ideals and inspiration in the days of its suggestive career. That its earnest creator should pay the penalty that marks the lives of those who live to present ideals by which evolution reaches its more perfect realization, is the repeated story, many times told in the history of an advancing world. Happy were the children who breathed the de- lightful air of this suggestive school, and many will be the schools that have caught inspiration from the Casa de Rosas. In larger and more magnificent ways the great Stan- ford University is the most suggestive style of archi- tecture, perhaps, in the world, for adaptation to the purposes of an ideal school. It is itself an adaptation of the mission architecture of southern California, and monumentalizes these glorious ideals which should be the pride of all America. The missions themselves were great industrial schools for the elevation of the children 94 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. of Nature, and suggest much for utilization in a school that should be equally broad in its purposes. Here, at Stanford, in the centre, is a great oblong quadrangle, 586 feet long and 246 feet wide, containing three and a quarter acres, paved with asphalt and ornamented with fountains and clumps of effective vegetation. All around this inner quadrangle or patio is a continuous colonnade of noble arches and rich colouring, the colon- nade making a continuous walk of nearly half a mile. Without this colonnade, and opening on it, are the groupings of class rooms, laboratories, libraries, lecture rooms, administration offices, etc., all one story in height. The roofing is of rich red tile, giving an effect- ive but artistic capping to this most unique school struc- ture in all the world. Between the several groupings of departmental rooms, but through continuous arches of the beautiful colonnade, are the entrances, foot walks, and driveways to the open patio, Without the first quadrangle, but widely separated from it, is now building a second quadrangle of archi- tecture entirely inclosing the first; and at the ends of the second quadrangle are designed other groupings of longitudinal buildings. The original plan provides for indefinite expansion, without crowding or distortion. Surrounding this ideal series of structures is the great Stanford farm, with here and there other buildings of greater height, for museum, gymnasia, chapel, mechan- ic arts hall, dormitories, and dwellings. Stanford Uni- versity is the practical realization of great but new ideals in school architecture, which with much profit may be adapted for the specific purposes of other educa- tional institutions. THE SCHOOL PLANT. 95 Gathering together these suggestions of Dr. Eich- ardson's City of Health, the schools of Andover, the Pestalozzi-Froebel House, Abbotsholme, the George Junior Republic, the McDonogh Farm School, the Jacob Tome Institute, the Casa de Eosas, and the real- ized great Stanford University, and incorporating the fundamental specifications already presented, let us eee now if we can not construct a school plant of greater efficiency in promoting the educational interests of the child. GENERAL DEDUCTIONS. The plan comprehends a school system of five thou- sand children. By reference to a subsequent chapter, it will be understood that the plan of organization is to do away with the mechanical grading of schools into twelve grades, which never have corresponded to their original intention, and to substitute a grouping into four departments, based largely on the great nascent periods of growth. These departments may be known as the play school, the elementary school, the interme- diate school, and the high school or gymnasium. Pref- erably, each department is to be accommodated in its own building. If the school is perfect, it will better hold its constituency in health and in culture. This would result in there being as many, or almost as many, in the high school as in the lower schools. To whatever extent it is not perfect, reduction must be made in each succeeding stage of work. If the city contains more than 5,000 children say 20,000 the number of build- ings can be quadrupled. If the number is a fraction of 96 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. 5,000, the quadrangles, in number or in size, can be increased or diminished proportionately. DESIGN FOB A PLAY SCHOOL AND ALSO FOR A PRIMARY SCHOOL. 56 School Rooms 24 Children per Room Total, 1,344 Children. P A R K\ P A R.K 8 J 1 1 1 __ CORRIDOR CORRIDOR GARDEN GARDEN GARDEN I 1 CORRIDOR : GARDEN CORRIDOR | | CORRIDOR | : . 1 GAP ! ! c tDEN ! GARDEN j GYMNASIUM AND PLAY ROOM I CORRIDOR GARDEN GAP GARDEN o DEN ! ! GARDEN c ) CORRIDOR CORRIDOR c 1 GARDEN' GARDEN \ CORRIDOR CORRIDOR \ PARK PARK Plan capable of indefinite expansion. A building of this design, either for the kinder- garten or play school, or for the elementary (or alpha- betic) school, should be located in the centre of a sec- tion of the park, the section containing not less than THE SCHOOL PLANT. 97 ten acres. The building would cover an area 372 feet by 380 feet. If the courts between the quadrangles could be greater, it would be all the better. The outer wall of each quadrangle is solid and gives a definite boundary to the more valuable school property. This outer wall is of glazed brick of cream colour, and is made artistic by architectural relief and a covering of vines. For the clinging of the vines the glazed walls in such sections should be trellised. As will be seen, the plan of architecture compre- hends an inner central building, surrounded by a garden court not less than forty feet wide. Around this inner court is the first school quadrangle, with continuous corridor or colonnade facing inward. Separated by another court, also forty feet wide or more, is the sec- ond quadrangle of buildings, with corridor or colonnade also facing inward. The school rooms are approximately 28 by 32 feet, are illuminated from overhead, and otherwise finished, ventilated, and warmed as previously described in this chapter. The school rooms have their convenient ward- robes and lavatories, not here represented, but in loca- tions elsewhere suggested. The school rooms look out, through interior win- dows and doors, on the broad corridor, and command views of the inner gardens and vine-covered walls be- yond. During the winter time these corridors are in- closed in glass and make the winter conservatories ; but in the milder months they are open and constitute con- tinuous colonnades. The gardens are not less than forty feet wide, have their broad mid-walks with fountains and aquaria at 98 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. each corner, and their beds for culture assigned to each class and pupil. Here and there are statuary and houses for pet animals. In the gardens also should be abundant places for and invitations to the birds to build their nests. Within the central patio or garden court is the large stormy-day play room, which, in the buildings designed for older pupils, is the gymnasium, but here is also used, as occasions may require, for an auditorium and exhibition hall. The administration offices might be in this central building. The passages from building to building are through covered pavilions which are inclosed in winter time. There are also exits at other points, as indicated in the design. This design omits details and is not submitted in hard-and-fast lines, but merely as suggestion for adap- tation as conditions may deem advisable. The diagonal facing of the building permits the sunshine to reach all the gardens and every corridor. The rooms, illuminated from above, are flooded with light almost as constant and abundant as that of the outer world. It will be remembered that the rooms are all of one story and are built on well-ventilated and warmed arch- ways of solid masonry. There are no basement rooms and no stairways. Without the building is the park, of sloping sward, forest and fruit trees, running water, pavilions, play- grounds, gardens, etc. There are no " keep-off-the- grass " signs. THE SCHOOL PLANT. 99 DESIGN FOR GKAMMAR SCHOOL OR HIGH SCHOOL. The quadrangle architecture is also designed for a school of older pupils, with certain modifications. The inner building should contain gymnasiums, instead of play room, with baths and swimming pools in direct connection. The inner building also should contain an ever-ready auditorium, smaller lecture rooms, music room, and the administration offices. The inner quadrangle might face outward and to- ward the exterior quadrangle. This would transform the inner court into a gymnasium court, where the pre- scribed physical exercises could be conducted in the open air. As this inner court would then be surrounded by solid walls, basket-ball and other kindred games could here be immediately under the eye of the physical director; although still better fields for these amuse- ments would be provided in the school park. The sec- ond court might well be wider than in the play school, preferably eighty feet. The central building also should be crowned with an observatory for astronomical and meteorological pur- poses, and a horticultural hall might be provided, al- though this latter is not especially advisable, as the inner gardens and the field gardens in the summer and the winter corridors present abundant opportunity for plant culture, excepting of larger tropical forms. The park without should contain larger gardens and playgrounds for team work and free exercises. It should also have its well-directed fields for applied sciences and constructive exercises, expressing themselves in experi- mental agriculture, electric stations, hydraulics, kite- 100 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. flying, weather bureaus, house construction, bridge- building, etc. " I admit," says Dr. Economist, " the great beauty and desirability of a school so located and constructed. It would return the school to its legitimate place in the field of Nature. It would bless the children with .soil in which to dig and plant, with animated life to study, an abundance of pure air, sunlight, and playground, and a hundred other desirable things denied in the barren life of most schools. Undoubtedly the children would enjoy better health under this and other provisions which, I infer, you propose to further present ; but that which perplexes me is how you are going to give such a school to the children in our thickly populated cities." In the original planning of a city the first thing to be thought of should be the children and their proper culture. Adequate school premises should be provided; and tributary to these should be all the other industries of life, which certainly have no higher purpose in man's ambition than to confer wealth on the rising generation. Why should there not be in every city a broad reserva- tion like the Executive Park in the city of Washington, or like the Boston Common, or the City Park in Albany, devoted to the culture of children? Or what other better way is there of utilizing our present city parks for the higher purposes of man? Such appropriation would only add to the beauty of the parks themselves, and would make them none the less the pride and enjoyment of the people. But the founders of cities are not always so far-see- ing or economic in their planning. We must reconstruct the city as it is. We might utilize our central parks; GENERAL PLAN FOR A SCHOOL COMMUNITY. 5,000 pupils. s HIGH SCHOOL PARK FIELD SPORTS 5 ACRES GRAMMAR SCHOOL PARK HIGH SCHOOL GRAMMAR SCHOOL 10 ACRES 10 ACRES GARDENS 6 ACRES ADMIN- ISTRATION D Z]/ z ACRES GARDENS 5 ACRES PRIMARY SCHO-C PRIMARY SCHOOl L PARK LAKE PARK AND GEOGRAPHIC WORLD 6 ACRES PLAY SCHOOL PARK PLAY SCHOOL 10 ACRES 10 ACRES FRONT Suggestion for grouping of buildings on a general school park. Plan subject to modification or indefinite expansion. Each building an adaptation of design presented on page 96, ac- cording to characteristic purposes of the play school, the primary school, the grammar school, and the high school. The administration building could contain offices, conference rooms, normal department, general library, lecture and music hall, heating and lighting plant, master clock, etc. Trans- portation by city ownership of street railways. For argu- ment and specifications see Chapters IV, V, VI, and VII. 101 102 AH IDiSAL SCHOOL. or, batter still, we could choose for our school plant desirable property without the city but in close prox- imity. This would not have been possible a few years since; but in this day of electric-car service there are no obstacles in the way of its effective operation. The city, by municipal ownership, by reservation in fran- chise or by contract, could well afford to provide this most necessary part in a desirable education. If the endowed public-school system provided by private enter- prise at the Jacob Tome Institute can thus care for, as their plans contemplate, two thousand pupils by the building of an electric railway, certainly the State or city should also be abundantly able to provide for its own. With the school so far removed from the homes., how would the children get their noonday meal? Would it be by a school lunch? Yes, but a much better lunch than that furnished in most schools. One of the great problems in the cul- ture of children is the food question. How shall the children receive the nutriment demanded by the stages of their growth and the nature of their work? The school dinner is a perfectly legitimate part of the child's culture. The school should also issue suggestions to the home concerning the other meals and related subjects. "It seems to me," remarks Mr. Taxpayer, "that the plan of buildings you present, with their parks of from ten to one hundred acres or more, their extended buildings and artistic surroundings, would cost a great deal of money. How would the cost of such a school plant compare with that of our present schools?" THE SCHOOL PLANT. 103 The increased cost would not be so much as it seems. The abandonment of valuable school property in the heart of the city, and generally in locations of great desirability, would of itself go far toward the purchase of the school parks and the erection of buildings. Indeed, in many instances, it would more than cover the entire expenditure. The cost of an ordi- nary building is greatly increased by its lofty super- structure, and sometimes there is much expended in the external finish of a building which is not at all desirable for school purposes. The transportation difficulty, to whatever extent it presents itself, could be effected by municipal ownership or by ordinance just as well as ordinary transportation can be reduced in fare from five to three cents. The cost for teachers, increased by i eduction of schools to twenty-four children, which is eminently desirable, and by the employment of better teachers, would be greater. But, after all, what are we living for if not for our children? Why does the wage- earner toil day after day, and the capitalist store up his money, if it is not to confer wealth upon the children? And what wealth is there that can for a moment be compared with glorious health, and the developing power which comes from a well-trained mind? CHAPTER VI. THE SCOPE OF THE SCHOOL. A PLANT, located, built, and furnished as has been described, would equip our school to meet the full mis- sion demanded by modern life. Every one of the traditional studies would be en- riched by an opportunity never before offered by the school. The losses by reversion from the rural life to that of the city would be partly overcome. The farm, with its many lessons from Nature and its many trades and occupations possible, would be rich in instructive exercises. The gardens would bring back the forgotten touch with the soil, and the delights of animal life would awaken new human interest. It would now be possible to group pupils more ac- cor.ding to interests and abilities. Then, for larger illustration and general culture, opportunities for use of lantern projection or for gatherings in the assembly hall would be immediately at hand. A hundred chil- dren, a thousand children of approximately the same age, would be at a moment's command for a music exercise. Scattered in their cottage quarters in the great quadrangles, the pupils might all be at individual work with space and group separation far greater than 104 THE SCOPE OF THE SCHOOL. 105 in the usual school; but yet orderly massing of large numbers for the lecture, the concert and the general exercise would be always at command. How often the superintendent has wished to meet the children of his entire city, grade by grade, but has always been denied because of distances ! Here also would be opportunity for gymnasium drill under favourable conditions, and for return to the old- time recess denied the child of the modern school. The complete bath house at Brookline, Mass., by this cen- tralization now becomes a desirable adjunct easily real- ized. But still greater in possibility would be the com- prehensive school library which must be a cardinal fac- tor in the ideal school. The traditional school has opened its doors at nine o'clock in the morning and closed them at four o'clock in the afternoon. In the cities the high-school session has been even shorter. In many instances the closing of the school has been hastened to catch certain cars ; and in a moment the great building with its valuable equip- ment is silent and empty. The pupils have been re- quired to do much preparation of work at home, fre- quently at great disadvantage and under unfavourable circumstances. These limited hours of school accessibility were all very well for the days of the rural school when the con- stituency was small and scattered; but the conditions and demands of modern life are very different. Be- cause the schools have been largely closed, other agencies have been rendered necessary. The institu- tional church and the various societies of community improvement have been called upon to do a work which 106 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. properly belongs to the school. The Young Men's Christian Association, the Young Men's Christian Union, the Young Women's Christian Association, the guilds and sodalities, the boys' clubs and the women's clubs, have been performing a valuable work which lies directly in the province of the public school. The large and prosperous commercial schools in our cities estab- lish also the fact that the school has not been meeting its entire responsibility.* Wherever in the community there is a sufficient number of persons desiring educa- tional facilities, right then and there is the mission of the school, no matter what the age or the attainment of the student may be. This opens up a wide field of use- fulness for the evening school. Almost every city, under proper organization, can gather as many pupils in the evening classes as in the higher classes of the day school. With the generous equipment now the posses- sion of the average school, this can be done at com- paratively small cost; and under the plan proposed in our centralized plant how much better it could be done! Not only the evening classes for investigation and study are the legitimate work of the public schools, but the school should also be the centre for all kinds of literary endeavour. The literary clubs could well be furnished their places of meeting in close proximity to the helpful library; and they should be directed in their endeavours. Classes in the afternoons for older persons in literature, history, science, physical culture, * The writer has official information to show that a single cor- respondence school in the United States pays annually over $80,000 in postage, to which might be added a similar amount for return communications. THE SCOPE OF THE SCHOOL. 107 art, cooking, and sewing would be a very valuable part of the work. The directors and heads of departments and of the great library could suggest and perhaps direct an important work which would be much appreciated. Then there is the field of the instructive lecture. Practical experiment has fully demonstrated that popu- lar science and instruction, presented in attractive ways, will reach people who ordinarily never come under the influence of the lecture. The whole field of the Chau- tauqua movement and of university extension is full of suggestion for the development of this important work in bringing value to the community. The school must comprehend the community. An annual music festival, made gloriously possible by the centralization of schools, art exhibits, the pres- entation of classic music by great artists, the illus- trated lecture of travel and science, the opportunity of the children to meet and to hear great men who would be attracted to such a school all of these would be direct possibilities. Then there is the vacation school for children de- siring to escape from the heat of the city and to be en- gaged in profitable and congenial employment. This would maintain the care of the gardens during the sum- mer. The work of Johnson at Andover, in particular, is very suggestive for what could be done on this great farm school. The very fact of centralization of equipment and the gathering of experts, as will be later described, would open up a field of high-school extension which should be occupied. To whatever extent deserving young people, who can not go away for their education, 108 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. need opportunity for post-graduate work, they should have it. Unquestionably the school can furnish such instruction cheaper at home than these young people can get it by going away. Whenever in a school of this character this movement grows in constituency suffi- ciently to take the place of the college it will be the legitimate province of the public school to perform that function. This will be discussed later on. The school, then, in what it offers should compre- hend the community. Whatever it can do to extend educational opportunity should be freely given. The doors should be, practically, always open; and whoever knocks at the temple of learning should find a most cordial welcome. Ee-enforcing the work of the superintendent and teachers, should stand the well-organized Education Society. The magnificent work which has been done at Brookline, Mass., and which has been extending it- self effectively in Philadelphia, Pa., Brooklyn, N. Y., Newark, N. J., Princeton, N. J., Pittsburg, Pa., New Haven, Conn., Boston, Mass., New York, N. Y., New- ton, Mass., Northampton, Mass., New Bedford, Mass., Barre, Mass., Belmont, Mass., Yonkers, N. Y., Den- ver, Colo., and other cities, is too important not to be utilized in support of the larger usefulness of the school. Superintendent Button has done much to make his Brookline schools famous; but the crowning master- piece of his useful work has been this great demonstra- tion of how the forces of the community may be corre- lated for effective advance work. This, then, outlines the larger province of the school, to which the people would respond with great apprecia- THE SCOPE OF THE SCHOOL. 109 tion. There are several reasons why the people have sometimes been slow in furnishing adequate support to the schools of the past. First, there has been little opportunity to appreciate the magnitude of the city school work, because of the scattered condition of the many plants. Second, the work itself has been of lim- ited efficiency. The parent has been annoyed too often by the doctrine that the home is responsible for the teacher's work. Third, the school has not extended very generous help to a large constituency of persons who have desired earnest educational assistance outside the usual hours and grades and curriculum of the formal school. The school has been too limited in its scope of usefulness. Fourth, the school-house has not been, to any considerable extent, the meeting place of the people. The minister owes his greater influence among his people over that wielded by the superintendent, and also his opportunity to be better understood, largely to the fact that he has so much greater opportunity to come in contact with the people, to gather them into a responsive, co-operating working body. Every gathering of the people at the school-house during the usual school hours, or for an evening lecture or entertainment, is an effective movement in the interests of better schools. It pays to bring the people into contact with school influ- ences, be it only in gathering them together for some- thing of value or enjoyment in the school hall. The sug- gestion of the school's interests by the school's sur- roundings, the democratic feeling of being an integral part of the work itself, and the exchange of appreciative remarks with others in the same school gathering, all foster a condition of personal pride and co-operation 110 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. that is very helpful in the making of an advance school. Indeed, there is no way of carrying forward progressive work to any goodly degree of leadership, excepting as the forces of the community are thus co-ordinated. The people are always proud of a good school, the purposes of which they can see and realize. The cen- tralization of all the schools in a general school park would be an effective object-lesson which, re-enforced by the greater usefulness of the school outside older lines, would bring the school interests to the minds and hearts of the people. Better equipment would be supplied because its application would be seen. Better teachers would be furnished because the adults as well as the children would gain from their instruction. Bet- ter official representation of the people would be elected because the people themselves met in more frequent and intelligent conferences concerning the welfare of the school. The forces of the community must be corre- lated; the school must be more comprehensive; the school plant must be enriched by greater centralization ; the doors must be open to " whosoever will " ; the people must meet more frequently to uphold the hands of their educational leaders. The results of such intelligent co-operation in a democracy can be only one thing: The people will be proud of their schools and will carry forward the work as has never yet been done in the his- tory of the world. BIBLIOGRAPHY. Button's Social Phases in Education. Scud- der's The Schoolhouse as a Centre (Atlantic Monthly, vol. Ixxvii). Search's The Larger High School, dedication of the Holyoke High School (School Review, April, 1900). CHAPTER VII. THE COURSE OF STUDY. "Of all subjects calculated to call forth a pupil's own efforts, those which give him something to do have the prefer- ence over those which merely give him something to say.'* (Dr. Andrew Bell.) WHATEVER may be the general thought concerning the feasibility of centralizing all the schools of the city in a general park, or in several parks, it will be evident that the discussion is now gradually approaching de- tails of great value in the conduct of the school. The interest of teachers, therefore, will be especially di- rected to the question of how to get rid of the difficulties in the course of study. Periods of Growth. Probably the most promising contribution of child-study to the building of the better school is coming from the discovery that the growth of the child is not one of uninterrupted progression. Great stages or periods of growth, widely differing from each other in character, are characteristic of the phys- ical development from the cradle to manhood. Attend- ant upon these stages are certain nascent periods of budding forth, which determine studies best calculated 111 112 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. for mind culture and the times of easiest accon> plishment.* The first five years are characterized, in particular, by being the period of the most rapid brain growth. The brain gains nearly all its growth in the first seven years, and practically reaches its full maturity in size \ at the age of eight or nine. The very fact that this is the period when the energies of life are largely centred in the storage of brain growth for the demands of later years, renders it highly important that the early life should be a life of freedom, with little to arrest the maturity of growth, which conditions so much to come. It is said that the child born with a large head is more likely to live. So, also, the child who has the oppor- tunity in his first seven or eight years for unarrested brain growth is safest for all the nerve strain that is to follow. This period, therefore, must be characterized by opportunity for rapid brain growth, nourishing food, abundance of sleep, plenty of free movement and play, and little demand upon the higher and finer brain areas, which do not develop so soon as the larger ones. The study of the heights of school children leads to some very serious reflections. Says Burk: J " Between six and seven years of age the American child measures about 44 or 45 inches. This is an in- crease of 24 to 25 inches for the first six years of life. * E. B. Bryan's Nascent Periods. Pedagogical Seminary, Oc- tober, 1900. t Donaldson's Growth of the Brain, p. 104. J Burk's From Fundamental to Accessory in the Develop- ment of the Nervous System. Pedagogical Seminary, vol. vi, pp. 5-64. THE COURSE OF STUDY. 113 ... At twelve years of age American boys are on the average about 55 inches in height, an increase of 10 or 11 inches for the six preceding years. . . . Until ten to twelve years there is no material difference in the heights of the sexes ; but, during these two years, vary- ing with localities, the girls grow faster than the boys, and for two or three years following are actually taller. During the fourteenth or fifteenth year the rate mate- rially slackens, and though the girls grow slowly for two or three years longer, they have practically com- pleted their growth in height, generally at the age of fifteen. The period of accelerated growth in height in the case of boys begins during the period of twelve to fourteen, as a rule. They overtake the girls usually in the fifteenth year, and by the end of the sixteenth year or later their period of accelerated rate ends. ... At the eleventh year or thereabouts there is no material difference in the heights of the two sexes." Dr. Bowditch found that at twelve and a half years, girls, as a rule, begin to grow faster than boys, and during the fourteenth year are about one inch taller than boys of the same age. At fourteen and a half years boys again become taller and continue to grow until nineteen. Girls have nearly completed their growth at fourteen and a half. By these references it will be noted that the most rapid growth of boys is between fourteen and sixteen, and of girls somewhat earlier. The wide variations in growth will be referred to later on. These periods or stages in average growth will be readily apparent from a study of the tables on pages 114 and 115: AN IDEAL SCHOOL, Dr. BowditcWs Table, showing Average Heights and Weights of Boston School Children of American Parentage. Heights taken without Shoes; Weight in Ordinary Dress* AGE LAST BIRTHDAY. BOYS. GIRLS. Inches. Pounds. Inches. Pounds. 5 years 41.74 44.10 46.21 48.16 50.09 52.21 54.01 55.78 58.17 61.08 62.96 65.58 66.29 66.76 41.20 45.14 49.47 54.43 59.97 66.62 72.39 79.82 88.26 99.28 110.84 123.67 128.72 132.71 41.47 43.66 45.94 48.07 49.61 51.78 53.79 57.16 58.75 60.32 61.39 61.72 61 99 62.01 39.82 43.81 48.02 52.93 57.52 64.09 70.26 81.35 91.18 100.32 108.42 112.97 115.84 115.88 7 " 8 " ... 9 " 10 " 11 " . 12 " . 13 " 14 " 15 " ... 16 " . 17 " 18 " Annual Average Increases in Height and Weight. (Warner, after Bowditch.) f BO YS. GIF LS. AGE LAST BIRTHDAY. Inches. Pounds. Inches. Pounds. 5 years 6 2.36 3.94 2.19 3.99 7 2 11 4 33 2.28 4.21 8 1.95 4.96 2.13 4.91 9 1.93 5.54 1.54 4.59 10 2.12 6.65 2.17 6.57 11 1.80 5.77 2.01 6.17 12 1.77 7.43 3.37 11.09 13 2.39 8.44 1.59 9.83 14 2.91 11.02 1.57 9.14 15 1 88 11.56 1.07 8.10 16 " 2.62 12.83 .33 4.55 17 .71 5.05 .27 2.87 18 " 47 3 99 .02 .04 * Warner's Study of Children, p. 31. f Ibid -> P- TEE COURSE OF STUDY. 115 Average Weight of the Brain of Children in Ounces, Avoirdupois. (After Dr. Boyd, as observed by him in 2,030 Cases, London.} * AGE. Males. Females. Newborn 11.67 10.00 17.42 15.94 21.80 19.76 From 6 to 12 months 27 40 25 70 From 1 to 2 years 33 25 29.80 From 2 to 4 years 38.70 34.97 From 4 to 6 years. 40.23 40.11 45.96 40.78 From 14 to 20 vears. . 48.54 43.94 Increase in Brain Weight with Age in Grammes. Encephalon weighed entire with Pia. ( Vierordt.) f A PTT HAL ES. FEMJ LLES. No. of cases. Brain. Brain. No. of cases. months 36 381 384 38 1 year 17 945 872 11 2 years 27 1025 961 28 3 " 19 1 108 1040 23 4 " 19 1 330 1,139 13 5 " 16 1,263 1,221 19 6 " 10 1,359 1,265 10 7 " 14 1 348 1 296 8 8 " 4 1377 1150 9 9 3 1,425 1,243 1 10 " 8 1,408 1,284 4 11 " 7 1,360 1,238 1 12 " 5 1,416 1,245 2 13 " 8 1,487 1,256 3 14 ". 12 1 289 1345 5 15 " 3 1,490 1,238 8 16 " 7 1,435 1,273 15 17 " 15 1,409 1,237 18 18 " 18 1,421 1,325 21 19 " 21 1,397 1,234 15 20 " 14 1,445 1,228 33 21 " . . 29 1,412 1,320 31 22 " . 26 1,348 1,283 16 23 " 22 1,397 1,278 26 24 " 30 1,424 1,249 33 25 " . 25 1 431 1,224 33 * Warner's Study of Children, p. 33. f Donaldson's Growth of the Brain, p. 104. 116 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. A GENERAL COURSE Subject to Individual Approximate ages. Stages of growth. Classification of school. Characteristic purpose. 23, 24, 25 . . Specialization. University. Professional training. 21 22 Transiti on nl The world Choice of vocation. 18, 19, 20 . . Early manhood and womanhood. College. General culture. 15, 16, 17 . . Early adoles- cence. Gymnasium or high school. Exercise and application. 14* Reconstruction . Accommodation. 11, 12, 13 . . Full childhood. Intermediate or all-round school. General survey and skill. 8, 9, 10 .... Middle childhood. Elementary or alphabetic school. Acquisition of tools. 5, 6, 7 . Rapid Play school. Freedom. brain growth. * A reading of the context is essential to an understanding THE COURSE OF STUDY. 117 OF STUDY. Variations. Sociologistic principle. Studies or media. Adaptation to distinctive mission. Life work. Finding mission. Business, society, travel, investigation. Altruism. Sciences, Mathematics, Gymnastics. Languages, Economics, Music, Humanities, Industries, Art. Belles-lettres, Convictions. Science, Design, Grammar, Creation, Latin, Greek, Gymnastics, French and German, Play, Literature, Music, History, Art. Algebra, Geometry, Relaxation in school. * Summer in country, in camp, or on seashore. Winter in semi-tropical regions. Helpfulness. Nature, History, Invention, Geography, Literature, Industries, Language, Arithmetic, Gymnastics, German and French, Geometry, Play, Drawing, Mechanics, Music. Self-control. Nature, Historical Narrative, Drawing, Literary Gems, Language, Form and Numbers. French, Construction, Writing, Play, Reading, Music. Beauty of harmony. Nature, Drawing, Play, Mother Tongue, Myth, Song. Picture Reading, Construction. of the distinctive bearings of this variable course of study. 118 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. A plan of school work should be determined largely by the characteristic phenomena of fundamental nas- cent periods of groups and of individuals; and to that extent it may contain a general time element; that is, it may base its proper work upon exercises appropriate to the various stages of growth; but no given portion of time should ever have assigned to it the accomplish- ment of a definite amount of work. School work should be full of opportunities for omissions, for short-cuts, and for changes in character of exercise. The best studies are not those which require identical proce- dure. Eecognising, therefore, the value of years as ap- proximately representative of certain stages of growth, with constant variation for adaptation to sex and indi- viduals, the classification of schools on pages 116 and 117 is offered, with illustrations to follow in subsequent chapters, to take the place of the graded course of study as generally constituted. THE PLAY SCHOOL. The play school is for children of years approxi- mately five, six, and seven. The characteristics of this stage of growth are rapid development in the size of the brain, the need of proper nutrition, and, at more frequent intervals (possibly five meals per day), little exacting work, an abundance of free movement, plenty of play in sunshine and pure air, and twelve hours per day for sleep. It is also the time for observation, for imitation and for story-hearing. The child comes in contact with the beauty of the law as unconsciously presented to him in his relations to others. His act THE COURSE OF STUDY. 119 may spoil the harmony of perfect concord, may be the one blot on the perfect picture, may bring unhappiness to others. The beauty of the perfect law, not its maj- esty, therefore, appeals to him ; and he gradually places his life in harmony with the welfare of others and thus finds himself an integral contributor toward good gov- ernment. The exercises of the play school are Nature study, bringing the child into contact with life and associat- ing him with its care and culture; story-hearing as he sits at the feet of the story-teller and drinks in the wealth of myth and representative story; mother tongue, through his own telling of stories heard, things observed and personal experiences, through contribu- tion to the children's group, and by imitation of the teacher story-teller; picture-reading, his only reading from the printed page; construction, embodying the survival of the fittest exercises of the kindergarten and reaching out after larger and higher forms ; games, full of life and romp and spontaneity; art or drawing, the child's own representation of stories heard, things seen or to be constructed; and song, not through character representation, but pure song itself. Would you have no reading or writing "before the age of eight years? I would have neither of these exercises in the play school during this stage of rapid brain growth. Read- ing, as has already been said, is an exercise of passive attention, full of abstraction and difficulty, which largely disappear when it is reserved for a time when strength and concept unite to make it easy, and its re- sults are very meagre. Besides, at this tender age, the 10 120 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. bending of the child over a book and the confinement of vision to the close-at-hand page before he is able to handle himself properly, are both to be avoided. There comes a time in the later development of the child when there seems to be a budding forth of literary ability which makes learning to read easy and quick of accom- plishment. Writing and other fine and exact work are also objectionable at this period, and should be deferred until the smaller areas of the brain begin to be devel- oped. The young child should deal more with wholes and larger movements. Is it ever advisable that a child of this age should begin piano practice? Is it not claimed that the skilled musician is the one who begins technical drill of the fingers in early childhood? Most emphatically there should be no piano practice at this age. The brain must reacji, during this period, practically its full maturity in size, and, therefore, must have the whole strength of its energies expended in growth. Attention to exercises of the finer muscles leads to arrest of brain growth and to many nervous dis- eases which afflict the child for life. It is cruel to con- fine a child of this age to an exercise like piano drill, when all the activities of the body and mind call for freedom. How will you occupy the child's time? Admitting that reading and writing have been largely unprofitable studies for young children, what can be offered as their substitute in the school? The consideration of this question in the past has been one of great difficulty because of the point which has just been raised; but we are now coming to its solu- THE COURSE OF STUDY. 121 tion. The scheme of Nature study which has been worked out so admirably by Dr. Hodge * at Clark Uni- versity, and in his writings, and which is now finding its way with such enriching results into the schools of Worcester, Mass., and elsewhere, opens up an unlimited field of opportunity. This question of Nature study will be treated more fully in our discussion of the methods of the school. Then there is the great and fruitful revelation of the story-teller, who is the person above all others to be prized in the education of the young how enormously this field can be developed ! The kin- dergarten has never experienced difficulty in filling the day, and the development of its higher exercises and their application in construction will contribute a great factor. Then the play exercises which Superintendent Johnson has been working out so admirably in his school at Andover are full of suggestion for immediate utilization. There is an abundance of material with which to fill even the longest day. " Would not the child lose greatly," says some am- bitious mother, " by thus omitting all technical training until he is eight years old? " It is the gradation of the school and not the loss of time by the child which makes this matter serious. If the child is given opportunity, he will readily recover his place with children of his own age, and beyond that his interest is keener and his progress more substantial. Says Dr. G. W. Fitz: f " Experience has shown over and over again that the * Dr. C. F. Hodge. Nature Study and Life, f Popular Science Monthly, vol. Iv, p. 429. 122 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. child who begins to read at eight or even ten years of age is in no wise handicapped in his later intellectual progress. He has the inestimable advantage of intense interest roused by his growing ability to unlock the se- crets of books and papers after the fashion of his elders. . . . Writing is taught before the child has acquired the art of fine co-ordination, and the effort demanded in the use of the pen ' leads to a degree of nervous ex- haustion unapproached by any other school work/ . . . Much of the aversion to arithmetical problems found later is undoubtedly due to this disheartening primary work. Here, again, the child who begins arithmetic at eight or ten years of age finds himself able to take it up quickly and has the liking for it that easy mastery always gives . . . Nature work, on the other hand, offers wonderfully interesting and valuable material for awakening the intellectual activities of childhood; and while its material for study and description is un- limited, its demand upon the child may be perfectly adapted to his power of observation. We must remem- ber that physical activity is the supreme factor in the development of a child." What should be the hours of this play school? Would you have single or double sessions? Under the form of organization recommended that is really a very immaterial consideration. By the pres- ent plan of schools, which confines the young child and expends his time in abstract, technical, and exacting exercise, the time should never be more than half a day. Indeed, two hours is all a child of this age should be confined for a day. But it must be remembered that our ideal school contemplates a school of great THE COURSE OF STUDY. 123 freedom and naturalness. It has its gardens and park for summer and its flower corridors for winter; its ample play room for winter and extended playgrounds for summer. Much even of the constructive exercises can be out of doors, while within the child still lives in a room of perfect illumination. The story-telling of the teacher lends itself as well to the group under the trees as to that in the house. All the movements of the children take on all the naturalness of the home. Under such circumstances it matters not whether the school is one of single session or double session; but with our ideal park and gardens and attractive build- ings for the gathering of the children, it would natu- rally be a place where they would spend a good part of the day. It is not so much a question of the child as it is of the teacher ; but in our play school the work is not so exacting, and it is not so necessary that the same teacher should carry all the work of the school. Supposing that your ideal plant could not be ob- tained, what do you think should be the discipline of the primary school as at present organized? There is no reason why the discipline should be rigid even in that case. The child has a divine right to a life of activity. If he wants to stand up or to sit down, the privilege should be his. If he wishes to leave the room because of physical necessity, that is his business and not the teacher's. In his movements to and from the class he must be natural. I was very much interested in visiting a school in Denver, to hear the enterprising teacher say she had discov- ered the natural way for a young child to move was not to walk, but to scamper. Here was a school 124 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. where, when the group around the desk was ready to return to their seats, the teacher gave a signal, and away they all scampered and another class came run- ning forward in the same way. The children had been accustomed to this exercise and not in the least did it seem to disturb the happy working discipline of the room. But even if it did, little would be lost by break- ing up the painful passivity and monotony of most primary schools. How many children to the teacher would be con- templated in this ideal school? Twenty-four. This is far too many in the present school where the teacher is to attempt the impossible task of bringing full activity to every child in the room in reading and kindred abstractions; but the teacher in our play school can handle that number very well, for she becomes their leader and director rather than the hearer of lessons. Did you ever see a school where Nature was thus made the basic study? Miss Dennis's walking school at Chautauqua, N. Y., conducted with great success during several sum- mers in the eighties, was a fine illustration of what could be done in this way. The Upsala School at Worcester, Mass., and Madame Claverie's transitional school in her beautiful Casa de Eosas, at Los Angeles, are both notable examples full of suggestion. Kefer- ence to this work will again be made, with fuller de- scription, in the discussion of studies. Would this plan do away with the kindergarten? By no means. The kindergarten has been the leaven that has been transforming all elementary education. THE COURSE OF STUDY. 125 Froebel is the only man who ever made a complete plan of education out of whole cloth. The work which has been begun so well in the infant-room has been reach- ing its way upward and is enriching the entire educa- tional fabric. Our play school is the expanded kinder- garten; and as it deals with children of older age it must take on higher character. Exercises in colour and form, modelling, paper-folding and cutting, stick-lay- ing, visualizing, larger mat and basket weaving, repre- sentative games, etc., are all full of great possibilities. Certainly the kindergarten must abandon its finer work, and this it is now doing. For building purposes nothing is of higher value than several hundred building blocks the size of bricks, or, for exact building, 2 inches by 4 inches by 8 inches. The larger portion should be of full size, a great many of half bricks, and some half bricks should be cut diagonally through the oblong sides, to make triangular forms for gabled roofs. With a quantity of blocks of these sizes in the school or the home there is no end to the magnificent structures and transformations which the children will make in ex- pression of their genius. Such an outfit, in a play room in the writer's own home, has been the gathering place and endless enjoyment of the children of a whole neigh- bourhood. Then there is the building of veritable houses under the teacher's direction, of mills on the water stream, and other creations of the opportunity- given child. It should not be forgotten, however, that the child at this age delights in cruder forms. To him a shaped board with a string is a boat; a very simple structure becomes a sled ; and there is more pleasure in a rude pencil sketch than in the finished picture in the 126 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. book. The complicated toy and the detailed representa- tion belong to a later age. Your play school provides for children of ages five, six, and seven, or approximately so. Would you have no schooling for children below the age of five? I look with great reluctance on any necessity which separates the mother and the child during the first four or five years of the child's life, and with still greater reluctance to any procedure which shuts the young child up in a house. If our homes were ideal, I would say the home garden, where the mother trains her child, is a sacred place not to be given up for anything the school can offer; but if the home conditions are not ideal, if the child is to be passed over to the attendant, or if he is to live in the atmosphere of the thousand vexations which some way characterize so much of every-day life, or if he is to be shut up in quarters where the conditions are less hygienic than the school, then I am sure the infant school is preferable. How- ever, the growing interest which mothers are taking in practical child-study, as evidenced in the formation of mothers' clubs, mothers' councils, etc., is prophetic of the day when the average mother will be better pre- pared for, and more delighted in, the culture of her own children. The mother owes that to her child which no teacher can ever offer. As Beecher has said, " Every mother is a priestess ordained of God." Mr. Taxpayer here interposes an objection: Your school seems to require that the number of pupils to the 'teacher should be reduced to twenty-four. Would not this cost a great deal of money This reduction is made even now in our kindergar- THE COURSE OF STUDY. 127 tens. It is also done in nearly all of our high schools and in many of our higher grammar grades. The num- ber of pupils to the class is very much less than that in certain branches. It is, therefore, only a question of justice to all, of carrying the. same policy into other schools. Besides, it is not a question of how much does it cost, but of how much more can the child get out of the school. As I have said before, what are we living for, if not for our children? " You think, then/' remarks some interested edu- cator, " that the plan of deferring a child's formal train- ing until he is approximately eight years of age is fully practicable, and that there will be sufficient subject- matter to occupy his time in the play school?" It is perfectly practicable. The time of a child always has been fully occupied by the school, and prob- ably always will be. It is absolutely essential that the child should have opportunity for free growth at this time. Says G. T. W. Patrick: * "The period between the ages of five and ten years is an important one in the child life. It is the time when the "let-alone" plan of education is of most value, for the reason that nearly all our educational devices beyond the kinder- garten are more or less attempts to make men and women out of children. If the child at this age must be put into the harness of an educational system, his course of study will not be impoverished by the omis- sions of reading and writing. To teach him to speak and to listen, to observe and to remember, to know something of the world around him, and instinctively . * Popular Science Monthly, vol. Iv, p. 392. 128 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. to do the right thing, will furnish more than enough material for the most ambitious elementary curricu- lum." THE ELEMENTARY OR ALPHABETIC SCHOOL. I am ready to admit there must come a time in the life of the child when he should become acquainted with the alphabets of learning, and acquire skill in the handling of certain tools on which his later advance- ment is more or less conditioned. The best time for this is during the ages eight, nine, and ten. The brain has now approximately completed its growth; the period is one of fairly constant increase in height and weight; the smaller brain areas are being developed; the body takes on a grace not possible before ; the mem- ory is not charged with the conflicting impressions of later years; language becomes easy; there is a grow- ing tendency toward details, analyses, and invention; a care for property rights and a regard for the happi- ness of others have been engendered; and the whole child is rapidly passing from the realm of pure per- cept to a growth where the concept is becoming more characteristic. It is a time when the child is rapidly adjusting himself to environment; and, therefore, it may be characterized as the period of nascent self- control. In this elementary or alphabetic school the child should still have Nature as the great basic study of the entire period. Drawing is still taught as a means of expression. His language, through imitation and from the more abounding concept, now seeks by its own nature a written representation. By recognition THE COURSE OF STUDY. 129 of the form of words, taught on the crayon board and by selection from placard or crayon-board vocabularies which grow with the addition of new words, the child by imitation begins to be a writer of words. The writ- ing of language leads directly to its reading; and thus the child gets his knowledge of the alphabets of literary composition at a time needed by the processes of Na- ture. To him reading is now intelligible from the start ; and his stronger mind short-cuts the longer and mo- notonous processes which in the earlier years are attended with so much worthless consumption of time. The story-teller still has her place in the school; and historical narrative adds to myth its noble contri- bution from the past. During this time of receptive memory beautiful gems from literature are made the children's own. The period is also characterized as the one particularly favourable for pure language study; hence, a foreign tongue, preferably French, should be begun early in this period, but entirely by the mother- tongue method. From contact with Nature in the play school the child has already got his unconscious knowl- edge of numbers, and, in his own way, can make some surprising calculations. It is now well that he should be drilled in the fundamental processes and acquire, through use, a knowledge of the alphabets and basic relations of numbers. Construction takes on a higher form. The simpler representations will not now an- swer. The boy's boat must be the best boat; the girl's doll must be the best dressed. It is a time of the wind- mill, the water-wheel, the sail-boat, the kite, the top, the mechanical toy, the pattern-making, the well- plotted garden, the play-house, store vending, and juve- 130 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. nile soldiers' drill. The child must have his tools and work room, and his pets to care for. He prizes drill in sloyd, sewing, and modelling; but all of his exercises must be for some practical purpose. It is a time also when the voice needs careful attention, that children may sing softly and in perfect tune. They should have opportunity to hear beautiful music, and, occasionally, the stirring brass band. If the future violinist or pian- ist is to arise to any great distinction, it must be by training of the finer muscles during this favourable period. But with all, the child must have abundant time and abundant opportunity for free play, and this free play should have fully half of his waking hours. He needs also eleven hours of sleep (best hours eight to six), and well-selected, nutritious food. Why is so much time demanded for play? Will this not interfere very materially with the serious work of the school in getting the child ready for the responsi- bilities of life? It must ever be remembered that play is the child's divine right. The man owes his comparatively greater longevity over the other animals to the fact that his period of childhood, of free play, is longer; and in proportion as we encroach on this fundamental neces- sity in healthy growth, we limit the tenure, the useful- ness, and the enjoyment of adult life. If we do not allow the child adequate time for play, there is no life worth the getting ready to live. What are the reasons for placing French in this elementary school? If it is based on the fact that this is the natural time for language, why not give the more attention to English? THE COURSE OF STUDY. 131 I would not for a moment lessen the attention which should be given to pure English, except to say that the best English training a child at this age can get is by imitation from the exemplar teacher, the models in polite literature, and in the clear comprehension of things to say. But there is a limit to which English, unaided by other language, can rise. The study of a foreign tongue brings into play many nicer exercises in the interpretation of one tongue into terms of an- other, many discriminations in word forms, synony- mous meanings and particular choices, and also un- consciously much of grammatical values not so easily recognisable in one's own familiar tongue. It is be- cause the processes of thought involved are so much richer that a foreign tongue at this age is particularly desirable as a help in English thinking. Besides, the period is the natural one for language study; and if one is ever to get a foreign language at all, he might as well get it while it is easy. " I doubt/' said Dr. Edward Everett Hale,* "if I was twelve years old when my father gave me a scrap in French, from the Journal des Debats, about excavations in Assyria, and asked me to translate it for his news- paper." There is no particular objection to making German the introductory modern language, if local circum- stances render that language more advisable. A child should gain a speaking knowledge, by the mother- tongue method, of both French and German before he reaches the high school. It is perhaps best he should * Bale's How I was Educated. 132 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. take up one first. French is much the easier in learn- ing, and therefore is placed first. Where shall we get teachers qualified for this in- struction in the lower school? Shall all our teachers be required to be proficient in French and German? Not necessarily so. French or German in schools below the high school should be taught entirely by the mother-tongue method, and this calls for teachers who are trained to the mother tongue. It is not necessary that such a teacher should be with the children except- ing at certain hours during the week. Then everything should take on the atmosphere of the French or Ger- man lands, be it in the school room or in the fields. Would you have no French or German in the play school? There is no objection to some simple exercises of this character in childish spirit, if the circumstances demand. Many kindergartners have introduced some- thing of the foreign tongues in connection with the children's lunch. In this way the children are taught quite effectively, and to their great delight, many phrases appropriate to their exercises. Wherever this can be done in connection with the play exercises it certainly has no objections and may present many de- cided gains. Would there be no formal gymnastics in this school? Not for children of ages eight, nine, and ten, ex- cepting in correction of physical malformations. The best physical training a child of this age can have is nutritious food, an abundance of free play, great freedom in the school room, and eleven hours of re- freshing sleep. If you can not have these essential THE COURSE OF STUDY. 133 elements and conditions, then you must offer formal gymnastics. When would you teach the child his multiplication table ? I do not know that I would teach it to him at all; I would probably let him learn it. And yet it is highly important the child should have careful drill in the alphabets of numbers during this period. In- stead of making him commit meaningless tables of numbers, I would place the common tables in large characters on great charts on the walls so that the child could get his table help at any time by an imme- diate glance at the table form. An abundance of cal- culations soon makes the child familiar with the funda- mental products ; and after a time he will himself short- cut the processes by mastering the missing links. Or then, when the table has become his tool, the teacher may make requirement if necessary. It is interesting to note that Samuel Pepys, the eminent English accountant, who was secretary of the navy under Charles II (all historians rely on his diary for data concerning the reign of this king), and was selected to make reply to the criticisms on the naval department which was done with such accuracy of statement, mathematical detail, and effective results that he received the thanks of the king and the naval department graduated from Cambridge in 1653, but did not learn the multiplication table until 1662.* Concerning covering the wall with placards and charts, bearing in large characters tables and other im- * See Samuel Pepys' Diary. 134: AN IDEAL SCHOOL. portant data to be fixed on the memory, the schools have much to learn from the psychology of advertising as exemplified in street-car cards and on bulletin boards. THE INTERMEDIATE SCHOOL. The years eleven, twelve, and thirteen in boys, and eleven and twelve in girls, are marked by great accelera- tion of growth in height and weight. Full boyhood is reached ordinarily at the end of the thirteenth year, and full girlhood ordinarily at the end of the twelfth year. This is the pre-pubescent stage just before great or- ganic changes set in, and may be called the period of realized childhood. The child now begins some gen- eralization and is ready for a general survey of his environment and for exercises of further skill in his adjustment. The development of finer muscles has given him a quickness and grace of body not earlier possible ; and his mental co-ordinations are correspond- ingly rapid. It is a time of spontaneous politeness and general helpfulness. He does not care to play alone, but has a passion for flocking, for choosing sides, and for the gang. His overabounding nature may now make trouble unless properly directed; but, on the other hand, any utilization of his gang spirit leads easily to great help- fulness in self-government and to the recognition of community relations. It is an excellent time to abridge many of the usual processes of the school and to gain in a short time, under proper opportunity, a compre- hensive preparation for the work of the high school. The school may now take on a miniature representation of life and may anticipate to good advantage every THE COURSE OF STUDY. 135 study that is to follow. Because of this, it may be called the School of General Survey and Universal Ad- justment. If there is any one person in the world who in a short time can quickly comprehend and also adjust himself to almost any emergency of universal environment, that person is the boy or girl of this age. This is the time for the climbing of trees, for learning to swim and to skate, for writing letters to the oppo- site sex, for baseball, for excursions, for running away from school, and for stealing watermelons not to be bad, but just for the fun of the thing. The child now needs an abundance of food, freedom from pressure, plenty to do during school hours, attention to cleanli- ness, opportunity to help somebody else, but not under requirement, opportunity for social games and play, and ten hours of refreshing sleep. Up to the end of this period co-education has its self-evident advantages ; during the following four years it is a debatable question. Because of all this, the study of Nature in the census of birds, the traits and habits of fishes and mammals, the colonization of bees and ants, the culture of frogs and toads, the destruction of pestiferous in- sects, and the fostering of plant life for animal pur- poses, is an exceedingly interesting occupation at this period, so long as it involves something for the child to do in the domestication of animals and in the cul- ture of the higher types of plant life. Before this time, the child, from his general contact with the world and from the illustrated lecture, has got an elementary knowledge that the world is round and one of many worlds, and of the general size and location of the con- 11 136 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. tinents and oceans. He has also gained many useful ideas from his experience and observation in the school park, from attendance on illustrated lectures and else- where. He is now ready for a detailed study of the geography of the world; and for this the two or three years' of this school are ample time. Language is still easily acquired. The forms of written com- munications used in letter-writing and business trans- actions should receive special attention; and abundant exercise will doubtless be given to record-keeping, to graphic descriptions and to story-telling. The mod- ern languages should be continued. If French has been studied in the preceding period, German may now be substituted, or, preferably, added; but in this the mother-tongue method should still be used, with read- ing and writing largely incidental. Drawing is con- tinued as a form of language expression, but begins to take on design for constructive purposes. The history of the United States and of England, and the leading current events and their related history of the world at large, now make fruitful reading and topics for discussion. Good books and selected master- pieces should direct and foster a worthy literary taste. Business arithmetic and practical geometry fit into their proper places. Mechanics, inventive exercises, and industrial training, in practical forms, are full of profit- able enjoyment. The child should now enter the gym- nasium for a half hour of regular daily drill, class and individual. The entire school should be organized for play, as at Andover ; but nothing should be done to crowd out the free spontaneous play which, however, is the natural outgrowth of the Andover spirit. It is THE COURSE OF STUDY. 137 at this period that the most beautiful music in all the world of song is possible, the voices of both boys and girls now reaching a purity and freshness that have no parallels in the realm of music. Because of the attendant beauty, grace, co-operative spirit, brightness and effective results, boys and girls at this period are most selected for exhibition purposes. Nothing that follows can compare with the pleasing life of this age. It is the glory of realized boyhood and girlhood in all their charm, vigour, and beauty. Would you have no advanced problems in arithmetic for disciplinary exercises? The fundamental processes in arithmetic and in actual business are really very few ; but they are capable of such an infinite application in problems such as one would meet in life, that they possess all the disciplinary possibilities that may be desired. Pupils, in rapid exer- cises from blackboard tables, may learn all the simpler square and cube combinations and their resolution into roots, so that the fundamental elements involved may thus be readily recognized; but square root and cube root and kindred difficulties should be left until the high-school period, when, in connection with algebra, geometry, and physics, they may be better presented. The course of arithmetic prepared by Superintendent Dutton for his schools in Brookline is remarkable not only in what it gives, but in what it omits. What there is, should be done well. I see no penmanship assigned for this period. Where does penmanship come in? Should it be vertical or slant writing? There is little penmanship taught, but plenty of 138 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. good writing required. In the elementary-school period, assigned for the acquisition of skill in the mastery of working tools, writing should be taught. The system is the vertical, with every letter formed in the simplest possible manner and as an approximation of print. The hand should be large and the lines heavy enough to be read without tiring the eye. All blackboard writing should be in a very large and heavy hand. In the pre- ceding three years of ages eight, nine, and ten pupils will acquire great legibility and fair rapidity in script writing ; and with the end of that period all regular spe- cial instruction in writing may be discontinued. The intermediate-school period in its various exercises calls for a great deal of expression in writing. Good pen- manship should always be required; but it need not be taught excepting as an occasional exercise. Vertical writing, once acquired, will perpetuate its own legibility. " I now understand" says some one, " that you would condense the technical work, which in most schools requires eight years, and in Massachusetts nine years, into these two periods of only six years, and in case of the girls possibly five years. Do you think this can be done; and, if so, how? " I am sure it can be done. In the first place, I am relying on better health to accomplish in a short time what ordinary meagre health accomplishes with diffi- culty in a long time. Then, again, all the work of the play school abounds in self-suggested anticipations of later work, and leads to the concepts which make all work easy when presented at the proper time. There is nothing whatever gained by the attempt to force a nascent period. At the proper time the child will THE COURSE OF STUDY. 139 come to his budding strength for the accomplishment of a given kind of elementary work; and then is the time to accomplish much in little. The attempt to anticipate, by substituting monotonous, unproductive drudgery, is apt to inoculate the child against all healthy interest when he is naturally qualified. It is never quantity which educates, but good healthy normal exer- cise at proper tension. Then, there is much in the ordi- nary course of study which can be eliminated, as has been suggested. Yes, I am quite sure that with an entire reconstruc- tion of our correlations and methods of work, all the technical work which should be done below the high school can be done in these five or six years, and even then allow for a good deal of absence demanded by gen- eral circumstances. The fact is, there is more educa- tion outside of the school than the average schoolman is ready to admit. There are educational factors which the school has never yet paralleled, but which contrib- ute very much to the total sum of a child's education. But how will you ever get these pupils together again if some of the girls omit a year here and other pupils a number of months there f I do not say that I would have all girls omit a year at the end of this period; but I would make it possible for some of them to do so, at least much of the work. As far as the difficulty of getting the pupils together is concerned, I am not disturbed about that. I am only too glad to see the early coming of the time when pupils are not " together " in their work. I am willing to short-circuit the curriculum for a great many pupils in the school. 140 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. Might not some work in Latin be begun very profit- ably in this school? Most certainly, if it is desired. It is purely a ques- tion of the proper amount of language study at this time; and that is largely an individual matter. As far as age is concerned, it is a favourable time for begin- ning Latin. Says Dr. Edward Everett Hale : * " I was put on my Latin paradigms when I was six years old and learned them remarkably well. We limped through a Latin version of Eobinson Crusoe when I was eight years old." Margaret Fuller is also said to have com- menced her Latin at six years of age.f Are there not a good many subjects in this proposed course of study quite as many } indeed, as required in the ordinary graded school? It may appear so, because all the elements which the child touches are here mentioned so that the compre- hensive scope of the plan may be seen. It should be noted, however, that these subjects are capable of a great deal of correlation. For instance, mechanics, in- vention, industries, and much of drawing and geometry really constitute one general subject. But beyond that, this school, as will be indicated later, works on a flexi- ble programme of longer periods and recognises that the child will probably live to do to-morrow what he can not accomplish to-day. This, however, will be dis- cussed later under the subject of illustrative methods. Is it to be understood that you would have children work by longer periods than is usually the case? Are * Hale's How I was Educated. f Julia Ward Howe's Life of Margaret Fuller. THE COURSE OF STUDY. 141 not all the recent studies in fatigue overwhelming in their argument for still shorter periods of work and for frequent changes of exercises ? The school here presented is a very different affair. I have long been convinced that the breaking up of the child's time into so many fragments, with such kaleidoscopic changes, tends only to dissipation of en- ergy and defective mental image. It is always better for a teacher to continue until she has got something, always observing the rule, never to pass the point of good, healthy, vigorous, and interested attention. Be- sides, the test, in a school built along the lines sug- gested by play instincts, is, how does a child play? A child never plays with fragmentary division of time. His is always the longer period. The moment he is pressed for frequent change he begins to tire of his sport. It is only when the child is taken to the school, the world's fair, or the circus, that he comes home tired. The fact is, there is a great difference between a school of dead and passive exercises and one built funda- mentally on the doctrine of interest. There probably never has been a study of fatigue where the elements of interest and spontaneity entered into consideration. Every attempt to measure fatigue, so far as I know, has been entirely through the media of comparatively dead and passive exercises. In advancing an argument for longer periods of work I wish to be understood. I do not fail to rec- ognise fatigue in our reconstruction of the school ; but all fatigue is not bad. We need normal fatigue to com- plete the cycle which leads to the recuperation of en- ergy, the reconstruction of exhausted brain cells; and 142 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. certainly there is advantage in proper change of exercise. What I am contending against is the fragmentary divi- sion of time and the dissipation of a child's energy. The flexible programme, doing to-day what can be done well, and the longer period of work, wherein interest is the controlling spirit in the doing of work, are things greatly to be desired in our elementary education. As a child plays, so may we safely plan his normal work. This will all be involved in the discussion of methods. THE SECOND BIRTH. We now come to the most serious problem in all the realm of pedagogy. Thus far we have been dealing with the child and have attempted to trace his gradual development from infancy up to the period of full boy- hood and full girlhood. Now comes a reorganization of the child's entire being, a reorganization based in the physical, but extending upward through the intel- lectual, and affecting largely the moral. A little later on, the child has reached early manhood or early womanhood; but just now he is neither child nor adult. The entire being is passing through an organic recon- struction which demands the most careful consideration. " The reproductive organs increase in size, the larynx enlarges, the vocal cords become elongated, the volume of the heart is increased. In the male the shoulders broaden, the muscles harden, and the beard begins to grow; in the female the pelvis increases in size, the bust develops, menstruation begins, and so on. Prob- ably equally important changes occur in the brain; for the shape of the head changes and the new intellectual and emotional activities of this period must be accon> THE COURSE OF STUDY. 143 panied by the functioning of cerebral centres that have lain dormant before. This is, moreover, a period of specially rapid growth in both sexes. Key, who reports observations made upon 15,000 boys and 3,000 girls in Swedish schools, found that the boys showed a rapid increase in height and weight from the fourteenth to the sixteenth years. A similar period of rapid growth appeared in the girls at a somewhat earlier age." * Dr. Burnham, from whom the above quotation is made and whose studies have given an immense impetus to a better knowledge of the characteristics of ado- lescence, further says : " The psychological changes at puberty are no less remarkable. There is a great influx of new sensations. The brain, aroused by these new stimuli, increases its activity. The psychic concomitant of this increased cerebral activity is manifested in a variety of ways. The adolescent mind is filled with hopes, dreams, tem- pestuous passions, and new ideas. Social and ethical impulses become dominant ; egotism often gives place to altruism. Political or religious zeal sometimes becomes the mainspring of action. The reasoning powers come into use. At a somewhat later period philosophic specu- lation frequently becomes almost a passion ; and philo- sophic and religious doubts are often common. The whole period of adolescence is often one of mental storm and stress; and not infrequently the cerebral overstrain results in insanity." It is in failure to consider these great fundamental * W. H. Burnham's The Study of Adolescence. Pedagogical Seminary, vol. i, pp. 174-195. 144 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. reconstructions of organism, which call for the concen- trated energies of the entire being, that educational methods have been most devoid of conscience. At the very time when there has been the most need for con- servation, the school system too often presses the child unmercifully. The changes attending this physical growth and reconstruction may be more manifest in girls, but they are just as energy-consuming in boys. At this time there must be relaxation, change in direc- tion, freedom from pressure, and opportunity. " Every modification of the sexual organs and every excitement will have its effect on the nervous system, and through it on the whole organism. Nervous cen- tres, voluntary muscles, involuntary muscles, heart and blood-vessels, glands everything is affected." (Dr. Colin A. Scott.) Dr. Christopher * has said that if a child were grow- ing fast and studying hard while at the same time it should be developing the reproductive organs, it would be almost impossible to furnish sufficient food to carry on all these processes, and something would be sure to suffer. Dr. Clouston also very pointedly remarks : "Ameri- can physicians tell us that there are some schools in Boston that turn out young ladies so highly educated that every particle of spare fat is consumed by the brain cells that subserve the functions of cognition and memory." " Puberty," as one writer has said, " is the grand court of appeal by which weak children are weeded out * Child Study Monthly, vol. iv, p. 74 THE COURSE OF STUDY. 145 and only those who have sufficient vitality for life's battle renew their strength and continue their de- velopment. . . . Foster's Medical Dictionary puts the average period of adolescence at between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five for boys and twelve and twen- ty-one for girls. . . . Clouston makes puberty the initial period in the development of the function of reproduc- tion, and adolescence the whole period of twelve years from first evolution up to the full perfection of repro- ductive energy." (Burnham.)* Any teacher, whose vision is not clouded by course of study requirement and the demand for a mechanical gradation, in contact with girls approximately at the age of thirteen and boys at fourteen, can not but have observed the difficulty with which children at this age usually perform school work. The girFs manifest weak- ness in climbing stairs and the boy's clumsiness in walk- ing across the floor are both indicative of inability to co-ordinate, because life energies are centred largely in growth. This year of greatest stress, wherever it hap- pens to come and it varies with the differentiation in children must be attended with a modification of school plans that will make conservation of these fundamental demands of growth a matter of prime importance. I do not say that such a child should have no schooling; but I do insist that many children ruin all their chances for future health by close application to school work during this critical time. Because of this, not to make such a plan uniform for all children, but to present opportunity for frequent need and to emphasize the * Pedagogical Seminary, vol. i, p. 174. 146 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. importance of some provision, I have placed in our gen- eral course of study a year of relaxed school life, to be spent, if possible, amid circumstances of proper men- tal activity, but of radical removal from school tension and rivalry. This year on our chart has been placed approximately at fourteen; but it should come early or late whenever the condition of the child's health demands. It is a good thing for the schoolman to realize that there is much education for a child outside of the school; and the school plans should be so built as to permit a child's absence at any time, without loss above compensation. The school which has difficulty in placing children received from other schools, or who have been out of school for a time, is not simply out of joint with other schools, but is itself out of joint with Nature. THE GYMNASIUM OR HIGH SCHOOL. The pupil is now still in the early stages of adoles- cence; but, it is to be hoped, the year of greatest stress has passed. If not, it should have consideration at any time it appears. The period characteristic of the ages fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen is, as a rule, one of re- markable tendency. As the outgrowth of physiological and psychological changes the youth's entire attitude toward life has been changed. There has been a break- ing up of old anchorages, a reticence toward parents, and frequently a desire to get away from home. An unsettled condition of mind is also attended by grow- ing convictions, which seek expression sometimes in harsh and very inconsistent ways. The mind is filled with ambitious dreaming, and strenuous desire to do THE COURSE OF STUDY. 147 something right off. The safety of the youth demands that there must be opportunity for this pent-up, over- flowing, and red-hot energy to express itself. If there is not such opportunity it may vent itself in immoral and lascivious dreaming. If it is true, as our most eminent physiologist asserts,* that many boys spend nine tenths of their time in thinking about matters pertaining to sex, it is highly important that the time of such pupils should be filled with inhibitive exercises that will prevent this over-consumption of time by sex- consciousness. As President Hall has so well said: " Quite apart, therefore, from its intrinsic value, educa- tion should serve the purpose of preoccupation, and should divert attention from an element of our nature, the premature or excessive development of which dwarfs every part of soul and body/' The youth must have opportunity to express his overflow energy in physical exercises not altogether work, to do something. He should not be given chance to spend his time in indo- lence, in secluded sentimental reading, and in riotous imagination. His need is for action. The question whether the sexes should be coedu- cated during this period of maximum sex-consciousness is one much discussed. If the major thoughts of many boys dwell insistently on sex functions, as asserted in the authority given, and a similar consciousness, even in degree, exists with girls, are there losses or gains in coeducation? Notwithstanding the judgment formed by most persons on the mere statement of the question in this light, I am inclined to think there are gains. * Pedagogical Seminary, vol. i, p. 207. 148 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. After a long, active experience which has placed me in charge of one hundred thousand boys and girls of all ages, with some inclination to study individual char- acteristics, I am led to the opinion, particularly as far as boys are concerned, that the separated child is the unfortunate one, that his lascivious imagination arises from being alone, and that there is purifying corrective in the presence of the opposite sex. It is far better to have a boy's conceptions of girlhood coloured by con- tact with the nobler average girl of the school than by his riotous imagination or some exceptional suggestion. If judged from this point of view, coeducation has its tower of great strength. However, the question is a broader one than this. Are the functions of the education of the two sexes the same ? There are physiological reasons why the girl surpasses the boy in school ability at the beginning of this period, because her development is earlier. Dr. W. 0. Krohn * has attempted to show, basing his infer- ences on the tables of Vierordt,f that the brain of the girl at twelve or thirteen, and of the boy at fourteen, diminishes in weight because the blood and vital ener- gies at this period of stress are largely diverted to the development of other parts of the body, and that the girl's recovery one or two years earlier is the reason she is able to surpass the less-favoured boy at this time. This, however, is purely speculative, for the number of cases (Vierordt's table) at these particular ages is too limited for the basing of a scientific conclusion. It is very possible that a boy at this critical age can not * Child Study Monthly, vol. i, p. 36. f Chapter VI, p. 115. THE COURSE OF STUDY. 149 divert energy from bodily growth to mental operations, while the girl having passed it earlier to a greater ex- tent can, and therein lies her perhaps greater danger from working under requirements of work uniform also for boys. Dr. Edward H. Clarke remarks: " It was not Latin, French, German, mathematics, or philosophy that undermined her nerves. She lost her health simply because she undertook to do her work in a boy's way and not in a girl's way." Clouston also very pointedly adds: " Why should we spoil a good mother by making an ordinary grammarian ? " If this phase of the problem has no other solution than that presented in the practices of the school of uniformity, then we must render verdict that coeduca- tion of the sexes in the high-school period is a failure. But the plans and methods of work, the discussion of which we are now entering, are built fundamentally on the recognition of existing individual differences and needs, and, therefore, provide a place where neither the girl nor boy will suffer in a scheme of coeducation as applied to exercises, mental and moral. If, however, a school is so happy as to be able to de- part from the ordinary conventional form, as in the case of Captain Wilson's school on Lake Pasquaney, where sixty or more boys are turned loose during the summer months to live, with little clothing and much exposure to sun and storm, and with principal exercises in mili- tary drill, gymnastics, swimming, boating, mountain climbing, and farming, then certainly the school must be for one sex. But desirable as a summer school of this kind would be for each of the sexes, it does not enter largely into our problem, excepting to say there are 150 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. certain parallel exercises in the general school which, in the very nature of the case, should be separate namely, gymnastics, bathing, swimming, and heavier constructive and farming exercises, which should have a place in a scheme of education planned to conserve Nature. The argument for the school of coeducation, excepting for degenerates, still stands. The period of early adolescence, then, is a period when the old foundations of the youth become unset- tled. He must have opportunity for original inquiry and investigation in order to reach convictions. The doubt which psychologists say arises at this time is fundamentally necessary to make him an original thinker. He must have opportunity to depart from uniformity and to find out something for himself. The teacher can only give him association and perspective. It is a period calling, as a safeguard, for active outlet for overflowing energy. He must have laboratory work, industrial training, and physical exercise. The study or the plan of work which calls for long-continued sitting or passive exercise is not best for his interests as an adolescent. Says Dr. Burnham : " Activity is imperatively ne- cessary. Education for adolescence must no longer be mere acquisition; it must give outlet for action. For many this is necessary for mental balance; for all it is a means of saving waste energy." All the studies of the school must take on labora- tory character. There must be little opportunity for idle dreaming, for sentimental twaddle, and for riotous imagination. There must be inhibition by interested exercise, the drawing off of superfluous energy by ex- THE COURSE OF STUDY. penditure in commanding activity, the storage of the mind with noble enterprise, and salvation by contact with healthy, uplifting personality. While this is a time demanding individual initiative and prosecution, it is also a period which must have debate, in which, however, none are so well qualified to speak intelli- gently or to be heard so appreciatively as those who come to their convictions through individual oppor- tunity. Because the early adolescent age calls so much for the expenditure of superabundant energy in active ex- ercise it is here called the period of .the Gymnasium, which, under the nature involved, is a better name than the High School. It is not a period for platitudes and monotonous procedure, but for the expenditure of po- tential energy in kinetic exercises. The studies and media of the gymnasium or high school are choices in the sciences, grammar, Latin (and possibly Greek), French, German, literature, history, algebra and geometry, design, creation, play, gym- nastics, music, and art. The manner of dealing with these will be presented in our discussions on methods, the child, and the teacher. Owing to the excessive growth during this period, the adolescent needs an abundance of wholesome food, omitting confections and pastries, nine hours of sleep with no overindulgence, well-directed occupation, the storage of the mind with good things, plenty of fresh air and exercise, and almost constant companionship. Recognising the lofty function of reproduction, and that the child passing through this tremendous organic change is flooded with a growing sex-consciousness and 12 152 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. an overflowing of energy, which are to him sources of great danger, what are the duties of the parent and the teacher in helping him in this period of such portentous consequences ? The duty of the teacher has been largely outlined in the suggested adaptation of work. To the enlight- ened parent the child has a right to look for protec- tion; but there comes a time when such questions as these can not easily be discussed by the parent with the child. The introduction of the work must be done at the initial period. If there is ever a time when the parent's duty is manifest, it is at this time when the child knows not himself but must come to his knowl- edge of great vital questions through sources, good or evil, pure or debasing. As Earl Barnes has so well said : " There are two sources from which this knowledge may be obtained one true and pure, the other false and dirty. Nineteen twentieths of children draw their information from those . . . who possess the mor- bid, false, and dirty view. They master a vocabulary which dates back philologically to our Aryan begin- ning, but to print which is a crime. The view which these children obtain is an abnormal one, and when they develop they use their sex powers abnor- mally." Dr. Helen P. Kennedy * says that "of 125 girls from whom she obtained written statements on this sub- ject, 36 passed into womanhood with no knowledge whatever, from a proper source, of all that makes them women; 39 had received a very meagre amount of in- * Child Study Monthly, vol. iv, p. 81. THE COURSE OF STUDY. 153 struction, while less than half of the whole number felt free to talk to their own mothers on this important subject." Says Dr. Jeanette W. Hall : " Are we going to allow our boys and girls to come to this critical period in their lives unprepared to meet and cope with its dan- gers ? Shall we sit quietly down with the means in our possession to present this subject in its pure and noble aspect and allow some one else to poison the minds of our children and inflict upon them a view of sex and reproduction from which they can never free them- selves? Shall our girls become invalids through igno- rance and our boys be robbed of half their manhood because of our superrefined delicacy? . . . Let us rather attain to that height from which we ourselves can look out upon this subject freed from all impurity and see in reproduction the crowning feature of God's great plan of life. Then, with a scientific knowledge of the subject, let us present it to our children that they may look upon puberty as a phase of life as sacred as birth or death and as pure as infancy or maturity, and upon reproduction as a sacred power/' The function of the teacher, in loco parentis man teacher for the boys and woman teacher for the girls in bringing to the adolescent this nobler conception of being and life, is the most difficult and yet the highest one in all pedagogy. At this time of stress and storm, of budding strength and conscious weakness, of doubt and yet need of light, the child seeks his confidants. If there is ever a time when " the confessional is the soul's clearing-house " (Hall), that time is now. The intelligent teacher may have a duty here, hard to read 154: AN IDEAL SCHOOL. and difficult of accomplishment; but it is frequently a field where " fools rush in where angels fear to tread." This is, however, a matter primarily for the father and the mother. But we must pass in our discussion to other phases of our ideal school. The college and the university, following the gymnasium or high school, do not come within the province of our problem. They are given their places in our general course of study simply to show function and relation. We need not stop to dis- cuss these phases of higher education. Their provinces and suggested characteristics are indicated on the diagram. Should not the college be discussed here to show what higher education has a right to expect from the high school? Is not your high school to be a prepara- tory school for the college? No, not to any considerable extent. The college must be the successor of the high school. It must take up the work of the capable student wherever he may happen to be. " But" exclaims some high-school principal, " the colleges make their demands and state their require- ments in terms of uniformity. How shall we escape this domination which destroys our opportunity for in- dividual conservation ? " I will tell you how it can be done. It must be by the better high schools declaring their independence. The time is rapidly passing when the colleges can dic- tate what shall be the education in the secondary schools. The colleges are in the business for students. Just as soon as they find that they can not get stu- THE COURSE OF STUDY. 155 dents on their own terms they will take them on the terms whereby they can get them. I do not doubt that many strong, capable people, who come to opportunity for liberal culture unexpect- edly late in life, are denied their just rights by the present attitude of the colleges. The magnificent school founded by Mr. Moody for this class of men and women is an exception which must determine the rule in colleges all over the land. I once knew a bright literary woman who, in the midst of a life devoted to culture as a student, poet, economist, and lecturer, sud- denly came to the desire to gain from the methods of the college. But this brilliant literary woman had never been in what the world calls the school more than a few months in all her life. Her whole career had been spent amid the culture of literary surround- ings, in the presence of books and scholarly people, and in literary creation ; but she had not the technique of the school. "Why," said the college executive to whom she applied for admission, "we all respect your literary ability; but under the requirements of our in- stitution I do not see that you present anything on which our precedents would allow us to grant you an admission." When will our colleges learn that they must find something else besides text and graveyard epitaphs as the basis for the measurement of creative mind? And when will they realize that they must take the capable student just where they find him in his desire for higher education? As President Jordan has so well said: * * Jordan's Care and Culture of Men. 156 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. "The rewards of investigation, the pleasures of high thinking, the charms of harmony, have never been for the multitude. To the multitude they must be accessi- ble in the future. Not as a gift, for nothing worth having was ever a gift, rather as divine right to be taken by those who can." There is another reason why the college has been placed on this chart in connection with the plan pre- sented for secondary education, as will be apparent by reading between the lines. We are in an era of tre- mendous high-school advancement, particularly in our cities. The attendance is now so large in our high schools that the change in conditions from this element of numbers will soon render it expedient for the state to furnish these young people their college education at their own homes, rather than send them away where expenses are so much heavier. The equipments of some of our newer high schools, like those in Springfield, Mass., Holyoke, Mass., Oakland, Cal., and other cities, dwarf many of our colleges. The high schools all over the country are now doing practically what the colleges did fifty years ago ; and the city high schools, of recon- structed type, purely for economy's sake will soon be called upon to assume the lower work of the present college. Something of this kind is to be attempted in the new Jacob Tome Institute, at Port Deposit, Md., which proposes to establish a new degree of associate for those who there complete the first two years of the college. The University of Chicago, it is said, is to give this same degree at the end of the two years' course, hoping eventually to drop all work below this point of recogni- THE COURSE OF STUDY. 157 tion and to assume its position as a true university. President Eliot's work has long been pointing to the same general issue. This, then, will create for the larger high school a new field, which economically it is well prepared to occupy. Indeed, a few high schools are even now offering opportunity for post-graduate high-school work. CHAPTEK VIII. INDIVIDUAL VARIATIONS. "If symmetry is to be obtained by cutting down the most vigorous growth, it would be better to have a little irregularity here and there." (Agassiz.) THE course of study outlined in the last chapter has been presented because there must be some back- bone to a school plan; but in the proper training of individuals it can serve only a general purpose. For convenience in comparison the usual factor of years is approximately indicated; but in our scheme for sci- entific education we must now drop the time element which has so long dominated both colleges and schools. The diversities in the human animal are the most un- limited and complex of all life. The variations in height, weight, proportion, temperament, food habits, interests, activities, endurance, and opportunities are so wide in their range and so complex in combinations that no one course of study can possibly meet the just needs of the many individuals whose interests are to be conserved. Every individual reaches his supreme possi- bilities in the fact that he is an individual and that his characteristics are peculiar to himself. Heredity. It is true that all children are descended from Adam, but the lines of descent are very different. Under the conventionality of modern artificial life dif- 158 INDIVIDUAL VARIATIONS. 159 ferent individuals may take on many common traits and imitated characteristics; but still both immediate and remote ancestries are very diversified, and the child comes to the present a personal ego plus the enormously diversified heritages of the past. As Spencer has said, " To educate a child you must begin back with his grandfather." The Pentateuch (Ex. xx, 5; xxxiv, 7; Num. xiv, 18) explicitly declares that the iniquity of the fathers is visited " upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generations." Bradford states: " All schemes of culture should begin with the recognition that each child is dif- ferent from any other, that the lines of difference run far back, and therefore are not superficial; and that, in order to secure the highest efficiency, systems of educa- tion should be adapted to the individuals to be reached." Heredity, then, is a fundamental factor in variation and must be considered in education. The ego, the divine spark, plus ancestral inheritance, can not be ignored. Even the children of the same parents come into the world diversified greatly by prenatal conditions; so much so that the several children of a given family, while bearing marked resemblance to parents in com- mon traits, are types peculiar to themselves. One child is tempest and another is sunshine; one is phlegmatic and the other nervous in temperament; that which will do well for one child will not do at all for the others ; and so each family has a little world of variety in itself. If there is so great difference in the children of the same family, where, because of common parent- age, association, shelter, food, clothing, and general home culture, one might expect some degree of similar- 160 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. ity, how much more should we expect variations in the fifty children of a school, where certainly parentages and nationalities are far from uniform ! Environment. So the child comes into the world a personal unit plus heredity. But how different the environments! The variations of home conditions from the rural to the urban, the differences in attendance, food, shelter, clothing, responsibilities, companionship, past instruction, sicknesses, injuries, opportunities, and all the thousands of circumstances, conditions, and incidents which go to make a person the "product of all he has ever met" and been how endlessly varied the process, how diversified the product! It is this product which comes to the school room, to have worked into the soul all the varying receptivities and reactions of the strengths and weaknesses of each succeeding step of instruction. The Child of a King, plus heredity, plus environment, stands at the door of the school and knocks, asking for that which uniformity can never give. Before the teacher, frequently of limited horizon and questionable motive, there gather in the school fifty children. Whence came they? They are the children of God, born of modifying parentages and conditioned by an evolution which knows no uniformity. In sizes, weights, temperaments, physical health, responsibili- ties, capabilities, and opportunities, what a heterogene- ous assemblage! Side by side, in the same school, sit the children of wealth and of poverty, of native and of foreign descent, the well-fed and the meagrely nour- ished, the warmly clad and the scantily protected from the storm, the refreshed by adequate sleep in rooms of pure air and those worn from meagre hours of rest in a INDIVIDUAL VARIATIONS. 161 crowded, unventilated room, the child of luxury and the one of heavy responsibilities, the spoiled by indulgent parents and the independent through forced self-reli- ance, the robust in physical health and the incapacitated by past sicknesses and injuries, the well-taught and the ill-taught, the child of virtue and the one whose whole life is a moral struggle, the child of encouragement and ambition and the one heart-sick and of little ex- pectancy. Is this an exceptional school ? If not, what are the individual rights of these children? How can any system of uniformity answer the responsibility which it assumes? The Growth of Children. Not for purposes of defi- nition, but for general illustration, it may be well to follow this necessarily brief reference to heredity and environment by a presentation of some of the variations in physical characteristics, as typed, perhaps least of all, in heights and weights. Burk's study of the growth of children * deduces some very important facts to be conserved in a general scheme of education ; but the complexity of the problem is enormously increased by the tremendous range in the heights, in terms of inches and years, given in his adapted tables showing the results of the measurements of 45,151 boys and 43,298 girls made in the cities of Boston, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Worcester, Toronto, and Oakland. The following section (8-15 years) from Dr. Bow- ditch's table, giving the measurement of Boston school children, shows approximately the same range of varia- tions: * American Journal of Psychology, vol. ix, p. 267. 162 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. Variations in Heights of Boston School Boys. INCHES. 8 yrs. 9 yrs. 10 yrs. 11 yrs. 12 yrs. 13 yrs. 14 yrs. 15 yra. 74.. 1 73 72 71 1 70 3 69 6 4 68 1 5 14 67 3 12 19 66 1 8 25 65 6 20 37 64 1 4 32 38 63 1 3 13 32 35 62 6 18 35 42 61 1 4 30 34 26 60 2 16 32 39 31 59.. .. 5 23 46 42 29 58 57 *i 3 5 12 19 38 28 48 44 49 27 14 6 56 55.. . *i 2 4 15 26 48 45 48 61 58 28 14 11 5 5 54 3 12 34 49 52 26 6 4 53.. 5 21 45 46 40 20 2 52.. 10 34 68 53 24 4 1 1 51 21 54 57 28 20 5 2 50 44 67 44 25 4 2 49.. 70 75 44 11 2 1 48.. .. 75 50 11 3 2 47 68 41 6 1 1 46 50 12 1 45 35 6 1 44 . 11 1 2 43 11 42 41 1 40.. 1 39 38 i 37 i 36 35 *i 407 381 360 350 373 391 386 342 For complete tables, see Dr. Bowditch's Growth of Children in Papers on Anthropometry, 1894. INDIVIDUAL VARIATIONS. 163 Variations in Weights of Boston School Soys, showing Number of Soys of Each Age. (Based on Dr. Bowditch's Table.) POUNDS. 8 yrs. 9 yrs. 10 yrs. 11 yrs. 12 yrs. 13 yrs. 14 yrs. 15 yrs. 186-190. 1 182-186. 178-182. 174-178. 170-174. 1 166-170. 1 1 162-166. 1 158-162. 1 154-158. 1 1 150-154. 1 4 146-150. *2 2 142-146. 1 *i 14 138-142. 'l 3 5 12 134-138. 1 1 9 13 330-134. , . 3 9 20 126-130. . '2 3 14 26 122-126. , 2 4 15 30 118-122. m 5 26 37 114-118. 'i 12 35 44 110-114. p . 5 15 34 59 106-110. 'i 8 30 47 53 102-106. 2 '3 12 41 70 60 98-102. 3 16 59 69 56 94-98.. 1 13 32 60 92 47 90-94.. 'i 4 16 57 93 103 50 86-90. . 1 12 29 76 131 97 37 82-86.. 'i 3 18 56 129 151 96 30 78-82. . i 2 42 100 157 177 72 19 74-78.. 3 23 112 175 219 158 50 11 70-74.. 11 55 166 235 219 117 34 5 66-70. . 30 121 270 258 144 52 20 3 62-66. . 106 251 262 201 100 28 3 58-62.. 210 343 227 117 36 10 2 54-58.. 333 336 150 64 24 4 1 50-54. . 424 208 79 18 8 1 46-50. . 251 76 14 5 42-46. . 91 14 2 38-42.. 19 3 1 34-38.. 1 1,481 1,437 1,363 1,293 1,253 1,160 908 636 The heights and weights of girls vary fully as much of boys. For other ages see Dr. Bowditch's tables. those Variations in Brain Weight of Eminent Men. Compiled from Records of Marshall and Manouvrier* AGE. Encephalic weight. Grammes. Eminent man. 39 1,457 1,238 1,294 1,403 1,516 1,468 1,409 1,312 1,378 1,358 1,499 1,644 1,520 1,629 1,520 1,503 1,485 1,559 . 1,250 1,436 1,533 1,488 1,398 1,415 1,449 1,332 1,830 1,785 1,498 1,512 1,502 1,352 1,516 1,207 1,349 1,390 1,590 1,410 1 226 1,492 1,254 1,403 1,452 1,290 1,516 Skobeleff, Russian general. G. Harless, physiologist. Garabetta, statesman. Assezat, political writer. Chauncey Wright, mathematician. Asseline, political writer. J. Huber, philosopher. Seizel, sculptor. Coudereau, physician. Hermann, philologist. Puchs, pathologist. Thackeray, novelist. De Morny, statesman. Goodsir, anatomist. Derichlet, mathematician. Schleich, writer. Broca, anthropologist. Spurzheim, phrenologist. V. Lasaulx, physician. Dupuytren, surgeon. J. Simpson, physician. Pfeufer, physician. Bertillon, anthropologist. Melchior Mayer, poet. Lamarque, general. J. Hughes Bennett, physician. G. Cuvier, naturalist. Abercrombie, physician. De Morgan, mathematician. Agassiz, naturalist. Chalmers, preacher. Liebig, chemist. Daniel Webster, statesman. DOllinger, anatomist. Fallmerayer, historian. Whewell, philosopher. Hermann, economist. Grote, historian. Hausemann, mineralogist. Gauss, mathematician. Tiedemann, anatomist. Babbage, mathematician. Ch. H. Bischoff, physician. Grant, anatomist. Campbell, lord chancellor. 40 .. 43 45 43 49 49 ... . 50 (?) 50 52 52 53 54 54 55 56 ... 56 57 57 59 60 60 . 62 62 (!) . . 63 63 .. 63 64 65 66 67 70 70 71 71 ... . 71 73 .. 75 ... 77 78 79 ... 79 79 80 . 82.. Donaldson's Growth of the Brain, p. 128. 164 INDIVIDUAL VARIATIONS. 1(J5 The following brain weights are also recorded : Oliver Cromwell, 2,231 grammes; Byron, 2,238 grammes; Turgenieff, 2,021 grammes; but these are perhaps with- out satisfactory collateral evidence, unless it be in the case of Turgenieff. Certainly these tables, reduced to a composite and shown in curves, are exceedingly significant and have their places in general considerations and plans; but the point is raised that no school mechanism can justly answer the requirements of the variations typed in small degree by these physical conditions. If there exists this range of physiological differences, repre- sented here by heights and weights only, besides which are an endless and limitless number of other factors, it can be depended on that there is an infinitely greater variation in the psychological characteristics.* Psychic Variations. Notwithstanding the wide vari- ations in the general physical characteristics of children, which are faintly hinted in heights and weights, the variations in psychological characteristics are infinitely greater. The tables of brain weights given by Vierordt and Boyd are of great general value, but the characteris- tics which make the child, the man, or the woman can never be measured in ounces or grammes. The immense range in brain weights indicated in the tables of Mar- shall, Manouvrier, Bischoff, Vierordt, and Boyd, and the finer quality of the mind of woman compared with man, must forever establish the fact that the human mind is * C. W. Hetherington, formerly instructor at Stanford Uni- versity, but now at Clark University, has for several years been working on a Psychology of Individual Differences, which, when completed, will open up an enormous field of possibilities. 166 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. conditioned by physical organs and environment only in elementary ways, above which the transcendentalism of the psychic and the infinite variations of the ego find illimitable expression. The personal equation is a com- posite absolutely unique. The varying circumstances and constituencies of an endlessly diversified heredity, modified still more by an environment never identical, and all the countless elements which attend a life of free-will agency, contribute to make each individual a personality peculiar to himself. Far more than differ the leaves of the forest man is differentiated in his wide range of psychic characteristics, unclassifiable and illim- itable. It is the greatness of man that he is infinite in the range of individuality; and the world is richest in the individual's reaction in achievement, in contribu- tion, in co-operation, and in happiness. Every teacher has before her in the school room a variation in human history, in individual abilities, and in unbounded future that needs no outside illustra- tions to establish the doctrine here advanced. No two classes are alike in abilities, and no two children of even the same parents are duplicates. How infinitely greater, then, must be the variations in personality of the forty or fifty individuals who have come to the present with all the wide range of conditioning fac- tors that enter into life! The recognition of these indi- vidual differences must be fundamental in scientific education. The existence and range of these variations have been but faintly comprehended in the policies of schools. Children of all degrees of ability, opportunity, natural endowment, and life purpose have been classed together. INDIVIDUAL VARIATIONS. ICY Three factors the child's best development, a time element, and uniformity in requirement, which can never constitute a perfect unity have been the erro- neous and impossible trinity of the schoolman's ignis fatuus. Under the operations of this uniformity these wide-ranged variations have disappeared from view. School people have been thinking of an average which conserves really only a small number of pupils and loses sight of an almost infinite range of variations not easily recognised. Attention is once more directed to the table of ages.* It is apparent that the average age completely loses sight of the enormous number of indi- vidual extremes, which in this case is startling. It has been supposed that a graded school fairly well gathers together in classes those of uniform ability. The fallacy of this policy is well shown in the various tables indicating the differentiation of working abilities, elsewhere presented.! The very existence of these dif- ferences in abilities demands that the school must give individual opportunity. It is frequently supposed that the senior class in the high school, representing as it does the survival of the most favoured, is fairly well graded. Let us see if this is the case. From many studies throwing light on this question, attention is directed to the one on the following page from the Field High School of Leomin- ster, Mass. Mr. Wallace E. Mason, the principal, is one * Table of Ages, Chapter II, p. 19. f The reader is requested to turn back to the tables represent- ing the differences in working abilities as shown in the studies of the free working classes in Latin and mathematics, described in Chapter II, pp. 29 and 33. 13 SENIOR REVIEW GEOMETRY, FIELD HIGH SCHOOL, LEOMINSTER, MASS. September 6 to December 14, 1899. Lineal measurement of work accomplished by class of 26 pupils. The figures at the top represent units of work. 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 79 114 ias 1G8 101 134 167 54 83 103 1 J3 138 65 87 40 56 87 59 I 1 73 1 51 107 46 1 63 118 168 INDIVIDUAL VARIATIONS. 169 of the leading individualists of the country, and from many studies similar to this has long since recognised the injustice of herding children. On the very face of this enormous variation in the working abilities of a senior class, how utterly unjust is the practice of ranking pupils by honour or any mech- anism which compares that which can not be compared! " But" says some one,, " this surely can not repre- sent an average high school." It does not represent an average high school, for in its essential conservations it is infinitely above the average high school. But this much is true: every attempt made in this country (and illustration could be made by scores of examples) to permit pupils to work according to their natural abilities has shown approximately the same wide range of variations. (See tables in Chapter II.) What is the graded school going to do with these pupils who have covered only fifty or sixty units of work? Are they qualified for graduation? Certainly they are as far as anything is shown by this table. But suppose a lower class in the ordinary elementary or secondary school exhibits this range of variation; what becomes of the pupil accomplishing only forty or forty-six units ? "Such a pupil" replies some schoolman, "is never permitted to do only forty or fifty units. He is helped on by the momentum of the class" I will tell you what becomes of him. If he holds his courage together long enough to get that far along he is rushed over work he does not understand. If he is not promoted, he repeats exactly the same work he 170 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. had before; a year is taken right out of his life. If he does not repeat the grade, his work is full of rotten places on which no solid superstructure can be built. Is it a matter of any surprise that school work has no personal interest to him, that he goes " as the quarry slave scourged" to his task, that he is a miserable misfit, to be dubbed, by the ignorance of the school, a dullard or a dunce? But the fact of the matter is, he is soon crowded out and is not counted in the " number belonging." On the other hand, what opportunity in the graded school has the pupil who has accomplished 168 units of work, or the two with 167 units? Certainly more than the one of 40 units, because three fourths of the teach- er's time is usually spent on the bright pupils. But have these rapid workers full, free opportunity to live up to the best that is within them? And, after all, in the light of the world's experience with the flower- ing of great men, is it not a mistake for the school to say who are the superior souls, and whether they are to be found among the precocious or the plodders? Says Dr. Edward Everett Hale : * ' 1 1 came home at the end of the first month with a report which showed that I was ninth in a class of fifteen. That is about the average rank which I generally had. I showed it to my mother because I had it. I thought she would not like it. To my great surprise and relief she said it was a good report. I said I thought she would be dis- pleased because I was so low in the class. f Oh/ she said, f that is no matter. Probably the other boys are * Dr. Hale, in How I was Educated. INDIVIDUAL VARIATIONS. 171 brighter than you. God made them so, and you can not help that.' " In a recent address before the British Medical Asso- ciation, Dr. G. E. Shuttleworth remarks: * " A rational educational system will of course recognise the fact that all children are not cast in the same mould ; that there are inherent, often inherited, differences in each pupil's powers, and that to obtain the best results, instruction must be adapted to idiosyncrasies and proportioned to varying capacities." Evolution, in its uplift of all life and particularly in the ascent of man, has reached its heights through processes that have always recognised the values of strengths. If the differences in innate potentiality count for nothing, then there is no use of the horti- culturist exercising care in the selection of seeds; one kind will produce as good fruit as another. If natural endowment had contributed nothing to progress and achievement, a sorry world this would be. Success in future mission is dependent on the evolution of the innate in man in adjustment to the purposes of life. It is a revelation to note that the creators in the world of science and industry have to no considerable extent come up through the graded school ; that the successful business men of the day were not trained in the city; and that even the students who have knocked at the door of the college have largely come from outside our mechanical system. Several questions present themselves for considera- tion. First, to what extent should the school aim at * Dr. G. E. Shuttleworth, in Mental Overstrain in Education, 172 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. symmetrical development? Second, should it be built primordially for development along lines of strength? Third, how shall individual training be possible in mass education? Fourth, what place has individuation in the preparation of man for his higher sociologistic re- lations ? Question first: To what extent shall the school aim at symmetrical development? Simply for the correction of weaknesses in so far as they condition man's happiness and the normal exercise of higher faculties. But these weaknesses must be reached by their individual recognition and by pre- scription of exercises best calculated for their cor- rection. This opens up a field infinitely larger than the school has ever attempted to occupy. To whatever extent related studies and exercises condition the best expression of higher faculty and endowment, symmet- rical education has something to offer, but no further. What folly there has been in putting a surfeit of mathematics on certain girls, when there may be a hun- dred other departments of work in her particular field where these girls may surpass their schoolmates ! This one practice, illustrative of others, tells of a fearful mis- application and loss of energy which could have been utilized with enriching results in the best development of the pupil. Question second: Shall the school be built primor- dially for development along lines of strength? Most certainly so, with all normal individuals. With the general correction of weaknesses already dis- cussed, and with enough of general introduction and survey to enable the pupils to choose wisely, education INDIVIDUAL VARIATIONS. 173 should early take on a recognition of natural endow- ments, chief interests, and well-defined trend. Man is too complex to permit much development in all di- rections. Besides, he was not created symmetrical, as the world counts symmetry, and in his life upward he has reached all his achievements in science, industry, literature and art through the exercises of faculties wherein he has been individually the most gifted. We need an education of differences, of parts wherein man is individually the strongest. As President Jordan has better said, if a man proposes to climb a high mountain it does not pay him to waste his energies in climbing all the foothills in the neighbourhood. Even so, it is a good thing for a young person early to find his lead- ing interest and then give opportunity for his growing strength. Question third: How shall individual training be possible in mass education? The solution of a problem so vast as this certainly has its very great difficulties. Under ordinary circum- stances it is almost impossible to do much, for the moment attempt is made to conserve the interest of the individual, just then education becomes complex and continues to grow in difficulty in proportion as such conservation is realized. But that is not the first issue to be considered. If the best education of child or man is reached through his consideration as a per- sonal being, requiring a specific study of his nature and interests and an individual prescription of exercises best calculated to give free expression to his growing strength ; if his education is to continue all the natural processes which, through evolution, has given us the 174 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. glory of all life; and if it is to respect the funda- mental principles of divine economy as exemplified in all that goes toward the making of character then the first duty for the educator is to attempt to furnish that education. The fact that the individual must find his education in contact with the mass is entirely to his advantage; but he in turn has the most to offer the mass in proportion as he is educated as an indi- vidual. The details presented in our discussion of methods will give some living illustration of how enter- prising teachers are finding their way to an effective answer to this question. Question fourth : What place has individuation in the preparation of man for his higher sociologistic re- lations ? Let not the position of the individualists be misun- derstood. There is no intelligent one of them who be- lieves in isolation, or who despises the proper place of the class and of the lecture, or who forgets man's rela- tions to his fellows. The individualist holds that the school must fit the child; that it must eliminate uni- formity in requirement, passive waiting, dead time, repetition of lessons because of others' faults, premature skipping and half-way performance of important exer- cises, non-promotion, bad motive, and unjust rivalry. He demands that there must be recognition of heredity and environment and trend as conditioning factors; that there must be opportunity for the exercise of natu- ral endowment, living interest, and choice; that there must be continuous progress, daily promotion, the per- formance of work of specific fitness, and the working of one's soul into the process; that there must be closer INDIVIDUAL VARIATIONS. 175 and more sympathetic association with higher person- ality; and that all of one's education must be related to life purposes. Every school plan must be tried by the test to what extent it better fits man for his rela- tions with his fellows; in what way he can make the highest contribution to the happiness and enjoyment of mankind. This is the fundamental purpose of the better education of the individual. The perfection of the community is dependent on the perfection of the individual. " The best field of corn is that in which the individual stalks are most strong and most fruit- ful. The strongest nation is that in which the indi- vidual man is most helpful and most independent." (Jordan.) There can be no great development of so- ciety excepting as the individual is made the unit in education. " No chain is ever stronger than its indi- vidual links." If the school is to be life, as Professor Dewey says it must be, it can only reach that realization by con- forming its processes to life. All business life, in the rise and fall of commercial man, is conditioned upon the individual. Man's industries and achievements in every field of science, literature, art, and economics have no other foundation. The law of the court recognises only individual responsibility. The church accepts no other person's confession of faith. In the whole realm of ethics and divine economy, all for the benefit of universal man, there is no recognition of any plan by which society may become strong and good, excepting as the individual unit is strong and good. It is the universal law of Nature, of man, and of God. In no other way can come being, growth, and salvation. 176 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. Then the individualist is the true sociologist, be- cause he furnishes the only foundation on which good society can be built the capable unit. To ignore, sim- ply from the suggestion of the term, the high purposes and ultimate end of individualism, is a misconception of great ideals. The individualogistic purposes in edu- cation have no value whatever excepting as they are swallowed up in the higher sociologistic relations of man, of which they form the nucleus essence. By this measure of sociologistic value everything in the plans to follow should le tested. CHAPTER IX. ILLUSTKATIVE METHODS. " Did the Almighty, holding in his right hand Truth and in his left hand Search after Truth, deign to tender me the one I might prefer, in all humility but without hesitation I would request Search after Truth." (Lessing.) UNDERSTANDING now that our school is to be or- ganized under ideal circumstances, and with proper cor- relations, it is desirable that the division of instruction should be largely departmental for all grades above the play school. The arguments for this form of organiza- tion are: 1. That the child may be in contact with the richer suggestions of several minds. 2. That the child may be longer in association with a given teacher for the sake of personal influence and that his work may be better related and more continuous. 3. That he may have, in his early years, the same high quality of instruction that has been vouchsafed to the university student. 4. That every study may have its well-equipped laboratory, which is largely impossible when equipment is divided up and duplicated in many scattered schools. " I call your first proposition into discussion at once," remarks some grammar master. ff Wherein is the su- perior value of contact with several minds?" 177 178 AN IDEAL SCHOOL. With several teachers the child's views of life are more normal, each being corrective of the other; his conceptions are fed from a richer source, just as one gets more from a glimpse into the gardens of an expert horticulturist than he does in the garden of the ordinary home; just as also the child who has trav- elled and seen much has the wider fund of knowl- edge on which to base his imagination and generaliza- tions. "I agree with you" says a teacher, "in your state- ment that a pupil's work in a given subject may be bet- ter connected, freer from rotten places and overlaps with more opportunity for short-cuts, and may be done in a shorter time; but how about the question of in- fluence? How can the teacher have as much chance to know the child and for influence, when there are, say, five teachers, giving her only one fifth of the child's time?" On the basis of one year's procedure, I admit that there might be loss in this respect; but we must not forget that the same teacher would be with the child for five years and probably longer. This of itself is more than compensation. Is not the discipline more difficult when the work is departmental? It is more difficult, because the weakness of an in- ferior teacher becomes more apparent. The pupils have opportunity to know good and bad, and rebel against imposition. It is infinitely better that this should be the case than that a child should remain five-fifths time under a poor teacher. Besides, it soon weeds out the poor teacher. ILLUSTRATIVE METHODS. 179 Do you think that the quality of the instruction would be better? Most certainly I do. It would raise all teaching to the level of the specialist. Probably not more than one third of our teachers can properly give instruction in music, and scarcely more than that number can do very high work in drawing. It is probable this would appear true of all the other studies, if the inadequacies were as easily recognised. It is not simply that teachers are not endowed equally, but they have not time to pre- pare for universal work to any high degree of excel- lence. Departmental work ploughs much deeper fur- rows. Besides, it would bring the descent of higher scholarship and higher method into the lower grade school. Sometimes there is more education in a single half hour in contact with a superior soul than in a month of ordinary school-room work where no one exercise can be very much vitalized with great inspiration. " I have observed" remarks some interested mother,