THE PURPOSE AND SCOPE OF VISITING TEACHER WORK
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HOWARD W. NUDDThis statement of the purpose and scope of visiting teacher work appeared originally in The Problem Child in School as a supplement to the twenty-six narratives written hy Mary Buell Sayles from case records of visiting teachers. It is now reprinted for the fourth time> April> 1930.
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THE PURPOSE AND SCOPE OF VISITING TEACHER WORK
By Howard W. Nudd
Chairman of the National Committee on Visiting Teachers, affiliated with the Public Education Association of the City of New York
EVERY teacher, every social worker, and many a parent is familiar with the problem child — the boy or girl whose school progress or whose reactions to normal requirements point toward later inefficiency, delinquency, or some other failure in personal or social adjustment.
What is the trouble with such children, and what can be done for them? How can the school obtain and utilize a knowledge of the forces that are affecting their success, and give them in fullest measure the benefits of their educational experience? Puzzles or pests at home, in school, or elsewhere, their personal welfare and the welfare of society require painstaking effort in their behalf. They cannot wisely be regarded as but temporary nuisances, whose present weaknesses a kindly fate will in some way heal with the balm of time, nor can they wisely be ignored, without serious study and effort, as inevitable liabilities which society must expect along with its blessings. To-morrow they will be citizens, for weal or for woe, and their shortcomings to-day, if left uncorrected, may have dire effect upon the character of their citizenship to-morrow. They present at once the most baffling, the most urgent, and the most interesting problems in the field of education.
Some of the ways in which the school is approaching these juvenile problems and is seeking to forestall later adult2
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unadjustment through the work of the visiting teacher are well illustrated by the stories presented in The Problem Child in Schoold They are drawn from actual cases in a score of communities where the National Committee on Visiting Teachers has cooperated with local school boards in carrying on demonstrations as part of the Commonwealth Fund Program for the Prevention of Delinquency. It is the purpose of this pamphlet to summarize what the Committee conceives to be the nature of visiting teacher work and its contribution to school practice, outlining the general function of the visiting teacher, the types of problems she handles, the treatment she applies, the preventive character of her work in relation to other school departments, the gradual evolution of school procedure which has revealed the need for this service, the origin and growth of the movement itself, its present status, and the outlook for the future.
FUNCTION OF THE VISITING TEACHER
The visiting teacher’s treatment of problem children is based upon the fact that useful citizenship and right living are the normal outgrowth of sound training and wholesome behavior in childhood and that the attainment of these ends is vitally affected by environmental influences and by the child’s attitude toward himself, toward others, and toward the opportunities and the obstacles he may encounter. His scholastic progress and deportment in school, his heredity, his emotional nature, his interests, ambitions, and dislikes, and the experiences which evoke the reactions that shape his character thus become the subjects of the visiting teacher’s inquiry and take her into the home, the class-
1 The Problem Child in School, by Mary B. Sayles, with a Description of the Purpose and Scope of Visiting Teacher Work, by Howard W. Nudd (The Commonwealth Fund, Division of Publications).OF VISITING TEACHER WORK
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room, or wherever a situation exists that may help to reveal and explain the causes of his difficulties.
School failures or dissatisfactions are usually symptoms of serious underlying causes which make or mar the foundations for success in after life. But, while the school occupies the strategic point in education and should provide a wealth of wholesome organized experiences, nevertheless it is but one of the many forces which influence the child’s life and create the attitudes toward self and others which deterhiine so largely his achievement and behavior. It is sometimes, indeed frequently, forgotten that during the months when school is in session the child is in attendance but five out of twenty-four hours ea,ch school day. This means that he is in school scarcely twelve per cent of the time, that during the eight years of his elementary education only one eighth of his time, or a period equal to one year, is spent in school, and that the greater part, equal to seven years, is spent in the home, the neighborhood, or elsewhere, under influences that are either strengthening or undermining the work of his teachers.
It is quite obvious, therefore, that if all the factors which enter into this process of development are to be understood thoroughly and made to count most for the child and society, the educative influences in home and neighborhood, which operate during 88 per cent of the time, must, so far as possible, be coordinated with those of the school, which operate during the remaining 12 per cent. Particularly is this true of those children who give promise of later serious unadjustment. To understand such children and give them their foil chance in life, it is essential that the school, the home, and every social agency which may influence or guide them, be mutually aware of the causes of their difficulties and cooperate in an enlightened and constructive program.4
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It is equally obvious that the performance of such a delicate and complicated task requires insight, skill, and a high degree of personal fitness. For not only do the problems of these children involve an infinite variety of contributing causes which must be disentangled in each particular case, but they require an intimate knowledge of the resources of the school, the home, and the community, if the difficulties are to be wisely removed and replaced by helpful influences.
For that reason, the school has been turning to the visiting teacher,1 a comparatively new specialist who has the twofold basic training and experience of a teacher and a social case worker. The person who performs the intricate task of adjusting the difficulties of problem children cannot be merely a sympathetic visitor between the home and the school, a messenger, only, of good-will and good tidings from one to the other. Helpful as that is, if it were all that were needed the task would be simple indeed, and doubtless any one with a kind heart and a pleasing personality would suffice.
Like everyone engaged in the profession of education, the visiting teacher must have not only the essential qualities of personality, but the technical equipment needed to understand and to deal effectively with the factors which comprise the specific problems in her field. To cooperate intelligently with teachers and school officials in the discovery and removal of handicapping conditions in the school itself, she must know professionally, by training and experience, the aims and procedure of the school. To aid parents and social agencies to cooperate effectively with each other and with the school in achieving an adjustment of the child’s
1 In some places she is known as a home and school visitor, or a school counselor.OF VISITING TEACHER WORK
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special difficulties, she must be able, through training and experience in .social case work, to seek tactfully and skillfully for underlying causes in the home and the community and to understand clearly what social resources can or cannot be employed in any given case. In order that she may help the child to adjust himself to the opportunities in his environment and overcome the obstacles presented by his own personality, it is particularly desirable that she be familiar with the principles of modern psychology and psychiatry, and thus be equipped to detect adverse symptoms and call upon the specialists in these fields for aid whenever necessary or desirable.
It is evident that this is not a field for the novice or for one fitted solely to skim the surface of difficult situations and to prescribe palliatives. The visiting teacher must be a skilled craftsman who can analyze thoroughly the problems which confront her and can marshal social and educative forces inside and outside the school for clear and specific purposes. She naturally does many things directly to remedy a given situation, but her aim is primarily not to duplicate what can best be done by others, but rather to bring into effective cooperation, for the welfare of the particular child, those agencies or measures which her knowledge of the situation indicates as essential.
TYPES OF PROBLEMS
The visiting teacher’s services are devoted primarily to the needs of those individual children who present problems of scholarship or conduct of a baffling, erratic, troublesome, or suspicious nature, or who show signs of apparent neglect or other difficulties which the regular staff of the school finds itself unable to understand or to deal with unaided. Such children include those who, for some unaccountable reason,6
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fall below standard in scholarship, although they are not sub-normal; the repeater, the restive, and the over-age who are counting the days until they may “go to work”; the precocious and the gifted who have difficulty in finding full scope or wholesome outlet for their interests and abilities; the adolescent who appear unable, without special guidance, to avoid the pitfalls they encounter; those whose conduct gives evidence of undesirable companionship or unwholesome interests and shows tendencies toward unsocial behavior or delinquency; the irritable, the worried, the vio-lent-tempered, and the repressed; the indescribable who are perpetually stumbling into difficulties or getting out of tune with their environment and who are always in need of counsel; and the apparently neglected, abused, or over-worked, whose home conditions appear so adverse that special assistance, supervision, or guidance is needed.
Such children, unless early adjustment is made, not only miss the lull advantage which the school affords, but may drift from bad to worse, arriving only too frequently at the children’s court or some other corrective agency. To meet these problems, which are both educational and social in nature, the visiting teacher utilizes her double experience as teacher and social worker. As has been indicated, what is required in each of these cases is better understanding and closer cooperation on the part of all who are molding the life of the child. ^The visiting teacher is specifically equipped, not only to find out why things are not going right in the lives of these children, but also to take back to the class teacher, the parent, or the social agency which may help, the essential information needed to meet their individual limitations. In order to do this effectively, it is frequently necessary for her to work intensively on cases for a long period of time. Despite this fact, she cannot always be sue-OF VISITING TEACHER WORK
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cessful in overcoming the obstacles that may be hindering the child’s progress. In the great majority of cases, however, her efforts do produce results of a far-reaching character and secure a satisfactory adjustment of the child’s difficulties.
TYPES OF TREATMENT
As a result of the new facts she discovers, the school is enabled to see what the actual situation is and to become aware of the real need of the child. It can often modify requirements to meet the newly seen limitations by changing the class, transferring the child to a special school, shifting emphasis from one phase of school work to another, adopting a new approach to the child, or connecting his school work more closely with his outside interests.
Frequently the visiting teacher effects the desired result by changing the child’s own attitude toward his problem, through explanation of his conduct and its consequences, through encouragement and supervision, or through the substitution of wholesome activities for harmful ones.
Many times, the adjustment of the difficulty lies in the home. A change in diet or in hours of sleeping may be desirable, or perhaps a shifting of hours for certain chores, a lightening of housework, a cessation of illegal occupations, the correction of conditions which make for immorality, a change in attitude toward the child or in methods of discipline, or an increased interest in his success or failure at school.
To remedy some situations, the visiting teacher may put the child or the family in touch with a social agency that will furnish relief or employment, a playground director or club leader who will furnish interesting substitutes for exciting dime novels or unwholesome movies, a convalescent home for an invalid parent, a day nursery to relieve an older child8
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of the burden of caring for younger children while the mother is at work, a psychiatric or medical clinic, or any number of agencies and opportunities of a special character, depending upon the local resources that can be mobilized in any particular case.
As a representative of the school, the visiting teacher is free from the suggestion of philanthropy and has a natural approach to the home, going as she does in the interests of the child. Through her acquaintance with families and the neighborhood she is frequently able to bring about social results of a far-reaching character. Her efforts have stimulated various communities to provide scholarship funds, nurseries, community houses, homes for neglected children, and other social activities. Hidden danger spots are not infrequently brought to her attention by parents who have not known what to do about them or who have been afraid to report to the proper agency or official. This often leads to such improvements as better policing and lighting of parks, better provision for playgrounds, closing of improper movies, checking of traffic in drugs to minors, and the removal of similar insidious conditions. In addition to what she may do for the particular children referred to her, therefore, the visiting teacher’s work may thus be helpful in a more general way to all the children in the school and neighborhood.
PREVENTIVE MEASURES THE GOAL
The value of the visiting teacher’s work is naturally in proportion to the extent to which she can get at the trouble early, while it is still in the preventive stage and before it drifts into a correctional or incorrigible problem or causes serious retardation that is well-nigh hopeless of solution. The measure of her devotion to this task is the measure ofOF VISITING TEACHER WORK
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her most helpful contribution to the school and to the broader field of preventing misfits and delinquency.
Retardation, chronic non-attendance, truancy, delinquency, and similar forms of acute unadjustment are milestones well along the way of a child’s falling from grace and are usually the outcome of a series of antecedent factors, at first relatively simple in character but growing with increasing momentum in seriousness and difficulty of solution. To the extent, therefore, that the visiting teacher’s participation in solving the child’s difficulty is postponed until these milestones are reached, to that extent her greatest usefulness, as a preventive force, is sacrificed. The more rigorously she is held at a distant post, the less she can do for the children who have not reached that post, and the more she is changed from a preventive to a corrective agency.
It seems necessary to emphasize the importance of getting at these problems early because of the common tendency to overlook what appear to be simple things and to let them slide until they become so acute and so obvious that something drastic must be done about them immediately. The old saying, “Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you,” depicts a fatal human tendency to procrastinate that is only too common in the treatment of problem children.
It frequently happens, in the initial employment of a visiting teacher, and sometimes for a considerable period thereafter, that the mistake is made of minimizing the importance of her work with problems which seem remote, and therefore less serious and less important at the time, and of emphasizing the value of her services to children whose problems have become almost overwhelming because of past oversight or neglect. The school seems to focus its attention upon a certain arbitrary danger point at which conduct becomes misbehavior and back-sliding becomesTHE PURPOSE AND SCOPE
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failure, and until the erring child drifts into the restricted circle of vision which encompasses that point, his approach to it remains unseen in the outer darkness. When this happens, the visiting teacher is usually kept so busily occupied with the mass of serious problems that have accumulated, and that are constantly being augmented by the new cases which drift into this circle of obvious danger, that she has no time to prevent further accumulation by dealing with the children who have not yet become bad enough, in the judgment of the school, to need a major operation.
It is quite natural, perhaps, that first thought should be given to problems which are most advanced and most pressing and that those which are less obvious and less troublesome, however preventive of later and more serious difficulties their prompt treatment may be, should be compelled to give way to those which must be handled immediately to clear off the official slateyit remains true, nevertheless, that adequate provision for utilizing preventive rather than corrective measures is more economical in the long run and contributes most to the welfare of the children and of society.
RELATION TO SPECIAL SCHOOL DEPARTMENTS
In view of this fact, it is important that due consideration be given to the place of the visiting teacher in the school system and to the conditions under which she must work. While detailed discussion of this point is impossible here, it is evident that although she must cooperate closely with all special school officials, particularly the nurse, the psychologist, and the attendance officer, her work should not be made a substitute for theirs but, rather, supplementary to it. Frequently she secures results on her own cases with their assistance, and at times she can aid them in the solu-OF VISITING TEACHER WORK
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tion of their specific problems when additional knowledge of the social and educational needs of the children in question might be helpful. But her own work is primarily in other directions, for the child’s health or mental status may or may not be a factor in his case, or he may have a perfect attendance record and yet present problems of scholarship or behavior which require the help and advice of a person with the special equipment of a visiting teacher. Where health, mentality, or attendance are found to contribute to the problem she is handling, she naturally refers such matters to the Appropriate department and solicits its cooperation, just as she refers other matters to social agencies. Were she to devote her efforts largely to obvious health or attendance cases it is evident that to that extent her time and energy would be diverted from problems of erratic scholarship and behavior which are outside the province of the nurse or the attendance officer, but which are equally important and require equally painstaking care and attention.
As the importance of utilizing the technique of the case worker in solving a variety of problems which involve social factors has become more generally recognized, there has been a tendency in some places to confuse the functions of the various school departments in which the use of this technique is desirable. Good administration requires the definition and coordination of the work of all these departments in such a way that wasteful duplication is eliminated and the danger avoided of achieving an apparent simplification, either by ignoring some of the essential functions or by making their performance practically impossible.
The visiting teacher is especially in danger of suffering from this tendency. Because she is a newcomer in the field of education and is skilled in the technique of case work, it sometimes happens that, in the zeal to apply her methods12
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elsewhere, an unwise short-cut is attempted by assigning to her cases which should properly go to the nurse or to the attendance officer. When this is done, or when she is regarded merely as a new emergency aid to help stem the tide which has grown beyond the control of an inadequate nursing or attendance staff, it is inevitable that she should be so overwhelmed with cases outside her field, which usually demand immediate attention to meet legal or other imperative requirements, that she is compelled to sacrifice her own specific work. As has already been indicated, the work of a visiting teacher in constantly nipping difficulties of scholarship and behavior in the bud will ultimately result in lessening retardation, non-attendance, truancy, delinquency, and other problems of a serious character. Such a result cannot be achieved, however, unless she is enabled to devote her attention to children long before their problems reach that critical stage. While her treatment of cases which belong to other departments may socialize and enlighten their work, and while her services will be of great value to the school whether cases are referred to her early or late, it is evident that she works to the best interests of the child, the school, the home, and the community when she gets ahead of the game in treating the problems in her field and prevents unwholesome possibilities from growing into grave actualities.
TERRITORY COVERED
It is also important that the visiting teacher should not be required to scatter her efforts over too many cases or too wide an area. Wisdom dictates and experience has shown that she can work most efficiently in one school or in a group of smaller neighboring schools. For, as has already been said, an essential part of her work is studying the neighborhood, knowing its resources, its lacks and potentialities, its tradi-OF VISITING TEACHER WORK
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tions, ambitions, and dangers. As a member of the school staff, she must also be familiar with the school’s facilities and possibilities and come to know intimately the teachers and principals with whom she must cooperate and through whom much of her work is accomplished. The magnitude and intricacy of her task, requiring intensive study of the cases which come to her attention, make it obvious that scattering her efforts would tend to make her work superficial and focus her attention upon the more “advanced” cases rather than upon those where the best preventive results can be accomplished.
HOW THE SCHOOL CAME TO SEE THE NEED FOR THE VISITING TEACHER
To understand more clearly the contribution which the visiting teacher is making to school procedure, it might be profitable to pause for a moment and review briefly the remarkable changes brought about in education during the comparatively recent past that have gradually led the school to realize the need for her services.
During the last three decades alone, the public school system has grown impressively, both in numbers and in attitude toward its problem. It has reached a larger number of children for a longer period of time, and its courses of study and machinery of supervision and instruction have greatly expanded. With ever-increasing clearness it is being realized that in a democracy not some children but all children must be prepared for wholesome and creative citizenship. Hence our compulsory education and child labor laws, which were practically non-existent in the early nineties. Along with this growth in numbers, the vast differences in abilities and interests among children have gradually become recognized as never before. This has inevitably led to a great varietyH
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of courses, special types of classes and trained specialists, all of which, when combined with the large increase in attendance, have forced the cost of education to a height not dreamed of before. The generous public support of these increased costs is striking proof of the general confidence in the increasing efficiency with which the school is mastering the technique of preparing children for the opportunities and obligations of citizenship.
Thirty or more years ago, before compulsory education laws became general, schools were schools, with curricula and methods of a predetermined pattern. Children could take them or leave them as they chose. Those whose aptitudes and interests happened to be appealed to stayed on and were “educated.”' The rest dropped out, to succeed or fail in the race of life by their own unaided efforts. Whether they became assets or liabilities to society was largely a matter of chance. The school, at any rate, made little concerted effort to understand them or to meet their needs. It stood calmly aloof, separating the sheep from the goats, showering its blessings on those who belonged and expelling the rest to an outer darkness. This process of elimination was as effective as it was; unjust. It weeded out the nonconformists and sought to produce in the survivors a marvelous uniformity. Such schools naturally cost less- and were far more simple in organization than the schools of to-day, and, in the opinion of some, produced far more impressive graduation exercises. With slight exaggeration, it might be said that, like parts of standard motor cars, the ideas and accomplishments of the surviving children were almost interchangeable, so uniformly did the ■ machinery of education select and fashion them. One might have taken their minds apart, so to speak, mixed the parts indiscriminately, sorted them out again without reference to the originalOF VISITING TEACHER WORK
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owners, and reconstructed an-equal number of similar minds that would have produced an equally impressive graduation program and could be guaranteed to take all the hills of life “on high.”
Then came a fundamental change. The non-conformists could no longer be eliminated so easily. Year by year the laws required the school to provide for a larger group of children, of a wider age distribution, and, as was natural, of a greater variety of abilities and interests. The old régime no longer sufficed. The schools suffered severe growing pains. At first they tried the impossible experiment of forcing all of these children through the same process from which they had formerly been eliminated as incompetents. The result was what might have been expected. The “good children,” who fitted the traditional plan, succeeded as before. They sat in the front seats, received gold stars, and monopolized honors on the perennial graduation day. A vast number, however—the non-conformists who had formerly been unceremoniously ejected from the company of the elect—fell behind, failing from year to year to meet the old requirements from which they had previously fled.
Gradually the presence of these failures became acutely felt, particularly in the lower grades where they piled up in alarming numbers. The statistical era then descended upon the schoolsj and after much calculation these children emerged as the “retardation problem.” Everywhere tables appearèd showing the number of children of various ages in each grade, and indicating by heavy dividing lines, like Jacob’s ladder reaching from earth to paradise, the number of children who were “under-age,” “over-age,” or of “normal age” for their grade. Immediately a panic struck the educational world and, as one community after another began to compare its “age-grade distribution” with others, a stampede16
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took place. The reputations of local school systems were at stake, and efforts by the score were made to correct bad statistical impressions. In some places standards of achievement were lowered, and everywhere schemes for getting all the children of the same age into the same grades, without unduly deranging the sacred curriculum which had been handed down through the ages, became the fashion. This frequently tickled the pride of disappointed parents and led many a harassed teacher to believe that she was conferring a kindness upon backward children by pushing them ahead faster than they should normally go.
From an administrative point of view a perfect age-grade distribution made a wonderful statistical impression and entitled the school system to meritorious mention. In the face of such a situation, it is little wonder that for a time more thought was given to the ebb and flow of mass showings than to the measures which might be taken to further the welfare of the individual children who were plainly out of adjustment with the school. The school was still the mold and the children were to be bent or manoeuvered to fit it. What effect this arbitrary pressure and manipulation might be having upon the emotional lives of these children, what fears, aversions, or antagonisms they might be creating, were almost lost sight of in the urge to make the group record of apparent intellectual achievement look commendable to a critical world.
Nevertheless, this appreciation in statistical form of the vast differences in children, as revealed by the widely varying rate of their progress through school, soon stimulated inquiry into causes and led to a stirring series of events which is still in progress. Efforts, at first cautious in nature but with ever-increasing skill and momentum, were made to measure children’s intellectual and physical ability and theirOF VISITING TEACHER WORK 17
rate of achievement in school subjects. At first, as in the inception of the movement to calculate retardation, the emphasis was placed upon mass showing, rather than upon the use of the tests to determine what might profitably be done for each individual child. It became the fashion for one community to point with pride to the fact that it had fewer morons or more superior children in its school system than had another, or that its children “averaged” better in arithmetic, spelling, or penmanship than did those of another community. For a while the attainment of uniformity of achievement and high averages under the traditional organization seemed to be the ostensible end of the testers, or at least of those who utijized their findings.
More recently, however, there has been a decided tendency to use this valuable technique for the benefit of the individual child. Where this viewpoint prevails, the card index is no longer worshiped primarily as a Convenient instrument for tabulating impressive data in which the individual is but an interesting item of information, however valuable such a statistical summary may be. *It is looked upon rather as a loose-leaf reference book of vital facts regarding Mary, John, and Peter, which must be utilized continually in adapting the work of the school to meet their specific needs.
This evolution has been accompanied and helped along by the experience derived from handling extreme cases of unadjustment which became so acute that a different treatment was seen to be imperative. Gradually special classes, with special equipment and specially qualified teachers, were organized for those who seemed incorrigible or who were obviously handicapped mentally and physically, and special courses of study and methods of instruction were formulated to suit their requirements. The development was helped along, too, by the experience with new studies, requiringi8
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special equipment and new methods of treatment, which had crept cautiously into the traditional curriculum, despite the obstruction of the so-called hard-headed, practical folk by whom they were regarded as “fads and frills.” These additions represented efforts to find better ways to interest and train those children who could no longer be eliminated and who were more or less vaguely being perceived as problems requiring something different from what the traditional program afforded.
^ Faced with the problem of educating all children, the school is thus gradually unbending to meet the child, and while it is still far from reaching its goal, it is steadily moving forward. Many of the innovations it has made have naturally been superficially organized in the initial stages and poorly incorporated into the existing procedure. In the groping effort to meet newly revealed problems, all the children have frequently been given a taste of everything, in the hope that they might find something, somewhere, to their liking which they might retain. But after prolonged use of the trial-and-error method, and with the newer insight into child nature and the evolution of better ways to appraise abilities and interests, the school is coming to realize that such patch-work will no longer do, that the tasting method must give way to a more fundamental re-organiza-tion.
A smattering appetizer here and there will no longer suffice. It is now generally recognized that children must be graded, instructed, and promoted, from the very beginning of school life, not on the basis of the old rigid system—or to produce statistical results which might shed glory upon the standards of by-gone days—but on the basis of their varied abilities and interests. In many places there is an enlightened effort to formulate differentiated courses of study,OF VISITING TEACHER WORK
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flexible programs of grading and promotion, and methods of instruction which find their inspiration in the manifold needs of individual children. Tests and measurements are coming to be regarded, not as convenient instruments for eliminating this child or that from the benefits of further instruction, but rather as instruments to illuminate their capacities, however limited, and to light the way to a more comprehensive and intelligent system of education which will give to every child “an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life.”
In view of the traditional conception of the school as a fact-and-skill-imparting agency, it does not seem strange that this development of educational technique has been largely in the field of intellectual and manual accomplishment and in the improvement of physical well-being. While the emotional life of the child, which gives rise to the attitude toward experience which determines behavior, has long been recognized as an important factor in education, it has remained more in the realm of theory than of practice. This has been due, not only to the traditional notion of the school as an agency for imparting information and manual skill, but also to the well-nigh universal absorption of educators in the dramatic movement to measure intelligence and achievement, and to a lack of knowledge and means to deal adequately with problems of behavior. As a result, the school has with increasing, efficiency imparted the “tools” and the “intellectual inheritance” of civilization, but has failed to understand and to develop in equal measure those emotional or spiritual traits in the individual child which determine so largely whether he will make or mar the life he might fashion with these instruments of skill and insight.
As measurements of intellectual ability and physical fitness have become more clearly determined, however, and20
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as the progress of children in the attainment of knowledge and skill has been more accurately gauged, it has been inevitable that other factors in the child’s nature, not appraised or explained by these measures, should emerge in bolder relief and present more clearly new problems for the school to grapple with. This explains to a considerable degree the new interest which is generally apparent in the problems of behavior and character. Intellectual accomplishment and physical fitness, while of course recognized as of fundamental importance, no longer monopolize the educational limelight. The school is coming to see that one may know the truth but the truth cannot make one free unless translated into appropriate action, and that “a sound mind in a sound body” is not the end, but a means to the' real end of education, which is sound behavior? It is becoming increasingly recognized that the emotional reactions of the child to his experience in school and in the world outside its walls play a vital part in the school’s main purpose to train children for right living and wholesome citizenship.
Intelligence, knowledge, and skill are, of course, invaluable assets whose worth cannot be minimized in the educative process, but in the end, it is the way they are used and the purposes they are made to serve which determine the character of the individual and of society. While a lack of ability, training, or accomplishment is a fundamental handicap which inevitably retards progress and precludes full realization of life’s opportunities, perverted strength, whether physical or intellectual, may prove to be a greater handicap, if not, indeed, a greater menace to personal and social well-being. Striking examples of this commonplace fact fill the records of court and clinic and obtrude from press columns and the annals of history. Irrespective ofOF VISITING TEACHER WORK
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one’s place on a measuring scale of intelligence or of achievement in subject matter, right conduct is the acid test of right living and right citizenship. Not what one knows or can do, but one’s attitude towards one’s self and others is the mainspring of behavior. Intellectual endowments and good health furnish a wealth of power which may be used or abused, according to the inclinations of the individuals who may possess them. The dangers of reckless driving, as well as the comforts and safety which come from a steady hand, a steady pace, and a smoothly running mechanism, are usually in direct proportion to the power of the propelling force. With a lesser force, one may not go so fast or so far, or experience the superior satisfactions which great force may give, but the greater the force the greater the havoc if the power is misapplied.
It would mark a distinct step forward, therefore, if the school would undertake to handle the problems of behavior, from the beginning of school life, with the same energy which has characterized its efforts to Understand and develop the intellectual and physical capacities of children. With the help of the psychologist and the physician it has sought to provide special classes for physical and mental defectives and to grade its former “normal” children according to their varied degrees of intellectual ability. With the help of the psychiatrist, it should seek to appraise their emotional nature and to care especially for the so-called neurotic.
To quote from a recent book which deals with the problems of these latter children, they may be described, for practical purposes, as “children who, for some reason other than intelligence, do not get on in the group to which they belong by reason of their intellectual endowments. . . . Every school teacher is puzzled by the occasional child who is always out of focus in his class, who is persistently too far22
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in the foreground or too far in the background. The background or ‘mousie’ type of child is frequently overlooked in school because, while he is young and often later in life, he alone is the sufferer. Yet this quiet, withdrawing youngster, who connects very little with his more boisterous playfellows, may be especially in need of understanding treatment. The foreground child who is a ‘pest’ is frequently allowed to strengthen his undesirable habits during his first years in school because the teacher is too proud to complain of a seven or eight-year-old pupil. She feels that unmanageable as he is, she must somehow manage him; but any first-aid method which she may happen to devise to keep the peace is not always either therapeutic or educational.”1
In the class grouping and education of these neurotic children, who exhibit marked aberrations of personality and behavior, as well as in the treatment of individual children elsewhere in the grades whose progress in scholarship and whose responses to normal requirements, though less erratic, present behavior problems of a baffling, troublesome, or suspicious nature, it is evident that the school cannot “go it alone.” Indeed, one of the most interesting outcomes of its searching inquiry into its task and procedure is the school’s growing realization of the fact that it is not an isolated, or semi-isolated, institution which can perform its specific functions efficiently in comparative seclusion. It is simply one, although a very important one, of the many social forces which transmute childhood into adult citizenship. It cannot hope, by its own efforts alone during five short hours, to compete with undermining influences which may be constantly at work outside. “Memory gems,”
1 Fitting the School to the Child, by Elisabeth A. Irwin and Louis A. Marks (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1924).OF VISITING TEACHER WORK
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knowledge of history and civics, stories of heroes and great men, educational rituals of one sort or another, may all play a valuable part in training for citizenship, but fine words do not make fine deeds, and only too frequently lip service is accepted as an adequate guarantee of strong character. By itself alone, the intellectual appeal is inadequate in the training of personality. Feelings and habits of behavior must be constantly nurtured or corrected, as the case may be, in the entire daily life of the child. How children act, in school and out, and why they act as they do are therefore of the utmost importance to education.
The school is obviously in a strategic position to get at the vital and active causes of the child’s behavior and emotional reactions wherever they may be manifested and, by soliciting and utilizing every agency that may help, to reinforce conditions that are wholesome and work for the removal of those which may lead to disaster. To achieve this wider influence upon the whole life of the child, however, the school must exercise the same degree of skill and insight that has made possible its progress in other directions. It cannot obtain an adequate knowledge of the conditions outside its walls that are helping or hindering in the educative process unless it is adequately equipped to ascertain those conditions and to appraise their effect upon the lives of individual children. It cannot readjust its own procedure or mobilize forces outside to aid it in meeting the needs of these children, unless it is equipped to secure coordinated action for clear and specific purposes. It needs, in short, a specialist who can probe these children’s difficulties, in school and outside, and who can utilize effectively every available resource to eliminate the harmful and conserve the good in their environment and in their educational opportunities.24
THE PURPOSE AND SCOPE
For that reason, as has been pointed out, the school has been turning to the visiting teacher. With her training and experience both as a teacher and a social case worker, and with her special knowledge of the behavior and personality problems of children, she has the equipment needed for this work and thus represents one of the most interesting and promising of the recent efforts which the school is making to understand the pupil as a child and to meet his individual needs with high professional skill.
Progressive educators realize that the regular teaching staff cannot perform this task unaided. Lack of time and energy, due to the pressure of class work, the preparation of class material, and after-school activities, often prevent teachers from knowing the home and out-of-school life of their pupils. With the reduction in the size of classes and the lightening of the teaching load, and with the development of a greater social consciousness through the addition of courses in social work and behavioristic psychology as part of professional preparation, teachers will in the future, it is hoped, be able to do more visiting than at present, and so become better acquainted with existing social conditions and their effect on their pupils. Even then, however, visiting teachers will.naturally be needed to adjust many of the difficulties and to deal with many of the handicapping conditions which the class teacher may find in her visits. For it is evident that, except in extremely simple cases, there is needed a larger experience in social work than the class teacher can be expected to acquire while performing with full efficiency her regular duties. Furthermore, such work not only involves visits during regular school hours to see the mother alone, or at night to talk over with the family group the problems of the child, but requires a flexible time schedule for follow-up work and for emergency calls to various socialOF VISITING TEACHER WORK
2 5
agencies which the exigencies of class instruction make impossible.
ORIGIN AND EARLY GROWTH
The origin and development of visiting teacher work has been told elsewhere in more detail than can be attempted here.1 Briefly, the first visiting teachers began work in the year 1906-1907 in New York City, Boston, and Hartford, Conn. In these communities and later in other places, as has frequently happened with other educational experiments, the impulse came from outside the school system. Private organizations—in Boston, settlements and civic organizations} in New York, settlements and the Public Education Association; in Hartford, the director of the psychological laboratory—first saw the need, and privately maintained the work until school boards became convinced of its value and incorporated it as part of the system. In other cities, like Rochester, N. Y., Mt. Vernon, N. Y., and Cleveland, O., the work was introduced directly by the school authorities themselves.
In 1919 the National Association of Visiting Teachers and Home and School Visitors was organized. Through the interchange of experience and the study of methods and common problems, it seeks to develop standards of work among its professional members, and, through personal efforts and the publication of reports, it endeavors to promote the development and extension of the work and to assist those who may establish it in new communities. It holds
1 The Visiting Teacher in the United States, Chap. i. Compiled by the National Association of Visiting- Teachers and Home and School Visitors and published by the Public Education Association of the City of New York, 1921 and 1923.
The Visiting Teacher Movement With Sfecial Reference to Administrative Relationships, Chap. 1. By Dr. J. J. Oppenheimer. Published by the Public Education Association of the City of New York, 1924.2 6
THE PURPOSE AND SCOPE
annual meetings alternately with the National Education Association and the National Conference of Social Work.
In 1921 the Commonwealth Fund included the work in its Program for the Prevention of Delinquency, and, through the Public Education Association of the City of New York, organized a National Committee on Visiting Teachers to establish demonstrations in thirty communities in the United States which presented a wide variety of geographical, social, and educational situations. While the directors of the Fund realized that a great part of the visiting teacher’s work is concerned with scholarship, behavior, and other types of unadjustment which, however serious their effect on the child’s later career, may not necessarily lead to delinquency, it also realized that much delinquency can be prevented if problems of behavior and personality are adequately dealt with early in the child’s school life. The demonstrations established under this program were located in the following communities:1
Berkeley, Cal.	Monmouth Co., N. J.
Birmingham, Ala.	Omaha, Nebr.
Bluefield, W. Va.	Portland, Oregon
Boone Co., Mo.	Pocatello, Idaho
Burlington, Vt.	Racine, Wis.
Charlotte, N. C.	Richmond, Va.
Chisholm, Minn.	Rochester, Pa.
Coatesville, Pa.	Rock Springs, Wyo.
Columbus, Ga.	San Diego, Cal.
Detroit, Mich.	Sioux City, Iowa
Durham, N. C.	Sioux Falls, S. D.
Huron Co., O.	Tucson, Ariz.
Hutchinson, Kans.	Tulsa, Okla.
Kalamazoo, Mich.	Warren, O.
Lincoln, Nebr.	Winona, Minn.
1This list is as of June 30th, 1927, at the close of the demonstration period. In Eugene, Oregon, and Butte, Montana, demonstrations were begun but laterOF VISITING TEACHER WORK
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In the process of selecting these communities, explanatory-announcements were sent to state superintendents and to superintendents of schools in communities of 5000 population or over throughout the country. From the many replies received a tentative list was made of those communities that gave promise of contributing most to the general purpose of the program. From this list, after further inquiry and personal visit, the final selections were made.
The National Committee appointed the visiting teachers, subject to the approval of the local school authorities, paid two-thirds of the salaries for a period of three years, and provided additional funds for necessary expenses. It also provided technical supervision of the work from the central office and held annual meetings of the entire staff in New York City for the consideration of professional problems. As the purpose of the program was not only to extend the work to the communities included in the program, but also to furnish a wide variety of illustrations for other communities which may wish to introduce it, significant data and reports describing and interpreting the results of the demonstrations have been published and are in preparation.
PRESENT STATUS AND OUTLOOK
At the present time there are 258 visiting teachers, including those on the staff of the National Committee on Visiting Teachers, in 95 cities and 8 counties scattered through 38 states of the Union. As has already been brought out in previous national surveys of this work* 1 there is considerable
were transferred to Portland, Oregon, and Winona, Minnesota. In twenty-five of the demonstrations the work was continued by the local boards of education. In five communities—Durham, North Carolina, Pocatello, Idaho, Rochester, Pennsylvania, Rock Springs, Wyoming, Winona, Minnesota—the work was not continued at the end of the demonstrations for financial reasons.
1 See footnote to page 2 5.28
THE PURPOSE AND SCOPE
divergence in practice among the different communities in which it is conducted. This is but natural in a field which deals with social and educational problems involving a veritable maze of local facilities and limitations and an infinite variety of educational standards and viewpoints. One fact stands out clearly in these studies, however. Whether one considers the data compiled from the visiting teachers’ case records or the opinions of the various school officials, social workers, and others whose judgment was sought, the fundamental purposes of the work are generally understood and the need for the service is well-nigh universally recognized.
It is also gratifying to find that, as the value of visiting teacher case work in the preventive stages of unadjustment is becoming more generally recognized, the importance of employing a similar technique in other school departments is being more fully realized, and the treatment of attendance, health, vocational guidance, and similar school problems outside the field of instruction in its restricted sense is being permeated with this awakened consciousness of the whole life of the child. The school is thus looking out as well as in for the enhancement of its purpose and is adding twenty-four-hour construction to its former five hours of instruction. It is realizing that mere presence in the flesh does not suffice when children are absent in spirit.NATIONAL COMMITTEE ON VISITING TEACHERS
Howard W. Nudd, Director, Public Education Association, New York City, Chairman
Edith Abbott, Dean, Graduate School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois J. H. Beveridge, Superintendent of Schools, Omaha, Nebraska Emma G. Case, Director of Visiting Teachers, Dept, of Education, Rochester, New York
Charles M. Elliott, Director of Special Education, Michigan State Normal College, Ypsilanti, Michigan R. G. Jones, Superintendent of Schools, Cleveland, Ohio Anna B. Pratt, Director, White-Williams Foundation, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Barbara S. Quin, Assistant Director, Commonwealth Fund, New York City
Graham Romeyn Taylor, Director, Division of Publications, Commonwealth Fund, New York City Henry W. Thurston, Department of Child Welfare, New York School of Social Work, New York City M. R. Trabue, Director, Bureau of Educational Research University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina Frankwood E. Williams, M.D., Director, National Committee for Mental Hygiene, New York City Jane F. Culbert, Executive of the Visiting Teacher Staff, Public Education Association, New York City, Secretary
CENTRAL STAFF Howard W. Nudd, Director Jane F. Culbert, Staff Executive
ASSISTANTS
Ethel B. Allen	Josephine Chase	Lois A. Meredith
Grace D. Chase	Helen Gregory	Helen R. Smith
8 west 40th street
NEW YORK CITYPublications Relating to Child Guidance Clinics and Visiting Teacher Work
Children at the Crossroads. By Agnes E. Benedict. 238 pages. $1.50.
Nine narratives of visiting teacher work in rural communities.
The Visiting Teacher at Work. By Jane F. Cul-bert. 250 pages. $1.50.
A practical handbook based upon demonstrations in thirty communities.
The Problem Child in School. By Mary B. Sayles and Howard W. Nudd. 288 pages. $1.00. Narratives from case records of visiting teachers.
The Problem Child at Home. By Mary B. Sayles. 342 pages. $1.50.
A study in parent-child relationships, based upon clinic records.
Three Problem Children. 142 pages. $1.00. Narratives from a child guidance clinic.
Children^ Behavior and Teachers’ Attitudes. By E. K. Wickman. 247 pages. $2.00.
A scientific study of how teachers behave when children misbehave.
Mental Hygiene and Social Work. By Porter R. Lee and Marion E. Ken worthy, M.D. 309 pages. $1.50.
An interpretation of methods of treating problem children and of training psychiatric social workers.
THE COMMONWEALTH FUND DIVISION OF PUBLICATIONS