is inculcated in many practical and impressive ways, with special reference to the effects of alcoholic drinks, stimulants and narcotics upon the human system; morals and ethics receive a goodly share of attention; and many forms of manual training have been gradually introduced into the grades of both the intermediate and high schools, including, besides drawing and designing, some forms of woodwork, iron-work, modelling in clay, printing, needlework, domestic science, etc. In 1871 manual instruction for other than purely industrial purposes was first given at the Illinois Industrial University, now the University of Illinois - both wood and iron shops being put into operation. The next year, 1872, St. Louis established similar shops at Washington University. The move in the public schools has taken on two forms that of the introduction of manual branches into the regular curriculum of the schools, as alluded to in the preceding paragraph, and the establishment of separate manual training high schools.* The number of public high schools reporting 20 or more students in manual or technical training courses reached a total, in 1911, of 425, with 43,126 students in such training, of whom 27,178 were boys and 15,948 girls. Manual and industrial schools (the earliest of which was the St. Louis Manual Training School, opened * Dexter, History of Education in the United States, pp. 407-412; The Manual Training Magazine (Peoria, Ill.). in 1880) have increased from 18 in 1889, and 153 in 1901 to 287 in 1911, with 5,017 teachers and 127,130 students-78,500 boys and 48,630 girls. These schools owned buildings and grounds valued at $38,874,001, and scientific apparatus, furniture, machinery, etc., valued at $6,140,483; they expended in 1910-11 $7,543,668, including outlay for salaries, new buildings, improvements, tools, materials, etc. The figures given on schools, not courses, include some of the private schools.* Manual training is differentiated from both industrial and vocational training by its cultural as well as technical value; and industrial education is different from vocational in being mechanical, while the latter more closely occupies the field of craftmanship, including for girls, millinery, dressmaking, embroidery, etc. But there is a far more important differentiation. Vocational courses and schools are designed primarily to enable a pupil, under the sympathetic and intelligent guidance of the teacher, to "find himself," and are gaining much favor in private industrial and trade schools, as well as those under the public system.† At the close of the Civil War there were about 150 public high schools in * Annual Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1911, vol. ii., pp. 1229–1259. Interestingly and more fully treated in Garber, Current Educational Activities, part ii., chap. iii., pp. 97-116; David Snedden, The Problem of Vocational Education (1910); and John M. Gillette, Vocational Education (1910). the United States; the number in June of 1911 was 19,234. This enormous growth indicates not at all the bitter animosity which a prolongation of study and time beyond the common school originally encountered; but it does attest to the intrinsic soundness of the high school idea. It not only bridged the chasm between the intermediate school and the college, but met in great measure the intellectual needs of the very large class to whom the privileges of higher education would have been denied. In fact, the high school, even with its unavoidable limitations, is somewhat approaching what it has often been called - the credited " or "affiliated" schools are most harmonious and mutually beneficial. But the increasing demands of the college catalogue and those of stern life were radically diverse. It was soon discovered that the old prescribed classical course, which was admirable when supplemented by the four years at college, was a fatally poor preparation for work-a-day duties when not so supplemented; and the first solution attempted was, naturally enough, to extend the number of subjects that would be useful to the students who could not go beyond the high school. This was done almost ad infinitum, until, in one instance, the number reached 29, and this in a three years' course. This structure of almost endless additions to prescribed subjects soon broke down of its own gravity, and made way for one of the greatest improvements in high school régime that has taken place in the period we are considering the subdivision of these subjects into separate courses, such as classical, Latin scientific, modern language, etc., with the privilege granted to the student of electing a United States in the years 1910-11, there were 45,167 teachers -20,152 men and 25,015 women, an increase of 3,500 teachers over the preceding year. The increase of boys in the same period, of 34,528, and of girls 35,088, brought the number to 433,053 boys and 551,624 girls in 1911a grand total of 984,677 students. This includes an enrolment of 14,512 colored students. Advance from grade to grade is by annual, or sometimes semi-annual, promotion, which, since about 1870, is largely based on the results of written examinations. A practical difficulty as well as frequent injustice consists in simply shunting all scholars through the same hopper, those having high or average scholastic attainments sliding through, while others are subjected to "retardation."* It is one of the great strides made by recent thought along these lines that "the hygiene of grading is supplanting the pedagogical one-consideration being given to "physiological age, psychological age, ability to work and resist fatigue, the general physical condition, the mental type as regards imagery," power of attention and concentration, home surroundings, etc.,- indeed meeting all the idiosyncrasies of "exceptional children." Some of the difficulties *Louis B. Blan, A Special Study of the Incidence of Retardation (1911). See the articles Hygiene of Grading, Grammar Grades, and Grammar High Schools, in Paul Monroe (ed.), Cyclopædia of Education, vol. iii., pp. 128-130, 138 (1912). are being met by "flexible grading,' but more often segregation or assignment to special schools or departments is found to furnish a satisfactory solution. The attempt to grade more scientifically has called medical inspection, among other allies, to its assistance, and this, in turn, has pointed the way to greater reforms. Medical inspection for the detection of contagious diseases has been in vogue since Boston introduced it in 1892; but this was protective, while modern inspection is also preventive. Tests and examinations for defective teeth and subnormal eyesight and hearing are now made; while a most important application of the new system is, perhaps, the detection by the "Binet test" of incipient feeble-mindedness or other mental weaknesses, with a view to the special treatment of children afflicted, of whom, in 1911, there were 17,470 in public and private schools.* The school nurse soon followed in the wake of the "school physician," and has been considered indispensable since New York City introduced her in 1902.† 66 SO - example, in 1908, that was followed in three short years by 32 other cities.* Another outcome has been the playground movement-184 cities now making "supervised play as much a province of education as any that ministers to intellectual growth under play directors. † Sanitation and hygiene in general are being looked after as never before-the relations of school architecture and hygiene, the needs of underfed children, the abolition of the common drinking cup, homely but necessary attention to personal cleanliness, health, exercise, etc., and a due regard to sex hygiene.|| Because no formal religious instruction can be given in our public schools, and all forms of religious belief must be respected and tolerated, the erroneous impression prevails that the spiritual nature of the child has been neglected. If this impression turns only on the old question of "The Bible in the Schools," it is still unwarranted, for no law had *See a paper by Leonard P. Ayres, Open-Air Schools, in National Education Association Report for 1911, pp. 898-903. † Among many other writings on this subject is the chapter on Recreation" in Garber, Current Educational Activities, pp. 73-79; Edward R. Shaw, School Hygiene (1901); William F. Barry, The Hygiene of the Schoolroom (1904). A magazine, The Playground, is published by the Playground Association of America (New York). Nicholas Murray Butler, Education in the United States, vol. i., p. 409 et seq. (1900). For a discussion of the comparatively new subject of sex hygiene, see a thoughtful paper by Dr. Francis M. Green in Proceedings of the National Education Association for 1911, pp. 917925. ever been passed by any State legislature specifically excluding the Bible by name from use in the public schools; on the contrary nine States have passed mandatory or non-exclusion laws, and five States permissive laws.* laws.* But if religion means, or leads to, morality, the sentiment is utterly untrue; for the moral influence of the public school is entirely on the side of what Dr. Eliot speaks of as the "combination of three ideals which are the supreme result of the best human thinking and feeling through all recorded time truth, beauty and goodness." The Boy Scout movement, school banks, self government (one New York school, at least, has its own "police department") "street cleaning week," etc., promote frugality, self-control, and the civic sense, and help to simplify some of the old, vexing problems of "discipline " which used to find their only solution in corporal punishment.† This was abolished from the New York City schools in 1870 and from other schools at varying periods. It is now the age of better, because more indirect, methods; and though there are still truants and truancy schools in spite of compulsory education laws in all northern States and many of those of the South, and an enrolment in our 60 public reform * Paul Monroe (ed.), Cyclopædia of Education, vol. i., pp. 370-377 (1911). John Dewey, Moral Principles in Education (1909); George H. Palmer, Ethical and Moral Instruction in Schools (1909). schools, in 1910, of 42,381, there is a more hopeful trend, even when the reformatory stage is reached, of the practical psychological treatment of delinquents found in such schools as the "George Junior Republic" and (in England) of the "Tiny Town."* The psychology of the text book has undergone a revolution in the last fifty years. On the merely material side this is surprisingly true paper, ink, type and binding. Maps, charts and tables are much more numerous and accurate; the beauty and finish of illustrations are of course beyond all comparison with those that childish eyes used to consider works of art; but the great advance has been made in the text itself. The modern text-book is humanized; it has been written for the purpose of teaching the pupil, and not for the purpose of presenting a subject; it represents a desire to adjust truths and the presentation of truths to the mind of the pupil.t The length of the school year varies from 70 days in North Carolina to 190 days in some of the New England States. In New York it is 175. The average length of the school year has advanced from 130 days in 1880 to 155 in 1900. Onehalf of a school month has been added in the last decade, which has increased educational effectiveness by World's Work (March, 1910); Garber, Annals of Educational Progress, pp. 251-253. Among other authorities, Dexter (History of Education in the United States, pp. 207-218) has a chapter on text books. 8 per cent. School hours also vary greatly. In some large cities, notably New York, where it seems impossible to provide full time for all pupils, in view of the 25,000 annual addition to the school population, half-day shifts for many thousands of children must be resorted to. The entire subject of the school year and school hours is inextricably bound up with the complexities of child labor legislation.* The number of public school teachers in 1909 was 506,040. The proportion of men to women teachers has diminished, since 1870, from 40 to 21 per cent.; in some States it is now less than 10 per cent. The average monthly salary for men teachers in 1909 was $63.39, an increase in ten years of $16.86; for women teachers in 1909 the average salary was $50.08, an increase of $11.45. In New York City the long struggle for the principle of "equal pay for equal work" culminated in October of 1911, under the leadership of Miss Grace Strachan, in a successful verdict; the aldermen still fix the salaries, but hereafter no discrimination can be made on account of sex. What the results will be, no one can foretell; if it accelerates the "dearth of male teachers "t and tends to further " feminization," it complicates a problem already regarded as suffi *See the Report of the Commissioner of Education on Industrial Education (1910). Dexter, Educational Progress, p. 180 et seq. G. Stanley Hall, Feminization in School and Home, in World's Work (May, 1908). |
