Having won Andy over, the teacher prepared to work her way past some of the barriers of prejudice which the community had placed between itself and civilization. The girls offered the readiest opening.
"The homes were wretched," the teacher said. "The people did not know the simplest health rules. They were strangers to sanitation or cleanliness. Their housekeeping was primitive and their cooking miserable. I had won the boys by getting them together in something that resembled a club. I decided that my best path to the girls, and from them to the community, lay through housekeeping."
The hypothesis was, at least, worthy of a try-out. The teacher began by keeping her own house in the most approved manner, and asking the girls to come in and help her do it.
"You"ll like to take supper with me this evening," she would say to a group of girls at recess time. "Speak to your mothers when you go home, and you, Sadie and Annie, will stay over night and sleep in the spare bed."
They were slow to respond at first. Long habit made them suspicious, but when the first few girls had spent their night with the teacher and had come home with the tales of her wonderful household arrangements, the others were looking eagerly for a chance to duplicate their experiences.
"Am I next?" a little girl asked anxiously one day, after the invitations to a party had been given out. The a.s.surance that she was, made her face shine for the remainder of the afternoon.
"The school girls all came willingly," the teacher said. "It was after I had them so interested that one of the factory hands came in. It was Sat.u.r.day night, and she rapped on the door before coming in with a hesitating touch, as if she was afraid. She sat down across from me, smoothing her dress and looking unhappy."
"You"ll not understand," said the factory girl, apologetically. "But Mame is in your school--she"s my sister. You had her up last week to spend the night. You"ll remember?"
The teacher nodded.
"She came home, and ever since she"s been telling us about the way you did things. And I"ve been thinking,----"
She stopped and looked at the teacher, half suspiciously, half appealingly.
"I"ve been thinking how nice it would be for me, if I could do them things the same as you. You see," she spoke rapidly, "I"m gettin"
married soon now, and when Mame came a-telling that way, and our house like it always is, and the baby crying, and nothing done exceptin" ma a-scoldin", and I says to myself, I says, if I could do things like that teacher can do "em mebbe I wouldn"t make mistakes like ma makes "em."
She paused for breath, looking expectant.
"You would like to come here to see how I do things?" the teacher asked.
The girl nodded eagerly.
"Come Monday after hours, and spend the night with me."
"After that," the teacher said, "it was a great deal easier. The next thing I wanted to do was to get the children examined for gla.s.ses and throat trouble. There were two second-rate country doctors there who knew little or nothing about modern medicine. The nearest man that I could trust was forty miles away. He was a specialist, too, and high priced. Still, I sat down and wrote him a letter, telling him how we were fixed. He answered by return mail, making a special rate and setting a day. I hoped to take twelve of the children, but I had car fare for only seven. Then came our windfall. I told the railroad what I was trying to do, and they made a special excursion rate and took the children at less than half fare. We were all able to go, and the extra money went for a treat to soda and the movies."
The children went back home, singing the praises of the trip, the teacher, and the doctor. They went back, too, with expert advice and a.s.sistance, and with the good news that others would soon have a turn.
Group by group, the needy children were brought down to the specialist in the city. Some were even operated on, although at the outset the parents would not hear of operations. In the end the children won, however. Their enthusiasm for the teacher and their doctor carried the day.
"It has been slow," the teacher said, "but at the end of it all, they see better, hear better, eat more wholesome, nourishing food, live better, and understand themselves better. On the whole it has paid."
X Theory and Practice[28]
The rural schools of the South have no monopoly on progressive educational views. A number of Southern cities have taken up their position in the vanguard of educational progress. Notable among these cities is Columbus, Georgia,--a city of 20,554 people, in which Superintendent Roland B. Daniel has undertaken a vigorous policy of shaping the schools in the interests of the community. There were in 1913, 5,356 children of school age in Columbus. Of this number, 4,089 were in the schools. The school population is rather unevenly divided, racially,--3,348 of the children of school age are white, and 1,198 are colored. About one-quarter of the white population depends for its livelihood upon the mills. Columbus is surrounded by an agricultural district from which come many children in search of high school training. The city of Columbus presents an industrial problem of an unusually complex character, and the manner in which this problem has been handled by the schools is worthy of the highest commendation.
Superintendent Daniel has laid down three definite planks in his educational platform for the city of Columbus. In the first place, he aims to provide school accommodations which are fitted to the peculiar needs of each part of the community. In the second place, he aims to shape the school system of Columbus in terms of the local environment of the children. In the third place, he has inaugurated a high school policy, which makes high school training practical as well as theoretical.
Among the mill operatives of Columbus, Superintendent Daniel estimates that there are approximately 800 children of school age. The situation presented by these children was critical in the extreme. There was an absence of compulsory education laws; few of the children attended any school, and when they did enter a school they seldom remained long enough to secure any marked educational advantage. Less than 5 per cent.
of the children continued in school after they were old enough to work in the cotton mills.
Pursuant of his intention to make the schools supply the needs of all of the children of Columbus, Superintendent Daniel organized the North Highlands School in the factory district. Of this school he says: "It is not made to conform, either in course of study or hours, to the other schools of similar rank in the system, for the board desires to meet the conditions and convenience of the people for whom the school was established. Cla.s.sroom work begins in the morning at 8 o"clock and continues until 11 o"clock, with a recess of 10 minutes at 9:30. The afternoon session begins at 1 o"clock, and the school closes for the day at 3:30 o"clock."
The long intermission in the middle of the day is given in order to allow the children to take hot lunches to parents, brothers, and sisters who are working in the mill. Many of the mills are located at some distance from the school. Some of the children are called upon to walk as much as two miles during the noon hour, in order to carry the lunches. These "dinner toters," when carrying lunch baskets for persons outside of the family, receive 25 cents per week per basket. In case several baskets are carried, the income thus earned is considerable.
The school thus organized on the basis of local needs is further specialized in a way that will appeal to the needs of the mill operative group. The academic courses are similar to the courses offered in the other schools, except that more emphasis is laid upon the "three R"s."
Superintendent Daniel says that the time is very limited in which these children will attend school, and more attention is given as to what may be regarded as fundamental. "While the prescribed course contemplates seven years, few continue after the fifth or sixth year, so strong is the call of the mills. Not more than 1 per cent finish this school and pursue their studies further."
The three morning hours and the first hour in the afternoon are devoted to academic studies, while the last hour and a half of the day is given to practical work. The boys are required to take elementary courses in woodwork and gardening, alternating these two branches on alternate days. The girls are given work in basketry, sewing, cooking, poultry raising, and gardening.
The results of the introduction of this applied work are summed up by Superintendent Daniel in this way,--"In all of these lines of work it is now the hope of the school only to better living conditions a little among the people for whom it was especially organized. The transformation is necessarily slow. In the beginning, no doubt, the advocates of this type of school thought that many might be induced to continue in school and do more advanced work, especially along vocational lines. In this respect the school has been a disappointment to some. We are seldom able to induce pupils to finish even the limited course offered in this school."
The North Highland School, in addition to its work for the children, has begun an organized effort to raise the standards of the local community.
Every day the princ.i.p.al and teachers of the school visit some of the homes, giving helpful suggestions, caring for the sick, and in any other possible way contributing to home life. Superintendent Daniel reports the progress in this respect by saying,--"Confidence is now so strong that one of the teachers every Sat.u.r.day morning collects the physically defective ones in the community and takes them to the free clinic for operations or treatment. At first parents would see their children die rather than permit them to be operated upon, but now they seldom decline to permit them to be taken by a teacher to the free clinic, when in the judgment of the teacher it is necessary."
The school has made an effort to organize the older people of the community. There are entertainments and school gatherings in which parents and children alike partic.i.p.ate. As a further help to those parents who are compelled to work in the mills, the school grounds, which are amply provided with a full play equipment, are open to all of the children at all hours of the day and all days of the week. "It is not infrequent," says Superintendent Daniel, "that, when the mother goes to work at 6 in the morning, she sends her children to the school to enjoy the privileges of the grounds until the opening of the school at 8 o"clock."
The work of the negro schools is similarly fitted to the industrial needs of the negro children. Boys and girls alike devote a considerable portion of their time to industrial work. The main purpose of this work for negroes is to prepare them for the line of industrial opportunity open to them. The school reports that it has developed a number of good blacksmiths, carpenters, cooks, seamstresses, and laundresses. Pupils who remain in the schools long enough to complete the course are able to earn, upon leaving school, about twice what they would be able to earn had no such training been provided.
A vigorous attempt has been made to reorganize grade work in the interests of clearness and effectiveness. As Superintendent Daniel puts the matter,--"We undertook to place before the teachers a definite problem, and to put suggestions into tangible form. We stated that all subjects could be taught with the books merely as helps and means to an end, and contend further for the doctrine that a working knowledge of books and subjects is far more desirable than accomplishing the feat of memorizing the printed page." Many teachers will be astonished by the doctrine which Superintendent Daniel evolves from this statement of educational theory. "The teachers were asked to conduct the work in such a manner that it would not be necessary to recite or take written tests with closed books, but that school books be used as tools with which to work, and that the child should use text-books as adults do books of reference, while the teacher guides and directs in the development of thought.["]
This attempt of Superintendent Daniel to proceed with the grammar school work in a more natural way, and to relate all of it more closely to life, met with some interesting results, as may be gathered from the following test questions which were worked out by teachers in pursuance of the instructions to make text-books incidental and thought primary in the school work.
ARITHMETIC, THIRD B
Roy shops for his mother at Kirven"s. He buys 2 boxes of hair pins at $.05 each, 6 towels at $.10 each, and 5 handkerchiefs for $.25. What was his bill? If he hands the clerk $1.00, how much change will he receive?
THIRD A
If Isabel"s 2 pair of shoes cost $4, how much will shoes for all the girls in the cla.s.s cost?
GEOGRAPHY THIRD B
Turn to the map on page 65 and find and write the names of seven different sh.o.r.e forms.
ARITHMETIC, FOURTH B
In our room are 46 pupils. The cla.s.s receives 230 tablets and 138 pencils for the term. How many of each does each child receive?
GEOGRAPHY, FOURTH B
What products may be sent to us from New England? If they were shipped from Portsmouth, N. H., on what bodies of water would they travel?
GEOGRAPHY, FOURTH A
Why does the United States carry on more trade with the British Isles than with Germany? At what seaport would our vessels land in the British Isles? What would they carry and what would they bring back?