What the Schools Teach and Might Teach

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Title: What the Schools Teach and Might Teach
Author: Bobbitt, John Franklin
Language: English
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TEACH***

WHAT THE SCHOOLS TEACH AND MIGHT TEACH

FRANKLIN BOBBITT
Assistant Professor of Educational Administration
The University of Chicago

1915

CLEVELAND EDUCATION SURVEY
Leonard P. Ayres, Director

The Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation
Cleveland, Ohio

Charles E. Adams, Chairman
Thomas G. Fitzsimons
Myrta L. Jones
Bascom Little
Victor W. Sincere

Arthur D. Baldwin, Secretary
James R. Garfield, Counsel
Newton D. Baker, Counsel
Alien T. Burns, Director

FOREWORD

This report on "What the Schools Teach and Might Teach" is one of
the 25 sections of the report of the Education Survey of Cleveland
conducted by the Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation in
1915. Twenty-three of these sections will be published as separate
monographs. In addition there will be a larger volume giving a summary
of the findings and recommendations relating to the regular work of
the public schools, and a second similar volume giving the summary of
those sections relating to industrial education. Copies of all these
publications may be obtained from the Cleveland Foundation. They may
also be obtained from the Division of Education of the Russell Sage
Foundation, New York City. A complete list will be found in the back
of this volume, together with prices.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword
List of Tables
Prefatory Statement
The Point of View
Reading and Literature
Spelling
Handwriting
Language, Composition, Grammar
Mathematics
Algebra
Geometry
History
Civics
Geography
Drawing and Applied Art
Manual Training and Household Arts
Elementary Science
High School Science
Physiology and Hygiene
Physical Training
Music
Foreign Languages
Differentiation of Courses
Summary

LIST OF TABLES

TABLE
1. Time given to reading and literature
2. Sets of supplementary reading books per building
3. Weeks given to reading of different books in
High School of Commerce
4. Time given to spelling
5. Time given to handwriting
6. Time given to language, composition, and grammar
7. Time given to arithmetic
8. Time given to history
9. Time given to geography
10. Time given to drawing
11. Time given to manual training
12. Time given to science, physiology, hygiene
13. Time given to physical training
14. Time given to music

PREFATORY STATEMENT

For an understanding of some of the characteristics of this report it
is necessary to mention certain of the conditions under which it was
prepared.

The printed course of study for the elementary schools to be found
in June, 1915, the time the facts were gathered for this report, was
prepared under a former administration. While its main outlines were
still held to, it was being departed from in individual schools in
many respects. Except occasionally it was not possible to find record
of such departures. It was believed that to accept the printed manual
as representing current procedure would do frequent injustice to
thoughtful, constructive workers within the system. But it must be
remembered that courses of study for the city cover the work of twelve
school years in a score and more of subjects, distributed through a
hundred buildings. Only a small fraction of this comprehensive program
is going on during any week of the school year; and of this fraction
only a relatively small amount could actually be visited by one man in
the time possible to devote to the task. In the absence of records of
work done or of work projected, unduly large weight had to be given to
the recommendations set down in the latest published course of study
manual.

New courses of study were being planned for the elementary schools.
This in itself indicated that the manual could not longer be regarded
as an authoritative expression of the ideas of the administration. Yet
with the exception of a good arithmetic course and certain excellent
beginnings of a geography course, little indication could be found as
to what the details of the new courses were to be. The present report
has had to be written at a time when the administration by its acts
was rejecting the courses of study laid out in the old manual, and yet
before the new courses were formulated. Under the circumstances it
was not a safe time for setting forth the _facts_, since not even
the administration knew yet what the new courses were to be in their
details. It was not a safe time to be either praising or blaming
course of study requirements. The situation was too unformed for
either. In the matter of the curriculum, the city was confessedly
on the eve of a large constructive program. Its face was toward the
future, and not toward the past; not even toward the present.

It was felt that if the brief space at the disposal of this report
could also look chiefly toward the future, and present constructive
recommendations concerning things that observation indicated should be
kept in mind, it would accomplish its largest service. The time that
the author spent in Cleveland was mostly used in observations in
the schools, in consultation with teachers and supervisors, and
in otherwise ascertaining what appeared to be the main outlines of
practice in the various subjects. This was thought to be the point at
which further constructive labors would necessarily begin.

The recommendation of a thing in this report does not indicate that
it has hitherto been non-existent or unrecognized in the system.
The intention rather is an economical use of the brief space at our
disposal in calling attention to what appear to be certain fundamental
principles of curriculum-making that seem nowadays more and more to be
employed by judicious constructive workers.

The occasional pointing out of incomplete development of the work of
the system is not to be regarded as criticism. Both school people and
community should remember that since schools are to fit people
for social conditions, and since these conditions are continually
changing, the work of the schools must correspondingly change. Social
growth is never complete; it is especially rapid in our generation.
The work of education in preparing for these ever-new conditions can
likewise never be complete, crystallized, perfected. It must grow and
change as fast as social conditions make such changes necessary. To
point out such further growth-needs is not criticism. The intention
is to present the disinterested, detached view of the outsider who,
although he knows indefinitely less than those within the system about
the details of the work, can often get the perspective rather better
just because his mind is not filled with the details.

THE POINT OF VIEW

There is an endless, and perhaps worldwide, controversy as to what
constitutes the "essentials" of education; and as to the steps to
be taken in the teaching of these essentials. The safe plan for
constructive workers appears to be to avoid personal educational
philosophies and to read all the essentials of education within the
needs and processes of the community itself. Since we are using this
social point of view in making curriculum suggestions for Cleveland,
it seems desirable first to explain just what we mean. Some of the
matters set down may appear so obvious as not to require expression.
They need, however, to be presented again because of the frequency
with which they are lost sight of in actual school practice.

Children and youth are expected as they grow up to take on by easy
stages the characteristics of adulthood. At the end of the process it
is expected that they will be able to do the things that adults do; to
think as they think; to bear adult responsibilities; to be efficient
in work; to be thoughtful public-spirited citizens; and the like.
The individual who reaches this level of attainment is educated, even
though he may never have attended school. The one who falls below this
level is not truly educated, even though he may have had a surplus of
schooling.

To bring one's nature to full maturity, as represented by the best of
the adult community in which one grows up, is true education for life
in that community. Anything less than this falls short of its purpose.
Anything other than this is education misdirected.

In very early days, when community life was simple, practically all
of one's education was obtained through participating in community
activities, and without systematic teaching. From that day to this,
however, the social world has been growing more complex. Adults
have developed kinds of activities so complicated that youth cannot
adequately enter into them and learn them without systematic teaching.
At first these things were few; with the years they have grown very
numerous.

One of the earliest of these too-complicated activities was written
language--reading, writing, spelling. These matters became necessities
to the adult world; but youth under ordinary circumstances could not
participate in them as performed by adults sufficiently to master
them. They had to be taught; and the school thereby came into
existence. A second thing developed about the same time was the
complicated number system used by adults. It was too difficult for
youth to master through participation only. It too had to be taught,
and it offered a second task for the schools. In the early schools
this teaching of the so-called Three R's was all that was needed,
because these were the only adult activities that had become so
complicated as to require systematized teaching. Other things were
still simple enough, so that young people could enter into them
sufficiently for all necessary education.

As community vision widened and men's affairs came to extend far
beyond the horizon, a need arose for knowledge of the outlying world.
This knowledge could rarely be obtained sufficiently through travel
and observation. There arose the new need for the systematic teaching
of geography. What had hitherto not been a human necessity and
therefore not an educational essential became both because of changed
social conditions.

Looking at education from this social point of view it is easy to see
that there was a time when no particular need existed for history,
drawing, science, vocational studies, civics, etc., beyond what one
could acquire by mingling with one's associates in the community.
These were therefore not then essentials for education. It is just
as easy to see that changed social conditions of the present make
necessary for every one a fuller and more systematic range of ideas in
each of these fields than one can pick up incidentally. These things
have thereby become educational essentials. Whether a thing today is
an educational "essential" or not seems to depend upon two things:
whether it is a human necessity today; and whether it is so complex
or inaccessible as to require systematic teaching. The number of
"essentials" changes from generation to generation. Those today who
proclaim the Three R's as the sole "essentials" appear to be calling
from out the rather distant past. Many things have since become
essential; and other things are being added year by year. The normal
method of education in things not yet put into the schools, is
participation in those things. One gets his ideas from watching others
and then learns to do by doing. There is no reason to believe that as
the school lends its help to some of the more difficult things, this
normal plan of learning can be set aside and another substituted. Of
course the schools must take in hand the difficult portions of the
process. Where complicated knowledge is needed, the schools must teach
that knowledge. Where drill is required, they must give the drill. But
the knowledge and the drill should be given in their relation to the
human activities in which they are used. As the school helps young
people to take on the nature of adulthood, it will still do so by
helping them to enter adequately into the activities of adulthood.
Youth will learn to think, to judge, and to do, by thinking, judging,
and doing. They will acquire a sense of responsibility by bearing
responsibility. They will take on serious forms of thought by doing
the serious things which require serious thought.

It cannot be urged that young people have a life of their own which is
to be lived only for youth's sake and without reference to the adult
world about them. As a matter of fact children and youth are a part
of the total community of which the mature adults are the natural
and responsible leaders. At an early age they begin to perform
adult activities, to take on adult points of view, to bear adult
responsibilities. Naturally it is done in ways appropriate to
their natures. At first it is imitative play, constructive play,
etc.--nature's method of bringing children to observe the serious
world about them, and to gird themselves for entering into it.
The next stage, if normal opportunities are provided, is playful
participation in the activities of their elders. This changes
gradually into serious participation as they grow older, becoming at
the end of the process responsible adult action. It is not possible
to determine the educational materials and processes at any stage of
growth without looking at the same time to that entire world of which
youth forms a part, and in which the nature and abilities of their
elders point the goal of their training.

The social point of view herein expressed is sometimes characterized
as being utilitarian. It may be so; but not in any narrow or
undesirable sense. It demands that training be as wide as life itself.
It looks to human activities of every type: religious activities;
civic activities; the duties of one's calling; one's family duties;
one's recreations; one's reading and meditation; and the rest of the
things that are done by the complete man or woman.

READING AND LITERATURE

The amount of time given to reading in the elementary schools of
Cleveland, and the average time in 50 other cities[A] are shown in the
following table:

TABLE 1.--TIME GIVEN TO READING AND LITERATURE
========================================================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
|-----------------------|------------------------
Grade | Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
--------------------------------------------------------
1 | 317 | 266 | 43 | 31
2 | 317 | 235 | 36 | 26
3 | 279 | 188 | 32 | 21
4 | 196 | 153 | 22 | 16
5 | 161 | 126 | 18 | 13
6 | 136 | 117 | 15 | 12
7 | 152 | 98 | 17 | 10
8 | 152 | 97 | 17 | 10
========================================================
Total | 1710 | 1280 | 25 | 17
--------------------------------------------------------

During the course of his school life, each pupil who finishes the
elementary grades in Cleveland receives 1710 hours of recitation
and directed study in reading as against an average of 1280 hours in
progressive cities in general. This is an excess of 430 hours, or 34
per cent. The annual cost of teaching reading being about $600,000,
this represents an excess annual investment in this subject of
some $150,000. Whether or not this excess investment in reading is
justified depends, of course, upon the way the time is used. If the
city is aiming only at the usual mastery of the mechanics of reading
and the usual introductory acquaintance with simple works of literary
art, it appears that Cleveland is using more time and labor than other
cities consider needful. If, on the other hand, this city is using
the excess time for widely diversified reading chosen for its content
value in revealing the great fields of history, industry, applied
science, manners and customs in other lands, travel, exploration,
inventions, biography, etc., and in fixing life-long habits of
intelligent reading, then it is possible that it is just this
excess time that produces the largest educational returns upon the
investment.

[Footnote A: Henry W. Holmes, "Time Distribution by Subjects and
Grades in Representative Cities." In the Fourteenth Year Book of the
National Society for the Study of Education, Part I, 1915. University
of Chicago Press.]

It would seem, however, from a careful study of the actual work and
an examination of the printed documents, that the chief purpose of
teaching reading in this city is, to use the terminology of its latest
manual, "easy expressive oral reading in rich, well-modulated tone."
It is true that other aims are mentioned, such as enlargement of
vocabulary, word-study, understanding of expressions and allusions,
acquaintance with the leading authors, appreciation of "beautiful
expressions," etc. Properly emphasized, each of these purposes is
valid; but there are other equally valid ends to be achieved through
proper choice of the reading-content that are not mentioned. There is
here no criticism of the purposes long accepted, but of the apparent
failure to recognize other equally important ones. The character of
the reading-content is referred to only in the recommendation that
in certain grades it should relate to the seasons and to special
occasions. Even in reference to the supplementary reading, where
content should be the first concern, the only statement of purpose
is that "children should read for the joy of it." Unfortunately, this
mistaken emphasis is not at all uncommon among the schools of the
nation. How one reads has received an undue amount of attention; what
one reads in the school courses must and will receive an increasingly
large share of time and thought, in the new evaluation. The use of
interesting and valuable books for other educational purposes at the
same time that they are used for drill in the mechanics of reading
is coming more and more to be recognized as an improved mode of
procedure. The mechanical side of reading is not thereby neglected. It
is given its proper function and relation, and can therefore be better
taught.

So far as one can see, Cleveland is attempting in the reading work
little more than the traditional thing. The thirty-four per cent
excess time may be justified by the city on the theory that the
schools are commissioned to get the work done one-third better than in
the average city. The reading tests made by the Survey fail to reveal
any such superiority. The city appears to be getting no better than
average results.

Certainly people should read well and effectively in all ways in which
they will be called upon to read in their adult affairs. For the most
part this means reading for ideas, suggestions, and information in
connection with the things involved in their several callings; in
connection with their civic problems; for recreation; and for such
general social enlightenment as comes from newspapers, magazines, and
books. Most reading will be for the content. It is desirable that the
reading be easy and rapid, and that one gather in all the ideas as one
reads. Because of the fact that oral reading is slower, more laborious
for both reader and listener, and because of the present easy
accessibility of printed matter, oral reading is becoming of steadily
diminishing importance to adults. No longer should the central
educational purpose be the development of expressive oral reading.
It should be rapid and effective silent reading for the sake of the
thought read.

To train an adult generation to read for the thought, schools must
give children full practice in reading for the thought in the ways
in which later as adults they should read. After the primary teachers
have taught the elements, the work should be mainly voluminous reading
for the sake of entering into as much of the world's thought and
experience as possible. The work ought to be rather more extensive
than intensive. The chief end should be the development of that
wide social vision and understanding which is so much needed in this
complicated cosmopolitan age. While works of literary art should
constitute a considerable portion of the reading program, they should
not monopolize the program, nor indeed should they be regarded as
the most important part of it. It is history, travel, current news,
biography, advance in the world of industry and applied science,
discussions of social relations, political adjustments, etc., which
adults need mostly to read; and it is by the reading of these things
that children form desirable and valuable reading habits.

The reading curriculum needs to be looked after in two important ways.
First, social standards of judgment should determine the nature of the
reading. The texts beyond the primary grades are now for the most
part selections of literary art. Very little of it has any conscious
relation, immediate or remote, to present-day problems and conditions
or with their historical background. Probably children should read
many more selections of literary art than are found in the textbooks
and the supplementary sets now owned by the schools. But certainly
such cultural literary experience ought not to crowd out kinds of
reading that are of much greater practical value. Illumination of the
things of serious importance in the everyday world of human affairs
should have a large place in reading work of every school.

It is true that the supplementary sets of books have been chosen
chiefly for their content value. Many are historical, biographical,
geographical, scientific, civic, etc., in character. On the side of
content, they have advanced much farther than the textbooks toward
what should constitute a proper reading course. Unfortunately, the
schools are very incompletely supplied with these sets. If we consider
all the sets of supplementary readers found in 10 or more schools, we
find that few of those assigned for fourth-grade reading are found in
one-quarter of the buildings and none are in half of them. The same is
true of the books for use in the fifth and seventh grades. Some of the
books for the sixth and eighth grades are found in more than half
of the buildings, but there is none that is found in as many as
three-quarters of them.

The second thing greatly needed to improve the reading course is
more reading practice. One learns to do a thing easily, rapidly,
and effectively by practice. The course of study in reading should
therefore provide the opportunity for much practice. At present the
reading texts used aggregate for the eight grades some 2100 pages. A
third-grade child ought to read matter suitable for its intelligence
at 20 pages per hour, and a grammar-grade child at 30 to 40 pages
per hour. Since rapidity of reading is one of the desired ends, the
practice reading should be rapid. At the moderate rates mentioned, the
entire series of reading texts ought to be read in some 80 hours.
This is 10 hours' practice for each of the eight school years, an
altogether insufficient amount of rapid reading practice. Of course
the texts can be read twice, or let us say three times, aggregating
30 hours of practice per year. But even this is not more than
could easily be accomplished in two or three weeks of each of the
years--always presuming that the reading materials are rightly adapted
to the mental maturity of the pupils. This leaves 35 weeks of the year
unprovided for. To make good this deficit, the buildings are furnished
with supplementary books in sets sufficiently large to supply entire
classes. The average number of such sets per building is shown in the
following table:

TABLE 2.--SETS OF SUPPLEMENTARY READING BOOKS PER BUILDING

Grade Average number of sets
1 10.0
2 6.3
3 5.1
4 5.5
5 6.3
6 5.3
7 5.5
8 6.0

A fifth, sixth, seventh, or eighth-grade student ought to be able to
read all the materials supplied his grade, both reading texts and all
kinds of supplementary reading, in 40 or 50 hours. He ought to do it
easily in six weeks' work, without encroaching on recitation time.
He can read all of it twice in 10 weeks; and three times in 14 weeks.
After reading everything three times over, there still remain 24 weeks
of each year unprovided for.

The reply of teachers is that the work is so difficult that it has to
be slowed down enough to consume these 24 weeks. But is not this to
admit that the hill is too steep, that there is too much dead pull,
and that the materials are ill-chosen for practice in habits of rapid
intelligent reading? It is not by going slow that one learns to go
fast. Quite the reverse. Too often the school runs on low speed gear
when it ought to be running on high. The low may be necessary for the
starting, but not for the running. It may be necessary in the primary
grades, but not thereafter for those who have had a normal start.
Reading practice should certainly make for increased speed in
effective reading.

The actual work in the grades is very different from the plan
suggested. In taking up any selection for reading, the plan in most
schools is about as follows:

1. A list of the unusual words met with is written on the blackboard.

2. Teacher and pupils discuss the meaning of these words; but
unfortunately words out of the context often carry no meaning.

3. The words are marked diacritically, and pronounced.

4. Pupils "use the words in sentences." The pupil frequently has
nothing to say that involves the word. It is only given an imitation
of a real use by being put into an artificial sentence.

5. The oral reading is begun. One pupil reads a paragraph.

6. With the book removed, the meaning of the paragraph is then
reproduced either by the reader or some other pupil. This work is
necessarily perfunctory because the pupil knows he is not giving
information to anybody. Everybody within hearing already has the
meaning fresh in mind from the previous reading. The normal child
cannot work up enthusiasm for oral reproduction under such conditions.

7. The paragraph is analyzed into its various elements, and these in
turn are discussed in detail.

Such work is not reading. It is analysis. A selection is not read, it
is analyzed. The purpose of real reading is to enter into the thought
and emotional experience of the writer; not to study the methods by
which the author expressed himself. The net result when the work is
done as described is to develop a critical consciousness of methods,
without helping the children to enter normally and rightly into the
experience of the writer. The children of Cleveland need this genuine
training in reading.

Reading in the high schools needs very much the same sort of
modernization. There are more kinds of literature than classical
belles-lettres, and perhaps more important kinds. We would not
advocate a reduction of the amount of aesthetic literature. Indeed, the
young people of Cleveland need to enter into a far wider range of such
literature than is the case at present. But the reading courses in
high schools should be built out in ways already recommended for
elementary schools.

The training, however, should be mainly in reading and not in
analysis. The former is of surpassing importance to all people; the
latter is important only to certain specialists. And, what is
more, fullness of reading and right ways of reading will accomplish
incidentally most of the things aimed at in the analysis.

The following table of the reading outline of the High School of
Commerce is a fair sample of what the city is doing. Note how much
time is given to the reading and analysis of the few selections
covered in four years.

TABLE 3.--WEEKS GIVEN TO READING OF DIFFERENT BOOKS IN HIGH SCHOOL OF
COMMERCE

Weeks to read
First Year
Ashmun's Prose Selections 9
Cricket on the Hearth 5
Sohrab and Rustum 3
Midsummer Night's Dream 6
Ivanhoe 11

Second Year
Autobiography of Franklin 7
Idylls of the King 10
Treasure Island 7
Sketch Book 7
Vision of Sir Launfal 3

Third Year
Silas Marner 7
Iliad (Bryant's--4 books) 5
Washington's Farewell Address 5
First Bunker Hill Oration 6
Emerson's Compensation 5
Roosevelt Book 6

Fourth Year
Markham's The Man with the Hoe 2
Tale of Two Cities 10
Public Duty of the Educated Man 4
Macbeth 11
Self-Reliance 6

When a short play of a hundred pages like Macbeth requires nearly
three months for reading, when almost two months are given to Treasure
Island and nearly three months to Ivanhoe, clearly it is something
other than reading that is being attempted. It is perfectly obvious
that the high schools are attending principally to the mechanics of
expression and not to the content of the expression. The relative
emphasis should be reversed.

The amount of reading in the high schools should be greatly increased.
Those who object that rapid work is superficial believe that work must
be slow to be thorough. It should be remembered, however, that slow
work is often superficial and that rapid work is often excellent.
In fact the world's best workers are generally rapid, accurate, and
thorough. Ask any business man of wide experience. Now leaving aside
pupils who are slow by nature, it can be affirmed that pupils will
acquire slow, thorough habits or rapid, thorough habits according
to the way they are taught. If they are brought up by the slow
plan, naturally when speeded up suddenly, the quality of their work
declines. They can be rapid, accurate, and thorough only if such
strenuous work begins early and is continued consistently. Slow habits
are undesirable if better ones can just as well be implanted.

To avoid possible misunderstanding, it ought to be stated that the
plan recommended does not mean less drill upon the mechanical side
of reading. We are recommending a somewhat more modernized kind of
mechanics, and a much more strenuous kind of drill. The plan looks
both toward more reading and improved habits of reading.

One final suggestion finds here its logical place. Before the reading
work of elementary or high schools can be modernized, the city must
purchase the books used in the work. Leaving the supplying of books
to private purchase is the largest single obstacle in the way of
progress. Men in the business world will have no difficulty in seeing
the logic of this. When shoes, for example, were made by hand, each
workman could easily supply his own tools; but now that elaborate
machinery has been devised for their manufacture, it has become so
expensive that a machine factory must supply the tools. It is so in
almost every field of labor where efficiency has been introduced. Now
the books to be read are the tools in the teaching of reading. In a
former day when a mastery of the mechanics of reading was all that
seemed to be needed, the privately purchased textbook could suffice.
In our day when other ends are set up beyond and above those of former
days, a far more elaborate and expensive equipment is required. The
city must now supply the educational tools. It is well to face this
issue candidly and to state the facts plainly. Relative failure can be
the only possible lot of reluctant communities. They can count on
it with the same assurance as that of a manufacturer of shoes who
attempts to employ the methods of former days in competition with
modern methods.

In this city the expenditures for supplementary textbooks have
amounted to something more than $31,000 in the past 10 years.
Approximately one-third of this sum was spent in the first seven years
of the decade and more than $20,000 in the past three years. This
indicates the rapid advance in this direction made under the present
school administration but the supply of books still falls far short
of the needs of the schools. A fair start has been made but nothing
should be permitted to obstruct rapid progress in this direction.

SPELLING

Cleveland has set apart an average amount of program time for
spelling. Possibly the study might more accurately be called
word-study, since it aims also at training for pronunciation,
syllabification, vocabulary extension, and etymology. Since much of
the reading time is given to similar word-study, the figures presented
in Table 4 are really too small to represent actual practice in
Cleveland.

TABLE 4.--TIME GIVEN TO SPELLING
========================================================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
|-----------------------|------------------------
Grade | Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
--------------------------------------------------------
1 | 47 | 54 | 6.5 | 6.3
2 | 63 | 66 | 7.2 | 7.3
3 | 79 | 73 | 9.0 | 8.0
4 | 63 | 67 | 7.1 | 6.9
5 | 51 | 61 | 5.7 | 6.3
6 | 47 | 58 | 5.4 | 5.9
7 | 47 | 52 | 5.4 | 5.3
8 | 47 | 51 | 5.4 | 5.1
========================================================
Total | 444 | 482 | 6.5 | 6.4
--------------------------------------------------------

The general plan of the course is indicated in the syllabus:

"Two words are made prominent in each lesson. Their pronunciation,
division into syllables, derivation, phonetic properties, oral and
written spelling and meaning, are all to be made clear to pupils.

"The teaching of a new word may be done by using it in a sentence;
by definition or description; by giving a synonym or the antonym; by
illustration with object, action or drawing; and by etymology.

"Each lesson should have also from eight to 20 subordinate words taken
from textbook or composition exercises.... Frequent supplementary
dictation, word-building and phonic exercises should be given.
Spell much orally.... Teach a little daily, test thoroughly, drill
intensively, and follow up words misspelled persistently."

In most respects the work agrees with the usual practice in
progressive cities: the teaching of a few words in each lesson; the
frequent and continuous review of words already taught; taking
the words to be taught from the language experience of the pupils;
following up words actually misspelled; studying the words from many
angles, etc.

In some respects the work needs further modernization. The words
chosen for the work are not always the ones most needed. Whether
children or adults, people need to spell only when they write. They
need to spell correctly the words of their writing vocabulary, and
they need to spell no others. More important still, they need to
acquire the habit of watching their spelling as they write; the habit
of spelling every word with certainty that it is correct, and the
habit of going to word-lists or dictionary when there is any doubt.

This development of the habit of watchfulness over their spelling as
they write is the principal thing. One who has it will always spell
well. In case he has much writing to do, it automatically leads to
a constant renewing of his memory for words used and prevents
forgetting. The one who has only memorized word-lists, even though
they have been rigorously drilled, inevitably forgets, whether
rapidly or slowly; and in proportion as he lacks this general habit of
watchfulness, degenerates in his spelling. The reason why schools
fail to overcome the frequent criticism that young people do not
spell well, is because of the fact that they have been trying to
teach specific words rather than to develop a general and constant
watchfulness.

The fundamental training in spelling is accomplished in connection
with composition, letter-writing, etc. Direct word-list study should
have only a secondary and supplemental place. It is needed, first, for
making people conscious of the letter elements of words which are seen
as wholes in their reading, and for bringing them to look closely
into the relations of these letter elements; second, for developing
a preliminary understanding of the spelling of words used; and third,
for drill upon words commonly misspelled. While a necessary portion of
the entire process, it probably should not require so much time as is
now given to it and the time saved should be devoted to the major task
of teaching spelling watchfulness in connection with writing letters
and compositions.

The great majority of the population of Cleveland will spell only as
they write letters, receipts, and simple memoranda. They do not need
to spell a wide vocabulary with complete accuracy. On the other hand,
there are classes of people to whom a high degree of spelling accuracy
covering a fairly wide vocabulary is an indispensable vocational
necessity: clerks, copyists, stenographers, correspondents,
compositors, proof-readers, etc. These people need an intensive
specialized training in spelling that is not needed by the mass of the
population. Such specialized vocational training should be taken care
of by the Cleveland schools, but it should not be forced upon all
simply because the few need it. The attempt to bring all to the high
level needed by the few, and the failure to reach this level, is
responsible for the justifiable criticism of the schools that those
few who need to spell unusually well are imperfectly trained.

The spelling practice should continue through the high school. It
is only necessary for teachers to refuse to accept written work that
contains any misspelled word to force upon students the habit of
watchfulness over every word written. The High School of Commerce
is to be commended for making spelling a required portion of the
training. The course needs to be more closely knit with composition
and business letter-writing.

HANDWRITING

Cleveland gives a considerably larger proportion of time to
handwriting than the average of the 50 cities.

TABLE 5.--TIME GIVEN TO HANDWRITING
========================================================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
|-----------------------|------------------------
Grade | Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
--------------------------------------------------------
1 | 47 | 50 | 6.5 | 6.7
2 | 63 | 60 | 7.2 | 6.7
3 | 63 | 52 | 7.2 | 5.7
4 | 63 | 53 | 7.2 | 5.5
5 | 67 | 50 | 6.4 | 5.1
6 | 47 | 47 | 5.4 | 4.8
7 | 47 | 39 | 5.4 | 3.9
8 | 32 | 37 | 3.6 | 3.7
========================================================
Total | 419 | 388 | 6.1 | 5.1
--------------------------------------------------------

The curriculum of handwriting resolves itself mainly into questions of
method, and of standards to be achieved in each of the grades. These
matters are treated intensively in the section of the survey report
entitled "Measuring the Work of the Public Schools."

LANGUAGE, COMPOSITION, GRAMMAR

The schools devote about the usual amount of time to training for the
correct use of the mother tongue. Most of the time in intermediate
and grammar grades is devoted to English grammar. Composition receives
only minor attention.

TABLE 6.--TIME GIVEN TO LANGUAGE, COMPOSITION, AND GRAMMAR
========================================================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
|-----------------------|------------------------
Grade | Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
--------------------------------------------------------
1 | 79 | 75 | 10.9 | 8.6
2 | 95 | 79 | 10.8 | 8.7
3 | 79 | 94 | 9.0 | 10.3
4 | 104 | 106 | 11.8 | 10.9
5 | 120 | 116 | 13.6 | 12.0
6 | 120 | 118 | 13.6 | 12.2
7 | 125 | 134 | 14.3 | 13.7
8 | 125 | 142 | 14.3 | 14.1
========================================================
Total | 847 | 864 | 12.3 | 11.4
--------------------------------------------------------

In the teaching of grammar too much stress is placed on forms and
relations. Of course it is expected that this knowledge will be of
service to the pupils in their everyday expression. But such practical
application of the knowledge is not the thing toward which the work
actually looks. The end really achieved is rather the ability to
recite well on textbook grammar, and to pass good examinations in the
subject. In classes visited the thing attempted was being done in a
relatively effective way. And when judged in the light of the kind
of education considered best 20 years ago, the work is of a superior
character.

As a matter of fact, facility in oral and written expression is, like
everything else, mainly developed through much practice. The form and
style of expression are perfected mainly through the conscious and
unconscious imitation of good models. Technical grammar plays, or
should play, the relatively minor role of assisting students to
eliminate and to avoid certain types of error. Since grammar has this
perfectly practical function to perform, probably only those things
needed should be taught; but more important still, everything taught
should be constantly put to use by the pupils in their oversight of
their own speech and writing. Only as knowledge is put to work, is it
really learned or assimilated. The schools should require much oral
and written expression of the pupils, and should enforce constant
watchfulness of their own speech on the part of the pupils. It is
possible to require pupils to go over all of their written work and to
examine it, before handing it in, in the light of all the grammatical
rules they have learned. It is also possible for pupils to guard
consciously against known types of error which they are accustomed to
make in their oral recitations. Every recitation in whatever subject
provides opportunity for such training in habits of watchfulness. Only
as the pupil is brought to do it himself, without prompting on the
part of the teacher, is his education accomplished.

A limited amount of systematic grammatical teaching is a necessary
preliminary step. The purpose is an introductory acquaintance with
certain basic forms, terminology, relationships, and grammatical
perspective. This should be accomplished rapidly. Like the preliminary
survey in any field, this stage of the work will be relatively
superficial. Fullness and depth of understanding will come with
application. This preliminary understanding can not be learned
"incidentally." Such a plan fails on the side of perspective and
relationship, which are precisely the things in which the preparatory
teaching of the subject should be strong.

This preliminary training in technical grammar need not be either
so extensive or so intensive as it is at present. An altogether
disproportionate amount of time is now given to it. The time saved
ought to go to oral and written expression,--composition, we might
call it, except that the word has been spoiled because of the
artificiality of the exercises.

The composition or expression most to be recommended consists of
reports on the supplementary reading in connection with history,
geography, industrial studies, civics, sanitation, etc.; and reports
of observations on related matters in the community. Topics of
interest and of value are practically numberless. Such reports will
usually be oral; but often they will be written. Expression occurs
naturally and normally only where there is something to be discussed.
The present manual suggests compositions based upon "changes in trees,
dissemination of seeds, migration of birds, snow, ice, clouds, trees,
leaves, and flowers." This type of composition program under present
conditions cannot be a vital one. Elementary science is not taught in
the schools of Cleveland; and so the subject matter of these topics is
not developed. Further, it is the world of human action, revealed
in history, geography, travels, accounts of industry, commerce,
manufacture, transportation, etc., that possesses the greater value
for the purposes of education, as well as far greater interest for the
student.

Probably little time should be set apart on the program for
composition. The expression side of all the school work, both in the
elementary school and in the high school, should be used to give the
necessary practice. The technical matters needed can be taught in
occasional periods set aside for that specific purpose.

The isolation of the composition work continues through the academic
high schools and in considerable degree through the technical high
schools also. In the high schools the expression work probably needs
to be developed chiefly in the classes in science, history, industrial
studies, commercial and industrial geography, physics, etc., where the
students have an abundance of things to discuss. Probably four-fifths
of all of the training in English expression in the high schools
should be accomplished in connection with the oral and written work of
the other subjects.

MATHEMATICS

To arithmetic, the Cleveland schools are devoting a somewhat larger
proportion of time than the average of cities.

TABLE 7.--TIME GIVEN TO ARITHMETIC
===========================================================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time|
Grade |-----------------------------------------------
| Cleveland | 50 cities| Cleveland | 50 cities |
-----------------------------------------------------------
1 | 38 | 60 | 5.2 | 6.9 |
2 | 136 | 96 | 15.5 | 10.7 |
3 | 142 | 131 | 16.3 | 14.4 |
4 | 152 | 149 | 17.2 | 15.4 |
5 | 142 | 144 | 17.1 | 14.9 |
6 | 155 | 146 | 17.5 | 15.0 |
7 | 142 | 140 | 16.1 | 14.4 |
8 | 158 | 142 | 17.9 | 14.1 |
===========================================================
Total | 1065 | 1008 | 15.5 | 13.3 |
-----------------------------------------------------------

That everybody should be well grounded in the fundamental operations
of arithmetic is so obvious as to require no discussion. Beyond this
point, however, difficult problems arise. The probabilities are that
the social and vocational conditions of the coming generation will
require that everybody be more mathematical-minded than at present.

The content of mathematics courses is to be determined by human needs.
One of the fundamental needs of the age upon which we are now entering
is accurate quantitative thinking in the fields of one's vocation, in
the supervision of our many co-operative governmental labors, in our
economic thinking with reference to taxation, expenditures, insurance,
public utilities, civic improvements, pensions, corporations, and the
multitude of other civic and vocational matters.

Just as the thought involved in physics, astronomy, or engineering
needs to be put in mathematical terms in order that it may be used
effectively, so must it be with effective vocational, civic, and
economic thinking in general. Our chief need is not so much the
ability to do calculations as it is the ability to think in
figures and the habit of thinking in figures. Calculations, while
indispensable, are incidental to more important matters.

Naturally before one is prepared to use mathematical forms of thought
in considering the many social and vocational problems, he must have
mastered the fundamentals. The elementary school, at as early an
age as practicable, should certainly give the necessary preliminary
knowledge of and practice in the fundamental operations of arithmetic.
This should be done with a high degree of thoroughness, but it should
always be kept in mind that this is only a preliminary mastery of the
alphabet of mathematical thinking. The other part of our problem is a
development of the quantitative aspects of the vocational, economic,
and civic subjects. One finds clear recognition of this in Cleveland
in the new arithmetic manual. The following quotations are typical:

"The important problem of the seventh and eighth grades is to
enable the pupils to understand and deal intelligently with the most
important social institutions with which arithmetical processes are
associated."

In discussing the teaching of the mathematical aspect of insurance, we
find this statement: "Owing to the important place this subject holds
in life, we should emphasize its informational value rather than its
mathematical content."

Under taxation and revenue: "If the general features of this subject
are presented from the standpoint of civics, the pupils should have no
difficulty in solving the problems as no new principle is introduced."

Under stocks and bonds: "Pupils should be taught to know what a
corporation is, its chief officers, how it is organized, what stocks
and bonds are, and how dividends are declared and paid, in so far as
such knowledge is needed by the general public."

These statements indicate a recognition of the most important
principle that should control in the development of all of the
mathematics, elementary and secondary, beyond the preliminary training
needed for accuracy and rapidity in the fundamental operations.

When this principle is carried through to its logical conclusion, it
will be observed that most of these developments will not take place
within the arithmetic class, but in the various other subjects.
Arithmetic teaching, like the teaching of penmanship, etc., is for
the purpose of giving tools that are to be used in matters that lie
beyond. The full development will take place within these various
other fields. For the present, it probably will be well for the
schools to develop the matters both within the arithmetic classes and
in the other classes. Neither being complete at present, each will
tend to complete the other.

On the side of the preliminary training in the fundamental operations,
the present arithmetic course of study is on the whole of a superior
character. It provides for much drill, and for a great variety of
drill. It emphasizes rapidity, accuracy, and the confidence that
comes to pupils from checking up their results. It holds fast to
fundamentals, dispensing with most of the things of little practical
use. It provides easy advances from the simple to the complicated. The
field of number is explored in a great variety of directions so that
pupils are made to feel at home in the subject. One large defect is
the lack of printed exercise materials, the use of which would result
in greatly increased effectiveness. Such printed materials ought to be
furnished in great abundance.

ALGEBRA

In the report of the Educational Commission of Cleveland, 1906, we
find the following very significant sentences relative to the course
of study for the proposed high school of commerce:

"An entirely new course of study should be made out for this school.
Subjects which have been considered necessary in a high school,
because they tend to develop the mind, should not for this reason only
be placed in a commercial course. Subjects should not be given because
they strengthen the mind, but the subjects which are necessary in this
course should be given in such a way as to strengthen the mind. The
mathematics in this school should consist of business arithmetic and
mensuration. We can see no reason for giving these students either
algebra or geometry. But they should be taught short and practical
methods of working business problems."

We find here a recommendation since carried out that indicates a clear
recognition of the principle of adaptation of the course of study to
actual needs. Carried out to its logical conclusion, and applied to
the entire city system, it raises questions as to the advisability of
requiring algebra of girls in any of the high school courses; or of
requiring it of that large number of boys looking forward to vocations
that do not involve the generalized mathematics of algebra. Now either
the commercial students do need algebra or a large proportion of these
others do not need it. It seems advisable here to do nothing more than
to present the question as one which the city needs to investigate.
The present practice, in Cleveland as elsewhere, reveals
inconsistency. In one or the other of the schools a wrong course is
probably being followed. The current tendency in public education
is toward agreement with the principle enunciated by the Cleveland
Educational Commission, and toward a growing and consistent
application of it.

Differentiation in the mathematics of different classes of pupils is
necessary. The public schools ought to give the same mathematics to
all up to that level where the need is common to all. Beyond that
point, mathematics needs to be adapted to the probable future
activities of the individual. There are those who will need to reach
the higher levels of mathematical ability. Others will have no such
need.

There is a growing belief that even for those who are in need of
algebra the subject is not at present organized in desirable ways. It
is thought that, on the one hand, it should be knit up in far larger
measure with practical matters, and on the other, it should be
developed in connection with geometry and trigonometry. The technical
high schools of Cleveland have adopted this form of organization.
Their mathematics is probably greatly in advance of that of the
academic schools.

GEOMETRY

Form study should begin in the kindergarten, and it should develop
through the grades and high school in ways similar to the arithmetic,
and in conjunction with the arithmetic, drawing, and construction
work. Since geometrical forms involve numerical relations, they supply
good materials to use in making number relations concrete and clear.
This is now done in developing ideas of fractions, multiplication,
division, ratio, per cent, etc. It should be done much more fully and
variously than at present and for the double purpose of practising
the form-ideas as well as the number-ideas. Arithmetic study and
form-study can well grow up together, gradually merging into the
combined algebra and geometry so far as students need to reach the
higher levels of mathematical generalization.

At the same time that this is being developed in the mathematics
classes, development should also be going on in the classes of
drawing, design, and construction. The alphabet of form-study will
thus be taught in several of the studies. The application will be
made in practical design, in mechanical and free-hand drawing,
in constructive labor, in the graphical representation of social,
economic, and other facts of life. The application comes not so much
in the development of practical problems in the mathematics classes as
in the development of the form aspect of those other activities that
involve form.

We have here pointed to what appears to be in progressive schools
a growing program of work. Everywhere it is yet somewhat vague
and inchoate. In connection with the arithmetic, the drawing, the
construction and art work, and the mathematics of the technical high
schools, it appears to be developing in Cleveland in a vigorous and
healthy manner.

HISTORY

The curriculum makers for elementary education do not seem to have
placed a high valuation upon history. Apparently it has not been
considered an essential study of high worth, like reading, writing,
spelling, grammar, and arithmetic. To history are allotted but
290 hours in Cleveland, as against 496 hours in the average of 50
progressive American cities. This discrepancy should give the city
pause and concern. If a mistake is being made, it is more likely to
be on the part of an individual city than upon that of 50 cities.
The probability is that Cleveland is giving too little time to this
subject.

TABLE 8.--TIME GIVEN TO HISTORY
===========================================================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time|
Grade |-----------------------------------------------
| Cleveland | 50 cities| Cleveland | 50 cities |
-----------------------------------------------------------
1 | 0 | 27 | 0.0 | 3.1 |
2 | 0 | 31 | 0.0 | 3.4 |
3 | 19 | 35 | 2.1 | 3.8 |
4 | 25 | 57 | 2.9 | 5.8 |
5 | 25 | 67 | 2.9 | 6.9 |
6 | 51 | 71 | 5.7 | 7.3 |
7 | 85 | 91 | 9.7 | 9.2 |
8 | 85 | 117 | 9.7 | 11.6 |
===========================================================
Total | 290 | 496 | 4.2 | 6.5 |
-----------------------------------------------------------

The treatment in the course of study manual indicates that it is a
neglected subject. Of the 108 pages, it receives an aggregate of less
than two. The perfunctory assignment of work for the seventh grade is
typical:

"UNITED STATES HISTORY

"B Assignment.
Mace's History, pp. 1-124 inclusive.
Questions and suggested collateral reading
found in Appendix may be used as teacher directs.

"A Assignment.
Mace's History, pp. 125-197.
Make use of questions and suggested collateral
reading at your own option."

For fifth and sixth grades there is assigned a small history text
of 200 pages for one or two lessons per week. The two years of the
seventh and eighth grades are devoted to the mastery of about 500
pages of text. While there is incidental reference to collateral
reading, as a matter of fact the schools are not supplied with the
necessary materials for this collateral reading in the grammar
grades. The true character of the work is really indicated by the last
sentence of the eighth-grade history assignment: "The text of our book
should be thoroughly mastered."

In discussing the situation, the first thing to which we must call
attention is the great value of history for an understanding of the
multitude of complicated social problems met with by all people in a
democracy. In a country where all people are the rulers, all need a
good understanding of the social, political, economic, industrial, and
other problems with which we are continually confronted. It is true
the thing needed is an understanding of present conditions, but there
is no better key to a right understanding of our present conditions
than history furnishes. One comes to understand a present situation by
observing how it has come to be. History is one of the most important
methods of social analysis.

The history should be so taught that it will have a demonstrably
practical purpose. In drawing up courses of study in the subject for
the grammar grades and the high school, the first task should be an
analysis of present-day social conditions, the proper understanding of
which requires historical background. Once having discovered the list
of social topics, it is possible to find historical readings which
will show how present conditions have grown up out of earlier ones.
Looked at from a practical point of view, the history should be
developed on the basis of topics, a great abundance of reading being
provided for each of the topics. We have in mind such topics as the
following:

Sociological Aspects of War
Territorial Expansion
Race Problems
Tariff and Free Trade
Transportation
Money Systems
Our Insular Possessions
Growth of Population
Trusts
Banks and Banking
Immigration
Capital and Labor
Education
Inventions
Suffrage
Centralization of Government
Strikes and Lockouts
Panics and Business Depressions
Commerce
Taxation
Manufacturing
Labor Unions
Foreign Commerce
Agriculture
Postal Service
Army
Government Control of Corporations
Municipal Government
Navy
Factory Labor
Wages
Courts of Law
Charities
Crime
Fire Protection
Roads and Road Transportation
Newspapers and Magazines
National Defense
Conservation of Natural Resources
Liquor Problems
Parks and Playgrounds
Housing Conditions
Mining
Health, Sanitation, etc.
Pensions
Unemployment
Child Labor
Women in Industry
Cost of Living
Pure Food Control
Savings Banks
Water Supply of Cities
Prisons
Recreations and Amusements
Co-operative Buying and Selling
Insurance
Hospitals

After drawing up such lists of topics for study, they should be
assigned to grammar grades and high school according to the degree
of maturity necessary for their comprehension. Naturally as much as
possible should be covered in the grammar grades. Such as cannot be
covered there should be covered as early as practicable in the high
school, since so large a number of students drop out, and all need
the work. Of course, this would involve a radical revision of the high
school courses in history. It is not here recommended that any such
changes be attempted abruptly. There are too many other conditions
that require readjustment at the same time. It must all be a gradual
growth.

Naturally, students must have some familiarity with the general
time relations of history and the general chronological movements
of affairs before they can understand the more or less specialized
treatment of individual topics. Preliminary studies are therefore both
necessary and desirable in the intermediate and grammar grades for the
purpose of giving the general background. During these grades a great
wealth of historical materials should be stored up. Pupils should
acquire much familiarity with the history of the ancient oriental
nations, Judea, Greece, Rome, the states of modern Europe and America.
The purpose should be to give a general, and in the beginning a
relatively superficial, overview of the world's history for the
sake of perspective. The reading should be biographical, anecdotal,
thrilling dramas of human achievement, rich with human interest.
It should be at every stage of the work on the level with the
understanding and degree of maturity of the pupils, so that much
reading can be covered rapidly. Given the proper conditions--chiefly
an abundance of the proper books supplied in sets large enough for
classes--pupils can cover a large amount of ground, obtain a wealth
of historical experience, and acquire a great quantity of useful
information, the main outlines of which are remembered without much
difficulty. They can in this manner lay a broad historical foundation
for the study of the social topics that should begin by the seventh
grade and continue throughout the high school.

The textbooks of the present type can be employed as a part of this
preliminary training. Read in their entirety and read rapidly, they
give one that perspective which comes from a comprehensive view of the
entire field. But they are too brief, abstract, and barren to afford
valuable concrete historical experience. They are excellent reference
books for gaining and keeping historical perspective.

Reading of the character that we have here called preliminary should
not cease as the other historical studies are taken up. The general
studies should certainly continue for some portion of the time through
the grammar grades and high school, but it probably should be mainly
supervised reading of interesting materials rather than recitation and
examination work.

We would recommend that the high schools give careful attention to the
recommendation of the National Education Association Committee on the
Reorganization of the Secondary Course of Study in History.

CIVICS

Civic training scarcely finds a place upon the elementary school
program. The manual suggests that one-quarter of the history time--10
to 20 minutes per week--in the fifth and sixth grades should be given
to a discussion of such civic topics as the department of public
service, street cleaning, garbage disposal, health and sanitation, the
city water supply, the mayor and the council, the treasurer, and the
auditor. The topics are important, but the time allowed is inadequate
and the pupils of these grades are so immature that no final treatment
of such complicated matters is possible. For seventh and eighth
grades, the manual makes no reference to civics. This is the more
surprising because Cleveland is a city in which there has been no
end of civic discussion and progressive human-welfare effort. The
extraordinary value of civic education in the elementary school, as a
means of furthering civic welfare, should have received more decided
recognition.

The elementary teachers and principals of Cleveland might profitably
make such a civic survey as that made in Cincinnati as the method of
discovering the topics that should enter into a grammar grade course.
The heavy emphasis upon this subject should be reserved for the later
grades of the elementary school.

In the high schools, a little is being accomplished. In the academic
high schools, those who take the classical course receive no civics
whatever. It is not even elective for them. Those who take the
scientific or English courses may take civics as a half-year elective.
In the technical high schools it is required of all for a half-year.
The course is offered only in the senior year, except in the High
School of Commerce, where it is offered in the third. As a result of
these various circumstances, the majority of students who enter and
complete the course in the high schools of Cleveland receive no civic
training whatever--not even the inadequate half-year of work that is
available for a few.

Whether the deficiencies here pointed out are serious or not depends
in large measure upon the character of the other social subjects, such
as history and geography. If these are developed in full and concrete
ways, they illumine large numbers of our difficult social problems.
It is probable that the larger part of the informational portions of
civic training should be imparted through these other social subjects.
Whether very much of this is actually done at present is doubtful;
for the history teaching, as has already been noted, is much
underdeveloped, and while somewhat further advanced, geography work is
still far from adequate at the time this report is written.

GEOGRAPHY

Geography in Cleveland is given the customary amount of time, though
it is distributed over the grades in a somewhat unusual way. It is
exceptionally heavy in the intermediate grades and correspondingly
light in the grammar grades. As geography, like all other subjects,
is more and more humanized and socialized in its reference, much more
time will be called for in the last two grammar grades.

TABLE 9.---TIME GIVEN TO GEOGRAPHY
===========================================================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time|
Grade |-----------------------------------------------
| Cleveland | 50 cities| Cleveland | 50 cities |
-----------------------------------------------------------
1 | 0 | 16 | 0.0 | 1.8 |
2 | 0 | 7 | 0.0 | 0.8 |
3 | 28 | 50 | 3.2 | 5.4 |
4 | 101 | 83 | 11.4 | 8.5 |
5 | 125 | 102 | 14.3 | 11.2 |
6 | 125 | 107 | 14.3 | 11.0 |
7 | 57 | 98 | 6.4 | 9.9 |
8 | 57 | 76 | 6.4 | 7.6 |
===========================================================
Total | 493 | 539 | 7.2 | 7.1 |
-----------------------------------------------------------

As laid out in the manual now superseded, and as observed in the
regular classrooms, the work has been forbiddingly formal. In the
main it has consisted of the teacher assigning to the pupils a certain
number of paragraphs or pages in the textbook as the next lesson, and
then questioning them next day to ascertain how much of this printed
material they have remembered and how well. It has not consisted
of stimulating and guiding the children toward intelligent
inquisitiveness and inquiring interest as to the world, and the skies
above, and waters round about, and the conditions of nature that limit
and shape the development of mankind.

That the latter is the proper end of geographical teaching is being
recognized in developing the new course of study in this subject.
Industries, commerce, agriculture, and modes of living are becoming
the centers about which geographic thought and experience are
gathered. The best work now being done here is thoroughly modern.
Unfortunately it is not yet great in amount in even the best of the
schools, still less in the majority. But the direction of progress is
unmistakable and unquestionably correct.

As in the reading, so in geography, right development of the course of
study must depend in large measure upon the material equipment that is
at the same time provided. It sounds like a legitimate evasion to
say that education is a spiritual process, and that good teachers
and willing, obedient, and industrious pupils are about all that is
required. As a matter of fact, just as modern business has found it
necessary to install one-hundred-dollar typewriters to take the place
of the penny quill pens, so must education, to be efficient, develop
and employ the elaborate tools needed by new and complex modern
conditions, and set aside the tools that were adequate in a simpler
age. The proper teaching of geography requires an abundance of reading
materials of the type that will permit pupils to enter vividly into
the varied experience of all classes of people in all parts of the
world. In the supplementary books now furnished the schools, only
a beginning has been made. The schools need 10 times as much
geographical reading as that now found in the best equipped school.

It would be well to drop the term "supplementary." This reading should
be the basic geographic experience, the fundamental instrument of
the teaching. All else is supplementary. The textbook then becomes
a reference book of maps, charts, summaries, and a treatment for
the sake of perspective. Maps, globes, pictures, stereoscopes,
stereopticon, moving-picture machine, models, diagrams, and museum
materials, are all for the purpose of developing ideas and imagery of
details. The reading should become and remain fundamental and central.
The quantity required is so great as to make it necessary for the city
to furnish the books. While the various other things enumerated are
necessary for complete effectiveness, many of them could well wait
until the reading materials are sufficiently supplied.

In the high schools the clear tendency is to introduce more of the
industrial and commercial geography and to diminish the time given to
the less valuable physiography. The development is not yet vigorous.
The high school geography departments, so far as observed, have not
yet altogether attained the social point of view. But they are moving
in that direction. On the one hand, they now need stimulation; and
on the other, to be supplied with the more advanced kinds of such
material equipment as already suggested for the elementary schools.

DRAWING AND APPLIED ART

The elementary schools are giving the usual proportion of time to
drawing and applied art. The time is distributed, however, in a
somewhat unusual, but probably justifiable, manner. Whereas the
subject usually receives more time in the primary grades than in the
grammar grades, in Cleveland, in quite the reverse way, the subject
receives its greatest emphasis in the higher grades.

TABLE 10.--TIME GIVEN TO DRAWING
===========================================================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time|
Grade |-----------------------------------------------
| Cleveland | 50 cities| Cleveland | 50 cities |
-----------------------------------------------------------
1 | 47 | 98 | 6.5 | 11.3 |
2 | 47 | 54 | 5.3 | 6.0 |
3 | 47 | 56 | 5.3 | 6.2 |
4 | 47 | 53 | 5.3 | 5.5 |
5 | 57 | 50 | 6.4 | 5.2 |
6 | 57 | 50 | 6.4 | 5.1 |
7 | 57 | 50 | 6.4 | 5.0 |
8 | 57 | 49 | 6.4 | 4.9 |
===========================================================
Total | 416 | 460 | 6.1 | 6.1 |
-----------------------------------------------------------

Drawing has been taught in Cleveland as a regular portion of the
curriculum since 1849. It has therefore had time for substantial
growth; and it appears to have been successful. Recent developments
in the main have been wholesome and in line with best modern progress.
The course throughout attempts to develop an understanding and
appreciation of the principles of graphic art plus ability to use
these principles through practical application in constructive
activities of an endlessly varied sort.

Occasionally the work appears falsetto and even sentimental. It
is often applied in artificial schoolroom ways to things without
significance. General grade teachers cannot be specialists in
the multiplicity of things demanded of them; it is not therefore
surprising that they sometimes lack skill, insight, ingenuity, and
resourcefulness. Too often the teachers do not realize that the study
of drawing and design is for the serious purpose of giving to pupils a
language and form of thought of the greatest practical significance
in our present age. The result is a not infrequent use of schoolroom
exercises that do not greatly aid the pupils as they enter the busy
world of practical affairs.

These shortcomings indicate incompleteness in the development. Where
the teaching is at its best in both the elementary and high schools
of Cleveland, the work exhibits balanced understanding and complete
modernness. The thing needed is further expansion of the best, and the
extension of this type of work through specially trained departmental
teachers to all parts of the city.

There should be a larger amount of active co-operation between the
teachers of art and design and the teachers of manual training; also
between both sets of teachers and the general community.

MANUAL TRAINING AND HOUSEHOLD ARTS

In the grammar grades manual and household training receives an
average proportion of the time. In the grades before the seventh, the
subject receives considerably less than the usual amount of time.

TABLE 11.--TIME GIVEN TO MANUAL TRAINING
======+=======================+========================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
Grade +-----------+-----------+-----------+------------
| Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------
1 | 32 | 42 | 4.3 | 4.8
2 | 32 | 47 | 3.5 | 5.1
3 | 32 | 40 | 3.5 | 4.5
4 | 32 | 45 | 3.5 | 4.6
5 | 38 | 50 | 4.3 | 5.2
6 | 38 | 57 | 4.3 | 5.8
7 | 63 | 72 | 7.1 | 7.1
8 | 63 | 74 | 7.1 | 7.4
------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------
Total | 330 | 427 | 4.8 | 5.6
------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------

It is easy to see the social and educational justification of courses
in sewing, cooking, household sanitation, household decoration, etc.,
for the girls. They assist in the training for complicated vocational
activities performed in some degree at least by most women. Where
women are so situated that they do not actually perform them, they
need, for properly supervising others and for making intelligible and
appreciative use of the labors of others, a considerable understanding
of these various matters.

Where this work for girls is at its best in Cleveland, it appears to
be of a superior character. Those who are in charge of the best are in
a position to advise as to further extensions and developments. It
is not difficult to discern certain of these. It would appear, for
example, that sewing should find some place at least in the work of
seventh and eighth grades. The girl who does not go on to high school
is greatly in need of more advanced training in sewing than can be
given in the sixth grade. Each building having a household arts
room should possess a sewing machine or two, at the very least. The
academic high schools are now planning to offer courses in domestic
science. As in the technical high schools, all of this work should
involve as large a degree of normal responsibility as possible.

We omit discussion here of the specialized vocational training of
women, since this is handled in other reports of the Survey.

When we turn to the manual training of the boys, we are confronted
with problems of much greater difficulty. Women's household
occupations, so far as retained in the home, are unspecialized. Each
well-trained household worker does or supervises much the same range
of things as every other. To give the entire range of household
occupations to all girls is a simple and logical arrangement.

But man's labor is greatly specialized throughout. There is no large
remnant of unspecialized labor common to all, as in the case of women.
To all girls we give simply this unspecialized remnant, since it is
large and important. But in the case of men the unspecialized field
has disappeared. There is nothing of labor to give to boys except that
which has become specialized.

A fundamental problem arises. Shall we give boys access to a variety
of specialized occupations so that they may become acquainted, through
responsible performance, with the wide and diversified field of man's
labor? Or shall we give them some less specialized sample out of
that diversified field so that they may obtain, through contact and
experience, some knowledge of the things that make up the world of
productive labor?

Cleveland's reply, to judge from actual practices, is that a single
sample will be sufficient for all except those who attend technical
and special schools. The city has therefore chosen joinery and
cabinet-making as this sample. In the fifth and sixth grades work
begins in simple knife-work for an hour a week under the direction of
women teachers. In the seventh and eighth grades it becomes benchwork
for an hour and a half per week, and is taught by a special manual
training teacher, always a man. In the academic high schools the
courses in joinery and cabinet-making bring the pupils to greater
proficiency, but do not greatly extend the course in width.

Much of this work is of a rather formal character, apparently looking
toward that manual discipline formerly called "training of eye and
hand," instead of consciously answering to the demands of social
purposes. The regular teachers look upon the fifth and sixth grade
sloyd[*sic] which they teach with no great enthusiasm. Seventh and
eighth grade teachers do not greatly value the work.

The household arts courses for the girls have social purposes in view.
As a result they are kept vitalized, and are growing increasingly
vital in the work of the city. Is it not possible also to vitalize the
manual training of the boys--unspecialized pre-vocational training, we
ought to call it--by giving it social purpose?

The principal of one of the academic high schools emphasized in
conversation the value of manual training for vocational guidance--a
social purpose. It permitted boys, he said, to try themselves out
and to find their vocational tastes and aptitudes. The purpose is
undoubtedly a valid one. The limitation of the method is that joinery
and cabinet-making cannot help a boy to try himself out for metal
work, printing, gardening, tailoring, or commercial work.

If vocational guidance is to be a controlling social purpose, the
manual training work will have to be made more diversified so that
one can try out his tastes and abilities in a number of lines. And,
moreover, each kind of work must be kept as much like responsible work
out in the world as possible. In keeping work normal, the main thing
is that the pupils bear actual responsibility for the doing of actual
work. This is rather difficult to arrange; but it is necessary before
the activities can be lifted above the level of the usual manual
training shop. The earliest stages of the training will naturally be
upon what is little more than a play level. It is well for schools to
give free rein to the constructive instinct and to provide the fullest
and widest possible opportunities for its exercise. But if boys are
to try out their aptitudes for work and their ability to bear
responsibility in work, then they must try themselves out on the
work level. Let the manual training actually look toward vocational
guidance; the social purpose involved will vitalize the work.

There is a still more comprehensive social purpose which the city
should consider. Owing to the interdependence of human affairs, men
need to be broadly informed as to the great world of productive
labor. Most of our civic and social problems are at bottom industrial
problems. Just as we use industrial history and industrial geography
as means of giving youth a wide vision of the fields of man's work,
so must we also use actual practical activities as means of making
him familiar in a concrete way with materials and processes in
their details, with the nature of work, and with the nature of
responsibility. On the play level, therefore, constructive activities
should be richly diversified. This diversity of opportunity should
continue to the work level. One cannot really know the nature of work
or of work responsibility except as it is learned through experience.
Let the manual training adopt the social purpose here mentioned,
provide the opportunities, means, and processes that it demands, and
the work will be wondrously vitalized.

It is well to mention that the program suggested is a complicated
one on the side of its theory and a difficult one on the side of its
practice. In the planning it is well to look to the whole program. In
the work itself it is well to remember that one step at a time, and
that secure, is a good way to avoid stumbling.

Printing and gardening are two things that might well be added to
the manual training program. Both are already in the schools in some
degree. They might well be considered as desirable portions of
the manual training of all. They lend themselves rather easily to
responsible performance on the work level. There are innumerable
things that a school can print for use in its work. In so doing,
pupils can be given something other than play. Also in the home
gardening, supervised for educational purposes, it is possible to
introduce normal work-motives. By the time the city has developed
these two things it will have at the same time developed the insight
necessary for attacking more difficult problems.

ELEMENTARY SCIENCE

This subject finds no place upon the program. No elaborate argument
should be required to convince the authorities in charge of the school
system of a modern city like Cleveland that in this ultra-scientific
age the children who do not go beyond the elementary school--and they
constitute a majority--need to possess a working knowledge of the
rudiments of science if they are to make their lives effective.

The future citizens of Cleveland need to know something about
electricity, heat, expansion and contraction of gases and solids, the
mechanics of machines, distillation, common chemical reactions and a
host of other things about science that are bound to come up in the
day's work in their various activities.

Considered from the practical standpoint of actual human needs, the
present almost complete neglect of elementary science is indefensible.
The minute amount of such teaching now introduced in the language
lessons for composition purposes is so small as to be almost
negligible. The topics are not chosen for their bearing upon human
needs. There is no laboratory work.

Naturally much of the elementary science to be taught should be
introduced in connection with practical situations in kitchen, school
garden, shop, sanitation, etc. Certainly the applied science should
be as full as possible. But preliminary to this there ought to be
systematic presentation of the elements of various sciences in rapid
ways for overview and perspective.

To try to teach the elements only "incidentally" as they are applied
is to fail to see them in their relations, and therefore to fail in
understanding them. Intensive studies by way of filling in the
details may well be in part incidental. But systematic superficial
introductory work is needed by way of giving pupils their bearings
in the various fields of science. The term "superficial" is used
advisedly. There is an introductory stage in the teaching of every
such subject when the work should be superficial and extensive. This
stage paves the way for depth and intensity, which must be reached
before education is accomplished.

HIGH SCHOOL SCIENCE

Having no elementary science in the grades, one naturally expects to
find in the high school a good introductory course in general science,
similar in organization to that suggested for the elementary stage.
But nowhere is there anything that even remotely suggests such a
course. Students who take the classical course get their first glimpse
of modern science in the third or fourth high school year, when they
have an opportunity to elect a course in physics or chemistry of the
usual traditional stamp. No opportunity is given them for so much as
a glimpse of the world's biological background. Those who take the
scientific or English course have access to physical geography and to
an anemic biological course entitled, "Physiology and Botany," which
few take. Students of the High School of Commerce have their first
contacts with modern science in a required course in chemistry in the
third year, and elective physics in the fourth year. In the technical
high schools the first science for the boys is systematic chemistry in
the second year and physics in the third. They have no opportunity
of contact with any biological science. The girls have "botany and
physiology" in their first year.

The city needs to organize preliminary work in general science for the
purpose of paving the way to the more intensive science work of the
later years. A portion of this should be found in the elementary
school and taught by departmental science teachers; and a portion
in the first year of the high school. As junior high schools are
developed, most of this work should be included in their courses.

As to the later organization of the work, the two technical high
schools clearly indicate the modern trend of relating the science
teaching to practical labors. What is needed is a wider expansion of
this phase of the work without losing sight of the need at the same
time for a systematic and general teaching of the sciences. It is a
difficult task to make the science teaching vital and modern for
the academic high schools, since they have so few contacts with the
practical labors of the world. Cleveland needs to see its schools
more as a part of the world of affairs, and not so much as a hothouse
nursery isolated from the world and its vital interests.

PHYSIOLOGY AND HYGIENE

Teaching in matters pertaining to health is given but a meagre amount
of time in the elementary schools. While the school program shows one
15-minute period each week in the first four grades, and one 30-minute
period each week in the four upper grades, it appears that in actual
practice the subject receives even less time than this. In the attempt
to observe the class work in physiology and hygiene, a member of the
Survey staff went on one day to four different classrooms at the hour
scheduled on the program. In two cases the time was given over to
grammar, in one to arithmetic, and in one to music. This represents
practice that is not unusual. The subject gets pushed off the program
by one of the so-called "essentials." It is difficult to see why
health-training is not an essential. In a letter to the School Board,
February 8, 1915, Superintendent Frederick wrote:

"The teaching of physiology and hygiene should become a matter
of serious moment in our course of study. At present it is not
systematically presented in the elementary schools: and in the high
schools it is an elective study only in the senior year. My judgment
is that it should become a definite part of the program, as a required
study in the seventh and eighth grades."

The small nominal amount of time as compared with the time usually
expended is partially shown in Table 12. Professor Holmes' figures for
the 50 cities include elementary science along with the physiology and
hygiene.

TABLE 12.--TIME GIVEN TO SCIENCE, PHYSIOLOGY, HYGIENE
======+=======================+========================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
Grade +-----------+-----------+-----------+------------
| Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------
1 | 10 | 37 | 1.3 | 4.3
2 | 10 | 41 | 1.1 | 4.5
3 | 10 | 40 | 1.1 | 4.4
4 | 10 | 37 | 1.1 | 3.8
5 | 19 | 34 | 2.1 | 3.5
6 | 19 | 40 | 2.1 | 4.2
7 | 19 | 45 | 2.1 | 4.5
8 | 19 | 57 | 2.1 | 5.7
------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------
Total | 116 | 331 | 1.7 | 4.4
------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------

In addition to the work of the regular teachers in this subject, a
certain amount of instruction is given by the school physicians and
nurses. In his report to the Board, 1913, Dr. Peterson writes:

"Health instruction is given by doctors and nurses in personal talks
to pupils, talks to whole schools, tooth-brush drills conducted in
many schools, and in visits into the homes by the nurses. Conscious
effort is continually made by all doctors and nurses to inspire to
right living all of the children with whom they come in contact."

Looking somewhat to the future, it can be affirmed that the school
physicians and nurses are the ones who ought to give the teaching in
this subject. After giving the preliminary ideas in the classrooms,
they alone are in position to follow up the various matters and see
that the ideas are assimilated through being put into practice both at
school and at home. At present, however, 16 physicians and 27 nurses
have 75,000 children to inspect, of whom more than half have defects
that require following up. It is a physical impossibility for them
to do much teaching until the force of school nurses is greatly
increased.

For the present certain things may well be done:

1. A course in hygiene and sanitation, based upon an abundance of
reading, should be drawn up and taught by the regular teachers in the
grammar school grades. This course should be looked upon as merely
preliminary to the more substantial portions of education in this
field. The physicians and nurses should select the readings
and supervise the course to see that the materials are covered
conscientiously and not slighted.

2. The schools should arrange for practical applications of the
preparatory knowledge in as many ways as possible. Children in relays
can look after the ventilation, temperature, humidity, dust, light,
and other sanitary conditions of school-rooms and grounds. They can
make sanitary surveys of their home district; engage in anti-fly,
anti-mosquito, anti-dirt, and other campaigns; and report--for credit
possibly--practical sanitary and hygienic activities carried on
outside of school. Only as knowledge is put to work is it assimilated
and the prime purpose of education accomplished.

3. The corps of school nurses should be gradually enlarged, and after
a time they can be given any needed training for teaching that will
enable them, as the work is departmentalized in the grammar grades,
to become departmental teachers in this subject for a portion of
their time. Their "follow-up" work will always give them their chief
educational opportunity; but to prepare for this the classwork must
give some systematized preparatory ideas.

In the high schools, training of boys in hygiene and sanitation is
little developed. The only thing offered them is an elective half-year
course in physiology in the senior year of the scientific and English
courses in the academic high schools. In the classical course, and
in the technical and commercial schools, they have not even this.
Physiology is required of girls in the technical schools, and is
elective in all but the classical course in the others. While in one
or two of the high schools there is training in actual hygiene
and sanitation, in most cases it is physiology and anatomy of a
superficial preliminary type which is not put to use and which
therefore mostly fails of normal assimilation.

The things recommended for the elementary schools need to be carried
out in the high schools also.

PHYSICAL TRAINING

The city gives slightly more than the usual amount of time to physical
training in the elementary schools. Except for first and second
grades, where a slightly larger amount is set aside for the purpose,
pupils are expected to receive one hour per week.

TABLE 13.--TIME GIVEN TO PHYSICAL TRAINING
======+=======================+========================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
Grade +-----------+-----------+-----------+------------
| Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------
1 | 63 | 46 | 8.7 | 5.4
2 | 54 | 41 | 6.2 | 4.5
3 | 38 | 40 | 4.4 | 4.5
4 | 38 | 40 | 4.3 | 4.2
5 | 38 | 38 | 4.3 | 4.0
6 | 38 | 40 | 4.3 | 4.2
7 | 38 | 38 | 4.3 | 3.7
8 | 38 | 39 | 4.3 | 4.0
------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------
Total | 345 | 322 | 5.0 | 4.2
------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------

Even though it is a little above the average amount of time, it is
nevertheless too little. A week consists of 168 hours. After deducting
12 hours a day for sleep, meals, etc., there remain 84 hours per week
to be used. In a state of nature this was largely used for physical
play. Under the artificial conditions of modern city life, the nature
of children is not changed. They still need huge amounts of active
physical play for wholesome development. Most of this they will get
away from the school, but as urban conditions take away proper
play opportunities, the loss in large degree has to be made good
by systematic community effort in establishing and maintaining
playgrounds and playrooms for 12 months in the year. The school and
its immediate environment is the logical place for this development.

The course of study lays out a series of obsolescent Swedish
gymnastics for each of the years. The work observed was mechanical,
perfunctory, and lacking in vitality. Sandwiched in between exhausting
intellectual drill, it has the value of giving a little relief and
rest. This is good, but it is not sufficiently positive to be called
physical training.

Very desirable improvements in the course are being advocated by the
directors and supervisors of the work. They are recommending, and
introducing where conditions will permit, the use of games, athletics,
folk dances, etc. The movements should be promoted by the city in
every possible way. At present the regular teachers as a rule have not
the necessary point of view and do not sufficiently value the work.
Special teachers and play leaders need to be employed. Material
facilities should be extended and improved. Some of the school grounds
are too small; the surfacing is not always well adapted to play;
often apparatus is not supplied; indoor playrooms are insufficient
in number, etc. These various things need to be supplied before the
physical training curriculum can be modernized.

In the high schools two periods of physical training per week in
academic and commercial schools, and three or four periods per week in
the technical schools, are prescribed for the first two years of the
course. In the last two years it is omitted from the program in all
but the High School of Commerce, where it is optional. With one or two
exceptions, the little given is mainly indoor gymnastics of a formal
sort owing to the general lack of sufficiently large athletic fields,
tennis courts, baseball diamonds, and other necessary facilities.

Special commendation must be accorded the home-room basis of
organizing the athletics of the technical high schools. Probably no
plan anywhere employed comes nearer to reaching the entire student
body in a vital way.

With the exceptions referred to, it seems that the city has not
sufficiently considered the indispensable need of huge amounts of
physical play on the part of adolescents as the basis of full and
life-long physical vitality. High school students represent the best
youth of the community. Their efficiency is certainly the greatest
single asset of the new generation. There are scores of other
expensive things that the city can better afford to neglect. The one
thing it can least afford to sacrifice on the altar of economy is the
vitality of its citizens of tomorrow.

MUSIC

In the elementary schools Cleveland is giving considerably more than
the average amount of time to music. In the high schools, except for
a one-hour optional course in the High School of Commerce, the subject
is developed only incidentally and given no credit. It is entirely
pertinent to inquire why music should be so important for the grammar
school age and then lose all of this importance as soon as the high
school is reached.

TABLE 14.--TIME GIVEN TO MUSIC
======+=======================+========================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
Grade +-----------+-----------+-----------+------------
| Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------
1 | 47 | 45 | 6.5 | 5.2
2 | 54 | 48 | 6.1 | 5.3
3 | 54 | 47 | 6.1 | 5.1
4 | 54 | 48 | 6.1 | 4.9
5 | 51 | 45 | 5.7 | 4.7
6 | 51 | 45 | 5.7 | 4.6
7 | 51 | 45 | 5.7 | 4.4
8 | 51 | 44 | 5.7 | 4.4
------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------
Total | 413 | 367 | 6.0 | 4.8
------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------

The probability is either that it is over-valued for the elementary
school and should receive diminished time; or it is under-valued for
the high school and should be given the dignity and the consideration
of a credit course, as it is in many progressive high schools.
It cannot be urged that the subject is finished in the elementary
schools. Pupils in fact receive only an introductory training in vocal
music. The whole field of instrumental music remains untouched. It
seems the city ought to consider the question of whether the course
ought not to be much expanded and continued throughout the high school
period as an elective subject. However, in considering the question
it should be kept in mind that there are very many things of more
importance and of far more pressing immediate necessity.

FOREIGN LANGUAGES

German has long been taught in the elementary schools. Until less than
10 years ago it was taught in all grades beginning with the first.
More recently it has been confined to the four upper grades. Beginning
with the present year, it is taught only in the seventh and eighth
grades. The situation is so well presented in the report of the
Educational Commission of 1906 that further discussion here is
unnecessary. They summarize their discussion of the teaching of German
in the elementary schools as follows:

"Such teaching originated in a nationalistic feeling and demand on the
part of German immigrants, and not in any educational or pedagogical
necessity.

"It aimed to induce the children of Germans to attend the public
schools, where they would learn English and be sooner Americanized.

"For 15 years [now 25 years] past, German immigration has almost
ceased, and other European nationalities, as the Bohemians, Poles, and
Italians, have taken their place numerically.

"The children of the earlier German immigrants are already
Americanized and use the English language freely, and those later
born, of the second and third generations, no longer need to be taught
German in the schools beginning at six years of age.

"It is demonstrated by experience and by abundant testimony that
children neither from German nor from English-speaking families really
learn much German in the primary and grammar grades, that is, from six
to 13 years of age.

"Hence the Commission recommends that the teaching of German in these
grades be discontinued and that the German language be taught only in
the high schools.

"It is admitted that those who begin German in the high school, after
the second year, can keep up with and do as good work in the same
classes as those who have had eight years of German in the primary and
grammar grades and two years in the high schools."

The form of argument that once was valid for including German in the
elementary course of study may now be valid for Polish, Hungarian,
Bohemian and Italian, for the children of the first generation of
these nationalities. Properly done, it is a means of preventing
the children's drifting from the parental moorings. After the first
generation, it would not be needed.

It is impossible, in the limited space at our disposal, to discuss
comprehensively so complicated a topic as foreign languages in the
high school. One group of educators sturdily defends the traditional
classical course, with its great emphasis on Greek and Latin, while
another group as urgently insists that if any foreign languages
are taught, they must be the modern ones. These opposing schools of
thought are profoundly sincere in their conflicting beliefs. Each
side is absolutely certain that it is right and is unalterably of the
opinion that there is no other side of the question to be even so
much as considered. Anything that agrees with its own side is based
on reason; anything opposed is but ignorant prejudice. Under the
circumstances the disinterested outsider may well suspect that where
there is so much sincerity and conviction, there must be much truth on
both sides. And undoubtedly this is the case.

Latin is a living language in our country in that it provides half of
our vocabulary. Pupils who would know English well should have a good
knowledge of this living Latin. If the Latinists would shift their
ground to this living Latin and provide means of teaching it fully
and effectively for modern purposes, it is possible that the opposing
schools of thought might here find common ground upon which all could
stand with some degree of comfort and toleration. When Latin study of
the character here suggested is devised, it ought to be opened up to
the students of all courses as an elective, so that it could be
taken by all who wish a full appreciation and understanding of their
semi-Latin mother tongue. Such a study ought to be required of the
clerical students of the High School of Commerce. In the meantime,
however, all will have to wait until the Latinists have provided the
plans and the materials.

In the new so-called English course in the academic high schools
required foreign languages are omitted entirely. In the third and
fourth years German or Spanish is made elective. This gives rise
to several questions. If the foreign language is studied simply as
preparation for the leisure occupation of reading its literature--the
only value of the course in the case of most who take it--why should
not French be elective also? By far the largest of the world's
literatures, outside of the English, is the French. The Spanish has
but a small literature; and while Germany has excelled in many things,
belles-lettres is not one of them. Another question relates to the
placing of these electives. If one is to study a foreign language at
all, it is usually thought best to begin earlier than the third year
of the high school, so as to finish these simple matters that can
be done by children and gain time in the later years for the more
complicated matters that require mature judgment.

DIFFERENTIATION OF COURSES

Courses of training based upon human needs should be diversified where
conditions are diversified. Uniform courses of study for all schools
within a city were justifiable in a former simpler age, when the
schools were caring only for needs that were common to all classes.
But as needs have differentiated in our large industrial cities,
courses of training must also become differentiated. In Cleveland this
principle has been recognized in organizing the work of the special
schools and classes. For all the regular elementary schools,
however, a uniform course of study has been used. Under the present
administration, principals and teachers are nominally permitted wide
latitude in its administration.

A large part of this freedom is taken away by two things. One is the
use by the city of the plan of leaving textbooks to private purchase.
For perfectly obvious reasons, so long as textbooks are privately
purchased, a uniform series of textbooks must be definitely prescribed
for the entire city. Uniform textbooks do not necessarily enforce a
uniform curriculum. In usual practice, however, they do enforce it
as completely as a prescribed uniform course of study manual. As the
schools of different sections of the city are allowed to experiment
and to develop variations from the course of study, they should be
allowed greater freedom in choosing the textbooks that will best serve
in teaching their courses.

The second condition enforcing a uniform course of study in certain
subjects is the use of uniform examinations in those subjects. We
would merely suggest here that it is possible to use supervisory
examinations without making them uniform for all schools. Different
types of school may well have different types of examination.

Different social classes often exist within the same school.
Administrative limitations probably must prevent the use of more than
one course of study in a single elementary school. But as the work of
the grammar grades is departmentalized, and as junior high schools
are developed, it will become possible to offer alternative courses
in these grades. Those practically certain of going on to higher
educational work requiring foreign languages and higher mathematics
should probably be permitted to begin these studies by the sixth or
seventh grade. On the other hand, those who are practically certain
to drop out of school at the end of the grammar grades or junior high
school should have full opportunities for applied science, applied
design, practical mathematics, civics, hygiene, vocational studies,
etc. When the necessary studies are once organized and departmental
work introduced, it is not difficult to arrange for the necessary
differentiation of courses in the same school.

Finally, courses of study should provide for children of differing
natural ability. Extra materials and opportunities should be provided
for children of large capacity; and abbreviated courses for those
of less than normal ability. In departmentalized grammar grades
and junior high schools this can be taken care of rather easily by
permitting the brighter pupils to carry more studies than normal,
and the backward ones a smaller number than normal. Under the present
elementary school organization with classes so large and with so many
things for the teachers to do, it is practically impossible to effect
such desirable differentiations.

SUMMARY

1. The fundamental social point of view of this discussion of the
courses of study of the Cleveland schools is that effective teaching
is preparation for adult life through participation in the activities
of life.

2. The schools of Cleveland devote far more time to reading than do
those of the average city. In too large measure this time is employed
in mastering the mechanics of reading and in the analytical study
of the manner in which the words are combined in sentences and the
sentences in paragraphs. The main object of the reading should be
the mastery of the thought rather than the study of the construction.
Through it the children should gain life-long habits of exploring,
through reading, the great fields of history, industry, applied
science, life in other lands, travel, invention, biography, and
wholesome fiction. To this end the work should be made more extensive
and less intensive. As an indispensable means toward this end the
books should be supplied by the schools instead of being purchased by
the parents.

3. The teaching of spelling should aim to give the pupils complete
mastery over those words which they need to use in writing and it
should instil in them the permanent habit of watching their spelling
as they write. Drill on lists of isolated words should give way to
practice in spelling correctly every word in everything written. The
dictionary habit should be cultivated, and every written lesson should
be a spelling lesson.

4. The time devoted to language, composition, and grammar is about the
same as in the average city. The chief result of the work as done in
Cleveland is to enable the pupil to recite well on textbook grammar
and to pass examinations in the subject. The work in technical grammar
should be continued for the purpose of giving the pupils a
foundation acquaintance with forms, terms, relations, and grammatical
perspective, but this training need not be so extensive and intensive
as at present. The time saved should be given to oral and written
expression in connection with the reading of history, geography,
industrial studies, civics, sanitation, and the like. Facility and
accuracy in oral and written expression are developed through practice
rather than through precept. They are perfected through the conscious
and unconscious imitation of good models rather than through the
advanced study of technical grammar. Only as knowledge is put to work
is it really learned or assimilated.

5. Cleveland gives more time to mathematics than does the average
city. The content of courses in mathematics is to be determined by
human needs. A fundamental need of our scientific age is more accurate
quantitative thinking about our vocations, civic problems, taxation,
income, insurance, expenditures, public improvements, and the
multitude of other public and private problems involving quantities.
We need to think accurately and easily in quantities, proportions,
forms, and relationships. Arithmetic teaching, like the teaching
of penmanship, is for the purpose of providing tools to be used in
matters that lie beyond. The present course of study is of superior
character, providing for efficient elementary training and dispensing
with most of the things of little practical use. The greatest
improvement in the work is to be found in its further carrying over
into the other fields of school work and in applying it in other
classes as well as in the arithmetic class. In the advanced classes
mathematics should be differentiated according to the needs of
different pupils. Algebra should be more closely related to practical
matters and developed in connection with geometry and trigonometry.

6. History receives much less attention in this city than in the
average city. The character of the work is really indicated by the
last sentence of the eighth-grade history assignment: "The text of our
book should be thoroughly mastered." The work is too brief, abstract,
and barren to help the pupils toward an understanding of the social,
political, economic, and industrial problems with which we are
confronted. It should be amply supplemented by a wide range of
reading on social welfare topics. This reading should be biographical,
anecdotal, thrilling dramas of human achievement, rich with
human interest. It should be at every stage on the level with the
understanding and degree of maturity of the pupils so that much
reading can be covered rapidly.

7. In Cleveland, where there has been an almost unequalled amount of
civic discussion and progressive human-welfare effort, the teaching
of civics in the public schools receives too little attention. It is
recommended that the principals and teachers make such a civic survey
as that made in Cincinnati as the method of discovering the topics
that should enter into a grammar-grade course. Not much civics
teaching should be attempted in the intermediate grades, but it should
be given in the higher grades.

8. A new course of study in geography is now being put into use. The
work as laid out in the old manual and as seen in the classrooms
has been forbiddingly formal. It has mainly consisted of the teacher
assigning to the pupils a certain number of paragraphs or pages in
the textbook as the next lesson, and then questioning them next day to
ascertain how much of this printed material they have remembered and
how well. The new course of study recognizes, on the contrary, that
the proper end of geographical teaching is rather to stimulate and
guide the children toward an inquiring interest as to how the world
is made, and the skies above, and the waters round about, and the
conditions of nature that limit and determine in a measure the
development of mankind. To attain this ideal will require in every
school 10 times as adequate provision of geographical reading and
geographical material as is now found in the best equipped school.

9. Drawing and applied art have been taught in Cleveland since
1849. The object of the teaching is to develop an understanding and
appreciation of the principles of graphic art and ability to use these
principles in practical applications. Where this work is done best, it
shows, in both the elementary and high schools, balanced understanding
and complete modernness. What is needed is extension of this best
type of work to all parts of the city through specially trained
departmental teachers.

10. Where teaching of household arts is at its best in Cleveland,
it is of a superior character and should be extended along lines
now being followed. Manual training for boys should be extended and
broadened with a view to giving the pupils real contact with more
types of industry than those represented by the present woodwork.

11. Elementary science finds no place in the course of study of
Cleveland. The future citizens of Cleveland will need an understanding
of electricity, heat, expansion and contraction of gases and solids,
the mechanics of machines, distillations, common chemical reactions,
and the multitude of other matters of science met with daily in their
activities. The schools should help supply this need.

12. Teaching in matters pertaining to health is assigned little time
in the elementary schools, and the time that is assigned to it is
frequently given to something else. The subject gets pushed off the
program by one of the so-called "essentials." A course in hygiene
should be drawn up, and practical applications of the work should be
arranged through having pupils look after the sanitary conditions of
rooms and grounds. The school doctors and nurses should help in this
teaching and practice.

13. Physical training is given about as much time as in the average
city, but without adequate facilities for outdoor and indoor plays
and games. At present the work is too largely of the formal gymnastic
type. Desirable improvements in the course are being advocated by
the directors and supervisors of the work. They are recommending
and introducing, where conditions will permit, the use of games,
athletics, folk dances, and the like. The movement should be promoted
in every possible way.

14. In the elementary schools Cleveland gives more than the average
amount of time to music, but in the high schools the subject is
developed only incidentally and is given no credit. It is a question
whether this arrangement is the right one, and in considering possible
extensions it should be remembered that there are other subjects of
far more pressing immediate necessity.

15. It is impossible in this brief report to discuss adequately so
complicated a matter as that of the teaching of foreign languages in
the high schools, but some of the most important of the questions
at issue have been indicated as matters which the school authorities
should continue to study until satisfactory solutions are reached.

16. Where school work in Cleveland is backward, it is because it has
not yet taken on the social point of view. Where it is progressive, it
is being developed on the basis of human needs. There is much of both
kinds of work in Cleveland.

17. In a city with a population so diversified as is that of
Cleveland, progress should be made steadily and consciously away from
city-wide uniformity in courses of study and methods of teaching.
There should be progressive differentiation of courses to meet the
widely varying needs of the different sorts of children in different
sections of the city.

CLEVELAND EDUCATION SURVEY REPORTS

These reports can be secured from the Survey Committee of the
Cleveland Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio. They will be sent postpaid for
25 cents per volume with the exception of "Measuring the Work of the
Public Schools" by Judd, "The Cleveland School Survey" by Ayres, and
"Wage Earning and Education" by Lutz. These three volumes will be sent
for 50 cents each. All of these reports may be secured at the same
rates from the Division of Education of the Russell Sage Foundation,
New York City.

Child Accounting in the Public Schools--Ayres.
Educational Extension--Perry.
Education through Recreation--Johnson.
Financing the Public Schools--Clark.
Health Work in the Public Schools--Ayres.
Household Arts and School Lunches--Boughton.
Measuring the Work of the Public Schools--Judd.
Overcrowded Schools and the Platoon Plan--Hartwell.
School Buildings and Equipment--Ayres.
Schools and Classes for Exceptional Children--Mitchell.
School Organization and Administration--Ayres.
The Public Library and the Public Schools--Ayres and McKinnie.
The School and the Immigrant--Miller.
The Teaching Staff--Jessup.
What the Schools Teach and Might Teach--Bobbitt.
The Cleveland School Survey (Summary)--Ayres.

* * * * *

Boys and Girls in Commercial Work--Stevens.
Department Store Occupations--O'Leary.
Dressmaking and Millinery--Bryner.
Railroad and Street Transportation--Fleming.
The Building Trades--Shaw.
The Garment Trades--Bryner.
The Metal Trades--Lutz.
The Printing Trades--Shaw.
Wage Earning and Education (Summary)--Lutz.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "What the Schools Teach and Might Teach" ***

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