The San Francisco Directory, 1874, Part 12

Author:
Publication date: 1874
Publisher: San Francisco : Langley, Henry G.
Number of Pages: 1128

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For the site, take a block, or the center of some block, at the junction of Oak and Webster streets, or within half a dozen blocks of that locality, in which- ever direction the best adapted or obtainable site may be found. Take a lot, one hundred and fifty by two hundred and fifty feet, in the center of such & block, and have four avenues of approach from the center of each side of the inclosing block. This would give the necessary freedom from the noise of adjacent streets, which is so great to any schools placed upon or very near any main thoroughfare daily traversed by loaded wagons, heavy drays, and rattling cars. In such a building, let the recitation rooms, library, reference room, philosophical, chem- ical, and astronomical apparatus, and teachers' rooms occupy the central part, and devote each wing to the study rooms of each of the separate classes or divisions; each sex by itself, or both together, as the authorities may determine.

2d. Into such a building bring both the present High Schools, and over the one grand, central, union High School thus created, place one experienced, accomplished educator, full of energy, enthusiasm, and, above all, of that personal magnetism which always distinguishes the true teacher; reduce the present number of classes, and, consequently, of teachers, fully one third, retain the best of those now employed, or get better, and diminish the annual cost of the entire High School instruction of this city by at least twenty thousand dollars a year, besides having it done in a much more uniform, thorough, and scholarly manner.

MISSISSIPPI VALLEY F. & M. INS. CO .; Assets $500,000; Farnsworth & Clark, Agts.

C. P. VAN SCHAACK & CO., 708, 712, 714, and 716 Kearny St., Importers and Jobbers.

GENERAL REVIEW.

GAINS.

MORE PRACTICAL SUPERINTENDENCY.

During the year, the regular biennial election placed the Superintendency again in the hands of one of the most experienced practical teachers upon the Coast, who was still further qualified for the office by two previous terms in the same capacity. Superin- tendent Denman signalized his return to office by procuring the immediate and much-needed disci- pline of several careless teachers who decidedly needed official admonition. With the aid of his able Deputy, Prof. Leggett, he has already initiated more minute, practical, and helpful supervision of the methods of instruction throughout the different grades.

The present Board of Education, which came into office December 1, 1873, is the first elected under the new law, which provides for the choice of School Directors from the city at large, instead of one from each ward, as had previously been the case. As an almost necessary consequence, the personal character and general ability of its members are generally con- sidered a decided gain upon those of previous years last past. Their principal deficiencies are those which time and experience alone can remove, as two or three of their more prominent official acts have already partially demonstrated.

NEEDS.

The most important needs of the School Depart- ment, as specified in our issue of last year, remain substantially unchanged. As an agitation of nearly ten years has resulted in securing the choice of Di- rectors from the city at large, it is to be hoped that in less than as many years longer, the public mind may be brought to perceive not only the permissibil- ity and the propriety, but the absolute necessity of making it illegal to place any but educated citizens in charge of public educational interests.

I .- FREE BOOKS.

Many claim that the Public School is not, and can not be, really and wholly a free school until the State provides free books as well as free teachers, houses, furniture, stationery, and necessary apparatus ; in fact, that the very phrase "necessary apparatus," must, first of all, include the requisite school books, as an indispensable part of the apparatus necessary to successful study and auxiliary to profitable teach- ing. Without attempting a decision or even a dis- cussion which would be wholly gratuitous in a coun- try where each man generally insists on his inalien- able right to bring in his own verdict whether he has heard the evidence or not, and zealously forms and forces his own opinion whether he understands the matter or not, or even venturing upon any discus- sion, it is certainly pertinent and should be profita- ble to inquire what advantages have followed the free-book system in those cities which, by actual ex- periment, have taken the question out of the domain of theory, assertion, and argument, into that of act- ual performance, proof, and demonstration.

Among these advantages, are :

ist. The immediate saving of from one quarter to one third of the original cost of all school books. As is well known, the ordinary bookseller, buying in comparatively limited quantities, receives a discount of from twenty-five to thirty-three and one third per cent. The city or the State, buying in immensely larger quantities, could obtain even greater dis- count.

In San Francisco alone, with its present number of public school children, the saving from this single source would amount to nearly forty thousand dol- lars ($40,000) a year, or quite enough to build two excellent school houses annually, amply accommo- dating from eight hundred to one thousand of those pupils now inconveniently quartered in rented rooms. If the parents and taxpayers choose to continue pay- ing this, and an even greater sum annually to the retail booksellers instead of saving it toward the payment of their other taxes, it is, of course, their own affair. And it may appear, and will appear, in this paper, if time and space permit, that in spite of the immediate loss to the retail bookseller which, it might at first seem, would result from the adoption of this plan, its carrying out would involve results which might partially if not wholly compensate him.

This, however, is a question of universal public good rather than of the gain or loss of any small clique of mon doing business solely for their own pecuniary profit.

2d. With the provisions hereafter noted, it would save fully one half the wear and tear and loss of books, and thereby cause them to last at least twice as long. This would be equivalent to an annual cash saving of fifty per cent.

Our Public Schools have an average membership, upon the lowest calculation, of twenty-four thousand. Fully one half of these, probably a larger part, go home to lunch and return, thus passing over the distance between the home and the school four times a day. Assuming that the average distance between the school and the home is only one quarter of a mile-which is below the fact-ten thousand children traveling this distance twice a day, and another ten thousand going over it four times a day, give us a distance of fifteen thousand miles a day, seventy-five thousand miles a week, three hundred thousand miles a month, and three million three hundred thousand miles a year, over which these twenty thousand school children carry, drag, swing, tote, or lug their frequently-falling packets and bundles of poorly-bound school books; battering them by frequent collision and dropping, straining and break- ing them by over-strapping, and often losing them altogether.

As the plan of furnishing free books, at public ex- pense, generally includes the provision or require- ment that, as public property, the books must not be taken from the school room, an additional and even greater saving would result from thus cutting off the wear and tear of frequent and generally care- less street transportation.

Should any ask when and where the pupils can learn their lessons if not allowed to carry the text- books home, the answer is the simple and obvious one, "in school." This can be effected in two ways: By devoting less time to recitation and more to in- struction and study. Nearly twice as much time is now consumed in recitation as needs be or would be if teachers, generally, knew how to conduct recita- tions in a business-like way, and pupils were proper- ly instructed how to study, prepare lessons, and make recitations. Also, by adding one hour to the present school time, and devoting this hour wholly to instruc- tion and study. As shown elsewhere, even with the proposed addition of one hour, the actual time spent in school work in the school room, exclusive of inter- mission, recesses, opening and closing exercises, etc., would still be but a small fraction over five hours. And of this time never more than an hour and a half at one time are the pupils kept continuously in their rooms, even in the highest grades, while in the lower grades, and especially in the primary classes, more frequent recesses, or times of physical exercise, make the longest continuous confinement even shorter.

If any ask what the teacher would be doing while the class is studying, the answer is: She should be correcting papers, assisting more backward pupils, or hearing one division of the class recite while the other studies.

3d. It would also save the expenses of sachels, bags, knapsacks, book-holders, and straps, which, includ- ing their unavoidable wear and tear and frequent loss, make quite a considerable item every year, especially in a family having three or four school- going members.

4th. It would improve the figure and gait or car- riage of the children.

Any one who has observed the shuffling, hampered, drooping, round-shouldered, swinging, or rolling gait of the average book-laden pupils needs no proof of this. An obvious cause, or a cause which becomes obvious by the merest statement, is this: The child carries, we will say, but two pounds' weight of books, suspended or slung in a bag, sachel, or strap, so as to hang or dangle from six inches to a foot and a half below the hand, and constantly swinging against or hindering the free motion of the lower leg, ancle, or foot, or even hitting and scraping the ground. To say nothing of the droop in the upper extremities, how is a child to walk freely and gracefully with such a constant impediment. Little wonder that our ·dancing and drill-masters complain of the extreme difficulty of teaching the average boy or girl an up- right, easy, and graceful gait. And less wonder that I parents complain of the frequent loss of many books

ATNA INS. CO. of Hartford has a Paid-up Capital of $3,000,000, and Cash Assets of nearly $6,000,000, GEO. C. BOARDMAN, Manager.

PACIFIC COAST BUSINESS DIRECTORY, 1874-6, H. G. Langley, Pub'r, S. F. Price $5.

SAN FRANCISCO INSURANCE CO. (Fire and. Marine), office 411 California.

EDWARD BOSQUI & CO., Stationers, Printers, and Bookbinders, corner of Clay and Leidesdorff Streets.

SAN FRANCISCO DIRECTORY.

and the falling to pieces of many more. A book must be exceedingly well bound, indeed, to withstand the straining and banging of frequent transportation at the hands of an ordinary juvenile of the present day.

Those fond of statistics may add one more fact: allowing that the average weight of school books carried back and forth at least twice a day-is two pounds only, and hundreds carry from four to five pounds-and that the average distance of the pupil's home from his school is but a quarter of a mile-and hundreds live a mile or more away-and also allow them to attend school upon an average two hundred days a year-and hundreds attend the whole two hundred and twenty days of the entire school year- and it follows immediately that our twenty thousand school children lug through the streets twenty tons of school books ten thousand miles a day, or four thousand tons two million miles a year. And this calculation, in all its elements, weight of books, dis- tance traveled, number of days, and number of children, is within and below the truth in every particular. The argument needs no aid from exag- geration.

THE PLAN NOT NEW.

This proposed plan of free books is by no means new. Larger American cities than ours adopted it from fifteen to twenty years ago, and the present writer merely borrowed the idea from them when he suggested it here nearly ten years since.

ADVANTAGES OF THE SYSTEM.

Its adoption, or fair trial, would involve the fol- lowing points:

Ist. The State or the city should furnish all neces- sary school books and stationery free of direct cost to the individual pupil or his parent.

2d. The pupil should never take the books from the school room.

3d. The pupil or his parent should immediately pay for all loss of, or damage to, books, resulting from his own negligence or abuse.

Certainly no one could reasonably object to the system on the ground of cost, as the parent would pay in increased taxes the wholesale cost of the books, while he would save in private family ex- penses, their retail cost, thus making a not gain of the difference, which is commonly one fourth of the retail price, and, under the system of very large wholesale purchases, would become even more.

THE CASE OF THE CHILDLESS TAX PAYER.

Of course, the objector would instantly bring up the case of the childless property owner, or the wealthy citizen and heavy tax payer whose children do not attend the l'ublie Schools. To him we answer at once that the general intelligence of a community directly increases its desirability as a place of resi- dence, and correspondingly enhances its value as a place of investment, and that the three great public fountains of general intelligence and popular enlight- enment are the school, the church, and the press, and that the church gains few intelligent voluntary mem- bers, and the press finds very few readers and fewer subscribers in communities wherein the school is not duing or has not done its work.

What would lands and houses be worth in a city or a country without schools ? And which costs more, to pay for the single item of public schools or to pay the extra taxes necessary for the efficient mainten- ance of reform schools, county jails, State prisons, State sheriffalty, county constabulary, and city po- lice, to say nothing of the immense cost of courts, the salaries of judges, and the fees of the vast army of lawyers, all of which are greatly increased, it not principally supported or primarily caused by the ig- norance of clients, criminals, and convicts. The ar- gument might lose no strength by including also the vast annual cost of hospitals, infirmaries, asylums, and alms houses, most of whose inmates find their way thither through causes which efficient popular in- struction, made compulsory upon all, would have very largely diminished, if not wholly removed or prevent- ed. With the kindest of feeling towards both law- yers and doctors, the student of true political economy cannot help seeing that they mainly live upon the ig- norance and vice ot their clients and patients, and that in proportion as the three great teachers of mankind, the editor, the preacher, and the teacher, do their work thoroughly and universally the service of the

doctor and the lawyer, at least in their present spheres, must continually grow less and less. Wheth- er true or not, it has been often said and oftener thought, that one great reason why compulsory edu- cation, and other educational reforms, encounter so many rebuffs and progress so slowly, is the apa- thy, indifference, and sometimes positive opposition which they meet at the hands of the lawyer members of various State Legislatures and prospective office- seekers, who manipulate ward meetings, district pri- maries, and county conventions, whose ignorant mem- bers habitually cheat themselves with the self-com- plimentary delusion that they are having their own way and voting as they please, when the truth is that a few selfish politicians, compacted into a little clique or ring, have completely captured them and are lead- ing them whithersoever they will. However loudly these office-seekers and ring-makers may clamor for free schools and shout for universal popular educa- tion, they are the very things which at heart they es- pecially dread and detest. Between them there is and must be that natural enmity which begets and nourishes a continual conflict. As the masses rise the demagogues fall. And this is true, not only in matters educational and political, but even more so in moral and religious interests. One or the other must go to the wall, and the people, having made up their minds which it shall be, are beginning to prac- tically understand that the free Common School is the grand source of mental enlightenment and civil enfranchisement, and to firmly resolve that neither political tyrants nor religious despots shall take it from them.

II .- MORE HOURS OF SCHOOL EVERY DAY.

Fully aware of the strong oppositon which the merest hint of such a suggestion will almost certainly call forth from the majority of teachers, his experi- ence of nearly twenty years has fully convinced the writer that an addition of at least one hour to the present number of school hours each day, with prop- er accompanying provisions and regulations, would very greatly improve the quality of the regular school work in all the grades, and, at the same time, rather improve than injure the health of the pupils. He thinks so for the following reasons :

Ist. The present total daily time now devoted to actual school work, in the school room and under school regulations, including study time, recitation time, and all forms of regular school work, even in the Grammar and High Schools, is but four and one half hours a day. And, if we exclude the time usu- ally occupied by calling the roll, receiving reports, etc., it is still less than this. In fact, in the highest classes, and under the strictest teachers, the most faithful pupil devotes hardly four hours a day to any- thing like earnest, absorbing, or really hard study. And even this small amount is not continuous; twice a day it is broken by recesses of fifteen minutes each, while at noon a solid hour of rest and recreation separates the morning work from that of the after- noon. Besides this, in accordance with a well-known law of both physical and mental effort, the variety of the work becomes in itself often equivalent to a full rest.

Requiring one hour more of school each day, with the accompanying proviso that the pupil should not ordinarily study at home, would involve or secure the following advantages:

Ist. Instead of costing the pupil more time it would actually cost him less. Home-study is almost universally necessarily broken by unavoidable in- terruptions. Few families are so commodiously housed that every boy or girl can have his or her own private or quiet little study room. Studying in the midst of younger children, almost constantly in- terrupted by surrounding domestic noises, and by the rattling conversation of heedless callers, the average pupil, with mind comparatively undisciplined in self- control, can hardly accomplish as much in two hours as he easily accomplishes in a single hour in the school room, where all the surroundings, as far as practicable, are made to favor successful study.

2d. It would enable the teacher to train the pupils in right methods of study. In the acquisition of knowledge, the how is often fully as important as the what. Many a pupil with brains enough in head, and time enough on hand, has failed simply through not knowing how to use both brain and time. Right methods of study enable even average pupils to ac-

FARNSWORTH & CLARK, Gen'l Fire and Marine Insurance Agency; office 230 Cal. St.

C. P. VAN SCHAACK & CO., 708, 712, 714: and 716 Kearny St., Importers and Jobbers.

GENERAL REVIEW.

complish amounts of real scholarly work previously thought well-nigh impossible. Teaching how to study is, probably, the most neglected part of the teacher's work as at present conducted.

3d. It would tend to equalize the diverse condi- tions under which many pupils now study. Hun- dreds of boys and girls not only have no regular household helping to be done in and about the house, but they have parents who can, and often gladly do, help them in their lessons, not only by giving them quiet rooms for study, but by frequent personal aid in hard places. Other hundreds, of fully equal nat- ural ability, have hardly ton successive minutes of uninterrupted opportunity to study while out of the school. They must run upon dozens of errands and do scores of little household services, exacted by parents who cannot understand the conditions or requisites of an education which they never received. Every thoughtful teacher soon learns the vast differ- ence in real moral credit due to different pupils for a seemingly equal performance. One comes from a home full of helps; the other from a home obstructed with nearly every conceivable hindrance. The most careful and conscientious marking cannot always justly discriminate between the good and ill-desert of pupils sitting side by side and making apparently equally good recitations. While no human power, at present, at least, can banish these great inequalities at home, it would seem an important and a fully practicable step toward justice for public authority to partially obviate them by providing increased time for study in school, where all can have an equally good chance to do equal work in equal time. This suggested extension of time is not intended to involve any increase cither of the number of studies or of the time of recitation; simply to provide more time for study in school; that is, to come nearer to doing school work, in school time, on school prem- ises, in the midst of school influences and under uni- form school control, and thus send the scholar home free for home work in home time. If carried into execution, the total time spent in all recitations and studies each day would still be less than five hours, and this would be broken by an additional recess into such intervals that no pupil would ever be kept continuously in his seat a moment longer than at present.

III .- SINGLE DESKS FOR ALL GRADES.

Nearly all the Grammar grades have them already, but it seems not yet to be generally understood that the little ones of the Primary grades have even greater need of them. Almost the first necessity of such grades is that of frequent physical exercise, and the first necessity for free and profitable physical ox- ercise, after pure air and clear sunshine, at least, is convenient room. Double desks necessarily compel the occupants of two opposite seats to rise toward each other and to stand together in the same aisle. Such an arrangement crowds the pupils so that by no possibility, in any room of ordinary size, can more than half the pupils exercise freely at once. Single desks, having a separate aisle at the side of each row, give the occupant of each seat, bis own exclu- sive space, in his own aisle, opposite his own desk and chair.

2d. Single desks and chairs, by giving each pupil his own particular spot, and keeping him more near- ly in it, increases his distance from his neighbor's and thus diminish at once his opportunity and his conse- quent temptation to whisper or communicate in any other way. They thus become a material clause in the practical answer of the petition, "Lead us not into temptation," which some of the children, at least, are taught to offer, in the home, if not at school.

3d. They tend to develop the ideas of exclusive proprietorship and consequent increased personal responsibility for cleanliness, neatness, etc., which every child feels for years before he understands the ponderous polysyllables which express them. Every experienced teacher knows that seating two pupils at the same desk divides the responsibility and dimin- ishes the carefulness of each. If, as old " Agesilaus, King of Sparta," used to say, "children should be taught those things which they will practice when they come to be men and women," even the lowest Primary grade is not too early a time or place in which to begin such teaching.

space permit, but, aside from the needs specified last year, this of single desks and separate chairs is of such immediate and constant physical and mental importance, and involves so many direct conse- quences important to both pupils and teachers, that it can least afford to wait.

CONCLUSION.

The free Public School is the infallible pulse of true republican vitality. It is the unerring register of the past, the certain index of the present, and the sure prophecy of the future. Its relations to the na- tional life are closer, deeper, more infinite, and more vital than those of any or all other public inter- ests. It is the fountain of civil life, the source of po- litical health, the preserver of social stability, the precursor of broader civil liberty, and the harbinger of true religious freedom.

" What think you of the Public School ?" is the simple challenge by which freedom's watchful sen- tinels may most readily and certainly distinguish be- tween the friends and the foes of popular enlighten- ment, personal independence, and national freedom.

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The San Francisco Directory, 1874, Part 12

Author: Publication date: 1874 Publisher: San Francisco : Langley, Henry G. Number of Pages: 1128

Author:
Publication date: 1874
Publisher: San Francisco : Langley, Henry G.
Number of Pages: 1128