USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Melrose > City of Melrose annual report 1903 > Part 11
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Upon evidence as insufficient as the above, parents too frequently form and express adverse judgments upon the work or management of the schools and in so doing injure the schools to a greater or less degree by shaking the con- fidence of the public in their efficiency.
A better understanding on the part of parents of the work of the schools would be found helpful, also, in coun- teracting the pernicious influence of such articles as that which appeared in the Ladies' Home Journal for January, 1902, under the title, "Dedicated to the American Parent." The article referred to is made up of quotations from per- sonal letters to the editor calling attention to the way in which, it is alleged, children are overworked in the schools today.
The following extracts are characteristic of the whole article:
" After seeing my frail little boy of ten sent home with twenty-five sums in cubic arithmetic, reaching home at half past four and work- ing until ten, the poor little brain too tired with cubic inches to sleep, I withdrew him. Protest to the school availed nothing."
"Compelled to bring home seven long lessons every evening, after being in school from nine until four, I have just taken my little girl of eleven out of the public school."
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"With our two boys it was study until ten at night and at it again at five in the morning. So we stopped schooling."
"Clever as he is, my little boy of ten cannot master the lessons he brings home, although he works until nine every evening. Repeated headaches decided us yesterday to take him out of school."
It is charitable to believe that, if the editor of the Ladies" Home Journal knew the work of the schools as he ought before going into print either in approval or disapproval of any phase of that work, he would refrain from scattering broadcast as a basis for generalization regarding the work of the schools statements that are in no wise true with reference to school systems in general.
Now, until the majority of parents can be induced to visit the schools frequently enough to know what is actually being done in them, such utterances as the foregoing given currency through the medium of a respectable publication will work no little injury by arousing in the public mind a feeling opposed to working pupils in the schools up to the point that is best for them.
It is more to be feared that pupils will be under-worked in our schools than that they will be overworked. I heartily endorse the sentiment of the President of Radcliffe College when he says: "The first lesson of education is the lesson of getting down to hard work, and doing the work thoroughly."
Unfortunately too many parents, in their solicitous desire to make the educational pathway of their children as smooth as possible, fail frequently to support school offi- cials in requiring from pupils that application to school tasks which is desirable.
Now it is hardly possible to secure the best results in schools unless the present popular conception along this line yields to the belief on the part of parents that the wel- fare of young people will be advanced by the adoption of a more strenuous policy with respect to their education.
Another way in which parents may help the schools is by reading more largely than they do the special literature of education. Comparatively few parents either subscribe for a single paper or magazine dealing distinctly or to any large degree with educational interest or read to any great extent
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from books bearing directly upon the problems of education.
The progress of a school system in any community depends largely upon the popular understanding of the pur- pose underlying the administration of the schools, the popular grasp upon general educational principles, and the popular conception of education. School officials may have the best of ideas but they can be incorporated into the school system only as fast as the public sentiment of the community will permit. Hence the necessity for fathers and mothers to read more largely along the line of the literature of education, in order that there may be a more enlightened public opinion in educational affairs.
Not only will such reading as I have suggested result in a better understanding on the part of the public of the prob- lems of education but also it will tend to develop in the minds of fathers and mothers a keener sense of their indi- vidual responsibility in the matter of the education of young people.
The public outside the legally constituted school authori- ties is a more important factor in education than is ordinarily conceived. I would not for a moment undervalue the work that the schools have done and are doing, but I cannot escape the feeling that they are less potent than popular thought holds them to be in determining a child's future as a citizen. Carlyle refers to this thought in the following words in his " Life of Sterling:" "To all of us, the expressly appointed school-masters and schoolings we get are as noth- ing compared with the unappointed, incidental, and con- tinual ones, whose school hours are all the days and nights of our existence, and whose lessons, noticed and unnoticed, stream in upon us with every breath we draw." Carlyle's statement may be an exaggeration; but more and more the thought that he voices is growing within me as I see, fre- quently, boys and girls with whom the schools seemed to do little assuming commanding positions in various lines of activity after leaving the schools, and as I see also, some- times, those who in school life gave indications of promise shaping their future careers in accordance with low ideals in spite of all that the schools have done to stimulate high
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aspiration. It is true that a child gets from the school the major part of his formal training in the various lines that constitute the school curriculum, and that the school is a powerful factor in helping on the evolution of a child into strong womanhood or manhood; but it is well to understand that there are outside forces constantly exerting an influence upon the child's mental, moral and physical being that, after all, will largely determine what he will be as an adult, and that the highest educational interests of the child can be secured only by bringing these outside forces into co-opera- tive action with the schools.
Again it would be found helpful to the schools if parents would see that, so far as possible, pupils presented them- selves at school in a fit condition physically to profit by the work of the schools. This requires (1) that parents should give more attention than they ordinarily do to the diet of children and (2) that there should be closer supervision of the social demands upon young people than is frequently given.
Much of the so-called dullness and stupidity of children as well as much of their emotional estrangement that mani- fests itself in irritability, viciousness, etc., is due to a degree of exhaustion of the nerve cells of the brain rather than to intellectual deficiencies or inherited dispositional tendencies.
Scientific study of children has demonstrated that one prolific source of such exhaustion of nerve cells is inade- quate brain nutrition. Nerve cells repair their waste by absorbing from the blood the materials needed for their upbuilding. Naturally, if the proper food material does not reach them, they are constantly in a more or less exhausted state, the degree of which varies with the amount of their activity. It behooves parents, therefore, especially mothers, to study the science of nutrition as affecting the nervous system of children, if they would rear children who are not only physically but also mentally and morally at their best.
So vital is the matter of diet as relating to the moral development of an individual that one scientist has said: "If you will allow me to feed the criminals for a hundred years I will abolish crime."
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Another source of exhaustion of nerve cells or brain fatigue, especially in the thickly settled communities, is the excessive strain that is put upon children in social ways today.
Sometime ago I submitted to the pupils of the High School and of the eighth and ninth grades throughout the city a series of questions among which were the following inquiries:
(a) Please state under each of the following headings the number that you have attended during the last two months (January and February).
I. Social gatherings (dances, card parties, birthday parties, etc.)
2. Literary gatherings (lectures, debates, readings, etc.)
3. Church gatherings (young people's meetings, socials, reunions, Y. M. C. A. affairs, etc.)
4. Musical affairs (concerts, operas, private gatherings, etc.)
5. Athletic meets.
6. Theatres.
(b) Are you restricted in any way by your parents or guardians regarding attendance upon any of the above mentioned gatherings on either of the following school days, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday?
In order that there might not be any restraint felt in answering, pupils were requested not to sign their answers but simply to indicate the grade that they attended.
Five hundred and forty-six different pupils returned answers and it was found that 64% of the entire number were not restricted in any way regarding attendance upon socials, etc., on either Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday evenings during term time.
Now when it is taken into account that during a period of two months in which schools were in session these pupils had attended in the aggregate six thousand five hundred and sixty-five gatherings of a social nature, that to a greater or less extent drew upon their nervous force, one is led to be- lieve that, if parents were more careful along this line than they frequently are, pupils would be better able to profit by the instruction of the schools and there would be less complaint regarding over-pressure in school requirements.
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SUGGESTIONS.
I. Salaries of Teachers : In my annual report for 1901 and again in the report for 1902 it was suggested that the Committee consider the advisability of some action with respect to salaries of teachers that might protect the City from the loss of so many of its best instructors.
I am pleased to record that the Committee has taken action in several instances during the past two years that has had a tendency to lessen the possibility of such loss.
However, I feel that more remains yet to be done in this line in order that the best interests of the schools may be subserved. In view of the educational loss to the City by frequent changes in the force, to which reference has been made previously in this report, I venture to repeat for your consideration the two opening sentences of my suggestion in this line in the report of last year. They are as follows : " In order that there may be a definite policy with respect to the salaries of our teachers, outlined and understood by all, I would suggest that the Committee consider the advis- ability of adopting a schedule of salaries for the principals throughout the City and for the High School teachers. It would be well at the same time, I think, to consider the pos- sibility of increased salaries for the grade teachers." I trust that the merit of this suggestion may receive the careful thought of the present School Committee.
II. Medical Inspection in the Schools : In the report for 1902, I recommended "That the Committee take under con- sideration the advisability of adopting some plan for regular medical inspection in our schools." Additional experience has strengthened my belief in the need of such inspection and the suggestion is again placed before the Committee for consideration.
Conversations with the local Board of Health with respect to action in this line warrants the belief that the School Committee may expect the co-operation of that Board in an effort to secure proper medical supervision throughout the schools.
III. Additional School Accommodations : During the past
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four years the registration in our ninth grades has increased 45 3-5 per cent. There are at present in grade IX 169 pupils. Four rooms are given up to these pupils, two at the Wash- ington School, one at the Lincoln School and one at the Franklin School.
The present registration in our eighth grades indicates that, at the lowest calculation, we are likely to have 200 pupils in grade Ix in September, 1904.
Such a registration would require the opening of an addi- tional ninth grade room.
At present the only available place in our grammar build- ings for an additional ninth grade is the hall at the Lincoln School. The hall at the Washington School is already in use by a ninth grade.
While it will be possible to provide for our ninth grades during the coming year by using the hall indicated, the time is not far distant, evidently, when it will be impossible to care for these grades without enlarging our school accom- modations at some point. Therefore it would seem wise at this time to consider briefly possible steps in this direction in order that the need may be met intelligently when it shall come.
I have had in mind the possibility of centralizing the ninth grades at the Sewall School building and placing them under the administration of the High School. This would require the removal of the primary grades from that building. For the accommodation of those grades the Mary A. Livermore building could be enlarged by an extension westward suffi- cient to provide at least four additional rooms.
In order that the ninth grades might be properly accom- modated at the Sewall building, it would be necessary to remodel the present structure or to erect a new one.
To carry out this idea would require considerable expen- diture upon school buildings, but, if the growth of our school population continues, a larger or smaller outlay for addi- tional accommodations ยท will be absolutely necessary in the near future, and the plan suggested has advantages from an educational point of view that make it worthy careful con- sideration.
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I. If the ninth grades should be brought together at the Sewall building as suggested it would be possible to have them taught to better advantage than when located in different parts of the City. Being near the High School it would be quite feasible not only to extend over them the administration of that school but also to have certain of their studies, such at least as are continued in the High School, directed by the High School teachers. This would tend to make the transition from the grammar to the High School less abrupt and trying to the pupils.
2. There would seem, also, to be an advantage in trans- ferring the primary grades, that are now located in the Sewall building, to the Livermore building.
The distance between the Sewall and the Whittier Schools, the only two schools north of Upham Street and east of the B. & M. R. R., in which there are primary grades, is so great that pupils in grades I, II, III and Iv attend school with great difficulty except in the most favorable weather. In fact there are parents who have hired teachers to give their children private lessons rather than to subject them to the task of walking the distance necessary in order to reach school.
To transfer the primary pupils from the Sewall to the Livermore building, on the one hand, would be a great accommodation to many children in the northeastern part of the section to which I have referred and, on the other, it would work no hardship to children in the southern part of the Sewall district, which extends only to Foster Street.
Inasmuch as the suggested change seems to have advan- tages both for the primary children and for the ninth grades, I recommend that the Committee consider the advisability of asking the City Government, in the near future, for an appropriation to enlarge the Mary A. Livermore building and either to remodel the Sewall building or to replace it with a structure more suitable for school purposes.
I desire, also, in this connection to call attention to a need existing in the south-eastern section of the City.
The single-room Ripley school building is not only inade- quate for the growing needs of that section but it is located
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so near the Malden line that it accommodates the pupils of a very limited area.
Children living near the eastern end of Grove Street and on the adjacent part of Swain's Pond Avenue, and those to the eastward thereof, after passing through the first four or five grades, are obliged to walk either to the Washington, the Horace Mann, or the Livermore Schools, a hardship in either case, while those in the immediate neighborhood of the Ripley School are transported to the central schools at the City's expense.
Now, if the present Ripley School should be discontinued and a larger building erected in the neighborhood of the junction of Goss avenue and Harold Streets or to the south- ward thereof, several beneficial results would follow :
(1) The needs of this section of the City with respect to school accommodations would seem to be more nearly met than at present, (2) the congestion in attendance that is making itself felt especially in the Livermore and Washing- ton Schools would be relieved in a measure, and (3) the expense and inconvenience involved in transporting pupils from the Ripley district to the central schools would be removed.
It seems proper, therefore, for the Committee to give this suggestion consideration.
IV. Home Study. The attention of the Committee is called to this subject, not because I have any sympathy with those hysterical individuals who occasionally rush into print with exaggerated utterances upon the "Slaughter of the Innocents " through the exacting demands of the schools in the way of home study, but because I have come to feel that some adjustment of our schools is possible that will largely remove the necessity of requiring home study of pupils in our grammar grades and at the same time will enable us without imposing greater burdens upon young people to accomplish more for them in our schools than we now do.
Several years of experience and close observation have convinced me that, when a young person breaks down in health during the period of school life, it is only in rare
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cases that the collapse can be properly attributed to the pressure of school tasks.
It is probably true in many cases that, combined with other drafts upon nervous force, school tasks assist the break-down, but usually the real cause is either poor physi- cal condition, for which the school is not responsible, or some outside strain that might easily be removed by the right kind of parental supervision; but to give currency to the idea that the school is the primary cause is not only a mistake but is calculated to injure the work of the schools, because it gives rise to a sentiment that makes it difficult to require of pupils that degree of application to school tasks which makes for their highest educational welfare.
Our present plan of administration in the schools of Mel- rose calls for a half-hour of home study in grade VII, one hour in grade VIII, and one and one-half hours in grade IX.
It has seemed best to ask for home study in these grades (I) in order that pupils might acquire in a measurable degree the power and habit of independent study that will assist them in meeting the requirements of work in the High School, (2) because the present daily school session of 43/4 hours in the grammar grades is too short to afford oppor- tunity in school for pupils to do the amount of study that they should in preparing assigned work. While school authorities would seem to be justified, on general principles, in asking for more or less home study on the part of pupils, I am inclined to consider the attempt to get effective home work from grammar school pupils under modern conditions as productive of less educational benefit to them than might .
be accomplished in another way.
There are three fair assumptions in this connection, (1) that the opportunity for home study in the majority of homes is such that the pupil works at a disadvantage, if he works at all, (2) that few pupils in the grammar grades have sufficient sense of responsibility or mastery of self to go to their home study voluntarily, and that the average parent is not sufficiently insistent to have the child do his outlined work well, (3) that, even if pupils apply themselves faithfully to home study, the results are not in proportion
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to the time spent because they do not know how to work advantageously.
It is a well-founded complaint from High School teachers that pupils do not know how to study when they come from the grammar school, so that they get from the earlier years in the High School, at least, far less than they might if they 'knew how to use the tools of their work to better advantage.
This lack in the training of grammar school pupils is due to a great extent to the fact that school sessions as a rule are too short to give the teacher proper opportunity to teach pupils how to study.
In my judgment, one of the chief ends in school training should be to teach pupils how to do intellectual work effec- tively and economically. If this can be accomplished in our schools, we shall have done much in the way of really educating children.
I would suggest that a longer daily school session for the upper grammar grades might result in distinct gain to our young people.
Several reasons incline me to this belief.
I. If the daily session should be lengthened by a half- hour and that time given up to study, pure and simple, the desired opportunity would be afforded the teacher to teach pupils how to work as they should. I believe that, in the case of the average child, a half-hour of such work in the school room would be worth more in the preparation of the next day's task than twice that time in home study.
2. The opportunity of preparing lessons at school under the direction and stimulus of the teacher would enable the pupil to come to his home practically free from whatever nervous strain may come from the omnipresent thought of a lesson to be prepared at some time before the next session of school begins.
3. It is probable, also, that if lessons should be prepared at school, as indicated, teachers would find it easier to hold pupils responsible for good results in their work.
If it be objected that the lengthened session would injure pupils physically, one may fairly reply that it is quite possi- ble to believe that the relief which the child would get with
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respect to home study, done as it is in the majority of cases, would fully offset any strain occasioned by the longer school session.
As a matter of fact, there is little reason to suppose that a normal child will suffer injury from 514 or even 51/2 hours daily during about one half the year in a school-room that is reasonably well lighted and ventilated, considering that the daily session is broken up at intervals by physical exer- cises and by an intermission of from one and three-fourths to two hours at mid-day.
I feel that the Committee may well consider whether or not any arrangement along the line of the foregoing sugges- tion is feasible in our schools.
V. Vacation Schools : The estimated value of the City's permanent investment in school property, i. e., lots, houses, and fixtures, is approximately $450,000.
Under present conditions this expensive plant lies idle nearly one-half of the calendar year. To me it appears hardly an economical business proposition to close our school property to use for such a large portion of the year.
I believe that the best interests of the community demand that a portion of the school plant shall be kept in operation during part, at least, of the long summer vacation, and that true economy would justify such additional expenditure of money as would be necessary to maintain vacation schools during five or six weeks of the summer for those children who remain in Melrose during that period.
To ascertain whether or not there exists any particular need for such schools in Melrose, I issued in the earlier part of May, 1903, the following circular to parents having pupils in grades II to VII inclusive, the grades most likely to be affected by a vacation school.
MELROSE, May 5, 1903.
Dear Friend : - In order that it may be determined whether or not the educational interests of Melrose may be advanced by any fuller use of our educational plant, you are respectfully requested to answer the following questions and to return this sheet properly filled out to the school that your child attends.
I shall consider it an added favor if the returns are made not later than Friday, May 15.
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This request for your co-operation is made strictly for educational purposes. The answers will be inspected only by the Superintendent of Schools and his clerk, and all statements and names will be consid- ered confidential in nature. Yours respectfully,
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