USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Fifty years of Boston; a memorial volume issued in commemoration of the tercentenary of 1930; 1880-1930, Pt. 2 > Part 8
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The present system, begun in 1896 and developed further in 1910, is based upon different principles and its methods may fairly be called unique. The child's powers of observation, imagination and appreciation are now expanded through creative effort and through association with beauty. The elements of art appreciation are taught as early as the fourth grade. Design and repre- sentation of objects are still cultivated but color and tone relationships are emphasized and, above all, the creative faculty of every child, his or her indi- vidual gift of expression, is encouraged rather than perfection in technique, the imitative, almost photographic, skill which was valued in the past. Technical
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skill, however, is developed in the high schools, where it may be turned to practical account, together with the higher creative faculties, through its various applications in costume designing, interior decoration, advertising, merchan- dising and other fields.
The new system is fully justified by its results, for example, the competi- tions for original poster work among high school pupils, leading to admirable public exhibitions of the competing designs. Another evidence of progress is the intense interest displayed. No fewer than sixty Boston public school pupils, selected from many times that number of applicants, are taking courses at the Art Museum, which, though given outside of the regular school hours, yield credits that count toward their diplomas.
MUSIC
The teaching of music is begun in the kindergarten by the establishment of simple rhythmic orchestras composed of bells, cymbals, drums, jingles, tam- bourines, rhythm sticks and triangles. In singing the development of freely emitted sweet tones properly supported by natural diaphragmatic breathing is stressed from the first grade upward. Part singing and the ability to read music developed in the upper grades affords an opportunity for large groups to get together to create harmonious ensembles. Children in elementary and intermediate schools are also given opportunities for instrumental instruction, which is continued through the high schools. The pupils from these instru- mental classes form bands and orchestras in their respective schools.
Practically every high school has a band. There are also about forty bands in elementary and intermediate schools. The Boston Public School Symphony Band is organized from the various officers of the several high school bands. These officers, commissioned and noncommissioned, have been granted their ratings by a representative of the Music Department in consultation with the head master, because of excellence in music and in scholastic standing.
There is an orchestra in almost every school. The best players in the high school orchestras are selected as members of the Boston Public School Symphony Orchestra, which has been highly complimented for its public performances, and the best players in the elementary school orchestras become members of the Boston Public School Junior Symphony Orchestra.
There are about twenty-five glee clubs in elementary and intermediate schools and sixteen high school glee clubs. An annual concert is given in Symphony Hall by the School Symphony Orchestra, the School Symphony Band, a large rhythmic orchestra, composed of very young pupils, a chorus of 1,800 boys and girls and selected soloists. This annual concert is becoming more and more an event of the musical season in Boston .*
HOUSEHOLD SCIENCE AND ARTS
While sewing was introduced in the Boston schools as far back as 1854, it was not until 1885 that household science extended beyond that subject. In that year cooking lessons were given under private auspices in a basement
* EDITORIAL NOTE .- An interesting reference to it will be found at the end of Mr. Chadwick's article.
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room in the Starr King School near Park square. This was probably the first kitchen for public school instruction in the United States. In January, 1886, the School Committee of Boston incorporated cooking into the curriculum of the elementary schools. Now there are school kitchens in sixty-five schools.
In 1906 a supervisor for cooking and sewing was appointed. At that time the course of study in sewing for Grades IV, V and VI included the mas- tery of the needle and thimble drill and of simple fundamental plain stitches. Practice was obtained by the making of useful articles, such as bags, aprons, towels and babies' bibs, and by doing such valuable work as darning, patching, mending and renovating clothing. In the choice of garments to be made the mothers were consulted, since they furnished most of the materials. The course of study for cookery included, in the work of Grades VII and VIII, all the principles and processes of cooking and a grasp of household manage- ment. It gave the girls also a clear idea of the relations between food and health and between efficiency and happiness.
With the starting of the intermediate schools in 1916 came an extension of the practical arts activities. At present girls in the practical arts section have four forty-minute periods a week in which they can make undergarments, dresses and household articles. They are taught mending and renovating in the intermediate grades, VII to IX, as well as in Grades IV, V and VI. They are also given an opportunity to learn about home beautifying through art work and the study of color in interior decoration. Girls may continue this work in the high school.
In 1916 millinery was introduced into the ninth grades of both the inter- mediate and the high schools. Practical arts classes in cookery, as well as dressmaking, are now offered to girls of Grades VII, VIII and IX. In these grades, as well as in the high schools, courses in first aid, home nursing, mother- craft and cooking for invalids are given.
In nine suburban high schools complete courses are given in household science and arts. As even boys are at times called on to assume practical charge of a family, two classes in household science for boys were started at the South Boston High School in 1928, with excellent results.
Public demonstrations of the value of this work have not been wanting. In 1908 Boston pupils made hundreds of garments for children rendered home- less by the Chelsea fire. During the World War 11,000 underweight children were given luncheons prepared at the schools and over 40,000 garments were made for the Junior Red Cross. Every year five hundred such garments are made. Jellies have been put up for the Children's Hospital.
The real value of this work, however, is seen in the homes, where it cannot be tabulated but is, without question, a substantial factor in the promotion of intelligent housekeeping throughout the community.
THE MANUAL ARTS
Half a century ago the manual arts had not even begun to be recognized in the Boston schools. The first move to establish manual training was in 1881, when an offer of the Industrial School Association of Boston to equip
INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION, MILL WORK
QUINCY SCHOOL, SEVENTEEN DIFFERENT NATIONALITIES WORK OF THE BOSTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS
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FIFTY YEARS OF BOSTON
and maintain a shop for the Dwight and Sherwin Schools was accepted by the School Committee. A course in carpentry was thereupon given by Mr. Walter Batchelder, a carpenter of Chelsea. There seems to be no record that this experiment was continued, but in 1883 the City Council was requested to appropriate the suin of $2,500 for a shop class for two hundred boys in the bascinent of the Latin School. From that time onward the development of inanual training went on uninterrupted. It is now established in the early grades, with a greater variety of subjects and wider opportunities as the pupils grow older.
In the intermediate grades (VII, VIII and IX) mechanic arts courses are offered in woodworking, sheet metal, electricity and printing. These courses are optional for boys in those grades. About one third of all the boys in Grades VII and VIII elect them, doing shopwork six hours a week. There are now about one hundred and fifty shops, with as many teachers, in the elementary and intermediate schools. Simple courses in the manual arts are offered in Grades IV and V. The whole field is a development of the years since 1880 and one which has proved beyond dispute its moral and educational value for boys of a concrete, mechanically constructive type of mind.
CO-OPERATIVE INDUSTRIAL COURSES
Under the compulsory law of 1898 for manual training in high schools, shopwork was introduced into several of the high school curricula. This work was optional and took the form largely of woodworking and art metal work. The courses were open to both boys and girls. During the administration of Superintendent Franklin B. Dyer, general manual training courses in high schools were discontinued and co-operative industrial courses were inaugurated, the first of these being given in the Hyde Park High School in the year 1913-14.
In 1916 the course of study was changed to very much its present form. The co-opcrative feature consists in having the pupils spend every other week during the second, third and fourth years in shopwork cither in the school or in co-operative shops. Work in a commercial shop during the fifth year is required for graduation. A high school diploma is issued.
Co-operative shops with activities as indicated have been established in the following schools. They are open to boys from any part of the city. The agricultural course at the Jamaica Plain High School includes work on estates and in greenhouses.
Hyde Park High School
Machine Shop Practice 1913
Dorchester High School for Boys
Woodworking 1915
East Boston High School
Machine Shop Practice 1916
Woodworking 1917
Brighton High School
Changed to Auto Mechanics 1919
Electricity 1917
Charlestown High School
Agriculture . 1918
South Boston High School
Sheet Metal Work 1926
Roxbury Memorial High School (Boys), Printing
. 1928
Jamaica Plain High School
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SALESMANSHIP
The first course in this subjeet was given in the fall of 1906. In September of that year "an order was passed providing that elasses in salesmanship which had previously been maintained by private interests be continued at the Bigelow Evening Sehool at the expense of the eity."
The first salesmanship instruetion in high sehools was authorized by the Seliool Committee on May 20, 1912, and a eourse was instituted at the Dor- ehester High School. Frank V. Thompson, then the Assistant Superintendent in charge of eommereial education and later Superintendent of Sehools, was quiek to see the inadequaey of the training unless it was aeeompanied by an opportunity for praetieal experienee. A director of praetiee work in sales- manship was appointed to bring about and supervise sueh eo-operative rela- tions. The eourse was extended to nine high sehools and about three hundred pupils took up the work. The pupils were exeused from school on Mondays and on speeial sales days for store experienee.
Sinee September, 1921, a eo-operative eourse involving half-time in the stores has been in operation for eertain girls of Grades XI and XII of the High Sehool of Praetieal Arts. Pupils are assigned to eo-operating stores in pairs and while one is in the store the other is in sehool. They exchange plaees weekly. By agreement with the Retail Trade Board of the Chamber of Commerce, the girls are given training in marking, stock, examining, eashiering and selling.
A second form of eo-operative store training was organized at the Roxbury Memorial High School for Girls on Mareh 1, 1927. For pupils who eleet this course, school opens at 8.15 a. in., thus allowing for recitation periods before 11.15 a. m. At noon they report to the stores to which they have been assigned, where they serve as a contingent force for the noon release of eashiers, examiners and salespeople until 3 p. m.
Salesmanship is at present taught in twelve day high schools, four evening high sehools, and in the Continuation School, and about fifteen hundred pupils are being trained. Girls are trained in retail selling, boys in retail and whole- sale selling, merehandising methods and advertising.
COMMERCIAL EDUCATION IN GENERAL
In Boston, in 1897-98, the "so-called eommereial eourses" were introduced into the day high schools and offered to all boys and girls who desired to take them. Special instruetors in bookkeeping, stenography and typewriting were employed. The eommereial course of study, as adopted September 24, 1897, was to extend through two years. The three and four year courses later insti- tuted in the Boston High Sehools existed side by side until 1907-08, when the commereial courses were placed on a four-year basis in all the high schools.
With the introduction of eommereial work in the Boston high sehools, there also eame a demand for the establishment of separate high sehools special- izing in eommercial branehes. It was in response to this demand that the Boston High School of Commeree was established in 1906.
Although training for business is of more reeent origin than any other line of scientifie training, there are more students enrolled in this type of training
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today than in all other high school vocational courses combined. This is explained by the fact that Boston, while it has a great diversity of industries, is predominantly a commercial city.
PENMANSHIP
In September, 1918, a director of penmanship was appointed to organize the subject of handwriting throughout the grades and to train the teachers in the technique and pedagogy of the subject. An assistant director and several supervisors assist her in her work with the teachers and pupils. Hardly any braneh of study in the entire curriculum requires and receives more careful supervision. Writing is taught from the first grade up. At the end of the first year the pupils have learned to form the entire alphabet in both small letters and eapitals and to combine the letters in simple words. Instruction is based upon the Palmer system. The result is a rapid, easy and legible style of penmanship. Special penmanship certificates are awarded to ninth grade and high school pupils and to graduates of the Teachers College, the last requiring a thorough understanding of teaching methods applicable to all the grades.
VISUAL EDUCATION
Visual education is not an innovation. Visual aids to instruction in the form of pictures, objects and charts, have been employed by enterprising teachers in our sehools from the earliest days. Boston's efforts in visual instrue- tion as a distinct educational method date back more than thirty years, when sets of slides were purchased. A quarter of a century ago nearly every school possessed a stereopticon lantern and stereoscopes.
As early as 1913 a committee made a report on instruction through visual aids. This committee, with a ehanging personnel, continued active until 1926. Its labors were productive of great benefit. Through its efforts a special appropriation was finally made by the School Committee for the purchase of motion picture machines and the rental of educational films. Every school district is now supplied with a motion picture machine, and a carefully conceived plan of circulating instructive films has been adopted. These are found to be of great practical value, for example, in geography, seience and even literature.
9. The Physical Child SCHOOL HYGIENE
In 1894 Boston blazed the way for the whole country by the adoption of a system of medical inspection of schools. This system, briefly deseribed, was as follows: Deriving authority from the Board of Health and serving under its direction, medical inspectors, eighty in number, visited daily the sehools within their assigned districts; inspected pupils reported by the teachers; suggested medical or surgical treatment wherever either seemed desirable; and in cases of diseases contagious, infectious, or suspicious, reeommended the exclusion of
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children from school. As officers of the Board of Health, they likewise attended to the isolation of pupils thus excluded, and imposed the conditions of readmission to school.
The School Committee of Boston again did pioneer work in 1907 when it united the various elements affecting the physical welfare of pupils and teachers - the physical, the sanitary and the hygienic agencies - and grouped them in a single department with a director of school hygiene in control. This Department of School Hygiene - the first of its kind in this country - besides the director, included assistant directors, instructors in physical training (women), instructors in athletics (men), supervisors of playgrounds, playground teachers, assistants in playgrounds, assistants in sand gardens, an instructor in military drill, a medical inspector of special classes, a supervising nurse, and assistant nurses; but not as yet the medical inspectors, who were still under the direction of the Board of Health.
School nursing was introduced in the Boston schools in 1907. In 1912 arrangements were made for dental clinics for the children. No description of health activities in the Boston schools is complete without due acknowledgment of the splendid services rendered by the Forsyth Dental Infirmary and the highly cherished co-operative arrangement between this institution and the public schools of the city. Provision was also made during this year for the examination of girls by women physicians.
Prior to June, 1915, as we have seen, medical inspectors serving under the Board of Health visited the schools. In 1915 the school physicians were transferred from the Board of Health and placed under the control of the School Committee. A group of supervising school physicians are now responsible to the Director of School Hygiene, himself, of course, a physician, for the conduct of school hygiene activities in the districts to which they are assigned and for the work of the physicians under their jurisdiction. They confer with the prin- cipals of each school district as occasion demands and explain to them the essential features of school hygiene service. The school nurses are under the same jurisdiction, that of the reorganized Department of School Hygiene. A new Department of Physical Education, however, has been created to supervise recreation and exercise.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION
Physical education of a sort has been a part of the curriculum since the early days of the public schools. It was more systematically organized, however, in 1890, when the Ling or Swedish system of educational gymnastics was intro- duced in all the public schools of the city and a director of physical training and four assistants were appointed. In the same year the need of playground work as part of the physical training of the children was recognized by the School Committee and the first appropriation for this purpose was made.
The Department of Physical Education at every point in our school system, through scientific training, is urging and directing children to cultivate correct physical habits. Much is made of corrective exercises, proper seating and good posture. All forms of school athletics are under the control of the School Com- mittee and are administered through this department. Girls as well as boys engage in athletics suitable to their needs. Supervised play abounds every- where. The playground program is expanding continually and is definitely
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FIFTY YEARS OF BOSTON
related to our campaigns for safety. The School Department conducts 138 playgrounds. There are 350 playground teachers with a daily attendance of 15,000 children.
For the boys of the ninth grade in the intermediate schools and for all the boys in high schools, two forty-minute periods each week must be spent in military drill.
Athletics is given close attention in the high, Latin, Trade, intermediate and elementary schools. There are no leagues and no prizes, and, for girls, no inter-school competition. The aim is not to encourage strife for championship and trophies, but rather to promote wide participation on the part of the students. The instructors and managers of athletics are members of the facul- ties of the several schools. Teacher coaches conduct football, track athletics and baseball in season. Play teachers handle the less concentrated forms of baseball, swimming, soccer, tennis, track and golf. During 1926, at the sugges- tion of the Superintendent of Schools, provision was made for the athletic instruction of girls. Intramural competition in tennis, gymnastic games, indoor baseball and swimming has been very successful. Hiking, skating and golf have also attracted many. Interest in forms of sport that have a " carry over" into life is the aim of the play teachers of girls.
There can be no doubt that the improvement in physique among the later generations in Boston is due in part to the encouragement of good health habits and the facilities for play and exercise provided by the public schools. In this way the city receives a rich return upon its investment of the pupils' time and the taxpayers' money.
10. Exceptional Children
Education during the last fifty years has had the outstanding characteristic of humaneness. It provides not only for the normal and accelerant child, but likewise for the unfortunate and misunderstood. More has been accomplished during the last two decades to mitigate the evils of mass production in education than ever before. This corrective, remedial training recognizes children as individuals and adopts education to the wide range of variation in types which is found to exist among them.
The outstanding educational contribution that has come to the children of Boston during the last fifty years, therefore, has been a clearer recognition by educators of the fact that children differ mentally as well as physically, and that they require almost infinitely varied forms of educational treatment.
There has been a methodical and scientific differentiation of the capacities of school children. This has resulted in the separation of pupils into homo- geneous groups with instruction adapted to the needs of each group. The accelerant child has an opportunity in the rapid advancement classes to advance according to his capacity. In these classes it is possible by means of intensive training to do three years' work in two. In this way the bright pupil's enthu- siasm is not dulled by incessant drill and repetition on material which to him does not possess the interest of novelty or convey the stimulus of conscious progress.
Extended provisions have been made for nonscholarly pupils and for pupils of slow mentality. The atypical or subnormal pupil has received increasingly careful consideration in special classes.
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SPECIAL CLASSES
Thirty-two years ago (January, 1899) the first special class for mentally retarded children was established in Boston. From that time on, careful studies have been made of the needs of these children and a technique of instruc- tion has been developed. Now there are a hundred classes with over 2,000 children. It is recognized that if these pupils are selected early, placed in small groups under a trained teacher, much may be done for them intellectually and socially.
The public schools at the present time are unable to care for children of such low mentality as to require custodial or institutional protection. They offer instruction, however, suitable for children who have not succeeded under ordinary classroom procedure.
THE HORACE MANN SCHOOL
The Horace Mann School for the Deaf was founded before 1880. The school at present has a total enrollment of one hundred and fifty pupils. This number is being gradually increased as a result of the systematic annual tests of hearing conducted by means of the audiometer. A beautiful building recently erected makes the work of the school more attractive.
Three classes of children need to attend a school for the deaf,- those born deaf or made deaf by disease in infancy; those who are too hard of hearing to learn speech naturally or to make proper progress in the ordinary schools; and those suddenly deafened by disease or accident, who retain normal speech, but cannot understand the speech of others until lip-reading restores them to more or less normal intercourse.
LIP READING FOR HARD-OF-HEARING CHILDREN
Pupils who have learned speech but who do not hear all that is said to them present a problem which is at once medical and educational. Pupils with a hearing loss of from twelve to fifteen per cent are considered in the danger zone and are reported to the official otologist, who sends to one of the five lip- reading centers all pupils needing extra attention. The ain in view is to help the child to do the regular work of his class, to keep up the social contacts with his classmates, to re-establish habits of attention, and to gain confidence in his own ability. The teachers are specially trained for the work.
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