USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Quincy > Inaugural address of the mayor, with the annual report of the officers of the city of Quincy for the year 1912 > Part 21
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Suitable quarters must be always available, and, inasmuch as the High School building is already full, it would seem that a Manual High School building should be started in the near future. The times demand the training of the hand as well as the awakening and development of the mental faculties, and Quincy must assume this new obligation with all that it implies.
The School Committee realizes fully that the money which it is allowed to spend represents toil, and, in some degree at least, sacrifice on the part of the people of Quincy; that it be- hooves it to exercise all justifiable economy and endeavor to secure the largest practicable results. It has endeavored to keep its responsibility in mind throughout the year and every item of our expenditure has been carefully considered. We have succeeded in keeping within our appropriation, which fact is a source of satisfaction to us, but secondary to our pleasure in knowing that, so far as lay with us, the school children have obtained full value for every dollar expended by the city for school purposes.
The foregoing report, presented by a special committee, consisting of Dr. Daniel L. Bruce, Mr. John D. Mackay and Dr. Nathaniel S. Hunting, was adopted as the annual report of the School Committee of 1912.
ALBERT L. BARBOUR,
Secretary.
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REPORT OF THE SUPERINTENDENT
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen:
Herewith is submitted my fourth annual report as Super- intendent of Schools of Quincy, being the thirty-eighth in the series of such reports in this city and accompanying the sixty- third annual report of the School Committee of Quincy.
THE YEAR'S PROGRESS
In several respects the past school year has been one of more than ordinary importance in the city's history, marked as it has been by several events of unusual significance and promise.
Following the recommendations of a citizens' committee, which was invited by your Committee to study the industrial situation, and acting in co-operation with the State Board of Education, a half-time industrial school was organized in Sep- tember, and has been carried on with steadily increasing num- bers, for the purpose of assisting boys already employed in mechanical industries to become thorough masters of their trades.
At the same time were organized three pre-vocational classes, two for girls and one for boys, intended primarily, though not exclusively, for pupils in the grades who did not expect to enter High School and whose school attendance might be expected to terminate with their fourteenth year. These classes have served to give the essentials of the academic work in a form at once concise and related to the pupils' inter- ests, to give the pupils an introduction into the manual work of several useful industries and to call to the attention of the boys and girls the opportunities offered and the disadvantages exist- ing in several industries toward which their inclinations or prospects of employment might lead them.
During the year, too, a number of evening trade courses have been offered also in alliance with the State, for both men and women, and the enrollment, attendance and interest shown
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have been so gratifying as to assure the permanency of this side of the city's educational activity.
Another large increase in the attendance at the evening school classes for non-English speaking people, as well as at the High School evening classes, has also been a feature of the year's work. This increase has been brought about very largely by a closer co-operation between the school department and the employers of labor in the city in securing the attendance of illiterate minors as required by law.
On February twelfth of this year was dedicated the new Wollaston School building, its beautiful hall being filled to overflowing with parents and citizens who took pleasure in inspecting the building and its appurtenances. Every room of the building was occupied at once.
In September the new Montclair School was opened in that comparatively new school section of the city, and of its eight pleasant schoolrooms seven are already in use.
Provision was also made during the year for a commodious school hall in the Quincy School building, and soon after the opening of the new year this hall should be completed, furnished and in use.
Land has also been purchased, plans secured and opera- tions commenced on a new building in the Adams district to take the place of the old wooden building which has been in service so long. This building will be an exact model of the new Wollaston School which has been found so admirably adapted for the purposes of that section of the city, with the addition of two basement rooms, one for manual training and one for domestic science uses.
A new method of taking and keeping a record of the school census, adopted this year, adds much to the accuracy and availability of that statistical information and enables the attendance officer to ascertain easily whether all pupils of school age are properly entered in school in September.
A new and improved form of accounting adopted last Janu- ary, uniform with that now coming into use very rapidly throughout the country, will prove of great future value in standardizing and comparing costs, and retains a copy of all bills in the school department's office.
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It is worthy of note that the Quincy Teachers' Association, which has been inactive for some years, has been reorganized and is now on a strong professional basis. This, together with the existence and active work of several other voluntary organ- izations of the teachers, is indicative of healthy, progressive conditions among the teaching force.
INDUSTRIAL TRAINING
Shortly after the beginning of the year, the two special committees of men and women appointed and invited by your Committee to investigate the field of industrial education with reference to the needs of the youth of this city, made detailed reports. A quantity of these reports were printed and dis- tributed, but the call for them has been so widespread that the edition is already exhausted. These reports with their at- tendant statistics call to attention the fact that Quincy is becoming a city of skilled industries, that a large number of boys and girls leave school at the age of fourteen or soon after to seek employment without any very definite aim and with a tendency to take any position that offers an acceptable compensation, whether that position has future promise or not. The reports further call attention to the fact, which is undeniable, that the typical school system is better adapted and offers greater op- portunities for training to the young people who seek a learned profession or plan to enter a few chosen vocations than it does to the boys and girls of mechanical or industrial tastes and abili- ties whose school attendance has already ceased or will cease at about the fourteenth year.
These reports urged the following recommendations upon the School Committee:
(a) That the amount of time devoted to manual training in the upper grade be increased; that there be more manual training rooms, easy of access to all schools.
(b) That pre-vocational classes be organized, both for boys and for girls, in various parts of the city. These classes would be designed for those pupils in the upper grades who do not profit at all by the present course of study or for those who plan to leave school at their fourteenth year and might receive greater assistance from a special class with diversified work.
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Such classes for both boys and girls would devote half their time to academic work more concisely planned and practically related than is possible in a normal grade, while the other half would be devoted to practical hand work such as boys and girls are interested naturally in doing, and from which they may perhaps derive a vocational taste.
(c) That a half-time school be established for boys of High School age, who have gone to work or are planning to work in industrial establishments, and who desire to learn a skilled trade thoroughly and well; such a school to parallel in maturity and earnestness and dignity a High School course, and the boys in the school to have the best of supervision and technical instruction for the three years of the school course.
(d) That evening trade courses be opened for men and women in any lines where definite trade groups might be found wishing the instruction that would make them more skilled in the trades in which they are employed. The attendance at these courses should be restricted to persons actually employed in the trade and the instruction should be given by teachers who are themselves thoroughly skilled in all parts of the trade.
The reports of these committees were unanimously accepted and adopted and the money requisite to carry the recommenda- tions therein contained was sought and secured in the annual budget. It is a pleasure to give a brief outline of the work that has been undertaken to carry these plans into effect.
Immediately after the acceptance and publication of these reports, steps were taken to acquaint the parents and citizens of the city as widely as possible with the aims of the school department in this direction and the methods by which the plans as formulated might be worked out. The matter was frequently and thoroughly discussed in the local papers in all its aspects and at the meetings of the various parents' associa- tions during the spring, addresses were given, explaining in detail how the desired classes might be organized. The public response and approbation proved hearty and widespread, the necessary funds were secured from the city government, and work was at once begun on the organization of the courses planned.
The Quincy Industrial Day School was organized under Chapter 471 of the Revised Laws and thereby seeks co-operation
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and reimbursement for half its running expenses from the Commonwealth.
The school is what may be termed a part-time co-operative one; that is to say, the boys attend school on alternate weeks for a period of forty weeks in each year, and work in the factory on alternate weeks during the school year and full time during the summer. The boys are, therefore, divided into two alter- nate groups and are further paired off so far as their factory work is concerned.
The school controls the admission and the rejection of all pupils and makes its only standard of admission the possession of a work certificate and a position in an establishment that is willing to allow the boys to take the training; consequently, any boy who has strength to do the shop work and intelligence to do the school work is able to secure admission. The school further assumes full responsibility for the boy's training in the shop; sees that he is given opportunity to go through the various branches of his trade under just and skilled direction and that there is no danger of the boy's being exploited for the benefit of the industry.
At the present time, the director spends a part of three days each week in the shop, inspecting the conditions of work under which the boy is employed. and securing data on which to base the school work of the following week. Next year and thereafter, as the school increases in size and more instructors are employed, the school will have its representatives in the factories daily for this purpose. This plan of organization has immense advantages over the all-day industrial school in that the boy is learning the technique of his trade under shop condi- tions and journeymen instructors. In other words, the school is dealing with the employed boy who is learning a trade and not trying to make a schoolboy over into a mechanic. By agreement between the shops and the school, the shop work for the boy is divided into time proportioned to the importance and the extent of difficulty met with in becoming expert in the various mechanical processes. The boy, therefore, in various parts of his trade and on various machines is constantly engaged in turning out a commercial product and is learning to do so with a degree of efficiency, speed and freedom from waste requisite for profitable shop conditions.
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In organizing the school the first and the vital problem to be solved was the selection of a director, one who could be depended upon not only to care for the school in its early stages, but to grow with it as it gained in numbers and complexity, and to deal with employers, future assistant teachers, commu- nity and pupils in a way to inspire and hold public confidence in the undertaking. Mr. J. G. Spofford was finally selected and the choice approved by the State Board of Education. Mr. Spofford was educated at the University of Maine and the Hawley School of Electrical Engineering. He had served an apprenticeship as a tool maker and worked seven years in the machine business. He had been foreman and instructor for one year in the General Electric apprentice school and came to us directly from the Newton school system where he had been assistant director of the Newton Industrial School.
His report is appended to this report and is worthy of careful reading. The school this year has attempted to deal with but two trades, the machinists and the joiners, but it is expected that two more, yet to be determined, will be added next year as the number of pupils increases. The school is now in co-operation with the four leading establishments em- ploying skilled labor in the city, and is ready to co-operate with any factory wishing to do so. The school is of course very early in its formative stage, most of its problems are yet to be encountered, and its progress will be critically followed by all interested in the development of education of this particular type. It may be safely said, however, that thus far there has been nothing but success in its path, and Mr. Spofford has undertaken the work of organization with a zeal and intelli- gence which is in every way commendable.
For the present year, the school occupies one room in the Quincy High School, but in organization is entirely distinct. Some permanent provision for the future home of the school ought to be made and, as shown later in this report, can be made with no great difficulty.
In following out the recommendations of the special com- mittee to provide evening technical instruction for groups that might be found in the various skilled trades represented in Quincy, the School Committee at the suggestion of the Advisory
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Committee on Industrial Education drew up and advertised a very comprehensive programme of evening work. Much to the surprise of all concerned, there was instant response to the proposals of the School Committee in almost every course. Classes were opened in Plumbers' Drawing and Estimating, in Engineers' and Firemen's License Work, in Joiners' Blue Print Reading and Drawing, in Sheet Metal Design and Develop- ment, in Shop Mathematics for Machinists, in Monument De- sign and in Lettering for Granite Cutters, and in Blue Print Reading for Machinists. For women, classes in Dressmaking were formed in two divisions as classified under Sections 106 and 471 of the Revised Laws. Two divisions were formed for the class in Blue Print Reading for Machinists, one of which afterwards became a class in Gear Design. After the first two weeks the roll of each class was filled and later applicants were placed on the waiting list. Teachers were secured who were approved by the State Board of Education and were thorough masters of their subjects. The course for each class included twenty lessons and the average attendance maintained was a striking tribute to the manner in which the instruction was appreciated.
On the concluding night of the course petitions were re- ceived from the regular attendants of all the courses named, asking for a second term equal in length to the first, and this request, with two exceptions, was granted. As these were State-aided courses, applicants for admissions were received in considerable numbers from the surrounding towns, and the city of Quincy was empowered to charge a tuition rate for such students, as well as for those in the Day Industrial School, which would cover every possible expense for instruction, administration and operation. The success of these two ex- periments in State-aided industrial schools has made plain the fact that there is in this city a strong demand on the part of the employed boy, youth or man for a broad and efficient technical education which will make him a better workman and a better citizen. It is plain further, that possessing as this city does within its borders factories and industrial establishments em- ploying many skilled workmen in many diversified trades, the opening of such a day school and such evening courses as the
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School Committee has undertaken will bring opportunities to the young men of the city, which can elsewhere be obtained in few cities of this country, and that there is, therefore, prospect of developing within our city a highly skilled and intelligent citizenship, with a reflex influence upon the city's industrial prosperity, which is so plain as scarcely to need pointing out. These evening courses, as well as the day school, have already demonstrated their latent possibilities, although still in their infancy. It is a surety that they have become fixtures in the educational system of the city and that they will develop and broaden in scope to supplement and follow up the activities of the public school and to be a power in the upbuilding of this city.
PRE-VOCATIONAL CLASSES AND MANUAL TRAINING
The recommendations of the special committees that opportunity be given for more manual training in the schools and for the formation of special classes for those boys and girls who do not expect to go to High School or who do not seem to profit by the normal type of instruction given in the elementary schools has led and will lead to developments which are worthy of notice. The plan of providing manual training for the boys of the eighth grade has been, and still is, a provision whereby these boys receive a two-hour lesson in the woodworking room at the High School once in two weeks. The scattered location of the schools and the insufficient opportunity to ally the train- ing with the personal and social interests of the boys renders this plan entirely inadequate. It is desired to set apart in a number of the schools where there seems to be vacant space, either in the basement or attic, a place where such instruction may be given in association with their other work, not only to boys of the eighth grade, but to those of the seventh as well. Arrangements have already been planned to bring this about.
There were organized in September three pre-vocational classes, so called, two for girls and one for boys; two at the Willard School and one at the Coddington. Pupils are admitted to these classes from any of the upper grades and the attendance is largely made up of boys and girls who are approaching their fourteenth year and who do not expect to enter the High School.
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One half of the time of the pupils in these classes is given to book work, but the teaching and the subject matter varies from the conventional types. The arithmetic, for instance, lays stress on fewer topics and those the ones most likely to be needed and called into use. The reading and language call the daily papers, the weeklies, popular scientific magazines and good children's books into action. The geography is closely allied with the geographical store of facts needed to interpret properly the current events recorded in the newspapers. In other words, the field of instruction is distinctly useful and usable for the immediate purposes of life and does not attempt to copy the traditional grade plans for which most of the pupils in these classes have already shown distaste. The remaining half day of the pupils' time in these classes is devoted to practical manual work. The girls, for instance, through the year will divide their time between sewing and cooking, both these arts being taught in a useful and economical way, and the girls in these classes being expected and asked to practice at home the work that they learn in the school. For girls who do not expect to obtain the benefits of such courses by High School attendance, the opportunity to do so while still in the grades is most valuable and the formation of such classes will scarcely need defence.
The class of boys is being trained on closely parallel lines with a most diversified experience in manual training. For instance, the boys in the Willard class have partitioned off and covered a room for the girls' cooking class in the same school, have built their own sawhorses and large carpenter's work benches, have installed cupboards in the cooking room and stands for the gas burners. They have re-covered the leaky roofs of the outside entrance to the building, have painted the fire escapes and window gratings, have renovated and re- finished a large number of picture frames which have been given to the school, and are preparing to refinish much of the interior woodwork of the building. Furthermore, the school possesses two printing presses, both of which have kept small groups of boys busy every half day, either at composition or press work, in turning out the large amount of printed material which is used by the school department or the masters of the schools in various forms of administrative work.
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The purpose of this useful and applied training is to give the boy who is so soon to leave the public school an insight and a taste of several forms of productive vocational activity, so that if possible he may be enabled the more intelligently to direct his steps toward a vocation in which he may be happy and efficient. The boys have the opportunity to learn what vocational bureaus have thus far recorded as to the opportuni- ties and drawbacks of some specific vocations and will leave school when obliged to- do so with far greater vocational intelli- gence than they would were their education along the tradi- tional lines exclusively.
It is further a part of the aim and the effort of the school department in this line of education to call the attention of the boys and the girls in the public schools to the many endowed and State-aided courses available in the city of Boston, which are open without charge to residents of Massachusetts and which may in some cases provide the exact form of training which the individual needs. For instance, a careful study of the industries of this city made it manifestly plain that it was not a practical thing to establish any day trade school for girls. Every girl, however, ought to know about the Boston Trade School for Girls, which, as a State-aided school, is open without charge to girls resident in Quincy.
The school department has had the assistance in initiating this important work of the frequent advice of the State Board of Education, as well as of the Advisory Committee on Indus- trial Education, a committee of citizens appointed by the School Committee for the special purpose of watching the development and giving advice on the direction of this side of the educational field. It is the advice of both these agencies that beginning with the new school year in September, when the new Adams School is to be occupied, the old building should be immediately occupied and utilized to the fullest advantage as a school of practical arts. The High School building is now so fully occu- pied that there is no opportunity to secure a second room for use in September, neither can the industrial school be handled satisfactorily in one room. The High School, moreover, is not centrally located for those wishing to attend the evening trade classes; the old Adams building is admirably located for
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that purpose, as well as for the large and rapidly increasing evening school for non-English speaking people which it now houses and which ought not to be transferred to the new build- ing. This arrangement would serve the purpose of the industrial education work for many years to come, as well as being avail- able in case of need to take care of the overflow in High School attendance which may shortly be expected and which will surely occur before new High School accommodations are provided.
COMMON EVENING SCHOOLS
The school department has been working steadily each year to see how best it might serve the interests of the city in the way of evening instruction.
The evening trade classes have already been described and being State-aided classes are not rated as a part of the common evening school system.
The usual schools for non-English speaking people have been maintained for forty evenings in the Adams and Willard buildings and an effort was made to establish a similar school at the Lincoln building, but only partial success was obtained.
This year, for the first time, the department has been successful in securing co-operation in enforcing that attendance at these schools which is required by law of all illiterate minors. As a result, there has been a marked increase in attendance and there has never been a time when the classes were better taught or gave more response than during the past term. The High School drawing class of 1911, as a result of its petition, was granted a second term of twenty nights early in 1912, and as the class was provisionally approved by the State Board of Education as an independent industrial class, its statistics of attendance are appended to those of the industrial evening classes, although its expenses appear in the common evening school account.
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