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 1914 > Part 16
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Viewed from any angle or by any comparison, the city's expendi- tures for public school purposes are most modest, and it is only by the most rigid economy and careful calculation that the Quincy school system is measurably able to meet the demands that are laid upon it and at the same time produce results which need no apology.
Administrative Control
At the close of the year the School Committee arranged to place the attendance officer on full time, as is done in other cities, so that he will give his undivided attention to the school census, the labor certificates and the enforcement of the school-attendance laws, with regular office hours at the office of the Committee. This action will be of great assistance to the efficiency of the department. The employ- ment certificates will hereafter be issued from the office and all the records connected with these certificates, being on file and accessible, will be of much value in securing a proper attendance both at day and evening schools. Additional clerical help will be needed in the depart- ment this year to take care of the increasing volume of business, due not only to the general increase in school buildings and school popula- tion, but to the requirements of new laws which are constantly adding clerical and statistical details. For instance, the opening of industrial schools, both day and evening, requiring separate sets of financial and attendance statistics; the uniform system of accounts, recently adopted; the operation of the new Teacher's Pension Act, with its additional records, and the new city ordinance with reference to pur- chases, which will entail a very great increase in the amount of clerical work necessary.
I would recommend that instead of engaging another clerk for the department, we call upon the commercial department of the High School to co-operate with us. In that way we shall be furnishing the school with an opportunity to give some of its advanced pupils an office practice which will be of value, while the School Department will get all the clerical help it needs at a purely nominal cost. The volume of business now carried on at the Committee rooms makes it imperative, too, that larger accommodations be secured as soon as possible.
Teachers' Pension
In September the Teachers' Retirement Law went into effect and should have mention in this report.
By the terms of this law a State Retirement Association is created, membership in which is compulsory for all new teachers hereafter elected and optional for teachers already in service. The age of retirement is fixed at a period from sixty, when retirement is voluntary, to seventy, when it is compulsory. Upon retirement, the teacher receives a pension based upon the length of service, salary received and consequent payment to the Association. Teachers are required to contribute annually to the Association an amount which in general is 5 per cent of the salary received, though it may not be less than $35 or more than $100.
The annual pension paid upon retirement, funds for which come
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in part from the annual assessments and in part from the contributions of the State, is sufficient to free the teacher from the thought or fear of privation in old age. One of the teachers of this city was among the first to benefit by this law, and it has been generally welcomed among the teachers of the city and the State.
A new Tenure of Office law which has also gone into effect, provides a tenure for all teachers after three annual elections, which will obviate any hasty or unjust treatment. Happily, the conditions in this city have been such that teachers doing faithful service have never had reason to fear. The enactment of this law, however, gives to the teach- ers of the State by law, a surety of treatment which in this city has been a matter of long standing custom.
Matters of Hygiene
Easily the first pre-requisites of a good school are hygienic school conditions - proper light, heat, ventilation - in so far as engineers can agree upon it, recesses or play at intervals, adjustment of pro- grammes to periods of maximum efficiency and fatigue, and so on. These factors we are fairly well able to control.
Then it bceoms important that the pupil on his part be of normal development and health, be habituated to a hygienic mode of life, especially as to food and sleep, and be reasonably resistant to fatigue and illness. Unfortunately, there will always be many of our pupils who fall short of fulfilling these pre-requisites for effective school work. A great many school children are constantly in a physical condition just below par, due very frequently to remediable causes. A great many school children have occasional periods of absence from school because of illness, with no medical attention and with no skilled home care, whose periods of absence might be reduced very considerably if the School Department had in its employ some one whose attention could be given to such cases. For this reason the Superintendent has advised the employment of a woman who would fill the office of school nurse and home visitor and whose special function would be to act as the intermediary between school and home, wherever she can be of service to either party in bringing about better health among school children in general and in inducing better health habits in certain school children in particular.
The only assistance that the schools now receive is a weekly visit from the school physician whose principal task is the examination of suspected cases of contagious diseases. The duties of the school phy- scian begin and cease with endless notifications to parents, of which usually very little notice is taken.
As Dr. Hoag, the Director of School Hygiene for the Minnesota State Board of Health, writes in Bulletin 555 issued by the United States Bureau of Education:
"This has been the experience everywhere. Without an effect- tive follow-up service conducted by visiting nurses, medical inspection is ineffective. Until 1908 New York City relied upon postal cards sent to parents of defective children, and was able to secure action in only 6 per cent of the cases where treatment was recommended. Im- mediately upon placing the follow-up service in the hands of school nurses the percentage increased to 84. This brought treatment of nearly 200,000 additional pupils.
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"In a word, the difference between medical inspection without and medical inspection with school nurses is almost exactly the dif- ference between mere diagnosis and cure.
"In a majority of cases parental neglect spells ignorance. The postal-card notification is a poor educational device. The nurse goes into the home and by tactful presentation of the child's case effects what no other agency could accomplish. She not only secures action in the case at hand, but she becomes a permanent advisory influence in the homes where she visits. She does what the iron hand of law could not do. We can hardly imagine any kind of legal machinery, devised for compelling parental treatment of children's defects, which would succeed in as large a percentage of cases as the school nurse does.
"In the second place, medical inspection without school nurses is always a costly tax on attendance. Children with scabies, impetigo, pediculosis, etc., are sent home by the thousand, there to mingle on the street with other children after school hours, beyond the control of the school and without effective treatment. Where diseases of this kind are treated either by the nurses at school or by the parents after her instruction, exclusions are usually reduced to 5 or 10 per cent of the number previously necessary. In New York the reduction was from about 10,000 to about 1000 per month. In a quarter of a school year exclusions were enforced in New York as follows: Measles, 18; diphtheria, 140; scarlet fever, 13; whooping cough, 61; mumps, 13; chicken pox, 172; trachoma, 1264; pediculosis, 8994; skin diseases, 661; miscellaneous, 1823; nearly all of the latter four classes of exclu- sions being preventable by school nursing.
"Over 95 per cent of the above exclusions would have been pre- vented by school nurses. By her ministrations and instruction in the home these diseases of filth and neglect are almost eliminated. As ex- pressed by Jane Addams Amer. Jour. of Nursing, 1908:
" 'The best of medical inspection succeeds only in sending the child home; they say that such-and-such a child would have a bad effect on the other children, and, therefore, he is sent back to the fam- ily physician for treatment. In most cases a family physician is not called in, because, in the words of Artemus Ward, "There ain't none," and, therefore, the child is kept out indefinitely, and the pub- lic school, so far as that child is concerned, is doing nothing, and the child continues to play in the alley and on the street or sit in the doors of the tenement with the rest of them. This is the whole idea - that medical inspection was succeeded and almost transposed by the addition of the visiting nurse. The medical inspection got the child out of school and the visiting nurse got the child back. It seems almost foolish to have medical inspection without the visiting nurse.'
"By virtue of her room-to-room visitation and her opportunities for observation the school nurse also becomes the ideal sanitary inspector. She notes temperatures, ventilation, seating, cleanliness of room, toilets, blackboards, and the clothes of children. Her hospital standards of sanitation tend to follow her into the schools.
"The school nurse, like the municipal district nurse, is first and last a social worker. Important as are her duties in the school, her ministrations and educative influence in the home are still more valu- able. She instructs ignorant, but fond, mothers in the best methods of feeding, clothing and caring for their children. She is received in in their homes as no other official visitor could possibly be. Mothers are quick to detect the genuineness of her interest in their children and are often ready to follow with blind faith any instructions
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she has to offer. At her advent in a tenement or street the mothers not infrequently crowd eagerly around her, plying her with questions and bringing their babies for inspection. The school nurse is thus a potent factor in diminishing infant mortality. In short, Dr. Osler does not overstate the case when he says that the visiting nurse is 'a ministering angel everywhere.' In many a family she becomes a spiritual adviser, pointing out not only inadequate sanitation which keeps them sick, but also educating them on the folly of cutthroat chattel mortgages, unnecessary furniture purchases at ruinous prices on the installment plan, the shortsighted policy of taking children prematurely out of school to work, etc. All this is especially important in the Americanization of the ignorant foreign-born population. As stated by Dr. Darlington of New York City:
" 'In all large communities the poorer element of the foreign-born population presents the greatest problem encountered in municipal health work. Diversified in their habits, often superstitious and resentful of any interference with their mode of life, oppressed by poverty, frequently ignorant or neglectful of the simplest sanitary requirements, their assimilation as citizens of their adopted country comes only as a result of sanitation - persistent, inclusive, and never ending. In public health work this education is brought about by various means. Lectures, printed instructions, and publicity in all its forms are used, but the most valuable and effective form is found in individual instruction in the home. Personal efforts, advice, instruction and demonstration offer the most practical and effective means, and we have found the employment of trained nurses for the purpose of inestimable value.'
"That the visiting nurse is a good economic investment is evidenced by the fact that some of the large insurance companies find it to their advantage to employ a number of them to visit the homes of policy- holders and give instruction in matters pertaining to hygiene. Depart- ment stores and factories also find it good business to employ nurses to look after the health of their employees and to teach them personal hygiene. The visiting nurse is a 'health nurse.' "
Moreover, the school nurse would be the instrument by which a great many of our school children could share in the advantages of the treatment afforded by the great free clinics offered in Boston, more especially at the Eye and Ear Infirmary and at the Forsythe Dental Infirmary. This alone would be a tremendously valuable side of her work.
In view of all this, it is with the greatest pleasure that we learn that the Quincy Woman's Club will undertake the support of a school nurse for the year 1915 as a memorial to mark the completion of ten years of public service.
It is safe to predict that this new axiliary to our work will at once make its value felt in the community and will in future years be a permanent factor in the School Department.
Evening Schools
The evening schools represent a phase of education to whose import- ance we are only just beginning to give thought. The statutes require that one or more public evening schools be maintained in every town or city of 10,000 inhabitants; it does not, however, specify the number of such schools or the length of term, leaving such details to the city. Our common evening school classes are of two types: those for the
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instruction of illiterates, in the English language, which might be called naturalization classes, and those for our own citizens in such of the common English branches as they may generally choose.
Last year the city doubled the length of term at the Adams Evening School and gave sharp attention to the enforcement of the attendance laws for illiterate minors. No one can afford to be blind to the neces- sity and value of this kind of work and no city having illiterates within its confines can afford to slight their education. There have been witnessed in this country within recent years so many distressing illustrations of the folly of such neglect that communities are well agreed upon the vital necessity of teaching our language, customs and laws. In a way this phase of evening school work ought not to be, although it is, a matter of local community burden and expense. Our experience has shown that the local community almost always is performing this service of education for the benefit of other com- munities. Each year in our evening schools we face an entirely new body of illiterate men and women, and inquiry shows that the pupils of the previous year have sifted back through the country to other communities, this city, like most of our coast cities, being little more than a clearing house for the newly arrived immigrants. An effort was made last year through the legislature to provide State aid for the support of these classes in order to distribute more generally the burden of expense for an undertaking, the benefits of which are gener- ally shared by the nation at large. Although it was not successful, its justice was admitted and the attempt will again be made.
The City of Quincy, far from shirking its burden, has given money and energy to the maintenance of these schools, and each year has seen added enrollment, increased attendance, more results and a greater interest on the part of those in attendance in learning the American language and ideals. It has been a great satisfaction to see an appreciation of what the city offers.
The other phase of our evening school work is intended primarily for those who already have a rudimentary education and all attendance is entirely voluntary. Beside the common English branches, there was instruction in drawing, bookkeeping and a specialized preparation for any who planned to take civil-service examinations. This side of our work has been the same for several years and grows slowly but steadily.
Looking at all our evening work in a broad way, the one thing which stands out most clearly is the fact that those classes are best attended and accomplish most whose members are animated by some purpose connected with their life work, while those accomplish least which have no vocational connection. None of our so-called com- mercial evening school work, for instance, has yet reached a plane where it can be called at all satisfactory from the standpoint of clerical education though it does accomplish excellent work in the funda- mentals.
The evening trade classes, however, which are discussed in the Industrial School report, are doing work of the most satisfactory character.
High School
The report of Mr. Ernest L. Collins, Headmaster of the High School, which is embodied in this report, gives an account of some important phases of the work of the school. The essential fact to
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emphasize in connection with the school just now is that the school building can accommodate no greater number of pupils than at present without serious loss of efficiency from overcrowding. In other words, added numbers will bring discomfort, general confusion in school work and difficulty of administration. The experience of the past few years with our growth in population and large percentage of pupils attending the High School bids fair to be a continuing one. The city is, therefore, brought to the point where it must provide for this normal increase of the coming years. The question will at once arise: In what way and for what class of pupils shall these new High School accommodations be provided? Before committing itself definitely to any building policy, it would be wise to consider whether the ninth year of school work, the Freshman High School year in other words, might not in some departments at least be carried on in some of the grammar school buildings which are hereafter to be erected and which could be provided with sufficient rooms for that purpose. This movement toward the so-called Junior High School, or inter- mediate stage between the elementary grades and the last three years of the High School as we now know it, has gathered considerable impetus in recent years and has much to recommend it. For one thing it will lead toward elasticity in the course of study and differentiation a little lower down than we now provide it. Our short experience with the provocational classes established in 1912 has shown us how many children there are who can be kept in school and given suitable education, when education is provided of a nature that will inspire interest and yield profit. It is quite possible that similar differentia- tion might be made in other sections of the city and along other lines, to continue through the ninth year as well as the eighth, and leading to the High School proper or Senior High School for the last three years. If, it may be, there are certain courses in which this may not be profitably done, there are certainly others that lend themselves quite readily to such an arrangement. The plan as it is now worked out in other communities ought to be studied very carefully to deter- mine how far it is profitable for our situation.
An especial feature of our High School work which is deserving of notice is its steady and persistent gain in its standard of scholarship each year, so far as we have any trustworthy scale of measurement to judge by. An inspection of the work done during the past five years by successive freshman classes during their first term of school bears eloquent testimony to the better records made by the new comers, while in all classes the number of pupils dropped to a lower standing diminishes steadily from year to year. This is, of course, what we are seeking and the energies of the school are directed con- stantly toward making as many pupils as possible profit by their school attendance. For this purpose the afternoon sessions for special help inaugurated a few years ago are proving of great assistance.
Among the items of interest to be noted in the statistical report of the High School, printed on a later page, is the very great number of pupils who enroll for a commercial course, or what may better be termed a clerical course. This same condition exists in nearly all High Schools and it is probably safe to say that there is relatively a greater number of misfits in this course than in any other that the school affords, which results in sending out finally a considerable number of pupils who are not especially adapted for the work they have chosen. Probably in no line of world activity today is there a greater surplus of labor than among the ranks of business or office employees, many
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of whom have been attracted toward it because of disinclination toward work of a more laborious nature. When young people are influenced in selecting their future life work by their natural tastes and capacities and not by a prejudice against any employment which is accompanied by toil and its attendant, sweat of the brow, we shall have fewer failures in life.
The opening of the full-time Industrial School tended to diminish slightly the increase at the High School and there are other boys who would transfer to this school if they could be accommodated.
It would seem that the time is about ripe now for the city to open a Vocational School for Girls which would train its pupils definitely and exclusively for home making. Such a school would draw its pupils very largely from the Household Arts Course of the High School, would probably entail very little added expense and would fit the needs of a good number of our girls better than is now possible with a High School department.
The College Preparatory Course of the High School, a course by which a school is very often judged, especially by those who lack an appreciation of the full purpose of such a school, is doing increasingly good work among a large field of students. The records of its gradu- ates who took the Harard examinations last June are pretty con- clusive evidence on that point.
The spirit of the school, its sensible attitude toward its work, its management, sports and all its sudent activities are highly creditable.
The report of Mr. Collins is printed herewith.
MR. A. L. BARBOUR,
Superintendent of Schools.
I have the honor of submitting to you my annual report for the High School.
The registration this year has shown the usual increase as the state- ment of comparison with former years will indicate.
1914
1913
1912
Whole number enrolled,
987
939
874
Whole number at date;
933
864
790
It may be seen from the above statement that the number of pupils retained in the school is relatively larger than in previous years. Economic conditions and the Employment Law may be largely respon- sible for this increase, but it is a condition which has had to be dealt with, nevertheless. Only by the use of the assembly hall for study classes could the large number of pupils now in the school be accom- modated. It is no longer a matter of providing convenient accommo- dations for classes, but rather of providing any at all.
The full-time Industrial School took care of a considerable number of boys who would otherwise have complicated the matter of accommo- dations in the High School, and it will be necessary to devise other means of relief from year to year until such time as the citizens find themselves able to solve the problem of erecting another High School building.
As is always to be expected, there have been several changes in the corps of teachers during the year, but it has been possible in every case to provide teachers who were able to continue the efficient work of their predecessors. Because of the large number of pupils, it was
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found necessary to increase the number of teachers. At the same time it became possible for us to decrease the number of pupils in some of the divisions, the wisdom of which has been shown in a reduction of the number of failures, particularly in the entering class.
There have been a few changes made in the course of study of the school in order that its efficiency may be increased. A course in Elementary Science has been established which is required of all pupils in the Manual Arts and Household Arts divisions and elective in other divisions. The purpose of this course is to give the pupils an intro- duction to science in general and an attempt is made to differentiate the work in the various divisions so as to apply directly to the dis- tinctive work of those divisions. The course in Botany and Physiology has been transferred to the third year where these subjects can expect and demand more intelligent attention from the pupils studying them than in the first year. Typewriting is offered two periods per week in the second year of the Commercial course. Because of the addi- tional time given, pupils should be able to master the technical part of the subject before the beginning of the fourth year, so that this last year may be devoted to a practical application of the subject as required in actual office practice. In the third and fourth years of the Commercial course pupils may have an option of Stenography or Bookkeeping in order that they may specialize in one of these subjects if they wish.
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