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 1923 > Part 21
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The lunch counter has become an important feature in the modern high school. In our own school it is under the immediate charge of the instructor in cookery, and is so conducted that pupils may secure a warme lunch practically at cost during their recess. Two-thirds or more of the pupils in the morning session avail themselves of this privilege. Pupils in ' the afternoon session are able to secure milk and sweet chocolate during a short intermission.
All the foregoing are too much under the control of school authority to be considered student activities. There are many lines of activity in the school, however, which are carried on by the pupils themselves, of course, with some guidance and advice from the teachers. The senior classes publish a school paper four times a year which contains literary articles of merit, as well as departments which reflect the life of the school. The young people furnish all the material for this paper, secure the means for
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publishing it, settle their own accounts, and have always had a balance to turn over to the head master for use in connection with some activity of the school.
The senior classes also every year present a play for the purpose of raising funds to defray the expenses of their social affairs at graduation. This is usually the gala occasion of the year, always a creditable perform- ance from a dramatic standpoint and always splendidly supported by the school.
There are several clubs in the school, two of which deserve special men- tion. The Debating Club is an organization of about thirty boys from the upper classes who are interested in studying the art of debating. Besides debates conducted among themselves, they meet teams from several other schools during each year and have uniformly given good account of them- selves. The Thalia Club is an organization of about thirty girls from the two upper classes chosen on the basis of high rank. This club has not only its social activities, but it also interests itself in definite needs of the school, and even attempts to do something along the line of social welfare in the community. Other clubs are composed of pupils especially inter- ested in some subject, such as Spanish or science, who desire to go more deeply into the subject than is possible in the limited time of class periods.
Several times during the winter the two upper classes have had the use of the auditorium and gymnasium for social gatherings. These usually consist of an entertainment furnished by themselves followed by dancing. Occasionally these gatherings take the form of a reception to an athletic team of the school, and furnish an opportunity for presenting the insignia of the school to the members of the team.
Our crowded conditions produced some confusion when classes were passing, and slowed up the progress of the school somewhat. Accordingly, the traffic squad, made up entirely of pupils, was organized, whose duty is to direct movement of pupils while they are passing from class to class. This is a step in student participation in school government, and is interest- ing to watch, since it shows the ability of the pupils to control their fellows, and demonstrates the desire of the rank and file of the school citizens to be obedient to the authorities which they themselves have chosen.
The large size of the school and the small seating capacity of the audi- torium have practically destroyed the efficiency of one very valuable school activity, - the school assembly. By crowding together, however, we have been able to give part of the school an opportunity to come together to hear speakers of wide reputation, and on one occasion to listen to a concert by players from the Boston Symphony Orchestra. At other times groups have met to get information on various vocations and on higher institutions of learning from speakers specially prepared to give this information. This assembly also furnishes an opportunity to arouse enthusiasm in coming athletic contests, and to give the pupils knowledge of the many activities of their own school.
This is a long and rambling account, I fear, but will interest some one, I hope. As I stated at the beginning, it is given for the purpose of showing how complex is the life of our high school pupils at the present day, and also, perhaps, to give an idea of how much a high school teacher has to be familiar with besides the subject which he is teaching.
In closing, I wish again to pay tribute to the wonderful spirit of help- fulness which has existed among pupils and teachers, and without which there could have been no degree of efficiency in the administration of the school. The School Committee and yourself have rendered every possible assistance and have shown the greatest consideration.
Respectfully submitted,
ERNEST L. COLLINS, Head Master.
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State-aided Schools
There has been gratifying improvement during the past year in this field of our school endeavor. This is due primarily and to a considerable degree to the wisdom of the School Committee in supplying an assistant for the Superintendent of Schools. Obviously, the Superintendent, with the many calls upon his time and energy in a system of the size and scope of Quincy's school system, cannot give to this field of our school work that close direction that is needful for the best results. The help given by an assistant has resulted in a degree of increased efficiency in the work of our State-aided schools which, taken alone, amply justifies the increased cost for this addition to the school staff.
In addition to his supervision of all our State-aided activities, excepting the Americanization work, which is in charge of a special director, the present assistant, Leroy L. Woods, formerly master of the Government and Washington Schools, has rendered valuable aid in several other phases of the general administrative work of the schools, thereby freeing the Super- intendent from some of the routine duties of his office, so that he may have more opportunity than otherwise would be possible for the consideration of the larger problems involved in our rapidly expanding school system, - problems that require careful and extended study if our schools are to function with maximum efficiency.
Special reports giving additional and more detailed information with respect to our State-aided activities - viz., the Industrial, Home-Making, and Continuation schools; the Evening Industrial and Practical Arts classes for men and women; and the Americanization work - may be found in Appendix A.
Conclusion
Much more than has been written might easily be said with regard to conditions in our schools. I believe, however, that careful reading of what has been presented in the preceding pages and in the several Appen- dices will convince the reader that the public school interests of Quincy, in spite of indicated handicaps, are being administered with a degree of efficiency and economy that should command the confidence of the public at large.
Respectfully submitted, FRED H. NICKERSON, Superintendent of Schools.
APPENDIX A
SPECIAL REPORTS
1. Report of Supervisor of Grammar Grades
Mr. FRED H. NICKERSON, Superintendent of Schools, Quincy, Mass.
MY DEAR MR. NICKERSON: - For some years past it has been the custom 'to have our teachers, each year, focus their attention upon some particular phase of the school work. During the year just ended, each teacher was asked to select and record what she held to be the "minimum essentials" of each day's work in covering the present course of study in arithmetic, English, history and geography. These reports were sent to the office on Mondays, and for one month were read by myself. At the end of that time, fourteen committees, each committee composed of a
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chairman and four members, were named from the teaching force to take charge of these reports. Their work was to tabulate the "essentials" as found; to submit them for general discussion at meetings called for that purpose; and to make suggestions for the betterment of the present course of study. The reports of the results of the year's work have been returned. They are rich in content and suggestion, and offer a splendid workable nucleus for the revision or vitalizing of our present curriculum.
Colin Scott says: "Education is a work which is not confined to the schools. It is an undertaking which any individual may engage in to a greater or less extent. . .. The school as a special organization for education must fit into the rest of society, must supplement it where necessary, and learn from it on every side."
Through the courtesy and interest of Mr. Temple, City Librarian, every eighth-grade class in the city has had four lessons at the library on how to use it. These lessons were all given by Mr. Temple or his assistant.
In response to a request, both the Granite and Quincy Trust Companies very willingly made arrangements for a couple of classes, while "studying banking " to be shown through their places of business. This procedure seemed so very worth while to the officials that they are now arranging for other classes to have similar privileges.
This year the Christmas magazines, forty-five in number, made by the seventh-grade class of the Washington School, were given to the children in the Massachusetts General Hospital. The teacher of the class and three pupils, chosen by their classmates, took them in and distributed them to the children in the wards the Wednesday before school closed for the Christmas holiday. They also placed fifteen of these magazines in the scrapbook department of the hospital library.
In closing, I wish to thank the Superintendent for his confident support; my coworkers, the masters and teachers, for their loyal and helpful co- operation; and the girls and boys for their well-doing.
Respectfully submitted,
HELEN MAUDE DELLICKER, Grammar Supervisor.
2. Report of the Primary Supervisor
Mr. FRED H. NICKERSON, Superintendent of Schools, Quincy, Mass.
MY DEAR MR. NICKERSON: - It is generally conceded that the work of the first four years lays the foundation of future work, and that a pupil's progress in the intermediate and advanced grades depends very largely upon the foundation that he gets in these early grades.
So thoroughly are the various teaching processes adapted to the child's instinctive interests and activities in the modern classroom that delight in learning and systematic progress go hand in hand. The attitude of mind developed by a subject is the matter of chief concern to the teacher. It is not the number of pages that is significant, but the kind of mental qualities developed. We consider teaching pupils the proper methods of study of more importance than the acquisition of any given group of facts. Atten- tion is constantly being directed to increased effort and concentration upon work; and the necessity for excessive repetition, drill and examina- tion is lessened by careful application of newly discovered psychological principles, especially in connection with the laws of attention and concen- tration.
"As an artist holds in his mind a tentative plan of his whole work, but rearranges and alters it as he is inspired to catch new phases of the subject which will fulfill his purpose, so the teacher must provide a tentative out- line, but change and readjust the details as she discovers unexpected needs
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of her children." Diagnostic exercises and tests enable the teacher to recognize individual differences of pupils in her classes, and to group them according to their aptitudes.
For instance, in the field of reading, the child of today learns to read through doing, through games, through interpretation of directions and through motivated story-parties. In reading through doing, all the read- ing units are related to interesting things which the child is doing. He reads directions to find out what to do. Thus reading is associated with meaning. From the very first day of school the child learns to grasp ideas that are larger than mere words: as, "Good morning" instead of "good" and "morning." The children are furnished also with silent reading seat work for following directions. Reading is concerned with the thinking processes of the child, with the formation of proper habits, with the broadening of his experiences. Many activities of the primary years are connected with reading. It is correlated with conversation, geography, health lessons, language, penmanship, incidental numbers, nature study, history, dramatization, handwork, picture study, etc. Five weeks are devoted to pre-primer work. This is followed by a transitional period of two weeks to induct the children into reading of the primer. As the result of our present method of teaching reading, the children in our schools read fromn ten to eighteen readers the first year.
Through our national holidays we arouse patriotism in the school circle, recounting the words and deeds of men and women who have helped to make our country great.
The child is introduced also to the study of home and community life, this being the first step in a progressive study of social life which, con- tinued through the grades, develops into the history, geography, and civics of later years. The first social unit studied is the home. In the first and second grades use is made of a furnished doll house, representing the home. A book-home is made by filling pages with cut-out furniture. In this book-home we find represented the various rooms that are found in a modern home. Magazines, advertising catalogues, seed and shrub catalogues, dressmaker's design books, and inexpensive Perry pictures furnish material for the decorations and furniture. Through the splendid work of our drawing supervisor the children are able to bring crayon into play in their book-home project.
A miniature farm is constructed in the sand pan. Transportation from the farm to the store and then to the home links up with the activities of the home. A reliving of primitive race experiences, without thought of specific locality or specific historical date, sets the stage for the work of the grades that follow. The children in the second grade are also intro- duced, through pictures and stories, to children of other lands. An Eskimo village is laid in the sand pan, and Indians are seen in their wigwams in a corner of the room reserved for that purpose.
The work of the third year is the study of the beginning of industrial and social evolution as typified in human progress through the early fishing, hunting, shepherd and simple agricultural stages. A reliving of these early experiences of the earth's peoples and of the beginning of the simple organ- ization of early social and industrial living is the theme of these years.
One of the greatest civic needs of today is training for better citizenship. "The school should be the most potent influence for good, clean, honest living." Citizenship is most effectively taught to children by actual observation of the beauties, historic spots and commercial centers of the city, and through educational visits to stores and shops; and emphasis is placed upon faithful service rendered by the city officials, and, in turn, upon the child's obligations to the city in which he lives.
To learn the worth of money in the best sense and to acquire some skill in its management are other valuable lessons taught. Early in the child's experience, through projects, concrete problems, etc., he learns something
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of the value of money. He receives, in school, continual instruction in the wise adaptation of means to end; in careful handling of books and use of materials of whatever kind; in wasting nothing; and in repairing by his own effort, books that show signs of wear. All the small lessons in cause and effect growing out of these concrete things are unconsciously transferred by and by to other and larger matters. A series of arithmetic lessons on the expenditure in various directions possible to a given income, as presented in the school room of today, are more interesting to the pupil than learning dry and liquid measure. Here the project method of teach- ing, including problems within the child's experience, such as making butter, candy, lemonade, and buying and selling tickets for an entertainment, furnishes opportunity for experience. Each child is encouraged to have a bank account, however small. The children are taught to use the home savings bank; the value of saving for short periods and for special objects, - flowers and plants, and for educational trips, etc.
In developing correct spelling habits, the order of seeing words, hearing them pronounced, pronouncing them, spelling them aloud, using them in sentences, and writing them are found to be most effective. Each pupil has his own difficulties in spelling. He is encouraged to make private lists of the words which he finds especially hard to spell, and is urged to use extra effort to master these. These may be listed in the back of his individual notebook. Such words are watched for in the other written work and misspelling prevented rather than corrected.
Penmanship has passed through several stages in its methods of de- velopment in the classroom. The old Spencerian type was abandoned in favor of vertical writing. When vertical writing was introduced every pupil in every school class had to cast his former writing aside and habituate himself all over to write vertically. This was replaced by the so-called modified slant, and again every pupil in every school class had to abandon the vertical and slant his writing. In some communities the Palmer method still holds sway, and every pupil has to bow to its "majesty." Modern educators hold that there are some children whose handwriting is naturally vertical or slant, and that there is such a thing as individual- ization in handwriting as in other subjects. In the Quincy schools we stress legibility, and emphasize, in the classroom, the fact that it is the moral duty of each child to write so that his writing can be easily de- ciphered by the reader, and that "what is worth doing at all is worth doing well."
Such are some of the ends toward which we have been working during the past year in the Quincy schools, and such are the means through which we are bringing about the accomplishment of these ends.
Respectfully submitted,
ELSA SCHOSHUSEN.
3. Music
Mr. FRED H. NICKERSON, Superintendent of Schools, Quincy, Mass.
MY DEAR MR. NICKERSON: - It is with pleasure that I submit the fol- lowing report for the music department.
We are endeavoring to fulfill the aim of our public school music, that is, to appeal to the children through every musical channel possible, - namely, use of the voice; singing and reading; music appreciation or listening to music; and playing of instruments, - offered through class instruction at a nominal price per lesson.
Under the first means of approach, we are emphasizing the reading of music at sight with the words, beginning with simple songs in the third grade, with the hope that, as this plan develops, the boy or girl graduating from grammar school will be able to read and sing new music with the words and with proper interpretation. This is an attempt to get away
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from the sol-fa syllables. A new and interesting undertaking this year is the organization of uniform work for the eight grammar school glee clubs which have formed voluntarily in as many schools. In January a com- bined Grammar School Glee Club concert will be presented. All clubs combined will give Coerne's "Prayer of Thanksgiving," and each club will sing an individual number.
Under the second means of approach, a music memory contest is in preparation. A list of fifty compositions, with composers given, is in the hands of all teachers of the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. Pre- liminary contests will be given in the various buildings, and the final contest, when prizes will be offered for perfect scores, will occur late in March. In connection with this, prizes are offered for certain correlated work in English composition, drawing, pageantry, and dramatization. These prizes are offered by the Quincy Women's Club, and the judges will be selected from the same organization. The music department feels that this is an evidence of a much-desired contact with the community. To more strongly motivate the concert, a concert was recently given by the Boston Symphony Orchestral Club, a group of seventeen men from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the entire program being selected from the memory list. The children thus heard contest numbers and saw and heard many kinds of instruments.
Under the third means of approach, a great advance has been made. This new work has been accepted by the school authorities, and provision has been made for financial assistance in carrying on the classes. In September, 300 were enrolled in classes for various instruments as com- pared with 240 last year. At the present time 230 are still enrolled as compared with 145 last year. Over 200 are enrolled in the grammar school orchestras as compared with 125 last year.
The music in the high school is ready for a greater growth than is now possible because of the crowded condition. There are 1,050 enrolled in chorus singing, 93 in harmony and music appreciation, 14 are taking ad- vantage of the diploma credit plan for outside piano study, 4 glee clubs and 2 orchestras are now organized on a class plan, and there are continued requests from the pupils for a high school band, which will be possible when there is time.
My strong hope and urgent suggestion for the future of our public school music is that the junior high school may not become the grave of music, as is sometimes the case, but rather the cradle; that we may foster and stimu- late at this important time in the lives of these adolescent boys and girls a more serious and vital love for music.
I wish in closing to commend most highly the work which is being done by Miss Tuthill and Mr. Taylor, and to express my deep gratitude to you and to the members of the School Committee for the helpful and stimu- lating support given to me in my work.
Respectfully submitted, MAUD M. HOWES, Supervisor of Music.
4. Drawing
Mr. FRED H. NICKERSON, Superintendent of Schools, Quincy, Mass.
MY DEAR MR. NICKERSON: - I herewith submit my report upon the drawing work in the public schools of Quincy.
Professor Walter Sargent says: "Drawing is a language, a mode of reproducing ideas, and as such is a means of forming and developing these ideas. A child who draws does not set forth ideas already perfectly formed, but perfects them in part by the very act of setting them forth. Drawing thus becomes a tool with which to think."
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In the drawing work in Quincy we are endeavoring to help each child to use drawing as a language by which he can express ideas. No longer is drawing considered a subject for the talented few, but as a means of ex- pression for all. It is interesting to note that almost every child can do good work in at least one part of the drawing course. One child may excel in construction work, another in color, and so forth.
We do not strive for perfection in this work, but for results showing sound thinking and careful execution. Originality is encouraged, although the expression of it may be crude.
The children of Quincy have shown great interest in their drawing work, and by their close attention and industry have done some very creditable work.
It is my belief that all subjects studied in school should be overlapping and related one to the other as far as possible. Therefore the drawing course has been planned to cover a definite number of important principles for each grade, but with room to allow co-operation with other subjects. For instance, a class may be studying Japan, and the need will arise for a book cover design and illustrations for a book on Japan. At once the regu- lar drawing work is dropped and all drawing principles are applied to working out the problem at hand. In this way posters were made for the Health Show recently held in Boston. Sometimes a sand table is under construction for geography or history, and figures or animals or buildings are needed to complete the scene. Here is a golden opportunity for practical correlation.
The drawing course is progressive and planned so as to cover the chief principles by the end of the sixth grade. The course is divided into the following parts: representation, color, design, and construction.
Representation is the expression of ideas or the recording of facts, either from memory or observation. To express ideas satisfactorily it is neces- sary to have a definite idea of how to draw common objects with some degree of skill. Consequently we start in the first grade to build up a vocabulary of shapes, - houses, carts, people, trees, etc., - adding each year more shapes and more skill in drawing, while in the upper grades perspective of these objects is studied.
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