USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Somerville > Report of the city of Somerville 1907 > Part 14
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-Theoretically the increase of salaries of Somerville teachers is based on length of service, a period of from two to eight years being required to pass from the lowest to the highest. The theory is founded on the assumption that every year of service renders the teacher more efficient. Practically, however, this theory has been applied in but few cases, for, having selected teachers of unquestioned efficiency, we have voted them the maximum salary at the outset. A few have started near the middle of the salary schedule. At the present time there are but twenty-one teachers in the city receiving less than the maxi- mum salary of the position, fifteen of whom are employed in the high schools.
The recent increase of the salaries of grade teachers was voted without regard to the question of efficiency. It was rather based on the conviction that at least $700 is necessary to the comfortable maintenance of a teacher. Any system of increase of salary based on increase of efficiency would affect our present corps only with reference to a possible future increase. As I have elsewhere predicted, this increase is sure to come in the not distant future. Will a provision made at the present time for larger salaries, based on professional growth and improvement, tend to raise the standard and give us better teachers, and hence better schools? If so, it is worth making.
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ANNUAL REPORTS.
Some teachers are not especially influenced by financial con- siderations. They do not expect to continue long in the busi- ness, and hence their indifference. Others are working for con- science' sake, with high ideals and motives, with a love for their work, and with strong interest in those whom they teach. They are constantly reaching out for better things. Still others are ambitious of higher professional standing, and are alert in their efforts to secure it. The great majority, however, while render- ing honest, faithful service, are amenable to the influences and advantages of larger salaries. They feel the need of the extra money, and may be stimulated to the effort necessary to ob- tain it.
So long as some increase in salaries must be made in the near future, why not offer it now as a reward for and a recog- nition of earnest effort to increase efficiency? There need be no "hard and fast" requirement of work to be done or examinations to be passed. Let it be understood that when salaries are again raised, those teachers will share the benefit who have made earnest efforts to add to their efficiency and have obviously in- creased their value as teachers. In other words, why not make salaries in the future commensurate with service?
The chief objection to the plan on the part of teachers is found in the apparent difficulty of securing just and unprejudiced judgment concerning higher qualifications. So many elements enter into the making of a good teacher, so various are the lines in which improvement may be made, so difficult is it to learn all that a teacher has done, so hard is it to read motives, and recog- nize difficulties, and measure attainments, so rare is it to find critics wholly unprejudiced, that teachers fear to trust the working of the plan.
Another objection is that present demands upon teachers so occupy their time and exhaust their strength that they cannot do what might be expected in the line of study. Still another is found in the expenses incident to summer schools and college courses. While there is force in these and kindred objections, they are not necessarily insuperable. There are just judges and inexpensive ways of self-improvement.
The merit plan is in the line of progress. It means ulti- mately better service, the elimination of unworthy teachers, and the raising of professional standards and remuneration in a way to attract and hold those best fitted for the great work of teaching.
I recommend it to your consideration.
The Tenure of Office of Teachers. In 1886 the Legislature enacted a law that the School Committee may elect a teacher who has served as such in the public schools of its city or town for not less than one year to serve as such at the pleasure of the Committee.
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The object of this enactment was to give some degree of permanence to a teacher's tenure, and render annual elections needless. At the present time rather more than one-third of the teachers of Massachusetts are serving under the provisions of this act. The arguments offered in favor of a permanent tenure for teachers are: That where the custom has been adopted it meets the hearty approval of school officials; indefinite tenure is preferred by all teachers who have worked under it; its ten- dency is to make teachers permanent residents of the city or town and to lead them to enter more heartily into the life of the community ; it removes one element of anxiety from the teach- ers ; it is taken by them as an evidence of confidence on the part of their employers, and inspires them to render their most effi- cient service.
The adoption of the act does not deprive the Committee of its right to discharge a teacher summarily. Where the method is adopted it is customary to provide for a probationary or tem- porary service of two or three years, and if found satisfactory the name of the teacher is placed upon a permanent list. Some- times this is done by special vote. If there is a falling off in effi- ciency, the name of the teacher may be transferred to the tem- porary list, after a suitable notice. At the same time, the ad- vance in salary may be temporarily suspended.
On this subject Secretary Martin, of the State Board of Education, says in a recent report : "The obligations imposed upon teachers are too heavy, and the drain upon their vitality too great to make it wise to subject them to the anxious suspense attending annual elections. They have a right to feel secure in their positions so long as they are fulfilling their obligations, and there is neither justice nor good sense in subjecting them to an annual round-up, with its attendant publicity."
I recommend that a simple rule be adopted which shall se- cure to teachers and schools the advantages accruing from a permanent tenure of office.
Backward Children. A thousand pupils in the upper eight elementary grades are repeating the work of last year. Another thousand, promoted on trial, are struggling to maintain a satis- factory standing. Only three out of every four received an un- . conditional promotion in June.
Inquiries show that out of every hundred pupils in the pres- ent ninth grade, in June two will have completed the elementary school course in seven years, twelve in eight years, fifty, or one- half, in nine years, twenty-nine in ten years, and seven will have taken eleven years. The average time will be nine years, three months, and the age at graduation will be fifteen years. These conditions are not peculiar to Somerville. They exist in greater or less degree in other cities. Cambridge has for years had an excellent skipping system, which gives every advantage to the
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ANNUAL REPORTS.
brighter pupils, and yet for the last five years the time taken by graduates as a whole to complete the course averages nine years, one month. In Providence in 1905 fifteen and one-half per cent. of all grammar school pupils repeated the year's work.
Why is it that so large a percentage fail to go through the schools in the allotted time? The following are suggested as reasons, no attempt being made to give them in order of their importance :-
Sickness and other enforced absences; physical defects of sight, hearing, throat, or nerves; abnormal mental equipment ; natural slowness in all mental operations; outside interests ; in- difference to school that teachers cannot overcome; studies that fail to attract or interest ; natural defects along the line of some one subject ; a curriculum too full for the unscholarly ; classes too large to allow individual instruction ; a natural tendency on the part of teachers to work along lines of the least resistance.
Probably no complete remedy can be found for this state of things, but surely something may be attempted by way of re- lief. A physical examination by experts will show how certain defects may be remedied by parental action. Outside interests that distract may be controlled by the same authority. The re- quirements of the course of study may be modified for these pupils. Indeed, for all classes we should emphasize the essen- tials and ignore details that now absorb too much attention ; teach principles and fundamentals without attempting to present every remote application of them. We can avail ourselves of the well-recognized psychological law that the dull and slow of intellect are stimulated and helped by motor activities. We can cease forcing all the children through the same mould. Uniform attainments should not be insisted upon. Superiority in one study should compensate for deficiencies in another. Shorter promotion periods and double the number of grades would greatly relieve the situation, but there is no room at the top, and promotion in crowded classes can be made only as often as graduates are admitted to high schools.
Undoubtedly the chief obstacle on the part of pupils is the natural indifference to all school interests. The chief obstacle on the part of the system is the large classes which are enforced by our lack of conditions. We have seventy-six classes with an average of nearly fifty pupils. Mass instruction becomes im- perative and individual instruction well-nigh impossible. We have made some use of the Batavia plan, so-called, but with meagre success for this reason. Teachers must have time to study the individual child, find his weaknesses, and get next to him in order to awaken and develop his latent powers. The available remedy that would be most effective lies in the employ- ment of extra teachers, at least one to every 300 grammar pupils, teachers of experience and skill, kind and sympathetic, who
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should give their whole time to the instruction of these needy children. Such instruction would save many a child the waste- ful prolongation of his school course. This was illustrated by the success of the summer school provided by the Y. M. C. A. in July and August last, and attended by fifty boys who successfully made up deficiencies and strengthened their position in school.
In the long run, if we cut down the number of repeaters, there would be a financial gain. Every child's education costs the city $30 a year. A year for each 500 repeaters costs $15,000, a sum sufficient to pay for twenty extra teachers.
This subject is surely worthy of attention, and I trust that some effort will be made in the interests of this submerged tenth.
School Books. There are at the present time in the twenty- six schools 150,000 school books, which have cost the city about $70,000; 24,000 of these are in the high schools. This does not include 1,684 reference books in the English School library, nor about 200 in that of the Latin School. Twelve thousand books have been destroyed during the year, a few on account of con- tagious diseases, but chiefly because worn out. Fourteen thou- sand two hundred and ten books have been re-bound. This is nearly three times the annual number. This results from an attempt to re-bind before books become so badly worn as to render re-binding inexpedient. Fifteen thousand new books have been purchased. The care and renewal of text-books is an important matter. The life of a book varies from two years to ten, according to its character and to the usage it receives. Many books are discarded because too badly soiled for further use. In some schools probably too rigid economy has been practiced, and there are books in use that never should have been re-bound. They bear too distinctly the soil of usage.
It will be seen that we have an average of twelve books for each child in the schools. This unnecessarily large number comes chiefly from the multiplicity of reading books in the ele- mentary schools, of which there are 55,000, or more than ten for each child. This number of reading books has been accumulat- ing for years, new books being added to the list before those previously in use are worn out. It would be well to have a re- vision of the reading-book list and some disposition made of those that appear to be useless. The management of the text- book supply demands more attention from headquarters than can under existing conditions be given. Several of the school buildings erected before the day of free text-books are without suitable book-rooms. While teachers are alike in their good intentions, they differ materially in the oversight of school books and in their judgment regarding their renewal. I am sure that a more direct supervision of books and other school supplies and their use would be in the line of economy.
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ANNUAL REPORTS.
184
A statement of books in the various school buildings will be found in Appendix I.
Administration. Somerville has doubled its population within twenty years. The methods and the force employed in the conduct of public business in a city of 35,000 are inadequate and ill-adapted to one of twice that size. This is as true in the administration of school affairs as in that of any other depart- ment. Nevertheless there has been no material change in methods nor increase in the supervisory or administrative force during this period. This matter has been called to your atten- tion before, but I wish to present it for your consideration once more, solely in the interest of the public service and with the personal element wholly eliminated.
There are two completely different departments of school administration which may and should be kept separate and dis- tinct. One has to do with the material interests of the schools, and the other with their purely educational side. One concerns the all-important work of the teachers in the schools, and the other is connected simply with their machinery. By far the most important part of this administrative work is that of super- vision and superintendence. It requires all a man's time and thought and energy to select suitable teachers, to arrange courses of study, to make a proper classification and distribution of pupils, to adjust differences with parents, to visit 300 school- rooms, to direct and stimulate and reform the work of teachers, to keep in touch with educational movements, and to perform the many other duties that are legitimately his.
On the other hand, there is the business side of school ad- ministration. This involves the purchase and care of books and supplies of all sorts, the keeping of accounts, the making of pay- rolls, the cataloguing of pupils, the matter of truants, the issuing of labor certificates, the licensing of newsboys, the annual inven- torying of books and their re-binding, the preparation of statis- tics for state and national authorities, the keeping of records of Board meetings and of sub-committee meetings, and other mis- cellaneous duties. All this work and the responsibility therefor should be transferred from the Superintendent to some compe- tent man. He should be made the secretary of the Board, leav- ing the Superintendent free to take part in its deliberations and discussions. This would, of course, require an amendment of the City Charter, other defects in which must ere long be reme- died.
The reorganization of the administrative department of the schools along some such lines as these, my judgment, confirmed by my experience, tells me would conserve both the financial and the educational interests of the city in a marked degree.
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SCHOOL DEPARTMENT.
Recapitulation. In reviewing this report I find that it con- tains an unusual number of recommendations. Further consider- ation of them, however, leads to the conviction that their adop- tion is largely a matter of time. If they could be made at once the schools would be greatly benefited.
These recommendations are here recapitulated : (1) changes in vacations to lengthen the school year; (2) the extension of high school accommodations by additions in the rear of the Eng- lish Schoolhouse; (3) the suspension of all kindergartens that force primary pupils into the streets for half a school day; (4) the enlargement of the Perry Schoolhouse; (5) the erection of a twelve-room building on the city ledge lot in Ward Seven; (6) the employment of additional teachers in the Latin School; (7) the non-curtailment of the evening school year; (8) the awakening of public interest in playgrounds for children ; (9) ad- ditional light for four of the older buildings; (10) the substitu- tion of adjustable furniture for that now in use; (11) the employ- ment of an additional truant officer; (12) the extension of manual training, to include the eighth and ninth grades ; (13) the omission of sewing instruction in the eighth grade; (14) the employment of two nurses in connection with the medical inspec- tion of schools ; (15) the employment of an instructor of physical training for the high schools; (16) the extension of supervision by grammar masters, to include the smaller schools; (17) the gradual reduction of the number of pupils assigned a teacher ; (18) consideration of the merit plan of salary increase; (19) the election of teachers on permanent tenure; (20) the employment of extra teachers for backward children; (21) changes in the methods of school administration; (22) provisions for a sab- batical year for teachers.
Changes of Fifteen Years. The school property of Somer- ville has a valuation two and one-quarter times as large as in 1892. School accommodations have been increased seventy- two per cent. This has been brought about by the enlargement of six buildings, the Latin, 'Knapp, Glines, Forster, Bingham, and Burns Schoolhouses, and by the construction of eleven buildings,-the Durell, English, Hodgkins, Carr, Hanscom, Perry, Baxter, Brown, Lowe, Bennett, and Proctor School- houses, the remaining nine of the present twenty-six buildings being unchanged. Eight antiquated wooden buildings have been destroyed or abandoned. They are the Bennett, Jackson, Prospect Hill, Harvard, Spring Hill, Beech Street, Cedar Street, and Webster, containing twenty-four rooms.
The number of pupils in the grammar and primary schools has increased sixty per cent., and the number of teachers slightly more, sixty-three per cent. The number of grammar school graduates is ninety-six per cent. larger in 1907 than in 1892, showing that a relatively larger number of pupils remain to
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ANNUAL REPORTS.
graduate. The increase in the cost of instruction for these schools has been twenty-one per cent. This is due to an increase of $50 in the salaries of grade teachers in 1900 and to the em- ployment of additional masters, higher-priced principals, super- visors, and kindergarten teachers.
The number of pupils in the high schools has increased 188 per cent., the number of graduates 179 per cent., and the number of teachers 339 per cent. The cost of instruction is 412 per cent. more now than it was fifteen years ago. The per capita cost of instruction has increased seventy-eight per cent. This increase is due to a reduction in the number of pupils assigned to a teacher from forty to thirty, by the employment of a relatively larger number of men, and by a general increase in salaries.
The valuation of the city has increased ninety per cent., while the expenditure for school maintenance is 144 per cent. more than it was fifteen years ago, showing that our school ex- penditures have increased more rapidly than our ability to meet them. The cost of the care of schoolhouses has increased 123 per cent. This corresponds very nearly to the increase of 124 per cent. in the value of these buildings.
Personal, In August next I shall have completed fifty years of school work and an uninterrupted service of thirty-five years in Somerville, the last fifteen of which will have been spent as superintendent of schools. For a long time I have felt entitled to a release from responsibilities and labors which grow more exacting and burdensome year by year. This feeling having be- come a settled conviction, I shall not again be a candidate for election as superintendent, but shall retire from service at the expiration of my official year, August 31, 1908. I realize that this determination will sunder ties that have become very strong and sever relations that have always been exceedingly. pleasant.
In this final report I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to the members of the various School Boards with whom it has been my good fortune to be associated for the courtesy, forbear- ance, and support which they have uniformly accorded me, and to assure them that I shall always recall their kindness with grateful pleasure.
To those with whom I have been more intimately connected as co-workers, and to whom far beyond all others whatever ex- cellence and influence the schools may have had are due, the supervisors, principals, and teachers, I am under the deepest ob- ligation. Greater loyalty, more earnest co-operation, a heartier service there could not be. The remembrance of their unvary- ing fealty and constant consideration will always awaken feel- ings of the deepest gratitude.
To the citizens of Somerville who have so long honored me with their confidence and good will, and whose generosity and
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influence have done so much to promote the educational inter- ests of the city, I tender most hearty thanks.
The aim of our schools has always been to qualify for honest, useful, and happy living; to lay deep and strong the foundation of business integrity and success ; to give culture and refinement, and an appreciation of what is true and worthy in art, literature, and life ; to cultivate the spirit of civic loyalty and service; to develop a citizenship that shall maintain the honor and promote the highest interests of the city and the state. With these aims still in mind and at heart, let home, church, schools, the press, all agencies that make for intelligence and righteousness clasp hands in constant striving for what is best, and the future honor and prosperity of our city and the happiness of its people are permanently assured.
Respectfully submitted,
G. A. SOUTHWORTH.
December 27, 1907.
APPENDIX I.
INDEX.
Manual Training in the High School. PAGE.
189
Recent Amendments to the School Rules 192
Present Schedule of Salaries.
Organization of Somerville Schools. 195
196
Course of Study in Latin School
198
Course of Study in English School 201
Early Schoolhouses. 206
History of Somerville Schools .. 207
Somerville Teachers' Association 212
Members of the School Board under the Second Charter 215
Number of Books in Use in the City December 15, 1907 216
Bits
There are many varieties of bits, among them the auger- bit, twist but and the gimlet bit The anger bit is the one most commonly used.
A
Shank
A-Spur. B-B-Nzbs. C-C=Lips.
allholes must be loved from both sides. to prevent splitting on the under-side
Book-Rach.
Two pieces of stock Finish base out of onepiece then mach out ends on the other Groove in the base to be cut to the line with the bach saw and chiseled from both sides. Ends to be saved and chiseled as shown
Chisel Saw Chasel Saw Chisel.
FIRST YEAR NOTE BOOK.
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SCHOOL DEPARTMENT.
HIGH SCHOOL MANUAL TRAINING.
The high school of to-day has become such a prominent fea- ture in education that it should be as broad and far-reaching in the course of study as is possible.
Only a few years ago courses were planned with distinct partiality to the small number of pupils who were to continue their studies beyond the secondary school. During the last few years, however, many new subjects, in approval of which educa- tors have been unanimous, have been added, in order to meet the needs of the great number of pupils whose schooling is to end at the completion of the high school course. It is self- evident that our duty is to prepare young men and women for life as far as lies within our power, knowing that the value of their life work depends largely on the choice of a proper vocation.
So commercial and manual training courses have gained a footing because of their strong educational and practical fea- tures.
Manual training creates power, physical, mental, and moral, and the high school has unlimited possibilities along this line of education, if carried on with the idea constantly in mind of never losing sight of the educational side of the subject.
To obtain a high standard of efficiency these things should be made prominent : (1) The teacher should thoroughly under- stand and appreciate the educational principles in such work; (2) the work should be laid out so that it can be thoroughly ap- preciated by the pupil; (3) and the material results should in every way represent the pupil's own efforts.
With these several ideas firmly impressed upon us, we are undertaking to make manual training productive of the best re- sults. In the first place we substitute for the word "shop" the word "laboratory," for we are doing our work as thoroughly as is done in any of the other laboratory subjects. One illustration of our laboratory method is the using of notebooks in which are worked out the principles of construction and the uses of the many tools. This notebook is also of great value to the pupil because many things incidental to the subject at hand are taken up, such as the study of timber, how and where it grows, the kind of soil it requires, etc. (See specimen page of notebook.)
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