USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > Plymouth > Town annual report of Plymouth, MA 1897-1899 > Part 12
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17. Expense per pupil on average membership 19.52
I8. Expense per pupil on same for all schools of the State, 1897-1898, 21.64
19. Average expense per pupil for books and supplies, 1.75
20. Average expense per pupil for drawing supplies, .20
PLY VII.
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V.
21. Average expense per pupil for whole en- rollment ( 1727) on aggregate expendi- ture for schools ($34,538.96) in 1898,
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22. Same on enrollment in 1897, 20.63
23. Average expense per pupil in average membership on aggregate expenditure in 1898, 24.30
24. Same on average membership in 1897, 25.30
25. Average monthly wages of men teachers in Plymouth in 1898, 100.00
26. Average monthly wages paid same in the State in 1897, I37.50
27. Average monthly wages paid women teach- ers in Plymouth, including all High School teachers except the Principal, in 1898, 40.96
28. Same paid women teachers in the State, 1897-1898, 51.44
The school records for the year show about four per cent. increase in the number of pupils enrolled, the same increase in the average membership, and a little less than four per cent. in the average daily attendance. The percentage of attendance is a little lower than the percentage of last year, due principally to the unusual amount of illness among pu- pils near the end of the year. Notwithstanding this loss in percentage, our attendance remains good, and shows a good degree of ambition and care on the part of teachers, and pride in the school's record on the part of the pupils,-traits that imply efficiency and profit in the work being done by both.
In table IV, the items are based upon the average mem- bership of the schools. Items 16 and 17 are based upon the amount expended for teachers' salaries, fuel and light,
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janitors and transportation of pupils. This amount ($27.738.86) is regarded as the current expense of the schools, and is the sum to be certified to the State authorities as having been raised by taxation and expended "for the support of public schools."
It may be seen from the statistics presented that nearly every item of expense for the year 1898 has been less per pu- pil. both on the total enrollment and on the average member- ship of the school, than the expense for the same purpose the preceding year.
These statistics are compiled with considerable care and presented in detail that the citizens may know how the money placed at the disposal of the school department is expended, that they may compare school expenses here with those of other communities, and draw their own conclusions as to their own liberality in supplying, and the prudence of the School Committee in expending school appropriations. While such statistics do not of themselves prove the efficiency or the inefficiency of the real work of the schools, they yet furnish valuable evidence in determining what may reasonably be expected of the schools, and indicate tendencies of which it may be well to take notice.
PRIMARY SCHOOLS.
A little more than one half the average membership of all pupils was enrolled in the primary schools-grades one to four, inclusive. Not counting those in the ungraded schools, the number of such pupils was 717. distributed in twenty school rooms, giving an average number of thirty- six pupils to each teacher. The schools in the village have had an unusually large enrollment since September and con- siderable difficulty has been found in providing accommoda- tions for all the children who applied for admission. This increased number is due in part to the action of the School Committee in admitting children to the lowest grade of the
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primary school only at the opening of the Fall term. The desirability of such an arrangement was mentioned and briefly discussed in last year's report. Most of the children of school age entered the primary grades in September, and this has permitted those schools to be organized as they will remain for the year. This makes unnecessary the re-ar- rangement of schools, the transferring of pupils and forming of new classes in April. as a result of admitting new pupils at that time. This change was suggested and carried out solely for the sake of the children. Those who have entered in April have taken up much of the teacher's time without much gain in proportion to the time and effort expended. Very few. if any, of the children admitted in the Spring are ready to go on to the next grade in June. The present ar- rangement will permit the teacher to give her time and energy to the preparation of those pupils who can be fitted for promotion, and will help pupils to do about as much in one year as they could have done by entering a term earlier.
The work of the Primary schools has been interfered with to a considerable extent the past year by illness of pupils, but more yet by the changes in teachers. Of the twenty-one changes-nearly fifty per cent. of all the corps of teachers- fourteen were in the Primary schools. Such changes are always disturbing factors, occasioning much loss of time and energy before the schools in which the changes occur regain their normal condition. The large number of vacancies and the difficulty experienced in filling them. both come from the same cause-the inability of the School department to offer enough salary to secure experi- enced and successful teachers in the primary grades; and its inability to retain teachers who have gained successful experience at the expense of the schools they have taught. It is unfortunate for the welfare of the whole school system that such a condition exists. It is allowed to exist because of the popular misapprehension of the training. experience and ability needed in the primary school teacher. It is
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generally supposed by those who have no knowledge of the demands of a good primary school, that any person with only an elementary knowledge of the three R's, can success- fully teach such a school. This is far from being true. The young child just beginning school has everything to learn. The teacher must give minute directions, constant oversight, frequent changes of work, and much individual help. The instruction must be entirely oral. for the children know nothing of the use of books, are awkward and unready in using material, have formed no habits of study or self- direction. All must be learned under the guidance of the teacher. It is of the utmost importance to the child's future as a learner that right beginnings be made. It is possible to determine the trend of his entire school-life in this first year. Careless, indifferent habits developed during this year inevitably hinder the work of the years following, lengthen the term of school-life, or render it so distasteful that the child does as little as he can, and ends his school period at the earliest possible moment.
Primary schools need the best and ablest teachers,-those having the knowledge, as well as the ability, to start the child right, and the experience which tells them how best to do this, without experimenting at the child's expense. A just and fair recognition, by all concerned, of the very important work,-in some respects the most important work,-which the primary teacher is called upon to do, and the determina- tion to offer sufficient inducement to good teachers to remain in their places, and the power, when vacancies occur, to secure well-trained and successful teachers to fill these places, would do more than any other one thing to increase the value of our public school training.
GRAMMAR SCHOOLS.
The Grammar schools include grades five to nine. The past year these grades have had an average membership of
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507 pupils,-about 36 per cent. of the school membership. They have occupied thirteen school rooms, giving an average number of thirty-nine pupils to a teacher. The school accommodations for all pupils in attendance have been ample, and the conditions for successful work have been good. During the past three years very few changes have been made in the methods of work, or in the course of study pursued here. The main effort has been to render more efficient the work attempted at that time in the interest of a higher standard of scholarly attainment. Our schools would be classed as conservative, not given to fads or to experiments of a doubtful sort. Whatever changes have been made had already been tested and found successful elsewhere.
But no course of study can be counted satisfactory which is not modified to meet the changed and changing conditions of life. However well the traditional school curriculum met the needs of our fathers, it would utterly fail to meet the needs of today. The world is a changed place, and life is a different thing. It is the duty of the school to recog- nize and keep in touch with the changing conditions of life, to help those whom it trains to understand their environ- ment and to meet its demands. No course of study does this which is not often modified; and the modifications made during the last few years have wrought almost a transfor- mation in many schools. In the best schools of a few years ago, literature, history and science received scant attention compared with the time given to mathematics and formal language work. This is true now only of the poorer schools. There is substantial agreement among experienced and suc- cessful teachers that, as pupils advance, the time given to mathematics should be lessened, and that allotted to history-, literature- and science-groups of studies should be increased.
In the main, the work in our schools is in agreement with this, but we can to advantage modify our curriculum and method of work, in the following particulars, especially :-
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I. Lessen the amount of time given to certain studies, particularly geography and arithmetic.
2. Provide for more nature or elementary science work in every grade, and secure a closer correlation of this work with the drawing.
3. Secure a broader course of standard literary reading matter in every grade.
4. Supplement the work in arithmetic in the ninth grade with a well-defined course in elementary algebra or geom- etry, concretely presented.
We have been trying some of these changes in a few of the schools for some time, and can now with advantage bring them into the regular Course of Study without bur- dening the curriculum. The changes or modifications suggested do not tend to multiply the number of main sub- jects of study in the Course, nor to increase the amount of work to be done by any pupil. The arraignment of the modern elementary course of study, because of its seeming multiplicity of subjects-too many for any pupil to do well- is, in most cases, unjust. The best answer to the criticism that the schools are trying to do so many things that they can do none of them well, is contained in the following quotation, taken from the report of Secretary of the State Board of Education.
"Many new subjects have been put into elementary schools within a few years, in response to demands for en- richment. The schools are becoming heavily burdened in many towns in consequence of such expansion, and the question is earnestly asked, 'Is there not danger of sacri- ficing thoroughness in a few things to a surface acquain- tance with many things?' Undoubtedly there is a limit in this enrichment, beyond which the schools cannot go. The only limitations, however, that merit serious recognition in framing a course of study are to be found in the child, not in the teacher or in school conditions. If teachers are lacking in scholarship or training, if equipment is inadequate, if
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general school conditions are adverse,-all these are limi- tations. indeed. but they ought to be overcome. But the limitations in the child. whatever they are, need to be respected. In other words. if the child can conquer and assimilate a theme. and profit by so doing, while the teacher does not know it or does not know it well enough to teach it. the curriculum should respect the child and not the teacher. The complaint of the teacher in a case like this, that the cur- riculum overburdens him. is doubtless true enough, but it is not legitimate. The curriculum should be built up from the standpoint of what the child can do and ought to do. when the teaching. equipment and circumstances are all propitious. When the curriculum in breadth or depth, or both. nears the confines of the child's capacity, there it should stop.
The sense of overcrowding and pressure that has come to many schools is largely due to an exaggerated view of the demands the new subjects are supposed to make upon the schools. When a new subject is introduced. the trend is to think of it as one to be taught continuously. every day in the week. and every week in the year. through successive years, like arithmetic or geography, as pursued in the old way. If new subjects are viewed in this way, as so many independent lines of work torun parallel with theold. and con- tinuously. like them. it is not strange that the curriculum becomes swollen, that subjects crowd one another, and that teachers become worried and feverish. And the sense of pressure is increased when experts in the new subjects, un- checked by considerations of what other subjects demand. elaborately unfold them for the guidance of teachers, each his own subject in a separate way. showing in what order and in what years its various facts and principles should be taken up. Thus each new subject stands out isolated and formidable .- an additional claimant for a co-ordinate place with the old interminable arithmetic and geography. Now, this unhappy result of enrichment was never intended and
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is not believed to be necessary. Indeed, it is not the result of true enrichment at all, but rather of mistaken ideas as to the nature of enrichment.
The foundation idea in the new movement, which, by the way, is a world movement, and not a local one, is that, instead of pushing the study of three or four themes that deal more with the means of expression than with the things to be expressed, and that cover, at the best, but a small part of the child's world,-instead of pushing these continu- ously through the years, often beyond the child's capacity, and still oftener beyond his interest, it is better to give him a larger number of themes, to be selected from the world that excites his wonder, and so more easily within his tastes and powers, but not to be pursued so relentlessly through all his schooling.
Another way of expressing the same thought is this,- that the child receives a far better training when he is led into the study of themes that stir his emotion and excite his thought than when he is narrowed down to the mere means and forms of expression. Nay, he will make more rapid progress in conquering the language itself of expression if he is led to employ that language upon things worthy of being expressed. Here is a sense in which he can do two things better than one.
The subjects of the curriculum should be gathered into a few groups for which as groups time may be found. With- in the limits of these groups the enriching themes should be handled, in helpful association, not with the thought of pre- senting such themes in any relatively complete and exhaus- tive way, but with the thought rather of firmly fixing in connection with them certain axes, centres or nuclei of prin- ciples, about which, outside of the schools as well as within them, other thoughts may gradually and naturally tie them- selves. The framing of such a curriculum in which breadth shall not imply a depressing multiplicity of separate themes, with sufficient minuteness to guide the teacher aright, but
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with sufficient suggestiveness to afford him a handsome margin of freedom in his work. is a problem upon which many minds are now at work.
In all this it is not meant to be implied that there is no danger in multiplying subjects of instruction. That dan- ger. because of the numerous possible themes and the cham- pionship any one of them. as a separate theme, may justly have. is very great. It is only urged that considerable enrichment is possible without unduly multiplying separate lines of work, and that much of the alleged multiplicity would cease with an improved conception of the nature of the desired enrichment.
The closing exercises of the Grammar schools were held at the High School on Friday afternoon, July 1, 1898.
GRADUATES OF 1898.
CORNISH SCHOOL.
Ethel L. Holmes,
Lottie A. Dowsett,
Marcia Manter,
Grace L. Melloncoat,
Eva M. W. Hinckley,
William R. Wood,
Mary W. Morton,
Harrison R. Morse,
Ida W. Sampson,
Henry W. Nelson, Terence O'Brien,
Margaret J. Perkins,
Helen M. Gooding.
Charles H. Maker,
Frederica Churchill,
John McHenry,
Ethel M. Sproul,
J. Gershom Owers.
Ada L. Walker,
BURTON SCHOOL.
Zelma B. Lucas,
Alice L. Gifford,
May Eleanor Hallinan,
Addie F. Hall,
Lillian E. T. Burgess,
Nelson T. Wright,
Katie Louise Stegmaier,
Fred E. Wasson,
Eunice N. Thomas,
Alfred Harlow Avery,
Nannie B. Stevens, Alice O'Brien.
Thomas A. Bodell.
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MOUNT PLEASANT SCHOOL.
Bertha Everson Bradford,
Clarence Dillard Bradford,
Florence Elizabeth Bradford,
Curtis Holmes, Jr.,
Inez Frances Churchill,
Arthur Shaughnessy,
Myra Alden Cobb,
Lyman Chester Tripp,
Amy Franklin Holmes,
Arthur Russell Warren,
Lenora Page Howland,
Pelham Harrison Whiting.
CHILTONVILLE SCHOOL.
Emeline Benson Finney, Frank Delano Rogers,
Leonora Williams Howland,
Charles Bartlett Howland,
Herbert Perry Finney, Alton Holmes Fish.
Charles Foster Bailey,
UNGRADED SCHOOLS.
During the past year the five ungraded schools have had an average membership of sixty-four. At the present time, the smallest has four pupils, and the largest twenty-one. These schools are supported at a large expense per pupil in comparison with that in the graded schools,-and at an expense for which there comes no sufficient gain. One of the great hindrances to their improvement lies in their iso- lation, and in their inability to supply to the pupil that stimu- lating influence which comes from contact with others of his own age and advancement. The teachers in these schools are conscientious and earnest in their work; but the conditions are too hard, and results are meagre. The children in these outlying communities are worthy, and en- titled to as good opportunities as are given to any other children in the Town. What more can be done for them under the present circumstances does not appear. When the people of these communities shall see that it is for their interest to consolidate their schools, and when some satis- factory method of transporting the pupils can be found, then the conditions for successful school-work will be better;
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more efficient teaching can be done, more rational methods of instruction adopted, without any increase in the present cost of supporting these schools.
HIGH SCHOOL.
The High School continues in good condition. The ex- cellent spirit which pervades it is shown by the industry, earnestness and prompt and willing obedience of the pupils, and by the interest of both teachers and pupils in the welfare of the school. No work done in any of the schools is reach- ing and maintaining a better standard of excellence than that done at the High School.
For the past three years it has been our main purpose to build up a course of study which should be practical, benefi- cial and disciplinary, suited especially to the needs of those who finish their school course when they leave the High School; to do this without lessening at all the opportunities which the school has offered to those wishing to prepare for college, and at the same time to increase the quality of all the work done there.
A law, recently passed, requires us to maintain (I) a course for the general purpose of training and culture, and (2) to teach such additional subjects as are necessary to prepare pupils for the normal schools, technical schools and for the colleges. Our general courses as at present arranged cover the requirements for admission to the normal schools, and in the main for the technical schools, but not for col- lege. The special work required to be done with pupils preparing for a college course is often a burden upon high schools no larger than our own. It makes necessary the formation of expensive, small classes, numbering often not more than two or three pupils. Gradually, however, it is coming to be recognized that a course of study which best fits a student for active life when he leaves the high school, may also best fit him for the duties and requirements of a
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college course,-that every course of study, if it be suffici- ently sound, exacting and continuous, should gain for the pupil who has successfully completed it, entrance to college.
When this apparent truth is sufficiently recognized and acted upon by both school and college, it will be a decided gain for both. Until this is brought about, it seems desir- able to continue to offer to all who wish to prepare for college ample opportunity to fit themselves in all classical work necessary for entrance; for it adds to the dignity, and not a littletothe efficiency of a high school to have its course lead into higher institutions, even though comparatively few of its pupils go there.
The work at the High School has been extended this year by the introduction of a Commercial Course of Study, con- sisting of book-keeping, commercial arithmetic, business forms and practices, stenography and typewriting. It is intended that this work shall extend over a period of four years, and be supplemented by a continuous course in history, English composition, and literature. To many pupils this is proving an attractive course because of its immediate utility, and, if well conducted, it will doubtless prove a strong, sound, practical and disciplinary English Course. This line of work is not fully established-is so far only an ยท experiment; but it is one that in most respects is working well, and seems likely to prove an excellent course for those who have their greatest interest in this kind of work, and who are not preparing for an institution of higher learning, as well as for those who can remain in the school but a short time.
The organization of our High School, like that of most others, is based upon the understanding that each pupil shall belong to one of the regular classes, that he shall select the work of one of the regular courses of study offered, and that he pursue this course of study to its com- pletion, when he receives a diploma as evidence of general proficiency in the work done.
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Under this plan the diploma is earned by the pupil's se- curing a general average in the whole work of the course. in which failures in some subjects count for something. pro- vided excellent work in other subjects bring the whole work up to the required average. A remedy has been sought for this, by requiring that at least a fair average in every subject in the course shall be necessary in order to secure a diploma. But this is not always possible: and if it were. it would not always be desirable: for in a well-conducted school these failures may come as much because the course selected contains work for which the pupil has no natural or acquired aptitude, as on account of his indifference or neglect. Under this plan. too. if the failures are so many or the successes so few as to fail to bring the whole up to the required average, then the successes count for nothing. a whole year's work is lost. and the pupil generally has to go over the whole work again.
We should like to see this plan of organization modified. so that credit for successful work may be given in a more rational way. The changes going on in the course of study will helpusto do this. It is the purpose of the school to make its work as broad, and its curriculum as flexible. as the equip- ment of the school will allow, and to include in it as many subjects as the school can well teach. in order that each pupil may find there that work which best meets his needs. and suits his tastes and capacity. It will be to the advantage of the school to make as many as possible of the subjects in its required courses optional. From a list of elective studies pupils might choose each year, with the advice of parents and teachers, those stulies which seem best suited to their needs. and these studies, together with those which are required because absolutely essential. should be
enough to fill up the time. It would not be necessary, as it is under the uniform required course. that each pupil should be asked to take up as many or as few subjects as any other pupil in his class, but only that he
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should take that amount of work which is up to the measure of his capacity. Credits may then be given for work satis- factorily done in each subiect, and a certain number of such credits would entitle the pupil to a diploma. Some might earn these credits in three years, others in four years, and still others in five or six years. To do his work in a given time and secure a certain general average in it all, is then no longer the main aim of the pupil, but rather the mastery of each subject he elects. The element of time is eliminated. and failure in any subject counts him nothing towards his diploma ; but he receives credit for all work well done.
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