USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Saugus > Town annual report of Saugus 1910 > Part 20
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Taking it for granted that the people of Saugus believe in manual training I make the foregoing suggestions with a desire to secure the best results possible from this sort of school work. Like everything else that is worth while, it requires time to secure lasting results. Much of this time is apparently taken from the regular work of the school. As manual training requires no previous preparation for the recitation period, the pupil has nearly as much time for study upon other lessons as he does without manual training. Fewer recitations in geography may follow the introduction of manual training, but that does not mean a loss of intellectual growth for the pupil. A pupil's knowledge of a given subject is not wholly dependent upon the number of recitations allotted to that subject in his school. The skill of the teacher has much more to do with getting the pupil to make the effort necessary to get the desired result. Some teachers accomplish more in two or three recitation periods per week than others in five. It is a question of intense concentra- tion rather than one of prolonged consideration. Too often the work of the recitation moves so slowly that it fails to attract the attention of any one. I have seen the school day of some grades shortened one-half without any apparent or perceptible loss of efficiency for the year. Seldom will more than half of the school apply itself seriously and voluntarily to the work of the school. To prevent loafing and shirking is a problem that will always demand the attention of the teacher. The indispensable element of success here is the same as in all effective teaching, namely an abundance of interest and enthusiasm on the part of the teacher. Herein lies the secret of the success of the special- ist. While it may be impossible for one to acquire the profi-
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REPORT OF SUPERINTENDENT.
ciency of a specialist in all of the many things that a public school teacher is called upon to teach, yet the zeal of the specialist within the limits of our time and strength is not an impossibility.
As important and necessary as is this industrial work which we are attempting yet it behooves all of us to see to it that it does not become a detriment to the cultural side of our school system. If properly managed it will become a credit to the system and an additional means for increasing the intellectual growth of our pupils. We believe in manual training not for the purpose of training common laborers, not for the purpose of discrediting the value of cultural training, but as a means for quickening the intelligence thereby enabling the pupil to earlier attain a higher plane of living. It is not vocational in the sense that it makes carpenters, bookbinders or machinists. It is simply bringing the hand under the control and subjection of the mind so that it may more readily execute what the mind conceives.
A Commercial Course in the High School.
An efficient commercial course is industrial training and generally precedes the introduction of manual training in most public school systems. By an efficient commercial course I mean one that makes of the pupils competent bookkeepers, stenog- raphers and typewriters. In most High Schools where this course is given it is taken by forty to fifty per cent of the pupils. I mention this to show that the High School that offers a com- mercial course comes nearer to meeting the demands of its sup- porters than one that does not. An examination of the annual enrolment sheet will show that the growth of our High School has not been commensurate with that of the other schools. While academic training is practical and profitable for any who will pursue it yet, it has little attraction for a large number of our young people. I believe that the membership of our High School would be increased fifty per cent in a few years if we maintained a first-class commercial course. To introduce such a course does not require an increase in the number of our High School teachers but simply the purchasing of a few typewriters at one-half the trade price.
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REPORT OF SUPERINTENDENT.
Recapitulation.
One more coaching teacher for East Saugus and Cliftondale. More time for our present course in manual training.
A longer course in manual training beginning with the seventh grade and including cooking for the ninth grade and the first two years of the High School.
There never was a time when these improvements to our school system could be made with less expense than now.
Respectfully stubmitted,
WILLIAM F. SIMS,
Superintendent of Schools.
High School.
Mr. William F. Sims, Superintendent of Schools :
DEAR SIR,-I herewith submit my report for that part of the school year in which I have acted as principal of the High School- from September, 1910, to February, 1911.
It is a difficult task to make a report on educational matters that is anything more than merely a superficial estimate of con- ditions when one has had but a very few months to observe those conditions. At the best in making recommendations for things educational one should know intimately about the people who send their children to school, the traditions of the town and of the school, and, above all, the needs of the town itself, especially from an industrial and commercial point of view. However, in the brief space of time that I have acted as the administrative head of the High School, one or two facts that have come to my notice could well be brought to the attention of the Superintend- ent and the School Board.
The Town, lying as it does, so closely to a number of cities and large towns to the north of Boston, is thrown into a kind of general competition with those cities in educational matters and especially into direct competition with the large private business or commercial schools in the vicinity.
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REPORT OF SUPERINTENDENT.
The question is often asked, who shall be the judge of the values of a certain school and of its limitations. While the colleges may judge the efficiency of a school by the record of a very few students who enter college, yet it is the business man or the manufacturer of the nearby towns and cities who really and finally is the judge of the powers of our High School boys and girls. For while the college judges the High School by the work of, at the best, but four or five students that have been influenced by the school, the business public estimates the value of the fitting school from the record of the forty to fifty non-college pupils who have gone into business, commerce or manufacturing, after a high school training of from one to four years. This criticism was hardly due a generation ago. Formerly a secondary school was invariably judged good or bad by its ability to fit its pupils for the entrance examinations to the colleges. To-day when the range or scope of work offered by our eastern colleges is being criticised so profoundly, indeed so much so that in many quarters the efficiency of the college as an institution is even questioned, the public looks not to the college as the judge of the ability of the secondary school to prepare its pupils but to the more general business world that says, "Does this school prepare in an accurate, practical way its pupils so that they are able to get on in life and get on successfully ?"
It would seem, considering our present day needs, that the function of the Saugus High School must be two-fold, first to fit those of its pupils who wish to enter college, with a suitable training, cultural and practical as well, for higher institutional work, and, secondly, to give to all who may not have the opportu- nity to go to college but whose aim is business, or trade, or agriculture as thorough a training as possible for their life work. This two-fold duty of a High School is surely our duty. We must aim at culture and we must aim at utility for our boys and girls, but only in either case in so far as neither harms the other. If tradition stands in the way of utility it must be ridden over. If utility debases the cultural aims in life it must be trained to better morals. In a word, whatever subjects we offer in school must be made to stand a certain test, and that test is what the life
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REPORT OF SUPERINTENDENT.
of the child is to be, his social status, his environment, his out- look on the next two decades of the life he is to live as a part of the world.
The conception of the function of a High School that should control the organization of such a school in Saugus is that such a public institution is supported by the people because of its necessity in the training of the youth of the town to efficient citizenship and because this efficiency is absolutely the very life of our social institutions themselves. To reach social efficiency the individual pupil must develop his powers in some form that will be useful to himself and to others. To attain to a high social efficiency he must be able to adapt himself to the demands of changing conditions. Above all, the boy or girl must be so trained that his ideals of social relations and duties must be right if he is to make good use of both his natural powers and his acquired skill. We should aim in our High School for a high degree of specialized skill so far as our time and financial means permit, but this skill must be combined with adaptability in the pupil,-the power to recognize new elements in a new situation and properly to apply all past experiences in his treatment of the new problem.
Our ninth grade work should give the basis for the formation of particular habits in the pupil and our four years' High School training increasing by the powers of skill and adapting oneself to new problems. The prime aid of the ninth grade school is to give to the pupils a thorough training in the school arts, i.e., reading, writing, numbering and the like, and to introduce them into the elementary parts of a fairly large variety of subjects, as language, mathematics, history, natural science, sanitation, and economies, not so much to obtain profound information about the facts of these subjects as to open to the pupils a gate, as it were, to that field where their own individual mental activities can most valuably be given free play.
The combination of skill and adaptability in the upper grades of the High School can be reached through the ideals that can be created in the mind of the student as he acquires any special skill in handling a subject. Though skill in one line of school
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REPORT OF SUPERINTENDENT.
work will not bring as great success in another, yet the ideal formed in the acquisition of skill in one thing will serve as a stimulus and a sort of governor in the shaping of habit, when the pupil attacks a new untried piece of work. A student's ideals arising as the result of experience must therefore expand in scope when his experience widens. The aim of the faculty of the school this year has been to have the organization of the school such that the development of the pupil shall be from the point of view of skill, adaptability, and right ideals.
Our town lying so close to cities contains the elements of both city life and village life. The needs of two types of people then will have to be met. The school affecting so deeply the forma- tive period of a boy's life should be a counterpart of the adult life around him. His course of study and other school activities should present to the pupil as many types as possible of those things that interest and affect men in the different phrases of life. In keeping with this principle, much of the work in science has been strengthened, we feel, by courses that aim to associate the principles of each science with the practical things of every day life, whether they have to do with Chemistry, Physics, Biology, or Physiology. Special emphasis is being laid in our classes on nutrition, ventilation, sanitation, infection and sepsis.
The three courses in Physics and the course in Chemistry are at present dealing with many of the problems of daily life, i. e., with the arts and manufactures that distinguish modern civiliz- ation, domestic science, medicine, and the chemistry of foods and soils. The treatment of all the science work includes recitations, laboratory work, field trips, lectures, and demon- strations. The cost of such instruction must of necessity be increasingly large, but it would seem a thing of necessity if the High School is to even approximate the work done in neighboring places.
The study of Greek has been added to the program this year, and a fairly large class of first-rank pupils has elected this cultural study with pleasure to themselves and with added prestige to the institution.
Pupils, moreover, are pursuing this year advanced courses in Solid Geometry and Trigonometry.
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REPORT OF SUPERINTENDENT.
One definite need of the school is a deeper and richer course in English for the ninth grade, a course that reaches down with proper articulation into the lower grades and up into the four years' work in the High School.
The urgent needs of the High School itself are a course in Domestic Science and a strengthening of our commercial work by the addition of instruction in Stenography and Typewriting,- this last being especially necessary to meet the competition of the business schools of nearby cities, which early attract many pupils who have entered upon a High School course. The mo- tive in giving a commercial course should be a double one, first, to prepare those of our pupils who may enter simple clerkships, and, secondly, to give to those who have the ability to accept heavier responsibilities in business houses a few years after grad- uation, the opportunity in their four years at school to secure a thorough training in the elements of a business life, especially in the study of commercial law, in the study of materials, of accounts, and of the methods of buying and selling.
Futhermore, a course in Domestic Science ought to be given. Such a course could be arranged for at no great expense to extend through a period of two years and to comprise cooking and chemistry of foods, dietetics, laundering, household accounts, simple household bacteriology and home nursing. An excellent opportunity would arise from such a course in giving correlation with the work already being done in the Chemistry, Physics and Physiology classes. The immediate aim of a course in Domestic Science would be to teach the selection, preparation and serving of wholesome, appetizing food and the avoidance of waste; the processes of cleaning clothing and dwellings and the preservation of health by the careful observance of sanitary laws; the pre- vention of sickness and the care of the sick by the most approved methods in science.
The introduction this past year of work for manual training and sewing classes has been satisfactory so far as the shortness of time given to such instruction permits. In some way double the time at least-still more if possible-should be given to the man- ual training classes if results are to be at all commensurate with
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REPORT OF SUPERINTENDENT.
the outlay for instruction, material, and tools. The one period per week that is now given for this work in the ninth grade or in the High School is all too short. The same criticism may be made of the time alloted to drawing and sewing in the school.
From a disciplinary point of view the school is in excellent condition. The corps of teachers is a very strong one, their energy and judgment being specially marked, the pupils are responsive and show interest in their school subjects. Indeed the year so far, considering our limited equipment for extended laboratory and practical manual instruction, has been a very successful one and shows great, possibilities for thoroughly good work, not only in preparation for college but in preparation for the problems that arise in gaining a livelihood and in living an all- round efficient life. The school as an institution is altogether too small in number when one considers the population of Saugus. A richer program of work in commerce and practical domestic science cannot fail to increase the number that would attend next fall.
The school is woefully lacking in not possessing suitable reference books for science, history and literature study. We need an expenditure of at least something over $100, for proper up-to-date reference books in these three subjects. Good work cannot be done with poor tools, even granting that our teaching force may be a strong one.
Respectfully submitted,
JAMES F. BUTTERWORTH.
Music Department.
Mr. William F. Sims, Superintendent of Schools :
DEAR SIR,-I have the honor to submit to you the annual report of the Music Department.
It is the aim of the department to develop a consistent and logical course of study to be followed consecutively through the elementary grades. This course is based on the New Educational Course, adapted to the needs and requirements of the school.
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REPORT OF SUPERINTENDENT.
The object of the course is fourfold : first, to develop in the child a love and appreciation of good music ; second, to develop a pleasing and musical voice; third, to develop the ability to read music at sight, and fourth, by the power to render songs understandingly.
For the attainment of this object the daily work is assigned under four divisions : voice training, sight singing, song study, and written work, with the addition of note singing in the elementary grade.
By voice training is not meant vocal training in its general meaning but the application of a few simple principles to induce proper breath control and tone production. Aside from the beneficial results, from a physical standpoint, the pure, sonorous quality of tone thus obtained greatly adds to the children's interest and pleasure in the music.
Sight singing, or a study of tune and time, is quite as valuable a mental drill as any study in the school curriculum. By time study, is meant the relation of the various tones of the major scales to each other, and of the common melodic intervals. Time study embraces the beat, measures, and rhythms, i.e. musical notation.
Song study, also, is a mental drill, as the ability to render songs understandingly demands absolute concentration of the childs' mind upon the work before him. Through the art of interpretation, the child learns to think of music as a means of expressing emotion ; in other words as a language, and with in- creased knowledge and understanding, we obtain increased interest in any line of work.
In the elementary grades, song study is supplemented by rote singing.
Written work is invaluable in music as in all studies, as a means of definitely bringing to the child's mind musical nota- tion. Whatever a child can correctly write from memory is clearly understood by him. Throughout the grades, written work is assigned, both within his comprehension and corre- sponding with his daily musical study.
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REPORT OF SUPERINTENDENT.
The department desires to thank the Superintendent and teachers for their hearty cooperation in the work.
Respectfully submitted,
MARY E. BERRY.
Manual Arts.
Mr. William F Sims, Superintendent of Schools :
DEAR SIR, - In this report I wish to include a statement of my aims in the manual arts under my direction and an estimate of the results thus far obtained. The subjects included are free- hand and mechanical drawing, manual training (except wood- working), and sewing.
The two general aims are to train the pupil to appreciate beauty, and to give him experience which will both enrich his life now, and be of real use to him after leaving school. In partial detail these aims are :
In Grades I and II.
To encourage the desire for graphic expression.
To form a habit of readily employing this means of expres- sion.
To develop muscular control.
To store the memory with a knowledge of simple forms and symbols.
In Grades III, IV and V.
To give greater control of the hands.
To train the ability to see, express and remember, shape, relative size and proportion.
To develop the power to think out the construction of objects.
In Grades VI, VII, VIII and IX.
To give opportunity for advanced manual processes.
To obtain independent constructive thought.
To impart a knowledge of geometrical figures and solids.
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REPORT OF SUPERINTENDENT.
To produce more exact representation of objects.
To develop a desire for good design and harmonious color . combinations.
In the High School.
To develop some of the principles of representation, color and design.
To give the opportunity to apply these principles.
To work out and apply the conventional methods of mechan- ical or constructive drawing by working directly from the ob- ject,- not from copies.
It must be remembered that the most important result of this work in all grades is not that which the pupil records upon paper, but that which is imprinted upon his mind. This idea should govern all instruction.
The teachers have supported me well in striving for these ends and owing to their interest and earnest effort I have eagerly noted the quickening of interest among the pupils. With the increased interest the inevitable result has been an increased ability to do and to think. The work produced has been very encouraging. Still better results will be obtained when it is possible to fully correlate with the regular grade work.
The High School work is carried on under disadvantages. The crowded condition of the building of course effects these classes, but the principal difficulty comes in the time allotment.
The amount of instruction per week is as follows :
Freehand class (2d., 3d., and 4th., year pupils) 40 minutes.
Freehand class, (Ist., year pupils) 20 minutes.
Mechanical class (Ist., year pupils) 20 minutes.
This is quite inadequate for the amount of work needed by these pupils, and it is greatly to be hoped that this condition will be remedied.
The sewing classes consist of 128 pupils including the girls of the 8th., and 9th., grades and a few from the High School. The earnestness with which they have worked indicates that this course has answered a real need. Progress has been good. As nearly all the girls needed to start with the fundamentals it has
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REPORT OF SUPERINTENDENT.
been necessary to conduct the work of both grades along practi- cally the same lines. With the second year of work, this would be changed to a graded course to meet the needs of the pupils.
Respectfully submitted, RUBY G. ALLEN, Supervisor of Manual Arts.
Report of Instructor in Manual Training.
Mr. William F. Sims, Superintendent of Schools :
DEAR SIR,-The manual training department was inaugurated on September 13, 1910. It is located in the old town hall building, on the first floor, which is admirably adapted for this purpose as it is a large and well lighted room. After consulta- tion with your predecessor, Mr. Fairfield Whitney, who took the matter up with the School Board, I was instructed to go ahead and fit up this department along the lines I had suggested with the result that we procured iron bench legs and constructed a continuous bench on three sides of the room, using heavy maple plank for the front and lighter stock for the back. This arrange- ment affords ample light for each bench and leaves a greater part of the floor space free for assembling pupils before the demonstration bench for instruction in the use of the various tools and the work to be done. This also left room for installa- tion of the necessary lathes for the advanced class next year. Here I wish to urge the importance of maintaining classes of not over twenty pupils each and extending the time of instruction to two hours for each lesson. This, I think, could be accomplished by giving three days each week, one-half of the time to be devoted to the advanced classes and the other half to the new classes which will enter the work next year. It will probably be necessary to install at least six or eight lathes for the advanced classes. The instructors' demonstration bench is of maple plank mounted on double iron legs and fitted with a Wyman and Gordon quick action vice which I consider among the very best
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REPORT OF SUPERINTENDENT.
made. Through the kindness of the Superintendent and the School Committee there has been installed a motor driving saw bench which adds very much to the facilities for preparing the material for use. Each bench has been equipped with a fine assortment of tools aside from a complete set for general purposes. As the appropriation for manual training purposes became exhausted it was necessary to omit the purchase of a few tools which I shall recommend buying for use during the coming year.
Course of Study.
It has been my intention to give each pupil a thorough train- ing in the elements of carpentry and an intelligent knowledge of the tools and material and their uses. The pupils who enter the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or any other technical school will thus be able to more quickly grasp the problems put before them and thereby gain much valuable time for the work in the advanced courses. If pupils are not to enter such institu- tions but follow up their training in industrial pursuits they will still find it of much value to them, as it develops application, accuracy, self-reliance and industry, qualities of use in any walk of life. It stimulates ambition and a high order of mental activity. It demands patience and enlightens the mind upon the orderly and systematic treatment of subjects. Various principles are brought into action in the development of the work which should be so arranged that no pupil will be taxed beyond his powers. Those who work accurately are given the opportunity to do more advanced work and are thus encouraged to put forth their best efforts. When the pupil has mastered the difficulties of a given task to the best of his ability a new problem is given him. The mastery of correct methods and the formation of good habits are considered of much more importance than the amount of work done.
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