Education in the United States; a series of monographs

Front matter

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Contents

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INTRODUCTION v

Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University in the City of New York

Conclusion

In conclusion a few facts touching the great school system, the legal organization of which we have briefly tried to sketch, and which has produced that organization and in turn has in part been produced by it, will be of interest. The enrollment of pupils in the state common schools alone was, in 1895-6, 14,379,078. These schools were kept open an average of 140.5 days in the year. The number of teachers employed was 130,366 males and 269,959 females, a total of 400,325. The total value of the public school property was $455,948,164, and the running expenses for the year were $184,453,780. There was raised by taxation $163,023,294. Of institutions above the grade of elementary schools there were 677 colleges and universities, with 97, 134 collegiate students and 69,014 preparatory students. Some of these are too ambitious in calling themselves " colleges," it is true, yet all are doing work that counts, and educational nomenclature is straightening itself out slowly but steadily. There were 5,108 public high schools with 409,433 secondary pupils, and there were 2,100 private high schools and academies with 107,633 secondary pupils. There were yy law schools with 10,449 students, 148 medical schools with 24,265 pupils, 157 theological schools with 8,173 students, and 362 normal schools with 67,380 students. In cities of over 8,000 inhabitants there were 601 schools with 3,590,875 pupils. In the whole country there were 7,184 public libraries with 34,596,258 volumes.

In the year 1896 there was paid for teachers' and superintendents' wages in the common schools $116,377,778, or 63. 1 per cent of the total expenditure for school purposes.

Laws making attendance at school compulsory have been enacted in 32 states and territories.

One of the most gratifying facts in connection with the educational work of the United States is the large increase in the number of graduate students in the colleges. The following table exhibits the number of resident graduate students in universities and colleges of the United States for 25 years and down to as late a time as the figures are available :

1871-72 198

1873-74 283

1874-75 369

1875-76 399

1876-77 389

1878-79 465

1879-80 411

. . . 460

1882-83..

1883-84. .

... 778

1884-85..

. .. . 869

1885-86..

••• 935

... 1,237

1887-88..

. . . 1,290

1888-89..

1889-90 1,717

1891-92 2,499

1892-93 2,851

1893-94 3,493

1894-95 3,999

1895-96 4,363

1896-97 .. 4,919

The United States bureau of education, to which I am indebted for the foregoing figures and much other information, is aided by a corps of 15,000 voluntary correspondents who furnish printed reports and catalogs and cheerfully answer the bureau's inquiries upon every phase of educational work.

It is of course difficult for one not familiar with American institutions and American ways to understand or appreciate the American school system. To him it seems anything but a system. It is a product of conditions in a new land, and it is adapted to those conditions. It is at once expressive of the American spirit and it is energizing, culturing and ennobling that spirit. It is settling down to an orderly and symmetrical institution, it is becoming scientific, and it is doing its work efficiently. It exerts a telling influence upon every person in the land, and is proving that it is supplying an education broad enough and of a kind to support free institutions.

BY

SUSAN E. BLOW

Cazenovia, New York

The history of the kindergarten in America is the record of four sharply defined movements ; the pioneer movement, whose point of departure was the city of Boston ; the philanthropic movement, whose initial effort was made in the village of Florence, Mass., and whose greatest triumphs have been achieved in San Francisco ; the national movement, which emanated from St. Louis ; and the great maternal movement which, radiating from Chicago, is now spreading throughout the United States. The first of these movements called public attention to the several most important aspects of the Froebelian ideal ; the second demonstrated the efficiency of the new education as a redemptive force ; the third is making the kindergarten an integral part of the national school system ; the fourth is evolving a more enlightened and consecrated motherhood and thereby strengthening the foundations and elevating the ideals of American family life.

In 1840 the first kindergarten was established by Friedrich Froebel at Blankenburg, Germany. Nineteen years later Miss Elizabeth Peabody of Boston became interested in Froebel's writings. In 1867 she went to Germany to study the kindergarten system. Returning to America in 1868 she devoted the remainder of her life to the propagation of Froebel's educational principles. Through her apostolic labors parents were inspired to seek the help of the kindergarten in the education of their children ; philanthropists were incited to establish charity kindergartens ; the Boston school board was persuaded to open an experimental kindergarten in one of its public schools and a periodical devoted to the elucidation and dissemination of Froebelian ideals was founded and sustained for four years. The pioneer movement, therefore, broke paths in the four directions of private, public, philanthropic and literary work. Above all through the contagious power of devout enthusiasm it created the consecrated endeavor without which the kindergarten as Froebel conceived it can have no actual embodiment.

In 1872 an independent pioneer movement was begun in New York by Miss Henrietta Haines who invited Miss Boelte to conduct a kindergarten in her school for young ladies. Miss Boelte had studied three years with Froebel's widow, had won a high reputation in Germany, and later had done efficient work in England. About a year after her arrival in America she married Prof. John Kraus and established an independent kindergarten and normal class. Her normal work still continues and she is to-day the leading representative in America of the Froebel tradition. The power of her work results from her resolute adherence to all the details of the original Froebelian method. By this unswerving conformity she has kept alive, through their practical application, ideas which are of the highest importance to the theoretic development of the kindergarten system.

In 1874 Mr. S. H. Hill, of Florence, Mass., contributed funds to open the first charity kindergarten in the United States and later put in trust a sum sufficient to sustain and extend the work. Four years later a philanthropic movement was initiated in Boston by Mrs. Quincy A. Shaw, who for the ensuing fourteen years supported free kindergartens for poor children, these beneficent institutions reaching at one time to thirty in number. The influence of her noble example has doubtless conspired with other causes to create the one hundred and fifteen local associations which are now rendering efficient service to the Froebelian cause in different sections of the United States. Of such philanthropic associations the wealthiest and best organized is the Golden Gate association of San Francisco. At the time of its greatest prosperity this organization supported forty-one kindergartens ; had given training to more than thirty thousand children ; had received in endowments and other forms of contribution five hundred thousand dollars ; and had published and distributed over eighty thousand annual reports. Unfortunately the financial depression of 1893 reduced its subscription list and at present it supports only twenty-three kindergartens. A training school for kindergartners is conducted under its auspices. Other associations deserving of special mention are the New York kindergarten association, which supports seventeen kindergartens, and whose aim is to provide for the children against whom the over-crowded public schools still close their doors ; the Brooklyn association, which provides for sixteen kindergartens, and under whose auspices there were conducted during the past year one hundred and eighty-three mothers' meetings ; the Pittsburgh and Allegheny free kindergarten association, which in six years has established twenty-eight kindergartens, with an enrollment of fourteen hundred children ; the Cincinnati association, which supports twenty-four kindergartens ; the Free kindergarten association of Chicago, which supports eighteen kindergartens and has a flourishing normal school ; the Chicago Froebel association, whose president organized the first charity kindergarten in that city, and to the veteran leader of whose normal department is due in large measure the introduction of the kindergarten into the Chicago public schools ; the Louisville association, which supports nine kindergartens, and has parents, nurses, Sunday school, boarding and normal departments.

Valuable as is the work accomplished by private kindergartens and kindergarten associations, it is necessarily a restricted work ; and had the Froebel ian movement developed only upon these lines the kindergarten must have remained forever the privilege of the wealthy few, and the occasional gift of charity to the abject poor. The public kindergarten opened in Boston, though carried on for several years, was finally given up upon the plea that the city could not afford to appropriate funds to extend the system, and a second public kindergarten, which was opened in Brighton, Mass., in January, 1873, was abolished when Brighton was annexed to Boston in 1874. Meantime, however, Hon.

William T. Harris, the present United States commissioner of education, who was then superintendent of schools in St. Louis, had called attention to the kindergarten and suggested that experiments be made with a view to introducing into the public school such features of the system as might prove helpful in the education of children between the ages of four and six. The outcome of this suggestion was the opening of an experimental kindergarten in the fall of 1873. The work was approved by the school board; new kindergartens were opened as rapidly as competent directors could be prepared to take charge of them, and when Dr. Harris resigned his position as superintendent in 1880 the St. Louis kindergartens had an enrollment of 7,828 children and the system was so firmly established that it has since that time proved itself impregnable to all attack.

The experiment in St. Louis was a crucial one and had it failed it would have been difficult to prevail upon other cities to introduce the kindergarten into their public schools. There were many ready arguments against such an innovation : the argument from expense ; the argument based on the tender age of kindergarten children ; the argument that kindergartens would spoil the children and fill the primary grade with intractable pupils ; the argument that only rarely endowed and, therefore, rarely to be found persons could successfully conduct a kindergarten. These arguments would have acquired irresistible force when confirmed by an abortive experiment. Dr. Harris steered the kindergarten cause through stormy waters to a safe harbor. He proved that the kindergarten could be made an integral part of the public school system. He reduced the annual expense to less than five dollars for each child. He called attention to the fact that the years between four and six were critical ones and that the needs of the child at this period were not provided for either by the family or the school. He convinced himself that children who had attended kindergartens conducted by competent directors did better on entering school than those who had received no such training, and the weight of his authoritative statement gave other educators faith in the • possibilities of the system. Finally, he proved that with wise training young women of average ability made satisfactory kindergartners. It was impossible to go on repeating that a thing could not be done in face of the fact that it had been done, and with the success of the experiment in St. Louis recognition of the kindergarten as the first stage of all public education became simply a matter of time.

The reasons which convinced Dr. Harris of the value of the kindergarten are stated in the following extract from his monograph entitled Early History of the Kindergarten in St. Louis, Mo. :

" If the school is to prepare especially for the arts and trades it is the kindergarten which is to accomplish the object, for the training of the muscles, if it is to be a training for special skill in manipulation, must be begun in early youth. As age advances it becomes more difficult to acquire new phases of manual dexterity. Two weeks' practice of holding objects in his right hand will make the infant in his first year right handed for life. The muscles yet in a pulpy consistency are very easily set in any fixed direction. The child trained for one year in Froebel's gifts and occupations will acquire a skillful use of his hand and the habit of accurate measurement of the eye, which will be his possession for life.

" In the common school, drawing, which has obtained only a recent and precarious foothold in our course of study, is the only branch which is intended to cultivate skill in the hand and accuracy in the eye. The kindergarten, on the other hand, develops this by all its groups of gifts.

" Not only is this training of great importance by reason of the fact that most children must depend largely upon manual skill for their future livelihood, but from a broader point of view, we must value skill as the great potence which is emancipating the human race from drudgery by the aid of machinery. Inventions will free man from thraldom to time and space.

" By reason of the fact already adverted to, that a short training of certain muscles of the infant will be followed by the continued growth of the same muscles through his after life, it is clear how it is that the two years of the child's life (his fifth and sixth), or even one year, or a half year in the kindergarten will start into development activities of muscle and brain which will secure deftness and delicacy of industrial power in all after life. The rationale of this is found in the fact that it is a pleasure to use muscles already inured to use ; in fact a much-used muscle demands a daily exercise as much as the stomach demands food. But an unused muscle or the mere rudiment of a muscle that has never been used, gives pain on its first exercise. Its contraction is accompanied with laceration of tissue, and followed by lameness, or by distress on using it again. Hence it happens that the body shrinks from employing an unused muscle, but, on the contrary, demands the frequent exercise of muscles already trained to use. Hence in a thousand ways unconscious to ourselves, we manage to exercise daily whatever muscles we have already trained, and thus keep in practice physical aptitudes for skill in any direction. H«n5-H**=H * * * * *

" The kindergarten should be a sort of sub-primary education, and receive the pupil at the age of four or four and a half years and hold him until he completes his sixth year. By this means we gain the child for one or two years when he is good for nothing else but education, and not of much value even for the education of the school as it is and has been. The disciplines of reading and writing, geography and arithmetic, as taught in the ordinary primary school, are beyond the powers of the average child not yet entered upon his seventh year. And beyond the seventh year the time of the child is too valuable to use it for other than general disciplines, — reading, writing, arithmetic, etc., and drawing. He must not take up his school time with learning a handicraft.

" The kindergarten utilizes a period of the child's life for preparation for the arts and trades without robbing the school of a portion of its needed time.

" Besides the industrial phase of the subject which is pertinent here, we may take note of another one that bears indirectly on the side of productive activity, but has a much wider bearing. At the age of three years the child begins to emerge from the circumscribed life of the family, and to acquire an interest in the life of society and a proclivity to form relationship with it. This increases until the school period begins, at his seventh year. The fourth, fifth and sixth years are years of transition not well provided for either by family life or by social life in the United States. In families of great poverty the child forms evil associations in the street, and is initiated into crime. By the time he is ready to enter the school he is hardened in vicious habits, beyond the power of the school to eradicate. In families of wealth, the custom is to entrust the care of the child in this period of his life to some servant without pedagogical skill and generally without strength of will power. The child of wealthy parents usually inherits the superior directive power of the parents, who have by their energy acquired and preserved " the wealth. Its manifestation in the child is not reasonable, considerate will power, but arbitrariness and selfwill — with such a degree of stubbornness that it quite overcomes the much feebler native will of the servant who has charge of the children. It is difficult to tell which class (poor or rich,) the kindergarten benefits most. Society is benefited by the substitution of a rational training of the child's will during his transition period. If he is a child of poverty, he is saved by the good associations and the industrial and intellectual training that he gets. If he is a child of wealth, he is saved by the kindergarten from ruin through self-indulgence and the corruption ensuing on weak management in the family. The worst elements in the community are the corrupted and ruined men who were once youth of unusual directive power, — children of parents of strong will."

By reducing his argument in favor of the kindergarten to a brief statement which no one could dispute and whose force every one could appreciate, Dr. Harris greatly increased its weight, and immediately upon the publication of his report the movement in favor of public kindergartens showed an increased momentum. In the twenty-nine years which have elapsed since the successful experiment in St. Louis the kindergarten has been made part of the public school system in one hundred and eighty-nine cities. In 1897-98 the total number of public kindergartens was 1,365 ; the total number of teachers 2,532 ; the total number of pupils 95,867.

IO

The cities which have the most fully developed systems of public kindergartens are Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, Philadelphia, New York, Brooklyn, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Rochester, Des Moines, Grand Rapids, Brookline, Newark, Jamestown and Los Angeles. Philadelphia, which reports 201 kindergartens, leads in numbers all the cities of the United States. St. Louis follows with 115 kindergartens, New York with 100, Boston with 67, and Chicago with 63. An estimate, based on the sale of kindergarten material, fixes the total number of kindergartens in New York at 600, so that, including private work and association work, this city has presumably a more extensive provision of kindergartens than any other in the United States.

Sixteen cities have a special supervisor of kindergartens.

The following states have the most extensive provision of kindergartens, public and private. The order of the names indicates the relative extent of the provision :

1 New York 8 Wisconsin

2 Massachusetts 9 Pennsylvania

3 Michigan 10 Ohio

4 Illinois 11 Indiana

5 California 12 Iowa

6 Connecticut 13 Colorado

7 New Jersey 14 Minnesota

In the year 1873 the National bureau of education began collecting statistics with regard to the total number of kindergartens in the United States. The results are necessarily imperfect, but they enable us to form an approximate idea of the growth of the system. Taking public and private work together, the advance of the kindergarten is shown in the following tables :

Kindergartens,

Teachers

73 1 252

16916

1 311

2 535 65 296

4 363

8 937

1 89 604

43] KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION II

Since the aim of the kindergarten is not instruction, but development, its results cannot be tested by examinations or expressed in statistical tables, but must be gathered from the testimony of experts who have had time and opportunity to study its influence. In other words, kindergarten children must be judged by elementary teachers and principals of schools, and unless, upon entering the primary grade, they show superiority to children coming direct from the home, the kindergarten cannot be said to have justified its adoption into our national system of education. Conversely, if the mental and moral superiority of kindergarten children prove to have converted primary teachers and school principals from enemies into warm friends of the Froebelian method, this fact should be accepted as convincing evidence of the merit of the work.

Before presenting the testimony which I have collected, it is necessary to call attention to the fact that, in the kindergarten, talking is not forbidden, but, on the contrary, children are encouraged to share with the kindergartner and with each other all their happy experience of effort and success. It is, therefore, natural that pupils promoted from the kindergarten should not at first understand the law of silence imposed by the character of the work in the elementary grades, and hence that, without any bad motive on their own part, they should prove troublesome pupils during the first weeks of school life. The failure to understand this fact has caused some unjust criticism of kindergarten children. It will, however, be apparent to all who read carefully the testimony now to be submitted that the adjustment of the kindergarten child to the school environment is a problem which is rapidly progressing towards a happy solution.

The more complete the testimony offered, the more certainly should we expect to find some differences of opinion as to the characteristics of kindergarten children. In any large city there will probably be a few incompetent kindergartners and some unintelligent or reactionary primary teachers. That the kindergarten fails to commend itself to

X teachers who are themselves mere martinets should be accounted a merit rather than a defect. The condemnation of incompetent kindergartners by wise primary teachers is a cause of rejoicing to all true friends of the Froebelian method. The influence of the kindergarten should be determined by the majority report. Variations of opinion should be explained by the occasional defect of the kindergartens and the occasional incapacity or prejudice of the judge.

The most extensive and carefully collected information which I have received with regard to the characteristics of kindergarten children came from Miss Laura Fisher, director of the sixty-nine public kindergartens of Boston, and consisted of 163 letters from teachers of the first grade sent in reply to the following circular communication from Mr. Edwin P. Seaver, superintendent of the Boston schools:

" To the principals of districts :

" For the Paris Exposition of 1900 Miss Susan E. Blow has been appointed to prepare a monograph of the kindergarten in the United States. She desires to use the information which you can gather by asking teachers of your first grade primary to answer carefully the questions hereto appended. Please give a copy of these questions to each first grade teacher, asking her to prepare her answers and give them to you as soon as possible. Ask her to be perfectly frank in her expression of opinion even if she must make some unfavorable criticisms.

"In returning the answers to me after you have collected them, you will confer a great favor if you yourself will write your impressions of the kindergarten system of instruction.

" QUESTIONS

" i. How many years have you taught children in the first grade ?

" 2. About what proportion (per cent) of your children have come to you from the kindergarten ?

" 3. What, if anything, have you observed as to the characteristics of kindergarten children as compared with other children ?

" 4. How do you think the kindergarten training has affected the progress of the children in the primary grade, particularly in your own grade? Has their progress been quicker in point of time ? Has the character of the work done been improved ? "

From the 163 letters received in reply to this circular I eliminated those reporting that less than ten per cent of the children attending the given primary room had received kindergarten training. I also omitted several letters based upon experience with children who had been only a few weeks or months in the kindergarten. The total number of letters omitted was 36. Of the remaining 127 letters 102 are favorable and 2 5 unfavorable to the kindergarten. Among the letters which I have classed as unfavorable one only is unqualified in its disapprobation. All the others admit some distinctive merits in kindergarten children, those most frequently specified being increased power of observation and linguistic expression, greater manual skill, and more general information. The most frequent criticisms are that kindergarten children are talkative and not easily amenable to school discipline. I quote two letters which represent the general trend of unfavorable criticism :

I

" I have taught the lowest grade one year, two months.

" About fifty per cent of my children came from the kindergarten.

" I find the kindergarten children are less inclined to obey quickly. They have acquired the habit of whispering over their work which has seriously hurt my other children. I find they understand in some cases more quickly than the other children and are more deft with their fingers.

" My kindergarten children are evenly scattered over my class. Owing to limited experience I think I am hardly competent to make a trustworthy estimate of the work of kindergarten children as compared with others. The children who came from home were nearly seven years of age, and as the children who came from the kindergarten were in most cases younger, there has been but little difference in the results of their work."

II

" I have taught children in the first grade something over two years in all. About one-fifth of this present class has attended a kindergarten, but has not come direct to me from there.

" I have noticed that they observe much more closely than ordinary children, that they are skillful with their hands in any kind of work that calls for skill, as drawing, clay work, science, etc. That in the arrangement of material, such as busy work, they are more orderly and careful in arrangement. I have found by looking the matter up that the children who have passed through kindergarten now present in my room are among the worst behaved and troublesome in the whole room. I also notice a habit to watch each other's work too much.

" I cannot say that I have found them any more able to take the work than ordinary children. I do not know that their minds are any more fitted for the retention of new ideas. I think, in some cases, the work is better done by these children than it would be without such training. But I do not know that some of the others would have done any better work with the kindergarten training. For some children I think it a great help, for others I might say unnecessary."

Contrasting the 102 favorable with the 25 unfavorable letters, the first fact which thrusts itself upon the notice of the reader is that the majority of their writers seem to have had little difficulty in solving the problem of discipline. A large proportion of these letters make no direct reference to this question, while the account given of the moral characteristics of kindergarten children precludes the thought that they have been found difficult to control. Most of the varying shades of opinion expressed by the remaining writers are indicated in the following extracts, and in the letters quoted in full at the conclusion of my summary of the Boston testimony in behalf of the kindergarten :

DISCIPLINE

" During the first weeks of the school term the children from the kindergarten are very lively, in fact more so than is best for the good order of the school room. This is due to the great amount of freedom which the children are allowed in the kindergarten. This fault, if it may be considered as such, must be corrected. When the child realizes that he is in a new atmosphere and that he must attend to one person he very soon adapts himself to the change."

" The kindergarten has done so much that is of great value to the children, that I am willing to overlook the only little difficulty that I have found. During the first few weeks of school the children like to go about and show their little friends what they have succeeded in doing or finding out and whisper or talk about it. But they soon learn that we can all work better when each one takes care of his own work and the inclination to move and talk gradually diminishes."

3 "The children I received from the -kindergarten were more restless at first. They were easier to discipline after a short time."

4 " Kindergarten children are alert and active, with eager questioning minds and eyes that see and note everything. They know how to use their hands and how to talk and are lovable and sympathetic. They come to the primary room happy, self-confident and talkative. On the other hand, the discipline of such children is very hard and it requires the greatest effort on the teacher's part to accustom them to the quiet, independent work of the primary room."

5 " Entering school from the kindergarten the children have already learned their social relations and their obligations to their companions. Hence from the first there is an absence of shyness and fear, and a school made up of kindergarten children is a delightfully social community. This trait, if firmly and tactfully dealt with, leads not to disorder but to right school spirit. I have not found it more difficult to tone down this trait than to arouse it as it lies dormant in other children."