School organization and the individual child: a book for school executives and teachers, being an exposition of plans that have been evolved to adapt school organization to the needs of individual children, normal, supernormal and subnormal

Front matter

SCHOOL ORGANIZATION

AND THE

INDIVIDUAL CHILD

Foreword

Within the past few years we have been coming to measure education by a new standard, the standard of individual achievement. This means that we have begun to differentiate the abilities of children, and to estimate the success of school work, not in terms of a general standard, but in terms of what each individual is able to do within the range of his own ability. This new standard has made necessary a modification of school organization, and there now appear schools for gifted children, for ordinary children, for slow and backward children, and for mentally defective children, and within these groups there are various forms of procedure for meeting more efficiently the needs of the members of each group.

The present volume undertakes the task of presenting in a somewhat detailed manner the various plans that have been evolved to make school organization fit the needs of the boys and girls both normal and abnormal that are enrolled as pupils in the public schools.

The part of the book dealing with plans of classification and adaptation brings together information from many different sources, information that every school executive must have to make his work intelligently efficient. In interpreting such a large mass of material, doubtless, mistakes have been made; the writer hopes that they are not such as to interfere with the general usefulness of the book.

The second part of the book, dealing with the treatment of abnormal children in the public schools, represents the first attempt to bring together information that the general school executive and special class teachers need in order to organize and carry on the work of so-called auxiliary classes

10 FOREWORD

or schools for mentally defective children. The aim has been to make the presentation plain and clear, rather than learned and technical, to the end that school men and women may be able to know the needs of these unfortunate members of the community. It has furthermore been the hope of the writer to bring home to the general reader some understanding of the great problem of the mentally unfit, some two hundred thousand of whom are members of our population, while only a few thousands, some fifteen thousand perhaps, have the custodial care that all should have if the greatest cause of crime, vice, poverty and degradation is to be made inoperative.

The writer wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to many superintendents, normal school principals and special teachers who have kindly furnished much special information. He is also under deep obligation for encouragement and aid to Dr. G. Stanley Hall, Dr. W. H. Burnham and Dr. Theodate L. Smith of Clark University, whose combined work in the interest of the better education of children deserves the gratitude of the whole world.

Introduction

The aim of this study is to present the fundamental principles of the various plans of grading, classification and instruction that have been worked out in the United States and some of the European countries for the purpose of better adjusting the organization of the schools to the needs of the individual children.

Such a comparative study has never been made, and much valuable material on this vitally important topic of school administration is wholly unknown to many school officials and teachers and quite beyond the reach of many others.

While the study will give due emphasis to the organization of special, or auxiliary schools and classes, it will place even greater stress on adequate provision for meeting the needs of the vastly greater number of normal boys and girls. There seems to be a rather general agreement that the number of really defective children (not counting imbeciles and idiots) is not less than one per cent, of the total school population. For such children special instruction in separate schools under specially trained teachers is an absolute necessity. It has been further estimated that an additional seven per cent. (Goddard says fifteen per cent.) of school children are so backward as to require somewhat different instruction from that given the abler children. This latter estimate is, of course, rather arbitrary. It is, however, past dispute that there are many children who while they are not really defective yet lack the ability to make normal progress under the ordinary mass methods of instruction. For such children the ungraded class or supplementary individual instruction is a requisite to school progress.

A full treatment of the organization and equipment of special and ungraded schools and classes as developed both in this and foreign countries will be given in the second part of this study.

Turning now to the elementary or people's schools, we find that the idea that every human being should be educated simply because he is a human being, was first vitalized in the brain of Comenius. Luther and his followers advocated the education of man because of his immortal soul, and education was the spiritualizing process by which this soul was to be saved, but Comenius looked upon education as the process by which all mankind should be humanized.

"To Comenius," as Laurie states, "we owe the modern graded school, for his plan of gradation was so well devised that with slight modifications it is now the state system of Germany. "

The system of class or simultaneous instruction is probably due to Canon LaSalle who in 1680 founded the society of Christian Brothers and imparted to them this method of teaching.

The simultaneous or class method of instruction was, however, adopted very slowly, and Landon tells us the individual method by which the master called the pupils to his desk one by one to recite their lessons and receive explanations lingered late "even in the heart of Prussia and was in vogue in 5844 primary schools of France as late as 1843." It held sway in some of the leading schools of Scotland until well into the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

In our own country, Dr. Grimshaw writing in Barnard's Journal in 1855 deprecates "the time wasted by the old fashioned and false method of teaching individuals instead of classes." "I notice," he continues, "in my visits to the schools many pupils sitting idle; sometimes part of the school is asleep or what is worse, engaged in making a noise and disturbing the remainder who may desire to be industrious."

The individual method was driven out of England by the monitorial systems of Bell and Lancaster; while, doubtless, the classroom system of the larger cities of the United States was imported from Germany. Pestalozzi himself tells us he was driven by necessity to class instruction. "Being obliged to instruct the children myself, without any assistance, I learnt the art of teaching a great number together; and as I had no other means of bringing the instruction before them than that of pronouncing everything to them loudly and distinctly, I was naturally led to the idea of making them draw, write, and work all at the same time."

We see then that for centuries individual instruction was the chief instrument of learning and that class, or mass, instruction is a rather modern invention. It is evident that so long as individual teaching prevailed the evils attendant upon the rigid classification of the modern school could not occur. Every pupil was a law unto himself, and the spur that comes from mental contact was scarcely known.

During the middle part of the last century individual teaching fell into disgrace and with the rise of the factory city and the graded school the emphasis was placed on class teaching and class organization. Indeed, a careful perusal of the volumes of Barnard's Journal and of the early volumes of the proceedings of the American Institute of Instruction would almost lead one to believe that individual children scarcely existed in the schools of those days, so little is said of their needs.

Matters in America, however, began to change for the better in the seventies along with the introduction of the kindergarten idea and with Dr. William T. Harris's discussion of the principles of classification and grading in his reports as superintendent of the St. Louis schools.

The importance of the individual child has since then been brought to the front slowly but surely, until now the principle is rather firmly established that the school should be organized to meet the varying needs of the individuals who comprise it.

Under the plan of organization now general throughout this country the elementary school course of study is divided into eight yearly units of work called grades. By following such a course a normal child entering school at the age of six and making normal progress is able to complete the elementary school at the age of fourteen years.

It is, however, a fact well known and one that has recently been brought home to school administrators by several investigations, notably those of Ayers, Cornman, Bryan and Thorndike, that a large number of pupils do not proceed normally through the grades. Many of the pupils in some of the very best of our city school systems, are one, two, three, and even four years behind what is called the normal age of their grades.

Ayers' recent book, "Laggards in Our Schools," has, doubtless, done much to call attention to the vast amount of retardation and elimination of pupils in the public schools. Such a study, however, is only a beginning and, if really valuable results are to be obtained, more intensive studies of different cities must be made. Conditions in different cities are so various that one is led to doubt the value of inferences drawn from the comparison of amounts of school retardation in two cities so different in their social and industrial make-up as Medford, Massachusetts, and Camden, New Jersey. These two cities stand respectively at the head and the foot of the list of cities which Ayers has chosen for his study of school retardation. Medford is largely a suburban, residential city with a relatively small foreign population, comprising people such as would naturally appreciate the opportunities afforded their children by the public schools and would co-operate in bringing about their regular attendance.

Camden, on the other hand, has a relatively large foreign population, a condition affecting school retardation in a marked degree. The lower grades in such a city are often filled with over-age pupils who have recently come from countries where they have had no educational advantages. Furthermore, the attendance of pupils from the class of homes we should naturally expect to find in Camden is often irregular, thus causing the pupils to fall behind their classes, resulting finally in demotion and retardation. Again, the struggle for existence among families of this class is so severe that it is the tendency of the children to leave school at the earliest possible moment to help increase the family income. Elimination from the upper grades naturally results. Furthermore, the matter of child labor laws, school attendance laws, and provisions for their enforcement must be taken into account in any really scientific study.

The normal age limit for the different grades chosen by Ayers seems open to question. By his standards all children who are eight or more years old at the end of the first school year are counted as retarded. By such a standard many of the children in Kansas City, Missouri, for example, would be counted retarded. Under the school laws of Missouri no city can expend public money for the education of children under six years of age. Because of this law a great majority of the six year old children who take advantage of kindergarten instruction would enter the first grades some months after their seventh birthday and would inevitably be counted at the end of the year as retarded or over-age children. Ayers' contention would probably be that the general tendency in most sections of the country is for children to enter school at five or six years of age ; still, if there is anything of value in the theory of physiological age and psychological age as distinguished from chronological age, as manifested in different children of the same racial stock and in the children of different racial stocks, it would seem that it might be pedagogically correct to find children with a difference of two or even three years in age engaged upon the same grade of work. Ayers' study loses much of its significance for a great many cities and towns if his normal age limit is raised one year for each grade, thus making it eight years for the first grade and fifteen years for the eighth grade. In view of the fact that the best teachings of physiological science would support the practice of not sending the child to school before the age of seven or eight years, it would seem that the age limits chosen by Ayers might be open to question. The greatest value of his study lies in the fact that it shows the vital need of more intensive studies in single communities or groups of communities presenting similar social and economic conditions.

Let us look now a little more specifically at the inner workings of the school. While a detailed discussion of the course of study would be out of place in the present exposition, still it may be remarked that the degree of difficulty in the course of study at various stages of the child's advancement is intimately connected with his progress and retention in the school.

It would probably not be far from right to argue that the large amount of retardation in the lower and middle grades of the schools of Kansas City, Missouri, is closely correlated with the difficulty of the course in arithmetic. An examination of this course reveals difficulties altogether beyond the powers of many normal children in these grades. The children of the first grades are required to add and subtract and even to multiply and divide fractions. There are, of course, many children who can learn to do this even at the age of six or seven, yet a great number find it beyond their powers and must inevitably fall behind. That arithmetic is the stumbling block of many children all along the line is well known. In Providence, Rhode Island, number work is not studied except in an incidental way until the third grade, and yet even here, according to the statement of the late Superintendent W. H. Small, it is the cause of many failures. This leads one to question the wisdom of postponing all work in arithmetic until the third year of school life, lest the added amount of pressure necessary to learn the fundamental processes in the third and fourth years should cause many pupils to fail who might have gradually mastered many of the simpler number ideas in the first two school years. Smith has well said that it is a mistake to exclude rational work in number from the first school years unless it is certain that there is something better for the child to do.

It is probable then that work in arithmetic made too difficult at first or postponed too long, may in either case result in the retardation of pupils. Superintendent Ella Flagg Young points out that the desire of many first grade teachers to show wonderful results by having their pupils all read in second readers, may result in the neglect of pupils who might well do the normal work of the first grade. There can be no doubt that the bright pupil fetish has held sway in many of our schools to the disadvantage, as some think, of these superficially quick pupils and to the much greater disadvantage of the slower pupils, who in the B, C and D divisions have been neglected and allowed to come on as best they might. The former superintendent of public schools of Medford, Massachusetts, Mr. C. H. Morss, when asked the reasons why Medford made the best showing in Ayers' list of cities having different amounts of retardation in the schools, made the statement that one of the reasons was that no test in arithmetic was required during the first three years of school life.

Even a glance at the courses of study of many cities will reveal the fact that both in reading and arithmetic in the lower grades and in nearly all the studies of the upper grades too much is being demanded of children in the way of knowledge acquirements. Coupled with this is the fact that in many places children are held back in the upper grades for failures in such studies as oral reading and geography. The writer has in mind a rather able girl who was compelled to repeat a year's work in an eighth grade because of failure in these two subjects, although she had done passing work in all the other subjects of the grade. It was later discovered that the girl's difficulty in reading was due to eye defect and that her apparent listlessness in the geography work was due to defect in hearing. The absurdity of such a demotion is evident when we consider that in the upper grades neither reading nor geography is a sequential subject, that is a study like arithmetic in which certain principles mastered at one stage are necessary to progress in the next. The chances are that the girl in question would have done much better work in these two subjects and in all others under a new teacher and with work on new material. Such failures are not rare in school systems where progress is rated by certain arbitrary standards. That school officials who stand for such conditions lack pedagogcial insight goes without saying.

The fixed promotional examination set often by persons not in touch with the schools although it has long since been tabooed in school systems guided by common sense and intelligence, is still in force in a large number of cities and towns. Camden, New Jersey, which makes the worst showing in the matter of retardation in Ayers' list of cities has such examinations. This chance method of promoting children is bound to leave many worthy children branded with the mark of failure. There is little doubt in the minds of those who know the system of Regents' examinations of New York State, that these examinations are responsible for much of the retardation and elimination which Commissioner Draper has shown exists in the schools throughout that state. Mr. C. B. Gilbert when in charge of the schools of Rochester, New York, pointed out the evils of this system in a clear way, and Rochester was led to abolish the examinations in the elementary schools to the immense advantage of both pupils and teachers.

A rational course of study adapted to the real ability of the normal pupils in the different grades is one of the prerequisites to any plan of grading and classification or instruction that is to meet the needs of the individual pupils. The attempt to work out such a course was made in Chelsea, Massachusetts, under the late Superintendent B. C. Gregory. In that city the core of the course of study in all subjects consists of such principles and information as all normal pupils will be able to succeed in mastering. Facts and principles of value within the range of the normal pupil's comprehension are made fundamental in the course of study. The course is based on the theory that power gained through success in doing many less difficult but essential things is as valuable as the same power gained through failure to do difficult things. There is a truth of great educational value here that needs to be carefully worked out.

The courses of study in our high and elementary schools, following the lead set by higher institutions, are based on the philosophy of failure. The spectre of failure looms up at every stage of the course, and a great many pupils soon realize that failure for them is inevitable.

Such a philosophy may be and probably is the right one upon which to base the work of fairly mature students who are pursuing studies that are beyond those required for the common business of life. It is extremely doubtful if such a philosophy should form the basis of the work of children in the elementary schools. The great success in the ungraded rooms and in the special schools for backward children has been due to founding the work of such schools on the philosophy of success. In such schools each child is bound to succeed up to the full measure of his ability, and it is to this fact more than to any other that the remarkable progress of some of the pupils in these schools is due. There is no doubt that working on the same principle much can be done to arrange the course in the regular schools so that the attainment of success will be possible without constantly keeping in sight the black flag of failure.

A rational course of study, the subjects of which are so selected and so co-ordinated that every normal child is fairly sure of passing through the eight elementary grades without failing, is one of the prerequisites to the realization of school success among elementary school pupils.

PROMOTION INTERVALS 21

Chapter Two PROMOTION INTERVALS

The frequency of regular promotions of pupils from class to class has been a topic of earnest discussion among school men in the United States during the past thirty or thirty-five years. The war has been against the yearly promotion interval which prevailed everywhere in this country before 1870 and which prevails to-day in a large number of cities and towns in the different states. The yearly interval prevails also in England and in Germany. It has, however, caused little discussion in those countries.

We shall discuss briefly the advantages and disadvantages of the yearly interval and then follow with a discussion of the half-yearly intervals and also of the still shorter intervals of promotion.

Yearly Promotions — Advantages

1. The chief advantage of the yearly interval comes from the ease with which it fits the school organization. The course of study is graded by years and it is natural that the pupils should begin the work of a grade in September and complete it the following June. The practice is probably inherited from the colleges which have always followed the yearly interval of classification.

2. The yearly interval allows the pupils to remain with the same teacher a full year, thus enabling the teacher to become acquainted with the pupils and to adjust the work to their individual needs.

3. It enables the teacher in the higher grades to have one class in the room instead of the two or more which are necessary under the half-yearly or shorter interval, thus allowing for quiet study periods, during which time the teacher may work with individual pupils.

Yearly Plan — Disadvantages

The chief disadvantage connected with the yearly interval is its lack of flexibility. Under it, as ordinarily administered, no provision is made for the superior pupil to progress rapidly without skipping a whole year of work, a leap too great for any except the very few ; nor is any provision made for the slow or retarded pupil, who, if he fails, must lose a whole year, repeating a considerable amount of work that he has already done.

These objections are valid so long as the yearly plan of promotions is unmodified and unsupplemented. It may be well to state here that many who hold to the yearly interval believe, and with some justification, that there is something more to the educative process than hurrying rapidly through a course of study. They hold that the rapid transit plans of grading tend in the main to superficial work and that the course of study should be both broad and deep as well as long.

In this stand they are supported by the great majority of school men in England and in Germany.

It is a fact of some significance that the three cities which show the least amount of retardation and elimination in Ayers' study have yearly promotions, while Camden has half-yearly promotions and stands at the foot of the list.

Furthermore the six cities which Ayers regards as the most efficient in the matter of retaining their pupils through the elementary school course all have the yearly interval.

PROMOTION INTERVALS 23

It would hardly seem safe to infer as does Ayers that "the first step toward mitigating the bad effects of failure in the schools is the system of half-yearly promotion. "

The Half Year Interval

In 1891, at the request of the United States Commissioner of Education, Dr. E. E. White made an elaborate study of promotions and examinations in graded schools. Considerable space is devoted in this study to a comparison of the different class intervals. The conclusion is that the half year interval seems to possess the most advantages and the fewest disadvantages, especially for the elementary grades, with the exception of, perhaps, the first and second grades in which a shorter interval may be desirable.

The half year interval is sufficiently short to facilitate the promotion of individuals and sufficiently long to prevent a "too frequent readjustment of class work. " It also presents the most favorable times for transfers and reclassification of pupils; the beginning and the middle of the school year.

As early as the middle of the year the upper classes of the elementary schools begin to be thinned out by the withdrawal of pupils for various reasons. The mid-year promotions help to keep the proper quota of pupils in these upper grades. It also makes room in the first primary grades for the entrance of beginners at the mid-year.

It facilitates also the promotion of many pupils who although able to skip a half year of work would not be able to skip that of a whole year. Again it obliges pupils who have been demoted to repeat only a half year of work.

The strongest objection to the half year interval is, according to Dr. White, the fact that it is not feasible in the high schools of small cities and towns where the number of pupils in the different years is not large enough to make division of classes economical. Another strong objection to the half-year plan is the fact that it makes necessary two divisions in nearly all school classes. There is recitation by one division and study by the other throughout the day. Again and again in his different addresses Dr. Harris insists that this plan cultivates in the child the power of sustained attention. The pupil learns to study under distracting conditions. This idea is strongly affirmed in a recent study of half-yearly promotion made by Mr. W. W. Chalmers which appears in the school report of Toledo, Ohio, for 1903.

In the same report, however, he quotes a prominent school official's opinion to the effect that under the half-year plan the pupils of the division not reciting learn a great deal from listening to the recitation of the pupils in the other division. This latter opinion would seem to be supported by the tradition that in the district school the younger pupils learned much from hearing the older pupils recite.

Recent studies in Germany bear out the assertion that the best thought work is not done under the distracting conditions of the classroom. Quiet study, a thing almost unknown under the two division plan, would seem so far as human experience goes to be a desirable thing to be cultivated in the schools.

Concerning the half-year interval Dexter makes the following statement: "Some schools, though altogether too few, are already trying the plan of semiannual promotions with the greatest success, except for its strain upon the administrative machinery." Such a statement concerning the success of the half-year plan it is impossible to verify.

PROMOTION INTERVALS 25

The Term Interval

The term interval by which pupils are reclassified every third of a year or oftener, makes closer grading possible than either the year or half-year interval.

It is claimed that it almost entirely removes discouragement from pupils who fail, since they have only to repeat the work of a third of a year. It furnishes the most natural division of pupils into bright, mediocre, and dull.

In the matter of defects it calls for more school machinery in the way of program-making and of keeping pupils who are at their seats profitably employed. It tends to bring together an accumulation of dull pupils in the lowest third of the class where they are likely to stay, since the teacher is chiefly concerned with pupils who can move forward.

Usually it necessitates frequent changes of teachers ; and finally, it makes promotion, rather than honest, thorough work, the aim of the school.

In concluding this brief discussion of promotion intervals it may be said that we have as yet in education very little, if any, evidence to show the real value of the short promotion intervals. Scientific studies are much needed here. Mere opinion has prevailed too long.

Chapter Three PLANS OF CLASSIFICATION

Several of the most important plans of grading and promotion in the United States are here presented. Since the short interval, or St. Louis plan, is really the parent of all plans of grading in this country it will be first considered. It will be followed by the Shearer, or Elizabeth plan, which is only a modification of the St. Louis plan. The concentric plan, the North Denver plan, and the group system will then be described, followed by the well-known Cambridge double-track plan and its modifications, the Odebolt and Le Mars, Iowa, plans. The Portland, Oregon, plan is briefly treated. Two German plans will then be explained: those of Charlottenburg and of Mannheim, the latter plan having been widely adopted in Germany.