CHILDREN AND THE SCHOOL
Wise parents will know the character of the influences affecting their children at all times. At no time can their responsibility be delegated to others. There is a tendency to think that when children go to school the family has a release from responsibility. But the school is simply the community—the group of families—syndicating its efforts for the formal training of the young. Every family ought to know what the community is doing with its children. The school belongs to all; it is not the property of a board, nor a private machine belonging to the teaching force; it belongs to us and we owe a social duty as well as a family obligation to understand its work and its influence on the children.
Parents ought to visit the school. Wise principals and teachers will welcome them, setting times when visits can best be made. The visitors come, not as critics, but as citizens and parents. The principal benefits will be an acquaintance with the teachers of our children and a better understanding of the conditions under which the children work for the greater part of the day. By far the larger number of teachers most earnestly desire character results from their work. It will help them to know that we are interested in what they are doing.
§ 1. HOME AND SCHOOL CO-OPERATION
Parents and teachers, both desiring spiritual results, can find means of co-operation. Parent-teacher clubs and associations have done much to bring the home and the school together. Meeting regularly in the evening, so that fathers, too, can attend, gives opportunity to work out a common understanding to raise the spiritual aims of the school, and to discover means by which the families may aid in securing better conditions for school work.
One of the most important considerations relates to the moral effect of the school life and environment. We are committed in this country to the principle that the public school cannot teach religion, but this by no means relieves it of responsibility for moral character. The family needs this ally. Children expect instruction in the school and they feel keenly the power of its ideals and the standards established by its methods and requirements. The family and the school greatly need to co-ordinate their efforts here to the end that there may be under way in both an orderly program for the moral training of children.
§ 2. THE SCHOOL TEACHING PARENTS
The school may help the home if arrangements are made for parents to meet regularly and receive instruction in those forms of moral training which can best be given at home. This is one method of solving the vexed question of sex instruction. Many hesitate as to the wisdom of such instruction in schools; but no one doubts that it ought to be and could be given in families but for the fact that parents are both ignorant of what to tell and indifferent to the matter. It may be that some day the state will not only say that the child must go to school, but also that every parent intrusted with children must either prove ability to train and instruct in these and other matters or go to school to obtain the necessary training. The state would not go beyond its province if it required ignorant parents—and that means most of us in matters of moral training—to go to school and learn our business. And without waiting for such compulsion the school may now offer opportunity for all parents to obtain the desired information. Teachers are especially trained to an understanding of child-nature and to methods of pedagogy; they are prepared to teach many things we ought to know; why should not the family obtain the advantage of such expert knowledge?
The school would also be within its province if it undertook to stimulate the indifferent parents, both rich and poor, to an appreciation of the educational task and opportunity of the home. Each institution greatly needs the other. The school reaches all the children of all the people; might it not be made a larger means of helping all the parents of all the children to quickened moral responsibility and to greater educational efficiency?
§ 3. CONTROLLING SCHOOL CONDITIONS
The family ought to know the conditions at the school outside the recitation or working hours. Few parents have any conception of the power of the playground over moral character. Perhaps a smaller number realize how dangerous are some of the elements at work there. Play of itself is immensely valuable, but play means playfellows, and some of these are simply purveyors of indecency and moral contagion in conversation and act. We are required to send our children to school; we have a right to demand freedom from moral contagion. Do you know what goes on in secret places on the grounds? Do you know that the vilest ideas and phrases are current in pictures, cards, on scraps of paper, and in handwriting on walls, not only in the high schools, but often among children of from six to twelve years of age? This is too large a subject to be developed properly here. It is one familiar to all wide-awake school men and women and ought to be equally so to the parents of children. Where the school combats this evil the home should intelligently aid; where the school is indifferent the family dare not rest until either the indifference is quite dispelled or the indifferent dismissed.
Do not expect to get the facts concerning these suggested conditions by inquiry among your children. They are reticent, naturally, on such matters when talking with adults; besides, the sense of school honor holds them to silence. If they tell you voluntarily, you are happy in their free confidence. Do not betray it; simply let it lead you to make further inquiry at the school from the authorities and stimulate you to insist that, for the sake of the spiritual good of the young, the school must furnish conditions of moral health.
I. References for Study
Ella Lyman Cabot, Voluntary Help to the Schools, chaps. vii, viii. Houghton Mifflin Co., $0.60.
W. A. Baldwin, "The Home and the Public Schools," Religious Education, February, 1912. $0.65.
II. Further Reading
M. Sadler, Moral Instruction and Training in Schools. 2 vols. Longmans.
John Dewey, The School and Society. The University of Chicago Press, $1.00.
Smith, All the Children of All the People. Macmillan, $1.50.
G. A. Coe, "Virtue and the Virtues," Religious Education, February, 1912.
III. Topics for Discussion
1. What ought parents to know about public-school life?
2. In visiting a school what may the parent do to acquire information in the proper way?
3. How may the home co-operate with the school?
4. What degree of instruction in morals ought the school to give?
5. In what way does the school best help in moral training?
6. What do you know about the conditions on the playgrounds of your own school?