THAT OTHER TEACHER AND THAT TEACHER'S LABORATORY
We are just beginning to discover that the rural school has a fine laboratory for practical educational purposes, in the neighborhood environment of the school. With the development of scientific agriculture and domestic arts in many of our modern country homes this laboratory is constantly improving.
Kansas State Agricultural College Bulletin, 1914.
There is a general idea among teachers that parents will not coöperate with them. This, I believe, is founded upon the assumption that because they cannot, as a usual thing, coöperate in textbook work they will not coöperate in other things. But both parents and teachers want the same results accomplished. If these are to be attained it means partnership work, the parent and that other parent, the teacher, working together; or one might say, the teacher, and that other teacher, the parent, working together.
I have been surprised to find to what extent parents will coöperate with teachers if given a chance. Mrs. Brown goes to the schoolhouse on a bleak afternoon. She is greeted warmly by the teacher, Miss Smith, and given an arithmetic text to follow while the class recites. The lesson is on decimal fractions. Now, Mrs. Brown didn't have decimal fractions during her school days, so the recitation is quite meaningless to her. She is glad when the class is over, and does not find time to visit school again that term. But if she is asked to prepare a luncheon for the picnic at the close of the year, or asked to assist in any social function at the schoolhouse, she spends her time for the school, and is glad to do it.
In Eugene, Oregon, several years ago I found that the women of the city were enthusiastic in aiding the schools. Thirty-two women gave up Monday afternoon to teaching the girls sewing, while the boys had military drill. At a social center meeting at Hover, Washington, the suggestion was made that it would be well if one of the mothers would come to the school building occasionally to help the girls with their sewing, as the eighth-grade pupils would have to take an examination in the subject in May. So many mothers volunteered to undertake the task that a schedule was made out whereby a sewing period could be had every afternoon, and no mother be on duty oftener than every two weeks.
At Myrtle Creek, Oregon, domestic art work is carried on in this way: the teacher gives instructions in the work that is to be done; in cooking, for instance, recipes are given, talked over, and written down. The girls then go home, and actually do the work, and make a report to the teacher. They must have the signatures of their mothers for all the work they do. This is managed with a home credit report card.
Mrs. E. H. Belknap, a progressive rural teacher near Jefferson, Oregon, said in a recent letter: "We learn how a cow can be fed and cared for, so as to produce the greatest amount of butter fat. That is well, but we regard it of far more value for the boy to go home, apply the knowledge learned, and produce the butter fat. He is now worth something to the world, and able to turn his education into dollars and cents at any time. The girl takes the book, and reads how to make butter. She goes home, tends the milk, churns, and makes the butter, learns how really to do the work. She has called the attention of the entire family to the amount and quality of her butter obtained from proper feeding and handling of the cow by the boy."
And yet it is said that nothing can be done in the small school in domestic science because there is no equipment. In every home there is ideal equipment if we mean the equipment the children are to use. If we are preparing for life, why not use the equipment we must use in life? Best of all, in using the home laboratory there is an immediate purpose. None of us can get much out of an exercise when it is done just for an exercise. There is the dinner to be cooked, the bed to be made, the ironing to be done; somebody must do it. And the dinner, the bed, and the ironing are to be put to the test by some one who sees real values. There is no doubt that one of the things schools most lack is purpose.
It might be said that to stimulate a child to want to do things is only half the problem. "If children do things without expert instruction they may do them wrong, and thus get a faulty habit." But I think more than half of the problem is solved when we create the desire to do a thing. The greatest fault of present-day education is that we constantly try to teach a child how to do a thing without his desiring to do it, or even knowing the reason for doing it. On the other hand, I once knew a country girl who had never seen a domestic science equipment, and who lived in a community where there was no one housekeeper especially noted; yet with her strong desire to be a fine housekeeper she learned something good from each neighbor, and for excellent results, and for economy of time and material, her daily practice would put the average domestic science teacher to disadvantage. However I am not arguing that domestic science should not be taught at school; I certainly believe it should. But I do claim that it is worth while, and is absolutely necessary, first to create the desire to do the things that are to be taught. To do things without a purpose is like trying to eat without an appetite.
A pamphlet published by the Kansas State Agricultural College on "School Credit for Home Work: The Laboratory of the Rural School," makes these practical points:—
Could there possibly be a more favorable condition for teaching Domestic Arts than in the rural school from which the girl goes every evening to a busy home where she is needed to take part in the actual work of housekeeping? It is here that the girl has a chance to put into actual practice the things she has learned at school. Here the home has the chance to realize immediately upon the investment it is making in the education of the girl. If sanitation, ventilation, sweeping and dusting, care of the sick, preparation of foods, care of milk, water supply and uses, bathing, care of health, sewing, proper clothing, etc., are taught in our schools, and if the laboratories are in the immediate neighborhood, and the girls and boys must go into them to stay overnight, they should be used. Likewise, the vegetable gardens at the homes should be made the experimental plots for the school, after the best seeds have been selected, best methods of preparing, fertilizing, and planting the soil, best-known methods of cultivation and maturing the crops, have been taught. The actual experimental work should be carried out in the home gardens by the boys and girls. Proper records can be kept, and the boys and girls will be anxious to get back into school, after the out-of-doors summer experiments, to compare reports, and renew another phase of their educational work.
In agriculture the fields, stock, buildings, etc., about the schoolhouse should be studied and used. These are the real agricultural laboratory. The real problems of actual farming are present, and the methods of work and the ways of handling the fields and the stock are the available resources of the school as a part of its actual laboratory. In this connection study the dairy cows, the feeding of cattle, hogs, and horses, types and breeds of farm horses, cattle, hogs, and sheep. In every community there are many opportunities for type studies—such as fields of alfalfa or wheat or corn; a dairy herd; valuable and well-bred horses; beef cattle; hogs or sheep; a silo, or types of farm machinery, and farm buildings.
It is natural for a child to want to assume home responsibilities, but there are many things that interfere unless a special effort is made. The school itself has been a great offender in weaning children from their homes and from natural living. This, of course, is not strange when we consider that the school started out to make lawyers and ministers, and not home-makers. Yet one of the great needs of the time is to make people home-loving, and to have those wholesome habits that come from sharing home responsibilities. Anything is worth while that will make the child once taste the joy of doing a useful thing well.