SOCIAL SERVICE AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS
ELEANOR HOPE JOHNSON
SECRETARY COMMITTEE ON THE HYGIENE OF SCHOOL CHILDREN, PUBLIC EDUCATION ASSOCIATION
Kate Douglas Wiggin, in one of her most appealing stories, tells of a child who was walking in a garden with his mother when they came upon a misshapen tree. In reply to the mother’s question as to why the tree was crooked the child replied that he guessed someone had stepped on it when it was little. So it is with many of the children in our larger cities—they get stepped on physically, intellectually and spiritually when they are young.
Little Ivan, whose mother had come here from Russia after passing through we know not how many scenes of terror and suffering, bore the stamp of her misery on his face and in his soul. When he came to a New York public school at eight years of age it seemed impossible that teacher and textbook should be able to do anything for him. He was ragged and dirty and could not speak. But after patient effort the teacher of the special class, where he had been put, found that he was not a mute and that he did understand English. Next, his mother was seen, and she became so interested in her boy’s welfare that his ragged days were brought to an end. A new suit of clothes and a clean face transformed him into an intelligent and alert looking youngster. Now he is struggling with the words, “boy and ran, dog and book,” and is attacking the other branches with some notion of what they are all about. His destructive tendency is being dealt with firmly and patiently, and there are great hopes that some day Ivan may develop into a normal and sturdy boy.
NELLO, THE “UTTERLY BAD”
Until a visiting teacher went to his home and found his mother dying of cancer, Nello nursing her and the three younger children, and the father sharing his morning beer with the undersized boy. The schoolroom tantrum was understood then. Nello was sent to the country.
This story of Ivan is a good illustration of what the school can do to help prevent the little trees from being so harshly trodden upon. It is also a good illustration of the manner in which they can do it. For it is one of the most promising signs of our times that our conception of the process called education is a constantly broadening one. It is no longer enough to teach children to read, write and cipher, even to draw, cook and sew. We have been in the past contented with the dictum that the public schools exist in order to abolish illiteracy, but now we are inclined to take the fuller meaning which, surprisingly enough, the dictionary gives: “to educate is to qualify for the business and duties of life.” Up to now, unfortunately, the dictionary has not been followed with too great care. Much time has been lost and from the results of this loss we are now suffering. In our new vision, the schools must not only train children toward constructive citizenship, but must do what they can to prevent the development of destructive citizens, must help in overcoming completely the original anti-social condition into which psychologists tell us children are born.
Industrial teaching and vocational guidance through the public schools should do much to bring about this training toward constructive citizenship. But for the equally important task of prevention some preliminary work must be done. Obstacles must be removed. Those who can profit by such training must be sifted out from those who cannot, and through the schools we must fit by some preliminary process, those who at first sight seem unfit. For in the schools are often found the beginning of all the bitter problems with which our strongest philanthropic organizations are struggling so manfully. “Millions for cure, nothing for prevention” sometimes seems to express pretty clearly where the emphasis has been placed in the past. The schools can help greatly if they would get back behind the present situation, and discuss, point out, and if necessary, perform these acts of prevention.
What does all this mean? It means that social service must come to be regarded as a justifiable function of the schools, as justifiable as it has already become in the case of at least two other institutions.
Upwards of twenty years ago a militant clergyman in New York is quoted as having said: “It is all very well to talk of saving souls, but I never yet have seen a soul that was not connected with a body.” At that time religious work was confined much more closely than it now is within certain traditional limits, and these ringing words did much to turn the attention of the churches toward their old ideal of social service.
A later grafting of the spirit of social service on long established practices is shown in the progress of hospital social service. What first opened the eyes of the medical profession is not recorded, but it was soon proven that the assurance given to a woman at the hospital that her children were being well cared for in her absence hastened her recovery, and that the visits of a wise and sympathetic nurse or trained social worker to the home of a discharged patient almost always succeeded in preventing that patient’s return because of a relapse due to carelessness or ignorance. A physician in a large Boston hospital where the social service is famous for its completeness and efficiency has said that a good social service nurse saves her salary twice over by the cures she hastens and the returns she prevents.
There is a tradition in this country on which we greatly pride ourselves, that education, at least in certain of its fundamental branches, is free to all who wish to avail themselves of the opportunity afforded by the state. Indeed, we go so far in most of our states as to make it not only free but compulsory between certain ages. But look carefully through any large school and many a small one, and you will find children who would gladly partake of this free education but who for many reasons, and through no fault of their own, are unable to do so. Children who sit idly in school or stumble blindly through a grade or two, and children whose names are finally taken from the register because for them no place in school can be made. And so we come to see that our free education is for those fortunate ones who are fitted for it, while for others it is practically non-existent. You can compel a child to go to school, but you cannot compel him to profit by his stay there.
The story of Nello is a pathetic illustration of this. Here was a boy of eleven, pitifully small for his age, who had been placed in an ungraded class, and was disturbing the class and distracting the teacher by his utter badness. A visitor was asked to investigate the home conditions and find out a possible explanation for his incorrigibility. She found ample cause. Nello’s mother was dying of cancer. His father was a heavy drinker, often out of work, who shared his beer with the small boy instead of getting proper food for him each morning. Nello was the only nurse his mother and the three younger children had, and his burden of responsibility gave him no other outlet except the schoolroom tantrum. A nurse and proper food were secured. The two youngest children were placed temporarily in an institution. Nello was taken to a doctor who said that the boy was permanently dwarfed because of his alcoholic diet, and the father was induced to discontinue this and give him milk instead. With better food and some time in the country it may be proved that Nello is only temporarily dwarfed mentally, even if his physical state is permanent. In any event, with the burden, too great for his narrow shoulders, finally removed the boy is now doing well in school and his future is not hopeless.
CLASS FOR ANAEMIC CHILDREN IN A NEW YORK PUBLIC SCHOOL
When the room is in a building the windows are so arranged that the largest amount of air is taken into the room. The windows are never closed.
Happily certain phases of the situation are now being remedied. Through the increase in the differentiation of special classes within the schools our educational systems are making education more nearly free to all, and so taking a most important part in the great work of prevention. We are ceasing to think quite so exclusively of the ambulances at the foot of the precipice and are building our fence, foot by foot, across its top. By means of these special classes, the different demands which differently constituted minds and bodies make are in great part met, the fact that certain obstacles prevent many minds from attaining full development is recognized; and due allowance is made for the effect physical and mental handicaps have on individual education.
To give an instance: In the public schools of New York these special classes are carried out to an admirable extent. Physical handicaps are recognized and provided for in the classes for cripples, for blind, anaemic and tubercular children, and in the School for the Deaf. The teachers of these classes come to know a great deal about the homes and the individual difficulties of their pupils, and what home or medical care will be of the greatest assistance to them educationally. Bodies are cared for, lunches even are furnished, that the mind may have a chance to grow strong and keen—for the school lunch is more and more recognized as a real factor in education.
For the backward children and for those who are mentally rather than physically defective, there are other special classes; those for the over-age children, for foreigners who come to school before they have learned to speak English, for children who are trying to get their working papers, and the so-called Ungraded Class for those who are apparently or really backward to a hopeless extent. Often members of this latter group find their way into the classes for foreign children or those who are trying for working papers, so limiting the best usefulness of those classes.
But one step further must be taken, and in some places and in some connections is being taken in this work of prevention, and of bringing together the incomplete little being and his opportunity for becoming more complete. This step is the adaptation of the ideal of social service to our educational work and through it we shall finally come to see, I believe, the supremely important part the schools must play in the solution of our most perplexing social problems. Often this part will be not to take the actual steps themselves, but to point out to other especially equipped agencies the steps that must be taken by them in order to prevent future misery and crime. From the schools must come our most valuable information and advice concerning the treatment of various groups of dependent children. They constitute the great dragnet and the natural clearing house.
The day is fast coming when just as surely as social service is an inseparable and honored part of both religious and medical institutions, so it shall be of our educational work. Phases of this service or movements closely allied to it, are already being slowly introduced into the public school systems of some cities, volunteer agencies are carrying on a more definite social service in close connection with the schools, and always a good teacher, interested to learn of the home surroundings of her pupils, is the most effective social service worker the schools can have.
But when the effort is made to introduce direct social service into the school system itself a suspicion has often been felt on the part of the governing body, or on that of the taxpayer, that here is an attempt to turn the schools into charitable centers. They do not seem to realize nor take to heart the message of that minister of twenty years ago that while it is all very well to talk about training the mind, no one has ever yet seen a mind that was not connected with a body. The obstacles which often prevent the mind’s full development must be discovered and removed before the education the schools offer can be taken full advantage of. The same close relationship which hospital social service bring about with a patient’s home must be established by the school with the homes of its pupils—as in the case of Nello—so that any hindrance to a child’s education existing there may be ascertained and as far as possible overcome. Much social service of a valuable kind has been carried on in connection with some of the special classes in the New York city schools by outside agencies devoted to the care of particular forms of physical defect, and their assistance to both teachers and pupils has been generous and effective. In some cases the closest relation has existed between these organizations and the school system, as in the case of the classes for cripples. But as yet none of this work has been made an actual part of the system, though its value is recognized and the volunteer service used to the fullest extent.
CLASS FOR CRIPPLED CHILDREN IN A NEW YORK PUBLIC SCHOOL
Note the adjustable chairs which can be suited to the particular difficulty of the child occupying it. Much manual work is done in these classes.
Last year the social worker who was supplied to the department of ungraded classes of the New York public schools by the Public Education Association proved abundantly the need for such work in connection with all the special classes for children who are backward from any cause whatever. Children who appeared to be hopelessly defective were taken by this worker to hospitals or clinics and found to be far more nearly normal than had been at first supposed. Children who seemed to be in immediate danger of getting into evil ways because of their mental defect and whose parents were unequal to the task of keeping them from harming themselves or others, were placed in institutions where they could be taught and cared for. Out of a hundred cases investigated the visitor succeeded in placing nineteen in institutions. Unwillingness on the part of parents or lack of room in the institutions prevented putting the others there also. On the other hand, the child who could not remain in the regular grades because of mental weakness was visited at home, his difficulties explained to the parents, who were ignorantly and often cruelly blaming him for a fault not his own, and he was finally placed, with the parents’ full understanding and consent, in an ungraded class. Adjustments have been made which will affect many a child’s whole career for good, advice has been given at home which has in some cases changed the status of an entire family.
GROUP FROM A CLASS FOR FOREIGN CHILDREN IN A NEW YORK PUBLIC SCHOOL
These children of immigrant parents enter the class immediately on landing. The average stay is three months, when they go out into the regular grades for which they are fitted, according to the previous education they have had in their own countries. One teacher says: “They absorb just like little sponges. They are so eager to learn.”
Because of the work done by this visitor and the effective way in which the inspector of ungraded classes has incorporated her work into the general plan for these classes; and also on account of the recommendation made by the State Charities Aid Association that more knowledge should be secured by the schools of the atypical children there, the New York Board of Education has decided to install two such visitors in the Department of Ungraded Classes. This is the first time, so far as I know, that an appropriation has been made by a school system for such a purpose. It is a step towards fulfilling this newer ideal of education of which New York city may well be proud.
It is impossible to measure the good that would result if this service were widened to include the other classes for backward children I have mentioned, particularly the working paper classes. At the Board of Health the other day a pretty Italian girl of fifteen was examined for her working paper. Her writing of the simplest English sentence was so poor that her paper was refused, and she was told she must stay in school until she was sixteen. The girl and her father came in despair to appeal to the head of the department. It was not a case of poverty; the father had work, and so had older brothers and sisters. On the girl’s side it was discontent and restlessness—“I do not want to go to school any more; they scold me all the time.” She had been in a special working paper class and had undoubtedly been dull and unambitious. The father had a more serious story. His English was halting, they talked only Italian at home, he told me, which accounted somewhat for the girl’s curious mistakes. But the mother was dead, the older sister working, and there was no one at home to look after the girl in her hours after school. The father’s distressed face showed clearly his perplexity as to the chaperonage of his daughter according to the Italian ideas. It was not safe or proper that she should be at home alone or wandering about the streets; she was better off at work. Whether the father’s statement was true or not, without much question the girl will never go regularly to school again, if she goes at all—in spite of attendance officers and all—and for another year she cannot go legally to work. It is not hard to guess the sequel, and the remedy is equally easy to see. How long will it take us to learn that when we take something from young people which they must not have, we must at the same moment supply its place with something desirable but safe. Social service directly connected with the school would solve the future of the pretty little Italian and of many others in the same evil case. They want not only the careful schooling that will correct the lack which prevents them from going to work, but, more than that, the home visiting which shall explain the need for this further training and arouse interest in the connection between school and work.
The best example of volunteer social service in connection with the public schools is that which for several years has been carried on by various outside agencies interested in linking more closely the school and the home, but always limited to work with the regular grades.
The Home and School League of Philadelphia has done valuable work in arousing interest in this direction, and now a number of such visitors are at work in the city supported by various private organizations. They are doing the same sort of work as that done by the visitors in New York and Boston, although from the reports it would seem that both in Philadelphia and Boston special attention is given by them to vocational guidance. A particularly valuable piece of work has been done by the home visitor appointed by the Armstrong Association to work among the colored pupils of Philadelphia; the Friend’s Preventive Association, the Juvenile Protective Association, and the Children’s Aid Societies, also support visitors. These are being used to an increasing degree by the Bureau of Compulsory Education of Philadelphia in carrying on the preventive work connected with that bureau.
In Boston there are now five full-time and seven or eight part time school visitors. Each visitor is engaged by some private organization, such as the Women’s Educational Association, the Home and School Association, a group of settlements, or by some individual. She is attached to a special school or district and does all her work there. This is the arrangement in all three cities. The work has been supervised by a committee of the Women’s Educational Association, and this committee represents settlements and other social agencies. Work of this sort, but on a smaller scale, is being done both in Worcester, Mass., and in Rochester, N. Y., the visiting teachers working under the Public Education Association of New York have been increasingly effective in their efforts to solve for the often overburdened teacher problems connected with individual children.
Efforts have been made from time to time by the supervising force to instruct teachers to visit the homes of the children in their classrooms and ascertain the conditions under which they were living, but with the present large size of classes in most public schools this has been found to be quite impracticable. Besides this, to overcome the difficulties in the way of a child’s education much visiting of an expert sort and many efforts for outside co-operation are often necessary, for which the teachers could not possibly find time. Separate visitors are therefore needed. There are so many illustrations of the sort of work they do, that it is hard to select one that is more telling than the rest.
From the report of a Boston visitor we learn of Angelina Conti, who was constantly tardy, frequently absent, and never alert or quick in her recitations. “She seems to lack ambition,” says the report, “and must be dropped into a lower grade unless something can be done to brace her up.” The visitor is sent to the home. She finds that Angelina is the oldest of nine children and that the family lives in three rooms. The burden of the family seems to rest on Angelina, who must wash the clothes every afternoon when she comes from school, and go for the baby’s milk before school in the morning. Angelina is a perfectly compliant, patient little soul. She has a headache most of the time, but expects to do all that her mother asks of her. She hopes that the teacher won’t “degrade” her.
The visitor urges Mrs. Conti to send a younger child for milk in the morning so that Angelina can come promptly to school. The headaches are reported to the school nurse, who sends Angelina to the hospital for much needed treatment. The whole situation is explained to the teacher, who gladly promises to send Angelina home promptly in the afternoon so that she may have time for her housework. There is a much better understanding between Angelina and her teacher, her health improves, she comes more regularly and keeps her class. Thus is the first step in preventing dependency taken.
An interesting part of the work of these social service workers has been to bring to bear on the lives of these “difficult children” all the agencies which might be of assistance. This same Boston visitor states in her report that “this new work of visiting the homes of the school children is one of continual co-operation with principals, teachers, truant officers, janitors and the children themselves, also with hospitals, dispensaries, employment agencies, the Associated Charities, or whatever the emergency may demand.” Too often this sort of effort is scattered and ineffective because of the lack of connection between agencies. With a visitor working from the school as a starting point and not from any private organization, the connection is quickly made and the influence of each helping agency is strengthened by the added influence of every other. This has proved to be just as true in the case of medical social service, particularly that of public hospitals and institutions, and one might almost prophesy that some day the relief work of philanthropic agencies will come only in response to calls from the social service departments of church, hospital, public institution and school, and that a great clearing house for these agencies, public and private, will be the best way of organizing charity.
Be that as it may, social service is as surely needed in connection with training people’s minds as it is with saving their souls and curing their bodies. It is easier to train our vines to grow straight and sure and to cling to the lattices we choose for them, if at the same time the soil is watered and enriched that the roots may be strong, and all things harmful to the plant’s health are carefully kept from it. “As the twig is bent the tree’s inclined,” but the twig must be strong and healthy as well as straight, if the tree is to do its part in forming the forests our country must have if it would be prosperous. Surely anything that will make more effective the mental training and development of our country’s future citizens is as fully justified.