Daily work began with exercises in which the whole school took part. The singing of a hymn afforded an opportunity for a singing lesson being given to the whole school, the principal acting as instructor. Then came the reading of Holy Scripture, or of selections from literature, and a short discourse by the principal, after which students were called upon to give quotations from the works of famous men and women, or to recite short poems which had been previously prepared. At the end of these public exercises, the students were required to dismiss according to word of command, to turn, march to music, and to drill as a class of children would have been required to do. This was intended to teach the students how to dismiss and drill a school or class.
Lessons in psychology were given by the principal. The treatment of the subject was necessarily very elementary, and, indeed, superficial. I noticed that the teacher constantly digressed on practical points, and seemed to know exactly when digression would be of advantage to his pupils.
Daily lessons on “Experiments” were also given. These were talks on some of the most elementary principles of science, and easy experiments showing how such principles might be illustrated in class. Capillary attraction was illustrated in a lesson I heard, and its bearing on everyday life was shown. Pupils were required to come out of their seats, and to arrange simple apparatus before the class. As they were quite unaccustomed to manipulate even the simplest materials, they seemed to find considerable difficulty even in drawing out glass tubing and clamping together glass plates.
The feature of the school, perhaps, the most interesting, was the anxiety shown by these rural teachers to lose no opportunity for improvement, and the keenness with which they followed their daily lessons. Some of them were so untrained as to find great difficulty in following the word of command during drill, but these, who were painfully conscious of their defects, made rapid progress even in a week’s time. Summer Schools like that of Benton Harbour may give real help to the ill-prepared and untrained country teachers, in increasing their knowledge, and widening their interests. They offer advantages to those who have no opportunity for training, but their conditions are such as to prevent their becoming an adequate substitute for it. Indeed, their very existence acknowledges the fact that country teachers have no opportunities for preparation, and in itself sanctions a certain amount of superficiality.
The principal object of Colonel Parker’s Summer School, held in previous years at Chautauqua, New York, but this year at Englewood, Chicago, is to stimulate teachers of all kinds, and to suggest lines of work to be developed by them during the year. Attracted by the name and work of Colonel Parker, more than 200 teachers, superintendents of schools, and persons interested in education, came from nearly all the States of the Union to attend the Summer School at Englewood. Most of the ordinary school staff of the Cook County Normal School at Englewood acted as teachers in the Summer School, and Colonel Parker himself gave daily lectures in psychology. Daily lessons were also given in the teaching of science, language, and reading, “number” or arithmetic, music, drawing, and also in voice culture, Sloyd, physical culture, blackboard drawing, and other subjects advantageous to the teacher. The methods of teaching taught in the Normal School at Englewood were explained and exemplified in the Summer School, and Kindergarten and primary classes attached to the Normal School were taught during the weeks in which the Summer School was held, in order to show the practical application of the methods discussed. The students selected their courses of study. All, however, were expected to attend the psychology lectures. The classes in methods of teaching science, methods of laboratory work, methods of teaching language and reading, and methods of teaching “number” or arithmetic, were the most largely attended. Very keen interest was also taken in the blackboard drawing.
The work in methods of science was carried on by lectures, laboratory work by students, and field work. An important feature of the science lectures was the attention paid to methods of meteorological observation. Blank charts, to show the daily range and variation of temperature and air-pressure, were filled in by the students; United States Weather Bureau maps were studied; the origin and course of storms in the United States were followed. The relation of science to other subjects, number, reading, modelling, painting, drawing, writing, language, was brought out in the lectures, all the instruction being such as to suggest methods of actually dealing with the subjects before a class of children. The laboratory work was especially suggestive. The Summer School pupils did individual experimental work, and had the same instruction and treatment as a class of children would have had. The practical science course for the Summer School was:
| (i.) | Making a magnetic needle. |
| (ii.) | Heat. Conductivity of Metals. |
| (iii.) | ” Expansion of Metals. |
| (iv.) | ” Determination of boiling-point of fresh and salt-water. |
| (v.) | ” Expansion of liquids and air. |
| (vi.) | ” Chemical change. |
| (vii.) | Pressure of air. Pump and syphon. |
| (viii.) | Mechanical constituents of soil (1). |
| (ix.) | ” ” ” (2). |
| (x.) | Physical properties of soils (1). |
| (xi.) | ” ” ” (2). |
| (xii.) | Mineral constituents of soils (1). |
| (xiii.) | ” ” ” (2). |
| (xiv.) | Transpiration of plants. |
| (xv.) | Specific gravity of minerals. |
Field excursions were made weekly, and methods of conducting children’s field excursions were suggested and discussed.
The instruction in blackboard drawing, as illustrating geographical forms, was excellent. In all cases, the students worked on paper with charcoal, at the same time as the teacher drew on the wall slate. After making a sketch, the teacher erased her work at once, in order to secure rapidity in those who were copying. The members of the class then distributed themselves round the room at various parts of the wall slate, and were required to reproduce on the wall slate the drawing they had just made, the teacher meanwhile giving individual help and criticising. The subjects for blackboard drawing for the fifteen lessons of the course were:
(a) Illustrations to show how Blackboard Drawing can be used.
(b) Hills, valleys, mountains, plateaus.
(c) River-basins, waterfalls, lakes, deltas.
(d) Erosion, cliffs, cañons, terraces, gorges.
(e) Mountains, ranges, parallel, etc.
(f) Continent of N. America. Esquimaux huts; Indian wigwams; logging camps.
(g) United States. Cotton fields, rice swamps, sand bars.
(h) Mexico. Central America. Cacti; ruins.
(i) S. America. Fiord coasts, volcanoes; tropical forests.
(j) Africa. Deserts, sand-dunes, oases, canals.
(k) Abyssinian Highlands: Nile Basin, pyramids, palms.
(l) Australia Islands, coral, volcanoes.
(m) Eurasia; plateaus of Thibet and Gobi.
(n) India; Spain; Italy; banyan trees.
(o) Norway and Sweden; glaciers, icebergs.