The elementary teachers and principals of Cleveland might profitably make such a civic survey as that made in Cincinnati as the method of discovering the topics that should enter into a grammar grade course. The heavy emphasis upon this subject should be reserved for the later grades of the elementary school.
In the high schools, a little is being accomplished. In the academic high schools, those who take the classical course receive no civics whatever. It is not even elective for them. Those who take the scientific or English courses may take civics as a half-year elective. In the technical high schools it is required of all for a half-year. The course is offered only in the senior year, except in the High School of Commerce, where it is offered in the third. As a result of these various circumstances, the majority of students who enter and complete the course in the high schools of Cleveland receive no civic training whatever—not even the inadequate half-year of work that is available for a few.
Whether the deficiencies here pointed out are serious or not depends in large measure upon the character of the other social subjects, such as history and geography. If these are developed in full and concrete ways, they illumine large numbers of our difficult social problems. It is probable that the larger part of the informational portions of civic training should be imparted through these other social subjects. Whether very much of this is actually done at present is doubtful; for the history teaching, as has already been noted, is much underdeveloped, and while somewhat further advanced, geography work is still far from adequate at the time this report is written.
GEOGRAPHY
Geography in Cleveland is given the customary amount of time, though it is distributed over the grades in a somewhat unusual way. It is exceptionally heavy in the intermediate grades and correspondingly light in the grammar grades. As geography, like all other subjects, is more and more humanized and socialized in its reference, much more time will be called for in the last two grammar grades.
TABLE 9.—-TIME GIVEN TO GEOGRAPHY
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| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time|
Grade |———————————————————————-
| Cleveland | 50 cities| Cleveland | 50 cities |
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1 | 0 | 16 | 0.0 | 1.8 |
2 | 0 | 7 | 0.0 | 0.8 |
3 | 28 | 50 | 3.2 | 5.4 |
4 | 101 | 83 | 11.4 | 8.5 |
5 | 125 | 102 | 14.3 | 11.2 |
6 | 125 | 107 | 14.3 | 11.0 |
7 | 57 | 98 | 6.4 | 9.9 |
8 | 57 | 76 | 6.4 | 7.6 |
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Total | 493 | 539 | 7.2 | 7.1 |
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As laid out in the manual now superseded, and as observed in the regular classrooms, the work has been forbiddingly formal. In the main it has consisted of the teacher assigning to the pupils a certain number of paragraphs or pages in the textbook as the next lesson, and then questioning them next day to ascertain how much of this printed material they have remembered and how well. It has not consisted of stimulating and guiding the children toward intelligent inquisitiveness and inquiring interest as to the world, and the skies above, and waters round about, and the conditions of nature that limit and shape the development of mankind.
That the latter is the proper end of geographical teaching is being recognized in developing the new course of study in this subject. Industries, commerce, agriculture, and modes of living are becoming the centers about which geographic thought and experience are gathered. The best work now being done here is thoroughly modern. Unfortunately it is not yet great in amount in even the best of the schools, still less in the majority. But the direction of progress is unmistakable and unquestionably correct.
As in the reading, so in geography, right development of the course of study must depend in large measure upon the material equipment that is at the same time provided. It sounds like a legitimate evasion to say that education is a spiritual process, and that good teachers and willing, obedient, and industrious pupils are about all that is required. As a matter of fact, just as modern business has found it necessary to install one-hundred-dollar typewriters to take the place of the penny quill pens, so must education, to be efficient, develop and employ the elaborate tools needed by new and complex modern conditions, and set aside the tools that were adequate in a simpler age. The proper teaching of geography requires an abundance of reading materials of the type that will permit pupils to enter vividly into the varied experience of all classes of people in all parts of the world. In the supplementary books now furnished the schools, only a beginning has been made. The schools need 10 times as much geographical reading as that now found in the best equipped school.
It would be well to drop the term "supplementary." This reading should be the basic geographic experience, the fundamental instrument of the teaching. All else is supplementary. The textbook then becomes a reference book of maps, charts, summaries, and a treatment for the sake of perspective. Maps, globes, pictures, stereoscopes, stereopticon, moving-picture machine, models, diagrams, and museum materials, are all for the purpose of developing ideas and imagery of details. The reading should become and remain fundamental and central. The quantity required is so great as to make it necessary for the city to furnish the books. While the various other things enumerated are necessary for complete effectiveness, many of them could well wait until the reading materials are sufficiently supplied.