What the Schools Teach and Might Teach

by John Franklin Bobbitt

Finally, courses of study should provide for children of differing natural ability. Extra materials and opportunities should be provided for children of large capacity; and abbreviated courses for those of less than normal ability. In departmentalized grammar grades and junior high schools this can be taken care of rather easily by permitting the brighter pupils to carry more studies than normal, and the backward ones a smaller number than normal. Under the present elementary school organization with classes so large and with so many things for the teachers to do, it is practically impossible to effect such desirable differentiations.

SUMMARY

1. The fundamental social point of view of this discussion of the courses of study of the Cleveland schools is that effective teaching is preparation for adult life through participation in the activities of life.

2. The schools of Cleveland devote far more time to reading than do those of the average city. In too large measure this time is employed in mastering the mechanics of reading and in the analytical study of the manner in which the words are combined in sentences and the sentences in paragraphs. The main object of the reading should be the mastery of the thought rather than the study of the construction. Through it the children should gain life-long habits of exploring, through reading, the great fields of history, industry, applied science, life in other lands, travel, invention, biography, and wholesome fiction. To this end the work should be made more extensive and less intensive. As an indispensable means toward this end the books should be supplied by the schools instead of being purchased by the parents.

3. The teaching of spelling should aim to give the pupils complete mastery over those words which they need to use in writing and it should instil in them the permanent habit of watching their spelling as they write. Drill on lists of isolated words should give way to practice in spelling correctly every word in everything written. The dictionary habit should be cultivated, and every written lesson should be a spelling lesson.

4. The time devoted to language, composition, and grammar is about the same as in the average city. The chief result of the work as done in Cleveland is to enable the pupil to recite well on textbook grammar and to pass examinations in the subject. The work in technical grammar should be continued for the purpose of giving the pupils a foundation acquaintance with forms, terms, relations, and grammatical perspective, but this training need not be so extensive and intensive as at present. The time saved should be given to oral and written expression in connection with the reading of history, geography, industrial studies, civics, sanitation, and the like. Facility and accuracy in oral and written expression are developed through practice rather than through precept. They are perfected through the conscious and unconscious imitation of good models rather than through the advanced study of technical grammar. Only as knowledge is put to work is it really learned or assimilated.

5. Cleveland gives more time to mathematics than does the average city. The content of courses in mathematics is to be determined by human needs. A fundamental need of our scientific age is more accurate quantitative thinking about our vocations, civic problems, taxation, income, insurance, expenditures, public improvements, and the multitude of other public and private problems involving quantities. We need to think accurately and easily in quantities, proportions, forms, and relationships. Arithmetic teaching, like the teaching of penmanship, is for the purpose of providing tools to be used in matters that lie beyond. The present course of study is of superior character, providing for efficient elementary training and dispensing with most of the things of little practical use. The greatest improvement in the work is to be found in its further carrying over into the other fields of school work and in applying it in other classes as well as in the arithmetic class. In the advanced classes mathematics should be differentiated according to the needs of different pupils. Algebra should be more closely related to practical matters and developed in connection with geometry and trigonometry.

6. History receives much less attention in this city than in the average city. The character of the work is really indicated by the last sentence of the eighth-grade history assignment: "The text of our book should be thoroughly mastered." The work is too brief, abstract, and barren to help the pupils toward an understanding of the social, political, economic, and industrial problems with which we are confronted. It should be amply supplemented by a wide range of reading on social welfare topics. This reading should be biographical, anecdotal, thrilling dramas of human achievement, rich with human interest. It should be at every stage on the level with the understanding and degree of maturity of the pupils so that much reading can be covered rapidly.

7. In Cleveland, where there has been an almost unequalled amount of civic discussion and progressive human-welfare effort, the teaching of civics in the public schools receives too little attention. It is recommended that the principals and teachers 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. Not much civics teaching should be attempted in the intermediate grades, but it should be given in the higher grades.

8. A new course of study in geography is now being put into use. The work as laid out in the old manual and as seen in the classrooms has been forbiddingly formal. It has mainly 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. The new course of study recognizes, on the contrary, that the proper end of geographical teaching is rather to stimulate and guide the children toward an inquiring interest as to how the world is made, and the skies above, and the waters round about, and the conditions of nature that limit and determine in a measure the development of mankind. To attain this ideal will require in every school 10 times as adequate provision of geographical reading and geographical material as is now found in the best equipped school.