School Credit for Home Work

by L. R. Alderman

STELLA AND SADIE

Through ignorance ye did it.—Acts III, 17.

"Let the school go on just as it has. What business is it of the school to meddle with the home work? Of course most children do certain chores at home, but why confuse the work of the home with the work of the school?"

Have you heard this speech? I have heard it several times. Does justice demand that we know what pupils do outside of school? Must the teacher know home conditions in order to teach efficiently? I have in mind a true story that answers these questions and shows the injustice of teaching children when one knows little or nothing of their home life. I am sure most teachers have had similar experiences.

In a certain schoolroom in a certain town I noticed one day two girls in the same class sitting near each other. The contrast between them was so great that I became interested in them, and found out something of their history and circumstances. Stella, the younger one, eleven years old, was a perfect picture of rosy health. Her brown hair was beautiful and most becomingly arranged. Many women would have been delighted to wear such furs as she put on at the noon recess. Well dressed and well nourished, she had the look of one much loved at school and at home, one to whom life was all happiness.

Stella is the only child of wealthy and doting parents. If we should follow her home we should find a well-kept modern house, and we should see that the mother who greets her at the door is just such a mother as we should expect for such a girl. While the evening meal is being prepared, her mother sits beside her at the piano, and helps with her practice, and when the father comes in, the three sing together until dinner is announced. After dinner her mother helps her with her Least Common Multiple and Greatest Common Divisor. They all discuss her composition and then her mother asks her to read aloud, and reads to her. Promptly at nine o'clock she goes to bed in just the kind of room a little girl loves. The windows are opened to the proper width, the heat is turned off, she is kissed good-night, and is told, "Mother loves you, and Father will come in and kiss you when he comes home."

In the morning at seven o'clock she is called by a very gentle voice, and told it is time for Mother's angel to leave her dreams. Her mother helps her dress, and brushes and braids her hair. "What will Father's sweetheart have for breakfast this morning?" She will have grape-fruit and a poached egg on toast. After some fitting by the seamstress for a new dress to be added to her already full wardrobe, she is thoroughly inspected and is ready for school. She is given some flowers for the teacher, and is accompanied part way by her mother. She is early at school, her teacher kisses her, pats her cheeks, and Stella is ready for the lessons, the lessons her mother helped her with the evening before. There she is, happy, radiant!

Now let us go home with the other girl. Sadie is thirteen, but she looks much older notwithstanding her frail little figure. Did I say home? Be the judge. A few years ago her father and her aunt ran away together, leaving the mother with Sadie and two younger children. The broken-spirited mother died after the desertion, and the father and aunt returned, were married, and took possession of the house and the three children. They now have a baby a year old. The family live in a tumbledown house at the edge of the city. On entering the house Sadie receives no greeting from her stepmother-aunt, who is sitting by a dirty window reading. The child knows what work there is to do, and goes at it sullenly. After the meal, at which she scarcely has time to sit down, she has to do up the work, and then is sent on an errand. When she returns it is nine o'clock and she is hardly able to keep her eyes open. The Least Common Multiple and the Greatest Common Divisor are like Greek to her. After she has tried to study a few minutes, her stepmother disturbs her by throwing her brother's stockings into her lap to be mended. When this task is completed, and the potatoes are peeled for breakfast, she goes upstairs. She tenderly draws the covers about her sleeping brother and creeps into bed beside her little sister. Though she is very weary, her starved soul is comforted as she cuddles and kisses her sister before she drops to sleep.

In the night she awakens, and thinking Harry is again uncovered she slips over to his bed, like a little mother, and again adjusts the bedclothes. The baby awakens at five o'clock, and Sadie is called and told to make a fire and warm the milk. She then gets breakfast, does the kitchen work, spreads up the beds, sews a button on her brother's coat, braids her sister's hair, and is late at school.

She came in a few minutes late the morning I visited her room. The class was trying to make a record for punctuality, and had tied another room for first place until this morning when Sadie's lateness set them behind. The teacher was provoked and reproved Sadie. The pupils showed their scorn in many ways and said she was the cause of all but three of the tardy marks of the term. The teacher knew that the principal would ask her why she did not improve her tardy record. The pupils knew that their chances for a half-holiday were spoiled as long as "that Sadie Johnson" was in the room.