Children have needs which the schools are here to supply. Certain of these needs are common to all children, and to that extent all schools must provide similar training. Other needs, varying with the size and character of the community, call for a like variation in the course of study.
CHAPTER IV
PROGRESSIVE NOTES IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION
I The Kindergarten
No single chapter can contain all of the progressive notes that are being sounded in American Elementary Education; yet it is possible, after some arbitrary picking and choosing, to describe a number of the most typical and most successful educational innovations. At the bottom of most up-to-date elementary school systems is the kindergarten. Not so often as it might be, but still frequently, the child begins school work there. The games, the songs, the children’s sports of these kindergarten years, make a joyous entry-way into the grades. In Gary the kindergarten child sees life. The flowers, leaves, grasses, lichens, fruits, butterflies, moths, and birds are usually brought to the classroom. The Gary children go on expeditions to explore nature’s wonderland, besides making excursions to squares, parks, and to the open country. The kindergartners of Cincinnati plant tulip bulbs in the city parks, and visit farms in order to have a chance to meet the farm animals. Singing, visiting, playing, shaping, building, the kindergarten child sees life on many sides. Perhaps, finally, other cities following the lead of Cincinnati will introduce the kindergarten spirit and kindergarten activities into the lower grades where they will clarify an atmosphere, fetid and dank with concepts which to the six-year-old are meaningless abstractions.
II Translating the Three R’s
At best the kindergarten reaches but a few. Even in cities which boast of a system of organized kindergartens, only a small portion of the children attend them. On the other hand, since practically all school children enter the grades, it is on them that an inquiry into elementary education must be focused.
The time has passed when reading, writing, and arithmetic made up the entirety of a satisfactory elementary education. Like the kindergarten, the elementary school must touch life; like the kindergarten, it must provide for child needs. Everywhere schools are turning from the old methods of teaching spelling, multiplication, and syntax to the new methods of teaching children,—yes, and teaching them those things which they need, irrespective of name. Three R’s no longer suffice. The child requires training from the Alpha to the Omega of life.
Compare, for example, the old method of teaching geography with the new. Under the abandoned system, the child began with capes, peninsulas, continents, meridians, trade routes, rivers, boundaries and products. Under the new system, he begins with the town in which he lives. Each schoolroom in Newark, for example, is provided with a large map of the city. In addition to these complete maps, each child is given a series of small maps, each of which centers about a familiar square, store, or public building. Then, from this simple beginning, the child fills in the surrounding streets and buildings. Newark geography begins in the third grade with a description of the school yard and the surroundings of the school lot. After all, what more simple geography could be conceived than the geography that you already know. Borneo and Beloochistan are abstractions except to the most traveled, but what child has not noted the red bricks and ugly iron fences surrounding his own school yard? Charity and geography both begin logically at home.