The regular work of the public school has been supplemented, of late years, by a number of significant innovations, of which the most far-reaching is, perhaps, a medical inspection of schools which involves a thorough physical examination of all school children by experts. By this scheme, the defect of the individual child is corrected, and the danger of widespread contagion or infection in the schoolroom is reduced to a minimum.
Following these physical examinations, the children who are clearly sub-normal are placed in special classes or special schools, where, under the direction of specially fitted teachers, they do any mental work for which they are fitted, in the interims of time between manual activities. Weaving, woodworking, folding and similar employments hold the attention of sub-normal children where intellectual work will not. The special school, freed from the throttling grip of an iron-clad course of study, studies the need of each child, and makes a course of study to fit the need. Although the special school has been used for incorrigibles, its real value rests in its care of the defective child.
Anaemic children and those who show a tubercular tendency are treated in open air schools. In Springfield a special school was constructed. In Providence an old building was employed. In all cases, however, the windows are notable by their absence. The school supplies caps and army blankets, a milk lunch in the middle of the forenoon and the afternoon, and a plain, wholesome dinner at noon. A few months of such treatment works wonders with most of the children. It seems only fair that the sick school child should be treated to fresh air and full nutrition, even though the well child is not so favored.
The open air school has borne fruit, however, in the establishment of numerous open-window classes. Against these classes, there seems to be only one complaint. The children are too lively. Fancy! They get a supply of oxygen sufficient to stimulate them into life during school hours. How tragic this must seem to the teacher who is in the habit of calming the troubled spirits of her class by a generous administration of closed windows and carbon dioxide.
A few cities are attempting to relieve underfeeding by the provision of wholesome school lunches at cost. Buffalo leads in the work, with Chicago, Philadelphia and a number of other cities trailing behind. When you remember that the Chicago School Board reported that in the Chicago schools there were “five thousand children who were habitually hungry,” while “ten thousand others do not have sufficient nourishing food,” you will perhaps agree that the time has come for some action.
Among the liveliest educational movements of the day is that of providing school children with a legitimate occupation and a convenient place to be occupied outside of school hours. Chicago, with an unequaled system of playgrounds, and Philadelphia, with a department devoted to school gardens, are leaders in two fields which promise great things for the future welfare of American city school children.
IX The School and the Community
Not content with doing those needful things involved in the education of children of school age, the school is reaching far out into the community. Night schools came first, as a means of education for those who could not attend school during the daytime. Every progressive city and town has a night school now, and the scholars who come after working hours use the same expensive equipment that is furnished to the regular classes. Machines, cooking apparatus, maps and blackboard all do double duty. In the foreign quarters, particularly, the night schools attract a large following of adults, eager to learn the language and ways of the new land. Though many a one falls asleep over the tasks, who shall say that the spirit is not willing?
Public lectures are being used more and more as a means of public education. There is scarcely an up-to-date city that has not some public lectures connected with its school or library system, while in a center like New York, the Board of Education has established an elaborate organization for the delivery of lectures in public school buildings throughout the city. The lecture topics—widely advertised through the schools and elsewhere—cover every field of thought.
Perhaps the whole movement of the schools to influence the community may be summed up in the phrase, “A wider use of the school plant.” Why should not the schools be open, as they are in Gary, day and evening, too? Why should the mothers and fathers not be organized into “Home and School Leagues,” meeting in the schools as they do on a large scale in Philadelphia? Why should not the social sentiment of a community be crystallized around its schoolhouse, as it has been in Rochester? Is it better to have the children playing in the street in the summer time, or in the school yards and playgrounds, as they do in Minneapolis and St. Paul?