“The work offered has been somewhat varied,” Mr. Cederstrom explains. “I have not attempted to follow any set course or outline of work made out by some one else who is not familiar with our conditions and needs.”
Where does there exist a more admirable statement of the principle underlying the new education? This man, when given charge of a school plant, deliberately chose to make the school fit the needs of the community upon which the school was dependent for support. Oblivious of tradition he set about remodeling the school in the interest of its constituency.
Sleepy Eye is located in a farming district. Many of the boys who come to the Sleepy Eye School will manage farms when they are grown men, and many of the Sleepy Eye girls will marry farmers and manage them. Here were farmer men and farmer women in the making. What more natural than to organize a Department of Agriculture?
A Department of Agriculture in a school? Yes, truly; and a short winter course for farm boys and girls who could not come the year round, and a school experiment station with school farms for the children, and a live farmers’ institute that met in the school and was fed and cared for by the Department of Domestic Science, and all sorts of courses built up around the needs of the children and of the community.
II Getting the Janitor in Line
As a result of this method of course-making the school janitor found himself on the instruction staff of the school. One day a couple of the short course boys were in the engine-room while the janitor was repairing a defective pipe in the heating plant. The boys lent a hand in the work; and one of them, having a practical turn of mind, suggested that he would like to learn more about pipe-fitting in order to install a water system on the farm at home. The janitor repeated the remark to Mr. Cederstrom, who called the boys out and had a talk with them regarding the possibilities of the plan.
The outlook for the course was not bright. Every instructor in the mechanical department was working on full time. Only one way out remained and that way led to the janitor.
The janitor was a busy man during the day, but his evenings were comparatively free. After some parleying he agreed to give a course in elementary plumbing and steam-fitting on Tuesday and Thursday evenings at seven-thirty. So the boys came to school in the evening, and under the direction of the school janitor learned how to install a water system in their homes. Their work for the year consisted in making a model water system for a house, a barn and the other farm buildings. The materials for this course were picked up from the school’s scrap-heap.
Perhaps some people will not understand the spirit of it—getting the janitor in line to give a course in steam-fitting from the odds and ends that are found on the scrap-heap. Such a proceeding is unconventional in the extreme. But, on the other hand, here were boys who wished to know how they might go back and improve their homes. Who shall say that the imparting of such knowledge is not the business of a real school?