The Rolling Prairie community mentioned above, too, benefited from a co-operative "County Project" work undertaken in 1913-14, under the supervision of Purdue University. A course given during the year in the rural schools was continued during the summer, open to all children over ten and required of graduates from the eighth grade. The County Superintendent of Schools, the County Agent under the university (States Relations Service) and County Board of Trustees (La Porte County) sent teachers into all parts of the county teaching the boys farming, stock raising, and gardening, and the girls canning, sewing, bread making, cooking vegetables, and laundry work, or if they preferred, gardening. The teacher gave an hour and a half every ten days at the home of each child.
At the end of the summer there were exhibits and prizes in the shape of visits to the state fair, to the university, to Washington, or to the stock show in Chicago. The Polish children who took prizes and who went to the university (some of them had never been on a train) became enthusiastic about going to high school and college, and some are going to high school. The fact that they took prizes interested the whole group, and the experiment affected the agricultural and domestic practices of the community. The sad ending to the story is that the township trustees have never been willing to assume again the expense of the teachers' salaries, but the possibilities in the co-operative method are evident.
The States Relations Service and the work of the Federal Board for Vocational Education are based on the so-called principles of the "grant in aid," which gives promise of both developing and encouraging local initiative and of obtaining "national minima" of skill and efficiency. Certainly the lack of any national body and often the lack of any state machinery with power to encourage local action and with facilities for gathering and comparing data, reduced the rate at which progress is made. For example, the device of the home teacher planned by the California Commission on Immigration and Housing, was only slowly taken over by the education authorities of California.
GOVERNMENT GRANTS IN ENGLAND
The experience of the English Board of Education may be noticed in this connection. Owing to the interest in national vigor aroused by the rejection of recruits during the Boer War, England took steps to provide food for the underfed school children and medical supervision of the health of the school children. This resulted in the accumulation of a great body of evidence showing the need of improvement in the conditions and household management in the homes from which these children came. Both schools for mothers and infant classes have been recognized as appropriate extensions of the work of the education authority, and the national character of the problem has been embodied in provision for the grant in aid.[64]
The conditions on which grants to schools for mothers and infant classes are made, set a standard for those communities desiring help from the central authority, and furnish a basis of judgment as to the work of any local authority. Those conditions are stated as follows:
A school for mothers is primarily an educational institution, providing training and instruction for the mother in the care and management of infants and little children. The imparting of such instruction may include:
(a) Systematic classes.
(b) Home visiting.
(c) Infant consultations.
The provision of specific medical and surgical advice and treatment (if any) should be only incidental.
(d) The Board of Education will pay grants in respect of schools for mothers, as defined in Article II of their Regulations for the year 1914-15, subject to the following qualifications:
(I) That an institution will not be recognized as a school for mothers unless collective instruction by means of systematic classes forms an integral part of its work;
(II) That grant will only be paid in respect of "infant consultations," which are provided for women attending a school for mothers;
(III) That grant will only be paid in respect of expenditure on "home visiting" of children registered at a school for mothers if neither the sanitary authority nor County Council undertake to arrange for such visiting;
(IV) The fact that a school for mothers receives a grant or assistance from a sanitary authority (or a County Council) or its offices will not disqualify it from receiving a grant from the Board of Education.
Thus the institutions included under the title "schools for mothers" have for their main object the reduction of infant sickness and mortality by means of the education of the mothers. They train the mother to keep her baby in good health through a common-sense application of the ordinary laws of hygiene. The training may be given by means of personal advice from doctor or nurse to individual mothers, by home visiting, and by means of collective teaching and systematic classes.[65] It is necessary to distinguish these "schools for mothers," which were educational, from the maternity centers maintained by the Local Government Board, intended to provide prenatal care of expectant mothers.
During the year 1917-18, two hundred and eighty-six such schools for mothers received aid from the central authority. The work of representative schools, as described in the medical officer's report,[66] includes instruction in hygiene, principles of feeding, needlework, and boot repairing.
In the same way the infant classes or nursery schools are to be distinguished both from day nurseries which may, if they comply with stated conditions, receive grants, and from infant consultations.[67] It is interesting to note that these items in the educational program are closely related to the plan under which Mothercraft is taught to (1) the older girls in the public elementary schools, and (2) the girls between fourteen and eighteen in the secondary and continuation schools. Under the stimulus of the possible grant in aid from the central authority and of the supervision and advice of the central authority, this work is developed by the local authority. The day nursery or infant class is made to serve the purpose of training the older girl as well as of training and care of the young child.