And now let us skip one-half the continent and visit the high school at Superior, Nebraska, where a young lady of my acquaintance was a teacher three or four years ago; she writes:
The much-vaunted “discipline” of this school included an iron-clad military regime which forbade pupils ever to run up or down stairs or to cut corners in passing between classes. When classes were dismissed, two teachers were required to stand in the hall to see that nobody cut a corner or took two steps at a time. During general assembly, when the whole school was gathered together, all the teachers were required to be in the auditorium and each was assigned two rows of students to watch during the program. No teacher was allowed to sit down during assembly, as she was expected to be watching her rows and seeing that no students exchanged a remark. The students not unnaturally referred to the school as “the penitentiary,” and while they were still as mice when the superintendent was looking, the place seethed with suppressed revolt. Any sort of meanness that could be done on the sly was a short cut to glory, and teachers were fair game for anybody who could torment them and get away with it.
And now skip the other half of the continent, and read part of a letter from Mrs. Edith Summers Kelley, author of a splendid novel, “Weeds.” Mrs. Kelley describes what is happening to her two children in the schools of San Diego, California:
At the “Junior High” which my little girl, aged eleven, attends, they are given no time to play at all. The children race directly from one classroom to another and have only half an hour for lunch. There is no chance whatever to form individual friendships, for as the twelve hundred race from classroom to classroom they are continually changing roommates and instead of school friendships there is simply a confusion of half familiar faces soon forgotten. My little girl still exchanges letters with the friends she made in school in Imperial Valley. But since she came here she has not made one friend. She could leave the school tomorrow without the slightest regret for it or any person, teacher or pupils in it. This seems to me a most damaging thing to say about a school.
At the “Junior High” they keep strict account of time. If a child has to go to the toilet during a class he or she is given a “detention slip” and has to stay after school the length of time that he was out of the classroom. This sounds like burlesque; but the child tells me that it is the sober truth. Of course they stuff them at both schools with flag saluting and patriotic songs, etc. Among other things they have taken the “Anvil Chorus” from “Il Trovatore” and set to it some didactic-patriotic words. “With peace and union throughout our happy land,” is all that the children remember; but you will agree with me that it is enough.
There is a very strong tendency in both schools to subordinate individual consciousness to group consciousness. Both of my children are strongly individualistic, though differently so, and they resent this. The children are taught they should be “loyal” to their country, still more so to their state and city, and quite belligerently so to their school. They have cheer leaders, school yells and songs, and they hire men to coach the boys in their games so that they can beat the teams of other schools. The aim seems to be not to encourage the individual characteristics of a child but to make them all as nearly as possible alike. My little girl is possessed of insatiable mental curiosity, and yet she hates the school. This being the case, it seems to me the fault must be with the school.
The point for you to get is that all this is training for “democracy.” The teacher in Nebraska just quoted confesses that she was a “misfit,” and explains the reason:
It seemed so perfectly inane to me to try to bring up citizens for a democracy under a system which is an old-style bureaucracy. The school board vents its lust for authority on the superintendent, the superintendent takes it out on the principal, the principal takes it out on the teachers, and the teachers take it out on the classes. The one unforgivable crime seems to be for student, teacher, principal or superintendent to be “disloyal” or “insubordinate” to the upper layers of the hierarchy.
With all the discipline and regimentation, just how much do the pupils succeed in learning? Dean Marshall of the University of Chicago was chairman of the Committee on Correlation of Secondary and Collegiate Education, and he examined the first hundred and fifty freshmen who registered for the School of Commerce and Administration at his university. He found that of these students, 59% had had no modern history, 24% no United States history, 86% no English history, 92% no industrial history, 39% no civics, 72% no economics, 98% no sociology.
And in the courses which they do take, how much do they learn? I think I do not exaggerate in saying that there is general complaint throughout the country that they learn far less than they should. Two illustrations come to me while I am writing. The first is from the San Francisco “Examiner,” November 10, 1923, and I quote it without change: