Berlin has an interesting solution of this problem. They house the gymnasium in a separate building in the yard. In this way the noise and dust which is incident to exercise is removed from the school, and it is possible to give more freedom to the work. In most cases there is a swimming pool in the basement where the pupils are taught to swim. But the chief advantage of the gymnasium’s being in a separate building is that it is thus more accessible to the general public as a free gymnasium and bath at night.
Our public schools and especially our summer schools are greatly hampered by the lack of library facilities. The school in order to be successful must create a love of reading. It cannot do this without books. At present only a small proportion of the children have access to a library, and this is often so distant that little use is made of it. The reason is simple, the library is a strange place and its methods are unknown. If the child, despite this, manifests his desire to draw out books, he must often first get some one to be his security for their return, and this is not always easy for a child of laboring or foreign parentage. But the school may safely trust the child because he is a member of the school and known and responsible, when it would not be at all safe for the public library to give out a book to him.
Parents often have little time or inclination to go to libraries for books, but depend on their children to provide them with reading. If the library were a separate building in the school yard or a part of the school, it would be no task for the children to take out and return as many books as might be desired in the home. The growing use of the school as a social center makes it increasingly important that the branch libraries should be connected with it.
The theaters of Greece and Rome were public institutions. Many of the best theaters of Europe are subsidized. The dramatic form of representation is the one that is nearest to having the experience itself. The socialized theater might undoubtedly be one of the greatest agencies for good that could come into any community.
In the past the expense of the public theater has been almost prohibitive; but to the credit of Thomas A. Edison be it said, that he has brought the theater to every man’s door. Most of our new schools contain auditoriums, and the state and city departments of public instruction will soon be required by public sentiment to furnish educational moving-picture films to every school in the state. With the addition of the theater the success of the school social center and the organization of community life is assured.
Besides these activities which should be connected directly with the school itself, the school is the best dispenser of much of the social betterment work for children. If each school had a camp in the country, it could make a much wiser selection of children to be sent there than any fresh air agency can do. No one child would be sent out successively by half a dozen different societies to the exclusion of the needy but timid child. Judging from a very limited experience it has seemed to me that the children are not at their best in the fresh air camps. Often away from all their friends and acquaintances they are homesick and feel that this trip and this camp have no connection with anything else in their lives.
Besides these great disadvantages under which the present system works, there are corresponding advantages that are lost to the school. With such a camp, there would be an opportunity for nature study and gardening of a most approved kind. Athletics might be so carried on as to supply many of the deficiencies of the school year, and boy scout patrols might be organized for all the older boys. But, best of all, the children would then learn to meet their teachers on a common footing and the tone of the school would be improved.
This extension of the school would not mean for the most part a large increase in expense. Already we are getting the larger playgrounds, the auditoriums, the gymnasiums, and the swimming pools in our new school buildings, but the cities are also building municipal baths and gymnasiums, small playgrounds and public libraries in places that have no relationship to any definite community. It is mostly a question of locating without duplication the facilities that all need in places where they will be accessible to all.
We may well ask ourselves if the school is competent to take these new responsibilities. The answer must be that at present the average school principal is certainly not competent to take charge of these new phases, but that men usually rise soon to new responsibilities or new men appear to take their places. These new relations would bring the school and the home together, would make the school a part of life, would give the pupil a new set of associations with his teachers and with study, and in every way would redound to the good of the school and the community.