A frequent error of this kind is the practice of making every recitation a language lesson, and interrupting the arithmetic, geography, history, literature, or whatever it may be, by calling the pupil’s attention abruptly to something in his forms of expression, his pronunciation, or to some faulty use of English; thus turning the entire system of school work into a series of grammar exercises and weakening the power of continuous thought on the objective contents of the several branches, by creating a pernicious habit of self-consciousness in the matter of verbal expression. While your Committee would not venture to say that there should not be some degree of attention to the verbal expression in all lessons, it is of the opinion that it should be limited to criticism of the recitation for its want of technical accuracy. The technical words in each branch should be discussed until the pupil is familiar with their full force. The faulty English should be criticised as showing confusion of thought or memory, and should be corrected in this sense. But solecisms of speech should be silently noted by the teacher for discussion in the regular language lesson.
The question of promotion of pupils has occupied from time to time very much attention. Your Committee believes that in many systems of elementary schools there is injury done by too much formality in ascertaining whether the pupils of a given class have completed the work up to a given arbitrarily fixed point, and are ready to take up the next apportionment of the work. In the early days of city school systems, when the office of superintendent was first created, it was thought necessary to divide up the graded course of study into years of work, and to hold stated annual examinations to ascertain how many pupils could be promoted to the next grade or year’s work. All that failed at this examination were set back at the beginning of the year’s work to spend another year in reviewing it. This was to meet the convenience of the superintendent, who, it was said, could not hold examinations to suit the wants of individuals or particular classes. From this arrangement there naturally resulted a great deal of what is called “marking time.” Pupils who had nearly completed the work of the year were placed with pupils who had been till now a year’s interval below them. Discouragement and demoralization at the thought of taking up again a course of lessons learned once before caused many pupils to leave school prematurely.
This evil has been remedied in nearly one-half of the cities by promoting pupils whenever they have completed the work of a grade. The constant tendency of classification to become imperfect by reason of the difference in rates of advancement of the several pupils owing to disparity in ages, degree of maturity, temperament, and health, makes frequenter classification necessary. This is easily accomplished by promoting the few pupils who distance the majority of their classmates into the next class above, separated as it is, or ought to be, by an interval of less than half a year. The bright pupils thus promoted have to struggle to make up the ground covered in the interval between the two classes, but they are nearly always able to accomplish this, and generally will in two years’ time need another promotion from class to class.
The procrustean character of the old city systems has been removed by this device.
There remain for mention some other evils besides bad systems of promotion due to defects of organization. The school buildings are often with superstitious care kept apart exclusively for particular grades of pupils. The central building erected for high school purposes, though only half filled, is not made to relieve the neighboring grammar school, crowded to such a degree that it cannot receive the classes which ought to be promoted from the primary schools. It has happened in such cases that this superstition prevailed so far that the pupils in the primary school building were kept at work on studies already finished, because they could not be transferred to the grammar school.
In all good school systems the pupils take up new work when they have completed the old, and the bright pupils are transferred to higher classes when they have so far distanced their fellows that the amount of work fixed for the average ability of the class does not give them enough to do.
In conclusion, your Committee would state, by way of explanation, that it has been led into many digressions, in illustrating the details of its recommendations in this report, through its desire to make clear the grounds on which it has based its conclusions and through the hope that such details will call out a still more thorough-going discussion of the educational values of branches proposed for elementary schools, and of the methods by which those branches may be successfully taught.
With a view to increase the interest in this subject, your Committee recommends the publication of selected passages from the papers sent in by invited auxiliary committees and by volunteers, many of these containing valuable suggestions not mentioned in this report.
Organization for City School Systems.
BY PRESIDENT ANDREW S. DRAPER.
[This is the report of a sub-committee of the Fifteen, of which President Draper of the University of Illinois is chairman.]