CHAPTER X

EXTENSION OF SCHOOL ACTIVITIES

A GENERAL SOCIAL MOVEMENT

It would be a mistake to treat the innovations in the course of study which were discussed in the last chapter as concessions to a narrow demand for mere gain through the better training of workmen. To be sure, there are some who would be willing to curtail the educational opportunity of the common people in order to insure that type of contentment which is supposed to dwell in the mind untrained in higher ideas. But these are fortunately not likely to succeed in their plans. The movement for a better industrial training is part of a larger movement for a broader social and economic life for all. The important fact about the whole movement is that changes within the school parallel a general effort to deal with all the problems of modern life as problems of popular education.

No exhaustive study of educational extension can be undertaken in the short compass of a single chapter. Indeed, there is hardly more than space to enumerate the types of activity which enter into this movement. Confining ourselves, then, to this very modest effort, the following outline will serve as a rough classification of the major phases of the school-extension movement.

First, there are activities of pupils which lie outside the school but are systematized and promoted through the supervision of the school. Second, there are organized efforts to supplement and enlarge school work by adding to the opportunities offered to pupils out of school hours or during vacations. Third, there are continuation courses offered in the schools for adults who have been limited in their educational opportunities. Fourth, there are various forms of educational propaganda through which communities are to be brought to a more satisfactory economic or social status. Fifth, there are legitimate and refined forms of entertainment, some intellectual and some purely social, which are provided at public expense either in the school building or in other meeting places. Some of these social activities are directed toward the cultivation of a direct interest in the schools; some have no special relation to schools. Sixth, there is at present a great movement for the spread of education through correspondence schools.

Following this outline, concrete examples of each type of activity may be briefly described.

CREDIT FOR HOME ACTIVITIES

First, the extension of school supervision is illustrated by the fact that in a township high school the girls who are taking cooking are required to do each day a certain amount of laboratory work in the kitchen at home. This is reported by the parents, and the cooking teacher visits the homes from time to time to inspect the work. Again, in many agricultural schools home gardening is required as a part of the course. Sometimes a school officer is employed to keep up the supervision of this home work during the vacation period. Another series of examples under this heading is to be found in those systems where miscellaneous home activities are credited by the school on the report of parents. The following quotation taken from Superintendent Alderman’s book on home credits shows how far the matter has been carried in some quarters:

Below is the Spokane County plan.

BULLETIN FOR TEACHERS: HOME CREDITS

The following are the rules and reward offered for home work. This work is to be done during the school week. No one is compelled to enter this contest, and the pupil may drop out at any time.

All work must be voluntary on the part of the pupil. Parents are requested not to sign papers for pupils if the work is not voluntarily and cheerfully done.

The rewards for this work are:

One half-holiday each month to the child who has earned one hundred or more home credits, and has not been absent or tardy for the month; also 5 per cent will be added to his final examination. The pupil who earns one hundred or more credits each month but fails in perfect attendance will have the 5 per cent added to his final examination.

In addition, the board of directors may offer a prize to the pupil in each grade who shall have the greatest amount of home credits, and shall be neither absent nor tardy during the term, or from the adoption of these rules.

List of Home Credits

Personal cleanliness 2 Cleaning teeth 1 Cleaning finger nails 1 Practicing music lesson 2 Dressing baby 1 Washing dishes 1 Sweeping floor 1 Making bed 1 Preparing meal 2 Making a cake 1 Making biscuits 1 Churning 2 Scrubbing floor 2 Dusting 1 Blacking stove 1 Darning stockings 1 Delivering papers 2 Retiring before 9 o’clock 1 Feeding and watering chickens 1 Feeding and watering horses 1 Feeding and watering cows 1 Feeding and watering hogs 1 Gathering eggs 1 Cleaning chicken house 1 Going for mail 1 Picking apples 2 Picking potatoes 2 Bringing in wood for to-day 1 Splitting wood for to-day 1 Bringing in water for to-day 1 Grooming horse 1 Milking cow 1 Working in field 2 Going for milk 1

E. G. MCFARLAND, County Superintendent of Schools.

The following statement is made by Superintendent McFarland as to the effect home credits had on attendance in 1913-1914:

We attribute the increase in our attendance this year in the schools of Spokane County, outside the city of Spokane, largely to the Home Credit System and our certificates for perfect attendance. While the enrollment was 108 less than last year, yet our attendance was 16,712 days more. At the present rate of 16 cents per day, the pupils earned for the county, from the State appropriation, nearly $2700 more than last year. With the same enrollment as last year the increase of apportionment would have reached approximately $6000.

The credit slip for the school week provides for a daily record of “chores or work done” from Monday to Friday inclusive. It does not contain a stated list of duties; the blanks are to be filled in by the child. The list of home credits is furnished each district, but the teacher uses her judgment in allowing credit for any chore peculiar to her locality.[47]

In Greeley, Colorado, the high school gives credits for courses taken in the Sunday schools. The teachers, under this plan, must be approved by the school authorities and the work must be graded. In many schools credit is given for music taken at home. Sometimes the results of this instruction are examined, sometimes not. In the latter cases teachers are sometimes approved by the school and their work then accepted without further question.

RELATION OF HOME WORK TO TRADITIONAL SCHOOL WORK

All these examples make it clear that the school organization is being used to systematize activities which without school credits are carried on very irregularly. The supervision of the school is undoubtedly of advantage to the activities. Is the draft made on the supervisory energy of the school legitimate? The answer to this question is, in some cases, undoubtedly no. Thus, if the school is not supplied by the public with supervisory energy beyond that commonly devoted to the routine of ordinary school work, it is difficult to manage without distraction some of these new kinds of credits. Again, if outside activities are allowed to take the place of regular school courses, the dangers become even more apparent. The advocates of the home credit system assert that the drawbacks are slight and offer examples to show that there is no conflict, but rather help for the school work.

A boy in one of the Portland, Oregon, schools had trouble with his spelling, getting a mark of only 4½ on a scale of 10. Soon after home credits were put into use by his teacher he came to her and anxiously inquired if he could help out his spelling grade with a good home record. The teacher graciously assured him that he could. The boy brought in each week one of the very best home record slips, and in some mysterious manner his spelling improved as his hours of work increased. He does not need his home record to help out his spelling grade now, for last month he received more than a passing mark, 7½, in his weak subject. The knowledge that there was help at hand relieved his nervousness, and gave him confidence.[48]

AFTER-SCHOOL CLASSES AND VACATION CLASSES

The second type of extension to be noted is that which adds to the regular school work by giving supervised opportunity outside the ordinary curriculum.

One example is that of a high school which tried the experiment of requiring manual training. The students grumbled a good deal about the course because it was so different from their other work. The course was abandoned. In its place was opened a voluntary class after school hours to which only students who secured a high grade in their regular work were admitted. There was a larger demand for the course than the shop could satisfy.

Vacation schools are often supported by groups of citizens interested in providing for pupils who have to remain in the city during vacation and have no suitable employment or recreation to keep them off the streets. So valuable is this addition to school work that it is very often taken over by the school system.

A great deal of school gardening is being encouraged by finding vacant lots or providing land in unsettled districts. School supervision sometimes cannot be extended to cover this work. This movement has been evolved during the recent campaign for food cultivation and conservation into a general social movement.

Athletics are sometimes organized under school supervision; sometimes only advisory help is furnished by the schools. The playground is opened to pupils after school hours or a special playground is provided. The matter of supervised play is important enough to justify a full discussion in a later chapter.

Some schools are providing moving-picture exhibitions out of hours for the pupils. The experiment has been successfully carried out by charging enough for such entertainments to pay their cost, the school thus furnishing only the place and the organization.

All these examples show that there is an unused margin of time and energy which pupils will use somewhere. Especially in cities it becomes a serious problem to insure wholesome conditions for the use of this surplus. If the pupils need further opportunities and the schools can provide them, it is certainly legitimate to carry out such plans. To be really educational all these activities need supervision. Supervision, of course, means either more expenditure of money to secure additional supervisors or an increased demand on the energies of present school officers. The present provision for instruction and supervision is seldom excessive. Expansion, therefore, ought to be faced as a new demand.

CONTINUATION CLASSES FOR ADULTS

Continuation courses for adults are intended to carry on the schooling of people who for some reason or other have found it necessary to stop ordinary school work. In many cases continuation classes are conducted at night in what is commonly known as night school. Here there are two types of courses, one designed to give training in the conventional academic subjects, the other to give greater efficiency in the practical occupational life of the student. As an example of general courses not connected with industries we may cite the special courses for immigrants which have of late been matters of an especially urgent campaign by the Bureau of Education, as indicated in the following paragraphs from a paper by Mr. Wheaton, the specialist on immigration in the bureau:

Education, however, is the most potent force toward inculcating American ideals and impulses. The English language and a knowledge of the civic forces of the country are indispensable to the alien in adjusting himself to America. Through our common speech comes understanding. Without it the pages of our newspapers are meaningless and ordinary matters of business with Americans must be transacted through the medium of an interpreter. Only by overcoming inability to speak English, by eliminating illiteracy among aliens, and by instilling the ideals, attitudes, and habits of thought of America, can we hope to make real American citizens of the strangers within our gates....

The education of children of immigrants in the day schools has always been considered a primary and essential function of the school system. But the training of adults in English and civics has not been generally so considered. Evening schools, through which only can adults be reached effectively, have usually been regarded merely as adjuncts to the day-school system, and hence are maintained when funds can be spared or eked out. Adequate facilities for the adult are rarely organized and maintained as an organic part of the educational system with a specific appropriation and unified supervision. In fact, education of immigrants has been left too largely to the well-intentioned but sporadic interest and effort of private organizations and individuals. The provision of public facilities may, therefore, be treated at present and for some time to come as a legitimate extension activity for educational systems.

It is with this latter conception in mind that the United States Bureau of Education has for a considerable period been actively engaged in promoting the extension of facilities for the education of immigrants over the compulsory attendance age. Authority to undertake this extensive program is derived from the organic act creating the bureau in 1867 and from various acts of Congress making appropriations for the purpose of promoting industrial and vocational training, the elimination of illiteracy, and the cause of education generally.[49]

The industrial phase of continuation education was noted in the discussions of the last chapter. It remains only to add that the industrial courses for adults have done much to make available for mature workers the kind of training which the school is now beginning to give to children.

Continuation classes are often provided by organizations outside of the schools, such as the Christian associations for young men and women, and labor unions, and through private endowment.

DEMONSTRATIONS AS MEANS OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL IMPROVEMENT

The fourth type of educational activity may be described as educational propaganda. The Federal government, especially through its Department of Agriculture, has promoted scientific farming where there was no initial impulse on the part of farmers to go to school. This work was supported, especially in the Southern States, by the General Education Board. It sometimes took the form of an appeal to the boys and girls as well as to adults. A typical case is set forth in the first report of the General Education Board.

A club consists essentially of a group of boys varying in number from twenty-five to one hundred, and ranging in age from ten to eighteen. Corn and cotton are both cultivated, but corn is preferred: first, because the South needs more corn; secondly, because corn lends itself better to study and selection. As a rule, each member works a plot of one acre. The county superintendent of education is usually in charge....

Driving through Macon County, Alabama, not long ago, two strangers observed, in a large field of ordinary corn, a patch standing out like a miniature skyscraper. They dismounted to interview the owner. A Negro boy approached.

“Is this your corn?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How did you come to grow it?”

“One of Dr. Knapp’s men showed me, sir.”

“Why did you plant it so far apart in the rows?”

“Because, sir, most all that grows comes from the sunshine and the air.”

“When did you plow?”

“Last fall, sir.”

“Why?”

“To make plant food during the winter.”

“Where did you get your fertilizer?”

“From the bottom, sir.”

“How many times did you cultivate?”

“Six times, sir.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s water down next to the clay, and when I don’t plow the sun draws it all away.”

“When did you put in the cowpeas?”

“After the last plowing, sir.”

“What did you do that for?”

“Because the cowpeas get out of the air nitrogen, and put back in the ground about as much as the corn takes out.”

How many valuable lessons had this remote Negro lad learned from doing one job right! But this is not the end of the story. His double crop was worth $52. From his pocket he pulled a dirty little pass-book, the entries in which showed what the crop had cost. Reckoning his own time at ten cents an hour and his father’s mule at a dollar a day, he netted a profit of $30 to the acre. His younger sister, it appeared, had had an equally profitable quarter of an acre in cotton. Three years later both were students at Tuskegee, paying for their education with the money earned as club workers.[50]

Equally impressive examples could be supplied of transformations in homes brought about by demonstrations in cooking, house decoration, and costume design given by teachers of domestic science and household art.

ENTERTAINMENT AS PART OF THE EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM

The problem of providing proper entertainment for people in the city and proper places for the coming together of social groups in country and city communities is one of the serious problems of modern life. The church serves less than it used to the purposes of a meeting place for the community. The schools have been called on to help solve this problem. The extent to which the demand exists is illustrated by the following quotation from the Cleveland survey[51]:

According to the custodians’ reports the total after-class lettings of school accommodations during 1914-15 numbered 3,469. Of these, 462 were for mothers’ club meetings, class dances, pupil society meetings, pay entertainments, bazaars, or some other kind of purely school function and 3,007 were lettings to outside organizations. A large part of the latter consisted of clubs or Sunday-school classes connected with some 27 different churches which, along with two dozen or more specifically named athletic societies, sought the use of school gymnasiums and showers for basketball and similar indoor games. The varied character of the bodies which hired the auditoriums, club and classrooms can best be discovered from a perusal of the following partial but representative list.

GROUPS USING SCHOOL ACCOMMODATIONS

Twentieth Ward Improvement Association East End Chamber of Commerce East End Neighborhood Club Women’s Suffrage Political League Municipal School League Spanish War Veterans Ladies’ Relief Corps Knights of Pythias Lodge Public School Association Garment Workers’ Union Warner Civic Association Social Center Club Teachers’ and Mothers’ Club Western Reserve Dental Club Thespian Dramatic Club South End Choral Society Mendelssohn Choir Boys’ Glee Club D. A. R. Clubs G. A. R. Post Normal Alumni Alumni Club Sanitation Club Civic League Boy Scouts Boy Cadets Camp Fire Girls Y. W. C. A. Mothers’ Club Anti-Fly Campaign Boys’ Chef Club Patrons’ Club Social Club German Club Latin Club Syrian Club

These names show concretely what a wide range of Cleveland’s social elements are nowadays seeking the kind of facilities which a modern school edifice possesses. In the majority of cases these groups were obliged to pay custodians’ fees ranging from 30 cents to $5.00 an evening depending on the size of the quarters used. That fact attests the genuineness of this demand and its vigor is further evidenced by the rapid growth in volume which, as shown in the following table, has practically doubled during the past two years.

GROWTH OF AFTER-SCHOOL USE OF SCHOOL FACILITIES BY NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATIONS

======================================================================= | | |PER CENT |1913-1914 |1914-1915 |INCREASE ————————————————————————————————————————+—————————-+—————————-+———————- Organizations using buildings | 298 | 596 | 100 Total lettings | 1,932 | 3,007 | 56 Fees paid to custodians by organizations|$1,729.91 |$2,813.55 | 62 Aggregate attendance | 120,511 | 276,253 | 129 =======================================================================

ASSOCIATIONS AIMED DIRECTLY AT THE IMPROVEMENT OF SCHOOLS

A social organization which is of special importance to the schools is the parent-teachers’ association, which is coming to be a common adjunct of every school. Such an association often helps the school to secure equipment which it needs, and furnishes a useful avenue for the dissemination of ideas with regard to school policies. Sometimes the school officer finds that the proper relation of the association to school administration needs definition. He then falls back with satisfaction on the words of a recent writer in the _Atlantic_:

Running a school or a class is a technical or expert job. It cannot as a rule be done by an untrained person; and untrained people, seeking to break in, are likely to do more harm than good. The school situation, indeed, resembles the situation in medicine fifty years ago. The practice of medicine at that time was atrocious; but it had to be improved, and it was improved by doctors, not by laymen. I shall not spare the schools; but schools must be improved by schoolmen—and they will be.

We have then reached this point. Intelligent parents wish to have a say in the education of their children. But schools must be conducted by trained persons. The training of these persons is, however, largely antiquated. Are we not deadlocked?

I think not. Parents cannot tell teachers what to do or how to do it. But what they can do is to ask questions. They can, like the man from Missouri, require “to be shown.” At first blush, this may not look like very much. But if my readers will bear with me for a moment, perhaps they will see that the right and the duty of asking “to be shown,” of asking persistently and continuously “Why?” “Why?” gives parents all the leverage they need or can use in making over the education of their children.

Our schools could not be perfect. I won’t even stop to argue that they can all at a bound make themselves much better than they are. Parents cannot possibly make many practicable suggestions by way of improving them. But just because we all know so little, just because schoolmasters are so hampered by tradition and organization, just because parents are so helpless in making practicable suggestions, for these very reasons the complacent following of traditions is the most inexcusable of attitudes. The schools which are now too conventional, too complacent, too free from deep-seated and unhappy doubts, should be tentative, inquiring, investigating, skeptical in their point of view. They will be assisted in becoming tentative, inquiring, skeptical, and experimental if parents will, year after year, make them tell _why_, make them show _why_. For when people are called on to show why, they begin to look into what they are doing, and out of this critical scrutiny will come doubt, invention, and finally something living in place of something long since dead.[52]

CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOLS

This discussion has not included, as perhaps it should, university extension, libraries, rural-community organization, and other agencies. It must, however, make reference to one popular movement which has grown in recent years to proportions that are literally vast. The correspondence schools of this country do an enormous amount of more or less valuable teaching. The qualifying phrase “more or less valuable” is justified by the fact that many of the correspondence schools are purely commercial enterprises and provide a very low grade of courses. The number of such schools, however, shows the demand for education, the evidence in this case being the stronger when we recognize that in many cases the quality of instruction is not such as to encourage the student.

PRINCIPLES REQUIRED TO SYSTEMATIZE EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES

The list of activities which carry education far beyond the limits of the traditional curriculum could be extended. A complete list would include newspapers and magazines with their lessons on health, on food and economic problems. It would include the churches and many social organizations. The purposes of the present exposition have, however, been adequately served if the reader has been impressed by the popular demand for a broad educational program.

EXERCISES AND READINGS

Complications sometimes arise in the matter of credits, not from the fact that they are given within a certain institution but rather from the fact that a second institution to which students go cannot deal with the credits. Suppose that a certain high school gives credit for gardening. Should the college accept the credit toward admission? Is it legitimate to substitute Sunday-school courses for senior English?

What would you want to know about a music teacher before crediting her pupils with a high-school credit in music? How would you find out how much work the music pupil had done? If you think an examination a good method, would you give credit for typewriting to a boy who learned to write outside of school and could pass an examination?

The distinction between an education and school credits is sometimes painfully evident. Describe cases in which the effort to get credits interferes with school work.

When a community is very enthusiastic about social centers, it often asks the board of education to open the schools at night. Should the board charge a fee or give the use of the building without charge? In case the board does not have money enough to furnish the children with playground apparatus, should it give the use of buildings free?

PERRY, C. A. Wider Use of the School Plant. Russell Sage Foundation. This book treats in a comprehensive way of all the different types of outside activity carried on in schools.

The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, September, 1916, Vol. 67, No. 156. Concord, New Hampshire. The number is given over to a symposium in which a number of authors give an account of the outside activities which have in recent years been attached to the school.

FOOTNOTES:

[47] L. R. Alderman, School Credit for Home Work, pp. 89-91. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1915.

[48] L. R. Alderman, School Credit for Home Work, pp. 32-33. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1915.

[49] H. H. Wheaton, “The United States Bureau of Education and the Immigrant.” _The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science_, Vol. LXVII, No. 156 (September, 1916), pp. 273-274.

[50] The General Education Board: An Account of its Activities, 1902-1914, pp. 58, 61-62. New York City, 1915.

[51] Clarence Arthur Perry, Educational Extension, pp. 82-85. Cleveland Education Survey. Published by the Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation, 1916.

[52] Abraham Flexner, “Parents and Schools.” _The Atlantic Monthly_ (July, 1916), pp. 26-27.