CHAPTER XVIII

SELECTED ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEMS

PROGRAMS AND MARKS

The regular and orderly movement of a social group depends on the adoption of a program. The daily program of a school is an indispensable formal device for maintaining that type of solidarity which was discussed in the last chapter. A second formal device of school control is the marking system, under which the pupil’s status is determined and in accordance with which all his relations of an official type are regulated. The marking system may be treated as a conventional plan for distributing social rewards and punishments. Together, the daily program and the marking system are so much more significant than any other devices of social organization that they may properly be selected for special treatment.

THE TOTAL SCHOOL DAY

The arrangement of the daily program involves, first of all, the determination of the total amount of time available in the school day. Reliable information on this matter is at hand for a large number of the smaller cities of the United States, as indicated in the following quotation:

The following statistics show present conditions regarding the length of the school day. Of 1,270 cities reporting, 338 have a school day of from four and a half to five hours; 521, from five to five and a half hours; 411, from five and a half to six hours. Of 1,310 cities reporting, 1,242 have two daily sessions, and 68 but one daily session. The tendency is toward a longer school day, especially in the grammar grades and in the high school. The opinion of most school men is that a high school of two sessions is superior to a high school of one session. With the one-session plan, but little time is available for study periods. It is evident that four recitations, the number generally required, demand more than one or two 45 or 50 minute periods for study. The theory is that with the one-session plan pupils will prepare their lessons at home in the afternoon. The experience of the superintendents who have tried the one-session plan has generally been similar to that of the superintendent of schools at Detroit, Minn., who says:

The one-session plan which I found in vogue in this high school was retained for the present year so that its workings might be studied. It is fine in theory, but a failure in practice. Asking the pupils to be ready for work at 8:30 caused much tardiness. It was impossible for those who came by the bus or train to be on time. Then the fact that the high school had one time schedule and the grades another, while occupying the same building, caused endless confusion. During the afternoon, when students came back only for shop and laboratory work or to consult teachers, there was further annoyance from students passing to and fro through the halls. There was too much idling about the buildings for the good of the grades in session or of the high-school students themselves. Of course, the fine theory was that students would spend the afternoon studying in the quiet and freedom of their homes, but they didn’t. Too many of them roamed the streets and came to class unprepared the next day. The plan also kept the industrial teachers waiting until afternoon before they could begin their work. They were compelled to do it when pupils were tired and nervous. This work ought to be interspersed through the day to relieve the tension of the other work.

One argument advanced in favor of the one-session plan is that many students work their way through school by using the afternoon. The facts are otherwise. This year only three boys have worked afternoons, and possibly the same number of girls.

Next year we shall return to the “long day” and lengthen the time devoted to each subject, so as to give teachers a better chance to teach it thoroughly. Each student will also have a longer time at school to study under the supervision of the principal.[81]

At Gary the eight-hour school day with variations in the program to secure play, shopwork, class work, and entertainment is the ideal toward which the system is working. In some other quarters the reduction of formal school work has been advocated on the assumption that outdoor work and play can be supplied by the home or some other agency enough to fill up the pupil’s waking hours. Whatever the form taken by the discussion, one leading tendency appears everywhere: the child’s work should be organized throughout the day. In most communities this means that the school will be called on to extend its control to most of the hours.

THE CLASS PERIOD

When the length of the school day has been determined, the problem of subdividing the day presents itself. The subdivision must first of all recognize the claims of various subjects. The type of problem which arises at this point was discussed at length in the chapters on the curriculum, and we need not here discuss further the claims of subjects. We turn now to the general problem of class organization which can be formulated in the question, How long can a student profitably try to concentrate his attention on a single form of activity?

PHYSIOLOGICAL FATIGUE

The pupil’s ability to work is determined by certain physiological conditions which should be understood by every teacher. These conditions can be described in a brief study of the physiology of fatigue.

Any animal tissue, as, for example, a muscle, is a storehouse of energy. Through nutrition the muscle tissue is kept in condition to contract. Whenever the muscle contracts, it uses up its own substance; it burns up its tissues to a limited degree. In the process of thus consuming its material the muscle gradually becomes clogged with waste products. It is the business of the circulatory system in a living organism to carry away this waste material and thus free the muscle from the effects of its contraction. The circulatory system also brings new materials in the form of nutrition to restore the depleted tissues. The restoration of the tissue through nutrition is not the demand which is most urgent in the case of a muscle which is called on to contract for a long period of time. Sooner or later the muscle must, indeed, be brought back to its normal state of nutrition, but during actual contraction the most immediate physiological problem is to keep it clear of its own waste products. If these waste products are not removed, they tend to interrupt further contraction by preventing the nerve fiber which enters the muscle from discharging motor impulses into the muscle. If stronger nervous impulses are sent through the nerve fiber, the muscle, even though it is somewhat clogged, will be found in a condition to contract with its original vigor; but if the nervous impulses are not increased, the contractions gradually diminish in intensity. This is a condition of muscular fatigue, and is to be distinguished from exhaustion, which does not set in until the substance of the muscle has been used up to a point which endangers the tissue.

Fatigue is nature’s effort to protect tissues against any possibility of excessive use. Fatigue sets in at a period long before danger to the tissue is at hand. The overcoming of fatigue is dependent in all cases on the power to dispose of waste products. The athlete, for example, becomes a better runner chiefly through a training of his organism to carry away waste products. The untrained individual grows stiff and sore from exercise, not because his muscles are used up, but because his muscles are clogged with waste substances.

This description of muscular fatigue lays the foundation for an understanding of the problem of nervous fatigue. The nerve cells, like the muscles, get clogged by the products of their own action. They then fail to carry nervous impulses freely, and the individual can do his mental or physical work only with excessive effort. Fatigue of nerve cells means that nature has limits of work in these cells. Fortunately, the limit is reached long before exhaustion or other real dangers set in.

CONDITIONS LIKE FATIGUE

Matters are complicated by the fact that physical conditions other than ordinary use produce fatigue-like effects in nerve cells. Excitement of any kind rapidly changes the condition of nerve cells, and sometimes foreign chemical substances get into the blood, as in fever or infection, and produce a condition that is in effect the same as fatigue.

Still further, as a fact of large importance in determining capacity for work, the nerve cells pass each day through a kind of internal cycle of conditions. At certain hours their condition is such that they transmit nervous impulses freely, and work is easy; at other hours work drags because the nerve cells are not prepared to be active; their internal chemical condition is such as to obstruct transmission of impulses. Thus, one is usually very energetic in the middle of the forenoon, but is logy at noon and sleepy at a late hour in the afternoon. Marked individual differences appear, making this statement merely a general statement. Furthermore, personal habits can be changed to some extent through the adoption of new habits of life.

Finally, there are all sorts of pathological conditions which profoundly affect the life and action of nerve cells. Anæmia and malnutrition may render nerve cells utterly incapable of continued action.

PRACTICAL PRECEPTS BASED ON STUDY OF FATIGUE

Enough has been said to make it clear that no simple formula can be applied to a group of pupils when one tries to determine for purposes of the daily program how long their nerve cells can be kept at work on a single task. The wisest course for the teacher to follow is to be alert, and when a class reaches its limit of profitable work to introduce a change. On the other hand, the teacher should be very discriminating and should understand that fatigue is not a dangerous symptom. For example, suppose that the athlete always stopped his exercise just as soon as he began to feel the necessity of sending stronger nervous impulses down to his muscles. He would lose the best results of training, for these results consist in the acquisition of the power to overcome fatigue. So also with the pupil. The acquisition of the power to overcome fatigue is a most important part of the pupil’s training.

Keeping the principles suggested in the foregoing discussion in mind, it is relatively easy to arrive at certain practical rules of program administration.

First, maturity ought to mean greater power of endurance. The older classes should—and usually do—have longer periods of work.

Second, the period should be long enough to stretch the pupil’s powers. Regulation of work within this period should be left to the teacher, and teachers should train themselves to recognize the symptoms of fatigue and to judge when training has gone as far as it can in overcoming fatigue.

Third, there should be variety in the program. The nervous system is made up of many different centers. The variation of occupations brings different centers successively into play and gives to each the opportunity of relaxation which is most wholesome. A long school day with much variety is eminently more rational than a short session of work of a single type concentrated into a few hours.

ADMINISTRATIVE CONSIDERATIONS CONTROLLING LENGTH OF THE CLASS PERIOD

When recommending variations in the program we collide with what may seem at first to be an insuperable difficulty. It is impossible from an administrative point of view to have class exercises of irregular lengths. Imagine what would happen if the mathematics teacher should dismiss his class after a recitation of twenty-seven minutes, and the Latin teacher should hold his for fifty-three minutes. For administrative reasons class periods must be measured by the clock.

This leads to certain absurdities in school organization. For example, in order to regularize credits in high schools a unit of credit has been defined as a certain number of hours of class work. A moment’s consideration makes it perfectly clear that an English class consisting of thirty freshmen will do less intensive work in a forty-minute period than will an advanced senior class of four students in trigonometry. The administrative fiction of uniformity when like credit is given for these two classes is grotesque.

The assignment of a double period to laboratory classes is likewise a concession to administrative convenience rather than a carefully weighed arrangement. It is easier to make up periods in multiples of the standard recitation time. But it is by no means clear that the sciences can profitably use double periods. The internal adjustment of laboratory work needs more careful study than it has received in the past. The laboratory method, as shown in an earlier chapter, is one which has excited great enthusiasm. Many a laboratory assignment which does not fill the time allotted to it is tolerated because of the vague general enthusiasm for the method and the formal arrangement of double periods.

ADJUSTMENT OF WORK WITHIN THE PERIOD

Such examples as these show from a new angle the importance of the movement for supervised study which was described in an earlier chapter. The teacher in charge of the class must ultimately have at hand various devices, some intended to give play to individual differences, some intended to promote social coöperation. Then, while administrative necessity dictates a uniform period for the class exercise, the educational needs of the students can be met by variations in the content and method of instruction.

ADJUSTMENT OF CREDITS

Such a formula as this dictates also the recognition in an administrative way of the differences between the work performed by different students. There has been of late an increasing recognition of the justice of giving pupils different degrees of credit for work which they do in one and the same course. The student who carries a course in algebra with a high grade undoubtedly learns more than the student who does low-grade work in the same class.

THE PROBLEM OF GRADING

The proper distribution of credits opens up the complex problem of grading systems. The grading system is the basis of academic rewards and penalties. Yet it is recognized by pupils and teachers alike to be full of pitfalls. The ordinary system uses letters such as _E_ for excellent, _P_ for poor; or percentage designations such as 100 for perfect, 60 or 75 for just passing; or some other similar symbolism.

The ambiguities in the system arise in part out of the fact that individual teachers have the most divergent notions as to the meaning of each of the symbols.

Let us assume the case of a new teacher who has just come to a given school trying to find out what the other teachers mean by their marks. This teacher will be told that 100 per cent means perfection. But what is perfection in a subject? Is the student perfect when he tells what is in the textbook, or is there a demand for original thinking? Still more doubtful is the meaning of 90 per cent. Does this signify nine tenths of what a student might know, or is it a kind of vague statement meaning that the student is in the upper part of the class?

The new teacher will be very likely at this point, if he is intelligent about marking systems, to ask how many students in a class usually get 100 or 90. This question is based on a conception of the meaning of marks entirely different from that which was referred to in the last paragraph. Marks may refer, and often do refer, not to the degree of perfection in knowledge but to the relative position of the student in his class. Some teachers mark the best pupil 100 and then try to grade the rest from this standard.

EXPERIMENTS WITH GRADING SYSTEMS

Examples could be multiplied indefinitely, showing that there is great vagueness in regard to the meaning of marks. We are, however, more interested in the efforts which are being made to overcome these unsatisfactory conditions.

First, teachers are being informed by comparative diagrams what the relation of their own marking system is to the general average of their colleagues. A few years ago the president of Harvard sent to each member of the faculty a chart showing the curve of distribution, reproduced in Fig. 16, and, superimposed on this, the curve of the individual instructor’s marks. The standard curve was derived by averaging the marks from eight large courses.

Second, the University of Missouri[82] has frankly given up trying to determine whether students are 100 per cent perfect in a subject or only 80 per cent. All students in all classes are arranged in the order of their excellence in their classes. The marks, in other words, are relative. When all the marks of the institution are compiled, there are a few students who are relatively very high, many who are mediocre, and a few who are low. The low ones are dropped, the high ones get honors, and the mediocres get the reward due the average student. On the basis of this kind of a classification the University gives to a student who stands in the uppermost 5 per cent of his class 1.2 credits toward graduation. The student in the next lower 20 per cent gets 1.1 credits. The 50 per cent who are mediocre get the normal credit of 1.0, while the lower ranks are penalized from 0.1 to all credit.

A third effort to improve the situation is being tried in the high school of Kansas City, Kansas.[83] In each classroom is posted a conspicuous chart telling students what they must do to get high grades. One may pass with a _C_ if one does the required work taken up in a sixty-minute combination recitation and study period. If one is to receive _B_, it is required among other virtues that one be sufficiently well prepared to recite without prompting from the teacher. Furthermore, one must do outside work and report on it. The _C_ pupil does his work in the class, but that is not enough for a _B_. The _A_ pupil must fulfill even higher requirements. Each department is allowed to post, in addition to the general statements made for the whole school, special regulations which obtain for the work of that particular department.

This system is a kind of public definition of the marks, and has the great advantage of clearing up in the minds of the students what often seems to them to be an unjust and mysterious scheme.

THE STUDY OF MARKS AS AN INTRODUCTION TO A STUDY OF THE SCHOOL SYSTEM

The study of grading systems has attracted much attention of late among the students of the science of education. It is an excellent subject with which to illustrate scientific methods, because the records being in quantitative form lend themselves to easy and exact statistical comparison.

There is no better body of material for a principal to employ in arousing his teachers to a recognition of the fact that they are factors in a system. Marks are a kind of technical language used in the school system. Their successful use calls for some comprehension of the meaning and problems of the system as a whole.

EXERCISES AND READINGS

Let members of the class make up a school program. Let there be in a certain high school eight teachers, one well qualified in each of the following subjects: English, mathematics, Latin, physics, biology, modern languages, domestic science, and manual arts. There are seven classrooms and a study room. There are 400 students, distributed as follows: 140 freshmen, 110 sophomores, 90 juniors, and 60 seniors. The school is in session from 8.45 A.M. to 12 noon and from 1.30 to 3.30 P.M. Make up a program of classes. Record all the questions that are not answered in the above statement of conditions. Supply answers yourself, recording explicitly the answer which you give in each case. Let the members of the class then compare programs.

What is the difference between such a problem as above defined and the problem of making out a program for an elementary school?

A very good exercise under this chapter is to give a written exercise to the class and then ask the writers to mark each his own paper after the question and its possible answers have been discussed by the class. In like manner let each member of the class mark a certain English composition or a recitation made by some member of the class. Let the members of the class rate the various members of the class in regard to their work. After each of these markings make a general table showing the distribution of grades and note the differences between the different markers.

There is very little written on detailed administrative problems. A very good reading exercise at this point can be made up by referring to Monroe’s “A Cyclopedia of Education” (Macmillan) and requiring the student to find ten strictly administrative topics and ten which have to do with methods. For most of the articles in the “Cyclopedia” reading references are given.

FOOTNOTES:

[81] W. S. Deffenbaugh, “School Administration in the Smaller Cities.” _Bulletin No. 44_, United States Bureau of Education, 1915, pp. 40-41.

[82] Max F. Meyer, “The Administration of College Grades.” _School and Society_, Vol. II, No. 43 (October, 1915), pp. 577-589.

[83] See article by W. A. Bailey, _School Review_, Vol. XXV (May, 1917), pp. 305-321.