CHAPTER XXXII.

MISCELLANEOUS EDUCATIONAL TOPICS.

CONTENTS-I. Several problems in graded-school management.-II. Education in Hawaii.-III. The Indian problem from an Indian's standpoint.

I. SEVERAL PROBLEMS IN GRADED-SCHOOL MANAGEMENT.1 There is a growing conviction among the more intelligent observers of our graded system of schools, that there are serious defects either in the system itself or in its administration. This conviction is the strongest where the schools have reached the highest degree of system and uniformity-where, in other words, the system, as a system, has attained the highest perfection.

That we may better consider these defects, let us glance at the mechanical features of a system of graded schools-not a real system as actually administered anywhere, but a system ideally perfect as a mechanism.

In the first place, it maps out and prescribes a definite and detailed course of study and instruction, the best that is practicable if not the best theoretically possible. This course is subdivided, and the time for the mastery of each part, as well as the whole, is definitely fixed. The pupils are next divided into grades or classes, corresponding to the subdivisions of the course, and all the pupils of each grade or class are required to pursue the same studies, to the same extent, in the same order, and with the same rate of progress. In other words, the mechanism of the graded system demands absolute uniformity in each grade, and the more nearly this essential condition is realized the more nearly perfect is its mechanical operation.

This view discloses the difficulties which attend the administration of the system. As a mechanism, it demands that pupils of the same grade attend school with regularity, and that they possess equal attainments, equal mental capacity, equal physical vigor, equal home assistance and opportunity, and that they be instructed by teachers possessing equal ability and skill. But this uniformity does not exist. Teachers possess unequal skill and power. Pupils do not enter school at the same age; some attend only a portion of each year; others attend irregularly, and the members of the same class possess unequal ability and have unequal assistance and opportunity. This want of uniformity in conditions makes the mechanical operation of the system imperfect, and hence its tendency is to force uniformity, thus sacrificing its true function as a means of education to its perfect action as a mechanism. This is the inherent tendency of the system when operated as a machine, and hence the great difficulty in administering it is to control this procrustean tendency and secure a necessary degree of uniformity without ignoring or forcibly reducing differences in pupils and teachers.

The foregoing remarks prepare the way for an intelligent consideration of several problems in the management of graded schools.

1 A paper read before the elementary department of the National Educational Association in Detroit, August 4, 1874, by E. E. White, A. M.

I. How can pupils be taught in classes in a graded system without sacrificing their individual powers and wants?

The pupils in graded schools, as we have seen, are divided into classes, and to secure necessary economy these classes are made as large as practicable. The fewer the number of pupils embraced in the system, the fewer must be the number of classes, and as a consequence the greater must be the inequality in the attainments and capacity of the members of each class, and hence the greater the difficulty of the problem now under consideration. If the teacher of a class adapt his instruction and requirements to the maximum capacity of his pupils, the great majority are hurried over their studies and receive a superficial and imperfect training. If he adapt his class work to the minimum capacity of the class, the great majority are held back, and as a consequence not only sacrifice time and opportunity, but fall into careless and indolent habits of study. The remaining course is for the teacher to adapt his class work to the medium or average capacity of his pupils, with such special attention to the more and the less advanced pupils as may meet to some extent their wants. But here comes in the "per cent system," with its demands. That the class, as a whole, may attain a high average per cent, it is necessary that the lowest members of it reach a good standard, and this results in the holding back of the bright and industrious pupils until by iteration and reiteration the dull and indolent may be brought to the required standard. The amount of time and talent thus wasted in some graded schools, is very great. This is not always evident to the teacher, since the brightest pupils, being chained to the dullest, soon learn to keep step, scarcely showing their ability to advance more rapidly. This difficulty is greatly aggravated when classes are promoted en masse from grade to grade, the pupils being thus chained to each other year after year or throughout the course-an efficient process for reducing pupils to the level of mediocrity.

The statement of these difficulties suggests their partial remedy. The brighter and more capable pupils in each class must have the opportunity to work away from the less capable and to step forward into a higher class when the difference between them and their lower classmates becomes too great for a profitable union in the same class. To this end there must be a proper interval between the successive classes, and the reclassification of pupils must be made with corresponding frequency.

Experience alone can determine what this interval should be and the frequency with which pupils should be promoted. It is possible that both of these facts may depend somewhat upon the number of pupils included in a graded system, a much more complete classification being possible in large cities than in small towns. While this may be true, it is believed by many experienced superintendents and other intelligent observers that the universal experience of graded schools condemns the prevalent practice of promoting pupils but once a year, with a year's interval between the classes. This wide interval is a serious obstacle in the way of a needed reclassification of pupils. The more capable pupils can not be transferred to a higher class, since this obliges them to go over the ground of two years in one-a task successfully performed by very few pupils-and the less advanced pupils can not be put back into a lower class without serious loss in time and ambition, if they are not withdrawn from school. It may be well for a few pupils in any system of graded schools to spend an entire year in reviewing the previous year's work, but these exceptional cases are usually the result of an unwise attempt to hold pupils too long together. Large classes of young pupils can not be kept together even for one year without serious loss both to those who are held back and to those who are unduly hurried. What is needed is a system of classification and promotion that shall provide for the breaking of classes at least twice a year, with a transfer of the more advanced pupils and their union with the less

advanced pupils of the next higher class, and also with special transfers of bright pupils from class to class as often as may be necessary, and special provision for pupils deficient in some branch of study.

We are aware that the system of annual promotions has special advantages. It reduces the number of classes in the smaller cities and towns, and it saves labor and trouble, especially when classes are promoted in a body on a minimum standard. It is undoubtedly true that a procrustean system which puts pupils in classes, reduces them to the same capacity, and moves them regularly and evenly forward requires little skill or trouble to run it, but this can not compensate for the serious losses involved. The highest good of pupils ought never to be sacrificed to secure a self-adjusting mechanism and uniformity of results.

II. Another problem in the management of graded schools, to which attention is called, may be thus stated: How to subject the results of school instruction to examination tests and not narrow and groove such instruction.

In a graded system of schools there must necessarily be some uniform basis of classification and promotion, since the object of classifying pupils is to bring those of like attainments into the same classes that they may advance together, and at the same time receive the greatest possible benefit from the instruction imparted. The promotion of pupils on the recommendation of teachers, or by classes without reference to relative attainments, is, as all experience shows, subversive of classification and thoroughness of instruction; and especially is this true in a system of schools comprising several departments or classes of the same grade. Teachers differ widely in skill and efficiency, and, as a general rule, the more superficial the teacher the higher his estimate of the attainments of his pupils. Hence the relative acquirements and standing of pupils must be determined by the application of some uniform test; and the more thorough and comprehensive this test the more complete, other things being equal, will be the resulting classification. Moreover, teachers as a class need the check of test examinations to prevent a too rapid advancement of their pupils. I have seen graded schools in which all proper classification was destroyed by the strife between teachers to advance their pupils into higher books and studies.

But whatever may be true of the necessity or value of test examinations, they are very generally employed in graded schools, and their character largely determines the character of school instruction. If the examination tests are narrow and technical, the instruction will be narrow and technical; if the tests run to figures, the instruction will run to figures; if the tests demand details, they will "emphasize and make imperative all the lumber of the text-books;" if they cover only a part of the studies, the non-test studies will receive little attention. Indeed, it may be stated as a general fact that school instruction is never much wider or better than the tests by which it is measured.

This narrowing and grooving tendency of test examinations is greatly increased when the results are used as a means of comparing the standing of schools and the success of teachers. The principal of the first grammar school in one of the largest cities in the East once said to the writer: "My success as a teacher is measured by the per cent of correct answers my pupils give to the series of questions submitted in the examinations for promotion to the high school. Whatever qualifications these tests call for I must produce or fail. I can not stop to inquire whether my instruction is right or wrong. I must prepare my wares for the market." Few teachers can resist the grooving influence of such a system, and, in spite of it, teach according to their better knowledge and judgment. I have seen blackboards covered with "probable" questions, and classes, meeting before and after school to be crammed with set answers to them, as a preparation for a test examination. I have known classes to memorize the names of all the bones in the human body, hundreds of dates in American history, and scores of the

mechanical processes of mensuration, because these things were known hobbies of the question maker. I have known the instruction of an entire corps of intermediate or grammar-school teachers to be largely concentrated on three or four test studies, to the great neglect of other branches of equal, if not greater, importance. Principals have neglected the lower classes in their schools and given their time and energies for weeks to the special drilling of their first class-the one to be subjected to the comparative test-and pupils have thus been fearfully overtasked.

The difficulties and errors thus pointed out suggest their remedies. We have only time for three or four specifications. The examination tests should be as wide as the approved course of instruction, covering every study and every important exercise. Since this can not be done when the examinations are conducted exclusively in writing, the written tests should be supplemented by oral ones, relating not only to the branches of study, but also to the discipline of the schools, their moral influence and life, the manners inculcated, and the general culture imparted. It is true that this will require time, but are not these things as important as the narrow and technical knowledge usually covered by the written tests?

Again, the questions should be so framed as to test the pupil's knowledge of the subjects taught his comprehension of the leading facts and principles, rather than his familiarity with the details and verbiage of the text-book. They should place training before cramming and culture before technics. It is true that classes thus examined will not reach as high a per cent as they would were the tests confined strictly to the text-books-were every question to fall within the prescribed course of instruction. But the object of a test examination is not to assist pupils in reaching a high per cent, but to determine what they actually know and to indicate what they ought to know. When classes reach an average of £0 to 100 per cent in a test examination, the fact is of itself evidence that the tests were either grooved to a narrow course of instruction, or that the special drilling of the more backward pupils was attended with a great sacrifice of time and opportunity on the part of the other pupils.

Another remedy suggested is that the results of test examinations should not be used to compare schools and teachers. A careful observation of this practice for years has convinced me that such comparisons are generally unjust and mischievous. There is often a marked difference in the intelligence of the different districts in a city, in the number of pupils under instruction, and in other conditions for which the board of education and the public make no allowance. Moreover, these published tables of examination per cents often put a premium on special cramming and false teaching, and sometimes on downright dishonesty. The teacher who ignores higher motives and bends all his energies to secure a high per cent is rewarded, while the teacher who scorns to degrade his high calling to the preparation of "wares for the market" is condemned. When the schools brought into comparison with each other are in the same building and under the same principal, these evils are more readily avoided.

A final suggestion is that the pupil's standing should be the result not of one but of several examinations. The holding of monthly examinations, a practice now quite common in Ohio and the West generally, I believe, is much better than the former practices of annual and term examinations. The reasons are too obvious to require their statement. I will only add that these monthly examinations are often a severe tax on both teachers and pupils. It is simply an outrage to require children to write from four to six hours a day under the severe strain of a test examination. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals should so extend the sphere of its humane efforts as to include some of our public schools on examination days.

III. Another problem in graded school management touches the freedom of the teacher, and may thus be stated: How to subject a corps of teachers to efficient supervision and not reduce them to operatives.

The adoption of a definite course of study with subdivisions corresponding to the number of classes, all following each other in natural order, necessitates the mastery of each of the successive portions as a preparation for the next higher. When the pupils in the lower grades or classes are sufficiently numerous to occupy several schoolrooms under different teachers, the progress and attainments of the several sections of each grade or class must be sufficiently uniform to enable them to come together in the upper grades or classes. This necessitates a degree of uniformity of instruction, and it is just here that the mechanism of the graded system touches its very life, as the experience of too many of the larger cities plainly shows. To secure this uniformity of instruction the course is mapped out in minute details, and the time to be devoted to each part, the order in which the steps are to be taken, and even the methods of teaching, are definitely and authoritatively prescribed. As a result the teacher is not free to teach according to his "conscience and power," but his high office is degraded to the grinding of prescribed grists, in prescribed quantities, and with prescribed fineness-to the turning of the crank of a revolving mechanism.

The supervising principal of a public school in a large city once said to the speaker: "It is idle to ask my teachers to read professional works. They follow the prescribed course of study and look to me for their methods. Their ambition is to do their work precisely as I direct, and they do this without inquiring whether my methods are correct or incorrect. It is enough that I prescribe them." It is possible that this may be an extreme case, but it illustrates the tendency of the system when administered as a mechanism. It seems unnecessary to say that this prescribed uniformity in both the matter and method of instruction is subversive of all true teaching. Carpets may be woven, garments made, and stone carved by pattern, but the unfolding and informing of a human soul is not the work of operatives, following appointed forms and methods. The human soul is not touched by the revolving cogs of mechanical methods. True teaching requires the artist's hand and the artist's spirit. Fruitful methods may be evoked; they can never be imposed. They must bear the impress of the teacher's image, and pulsate with the life which he breathes into them. The vital element in every method of instruction is what the teacher puts into it, and hence the prime fact in every school is the teacher. It is not enough that graded schools go through with the forms of a philosophic course of instruction. The knowledge to be taught may be wisely selected and arranged, the successive steps may follow each other in natural order, and the entire mechanism may be so perfect that the revolving cogs touch each other with beautiful precision; and yet, if the whole be not vitalized by true teaching, the system is a failure as a means of education. The one essential condition of success is the informing, vitalizing spirit of free, earnest teachers; and the more philosophical the system of instruction attempted, the more essential is this condition. A routine of mere book lessons may be conducted by a blind plodder who can turn the crank and tighten the screws, but a system of instruction, having for its grand end the right unfolding and training of the mind and heart, requires the insight, the invention, the skill, the inspiration of the true teacher. We are slow in learning that philosophic methods of teaching are practicable only to those who have some insight into their principles. The oral teaching in our schools is often as deadening as the old text-book drills. Some of the object-lesson teachers out-Herod Herod in mechanical teaching, and if I were obliged to choose between the text-book grinder and the crank turner of prescribed object lessons, I should unhesitatingly take the former, with the assurance that he would have something to grind.