BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

1. JUDD, C. H., and PARKER, S. C. Standardizing State Normal Schools. Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1916, No. 12. Chapter IX contains a description of the policy of progressive state normal schools of organizing differentiated training courses for the teachers of primary grades, intermediate grades, and upper grades.

2. Course of Study in Community Life, History, and Civics in the Elementary School of The University of Chicago. (The University of Chicago, School of Education, price 25 cents.) Also printed in the Elementary School Journal, 1917, Vol. XVII, pp. 397-431, 485-520, 550-575, 627–649. This detailed course of study explains the subject matter and activities illustrated by a number of pictures in this text. Similar courses of study are available in geography and science.

3. Courses of Study of the Speyer School and of the Horace Mann Elementary School. (Teachers College, Columbia University, prices 60 and 80 cents respectively.) These detailed courses of study describe the work in two elementary schools that have had the benefit of excellent professional advice in organizing their teaching. An earlier edition of the Horace Mann course is printed in the Teachers College Record, 1913, Vol. XIV.

CHAPTER II

BROADENING PURPOSES OF ELEMENTARY

SCHOOL TEACHING

Main points to open each chapter. At the beginning of each chapter will be found a brief statement of its main points. This should be read rapidly in order to get a general notion of what is to come. After the chapter is finished, it may be studied as a summary of the chapter.

Main points of the chapter. 1. Turmoil and confusion often result in school systems because the teachers fail to understand the purposes of the classroom activities.

2. Hence a clear understanding of the aims and purposes of the elementary schools of to-day is the starting point for a discussion of methods of teaching.

3.

The elementary schools of to-day train for complete living; their purposes are as broad as life itself.

4. This broad program contrasts strongly with the narrow colonial Puritan elementary schools, which trained children to avoid sin and Satan.

5. The expansion of the elementary school is due largely to three social influences: (a) democratic government, () practical humanitarianism, (c) the industrial revolution growing out of the factory system.

6. The combination of these factors is resulting in happiness of the multitudes being made the end of democratic government and of democratic education.

7. Training for happiness emphasizes health, enjoyment of leisure, good will, and social service as the social aims of the school.

8. In training each boy and each girl to attain these broader social aims, the teacher develops in them valuable information, habits, ideals, and many-sided abiding interests.

Necessary for teachers to understand purposes of school activities. It is highly important that teachers understand the aims, purposes, and values of the activities which they supervise in school. Unless they do understand the purposes of all parts of their teaching, time and energy and public funds will often be wasted on activities that have little value. The possibilities of such waste are illustrated by the following observations.

About 1900 an

Turmoil over purposes of handwork. observer visited a very backward school system in which a new superintendent was trying to introduce many innovations. These innovations had been described to the teachers in their institute week at the opening of the school year, but the teachers had secured little comprehension of their purposes. One of the innovations was handwork. Two fourthgrade rooms were visited in which this new activity was being taught.

Basket factory versus "busy" work. In one of these rooms the teacher was having the children weave wicker baskets. She was very enthusiastic about their work. She said they made baskets at recess and after school, and even worked on them at home. Finished baskets were hanging all around the room, and she proudly showed the observer a closet full of them. The room was a veritable basket factory. The observer asked her if the basket-making had any connection with the other subjects, but she said it did not; basket-making, she considered, thoroughly justified itself.

In the other fourth-grade room just the opposite situation prevailed. The class was divided into two sections. The study section was quietly weaving flexible splints into little mats. At the end of the period they took the mats to pieces and replaced the splints where they belonged. This teacher was also enthusiastic about the new activity; it was so useful as "busy work," she said, to keep the children out of mischief.

Frills versus fundamentals. - Many of the parents, however, did not view the handwork with favor. They complained that the three R's were being sadly neglected in favor of the new "fads and frills." The children, they said, now spent their time at home cutting paper dolls and pasting paper stars instead of studying "the fundamentals." Eventually the turmoil of misunderstanding became so great that the superintendent moved to other fields. Possibly he succeeded there in getting his teachers to understand that the purpose of the handwork was to aid in the study of community life

Story of the picture on opposite page. - Spinning and weaving have always been among the most important of human industries. To understand them is an important factor in understanding human needs and corresponding industrial processes. They may be made clear to children by beginning with the simpler mechanical devices, some of which the children may use themselves. In the picture on the opposite page are grouped illustrative materials and processes used in a second-grade class which was following the course of study in history described on page 135. On the wall is hung a sheepskin, from which the children acquired real ideas of wool in the natural state. At the left are two children who are trying to comb, or card, some wool with a couple of primitive carding-paddles containing pegs, or pins, or thorns. To the right of the old woman is a child trying to twirl a simple spinning device to twist cotton into threads. At the extreme right, a child is weaving a little rug on a lap loom. All the materials, devices, and processes described so far could be provided in a well-equipped public school.

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The central figure in the picture, however, the old Italian woman spinning flax on her own spinning wheel,— could seldom be reproduced even under the most favorable circumstances. She was found" at Hull House, one of Chicago's great social settlements, where many European immigrants congregate and bring their primitive industrial and artistic processes. To see her at work was a valuable educative experience for these children.