The Elementary School of the University of Missouri, at Columbia, under the direction of Prof. J.L. Meriam, has much in common with Mrs. Johnson’s school at Fairhope. In its fundamental idea, that education shall follow the natural development of the child, it is identical, but its actual organization and operation are sufficiently different to make a description of it suggestive. In common with most educational reformers, Professor Meriam believes the schools of the past have been too much concerned with teaching children adult facts. In attempting to systematize and standardize, the curriculum has ignored the needs of the individual child. He believes that the work and play of the school should be children’s work and play; that the children should enjoy school. The life there should be like, only better than, the life of the children outside the school; better because they are helped to know how to play and work correctly and to do it with other children.

“Do children remember how they learned to talk? No, but their parents remember for them. Yet most of us, both children and adults, remember how we struggled in learning to read and write at school. We learned to talk simply by talking when we were in need or had something to say. We learned to say, ‘Please, Mamma, give me a drink,’ when we wanted a drink. We did not practice on such words at nine o’clock each morning. The pupils in the University Elementary School learn to read, to write, to draw, and to do other things, just when they need to do so. The pupils do in this school about what they would do at home, but they learn to do it better. They work and play. At home they are very active most of the time doing many things; and so they are in this school.”

What would these children naturally be doing if there were no school? On the answer to this question Professor Meriam has based his curriculum, which contains but one subject that appears on the ordinary program; namely, handwork. They would, he says, be playing outdoors, exercising their bodies by running, jumping, or throwing; they would be talking together in groups, discussing what they had seen or heard; they would be making things to use in their play: boats, bean bags, dolls, hammocks, or dresses; if they live in the country they would be watching animals or plants, making a garden or trying to fish. Every one recognizes that the child develops quite as much through such activities as through what he learns in school, and that what he learns out of school is much more apt to become a part of his working knowledge, because it is entirely pleasurable and he recognizes the immediate use of it. Again, these occupations are all closely connected with the business of living; and we send our children to school to learn this. What, then, could be more natural than making the school’s curriculum of such material? This is what Professor Meriam does. The day is divided into four periods, which are devoted to the following elements: play, stories, observation, and handwork. For the younger children the work is drawn almost entirely from the community in which they live; they spend their time finding out more about the things they are already familiar with. As they grow older their interest naturally reaches out to remoter things and to the processes and reasons back of things; and they begin to study history, geography, and science.

The time of the first three grades is divided in this way: From 9 to 10:30, observation; 10:30 to 11, physical exercises; from 11 to 12, play; 1:30 to 3, stories; and 3 to 4, handwork.

The observation period is devoted to the study of one topic, and this topic may take only a single morning or it may take several weeks. While there is a general plan for the year’s work, if the children bring up anything which seems of importance to them and which fits in, the program is laid aside and the teacher helps the pupils in their study of their own problem. This might be true of any of the studies of the day; the program is flexible, the school aims to meet the individual needs of the child and the group. The observation periods of the first three grades are devoted to a study of flowers, trees, and fruits; birds and animals, of the weather and the changing seasons, of holidays, of the town grocery store, or the neighborhood dwellings, and the clothing that the children see for sale in the stores. The pupils learn to read and write and figure only as they feel the need of it to enlarge their work. The nature work is taught as much as possible out of doors; the children take walks with the teacher and talk about the trees, plants, and animals they meet on their way; they gather tadpoles and fish for the school aquarium and pick out a tree to watch and keep a record of for the whole year. Their study of the weather also lasts through the whole year; they watch the changing seasons, what things look like in the fall and what happens as winter begins, what the plants and animals do in winter, etc. In this way they watch the whole cycle of the year, and learn unconsciously the relation between their own climate and the vegetation and animal life about them.

The study of their own food, shelter, and clothing is concentrated into a consecutive period, and as interest and time dictate it is added to by a study of some phases of local life that are not concerned with the actual necessities of life. They learn about their neighbors’ recreations and pleasures by studying the jewelry store and the circus, or the community interests of their parents by studying the local fire department and post-office.

The method of study is the same for all work. First, with help from the teacher the children tell all they know about the subject they are beginning to study; if it is food, each child has an opportunity to say anything he can think of about it; what his own family eats, where the food comes from, how it is taken care of, what he has noticed in the grocery stores, etc. Then the whole class with the teacher make a visit to the grocery store, spend perhaps all the morning there, each child trying to see how much he can find out for himself. Before they start the teacher has called their attention to the fact that the things are sold by the quart, etc., for the subject of weights and measures seems to be of absorbing interest to the children when approached from this side. Some first grade children have proved to be remarkably keen detectives in noticing the grocer’s innumerable devices for making quantities look greater than they are. The pupils are also encouraged to note and compare prices, and to bring food budgets from home whenever their parents are willing. When they return to their classroom they again discuss what they have seen, and those who can write make a list with prices of all the articles which they can remember, or write an account of their visit, which is dictated by the teacher from the oral accounts the children themselves have given of it.

The pupils who cannot read will draw a picture of the grocery store or perhaps have a reading lesson in the catalogue the grocer has given them. Later they will study the way the grocer delivers his goods to his patrons, and in a very general way where the things come from. They will bring grocers’ bills from home, compare them, add them up, and discuss the question of economical and nutritious food. Perhaps they will do the same thing with the milk and bakery business, before moving on to the question of the houses in the neighborhood. This and the clothing and recreation of the town will be studied in the same way. Later the class will visit the fire department and the post-office and find out what each is for and how they are conducted. This and the study of local amusements usually come in the third grade. The opportunity for the constant use of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and for drill in the correct use of spoken English, is obvious. Professor Meriam is insistent upon the fact that this study of the community in which the child lives is made for the educational value of the work itself to the pupil, never as a mere cloak for the teaching of “the three R’s,” which must be done only as it contributes directly to the work the children are doing.

The period devoted to games by the first three grades is of the same educational value. The children are exercising their bodies, learning to control them and to make skillful motions aimed at some immediate result. Much variety and liberty is allowed in this work, and the teacher is only an observer. Most of the games the children play are competitive, for they have found that the element of skill and chance is what the pupils need to make them work hard at the games. Bean bags and nine pins are favorites; any game, in fact, where they can keep score; the teacher acts as scorekeeper for the little children, and when the game is over they copy the score in a folder to refer to and see how they progress. The better they play, the more they enjoy the game; so they watch the best player, studying how he moves and stands, and make drawings. The teacher also writes on the board some of the things the pupils say as they play, and at the end of the game they find a reading lesson which they have made themselves and which gives an account of their game; in copying this into their folders they have a writing lesson. The children are allowed to talk and laugh as much as they please while they are playing, and this is an English lesson. Great variety is introduced into the games so as to encourage the pupils to talk freely, and added stimulus is given by using interesting things to play with, bright colored balls, dolls, and gaily painted “roly-polys.” The new words and phrases the children use are written down in the daily account of the game, and in this way their vocabulary is enlarged in a natural way.

The hour devoted to stories is no more a reading and writing lesson than all the rest of the day’s work. Children immensely enjoy good stories, therefore they ought to be given plenty of opportunity to become acquainted with them. During this period, the teacher and the children tell stories to each other; not stories they have studied from their primers, but stories that they already know, that they have listened to, or read because they enjoyed them. Every child likes to be listened to, and they soon discover they must tell their story well or they will get no audience. Some stories they tell by acting them out, others by drawing. Soon they want to learn a new group of stories, and then, quite naturally, they go to the school library, pick out a story book and read. It has been found that the first grade pupils read from twelve to thirty books during the year; the second grade pupils from twenty-five to fifty. In this way they learn to read, to read good books—for there is nothing else in the library—and to read them well, for they always have the desire to find a story to tell to their class, or one that they can act. Appreciation of good literature begins very early in this way, or rather, it is never lost. Very small children always enjoy most the best stories—Mother Goose, Hans Andersen, or Kipling’s “Just So Stories.” The dislike of books gained in school turns children from literature to trash. But if children are allowed and encouraged to hear, and read, and act out these stories in school just as they would at home—that is, for the sake of the fun there is in it—they will keep their good taste and enjoyment of good books. Songs, says Professor Meriam, are another sort of story, and little children sing for the fun of it, for the story of the song; so the singing at this school is part of the story work, and the children work and learn to sing better, in order to increase their enjoyment.

Children are always clamoring to “make something.” Professor Meriam takes this fact as sufficient grounds for making handwork a regular part of the curriculum and having it occupy an hour a day, a period which usually seems so short to the pupils that they take their work home. The youngest children, boys and girls alike, go into the carpenter shop and learn to handle tools and to make things: furniture for their dolls, a boat, or some present to take home. Weaving and sewing interest both boys and girls alike and give scope to the young child for beauty and utility, so they do a lot of it. The youngest begin usually with dolls’ hammocks; then they learn to do coarse cross-stitching and crocheting. An entire class, especially among the youngest children, usually make the same thing at the same time, but they may suggest what they want to make, and the older children are allowed a great deal of liberty. The work naturally increases in variety and complexity as the pupils grow older, and as they acquire skill in the handling of tools. Some of the fifth and sixth grade boys have made excellent pieces of furniture which are in constant use in the school. The handwork furnishes another opportunity for drawing and color work, in the making of drawings for patterns.

With the fourth grade there is a marked shift in the work, due to the widening interests that are coming to the child. The day is divided then into three periods, which are devoted to industries, stories, and handwork. Organized games no longer appeal to the pupils; they want their play outdoors, or in the freedom of a big gymnasium, where they can play rougher, noisier games, and they are big enough to keep their own scores in their heads. The “industries” period takes the place of the “observation” of the younger children, and continues the same sort of work. The child has learned the meaning of the immediate objects he sees about him, their relation to himself and his friends, and he is ready to go on and enlarge this knowledge so as to take in the things he cannot see, processes and reasons, and relations that embrace the whole community, or more communities, and finally the whole world.

In the same way that the younger children study their immediate environment, the fourth grade studies the industries that go on in their own neighborhood: the shoe factory, the flour mill, the work in the wheat and corn fields. They go on excursions to the factory and farm, and their work in the classroom is based on what they see on their trips. Their writing and composition are the stories of their trips, which they write; their reading, the books that tell about farming or shoemaking; their arithmetic the practical problems they find the farmer or foreman doing; all done so that it will contribute to the pupils’ understanding of the industry he is studying. Geography too comes from these trips. It answers the questions: Why do they grow wheat? Where will it grow best in the neighborhood and why? etc. This school happens to be situated in a small town where the industries are chiefly agricultural, but obviously such a plan could easily be adapted to any community by substituting the industries that are found in the immediate neighborhood.

In the fifth and sixth years the study of industries is continued, but the scope is extended to include the principal industries of the world. Here, of course, pupils must learn to substitute more and more the printed page for their former excursions. This includes drill in reading, writing, and mathematics, related to earlier studies, and also more and more geography. The use of the library becomes of great importance, for the pupils are not given one text-book from which they study and recite. Work in geography begins with this question: What becomes of the things made in this town, which we do not use up? The next step is: Where else are these same things made, and are they made in the same way? What else is made in that place and how is it done? Then, where and how are the things made that we get from elsewhere? No one text-book could suffice for this work, and if it did it would contradict the idea of the school that the children should learn by investigation. They must find for themselves from among the books in the library the ones that tell about the particular industry they are studying. Every child does not read the same book, and as far as possible each pupil makes some contribution to the discussion. Just as in the lower grades, the older pupils all make folders where they keep their descriptions of the industries and illustrations of machines and processes.

In the seventh and highest grade in the school, the study of industries is continued as history; that is, the history of the industries connected with clothing, feeding, and housing is taken up. The pupils study the history of shelter from the first beginnings with a cave or a brush thicket, through the tents of the wandering tribes and the Greek and Roman house, to the steel skyscraper of to-day. They study the history of agriculture and learn to understand the development of the steam reaper and thresher from the wooden stick of the savage. The study of the industries in these four higher grades includes a study of the institutions of government. The fourth grade studies the local post-office, in the fifth and sixth they study the mail system of the United States, and then how letters are carried to all parts of the world. The seventh grade studies the history of some of these institutions. Part of their time during the past year was devoted to finding out how the different peoples of the world have fought their battles and organized their armies, first by means of reading and then by discussing what they had read. Each pupil kept a record of this work, writing a short paper on the army of each country he studied and illustrating it as he cared to.

The story period of the four highest grades continues the work begun in the lower grades. Music and art become more and more concentrated into it. The children continue reading and discussing what they have read. Each pupil keeps a record of the books he reads with a short account of the story and reasons why he liked it, and these records are kept on a shelf in the library where any other pupil can consult them for help in his choice of books. Even in high school, Professor Meriam does not believe in teaching composition for its own sake, nor literature by the usual method of analysis. All the work of the school is a constant drill in English, and by helping the pupils to use and write good English during every school hour, more is accomplished than by concentrating the work into one hour of formal drill.

The teaching of French and German is also considered part of story work. It is a study the pupils take for the pleasure they get from talking and reading another language; for the sake of the literature they will be able to read. For this reason it finds its place in the curriculum among the things that are purely cultural: for recreation and pleasure. The studies that come under the title of “stories” are the only ones where homework is given. The children come to school to do their work, and it is not fair to ask them to do this same work at home as well. They should look forward to school as a pleasure, if they are to get the utmost benefit out of it, but if the doing of set tasks becomes associated with school work, the pupil’s interest in his work in school is bound to diminish. If, however, some of the school work is regarded as appropriate to leisure and recreation, it is natural that the children should keep on with it out of school hours, in their homes.

The school has been working with this program for eight years, and has about 120 pupils. The school building has few rooms and these are connected with large folding doors. At least two and usually three grades work in the same room, and the pupils are allowed freedom to move about and talk to each other as long as they do not disturb their classmates. One teacher takes charge of an entire room, about thirty-five children, divided into several groups, each doing a different thing. Individual teachers in some of the neighboring country public schools have also followed the program through one grade and have found that the pupils were all ready for promotion at the end of the year and that they did their work in the next grade with as much ease as if they had followed the usual formal drill. Records are being kept of the graduates of the elementary school. Most of them go into the high school of the university, where there is every opportunity to watch them closely. They find no unusual difficulty in keeping up with the regular college preparatory work, and their marks and the age at which they enter college indicate that their elementary training has given them some advantages over the public school pupils in ability to do the hard formal studying.

Professor Meriam is also director of the high school, but has not as yet changed the regular college preparatory curriculum, except in the English. He expects to do so, however, and believes an equally radical reorganization of the work will have beneficial results. In the high school, English is not taught at all as a separate study, but work on it is continued along the same lines followed in the elementary school. A study of a certain number of graduates from the university schools and an equal number from the town high school, has indicated that the pupils who have received none of the usual training in English during their high school course do better work in their English courses in college than those who have followed the regular routine.

Of course, judging an educational experiment by the pupil’s ability to “keep up” with the system the experiment is trying to improve, is of very little value. The purpose of the experiment is not to devise a method by which the teacher can teach more to the child in the same length of time, or even prepare him more pleasantly for his college course. It is rather to give the child an education which will make him a better, happier, more efficient human being, by showing him what his capabilities are and how he can exercise them, both materially and socially, in the world he finds about him. If, while a school is still learning how best to do this for its pupils, it can at the same time give them all they would have gained in a more conventional school, we can be sure there has been no loss. Any manual skill or bodily strength that their schooling has given them, or any enjoyment of the tasks of their daily life and the best that art and literature has to offer, are further definite gains that can be immediately seen and measured. All contribute to the larger aim, but the lives of all the pupils will furnish the only real test of the success or failure of any educational experiment that aims to help the whole of society by helping the whole individual.