The Building as an Evidence of a Community’s Educational Views

A study of school buildings furnishes in very concrete form evidence of the new spirit which has come into school organization. The old-fashioned school building was copied from the church. In its externals it often showed its antecedents by the tower and steeple, which sometimes housed the bell and sometimes served merely as an ornament. In its interior there was little or no evidence of careful adaptation of the space to its uses. Small windows, high from the floor and narrow in the space admitting light, were scattered along three sides of the room. Across the fourth side of the room was a raised platform for the teacher. The roof was high and made the space below difficult to heat. A stove was the means of heating; it gave out an excess of heat to the immediate neighborhood and proved inadequate for making the remote corners habitable. The seats were narrow benches, often without backs. In the schools of earlier days these benches ran around the room, the pupils facing the wall, to which was fastened a board that served as a desk on which the pupil might write or lay his book. In later schools the benches were arranged in rows, the desk of one row economically furnishing a back for the bench in front. Add to all this a common drinking cup in a pail of water and sanitary arrangements of the most primitive type, and we have a picture of almost complete disregard for human comfort and hygiene. More than this, we see in such a school building the clearest evidence of a conception of education which was limited to the barest rudiments. There was no provision for varied activities in a school building of the older type. Kitchens in which the girls learn to cook, shops for the boys, laboratories for courses in science, playrooms and libraries, to say nothing of swimming pools and baths, were never thought of, because the course of study was limited strictly to the three R’s.

The modern school building is the embodiment of a wholly new conception of education. The building is constructed with the utmost deference to the demands of hygiene. The placing of windows, the means of heating and ventilating, the style and arrangement of seats, have all been considered in every possible detail. When the demands of hygiene have been met, the various needs of the school are studied, and the rooms and equipment are arranged with the fullest possible regard for an enriched course of study. The exterior of the building reflects the interest of the community in Æsthetics. It is commonly surrounded by an ample playground and often has a garden as well. These changes from the barren buildings of earlier days show that education is thought of as related to the common life of children.

Contrasts in Plans of Rural Schools

A number of concrete contrasts will perhaps serve to give the reader who is likely to be familiar only with modern school equipment some idea of the long road that has been traveled in the evolution of the American school system.

A ground plan furnished by a bulletin of the Bureau of Education28 shows (Fig. 6) the old-fashioned one-room school with its small windows and inadequate heating. The light from these windows is badly distributed. The wide wall spaces between windows leave long dark spaces across the room. The fact that there are windows on many sides makes it necessary for someone to face glaring lights on bright days and results in all sorts of cross lights and shadows. The other features of the plan, including the stove, were commented on in an earlier paragraph.

A second ground plan (Fig. 7) shows a well-arranged, simple rural school. The light comes from one side of the room. There is provision for many different activities, and a system of ventilating and heating has been substituted for the stove of former days. The stove is inclosed in a jacket. Into this jacket opens an intake which brings fresh air from outside. A pipe carries the heated air to various parts of the room, insuring its adequate distribution.

The externals of the situation are depicted in Fig. 8.

Contrasts in Urban Elementary Schools

The evolution is even more impressive when it appears in the many-roomed schoolhouses of a city system. The following paragraphs and figures from the Cleveland survey show how complete has been the transformation of a half century:

The type of building erected during the 50’s is well represented by the Alabama School, although this particular building was not completed until 1861. Several buildings of this general type are still in use in the city.... In these early buildings the rooms were large and accommodated enormous numbers of children. Classes ranged from 100 to 200 in each room. There was hardly a square foot of waste space in these buildings. Originally they contained no corridors, no wardrobes, no toilets, no storerooms, no running water, and no heating plants except stoves.29 [Figs. 9 A and 9 B.]

The Empire School, completed in the fall of 1915, represents the most modern type of school architecture. It is entirely fireproof and so constructed that new wings may be added for future extensions without injuring either the utility or the symmetry of the building. In appearance these newest buildings are great improvements over their immediate predecessors and educationally they are far superior. The windows are banked in sets of five and the masonry is so shaped as to cut off a minimum of light. Auditoriums have slanted floors like theaters, are unobstructed by pillars, and have real stages instead of platforms.

Gymnasiums for boys and for girls, swimming pool, playrooms, toilets, shower baths, auditorium, library, shops, and domestic science rooms can all be shut off from the rest of the building so that they can be conveniently used for social and community center purposes. In these schools mouldings are done away with, doors have no paneling, corners of floors and ceilings are smooth and rounded, stairways have solid balustrades, and every endeavor is made to leave dust and dirt no lodging place. Piping for vacuum cleaning, and the most modern heating, ventilating, and regulating apparatus are installed.30 [Figs. 10 A and 10 B.]

A High-School Building of the Early Type

A similar lesson may be drawn from the study of high-school buildings of successive generations. The following quotation from the Denver survey shows how limited was the earlier conception of the school and its doings.

The course of study in this school [the East Side High School] was from the first a rigorous, disciplinary course, dominated by literary and classical interests. The issue between science and the classics was clearly drawn even in the early years of the East Side High School’s history, but the victory has always been with the literary subjects....

The kind of a course of study which was thought of as necessary in those early days reflected itself in the kind of a building which was erected. The East Side High School building was, in its day, a conspicuous model of high-school architecture. The high ceilings and great corridors and large classrooms showed the generous intention of the citizens of Denver. There were, however, no gymnasium, no lunch room, no shop for manual training, and no special equipments for science courses. In short, the East Side High School stands as a conservative example of a school, strong in its early days, but unable in these days to take on the progressive features of a first-class high school because of physical limitations and because of the hampering traditions which come from a successful past.31

The Hygiene of Lighting

Lest the individual teacher should regard these matters of architecture as very remote from his or her personal interests, let us comment on the evil effects of neglect of some of the hygienic problems which the modern school is designed to solve.

When light is badly distributed, there is a strain on the eyes which results in unfavorable physiological conditions. These unfavorable conditions sometimes take the form of a congestion of the blood vessels in and around the eye, with consequent feelings of discomfort and inability to work. These unfavorable results may appear both in pupils and in the teacher. The conditions are not clearly recognizable through any signs of fatigue which the person affected can readily localize, for we have no sense organ giving direct sensations of fatigue. The result is that the person is unable to do his work, but does not know, unless he has made a special study of the problem, what the difficulty is or how to remedy it. Evidently the problem of lighting cannot be left to natural judgment, and every physical appliance for proper control and distribution of illumination should be provided.

The Hygiene of Ventilation and Heating

In regard to ventilation and heating the situation is much the same as with lighting. Until recently all public buildings were without special provisions for ventilation, it being assumed that enough air would come in through doors and windows. The private dwelling was the model followed in this matter. A dwelling occupied by a few people leaks enough fresh air so that even when all the windows are closed the air is tolerable. When fifty or a hundred people in a public building are crowded into a space that is proportionately much smaller than the space in a dwelling and when, furthermore, through improvements in methods of construction the leakage of fresh air is almost entirely stopped, the situation calls for artificial means of introducing air and distributing it. The situation with regard to fresh air is complicated in all colder climates by the necessity of producing and conserving artificial heat. Modern heating arrangements are capable of maintaining large buildings at a summer temperature even in the coldest weather, but in order to do this at reasonable cost the building must be made as nearly air-tight as possible. The temperatures secured through artificial-heating plants have also brought another evil. The air raised to a high temperature is abnormal in humidity because it is taken from outdoors, where it is cold and the humidity is low, and is raised by heating to a condition where it can absorb a great quantity of moisture. Such air is very dry and takes moisture in an excessive degree from the moist linings of the human respiratory tracts and thus irritates and fatigues the people exposed to the dry air, becoming a serious menace to comfort and even to health. To meet these difficulties it has been necessary to introduce into all public buildings artificial ventilating and humidifying systems. Even in one-room rural schools, where the simpler types of architecture must still be adhered to, it is common, as pointed out above, to jacket the stove, thus making it possible to circulate fresh air and to introduce an evaporation reservoir which will render the humidity more nearly normal. Above all it is important that teachers understand that these matters cannot be left to mere chance. Life indoors is artificial at best, and its conditions must be guarded as carefully as possible.

Hygienic Equipment

Not merely has the plan of the building been improved, but the equipment has also been thoroughly worked over. Drinking fountains or individual drinking cups have taken the place of the pail and the common dipper. Toilets have been furnished in a way which makes it possible to keep them clean and wholesome.

The matter of seats may be discussed from both points of view suggested in earlier paragraphs, that is, from the point of view of attention to the health and comfort of pupils and from the point of view of the work which pupils have to do in school. The old uncomfortable benches have given place to comfortable individual seats which, in the best-equipped schools, have been made adjustable so that they fit the individual pupil. Where this complete adjustment to individual size is not provided, at least an approximation is secured by seats of two or three heights in each room. Desks with broad, smooth, sloping tops have been added to make writing and other kinds of school work easy. The most recent improvements have to do with the storage of books and materials. Formerly the pupil’s knees were wedged below the storage drawer, or the working top of the desk was inconveniently or unhygienically high. The storage drawer is now being relegated to a position under the chair or to a locker on the side of the room.

Relation of Equipment to the Course of Study

The adaptation of the desk to the pupil’s work has been carried to the full limit in the shops and drawing rooms and domestic-science laboratories where work benches and laboratory equipment have been substituted for the conventional seats. That much remains to be accomplished is vividly set forth in the following extract from the writing of one of the most suggestive critics of the present-day school. In the second chapter of “The School and Society” Professor Dewey writes:

Some few years ago I was looking about the school supply stores in the city, trying to find desks and chairs which seemed thoroughly suitable from all points of view—artistic, hygienic, and educational—to the needs of the children. We had a good deal of difficulty in finding what we needed, and finally one dealer, more intelligent than the rest, made this remark: “I am afraid we have not what you want. You want something at which the children may work; these are all for listening.” That tells the story of the traditional education. Just as the biologist can take a bone or two and reconstruct the whole animal, so, if we put before the mind’s eye the ordinary schoolroom, with its rows of ugly desks placed in geometrical order, crowded together so that there shall be as little moving room as possible, desks almost all of the same size, with just space enough to hold books, pencils and paper, and add a table, some chairs, the bare walls, and possibly a few pictures, we can reconstruct the only educational activity that can possibly go on in such a place. It is all made “for listening”—for simply studying lessons out of a book is only another kind of listening; it marks the dependency of one mind upon another. The attitude of listening means, comparatively speaking, passivity, absorption; that there are certain ready-made materials which are there, which have been prepared by the school superintendent, the board, the teacher, and of which the child is to take in as much as possible in the least possible time.

There is very little place in the traditional schoolroom for the child to work. The workshop, the laboratory, the materials, the tools with which the child may construct, create, and actively inquire, and even the requisite space, have been for the most part lacking. The things that have to do with these processes have not even a definitely recognized place in education. They are what the educational authorities who write editorials in the daily papers generally term “fads” and “frills.” A lady told me yesterday that she had been visiting different schools trying to find one where activity on the part of the children preceded the giving of information on the part of the teacher, or where the children had some motive for demanding the information. She visited, she said, twenty-four different schools before she found her first instance.32

These paragraphs serve to indicate the close relation between school equipment and the course of study. Since the above criticism was written, general conditions have undergone a radical change. Shops have become common, and there is an increasing emphasis on activities. Correspondingly, there is a change in the conception of the course of study, as we shall see in later chapters.

Modern School Construction and Costs

In the meantime the erection of buildings with shops, auditoriums, laboratories, kitchens, and gymnasiums has given rise to new and urgent problems. First, the cost of these new buildings is great, and many school boards are driven to ask whether the community can afford to erect them. The superintendent of schools of New York City recently reported to the Board of Education of that city that a building program would have to be adopted which would cost the city $40,000,000 in a period of five years. In order to provide buildings many cities have been obliged to issue bonds which will fall, in the years to come, as a financial burden on the generation which is being educated in the buildings.

The urgency of these financial problems is aggravated by the fact that in many school systems the elaborate buildings are not used to the full extent of their capacity. Indeed, it comes to be a most interesting economic and educational problem to inquire what is the capacity of one of these buildings. For example, what does an auditorium represent in the way of actual enlargement of the school plant? Is it merely a place in which the school may come together for a general exercise once a week, or should it be used every day? If it is used for twenty minutes or half an hour every morning, should it be closed during the remainder of the day? As a matter of public economy should it be made available to adults at hours when it is not needed for school purposes, as, for example, in the evening or in the late afternoon?

Such questions as the foregoing multiply with every new addition to the buildings. The old buildings equipped only for study and recitations were economical in the extreme; the new buildings are often lavish.

The Gary Plan for distributing Pupils and enlarging the Scope of School Work

To meet the problems of economy and of adaptation of buildings to educational needs, ingenious ways of rotating classes have been devised. The most conspicuous experiment of this type is that worked out by Superintendent Wirt in Gary, Indiana. Indeed, Superintendent Wirt has advocated the most elaborate extension of the school building and its grounds and a corresponding expansion of the school program. For him the school playground becomes an additional space of great importance in rotating the pupils. Shops and laboratories are to be kept full all day and even in the evening; corridors are to be used as assembly rooms and recreational spaces. He goes so far as to draw the churches and the public library into his plan. With all these available places in which pupils may be instructed, a program is adopted which provides that each room with its special teacher be continuously engaged in some kind of teaching. Pupils are sent from room to room, the theory being that each room shall be kept full at all hours and that each pupil shall get all the different kinds of advantages which the elaborate course of study offers. The reorganization of grade work which is necessary to carry out this program reaches deeper than the addition of new subjects. To make rotation complete, each teacher must be a special teacher and the pupils must move from room to room. Even the lowest grades must be organized under what is known as the departmental plan. Thus, even a second-grade child gets his reading with one teacher and his arithmetic with another.

Requirements to be met when the Gary Plan is adopted

The Gary plan is a very striking example of the relation between the school plant and the school program. In many quarters this relation has not been clearly recognized. For example, some school boards, hearing that twice as many pupils can be accommodated in a Gary building as in an ordinary school building, have instructed the superintendents in their own towns to adopt the Gary plan. The superintendent has to answer: We have an old four-square building which is full in every available corner, there are no shops, and the play space is inadequate.

He often has to go further and question the advisability of departmentalizing the teaching in the lower grades. He is sometimes convinced that a daily program which includes many kinds of activity is distracting and undesirable. The adoption of a new building plan involves the course of study, and the adoption of a new policy with reference to the course of study involves the use of the building. The interesting fact for our immediate purposes is that educational questions that have to do with the content of the course of study and with the methods of teaching are always related to considerations regarding the building.

The Construction of Consolidated Schools

Not only does the school building reflect the internal needs of the school organization which it houses, but there is also a close relation between the school and the distribution of the population in the community. A sparsely settled community invariably used to have a one-room school, because the distances which pupils must travel are such that it is difficult to bring together enough pupils to justify a larger building. The one-room building is likely, however, to offer only the most meager educational opportunities. There is only one teacher. There are no adequate provisions for the pupils who are supposed to be studying, because this one teacher in the one room must be hearing a class recite on some subject at practically every period in the day. The one-room building does not satisfy the progressive community. The device which has been adopted is that of consolidating a number of one-room schools and transporting the pupils through the necessary distances to make possible large schools with separate rooms for pupils of different ages. A consolidated school has facilities which are impossible in a one-room school. These facilities cannot be described without discussing the course of study and also the building and equipment.

The following quotation gives an example of such a discussion:

In Harrison County, Miss., about 8 miles out from the Gulf and in a typical south Mississippi rural community, may be found the Wool Market consolidated school, the subject of this brief study. Three medium-sized one-teacher schools—Coalville, King, and Oakhead—were brought together two years ago to form this school near the Wool Market post office, on the Biloxi River.

The new house, built by private subscription at a cost of about $2,000, was located within 2 miles of all the children in two of the old districts, while a transportation wagon was used to bring in from 25 to 30 pupils from the Oakhead district, about 3 miles from the new schoolhouse. The territory of the new school covers 27 square miles and now has within its bounds 134 children of legal school age.

Each of the teachers in the abandoned schools, having from 30 to 40 recitations daily to cover the eight grades of the elementary and grammar grades, had no time to do high-school work, and on that account had no high-school pupils. As a result of those conditions the patrons who were able financially to bear the expense sent their children out of the community to school as soon as they were ready for the high school, at an annual cost of from $150 to $200, while the larger number were forced to turn aside to take up life’s duties and responsibilities with only the meager training obtained in these little schools. Such conditions obtain in three-fourths of the schools in the South. The Wool Market consolidated school, now serving the same territory, has 23 high-school pupils—16 in the ninth grade, 5 in the tenth grade, and 2 in the eleventh grade—and 20 pupils in the music and expression classes under special teachers.

The aggregate average attendance for the original schools was 60 pupils, according to the records, while the average attendance now in the consolidated school is 110 pupils, with an enrollment of 125. There are only 9 children of school age in the district not in school. In the old schools the number was too small to form an attractive social center and to justify the employment of special teachers, but the new school is fast becoming the center of all social activities of this larger community, employs special teachers in music and expression, and has in the faculty teachers qualified to give instruction in practical agriculture and domestic science. In the interhigh-school contests last spring the Wool Market consolidated school, though only two years old, captured a fair share of the medals in declamation and recitation, while the girls’ basketball team claims the county championship.

The school is located on 5 acres of land, which are used for playgrounds, school garden, and practical agricultural demonstration work. Dr. Welch, the community physician, lectures to the school once a week on hygiene and school and home sanitation; and Mr. W. A. Cox, a trustee of the school and a practical farmer and horticulturist, gives the school weekly lectures on agricultural, horticultural, and allied subjects.

After trying the consolidated school two years the patrons and other citizens of the Wool Market community voluntarily levied a tax of $7 per thousand on the property of the district to support the school for an eight or nine months’ session.

COMPARATIVE STATISTICS

Cost of the three teachers in old school per month	$128
Aggregate attendance in the three schools	60
Average cost per pupil per month	$2.13
Cost of the three teachers in the elementary and grammar-school grades of the consolidated school per month	$150
Entire cost of the one transportation wagon per month	$50
Average cost per pupil per month in same grades	$2.22
Cost of the four teachers in entire school and of the school wagon per month	$280
Average cost per pupil for the elementary and high school	$2.54

The Wool Market school, with its four teachers and adequate high-school advantages, costs the community only 41 cents per pupil, or a total of $45 per month more than the three little one-teacher schools. To send the 23 high-school pupils out of the community for their high-school education would cost the community at least $1,000 more than this entire school cost the community and county for eight months. Mr. W. A. Cox, referred to above, is authority for the statement that the value of land in the community had increased during the two years as a result of the good school from $10 per acre to $25 per acre.

What has been accomplished in the Wool Market school can be done in almost any community in the South. This and similar instances that might be mentioned lend strength to the contention that adequate school advantages can be provided for the country children in the community near the farm home.33

EXERCISES AND READINGS

A new school building with twelve recitation rooms is to be built. Shall the windows of the classrooms open to the north and south or to the east and west? Shall the lockers for coats and hats be in the general corridors or shall there be a cloakroom off each room? How high shall the blackboards be from the floor? How many sides of the room shall be supplied with blackboards? How high shall each step be in the stairways? If the building is designed to accommodate six hundred pupils, what rooms besides the recitation rooms shall be provided? How big should the auditorium be? Should it have a large stage? Shall the toilets be in the basement or on each floor? Is it legitimate to spend money on a teachers’ rest room? Where should the principal’s office be?

Is there any difference between the kind of school building to be recommended in San Antonio, Texas, and Minneapolis, Minnesota? What color should the walls of a classroom be? How much playground space should there be around a school building designed for six hundred pupils?

Should school buildings be frame buildings? Should doors open into the building? What is a fire drill, and why is it required?

Report of a Study of Certain Phases of the Public-School System of Boston, Massachusetts, made under the auspices of the Boston Finance Commission, Document 87 (1916), pp. 185-213. Reprinted by Teachers College.

Strayer, G. D. Score Card for School Buildings. Teachers College.

Terman, L. M. The Building Situation and Medical Inspection. Denver School Survey. Published by the Denver School Survey Committee.