If any two words in the English language can express the spirit of the Cincinnati schools, they are “co-operation” and “progressivism.” The people of Cincinnati, high and low, have banded themselves together in an endeavor to make good schools. Cincinnati schools are not a monument to any individual or group of individuals, rather they are the handiwork of the citizenship. In their eagerness for educational progress, the people are not hypnotized by every cry of “lo here! lo there!” nor do they live in terror of new educational ideas. Their one aim, the education of Cincinnati’s children, takes precedence over every other consideration. Perhaps that fact explains both the co-operation and the progressivism.
Co-operation in the educational work of Cincinnati has been developed to a remarkable degree. “There is not a civic society in the whole town which is not working with the schools,” says former Superintendent Dyer. Mr. Dyer might have left out the word “civic” and still have been very close to the truth.
Mr. Frederick A. Geier, a leader among the manufacturers who have made possible the “half time in shop, half time in school” system, says of his activity in co-operating with the school authorities: “As a citizen of Cincinnati, I am interested in the schools for two reasons: first, because good schools will bring under their influence the maximum number of pupils and parents, and it is the best agency I can conceive of for producing a high quality of citizenship; second, as a manufacturer I feel that the material prosperity of a community is directly related to the mental and manual equipment of its people.” Showing his faith by his works, Mr. Geier has labored in season and out of season to make the schools of Cincinnati the most progressive in the country.
Speaking as “a woman and mother,” Mrs. Isabella C. Pendleton, of the Civic League, which has played an active part in building up school sentiment, says: “I consider that the most important features of our school system are the manual training for boys and the domestic science for girls. I am happy to say that to-day a girl on graduating from our schools is capable of taking care of a home.” As public schools go, that is not an insignificant achievement. No wonder Mrs. Pendleton, a woman and mother, is interested in schools which accomplish such vital results.
From what extraordinary sources do the schools in Cincinnati secure their support! “All of the local dentists have been brought into close contact with the school system by the efforts of the Dental Society to introduce mouth hygiene into the schools,” says Dr. Sidney G. Rauh. “We dentists,” adds Dr. Rauh, “are firm believers in general co-operation.” No less cordial is the Board of Health in its endorsement of the schools, and in its efforts to raise the health standard of school children.
“I do not believe there is any city in the United States which offers as good an example of the spirit of co-operation as Cincinnati does,” affirms Carl Dehoney, of the Chamber of Commerce. “Why are we so active in co-operating with the schools? Simply because we realize that good schools, and especially practical schools, which will fit young men and women for their real life work, have a tremendous bearing upon the efficiency of the people of the city.” Mr. W. C. Cauldius, also of the Chamber of Commerce, says: “Our school development is the result of a few years of public support and sympathy.” In similar enthusiastic words the leaders of every phase of Cincinnati life express their interest in educational progress.
II An Educational Creed
Let no one infer from what has been said that the people of Cincinnati are agreed upon all of the details of educational policy, nor upon the fundamentals either, for that matter, but they have adopted an educational creed which runs about as follows:
1. I believe in making the schools provide for the educational necessities of every child.
2. I believe that this can be done when all work together.
3. I believe that new ideas are the life-blood of educational advance.
That simple creed adopted by teachers, principals, mothers, manufacturers, dentists and trade unionists has become a great motive force in the upbuilding of the Cincinnati schools.
The most evident thing about the Cincinnati school organization is its democracy. The feudal spirit of lordship and serfdom existing in many schools between superintendents and principals on the one hand, and teachers on the other, is nowhere evident in the Cincinnati schools; instead, each teacher, thrown upon her own initiative, is a creative artist, solving her particular problem as she believes that it should be solved, and abiding by the consequence of her failure or success.
Early in his work Mr. Dyer made it clear that he would not tolerate a mechanical system of education. “Up here on the hill, in a wealthy suburban district, is a grammar school. Its organization, administration and course of study must necessarily differ from that other school, located in the heart of the factory district. The principal of each of these schools has a problem to face—each will succeed in proportion as he grasps the significance of his own problem and the readiest means for its solution.” Is not that a refreshing sentiment from a superintendent of city schools? Note this other delightful touch: “My teachers soon learned that I regard the teacher who works exactly like another teacher as pretty poor stuff.” Before the axe of such incisive radicalism, how the antiquated structure of the old school machinery came crashing to the ground, to be replaced by a system which recognized each teacher as an individual builder of manhood and womanhood, working to meet the needs of individual children. It is not an idle boast which the English make when they glory in the absence of a curriculum; for even the best curriculum, if mismanaged, is speedily converted into a noose, the knot of which adjusts itself mechanically under the left ear of teacher and child alike. The school authorities of Cincinnati destroyed both knot and rope by giving to their teachers and principals this injunction: “Make your school fit the needs of your children and your community.”
The old-time, machine-minded school superintendent, filled with the spirit of co-operative coercion, assembles his teachers. “Now let’s all work together,” he exclaims, “Here, Susie Smith, this is what you are to teach your pupils, and this is the way in which you are to do it.” It was in quite a different spirit that Mr. Dyer said to each one of his teachers: “You do your work, I’ll do mine, and together we will make the schools go.” It was in this spirit that the teachers were called together to confer on the reorganization of the course of study. Each teacher in each grade had her say in the matter. If the most insignificant teacher in Cincinnati said to Mr. Dyer: “I have an idea that I think would improve the work in my grade,” his invariable reply was: “Then try it. There is no way to determine the value of ideas except to try them.” By that policy Mr. Dyer surrounded himself with a group of vitally interested people, each one suited to the task in which he believed implicitly, and each one fully convinced that the success or failure of that part of the Cincinnati school system with which he was immediately concerned, depended directly upon his efforts. No wonder the schools succeeded!
III Vitalizing the Kindergarten
The kindergartens are at the basis of the educational system of Cincinnati, and they are in charge of a woman who believes in herself and in her work. Perhaps the people of Cincinnati are not justified in believing that their kindergartens are the very best in the whole United States, but Miss Julia Bothwell, who directs them, says, modestly enough, that she has visited kindergartens in many cities, adopting their schemes and improving in response to their suggestions, until she is convinced that no other city in the land can show a better kindergarten system than that of Cincinnati. In truth, her plan is ordinarily referred to as the “Cincinnati idea.”
Cincinnati children begin their kindergarten work at four and a half or five, entering the first grade at six. While in the kindergarten they play the games and sing the songs that all kindergartens play and sing, but with this difference: their plays and songs are built around the things that they do.
The yellow October leaves of Cincinnati’s parks half shadow the activity of the busy classes of little kindergarten folks who go there to work and to learn. The Park Commissioners, like every one else in Cincinnati, are in thorough sympathy with the work of the schools, so they allot to each kindergarten class a plot in the park, in which the children—using all of the tools themselves—plant tulip bulbs under the direction of the park gardeners.
“Tulips are the first thing up in the spring,” Miss Both well explained, “so we have decided to use them. For years we tried gardens, but children of kindergarten age are not willing to give gardens as much attention as they require; then, too, the gardens ran wild during the summer, so we have settled on the tulip. After the children have planted the bulbs they sing and talk about their work. Then, early in the spring, they begin to visit their plots, watching the first shoots of green as they appear, looking eagerly for the buds, and then, at last, as the reward of their interest, picking the flowers and taking them home. Thus, each child, during his kindergarten course, sees the complete cycle from bulb to flower.”
Besides this flower-culture in the park, the children grow hyacinths in the school rooms, visit the woods to collect autumn leaves and spring flowers, make excursions to the country, where they may see animals and crops, and always, for a few days after an excursion, talk about the things which they saw, draw them, sing about them and play games about them. In order to facilitate the work the Board of Education leases a farm, to which the kindergartens go in succession. By these means the life of the city kindergarten child is thoroughly linked with nature.
These things are not new in kindergartening, however. They have merely taken firm root in the fertile soil of Cincinnati’s educational enthusiasm. The real excellence of Miss Bothwell’s experiment consists in connecting the kindergarten with the early elementary grades on the one hand and with the community on the other.
The first grade children of Cincinnati come back to the kindergarten teachers for an hour’s kindergartening once each week, in order to clinch the kindergarten influence on the lives of the first graders. The first grade teachers meet the director of kindergartening once each week, for a discussion of kindergarten methods, and an initiation into the kindergarten spirit. Thus the lump of first grade abstraction is leavened with the leaven of kindergarten concretes, and the grade teachers get the spirit of kindergarten work. In the near future Miss Bothwell hopes to have the kindergarten work extend to the second grade, in order that the spirit, rhythm, harmony and joy of the kindergarten may thoroughly permeate the roots of the Cincinnati school system.
Even more significant—if anything could be more significant than the breakdown of the ironclad, first grade traditions—is the grip which the kindergartens of Cincinnati have secured on the people. The Cincinnati kindergartener is more than a teacher—she serves many masters. In the morning she holds kindergarten classes. On two afternoons a week she does kindergarten work with first grade children; on one afternoon she holds a conference with the supervisor; on a fourth afternoon she visits the classes of first grade teachers or confers with mothers’ clubs, and on her remaining afternoon she visits her children in their homes. Out of these varied duties has come: first, a group spirit among the kindergarteners, built upon frequent interchange of plans and ideas; second, an understanding of the relation between the problems of the kindergarten and the problems of the grades; third, a sympathetic grasp of the home conditions surrounding the life of many a difficult child; and fourth, sixty-one mothers’ clubs, one organized in connection with each kindergarten, which furnish a social gathering-place for mothers, an opportunity to influence parental ideas, and a body of invaluable public sentiment.
The idea of a kindergarten, usually regarded as a small part of the school program, has been evolved until, in this one city, it is a potent influence, working on children, teachers, parents and public opinion.
IV Regenerating the Grades
The kindergarten is not alone in its appeal to the child and in its affiliation with the community. Traditional grade education has likewise been modified and rehabilitated until it makes an appeal to parent and child alike. In the first place, a consistent effort has been made to provide accommodations for the physical education in the grades of the fifty-seven elementary schools. Twenty-five now have fully equipped gymnasiums in which children have two or three periods of exercise each week. In the schools not so equipped the physical work is confined to calisthenics. Each year the Board of Education appropriates five hundred dollars for the Public School Athletic League, which organizes meets and games, open to all public school pupils free of charge. Besides field days, baseball, soccer and football there is an athletic badge awarded to all pupils who pass an “efficiency” test in athletic activities.
The academic work of the grades is alive with enthusiasm. History, so often made a mass of dead names and dates, is taught in terms of life. The children learn that history is in reality a record of the things which people did, and of the forces which were at work in their lives; furthermore, that the commonplace acts of to-day will be the history of to-morrow. Translated into ideas and social changes, history stimulates thought, turning the child’s mind from the purely personal side of life to the social activities of which history is made.
Arithmetic and geography begin at home, in the things which the children know and do. Both are taught in terms of child experience. Both call to the child mind the things of daily life.
English, too, which is so important an element in education, is made to reflect child experiences. Teaching the reading lesson of “Eyes and No Eyes” one teacher asked her class: “Well, children, what did you see on your way to school this morning? What did you see, Elmer?”
“Well, I saw—I saw—” and Elmer sat down.
“I saw that it had been raining in the night by the mud in the streets,” said Alice; while John had seen trolley cars, and remembered that the number on one of them was 647.
A seventh grade girl had read the Psalm beginning, “Who shall ascend unto the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in His holy place?” After asking what a psalm was, and who wrote the Psalms, the teacher asked:
“Who was David?”
“He was the king of Palestine,” replied one boy promptly. After straightening out the history the teacher next asked:
“For what was David noted?”
“For being Solomon’s father,” ventured one little girl.
“Oh, no,” protested a boy, “He was the fighter.”
“Sure enough,” said the teacher, “would the fact that he was a warrior naturally influence his thoughts?” After an affirmative answer from the class: “Where do we find any evidence of that in this Psalm, George?" asked the teacher.
George considered the reading a moment. “Oh, I see, it’s where he says, ‘The Lord mighty in battle.’”
After an elaboration of this idea the teacher went on to ask why David wrote, “Lift up your heads, oh ye gates, and the King of Glory shall come in.” By careful questioning the class was led to see that cities had walls and gates; that David, who had won many victories, was accustomed to have the gates thrown wide to receive him, and that his triumphal entries had made a deep impression on his thoughts. After some more discussion the Psalm was read again, this time with surprising intelligence and feeling.
One eighth grade class in English was engaged in preparing a catalog of all of the pictures in the school, looking up the painters, their lives, their principal works, and the circumstances connected with the painting of the pictures which hung on the school wall. In the same room a girl had written a description of a sunset, in which she had said: “The western sky is illuminated with a fiery red, and the edges of the clouds are also tinted with a silvery hue.”
“What would Corot say about that?” asked the teacher.
The girl thought a moment. “I guess he would say that there was too much color.”
“Yes,” smiled the teacher, “he would say, ‘Let’s go home and wait for a few moments.’”
The essay work in the upper grades is linked with all of the other school work. The children write about civics, architecture, localities, books and pictures. One girl of thirteen wrote on “The Reaper”—“As I enter my bedroom one picture especially catches my gaze. It hangs on the eastern wall. It is the picture of a large city by moonlight. The moon is bright and the stars are out. A beautiful lake borders the far end of the city, and the moon makes the lake look like a mirror. The church steeple stands out clear against the sky. It is a beautiful summer night, and while the city sleeps an angel descends and bears a little child to the heavens above. Some mother must have given up one of her beloved flowers.”
No less valuable are the essays describing an ideal kitchen, a location for a house, a home, school life, and the various other things with which the child comes in contact.
Last among the academic branches, there is a carefully organized eighth grade course in civics, which, beginning with the geography and early history of Cincinnati, covers family relations and the tenement problem; the protection of public health—street cleaning, sewage, water, smoke abatement, and the activities of the Board of Health in providing for sanitation and the suppression of disease; the protection of life and property; the business life of the community—relation of the citizen to business life, the growth of commerce and industry in Cincinnati; Cincinnati as a manufacturing center, the labor problem, and the regulation of business by the government; the necessity for civic beauty; the educational forces of the community; the care of dependents and delinquents; the functions of government; and the collection and expenditure of city funds. In this way the child, before he leaves the elementary school, is given an idea of the real meaning of citizenship.
Beginning in the kindergarten, the art work extends through the high school, including in the lower elementary grades, paper-cutting and pasting related to school work, the seasons and the holidays. From the third grade on, the children make real products—trays, boxes, blotter pads, calendars, booklets and folios—work which is supplemented by object and constructive drawing and designing.
Shop-work is given to boys, and domestic science to girls, in all of the schools. The point at which these subjects are introduced and the amount of time devoted to them depends upon—what do you think? The regulations prescribed in the course of study? Not a bit of it! It depends upon the needs of the community and of the child.
Schools which are located in the poorer districts begin manual training and domestic science with the second grade, though ordinarily they are not introduced until the sixth. Normally the children are given one and one-half or two hours a week of such work, but over-age, backward and defective children may spend as much as half of their time upon it. For some of the girls a five-room flat has been rented, in which they are taught housekeeping in all of its phases. Otherwise the domestic science consists of hand and machine sewing, the designing and making of simple garments, the planning and preparation of food, and the organization and care of a household. Wherever possible, the boys make useful products in their shop-work, instead of constructing show pieces which have no value.
From top to bottom the grades are shaped to meet the needs of children. Each class and each school is built around this central idea. The school system, instead of taking the usual form of a cumbrous machine, is a delicate mechanism adjusted to the wants of Cincinnati children.
V Popularizing High School Education
Not content with making the grades interesting, the school authorities of Cincinnati have made the high schools so profitable and popular that ninety-five out of each one hundred children who complete the eighth grade go to the Cincinnati high schools. Furthermore, during the past six years the high school attendance in Cincinnati has doubled. These two noteworthy conditions are the product of carefully matured and efficiently executed plans, and of infinite labor. Yet the results have more than repaid the labor which they cost.
“Our first task,” explained Dr. E. D. Lyon, principal of the Hughes High School, “was to persuade the community that it needed high school training. Next we secured two fine new high school buildings. Then those of us who are engaged in high school work faced the supreme task. We had to prove to the people that their expenditures on high schools were worth while, by providing a high school education that would mean something to the pupils and to the community.” Note the spirit of social obligation—a feeling prevalent throughout the Cincinnati schools.
“Most parents fail to see the importance of the high school problem,” said Assistant Superintendent Roberts, “because they never make consistent efforts to have their children choose their vocations intelligently. We began our work right there, at the bottom, by telling the parents of grade children about the high school courses, and what they meant. Eighth grade teachers, under the guidance of Mr. F. P. Goodwin, are expected to talk to their classes regularly on the vocational opportunities in Cincinnati and elsewhere, and to help the children get started right in high school careers. Besides that, we take the grade children on trips to the high schools, showing them on each trip some striking feature of high school work. Parents’ meetings are held, in which the high schools are explained and discussed, and we send circulars to the parents of sixth, seventh and eighth grade pupils, explaining the high school work as simply as may be.”
After arousing such expectations, the high school cannot fulfill its obligations in any way other than by the provision of a thorough course of study adapted to the needs of all types of pupils. The preparation for this in Cincinnati has been made with consummate skill. The pupil, on entering the high school, may select any one of the nine general courses, in which there are twenty-three possible combinations of subjects.
Four of the courses—General, Classical, Domestic Science and Manual Training—prepare for various colleges and technical schools. The other five courses—Commercial, Technical Co-operative Course for Boys; Technical Co-operative Course for Girls; Art and Music, lead to vocations. Housed in the same high school building is this range of work, which permits boys and girls to select a course which will bear directly on almost any line of work that they may care to follow in later life.
Each course is shaped to give the children who select it a definite training in the line of their interest. The General Course prepares pupils for college; the Domestic Science Course shows girls how to make and keep a home; the Commercial Course turns out bookkeepers; the Technical Co-operative Courses, enabling boys and girls to spend part of their time in the school and part in the factory, are arranged in co-operation with the principal industries of Cincinnati. The Art and Music Courses, like the other special work, are in the hands of experts who are competent to give a practical direction to the activity of their pupils.
In passing, it is interesting to note that the people of Cincinnati are getting the best possible use out of their splendid high school equipment. In addition to the regular classes which fill the Woodward High School from 8:30 to 3:00, the pupils in the continuation courses occupy the building every afternoon and all day Saturday. Five nights a week it is filled by an enthusiastic night school, three thousand strong, and during six weeks of the summer vacation a summer school holds its sessions there. It would be difficult to find a school plant which comes nearer to being used one hundred per cent of its time. To be sure, such things were not done “in father’s time,” but then the people of Cincinnati have a theory that while a good thing is worth all it costs, it does not pay to let even the best of things decay for lack of use. That is why the school system tingles from end to end with vigor and enthusiasm.
VI A City University
Besides the kindergarten, elementary schools, and high schools, the city of Cincinnati has a university, which, like all of the other educational forces of the city, is tied up with the general educational program. Those graduates of the Cincinnati high schools who desire to go to college, may pass from the high school of Cincinnati into the University of Cincinnati without a break in the continuity of their education.
The University of Cincinnati is a municipal university. The city appropriates one-half of one mill on the general assessment, for university purposes. The board of education appropriates ten thousand dollars a year toward the maintenance of the Teachers’ College, the school in which the city teachers are trained. The training school for kindergarteners is affiliated with the university, having the same entrance requirements as the other university courses. In explanation of this close connection between the city and the university, President Dabney begins his 1911 report to the board of directors by saying: “An effort has been made in this report to explain the service of the university to the city and people of Cincinnati. It is therefore not only an official report to the directors, but is also a statement for the information of all citizens.” Begun in this spirit of public obligation, the report details the services of the Teachers’ College in supplying teachers; of the School of Economics and Political Science in supplying municipal experts; and of the Engineering School for its inauguration of the widely-known industrial co-operative courses—for be it known to the uninitiated that the five hundred students of the University Engineering School spend alternately two weeks in the school and two weeks in a shop. More than that, the Engineering School furnishes experts for municipal engineering work.
That the students of the University may feel the interest of the city in their work, preference is given to the University graduates in appointments of teachers, of municipal engineers, and of employees on such municipal work as testing food, inspecting construction, and the like. University students may thus occupy their spare time in practical municipal work.
“The University should lead the progressive thought of the community,” says President Dabney, and by way of making good his proposition he avails himself of every opportunity to turn his students into municipal activities, or to co-operate in any way with the forces that are making for a greater Cincinnati.
VII Special Schools for Special Classes
There are children in Cincinnati, as in every other city, who cannot afford to go to the high school. The easiest answer to such children is, “Well, then, don’t.” The fairest answer is a system of schools which will enable them to secure an education even though they are at work. Cincinnati in selecting the latter course has opened a school for the education of every important group unable to attend the high schools who wish to avail themselves of advanced educational opportunities.
First there is the night school work, which, in addition to the ordinary academic courses, offers special opportunities in machine shop practice, blacksmithing, mechanical and architectural drawing, and domestic science. As these courses are carried forward in the Woodward High School building the students have all of the advantages of high school equipment.
Night school, coming after a day’s exertion, is so trying that only the most robust can profit by it. No small importance therefore attaches to the operation of the compulsory continuation schools under the Ohio law, which empowers cities to compel working children between fourteen and sixteen years of age to attend school for not more than eight hours a week between the hours of 8:00 A.M. and 5:00 P.M.—hours which will presumably be subtracted from shop time. By means of this adaptation of the German system even those children who must leave school at fourteen are guaranteed school work for the next two years at least. Although this is but a minimum requirement, it represents a beginning in the right direction.
No less significant than this compulsory system are the voluntary continuation schools for those over sixteen years of age, which have been established for machinists’ apprentices, for printers’ apprentices, for saleswomen, and for housewives. The first two courses are conducted under the direction of a genius named Renshaw, who takes from the machine shop boys of every age, nationality and experience, fits them somewhere into his four-year course; gives them a numbered time check from his time board; teaches them reading, writing, arithmetic, mechanical drawing, geometry, algebra and trigonometry by means of an ingenious series of blueprints, which constitute their sole text-book; visits them in their shops, giving suggestions and advice about the shop work, and finally sends them out finished craftsmen, with an excellent foundation in the theoretical side of the trades. The work is entirely voluntary, yet so excellent is it that a number of Cincinnati manufacturers send their apprentices to Mr. Renshaw, paying them regular wages for the four hours of credit which the said Renshaw registers weekly on the boys’ time-cards. “One firm sends sixty boys here each week,” commented Mr. Renshaw’s assistant. “That makes two hundred and forty hours of school work each week for which they pay regular wages. Well, sir, the superintendent there told me that they didn’t so much as notice the loss.”
“I tried to explain my system to one superintendent,” said Mr. Renshaw, “but he wouldn’t even listen. ‘It makes no difference how you do it,’ he grumbled, ‘I don’t care about that. I know that the boys are neater, more careful, more accurate, and better all-around workmen after they have been with you for a while. That’s enough explanation for me.’”
Acting on such sentiments the manufacturer peremptorily dismisses the boy who does not do his school tasks satisfactorily. The responsibility is in the school, whose growing enrollment and influence tell their own story. Firms send their boys to the school with the comment that the hours of school time, for which they are paid, do not add to the cost of shop management, but do add to the value of the boys to the shop. Increased efficiency pays.
A school of salesmanship for women has met with a like success. The leading stores, glad of an opportunity to raise the standard of their employees, grant the saleswomen a half day each week, without loss of pay, during which they take the salesmanship course. The course has the hearty backing of the best Cincinnati merchants, who see in it an opportunity, as Mr. Dyer put it, “to make their employees the most skilled and intelligent, the most obliging and trustworthy, the best treated and best paid—in short, the very best type of saleswomen in the country.”
That this work may keep pace with the demand for it the school authorities offer industrial instruction in any pursuit for which a class of twenty-five can be organized.
“A large number of women were born too soon to get the advantage of the courses in domestic science now being offered in our high schools,” comments Mr. Dyer in his dry way. Scores of such women anxious to learn all that was known about domestic arts constituted a class for which the school was well equipped to provide. “Then suppose we give them what they need,” said Mr. Dyer. Just fancy—a continuous course in domestic science! Yet there it is, in Cincinnati, with an enrollment of more than eleven hundred women, attending the public schools to learn domestic arts. What could be more rational than this Cincinnati system of making a school—even though it be a continuation school—to fit the educational needs of Cincinnati people—grown-ups and children alike?
VIII Special Schools for Special Children
The Cincinnati schools provide for special children as well as for special classes of people. First there are the unusually bright children, who “mark-time” in the ordinary classes. These children were placed in “rapidly moving classes.” While omitting none of the work, they were allowed to go as fast as their mental development would allow them, instead of as slowly as the other members of the class made it necessary to move. At the beginning the teacher found these exceptionally able children lacking in effort and attention, qualities which they had not needed to keep their place in the grades. “The extra work and responsibility stimulated their mental activity, increased their power of attention, fostered thoroughness and accuracy, developed resourcefulness and initiative, and those other qualities necessary for leadership.” Why should it not be so? Why should not the specially able child be taught as thoroughly as the defective one? Yet Mr. Dyer, speaking from experience, remarks: “Strange to say, it is harder to establish such classes than defective and retarded ones.” Strange indeed!
For the sub-normal or retarded children Cincinnati has made ample provision. Spending from a quarter to a half of their time in manual work, the children are no longer tortured with the doing of things beyond their powers. The overgrown boys have instruction in shop work. The overgrown girls have a furnished flat in which they learn the arts of home-making at first hand. There are in all over four hundred children in these schools.
Similar accommodations are provided for other special groups. The anaemic and tubercular children are taught in two open-air schools; six teachers are detailed to instruct the deaf children; one teacher devotes her time to the blind children, and ten teachers are employed to take charge of those children who are mentally defective. Thus, by adjusting the schools to the needs of special groups of people, and of special individuals, Cincinnati is providing an education which reaches the individual members of the community.
IX Playground and Summer Schools
The vacation school is planned to meet the needs of the children in the crowded districts during the hot summer months. “For that reason,” says Mr. Dyer, “it provides industrial work of all kinds unassociated with book instruction, but mingled with a great amount of recreational activity—excursions, stories, folk-dancing, and a wide variety of games.”
The field of industrial activity is a broad one, including cooking, nursing, housekeeping, sewing, knitting, crocheting, weaving and basketry; drawing and color work, brush and plastic work; bench work with tools, making useful articles; sports and games, including folk-dancing for girls and ball for boys. The primary and kindergarten classes offer a delightful round of song, story, games, excursions, paper work and other forms of construction. For the girls who have to take care of babies there are special classes. The boys make useful articles in the shops, and the girls, in sewing-room and cooking laboratory, learn to do the things around which the interests of the home always center. By co-operation with the park commissioners, the playgrounds were made an integral part of the summer school work.
Besides the recreational summer school Cincinnati has maintained for the past five years an academic summer school, in which children might make up back work in school, or do special work in any line which was of particular interest to them. In these schools “the very best instructors that can be secured” are employed, and their recommendations are accepted by the school principals when the fall term opens. “This school is one of the means taken to deal with the problem of repeaters in our schools,” says Mr. Dyer. “Instead of requiring children who are behind to fall back a year, they may, if they are not hopeless failures, but only deficient in a few studies, remove their deficiencies in the summer school and go on with their class. We have followed up these pupils,” Mr. Dyer adds, “and found that a normal percentage keep up with the class in succeeding years.”
X Mr. Dyer and the Men Who Stood With Him
A spirit of comradeship and hearty co-operation breathes from every nook and cranny of the Cincinnati schools. Principals and teachers alike sense the fact. Alike they aim toward the upbuilding of the schools.
“Never in my life have I found such a spirit of mutual helpfulness,” says Assistant Superintendent Roberts. “Every teacher has felt that she had a part to play, that she counted, that her suggestions were worth while, and she has worked earnestly toward this end.”
“Everywhere I encounter the same willingness to co-operate with the schools,” said Superintendent Condon, after spending three months in the place that Mr. Dyer vacated when he became superintendent of the Boston schools. “There is a heartiness in it, too, that grips a man.”
“There is always the jolliest good-fellowship in the Schoolman’s Club,” exclaimed a grammar school principal. “It’s always ‘Roberts’ and ‘Lyon’ and ‘Dyer’ there. They’re as good as the rest, no better. We all go there to work, and to work hard for the schools.”
On such a spirit is the school system of Cincinnati founded. From its point of vantage, set upon its high hill of ministry to child needs, it flashes like a searchlight through the storm of nineteenth century pedagogical obscurity. The optimist sings a new, glad song; the pessimist is confounded; the searcher after educational truth uncovers reverently before this masterpiece of educational organization, this practical demonstration of the wonders that may be accomplished where head and heart work together through the schools, for the children.
Such is the triumph, but whose the glory?
“It is not mine,” protests Mr. Dyer, “I did only my part.” “Nor mine,” “Nor mine,” echo his assistants. Truly, wisely, bravely spoken. The glory is not to Mr. Dyer, nor to any other one man or woman—the glory is to Mr. Dyer and the men and women who worked with him for the Cincinnati schools.
“My predecessor was an able organizer,” explained Mr. Dyer. “He left things in splendid condition, and we took up his work. There were five things which marked great epochs in the upbuilding of the Cincinnati schools:
“First, we established the merit system for the appointment of teachers.
“Second, we improved the school buildings and equipment.
“Third, we organized special courses for children who were not able to profit by the regular work.
“Fourth, by putting applied work in the grades we gave the children a chance to use their hands as well as their heads.
“Fifth, we enlarged the school system by adding buildings and courses until there was a place in the schools for every boy and girl, man and woman in Cincinnati who wanted an education.
“That was the sum total of our work. It was a long and difficult task.” Mr. Dyer’s tall form straightened a trifle. His earnest, determined face relaxed. From under his bushy eyebrows flashed a gleam of triumph—the triumph of a strong, purposeful, successful man. “But when it was all over,” he concluded, “and when the things for which we had striven were accomplished we knew that they were worth while.”
When Mr. Dyer left his position in Cincinnati to become Superintendent of the Boston schools, there was, on every hand, a feeling of loss and of uncertainty among those most interested in the city’s educational problems. During those months which elapsed between Mr. Dyer’s departure for Boston and the election of his successor there was a feeling that, after all, perhaps he was not replaceable.
Then the successor came,—a quiet man, with a constructive imagination that enabled him to grasp, readily and completely, Cincinnati’s educational need. There had been an era of radical educational adjustment in the city. The school system had been changed,—artfully changed, it is true—but changed, nevertheless, in all of the essential elements of its being. Some of the changes had been made with such rapidity that their foundations had not been fully completed. The brilliant school policy which Mr. Dyer had inaugurated needed rounding out for fulfilment and completion. Randall J. Condon saw these things; and he saw, furthermore, that in a community so awakened as Cincinnati, almost any educational program was feasible, so long as it remained reasonable.
The Cincinnati school people who went to Providence for the purpose of inviting Mr. Condon to take charge of the Cincinnati schools, felt the constructive power of his leadership. Providence had been educationally transformed, and Mr. Condon was the man responsible for the transformation.
The people of Cincinnati have every cause to congratulate themselves upon the new school head. At the outset Mr. Condon said,—“I purpose, to the best of my ability, to live up to and follow out the policies inaugurated by Mr. Dyer.” With the utmost fidelity he has kept his word.
There is far more in Mr. Condon’s administration than a mere follow-up policy. Everywhere he is building. In the face of a difficult financial situation which compels a serious curtailment of expenses for the time being, he is insisting upon additional kindergartens, extended high school accommodations, a more intimate correlation of the elementary and high school system, and an extensive system of recreation and social centers. It is upon the latter point that Mr. Condon is laying the greatest emphasis at the outset of his administration.
The Cincinnati policy which Mr. Condon has inaugurated with regard to civic centers is admirably summed up in his statement of the case. “A larger use of the school house for social, recreational and civic purposes should be encouraged. The school house belongs to all of the people, and should be open to all the people upon equal terms,—as civic centers for the free discussion of all matters relating to local and city government, and for the non-partisan consideration of all civic questions; as recreational centers, especially for the younger members of the community, to include the use of the baths and gymnasiums for games and sports, and other physical recreations, the use of class-rooms and halls for music, dramatics, and other recreational activities, and for more distinct social purposes; as educational centers in which the more specific educational facilities and equipment may be used by classes or groups of younger or older people, in any direction which makes for increased intelligence, and for greater economic and educational efficiency; as social centers in which the community may undertake a larger social service in behalf of its members,—stations from which groups and organizations of social workers may prosecute any non-partisan and non-sectarian work for the improvement of the social and economic conditions of the neighborhood, rendering any service which may help to improve the condition of the homes, giving assistance to the needy, disseminating information, helping to employment, and in general affording the community in its organized capacity an opportunity to serve in a larger measure the needs of the individual members.” Here is, indeed, a broad-gauge social school policy, to which the administrative authorities of the Cincinnati schools are fully committed.
The movement for social centers in the schools is to be under the direction of a social secretary appointed by the superintendent. Until the organization is more highly perfected, principals are free, under certain restrictions, to open their schools for classes, groups, and all other legitimate community activities.
Mr. Condon’s activities in the direction of socialized school buildings finds a ready response. “There was already a large use of a number of the schools for community meetings—for welfare associations, for boys’ and girls’ study clubs, and for musical and social gatherings.” The program is a program of extension, rather than of innovation. It has already won the approval of the citizenship.
Spontaneity must be the soul of such a movement. “It was my strong conviction that the development of such a social movement should come from the people themselves, not that a ready-made program or plan should be given them, but that they should develop their own.” One by one centers are being formed. The Board of Education furnishes the building, the local social center organization pays the immediate expenses which its activities incur. The movement has been started right. “I am a great believer in democracy,” Mr. Condon says. “The people can be trusted to settle social questions as they should be settled, provided all sides can be fully presented and time taken for deliberation. The school house affords the one opportunity where all can meet on common ground as American citizens and as good neighbors, where the question of wealth and position may be forgotten, and where what a man is in himself, and what he is willing to do for the common good, counts most.”
Such is the spirit in which Mr. Dyer, the men and women who worked with him, and the men and women who succeeded him, have striven for the advancement of education; such the spirit of co-operation and progressiveism which dominates this great city school system.
[21] Much of this material appeared originally in Educational Foundations.
