This is the story of a school that was built to fit a town, and it begins with a hypothetical case. Suppose that there was a town—a prosperous town of some 2,247 souls, set down in the middle of a well-to-do farming district. As for business, the town has a few industries and some stores; the countryside is engaged in general farming. Suppose that the school board of such a town should come to you and say: “We are looking for a school superintendent. Are you the one?” Suppose you said, “Yes.” How would you prove your point?
Out in Minnesota there is a town named Sleepy Eye, set down in a well-to-do farming district. At the head of the Sleepy Eye schools there is J. A. Cederstrom. Mr. Cederstrom has proved by a very practical demonstration that he is “the one.”
When Mr. Cederstrom took charge of the Sleepy Eye schools he found an excellent school plant, an intelligent community and a school system that was like the school system of every other up-to-date two-thousand-inhabitant town in the Middle West. Before Mr. Cederstrom there lay a choice. He could continue the work exactly as it had always been carried on, improve the school machinery, and make a creditable showing at examination time. That path looked like the path of least resistance. Mr. Cederstrom did not take it, however. Instead he made up his mind that after measuring the community and the children he would, to use his own words, “fit the work to their respective needs.”
“The work offered has been somewhat varied,” Mr. Cederstrom explains. “I have not attempted to follow any set course or outline of work made out by some one else who is not familiar with our conditions and needs.”
Where does there exist a more admirable statement of the principle underlying the new education? This man, when given charge of a school plant, deliberately chose to make the school fit the needs of the community upon which the school was dependent for support. Oblivious of tradition he set about remodeling the school in the interest of its constituency.
Sleepy Eye is located in a farming district. Many of the boys who come to the Sleepy Eye School will manage farms when they are grown men, and many of the Sleepy Eye girls will marry farmers and manage them. Here were farmer men and farmer women in the making. What more natural than to organize a Department of Agriculture?
A Department of Agriculture in a school? Yes, truly; and a short winter course for farm boys and girls who could not come the year round, and a school experiment station with school farms for the children, and a live farmers’ institute that met in the school and was fed and cared for by the Department of Domestic Science, and all sorts of courses built up around the needs of the children and of the community.
II Getting the Janitor in Line
As a result of this method of course-making the school janitor found himself on the instruction staff of the school. One day a couple of the short course boys were in the engine-room while the janitor was repairing a defective pipe in the heating plant. The boys lent a hand in the work; and one of them, having a practical turn of mind, suggested that he would like to learn more about pipe-fitting in order to install a water system on the farm at home. The janitor repeated the remark to Mr. Cederstrom, who called the boys out and had a talk with them regarding the possibilities of the plan.
The outlook for the course was not bright. Every instructor in the mechanical department was working on full time. Only one way out remained and that way led to the janitor.
The janitor was a busy man during the day, but his evenings were comparatively free. After some parleying he agreed to give a course in elementary plumbing and steam-fitting on Tuesday and Thursday evenings at seven-thirty. So the boys came to school in the evening, and under the direction of the school janitor learned how to install a water system in their homes. Their work for the year consisted in making a model water system for a house, a barn and the other farm buildings. The materials for this course were picked up from the school’s scrap-heap.
Perhaps some people will not understand the spirit of it—getting the janitor in line to give a course in steam-fitting from the odds and ends that are found on the scrap-heap. Such a proceeding is unconventional in the extreme. But, on the other hand, here were boys who wished to know how they might go back and improve their homes. Who shall say that the imparting of such knowledge is not the business of a real school?
III The Department of Agriculture
Let us go back for a moment to the organization of the Department of Agriculture. The school at Sleepy Eye have available what every other school should have—five acres of tillable ground. This tract at Sleepy Eye is devoted to tests and experimental work, to flower gardens and to individual school gardens—one for each child who applies.
The experimental work and tests are carried on exactly as they would be at a state experiment station. In the section of Minnesota surrounding Sleepy Eye, corn is the great staple crop. Therefore on the demonstration grounds of the Department of Agriculture, Independent School District No. 24, Sleepy Eye, Minnesota, they are growing a number of plots of corn, each plot variously planted, fertilized, cultivated, and cared for, so that the children may learn at first-hand scientific methods of discovering the best kinds of crop, and the best ways of handling a crop in their own locality.
The allotment of the school gardens carried with it instruction in engineering and in civics at the same time that the bonds between home and school were cemented. The part of the school land that was to be devoted to school gardens was turned over to the older boys, who surveyed it in exactly the same way that the United States government surveyed the homestead tracts. The plot was laid out in towns and ranges. The sections were staked and numbered. Then the children who wished to take up plots went into the newly surveyed territory, picked their plots, and filed an application with the land commissioner for a plot, stating the section, town and range. After that a line formed and the plots (20×20 feet) were allotted. No child was permitted to take up an allotment unless he had the endorsement of a parent or guardian. The form on which this endorsement was secured was as follows:
Name________________________ Grade__________________
_______ Sec____ Town______________ Range____________
APPLICATION FOR LAND IN PUBLIC SCHOOL GARDEN, DEPT. OF AGR., SLEEPY EYE HIGH SCHOOL
“It is assumed that the parent or guardian who endorses this application will co-operate with the school authorities and have the applicant care for and weed said land during the growing season, and devote at least two and a half hours each week this summer to the agricultural work as may be directed or required by the Director of the Department of Agriculture, Mr. Haw.
“I hereby apply for.......... Sec.......... Town........... Range.......... in the Public School Garden of Sleepy Eye High School, and will cultivate and care for same as may be directed by the proper authorities, and will keep a careful record of the returns therefrom and report same on or before Oct. 20, 1911. I will do the additional agricultural work that may be directed as indicated above.
..................................... Applicant.
Endorsed by ............................ Parent or Guardian.”
The form carried on its opposite side statements showing the character of crop and its value, the amount paid for seeds and an itemized statement of the returns. The school gardens proved an admirable success. The children had learned the details of a great historical event in their own state—the giving out of free land; the boys had conducted a miniature survey; rivalry had been developed in the competition over plots; the gardens, laid out side by side, served as a splendid object lesson in quality of work; no boy or girl could allege a teacher’s unfairness from an untilled, weedy plot; the parents were made to feel that the school was doing something practical for their children; the children were taught a simple form of accounting and cost-keeping; and, best of all, they were made to feel their citizenship in the school.
The Department of Agriculture has, in addition to its experimental farm, a well-equipped laboratory, in which tests and experiments are carried on. Sleepy Eye is located in a dairy section; therefore one of the chief functions of this laboratory has been the testing of milk. Any farmer may bring milk samples and have the Babcock test applied to determine the percentage of butter fat which an individual cow is yielding.
IV A Short Course for Busy People
In the neighborhood of Sleepy Eye, as in many other places, there are many boys and girls who cannot attend school throughout the year, but who would welcome a chance to go to school in the winter months. Agricultural colleges have recognized this need by the organization of “short courses” during the winter months. Only a few children can go to college, however. Lack of preparation and lack of funds compel them to remain at home. It was for them that the school at Sleepy Eye organized a short course like that given in the agricultural colleges, extending from the end of November to the middle of March. Of the pupils attending this course, some of the boys are as old as thirty-seven, and some of the girls as young as fifteen; yet all come, eager to find out some of the things which the school has to teach them.
The agricultural work of the short course centered around the agricultural problems of the Brown County Farm. Planting, milk and cream testing, work in seed testing and germination, and treatment of seeds for fungus growths, corn judging, and similar topics covered the work of the term. The short course boys had already learned many lessons in the practical school of farm work. The school at Sleepy Eye offered them in addition the knowledge which science has recently accumulated regarding the work of the farm.
As the successful farmer must be a trained mechanic, the short course laid great stress on manual training. The boys were taught how to handle and care for tools, how to frame a building, how to make eveners, hayracks, watering troughs, wagon boxes, and similar useful farm articles. In the blacksmith shop the simpler problems in forging were covered, including the making of hooks, clevises, cold chisels and other small tools.
While the boys were engaged in agricultural and mechanical work the girls took domestic science. In addition to the elementary work in cooking and sewing there were advanced courses in dress designing, so planned as to prepare a girl to work out her own patterns and make up her own materials.
Let no one suppose that the short course neglected academic work. Indeed, it was originally intended to enable boys and girls who felt too big for the local school, or who had no time to take the entire term there, to review common school subjects. The courses in industrial work, in agriculture and in domestic science were offered in addition to these regular school studies.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. The boys and girls who take the short course for the first year come back in considerable numbers to take a second and a third year of work during the winter months. The short course is a success, because it gives the boys and girls who take it training and knowledge which they would not otherwise acquire.
V Letting the Boys Do It
The school at Sleepy Eye needed a farm building on the school farm. The short course boys and some of the older boys in the school were anxious to learn. What more natural procedure than for the school to buy the lumber and have the boys do the work? Exactly this proceeding was followed, and the pupils erected the building which they needed to carry on the applied work of the school.
The mechanical work of the school is splendidly organized. First of all, the pupils built a large part of the equipment themselves. Five simple forges, made by the students of pineboards and concrete, form an excellent shop equipment, besides giving the boys who did the work an inkling of the ease with which a forge can be erected in connection with the tool-house on the farm. The boys built a turning lathe, on which the wood turning of the school is done. Besides the shop-work there is a well-organized course in mechanical drawing. The whole department is prepared to teach boys, particularly farm boys, some of the things which they will most need in the mechanical work on the farms.
The mechanical courses are open to the boys in the grades, as well as to the high school and the short course pupils. The work is graded, and may be followed through the high school course.
VI A Look at the Domestic Science
While the boys are in the shops the girls are occupied with domestic science. A well-equipped laboratory and sewing-room furnish the basis for some thorough work. The Domestic Science Department is one to which Mr. Cederstrom points with justifiable pride. “Of all my constructive work since coming here,” he says, “I probably take my greatest pride in our Domestic Science Department, where elementary and advanced work is offered in cooking and in household economy.”
Because the space in the school was small, and the demand for instruction large, Mr. Cederstrom planned the domestic science tables himself, and superintended their building. Again the effectiveness of the school’s work is shown by its results. With the modest equipment which the funds and space available provided, the girls in the Domestic Science Department each year serve a dinner to the farmers and farmers’ wives attending the annual farmers’ institute held in the school in February. On one occasion the department baked almost half a cord of bread, roasted one hundred and forty pounds of beef, and fed five hundred and seventeen persons at one dinner.
The sewing work includes a complete course in dressmaking. Students are required to make patterns from pictures selected in fashion magazines. These patterns are then used in cutting out the garments, which the girls themselves make up.
Each girl in the High School is required to take at least one year each of cooking and of sewing. These courses occupy five periods a week. An additional year in each course is optional. Most of the girls eagerly elect it. Mr. Cederstrom takes a very practical view of such educational matters. “Our girls like the domestic science work,” he says. “They take as much pride in bringing to my office a good loaf of bread, or a well-prepared dish of vegetables or meat as they do in being able to give a perfect demonstration of a theorem in geometry, or a perfect conjugation or declension of a Latin word. Possibly ten years from now they may have more demand upon their ability to prepare a square meal for a hungry life companion, or to cut out a dress or apron for a younger member of the family than they will have need of doing some of the other things which I have just mentioned.”
They do not teach domestic science for its own sake out in Sleepy Eye; they see farther ahead than that. Mr. Cederstrom is making his work practical, because, as he says, “We are anxious to do what little we can toward making our girls more efficient and capable as housekeepers, wives, and possibly as mothers.”
VII How It Works Out
There are two questions that naturally arise: First, what is the effect of this work on the children? Second, what is its effect on the farmers? Both questions must be answered briefly, though the answers to both might be followed out through pages of illustrative detail.
The children like the school at Sleepy Eye. The boys and girls come early and stay late. The school doors open at eight o’clock and are not closed until dark. There are always pupils there from the beginning to the end of that period. The children are not interested in the applied work alone. Their interest in that has led them very often to an interest in some of the academic studies toward which they had no particular inclination.
The homes in Sleepy Eye are also interested in the school. As one woman remarked: “My girls like to do work about the house now; they never did before.” School work which gives girls a new desire and a new viewpoint on the work in the home is a step, and a long one, toward building sounder homes and stronger family ties. There are some Sleepy Eye homes in which the interest of the boys in the school shops has led their parents to buy benches and tools which the children may use at home.
The school at Sleepy Eye has interested the farmers. It has persuaded them that high grade seed is better than mongrel seed. Consequently the farmers are shelling more bushels of corn to the acre planted. The school has persuaded the farmers that well-bred cattle are more profitable than mongrel cattle. Consequently the farmers are raising the standard of their herds. When the farmers come into Sleepy Eye they go to the school. Perhaps they have milk to be tested; perhaps they are looking for suggestions regarding soil or blight; perhaps they want to know the latest facts about the scale or rust; perhaps they want some advice about farm implements. In any case they go to the school.
The farmers have been led to the school through the children. The boys have gone home to their fathers with suggestions and improvements of inestimable value in the management of the farm. The girls have gone home to their mothers with practical ideas on the running of the household. These demonstrations of school efficiency have done more than argument or persuasion ever could hope to do in convincing the fathers and mothers of the usefulness of the school.
VIII Theoretical and Practical
The work in mechanics seems to interfere in no essential particular with the regular academic work of the school. The boys and girls are interested and enthusiastic. That counts for a great deal. Then, too, boys and girls come to school for the mechanical work who would not come at all if the mechanical work were not there. The academic work which such boys take is clear gain. Through the mechanical work many pupils become interested in the school, and the school means, for all pupils, academic as well as applied work.
“We do not discount those parts of an education that were once the sum total of the work in every high school,” Mr. Cederstrom says. “They are all offered and taken by the students. We are trying to give in addition to these academic branches the kind of education which will appeal to the children as being of a common-sense order.” There is in the high school a Latin Course, a Scientific Course, beside the Agricultural Course and the Industrial Course. All of the students are required to take this academic work. Many, in addition, take the industrial and agricultural work, even when they do not receive credit in their academic course. Each high school student is allowed two periods a day in laboratory work, shop-work, or some other form of applied education. In addition to those periods, the students may work in the shops or laboratory after school, if they please. Many of them get their applied education in that way.
How great is the fire that a little spark kindles! It was more than a thousand miles away that I first heard of the school at Sleepy Eye. It happened in this way. The clock had scarcely announced that it was high noon when a group of men drew their chairs up to a dinner table generously loaded with country hotel fare. There were two school directors in this happen-so party, a carter, a salesman, a lawyer, a farmer and two teachers, who talked with a professional twang. The salesman listened impatiently to the educational clap-trap, watching for an opening between phrases. When at last the loophole appeared:
“Gentlemen,” said he, “you’re interested in schools? Then you ought to see some real schools. Did you ever go to a school to listen to a phonograph?” Then, turning to the farmers: “Did you ever go to school to get your horses shod? You go to school for both in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota. They’re the greatest schools I have ever seen. They run from seven in the morning till eight at night, and accommodate every kid that wants an education. Gentlemen, if you want to see real schools go to Sleepy Eye.”
CHAPTER XII
