their mental powers. It is a commonplace to add that, unless State efforts be aided and supplemented by individual support, they are futile. Authorities recognise, therefore, that in educational institutions for all ages, provision must be made to train children in an intelligent and practical knowledge of health rules, to be applied in private and in public duties, i.e., in every relation of life. It will have been noted that the obligation to acquire an elementary knowledge of personal and public hygiene is at present laid upon both sexes in all State schools and in most State colleges, while for girls the opportunities of gaining a useful working knowledge of domestic science promise to become abundant. But what seem to me of equal, if not of greater, promise in this connection, are the educationally organised courses in the public High schools and the recognition of the social and national importance of Household Economics by its installation among other subjects of university rank in State universities. By the High school courses the young people are imbued at a most impressionable age with a conception, hitherto often absent, of the dignity and worth of Home, and will, it is believed learn to appreciate its claims; they are intelligently familiarised with the world in which they must shortly play a part of greater or less influence, and their scientific, artistic, literary and manual training studies are usefully and attractively associated with daily duties and social interests. By means of the college courses it is anticipated that, in addition to the general advantages just enumerated, the resources of modern science and art will in future be more utilised for the improvement of home life; trained intelligences will be brought to bear upon vexed domestic problems, upon diet, expenditure, and service, so that in years to come a complete and harmonious system will be evolved from the present faulty and discordant methods. It has been well said by Dr. Mary E. Green, late President of the National Household Economic Association, that "Household Economics once properly understood by the women of the country will make possible to each individual the health, happiness and development which are his due." The United States now offers to its women of all ages, free of charge, the opportunities essential to the gaining of this understanding. 141 PART II. PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS. Side by side with the State system of education in the United Introductory. States there exists a parallel system of schools and of institutions for higher education; these are supported entirely from private sources (fees and endowments), unrestricted by State legal regulations. The governors or directors of these private institutions are thus independent of any popular or outside control; free to initiate new departures and at liberty to test original theories by practical experiment. As a rule, this power and independence are not abused; the standard of instruction is such that graduates from private High Schools or Colleges take equal rank with those under State control; while it suffices to mention the names of Columbia University or of some of the best-known Technical Schools, such as Pratt, Drexel, Armour or Lewis, to indicate the leading position occupied by institutions which owe their existence to the lavish generosity of individuals. The vast sums with which many of these private schools and colleges are endowed enable them, indeed, to set a desirable standard in respect of buildings, equipment, and staff; the freedom to express many new ideas in practice serves as an outlet for the rapid flow of original conceptions characteristic of the present stage of national development; and, though it may be permitted to question the immediate result to the juvenile subjects of some few scholastic experiments, the cause of education will probably derive eventual benefit from efforts which are invariably well intentioned, though occasionally eccentric in expression. This is not the place in which to attempt to detail the causes which have led to the gradual growth of this dual system of schools in the United States, it must suffice to say that both are complete throughout, from Kindergarten, Primary and Grammar Grades to High School, Technical Institute, College and University. In a large number of instances, the curriculum of the private Grade and High schools is identical with that sanctioned by the official Boards of Education in the various States and cities; but, as has been stated, certain others are prominent in the public eye on account of the originality of their practice and the suggestiveness or efficiency of their methods. Deviations from accepted canons are less obvious in private Colleges; on the contrary, these and the great Technical Schools often set the pace for State-aided institutions by the high standard they attain in systems tested by experience. The several grades of these private institutions and their recognition and treatment of the various subjects upon which I was commissioned to inquire will now be dealt with in practically the Growth of Connection of Domestic Science with Home and Social Interests. same order as in Part I., with a view to facilitate reference and to (A.) Kindergartens, Primary, and Grammar Schools. (C.) Technical Institutes. (D) Women's Colleges. A.-KINDERGARTENS, PRIMARY, AND GRAMMAR SCHOOLS. No allusion was made to Kindergartens in Part I. of this Report because, so far as I could learn, the methods of teaching Domestic Science subjects which obtain in certain experimental school kindergartens, with the primary object of strengthening home affections while training social instincts, have not yet been introduced into those under State Boards of Education; it is to the former I now propose to refer. The Monograph on "Kindergarten Education," by Miss Susan E. Blow* records the growth of the movement in favour of their establishment, with all it owes to Dr. W. T. Harris, National Commissioner of Education; and reveals the existence of fullydeveloped systems of public kindergartens in 189 prominent cities and 15 States. "The history of the Kindergarten in America," writes Miss Blow, "is the record of four sharply-defined movements; the pioneer movement whose point of departure was the city of Boston; the philanthropic movement, whose initial effort was made in the village of Florence, Massachusetts; the national movement which emanated from St. Louis; and the great maternal movement which, radiating from Chicago, is now spreading throughout the United States, evolving a more enlightened and consecrated motherhood, and thereby strengthening the foundations and elevating the ideals of American family life." In these concluding words are found the key-notes with which those in charge of the Kindergarten and Primary classes at the two experimental schools attached to Chicago University endeavour to harmonise the methods they advocate. They believe that by taking advantage of a little child's strong affections and instinctively personal standpoint he may, through his social interests, be made intelligently acquainted with the world in which he lives; family ties may be strengthened in the process, and home life dignified: while such a desire to know the "reason why" for daily facts is awakened, that, in its gratification, real scientific habits of mind are acquired. Thirty years ago Dr. W. T. Harris drew attention to the fact that "at the age of three years the child begins to emerge from the circumscribed life of the family and to acquire an interest in the life of society and a proclivity to form relationship with it. This increases until the school life period begins at his seventh * No. 2, "Monographs on Education in the United States," edited by Professor N. Murray Butler. year. The fourth, fifth, and sixth years of transition are not well provided for either by family or by social life in the United States." It is upon the training and development of this social instinct in childhood, upon the provision of suitable educational opportunities during this transition period, that great stress has been laid throughout their school programmes by two of the leading educationalists of recent years. By written and spoken word, Dr. John Dewey and the late Colonel Francis W. Parker have asserted their conviction that all school work should connect on the social side with the life without; and that this connection can be fitly and profitably made by means of suitable occupations carried on throughout the period of school life. "By occupation," writes Dr. Dewey, "is not meant any kind of busy work' or exercises that may be given to a child to keep him out of mischief or idleness when seated at his desk. By occupation I mean a mode of activity on the part of the child which reproduces or runs parallel to some form of work carried on in social life." In the Chicago University Domestic Elementary School these occupations are represented by the Science and workshop with wood and tools, by cooking and sewing and by Arts at the University textile work. To those to whom this conception is unfamiliar, a of Chicago careful perusal of Dr. Dewey's book "The School and Society," Experiand of his article on the "Psychology of Occupation" in the mental "Elementary School Record" will result in a better comprehension of his thesis. The limits of space forbid more than the most concise references to Dr. Dewey's writings, or to Colonel Parker's ideals and methods. Careful abstracts of a year's work in the schools where the views and methods of these leaders of educational thought are subjected to the test of practice, are furnished in Tables XXI. and XXII. They are included in this portion of my Report as affording the best illustrations I can offer of the means by which the domestic, equally with other sciences and arts, may be educationally employed to make schools for our children of all ages a "genuine form of active community life, instead of places set apart to learn lessons." Dr. Dewey's opinion, shared, I believe, by the late Colonel Parker, must be borne in mind while studying these school programmes, viz., that "those subjects and that material develop the young intelligence of the child which (1) forge social links between school and home; (2) can be acquired largely in the first instance through the exercise of the bodily activities; (3) are so interwoven with family life as to appeal to the limited, familiar experience of a young child; and (4) demand thought, yet by their simplicity permit that thought to function in actions, habitual or suitably acquired at the special period of life at which the lesson requires them." Dr. Dewey also maintains that the educational material should stimulate efforts directed to "Psychology of Occupations." The Elementary School Record. A series of nine Monographs, published by the University of Chicago Press, "The School and Society," John Dewey, University of Chicago Press, Schools. (a) Elementary School Table XXI. the acquirement of technique, even though at considerable personal cost, and that each subject must possess inherent continuity in itself, adapting it for progressive development, consistent with the several periods of child growth. Further, both authorities agree that veritable correlation of each subject with the whole school programme is an essential qualification, not "through devices of instruction which the teacher employs in tying together things in themselves disconnected," but through wise selection, by which real, organic continuity of subject matter is ensured. In the University Elementary School at Chicago, therefore, the Domestic Sciences and Arts appear throughout among the Occupations for all groups included in the Time-Table, from which it is Dr. Dewey's object to secure the absence of mere mechanical routine repetition, and to ensure the presence of conscious, intelligent action and habits of reflection. # * "Occupations, so considered," he writes, "furnish the ideal occasions for both sense-training and discipline in thought. The weakness of ordinary lessons in observation, calculated to train the senses, is that they have no outlet beyond themselves, and hence no necessary motive. Now, in the natural life of the individual and the race there is always a reason for sense-observation. There is always some need, coming from an end to be reached, that makes one look about to discover and discriminate whatever will assist it. The same principle applies in normal thinking. It also does not occur for its own sake, nor end in itself. It arises from the need of meeting some difficulty; in reflecting upon the best way of overcoming it; and thus leads to planning, to projecting mentally, the result to be reached, and deciding upon the steps necessary and their serial order. This concrete logic of action long precedes the logic of pure speculation or abstract investigation, and through the mental habits that it forms is the best of preparations for the latter. Now, there can be no doubt that occupation work possesses a strong interest for the child. A glance at any school where such work is carried on will give sufficient evidence of this fact. Outside of the school, a large portion of the children's plays are simply more or less miniature and haphazard attempts at reproducing social occupations. There are certain reasons for believing that the type of interest which springs up along with these occupations is of a thoroughly healthy, permanent, and really educative sort; and that by giving a larger place to occupations we should secure an excellent, perhaps the very best, way of making an appeal to the child's spontaneous interest, and yet have, at the same time, some guarantee that we are not dealing with what is merely pleasure-giving, exciting, or transient. In the first place every interest grows out of some instinct or some habit that in turn is finally based upon an original instinct. It does not follow that all instincts are of equal value, or that we do not inherit many instincts which need transformation, rather than satisfaction, in order to be useful in life. But the instincts which find their conscious outlet and expression in occupation are bound to be of an exceedingly fundamental and permanent type. The activities of life are of necessity directed to bringing the materials and forces of nature under the control of our purposes; "The Psychology of Occupations," Elementary School Record. University of Chicago Press. |