Lyman Hall High school - Singer Chronicle Yearbook (Wallingford, CT)

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12 THE CHRONICLE Literary Digest—December 18. 1926—School Histories with Bunk or De-Bunked? Literary Digest—February 23, 1929—War Banished from Schoolbooks New Outlook—November, 1933—Half-Truths for 30.000.000 Beview of Reviews—July, 1926—Can a Textbook Have a Human Appeal!? Review of Reviews—December, 1932—Next to the Teacher—Books. School, and Society March 22, 1924—The Censorship of Schoolbooks March 14, 1931 — The Textbook in American Education Octolx'r 13, 1934—For the Love of Books Scribner's Magazine—June, 1934—Politicians. Teachers, and Sch x)ll)ooks Wilson Bulletin—December, 1933—Teacher Use of Periodicals ♦ ♦ ♦ A SCHOOL FOR LIVING Competitive Essay Through many ages man has labored to establish a better foundation for future citizens. Beginning with the early Greeks we find that their idea was that education was a complete and harmonious development of all the powers of the body and soul. However, they restricted this idea to a very limited class. During the Renaissance popular education was established, and there was a steady progression in educational development. Pestalozzi, one of the greatest and most beloved educators, was the guiding hand in the eighteenth century for popular education as we know it today. Pestalozzi held that human nature itself should be the guide for natural, progressive, and symmetrical education. In America education may be traced through three distinct periods: the Colonial Period, the period from the Revolution to the Civil War, and the modern period. Gradually education has been evolved to our present day standards. What is the motive that has led man to labor so diligently for education? The most prominent motive is the desire to find through this channel better and more abundant life for all. Therefore, the schools set out with this aim in view. Each new generation that comes into the world must be adjusted to the environment in which it lives. I ndoubtedly, the school as well as the home must instill the mores and folkways of the past centuries into the minds of young people. Education will aid in dispelling the confusion and bewilderment of youth. One cannot live in the world today in a normal manner without coming into close contact with his fellowmen. Here, then, is another aim of the school: to show the child his proper place in society. While these are all views which the school still holds, it has drifted away from them in the sense that schools have become too formalized to give the close attention to these aims that is necessary. Our methods of teaching are at fault. The teachers themselves are not to blame, for they have been brought up by these methods. The imperative need is for teachers who will be guides, friends, and students of psychology. A second need of the present school is a system which w ill give the child the most important and vital principles for future life.

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THE CHRONICLE 11 too far in (lie other direction. To he interesting to students some tilings must be told and explained with a story, but this story must be one which makes the facts real and vital, one which is in tune with the times. Textbooks should be written so that they have a “human appeal.” They should be written for the student, to develop his interests and to help him to find new ones. Illustrations may help a great deal in making subject matter clear. In that matter of being “in tune with the times” a good many textbooks used today are at fault. Instead of going to great length to describe wars, which are past, histories might better show what the social and economic life is, and how it is an improvement upon the past. As Cedric Fowler says, “The world he meets on graduation will not lie filled with the romance and glory of military combat. It will be a place where economic forces and industrial technique are dominant.” The writers of new histories are endeavoring to take this fact into consideration. One describes the World War in seventeen hundred words, with hardly a mention of a battle. Other types of textbooks are, also, at fault. Those on social subjects give very little notice to unemployment and depressions, which the student is liable to meet when he goes out into the world. Civics texts do not keep up with the constant changes in the government. Mathematics texts use as examples men who save from one-half to one-third of their incomes. It will be quite safe, I believe, to say that textbooks will be used in high schools for some time to come. However, I believe that the use of textbooks will become more informal as the years go on. For example, in an English class, after the entire class has studied one play together, a great many books of plays may be brought from the library. Then several days may be devoted to reading plays, each student reading whatever ones he desires, and brief reports may be made on those which have been enjoyed. In this way the students may come in contact with all kinds, new ones, old ones, comedies, and tragedies. The same thing may be done in the case of poetry. Instead of reading one or two poems each of few authors, access may be given to many types of poems. By reporting on and reading the poems aloud in class, this method may have still farther-reaching results. Such a procedure would seem to stimulate more interest and a greater desire to do the reading. Also, if library books are brought into the classroom, the student may come to have a deeper appreciation of the right kind of books, which he might not get if left to his own devices. Since the first secondary school in 1635 there have been many changes in textbooks. The first ones were very imaginative, but later they became more prosaic. Then another change was made when textbooks were brought into closer connection with life so that students might be better prepared to go out into the world. Today a greater variety of books is being used in the high schools, and this makes the work far more interesting. I think that these changes have been improvements but that more are yet to come. However this may be, we cannot deny that books are the foundation of our learning and will continue to be for many years to come. Yarley Bingham References: Directing Learning in the High School—Walter S. Monroe—Page 198 Life in America One Hundred Years Ago—Gaillard Hunt—Page 133 A tlantic Monthly—March. 1921—Old Schoolbooks The Journal of the National Education Association—December, 1925—Early Textbooks—A rithmet ics

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THE CHRONICLE 13 Most townspeople take great pride in pointing out to visitors a vast gray concrete structure which often slightly resembles a factory. This is the high school, and often times it is a factory a factory where some thousand or more students pour in as a bell rings, change classes as a bell rings, and pour out again as a bell rings. Our modern schools have too frequently become almost automatic places where knowledge is gained for the purpose of obtaining a certain number of credits to graduate. One more fault of the present school system is that a proper balance has not been maintained. It is vocational for five per cent of our students and cultural for ninety-five per cent. Ministers, teachers, doctors, and lawyers find it vocational while for others it is cultural. We must keep in mind that what is vocational for one person is purely cultural for another. French is vocational for the teacher of that subject; it is cultural for the merchant. When young people are graduated from high school, they often find too late that they have studied too many abstract subjects and not enough practical ones. Fundamentally and primarily the school of tomorrow must be a school of living. It will not necessarily be a radically changed school, but it will carry out the old ideas of Rousseau and Pestalozzi that education must be a natural growth. No longer will a teacher acquire a bit of geography, grammar, and arithmetic and feel that he is ready to teach children. In fact, books will be a minor consideration in the day that is dawning. Vocational guidance and training will be the basis for the school of the future. Under this one idea appear a multitude of needs. The first and foremost will be to find the life work of each child. From the time the child enters high school until he graduates, teachers especially trained for vocational direction will study him carefully and painstakingly to discover his interests and abilities. If a boy is clearly destined to be a man behind the plow, it is foolish and wasteful to have him follow a purely cultural curriculum. The idea that manual labor is degrading will be taken from the new system and replaced by the truer idea that head and hand must work together. Professor John Dewey says: “The child who employs his hands intelligently in the school room, in due proportion is satisfying one of the most powerful interests within him. He is cheerful; he is a picture of health; and his best emotions and impulses are easily kept active. ” Again he says: “The greatest mistake in education consists in shutting children away from nature and in trying to teach them almost entirely from books.” If a child feels that he is living while he is in school and preparing for future living, he will find a greater incentive to work. Too many times the incentive to work in school is merely the desire to get ahead of the other fellow. When both the teacher and the child feel that the life work has been found, the child will use the school as a work shop in which he may practice living with his job. The school building itself will be changed to fit the scheme of living. An ideal school that is not too Utopian w ill be set in grounds at least a mile square. The class rooms will not be designed with desks and chairs, but with work benches and tools for active participation in one's chosen work. Gardens and conservatories will surround the school and be cared for by interested pupils under the guidance of a horticulturist or head gardener.