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

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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.

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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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14 THE CHRONICLE A theatre for the study and enjoyment of drama will be in the large recreation room. A gallery of copies of the finest paintings in the world will occupy a portion of the building. Here one may develop individual appreciation and self-expression. The library will be an important part of the new school. It will be a large room with plenty of quiet corners where one may read for the sheer pleasure of reading. 'The librarian will be a librarian only in a secondary sense. She will primarily guide and stimulate reading tastes. In every way possible the child will be prepared vocationally. This will include more than the mere technique of his vocation. He must be a good citizen; he must have skill in the use of his mother tongue; he must know how to protect his own health and the health of the community; and he must know how to spend his leisure time properly. The use of leisure time will be an important factor in finding the better and more abundant life. In the new school through the active study of nature, an appreciation of the beauty and order of nature will be developed. The art galleries of the school will foster a true taste for the finer things in life. In the world as we know it people live together. To live together as harmoniously as possible we must understand society. First of all a child must see how interdependent we are; he must develop a consciousness of the effect of his acts upon others; and a realization of his limitations. He must have a respect for variations in personality, points of view, and practice. Then he must realize his debt to society. A hackneyed phrase, yet one that too often is employed only in speaking. This debt includes an active desire to contribute to the improvement of the life of the group of which one is a part. He must be willing to co-operate; and, last but not least, he must develop a personal philosophy of life. All this may seem very far from school, but it is not. Education, I repeat, is a way for a better and more abundant life for all. Heading from text books will not guide us to that more abundant life, but active participation in the ways of living will. When the sun is high in the heavens of the new day, we will see happy, busy people who have been properly fitted into the world. 1 myself as a high-school student of today feel that if this plan of living with your job in school is carried out, I should like to be a high-school st udent of tomorrow. MARGARET HOTCHKISS References: The Evolution of the Educational Ideal—Mabel E. Emerson The Activity School—Adolph Ferriere New Schools for Old—Evelyn Dewey Present Day Tendencies in Education—W. B. Bizzell W. H. Duncan The New Education in the Soviet Republic—Albert P. Pinkevitch Articles from the Progressive Education Magazine: What do we mean by progressive education? W. It. Kilpatrick—Decemt er, 1930—pages 383-386 Progressive Education—What Now—Hilda Taba March, 1934—pages 162-168 Is the High School Moving Ahead?—Burton P. Fowler November, 1933—pages 363-366 Education for Orientation—Vivian T. Thayer