Part 5 (2/2)
Here indeed is something new! So far only our great national buildings have had a continued _maintenance fund_. Here, in these houses offered to the people, the maintenance is confided to a hundred or so workingmen, that is, to all the occupants of the building. This care is almost perfect. The people keep the house in perfect condition, without a single spot. The building in which we find ourselves to-day has been for two years under the sole protection of the tenants, and the work of maintenance has been left entirely to them. Yet few of our houses can compare in cleanliness and freshness with this home of the poor.
The experiment has been tried and the result is remarkable. The people acquire together with the lore of home-making, that of cleanliness. They come, moreover, to wish to beautify their homes. The a.s.sociation helps this by placing growing plants and trees in the courts and about the halls.
Out of this honest rivalry in matters so productive of good, grows a species of pride new to this quarter; this is the pride which the entire body of tenants takes in having the best-cared-for building and in having risen to a higher and more civilised plane of living. They not only live in a house, but they _know how to live_, they _know how to respect_ the house in which they live.
This first impulse has led to other reforms. From the clean home will come personal cleanliness. Dirty furniture cannot be tolerated in a clean house, and those persons living in a permanently clean house will come to desire personal cleanliness.
One of the most important hygienic reforms of the a.s.sociation is that of _the baths_. Each remodeled tenement has a place set apart for bathrooms, furnished with tubs or shower, and having hot and cold water.
All the tenants in regular turn may use these baths, as, for example, in various tenements the occupants go according to turn, to wash their clothes in the fountain in the court. This is a great convenience which invites the people to be clean. These hot and cold baths _within the house_ are a great improvement upon the general public baths. In this way we make possible to these people, at one and the same time, health and refinement, opening not only to the sun, but to progress, those dark habitations once the _vile caves_ of misery.
But in striving to realise its ideal of a semi-gratuitous maintenance of its buildings, the a.s.sociation met with a difficulty in regard to those children under school age, who must often be left alone during the entire day while their parents went out to work. These little ones, not being able to understand the educative motives which taught their parents to respect the house, became ignorant little vandals, defacing the walls and stairs. And here we have another reform the expense of which may be considered as indirectly a.s.sumed by the tenants as was the care of the building. This reform may be considered as the most brilliant transformation of a tax which progress and civilisation have as yet devised. The ”Children's House” is earned by the parents through the care of the building. Its expenses are met by the sum that the a.s.sociation would have otherwise been forced to spend upon repairs. A wonderful climax, this, of moral benefits received! Within the ”Children's House,” which belongs exclusively to those children under school age, working mothers may safely leave their little ones, and may proceed with a feeling of great relief and freedom to their own work.
But this benefit, like that of the care of the house, is not conferred without a tax of care and of good will. [6]The Regulations posted on the walls announce it thus:
[6] See page 70.
”The mothers are obliged to send their children to the 'Children's House' clean, and to co-operate with the Directress in the educational work.”
Two obligations: namely, the physical and moral care of their own children. If the child shows through its conversation that the educational work of the school is being undermined by the att.i.tude taken in his home, he will be sent back to his parents, to teach them thus how to take advantage of their good opportunities. Those who give themselves over to low-living, to fighting, and to brutality, shall feel upon them the weight of those little lives, so needing care. They shall feel that they themselves have once more cast into the darkness of neglect those little creatures who are the dearest part of the family. In other words, the parents must learn to _deserve_ the benefit of having within the house the great advantage of a school for their little ones.
”Good will,” a willingness to meet the demands of the a.s.sociation is enough, for the directress is ready and willing to teach them how. The regulations say that the mother must go at least once a week, to confer with the directress, giving an account of her child, and accepting any helpful advice which the directress may be able to give. The advice thus given will undoubtedly prove most illuminating in regard to the child's health and education, since to each of the ”Children's Houses” is a.s.signed a physician as well as a directress.
The directress is always at the disposition of the mothers, and her life, as a cultured and educated person, is a constant example to the inhabitants of the house, for she is obliged to live in the tenement and to be therefore a co-habitant with the families of all her little pupils. This is a fact of immense importance. Among these almost savage people, into these houses where at night no one dared go about unarmed, there has come not only to teach, _but to live the very life they live_, a gentlewoman of culture, an educator by profession, who dedicates her time and her life to helping those about her! A true missionary, a moral queen among the people, she may, if she be possessed of sufficient tact and heart, reap an unheard-of harvest of good from her social work.
This house is verily _new_; it would seem a dream impossible of realisation, but it has been tried. It is true that there have been before this attempts made by generous persons to go and live among the poor to civilise them. But such work is not practical, unless the house of the poor is hygienic, making it possible for people of better standards to live there. Nor can such work succeed in its purpose unless some common advantage or interest unites all of the tenants in an effort toward better things.
This tenement is new also because of the pedagogical organisation of the ”Children's House.” This is not simply a place where the children are kept, not just an _asylum_, but a true school for their education, and its methods are inspired by the rational principles of scientific pedagogy.
The physical development of the children is followed, each child being studied from the anthropological standpoint. Linguistic exercises, a systematic sense-training, and exercises which directly fit the child for the duties of practical life, form the basis of the work done. The teaching is decidedly objective, and presents an unusual richness of didactic material.
It is not possible to speak of all this in detail. I must, however, mention that there already exists in connection with the school a bathroom, where the children may be given hot or cold baths and where they may learn to take a partial bath, hands, face, neck, ears. Wherever possible the a.s.sociation has provided a piece of ground in which the children may learn to cultivate the vegetables in common use.
It is important that I speak here of the pedagogical progress attained by the ”Children's House” as an inst.i.tution. Those who are conversant with the chief problems of the school know that to-day much attention is given to a great principle, one that is ideal and almost beyond realisation,--the union of the family and the school in the matter of educational aims. But the family is always something far away from the school, and is almost always regarded as rebelling against its ideals.
It is a species of phantom upon which the school can never lay its hands. The home is closed not only to pedagogical progress, but often to social progress. We see here for the first time the possibility of realising the long-talked-of pedagogical ideal. We have put _the school within the house_; and this is not all. We have placed it within the house as the _property of the collectivity_, leaving under the eyes of the parents the whole life of the teacher in the accomplishment of her high mission.
This idea of the collective owners.h.i.+p of the school is new and very beautiful and profoundly educational.
The parents know that the ”Children's House” is their property, and is maintained by a portion of the rent they pay. The mothers may go at any hour of the day to watch, to admire, or to meditate upon the life there. It is in every way a continual stimulus to reflection, and a fount of evident blessing and help to their own children. We may say that the mothers _adore_ the ”Children's House,” and the directress. How many delicate and thoughtful attentions these good mothers show the teacher of their little ones! They often leave sweets or flowers upon the sill of the schoolroom window, as a silent token, reverently, almost religiously, given.
And when after three years of such a novitiate, the mothers send their children to the common schools, they will be excellently prepared to co-operate in the work of education, and will have acquired a sentiment, rarely found even among the best cla.s.ses; namely, the idea that they must _merit_ through their own conduct and with their own virtue, the possession of an educated son.
Another advance made by the ”Children's Houses” as an inst.i.tution is related to scientific pedagogy. This branch of pedagogy, heretofore, being based upon the anthropological study of the pupil whom it is to educate, has touched only a few of the positive questions which tend to transform education. For a man is not only a biological but a social product, and the social environment of individuals in the process of education, is the home. Scientific pedagogy will seek in vain to better the new generation if it does not succeed in influencing also the environment within which this new generation grows! I believe, therefore, that in opening the house to the light of new truths, and to the progress of civilisation we have solved the problem of being able to modify directly, the _environment_ of the new generation, and have thus made it possible to apply, in a practical way, the fundamental principles of scientific pedagogy.
The ”Children's House” marks still another triumph; it is the first step toward the _socialisation of the house_. The inmates find under their own roof the convenience of being able to leave their little ones in a place, not only safe, but where they have every advantage.
And let it be remembered that _all_ the mothers in the tenement may enjoy this privilege, going away to their work with easy minds. Until the present time only one cla.s.s in society might have this advantage.
Rich women were able to go about their various occupations and amus.e.m.e.nts, leaving their children in the hands of a nurse or a governess. To-day the women of the people who live in these remodeled houses, may say, like the great lady, ”I have left my son with the governess and the nurse.” More than this, they may add, like the princess of the blood, ”And the house physician watches over them and directs their sane and st.u.r.dy growth.” These women, like the most advanced cla.s.s of English and American mothers, possess a ”Biographical Chart,” which, filled for the mother by the directress and the doctor, gives her the most practical knowledge of her child's growth and condition.
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