Part 7 (2/2)

The three kinds of work, (1) Cooking, (2) Housekeeping, and (3) Sewing, are carried on in rotation, a girl spending one entire afternoon at cooking, the next at sewing and a third at housework Thus each girl does an afternoon's job in each subject The cooking class studies successively ”breakfast,” ”lunch” and ”dinner,” in each case preparingthe food A meal is served nearly every day The service falls to the housekeeping class, which is also responsible for cleaning up, tending the furnace, washi+ng, ironing and the like

Included in this part of the work are a nuiene and ho their hos while a teacher reads to theinners hem table cloths, napkins, towels, dustcloths, etc, for the school The classes are s individual work possible

”No, no,” protested Mrs Trowbridge, ”we have no course of study, or else, if you please, there are as irl has her problems and we aiarden, furnishes vegetables which the girls cook and can These vegetables, together with canned fruits, jellies, jaive the school such an excellent source of revenue that last year it turned over 15 to the Superintendent of Schools

The crowning work of the school was done in a bare upstairs rooirls papered and painted the with rooe, happily

”Isn't that good for a start?”

The ho with the facts of life as the girls who come to school see them It would hardly be fair to expectNew Ground

The regular work of the public school has been supplenificant innovations, of which theis, perhaps, a h physical examination of all school children by experts By this scheme, the defect of the individual child is corrected, and the danger of widespread contagion or infection in the schoolroo these physical examinations, the children who are clearly sub-normal are placed in special classes or special schools, where, under the direction of specially fitted teachers, they do any mental work for which they are fitted, in the interi, folding and similar employments hold the attention of sub-normal children where intellectual ill not

The special school, freed frorip of an iron-clad course of study, studies the need of each child, and h the special school has been used for incorrigibles, its real value rests in its care of the defective child

Anaemic children and those who show a tubercular tendency are treated in open air schools In Springfield a special school was constructed In Providence an old building was employed In all cases, however, the s are notable by their absence The school supplies caps and army blankets, a milk lunch in the middle of the forenoon and the afternoon, and a plain, wholesome dinner at noon A few months of such treatment works wonders with most of the children It seems only fair that the sick school child should be treated to fresh air and full nutrition, even though the well child is not so favored

The open air school has borne fruit, however, in the establishainst these classes, there seems to be only one coet a supply of oxygen sufficient to stiic thisthe troubled spirits of her class by a generous administration of closed s and carbon dioxide

A few cities are atte by the provision of wholesome school lunches at cost Buffalo leads in the work, with Chicago, Philadelphia and a nu behind When you reo School Board reported that in the Chicago schools there were ”five thousand children ere habitually hungry,”

while ”ten thousand others do not have sufficient nourishi+ng food,” you will perhaps agree that the ti the liveliest educationalschool children with a legitimate occupation and a convenient place to be occupied outside of school hours Chicago, with an unequaled systerounds, and Philadelphia, with a departardens, are leaders in two fields which pros for the future welfare of American city school children

IX The School and the Cos involved in the education of children of school age, the school is reaching far out into the coht schools came first, as a means of education for those who could not attend school during the daytiht school now, and the scholars who co hours use the saular classes Machines, cooking apparatus, n quarters, particularly, the night schools attract a large following of adults, eager to learn the language and ways of the new land Though many a one falls asleep over the tasks, who shall say that the spirit is not willing?

Public lectures are being used more and more as a means of public education There is scarcely an up-to-date city that has not some public lectures connected with its school or library system, while in a center like New York, the Board of Education has established an elaborate organization for the delivery of lectures in public school buildings throughout the city The lecture topics--widely advertised through the schools and elsewhere--cover every field of thought

Perhaps the whole movement of the schools to influence the community may be summed up in the phrase, ”A wider use of the school plant” Why should not the schools be open, as they are in Gary, day and evening, too? Why should the anized into ”Ho in the schools as they do on a large scale in Philadelphia? Why should not the social sentiment of a community be crystallized around its schoolhouse, as it has been in Rochester? Is it better to have the children playing in the street in the surounds, as they do in Minneapolis and St

Paul?

The billion dollars invested in the school plant must be made to yield a return in broader social service with each succeeding year

X New Keys for Old Locks

Nor have progressive educators been satisfied to change theold subjects More important still, they have introduced new courses which aiiene, nature study, civics,and domestic science have all been called upon to enrich the elementary school curriculuy--names of muscles and bones, symptoms of diseases and the like--has been replaced in the twentieth century schools by a physiology which ai into so with nature study and eleiene course in Indianapolis emphasizes, first, the care of the body and then, in the seventh and eighth grades, public health, private and public sanitation, etc Fros, the child is led to see the application of the laws of physiology and hygiene to the life of the individual and of the community

Nature study, eleardens have taken their place, on a sressive educational systerow; an education in the sequence and significance of the seasons, which brick and cement pave made to teach children the relation between individual and corade children in Indianapolis visit the city bureaus--water, light, health, fire and police Trips to factories teach them the relation between industry and the individual life, while social concepts are developed by newspaper andand class discussions of the articles and books which are read At election time they discuss politics; they take up strikes and labor troubles; woe is occasionally touched upon; and they are even asked to suggest e cover family needs