Part 10 (1/2)

The high school is not a training ground for colleges, nor is it a repository of classical lore As an advanced school it differs no more from the elementary school than the six cylinder autoh its work is more complex, like the ele children to live wholesome, efficient lives

II An Experiet stranded in the seventh or eighth grades e and out of place, they lose interest, becoed and at fourteen drop out of school to work or to idle In Newton, as in every other town, there were a nuet into the high school

”There they will be ae,” he explained

”They may take a new line of work and acquire a real interest”

”But they will fail in their high school work as they have failed in their grade work,” protested the doubters

Mr Spaulding, senial smile, tried his experirades of the Newton schools he picked the boys and girls ere fifteen or more at their next birthdays These pupils, seventy in all--forty girls and thirty boys--were transferred, without exaoing to drop out of school for good in one year, or two at the outside,” explained Mr Spaulding, ”so Ithat year at least they should have soh school teachers for their hand-work; but for their studies, I put therade teachers, ere responsible for seeing that each child was rade teachers this way: 'Here are a lot of children who have got the failure habit by failing all through their school course Unless ant to send them out of our school to make similar failures in life, we must teach theive hiave these boys and girls twenty hours a week of technical work (drawing, designing, shop-work, cooking and sewing) and ten hours a week of acadeiene) Shop costs, buying ofcovered their s which would probably be ot deeply interested in civics, and we let theirls we discussed hygiene, dressing and a lot of other things in which they were interested

”When those children entered the school they were boisterous and rough

The girls dressed gaudily, reveling in cheap finery By Christmas, to all appearances, their classes differed in no way froh school classes They all brushed their hair The boys were neater and the girls were becoly dressed[”]

Most of the seventy children stayed through the year Twenty-seven of the forty girls and seventeen of the thirty boys entered the regular high school course the next fall They were thus put into corade coh they had had only two-fifths as rade pupils There was the test

Could these derelicts, after one year of special care, take their places in the regular freshh school work? After the end of the first quarter, a study h school showed that on the average there were fifty-four hundredths of one failure for each scholar Airls from the special classes, however, there was but seventeen-hundredths of a failure for each girl, or one-third as many failures as in the whole school The boysOf the entire seventeen, only one boy failed, and in only one subject

III The Success Habit

”We had given the concluded ”They succeeded a few tiot the success habit, learned to like school, went into the regular high school course and succeeded there”

As an illustration of the way in which the new plan works, take the case of James Rawley James was in a serious predicament Time after tis, but James had taken the pitcher once too often to the well, and the open doors of the State Reforri run,” coe ”Each month of this wild life makes him a little less fit to keep his place in the community He has had his last chance”

Yet there was one ray of hope, for James lived in and out of Boston, a city located near the Newton Technical High School This fact led Jaive Jah School The judge, also of the initiated, agreed to the suggestion, and Jarade failure, entered the Newton Technical High School in one of the special transfer classes

Just a word about Ja; and his father, a rather indifferenthis early years with an aunt, who first spoiled hih, hated hienial atreeable in the extreeable

The people horew tired of his continued truancy and he was placed on a farm near Boston There, too, he was discontented, dissatisfied and disobedient Time after time he ran away to Boston He went on fro their talk and their ways, acquiring a love for wandering and a distaste for regularity and direction Taken into custody by the Juvenile Court, and placed on probation with a fale with a crowd of his old associates in Boston It was at this point that the court decided to send him to the Reform School It was likewise at this tie, found him a home in Newton, and started his life anew in the Newton Technical High School, which James entered with a special transfer class Proular freshman class on trial, James has renewed his interest in education and bids fair towell in the Newton Technical High School Though he does not like all of the regular high school work, he has a full course, and is working at it persistently Heretofore school has never appealed to him--in fact, he hated it cordially--but the school at Newton offered him such a variety of subjects that he was able to find so on those subjects

There are many cities in which every school door would have been closed to James, because he did not fit into the school system, but the superintendent of the Newton schools believes inthe school fit the needs of the boy A fantastic theory? Well, perhaps a trifle, from one viewpoint; nevertheless, it is the soul of education

IV The Help-Out Spirit

As a result of this special proe pupils in the gras in round holes, the Newton High School can boast of sixty or seventy children who co for which they are technically not ready, but into which they h school, two-thirds of them find an incentive sufficient to lead them to continue with an education of which they had already wearied

The Newton High School, recognizing its obligation to serve the people, strains every nerve to enable boys and girls to take high school work