Retardation and Elimination in the Schools of Mauch Chunk Township. ===========================================
- Author:
Alvin E. Wagner, A.M.,
Supervisory Principal of Schools, Nesquehoning, Pa.
It is some time since the following table relating to pnblic school attendance appeared in the various educational papers of the country. It was prepared by W. C. Smith, of the Winona Technical Institute, Indianapolis, Ind., who took the data from the report for 1903 of William T. Harris, Commissioner of Education.
Grade Age Number of Pupils 1 7 5,149,296. Children enter first grade. 2 7 2,912,462. Nearly one half have dropped out. 3 8 2,426,263. Still leaving school. 4 9 2,168,956. 5 10 1,288,814. Breadwinning by the children begins. 6 11 705,885. “The call of the dollar.” 7 12 405,693. 8 13 323,697. About 17 per cent of the pupils finish the eighth grade. 9 14 243,433. Enter high school. 10 15 147,192. 11 16 101,903. 12 17 73,596. A very small portion complete high school.
Over 10,000,000 children leave school to go into the trades without a complete common school education. There are 32,000,000 breadwinners in the United States, 2,000,000 of whom do brain work, and the remainder, 30,000,000, are employed in the manual labor trades.
According to this table only 17 per cent of the pupils who enter the first grade of the elementary school remain to complete the work of the eight grades; 6.25 per cent of these enter the high school, and only a lamentably small portion, 1.25 per cent of those who enter, receive the honors of graduation. From the same table it may be seen that 4,225,599 children annually leave school without receiving the training and advantages which the nation is preparing and equipping schools to furnish.
That so many children should enter the various industries to make their living, who do not have the essential elements of an education is a matter of serious concern. The causes which effect this elimination are a serious menace to the commercial, industrial, and social welfare of the nation. It was to try to determine what these causes are, and to study the possibility of their removal, that this investigation was undertaken at Dr Witmer’s suggestion. In trying to determine the causes of elimination the investigator does not proceed very far before he is confronted with the fact that many of the eliminated children at the time of leaving are not in the grade where according to their age and time of school attendance one would naturally expect them to be. This raises the question as to the cause of their retardation, for it is altogether likely that their retardation is one of the reasons for their elimination.
As used in this article, retardation signifies a subnormal rate of advancement on the part of any pupil in doing an amount of work which has been prescribed for a given period of time, and acceleration on the other hand is used to indicate a rate of progress more rapid than that at which the prescribed work is performed by the normal child. If we grant that the normal child under normal conditions can complete the work prescribed for a given time in the period assigned, then for all practical purposes the rate of progress of the normal child represents the normal rate; and all who advance more rapidly than this average are accelerated, while those who lag behind it are retarded. The unit of acceleration and retardation most convenient for all practical purposes is the single grade or year. Teacher?
J. K. Mulligan School? A Grammar Pupil’s Name? James Crossin a Z O OS 3Pt a! 55 o ? .d cs J* Em 12-9 1900 MS 0) ? ?a ai Sc ow *13 ft wo “3 o 3”S O ti <!0 j3>0 O O Sg ?< ? 3”? W HO <X> C 32 a! ? Otf ?a o a o 03 ?
The above is a copy of the blank form which was used for collecting the data. The sheets were large enough to furnish recording space for each child in the room. The cause of retardation was recorded as one of the following:
Irregular attendance.
A somewhat lengthy absence owing to sickness.
3. Changing from one system of schools to another or to several others. 4. Beginning to attend school after six years of age. 5. Slow learning due to the lack of brain development. 6. General indifference. 7. The difficulties which foreigners have in mastering the English language. 8. Feeblemindedness, requiring institutional care and treatment. In the cases of acceleration early start and special aptitude for learning were always found to be good and sufficient reasons. In order to get as definite a knowledge as possible of the situation, the record for each child was taken by myself. My duties as supervisor during the last five years have brought me into rather close relation with each individual cl$ld so that I knew all of them by name and had a fairly good idea of the mental status of each one of them, having on many occasions marked examination papers which they prepared for me in my presence. All the data used relate to school conditions as they existed during the school term of 1908 and 1909.
From the item on nationality was gleaned the following:
Total number of children in attendance, 842.
2. Number of children whose parents were born in America, 507. 3. Number of children whose parents were born in Europe, 314. 4. Number of children who were born in Europe, 21. The number of children of American parentage as compared with the number whose parents were born in Europe is perhaps rather alarming. The homes of many of the children whose parents are not naturalized are not what they should be. This is especially true of those located in the Italian and Hungarian settlements. There are, however, only a small number of children whose appearance is not at all times presentable and in general the children of foreign parentage, who from the major portion of those retarded, advance about as rapidly as do the American children when once they have mastered the difficulties of the English language.
The table at the foot of this page gives all of the children of each of the grades divided into groups according to ages. The numbers at the top of the table represent the ages of the children, and the numbers in the second row represent the number of children of a given age in the first grade. The same applies to each grade up to the twelfth. From this table the following facts were gleaned:
Number Retarded.?One year, 205; two years, 46; three, 24; four, 7; five, 6; six, 2. Number Accelerated.?One year, 118 ; two years, 19 ; three, 2. When the data were consulted for causes of retardation, and the results tabulated, the following condition was found: Number Retarded.?Causes of retardation: Poor attendance, 20; sickness, 16; changing schools, 22; late start, 36; slowness in learning, 52; laziness and indifference, 16; language difficulty^ 123; feeblemindedness, 5. Total, 290.
Out of a total attendance of 842, 290 or not quite 34.5 per cent were found to be retarded. This is very likely a much better showing than would have been made some years ago before the present truant officer, who really enforces the Compulsory Attendance Act, had been regularly employed. That so large a number should be retarded because of language difficulty will probably surprise no one. The wonder is rather that the number should not be larger, especially when consideration is given to the fact that over one half of those who are retarded because of the language difficulty, attended the school at “Little Italy,” where for three terms one teacher had been “keeping school” with over fifty little Italians enrolled.
25 25 80 100 92 112 10 15 31 31 7T1 2 101 101 12 13 87 74 15 27 16 17 18 Age First Grade Second Grade Third Grade Fourth Grade Fifth Grade Sixth Grade Seventh Grade Eighth Grade Ninth Grade Tenth Grade Eleventh Grade Twelfth Grade Total 848
Twenty pupils, or a little over 2 per cent of the present school population, are retarded by poor attendance. The law fixes the minimum of attendance at TO per cent, but allows school boards the privilege of requiring any per cent of attendance beyond this that they may see fit to select. The school authorities of Mauch Chunk Township, realizing that those children get most out of school who attend it most regularly, fixed 90 per cent as the minimum, and with this as a standard the law is effectively enforced.1 The children less than eight years of age to whom the law does not apply do not attend irregularly since their help at home amounts to very little, and they are sent to school whenever the weather permits. This gives them an attendance of reasonable regularity. That there should be fifty-two slow learners or children bordering on feeblemindedness among eight hundred and forty-two is but corroborative evidence of what The Psychological Clinic has often stated in its advocacy of special schools. There are no funds available in the district to provide special classes for these children, even if it were possible to overcome the difficulty of transporting them from the various localities of a mountainous district covering twenty miles square. All of these slow learners acquire the ability to read, write, and do elementary number work before they leave school, and until the population becomes denser or the means of transportation better, this is probably all that can be accomplished.
The tendency on the part of the majority of foreigners is to send their children to school before they are six years of age, the legal time of starting, rather than give them a late start when they are beyond this age. The major portion of those who are retarded because of a late start are the children of parents who were born in Europe, and who failed to send them to school when they came of school age. In a somewhat flexible system of grading, children having no handicap of language or inferior brain development, who start late, usually overtake the regulars before they reach the end of the course, so that this cause of retardation may safely be considered a negligible factor.
Of the twenty pupils who were retarded because of changing schools, all came from rural districts where the term was short, the teacher’s wages low, and the organization which supervision would bring was entirely lacking. Better organization and management by the state would remove this cause of retardation. lAct of May 29, 1907, Pennsylvania School Laws, p. 40. Until rural schools are centralized, medical inspection in them will be well nigh impossible; and it is doubtful if a corps of inspectors and school nurses would ever be able to keep the schools and the community so free from various kinds of infection, that some pupils would not become retarded because of school time lost through sickness. Children’s diseases are ills that human flesh is heir to, and while everything should be done to prevent their spread, when it is remembered that less than two per cent of the whole school population is retarded through sickness, it is probably Utopian to expect to reduce this percentage further. The sixteen children to whom indifference is ascribed as the cause of retardation are boys and girls of American parentage whose home environment is not what it should be. These children (two are girls, fourteen boys) spend their evenings on the streets, and in the moving picture parlors. Individual attention and the personal touch of the teacher, it is hoped, will give them encouragement, inspiration, and the sense of something to be achieved, and by this means the number may be very much reduced.
That there are some pupils in every system who are retarded is quite natural, and in any system which is reasonably flexible accelerated pupils are equally to be expected. The investigation brought to light the following facts:
Per cent of the whole number of children accelerated, 16.6; per cent of the whole number of children accelerated one year, 14; per cent of the whole number of children accelerated two years, 2; per cent of the whole number of children accelerated three years, 0.35.
When it is remembered that in cases of rather unusual acceleration the child has done almost no supplementary work, that usually he has but little knowledge of the background of the facts which in a more or less mechanical way he has mastered, it becomes evident that to be in advance several years is not without its disadvantages.
The law allows children between fourteen and sixteen years of age, who secure a working certificate, to be employed at some remunerative occupation, and during the year under consideration in this article the issuing of these certificates was the function of the civil authorities and not of the school officers. Certificates were issued in Mauch Chunk Township to almost every child whose parents were willing to affirm his age to be fourteen years. This tended to put a premium upon misrepresenting the child’s age, especially among the foreigners whose birth records were not available, and so led to abuses. As a result there were fiftythree children who were permitted to leave school on a working certificate.
The grades in which they stopped and the number of children who left from each grade follows:
Ninth grade, 8; eighth, 14; seventh, 15; sixth, 12; fifth, 4; total, 53.
All but eleven of these children according to their classification at the time of leaving school were retarded. Nine of them were retarded two years; two, three years; and thirty-one, one year. Just how effective this retardation was in causing the elimination, it is impossible to determine. Going to work for these children meant assisting in the family support, evenings without study to enjoy the attractions of the street and the amusement places, more liberal allowances of spending money, associations with older and larger companions, freedom from; books which had for them but little utility and less interest, and relief from the drudgery and routine of the school room. It is easy to see that the effectiveness of retardation in causing elimination when associated with an array of motives such as these may easily be overestimated.
Of the fifty-three children who left school to go to work, some are employed about the mines or the coal companies’ offices, some are working in the silk mills, some are engaged by the tradespeople, and the remainder are doing domestic service. By actual investigation it was found that their wages varied from 30 cents to $6.50 a week in the silk mills, from 60 cents a day to $1.25 about the mines, from 75 cents a week to $1.50 among the tradespeople, and the remainder are doing domestis service. It is not within the province of this article to discuss whether many families are really in such stringent circumstances as to need so small an amount as the earnings of many of these children represent, or whether such stringency is caused by involuntary idleness, or low wages, or intemperance in some form or other on the part of the parent. The parents of all the eliminated children when interviewed, stated directly or indirectly that the earnings were a necessity to the family maintenance, and in most cases the presence of such a necessity was perceptible in the home. Necessity as a factor in elimination can only gradually be removed since .the causes producing it are as complex as our social institutions and as indissolubly interwoven with them. Especially is this true now that the increase in the cost of living is in no way commensurate with the increase in wages. CHART Showing Graphically the Results of this Investigation. Whole number of children Number of American parentage. ? i European born m Europe Number of cht/dren retarded Number of retarded ctn/dren offoreign parentage Number retarded one gear two gears three years more, than three years Number retarded bij language d/ff/cutty ? mental s/owness ? ? tote sfari changing schools poor a/tendance ?? sickness ? ? laziness and indifference ” ?> ?? feeblemindedness Number acce tera/ed one gear two years three years Number who [eft grades fo go t? ysorf The investigation next concerned itself with trying to determine what, in the opinion of the people who employ the eliminated children, the schools might do in order to give these children a better training and a fuller preparation for the work they will probably do, and the life they must live.
The managers of the silk industry responded that the schools can do nothing by way of direct preparation. They would prefer to teach their employes right in the mills while the individual being taught is actually doing the work to be performed or seeing it done by their representative who is an expert. They contend that so far as the individuals whom they employ are concerned, the function of the school is rather to instil and inculcate habits and ideals of industry, honesty, sobriety, and reliability, than to teach the doing of things which would develop the kind of dexterity they require. Let the school give to the child as much knowledge as the time he may remain permits and let it be given in such a manner as to cause the formation of right habits and ideals; let the school do its utmost to attend to the proper development of the child’s physical organism and then the processes and acts requiring dexterity can soon be learned and best be taught by the manufacturers themselves. The mine superintendents and bosses considered that the schools by giving a fairly good knowledge of the elements of geology and physics could materially enhance the interests of the future miner. Those who employed the girls for domestic service in hotels and boarding houses when consulted as to their opinion concerning what the schools might do to better prepare the girls for this class of work, first emphasized the necessity for rectitude of character, but when the idea of introducing into the school curriculum courses in buying, serving, and cooking as well as house decoration and sanitation was suggested, they admitted that such training, if it could be given, would be very valuable to the girls, and would have a tendency to keep them in school longer. The most serious cause of elimination in the mind of the investigator is that contained in the following question which frequently confronted him and was repeatedly asked in some form or other: “What is the use of my child’s going farther ?” “How will the things which it will get in school help it in the silk mill ? In the mines ? In being a dressmaker ?” “I have sent my boy to the high school three years already, and all he can get to do is drive mules and tend switches, what is the use of sending him longer ?”
Of what real use to people who work with their hands is the abstract arithmetic, technical grammar, dead lumber geography, dissociated historical facts, the spelling of words which cannot be used, and the impractical physiology, which constitute the mental diet of the great majority of the children of the upper grades in the elementary schools where the elimination usually occurs ? The things which appeal to the natural instincts of children are excluded from the school and obsolete notions and ancient customs are emphasized. There is excluded almost everything which fits a child for the kind of life that most of them will have to live, and the vast majority will want to live, and there is included a lot of matter which to them is as dead as a door nail and as useless and as obsolete as the grain cradle of their ancestors. Only special schools teach the things needed to make a living. Industrial history, treating of the present status of the great moving forces of steam and electricity, books about modern customs and social usages, farming, millinery, salesmanship, care of babies, the chemistry of house keeping and the art of home making,?all these could be taught to the children who to-day are being eliminated by thousands after being taught to read, write, and cipher.
No investigation with parents can be carried on very far before one begins to realize that a large majority of the children are removed from school because the schools do not give them the practical and everyday things which both parents and children feel the children need and want. The investigator is soon made aware that the plans which the school authorities are trying to carry out do not hit the mark, and that children are wasting time and finally being eliminated because these plans are ineffective; that if children are to be kept at school, such plans and means must be adopted as will attract and hold them. Investigation will reveal the needs, and once the needs are known it behooves the school authorities to modify the system so that these needs may be supplied. In order to make the required changes, it may be necessary to abandon some well established and aristocratic usages and to learn valuable lessons from the correspondence schools and industrial institutes.
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