Our School Houses
- Author:
William Estabrook Chancellor,
Superintendent of Schools, South Norwalk, Conn.
In 1906 a commission was appointed by act of Congress to report to that body a plan of a better type of schoolhouse for the District of Columbia. The commission was composed of the Superintendent of Schools, the Supervising Architect of the Treasury, and the Engineer Commissioner of the District.
Two members were, therefore, expert builders. This commission, of which I was chairman, visited many of the important cities of the country?among them New York, Chicago, Boston, St. Louis, Cleveland, Rochester, Syracuse, Springfield and Worcester?and published a report now known as Senate Document No. 338, Sixtieth Congress, First Session. We examined every one of the one hundred and fifty-six schoolhouses of the district. We visited in all twenty-five other cities. In addition, I myself have visited schools in the more remote parts of the country, including the South and the Pacific coast. In all, I have examined some fifteen hundred schoolhouses. This paper is a summary of some things I have seen and some opinions I have formed. IIow bad some of the conditions are I do not like to say. I have too much patriotic pride, and too great a sense of the decencies of public print. I have visited many schoolhouses which smelled like prisons, there being no warrant why either schools or jails should have an offensive odor. I have seen schools where boys and girls used the same outhouses. I have seen schools which were obviously firetraps. I know that most schools are firetraps, but those to which I refer defied even the dullest “common sense”. On the other hand, I have seen a few beautiful, commodious and safe buildings. I have seen even some locations and grounds which were really adequate for the best educational purposes. While I have seen nothing as good as the competent school architect with adequate resources could provide, I have seen approximations to such ideals.
As I have not yet been able to visit all the important cities and all the states, it would be invidious for me to cite any state or any city as either the worst or the best. I have certain cities in mind which deserve the brand of infamy in respect to their schoolhouses, but it may be that there are some others equally bad. Until the advent, some half dozen years ago, of Colonel John Biddle, U. S. A. Engineer Corps, as Commissioner of the District of Columbia, the city of Washington, the alias of the district, was perilously near being the worst city of America in respect to its schoolhouses, partly because of the indifference of Congress, partly because of the quarrel, a century old, between the “Nationals” and the “Domestics”. Since that time, however, there has been a radical improvement
In those cities where the board of education has the power to bond the municipality for schools, we generally find the best conditions, while the worst conditions are usually to be found where the board has no power at all over schoolhouses. To this rule, however, Boston is a notable exception. I can also say that where the board, the city council, or the schoolhouse commission, employs a genuine school architect who gives his entire time to that work, we have the best new schools. Chicago secured such an architect by competitive examination determined by architects, with the result that the work of that city in recent years has been unsurpassed in this country. Four men have done so much more and so much better work for their cities than any others have been able or permitted to do, that they deserve to be specifically mentioned?Dwight H. Perkins, of Chicago; William B. Ittner, of St. Louis; C. B. J. Snyder, of New York, and R. Clipston Sturgis, of Boston. The best thing that any board member or school superintendent can do for his community in respect to new buildings is to buy a railroad ticket and spend a week investigating the new schoolhouses of some one of these four cities.
It is a significant feature of the new high school awakening of the past twenty years that in general our high schools are superior to our grammar schools. They are superior in two important respects: First, they are built to accommodate the pupils and the courses of study, and secondly, they are not structures made of new materials shaped upon traditional lines.
What are the difficulties which seem to bar the way to progress in schoolhouse construction in most cities ?
First, in relation to size of plot.?There is an idea that a large playground for children takes a lot of real estate out of the taxable property. I have not time here to discuss this strange fallacy in all its details, nor the incidence of taxation in general, but in passing I may note two things, that the people who do not live in tenements upon the space devoted to the playground do live somewhere else and create values there, and that because they are forced out upon the periphery of the community, they have more breathing space than if they had been allowed to stay in the heart of the city. They are merely displaced. With those afflicted with taxpayers’ or politicians’ nearsightedness of this kind, argument is, of course, useless. I have known of cases where governing boards actually sold playgrounds which wise predecessors had had the foresight to acquire.
Secondly, in relation to architecture.?Most new elementary school buildings simply repeat the plan of older buildings. The idea has prevailed that so many classes of so many pupils each constitute a school. The problem was, therefore, to fix the proper size of the unit school room and then repeat this as often as may be, with halls and stairways for entrance and exit By this plan, it has come to pass that most schoolhouses are little more than barracks. Building schools in this way is not a difficult enterprise for a board. It requires no thought, but involves simply functioning by habit. Not long ago, in a New England city, a man came out with a letter in which he explained how a certain large schoolhouse came to be what it was. His explanation, in a few words, was that he himself, in his capacity of a board member, sat down one evening and drew the plans, and that next day the contract was let?for eighty thousand dollars of the public money. This school has inner halls without light, the halls being six feet wider than necessary. The reduction of this space would have more than paid an architect’s fee of five per cent. Cubical contents cost so much per unit, a fact that this economist did not deem worth considering. Moreover, because the halls have no light, there is a monthly gas bill for illumination representing five per cent per annum upon a thousand dollars. And, in addition, the building is so ugly as to be a direct detriment to every piece of property near it. I cite this merely as an illustration. Another city had thirteen schools to build at one time, and twelve architects entered the competition. This community awarded a school to each of the architects, the assignment of the odd school being determined by lot. By this happy procedure, the city avoided hurting the feelings of eleven architects, and acquired some fine examples of freak schoolhouses.
Thirdly, in relation to replacement.?Here is the worst of all the troubles. Once up, a schoolhouse stays apparently forever. In nine cases out of ten, there is no economic motive for replacement. Its users are children without power to help themselves. The building may grow musty. The street level may be changed. The character of the neighborhood may be revolutionized. But for want of occasion and for want of rivalry, the building stands. The only way to get an old building torn down is to have it condemned by the board of health, and this is seldom possible. It is too easy to tinker the hulk into the appearance of availability. Occasionally, a neighborhood radically improves, and, when it becomes of sufficient political importance, it is able to induce the powers that rule to give it a better schoolhouse. But these instances make the common presence of the old schoolhouse only the more apparent. We are carrying our schoolhouses now, for all America, at the book-value of $843,000,000.* We have no knowledge as to what they are really worth. Many are utterly worthless. Some are positively dangerous.
Fourthly, in relation to the teachers.?It is an irritating fact to men who believe in living in the world as a part of it, that so many schoolmen as regards practical things are wanderers in a fog of ignorance. I recall an experience of the schoolhouse commission. We had finished inspecting a fine, large building. Our guide was the school principal, a man in middle life. As we prepared to depart, we asked him what the building had cost. He did not know. We then asked in what year it had been built. He did not know that. Finally, we asked the name of the architect or the contractors. He did not know. !Now this was but a small community, and the principal had lived in the town at the time the schoolhouse was built. The people paid him the generous salary, for a rural town, of two thousand dollars, yet he evidently regarded these material concerns as outside his interests. The druggist across the street from this fine property had all these items at his tongue’s end. This may appear a trifling incident, but in the light of many such experiences in nearly every state of the Union, I am not an optimist with respect to the ability of school principals to prepare boys for real life. The principals accuse the superintendents of being long on business, short on pedagogy; the superintendents are warranted in replying that the principals are dead to the every-day life going on about them. I have known principals to give up small salaries in beautiful new school buildings to take slightly larger ones in miserable ?Report of Commissioner of Education, 1908.
structures, and then not be able to tell in what respects, if at all, the latter were superior to the former. It is small wonder that in our cities and towns the more practical board members are not particularly interested in the views of the pedagogues. I remember well one case in which the commission were gravely informed that the old building was really superior to the fine new one that replaced it because in the old building was a tower from which the principal could command the entire recess yards, whereas in the new schoolhouse he was compelled to go down stairs and walk around the yards. This was told to us by a young man, twenty-nine years of age, in apparently splendid health. I cite this illustration in order to make it clear that criticisms of schoolhouses by pedagogues are not invariably valid.
One more illustration will suffice. In a certain city stands an eight-room brick building with no cellar. The principal was sure that the absence of a cellar was desirable because there was, in consequence, no playroom in the basement to be looked after in rainy weather.
I may summarize the situation by saying that the school architects and the school superintendents are combining in America to give better schoolhouses to the pupils, and are usually opposed in their efforts by taxpayers, by traditionalists, and by politicians more or less often in league with contractors. Not infrequently also they are opposed by the principals of schools. It is unpleasant but necessary to add that they are often opposed by architects who occasionally build schoolhouses, but who have never entered fully into the problems of schoolhouse construction.
The first requirement for a good schoolhouse is one so commonly neglected that many rooms in a majority of American schools should be abandoned for classroom purposes. This requirement is that into every such room the direct sunlight should come at least one hour every day. It is easy enough on a proper area of land to secure this result. There are all varieties of available floor plans,?the square, the rectangle, the T, the U, the L, the X, the H, the E, the Y, and various combinations of these. I have seen new schools in which there are northeast rooms and northwest rooms taking their light only from the north, whereas they might equally well take it only from the east or west. Sunlight is the true germ killer. And yet I know a large city school in which the janitor invariably shuts the inner blinds of every classroom throughout holiday periods.
Often, in the case of a new building, one does not discover for years what the trouble is with the north rooms. But as surely as the sun shines, just so surely this sunshine is needed in every room occupied by human beings for considerable periods of time. The sunlighted rooms of even badly ventilated old structures never smell as foul as do the unlighted rooms. Reflected sunlight and diffused sunlight have lost their greatest health value. Every building of more than one story should be fireproof. In order to secure this requisite, it is necessary to spend from six to eight thousand dollars per room. Many cities have the latter maximum now. One of the beneficent results of the Schoolhouse Commission of the District of Columbia was that its report convinced Congress of the desirability of strictly fireproof construction. And since then all appropriations have been based upon the last named figures. I have heard it argued that rural schoolhouses of two stories need not be fireproof. There are one hundred and fifty schoolhouses burned down every year. These fires are by no means confined to cities. Fireproof construction is the true economy not only of life but also of money.
Schoolhouses should also be panic-proof, as far as that is possible in dealing with children, who are peculiarly susceptible to panic. For this there are two requirements. The stairways should be two for the first four classrooms above the ground floor, and one for every two additional classrooms. A building with twelve classrooms above the first floor requires six stairways. These stairways should be of such a width as to permit two people to pass up or down side by side or one up and one down, which means four and a half or five feet wide. Where there are three or more stories the singular stairway used in IvTew York city is admirable. This permits up and down pairs of stairs in the same space, and is a remarkably ingenious device. The other requirement is that the hallways should not be too wide, the width, of course, depending upon the number of rooms opening out upon the hallways. The general standards are twelve to fourteen feet for hallways with four rooms opening upon them, and one foot more for each additional room. It is exceedingly important that nowhere shall there be a “neck-in-the-bottle” construction by which children are forced into narrower spaces as they move forward. Outside doors must open outward, and they must be as wide as the hallways.
Each hallway should be lighted fully from end to end by daylight. This seems axiomatic, but it is a requirement often neglected.
It is no longer considered good school practice to have general basement toilets. The best plan is that adopted in Chicago, where what is known as tlie “tower plan” is used. By this plan the ventilation of the toilets is isolated from the general system, and separate rooms are provided for each group of one hundred or more boys or girls. These accommodations are arranged conveniently upon each floor. Every child needs twenty square feet of floor space in his classroom, and as many more in his playroom. The Indiana standard of fifteen feet is too low. The ceiling height should be at least twelve feet, and in the South it should go to fifteen or sixteen feet as the minimum. It follows that for forty-two children, therefore, the schoolroom should be in area either twenty-four by thirtytwo or twenty-five by thirty feet. The lighting surface of window glass should be twenty per cent of the floor surface, and the height of the window glass at least sixty-five per cent of the floor width. It is no longer necessary to argue for unilateral or quadrant lighting. We have come to understand the dangers of cross-lights to the eyesight and nervous system.
We must have forced ventilation both summer and winter. The lives of not a few eminent architects and engineers are being devoted to this one matter. The air in the rooms must be fresh all the time. It is not enough that it should be occasionally renewed, and it must be introduced in such a way as not to cause drafts. By so-called “practical” people, I have often been asked what windows are for, if not primarily to be opened and shut. Windows are for light.
Our schools should be the molds into which the building materials are poured, not our buildings the molds into which the children are poured. We need many rooms seldom present in elementary schools but coming at last into the high schools. Among such rooms, I would specify:?
an art museum and a science or nature museum; an assembly hall; a music room; a drawing room or studio; exercise or drill halls for physical training, with shower baths attached, preferably one hall for each sex; a library and reading room; rooms for teachers, for principal, for janitor; various shoprooms for manual training, domestic science and art, and the crafts.
This will cost money to secure ? Yes, indeed. Boston has already spent a vast sum upon that finest school building in America, the Charleston High School, which has, however, no playgrounds. It has equipped the building with lockers, so that every desk in it may be used by three different sets of pupils,? evening, afternoon and morning, if necessary. The little town of Naugatuck, in Connecticut, has a high school almost equally fine,?the gift of a millionaire who is a civic patriot. Let us have fine buildings, and let us use them all the time.
We are going to spend a great deal more money every year upon public education in America. I am sorry to say that most of the increase will not go to raise teachers’ salaries. It will go for new buildings. The time will come when for our new buildings we shall be looking for a higher grade of teacher. The general public can see the good of the money which it spends upon school buildings, but it cannot yet see the good of the money which it spends upon teachers. That will come in time.
We are now entering upon a building renaissance in schoolhouse construction; it is well, therefore, for educators and students of education to think seriously and to inquire carefully into the kind of buildings we really need. Everywhere the chief trouble is plain ignorance on the part of all concerned. The financial board knows no better, and the architect, if there is one, knows no better, and the teachers who must use the building know but little more. Once a school superintendent actually defeated the proposal of a good architect for a ventilating system in a new school by saying to the board that “operating it would prevent the teachers from doing proper classroom work.”
I have but three practical suggestions to make. First, there are now three books upon schoolhouse construction which are worth studying.* Secondly, it is eminently worth while to buy a railroad ticket and proceed to inspect such of the newer school buildings as may be within reasonable distance. It will not do to accept these in toto, but they are bound to prove suggestive. Thirdly, schoolmen, whether superintendents or principals, should advise the powers who build schoolhouses in their own communities as to the ideals and standards they themselves have in mind. The attitude, “I will take what I can get,” may be finally necessary, but, in some instances at least, the demand for high standards has been productive of good results.
*Briggs, W. R. Modern American School Buildings. N. Y., Wiley, 1902. Bruce, W. G. School Architecture. Milwaukee, School Board Journal. .3d ed? 1906. Moore, J. A. The Schoolhouse, Its Heating and Ventilation. Boston, Moore,, 1905.
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