Modern Educational Work at Rochester
News and Comments.
Rochester, New York, is not one of the largest cities in these United States, but it has a public school system which appears to realize in prac92 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC. tice the very best ideas of modern education. The annual report for 1909 of the President of the Board of Education, Mr. George M. Forbes, is surprisingly readable. It is so compactly printed,?so much is crowded into its six modest pages of solid type,?that it does not attract the eye at first glance. When, however, we read the headings of one section after another, “Domestic Science for Grammar School Girls,” “Industrial Education,” “Special Problems of the High School,” “Backward, Defective and Delinquent Children,” “Open Air Classes,” “Dental Clinic,” “Use of School Buildings for Social Purposes,” “Clubs of Young Men and Women, Boys and Girls,” we are tempted to read further.
While it would be a pleasure to reprint here the whole report for the profit of all the readers of The Psychological Clinic, the closing summary of ten years must serve to give a “taste of its quality”: “To-day marks the close of ten years of work under the present administration of schools. During this time the material equipment of the schools has been improved by the construction of eleven buildings, and eleven additions equipped with the best known provision for light, heat, ventilation, sanitation, and instruction. Two of these buildings are high schools, costing in round figures $700,000, and two of them extra large grammar schools, costing about $350,000. All these buildings and additions have been paid for or are to be paid for out of current appropriations. But two sinking fund payments of $30,000 each remain to complete the payment for the high schools.
“For the children physical conditions have been improved not only by all the improvements in buildings, but also by the introduction of systematic out and indoor physical training, through class exercises, gymnasiums, and playgrounds, and protection of health by work of school physicians and nurses. Educational conditions have been improved by the introduction of courses of study based upon the scientilc study of children and the laws of their development, utilizing for educational ends their instinctive craving for activity, providing grade libraries to cultivate a taste for good reading, segregating the abnormal children from the normal to the great benefit of both.
“For the teachers conditions have been improved by four increases of salary, the provision of a teachers’ retirement fund, of which the city pays one-third, rules providing permanent tenure of office, provision for leave of absence on half pay, reduction of classes to an average of thirtyfive pupils, ^increase in the vacation periods, and better conditions of work not only by improved buildings with rest rooms and dining rooms, but by teachers’ libraries and provision for systematic professional growth and improvement through institutes and evening school classes. .’?‘“These improvements have been possible by reason of a consistent policy, financial and educational, consistently adhered to, a policy of utilizing the results of the scientific study of education and organizing these results into the school system in such a way as to increase its efficiency.”
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