Elimination and Vocational Training
- Author:
Gayleii,
Superintendent of Schools, Canton, Illinois.
The American people have committed themselves irrevocably to the doctrine of a universal education. They have created a system of public school education so extensive in plan that it leads by successive steps from the first grade of the elementary school to graduation from the senior year of a university course. Taxes have been levied, buildings have been erected, and teachers employed. This splendid system of education was created and i* maintained to-day that :ill the children of all the people may receive the benefits of an education which will make them more efficient workers in their social and industrial world.
Reports from practically every section of the United States, as given by Ay res in “Laggards in Our Schools,” by Straver in Bulletin IsTo. 5, 1911, of the United States Bureau of Education, and other investigators, show that a very small per cent of the whole number of children pass through the entire system and receive the full benefits of it. The records of our public schools to-day show that fewer than one-half of the children who start in the first grade get farther than the sixth grade.
In a small city in central Illinois last year there were enrolled 2010 children. Of this number 1575, or 78 per cent of all children, were in the first six grades, while 444, or 22 per cent, were in the last six grades. In this school 1803 children were in the eight lower grades, and 200 in the high school. A city in northern Illinois shows a total enrolment of 2043 in the eight grades, 1802 being in the first six grades and 241 in the seventh and eighth grades. A city of south central Illinois which has a grade enrolment of 1538 has 1230 in the first six grades and 200 in the seventh and eighth grades. A city of western Illinois has a total enrolment of 3732. Of this number 417 are in the hish school and 3315 in the grades. In the first six grades the enrolment was 2724. In the last six grades it was 1008. These conditions I take to be fairly representative of conditions throughout this state, and show that the public schools in a very large measure are turning out a sixth grade product.
. These facts bring us face to face with the biggest problem before the educational public to-day?the problem of universal education ill the sense that all the children of all the people are not receiving the preparation for life which the public school is in duty bound to give. It is more important than any question of school theory, or school method, and more important than any question of mere school management. The public school is not realizing the eud for which it was created. It is not giving that universal education which is necessary in a democracy where all have a voice in the management of the social institutions. A short time ago Dr Draper, in an address before the National Educational Association, said: “When but one-third of the children remain to the end of the elementary course in a country where education is a universal passion, there is something the matter with the public schools.”
Why do these children drop out of school ? So far as statistical information bearing on this point is concerned, little is available, and that little is neither very reliable nor very helpful. Some of the reasons given are,?to go to work, to help at home, visiting, sickness, lack of ability, removal from city. These do not go far enough in explaining conditions. The causes seem to lie deeper than is generally believed.
Whenever personal investigations have been made, many parents of eliminated children state either directly or indirectly that the earnings of the children are needed. This is especially true of mining and manufacturing districts.
At the beginning of the present school year a woman called at the office of the writer to secure an “age and school certificate” for a boy who had just reached the age of fourteen. She stated that for five or six years she had been doing two washings a day for six days in the week, by this means earning enough money to support the family and send the children to school. When I talked to her of the advisability of keeping the boy in school, how this would help him in after life, and how he would be handicapped later if taken out now, she answered by stating that she had been looking forward to the time when her burden could be somewhat lightened by his help, but said further that she thought she could manage a little longer if necessary.
I his is only one of the manv cases which illustrate the necessity of children dropping out to help parents earn a living. It is not my purpose here to discuss the social conditions which require this sacrifice of young manhood and voung womanhood. 1 he only purpose is to show that it is oue of the causes for the large number of eliminated children at the age of fourteen.
A second cause, one receiving much more attention now than it did a few years ago, is the ill health of children. Sickness or chronic ill health often keeps the child out of school for days and weeks, or causes such irregular attendance that it is impossible to make the percentages necessary for going on with the class. This retardation means often doing work with smaller children. Ahen these retarded pupils reach that period of life when rapid changes take place, when they cease to be children, they wish to associate with companions of their own age, they feel humiliated among the smaller children and seek to get out of school at the earliest possible moment. These retarded boys and girls are the ones who keep our truant officers busy rounding them up and placing them in school. After the age limit is reached they leave school. Closely allied with the preceding group are the defectives, who because of their defects drop behind from year to year and finally because of ill-health drop out of school entirely. Within (Ik1 last year or so many cases have been called to my attention where children have not made progress in school work 011 account of defective eyes, defective cars, adenoids, 01* some other cause which hampers them in their movement through the grades, and finally results in elimination. A proper medical examination with suggestion to parents will help to lessen the cases of elimination due to this cause.
But we have some children not in ill health and with no recognizable physical defects, who from some cause are unable to do the school work and who drop out as soon as they arrive at the age when the law permits them to go to work. Some of these fail to adjust themselves to the school, and although in everyday affairs out of school they seem as intelligent as the ordinary child, in school they fail to make progress. They are humiliated, they lose confidence, they are convinced that they are failures. These children are usually the ones who are ‘born short’ in some particular kind of ability, most often in literary work, for which they see little use in the practical affairs of life. As Mr. Ayres says: “We know them in the schools as the children who arr always behind a little physically, a little behind intellectually, and a little behind in the power to do. Such a child is the one who is always ‘It’ in the competitive panics of childhood. TTe cannot jump so far as the other boys, he takes a step more in getting across the street from curb to curb when the boys are seeing in how few steps they can do it. He always fnll* below; he falls down?be knows he is <roin<r to fall.”
There is a pretty widespread criticism made by tlie best friends of the schools that they are trying to do too much and that standards are too high; that these standards are such that only the children of the best intellectual ability can do the work, that the average or the dull child has but little show to do it. When we consider that over 57 per cent of our children are behind the normal grade, as many as 30 per cent being behind two or more years, it looks as if there were some ground for the criticism. In an eighth grade in one of our city schools last year 49 pupils out of a class of 110 failed in grammar. The students, as far as I have been able to find out, were average boys and girls of fair to good intellectual ability. They made fair grades in other subjects, but on account of the high standards in the subject of grammar almost 50 per cent of them failed. At the beginning of the present year when the roll was called only a small fraction of the 40 failures reported. Of the 50 who did not fail in the grammar work a much larger percentage appeared and are continning the work in the high school. High standards, strict grading, without taking into consideration the amount of effort the children put forth, together with the fact that many times there is a lack of real inspirational work on the part of the teacher, may account for a larger percentage of our eliminated pupils than we are ready to acknowledge.
There is a pretty well defined opinion on the part of many parents that the schools are not giving the greatest possible service to their children, and that what they get in school is of little value in the preparation for the life that they must live outside of school. The farmers say that there is not much in the school that prepares the farmer lad for living a better life than his father lived. The day laborer and the mechanic make the same criticism, and say that there are very few things in the public schools that prepare their children for service in manual and industrial work. Ninetvsix per cent of the world’s work is manual or industrial, and 4 per cent is professional. Tn other words, 00 per cent of the workers are engaged in manual and industrial pursuits and 4 per cent are largely now, as they have been in the past, facing toward the university, with courses of study looking toward a professional more often than toward an industrial career.
This idea that aside from the rudiments of the three Tl’s there is nothing worth while in the schools for the children who will do manual and industrial work in after life, has a great deal to do with child rt n dropping out of school. Anv shul v of elimrnaELIMINATION AND VOCATIONAL TRAINING. 73 tion and retardation must sooner or later confront us with the necessity of changing our course of study so that it will face toward the actual life of the majority of children after they leave school rather than toward the college or university. The school must take account of the life around it as well as differences in tastes and abilities of pupils. The time has come when, beginning about the sixth and seventh grades, our curriculum must be modified to suit child life. It must take on more industrial and vocational work and look less to literary and professional work if the school is to achieve the thing it was created to do,?educate all the children of all the people. “The ideal of education in a democracy will be realized when it is possible for each child to work to the maximum of his capacity and to secure during those years devoted to school activity that training which will best fit him for his life’s work.”
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