The Greatest Works of John Dewey. Джон Дьюи
and the latter in turn does not develop shiftless habits because he has not enough to do. But if for any reason a pupil does not fit into any of the usual programs of classification, he is not forced to the conclusion that the school holds no place for him. The pupil who is physically unfit to sit at a desk and study goes to school, and spends all his time outdoors, with a teacher to help him get strong.
In the same way the two-school system enables the child who is weak in arithmetic to catch up without losing his standing in other subjects. He simply takes the arithmetic lessons with two grades. In the shops the poor pupil simply works longer on one thing, but as his progress is not bound up with that of the class it makes no difference. The pupil who thinks he hates school, or is too stupid to keep on going, is not dealt with by threats and punishments. His teachers take it for granted that there is something wrong with his program, and with his help fix it for him.
The child who hastens to leave school without any reason as soon as he may, is told that he may come back and spend all his time on the thing that he likes. This often results in winning back a pupil, for after he has worked for a few months in his favorite shop or the art room, he finds he needs more book knowledge to keep on there and so he asks to go back to his grade. The large number of foreign pupils is also more efficiently dealt with. The newcomer concentrates on English and reading and writing until he is able to go into the grade where his age would naturally place him, and the pupil who expects to go to school only a very short time before going to work can be put into the classes which will give him what he needs most, regardless of his age or grade. The work around the school buildings which can not be done by the pupils under the direction of the shop or department heads, is not done by outside hired help, but is given to some school pupil who is interested in that sort of work and is ready to leave school. This pupil holds the position for a few months only, until he has no more to learn from his work or gets a better position outside. These pupil assistants are paid sightly less than they could earn if they went into an office, but the plan often serves to keep a pupil under school influences and learning when he would otherwise have to leave school in order to earn money, perhaps just before he finishes his technical training.
Real work in a real shop begins in the fifth grade. (Gary, Ind.)
Gary has fortunately been able to begin with such an all-around system of education, putting it into operation in all her schools in a nearly complete form, because the town was made, as it were, at a stroke and has grown rapidly from a waste stretch of sand dunes to a prosperous town. But many other cities are realizing more and more strongly the necessity of linking their curriculum more closely to the lives of their pupils, by furnishing the children with a general training and outlook on life which will fit them for their place in the world as adults. Recently the Chicago public schools have been introducing vocational work in some of the school buildings, while technical high schools give courses that are vocational, besides work in trade-training. Of course such elaborate equipment as that in Gary is impractical in a building where the shops are not used by the high school as well as the grades. Twenty or more of the regular school buildings in the city have been fitted up with carpenter shops and cooking and sewing rooms as well as laboratories for work in science. Each one of these schools has a garden where the pupils learn how to do practical city gardening. From one-fourth to even a half of the children’s time is spent on manual training instead of one-eighth as in the other schools of the city, and in other respects the regular curriculum is being followed. The teachers in the schools who were there before the change of program feel convinced that the pupils not only get through with as much book work as they did when practically all their time was given to it, but that they actually do their work better because of the motive furnished by the hand work.
The courses given by the schools are not uniform, but most of the schools include courses in mechanical drawing, pattern making, metal work, woodwork, and printing for the boys, and for the girls, work in sewing, weaving, cooking, millinery, laundry, and general home-making. Both boys and girls have work in designing, pottery, bookbinding, and gardening. The program differs somewhat in different schools to meet the needs of the neighborhood or because of the resources of the building; but all the pupils of one school take the same work, so that when a pupil graduates from the eighth grade in one of these schools he has acquired a good beginner’s knowledge of the principles and processes underlying two or three trades. This special work is supplemented by the regular work in music and art and this, with work in the elementary processes of sewing and weaving and pottery, constitutes the work for the younger grades. The object of this training is to enable the child to pick up the thread of life in his own community, by giving him an understanding of the elements of the occupations that supply man’s daily needs; it is not to confine him to the industries of his neighborhood by teaching him some one skilled trade.
The laboratories for the study of the elements of science play a most important part in this work. In them the child learns to understand the foundations of modern industry, and so comes to his environment as a whole. Without this comprehensive vision no true vocational training can be successful, for it is only as he sees the place of different kinds of work and their relation to each other that the youth can truly choose what his own vocation is to be. Elementary courses in physics, chemistry, and botany are given pupils, and the bearing of the work on what they are doing in the shops is made clear. The botany is taught in connection with the gardening classes, chemistry for the girls is given in the form of the elements of food chemistry. One school gives a laboratory class in electricity, where the pupils make the industrial application of the laws they are studying, learning how to wire when they are learning about currents, and how to make a dynamo when they are working on magnets, etc. All the pupils take a course in the elements of science, so that they may get a true basis for their ideas about the way things work. There is no doubt that even in this rather tentative form the vocational schools have proved themselves a decided success, enabling pupils to do their book work better than before. Linking it with the things of everyday life gives it meaning and zest, and at the same time furnishes a mental and muscular control over the sort of thing they are going to need as adults while earning a living.
There are five technical high schools in Chicago, four for boys and one for girls. In all of these and in three other schools there are given what is known as “prevocational” courses. These are for pupils who have reached the legal age for leaving school, but who are so backward in their work that they ought not to be allowed to do so, while at the same time this backwardness makes them wish not to stay. These classes have proved again the great value of training for the practical things of everyday life to the city child. The boys and girls who are put into these classes are by no means deficient: they are simply children who for one reason or another have not been able to get along in the ordinary grade school as well as they ought; often the reason has been poor health, or because the child has had to move from one school to another, or simply because the usual curriculum made so little appeal that they were not able to hold themselves to the work. The prevocational classes include the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, and give the greater part of the time to training the child through developing skill with his hands. Book work is not neglected, however, and the pupils are held up to the same standards that they would have to reach in an ordinary school, though they do not cover quite so much ground. The work can be made more varied than in the vocational grammar school because the equipment of the high school is available. Moreover, their ambition is so stimulated that very large numbers of them do additional work and transfer to the regular technical high school work, where in spite of their prior backwardness they do as well as the regular students. Ordinarily not a single one of them would ever have entered a high school.
The girls’ technical high school does about what the vocational grammar schools are doing excepting that the work is more thorough, so that the graduate is more nearly prepared to take up work in some one industry. The cooking includes work in the school lunch room, and training in marketing, kitchen gardening and general housekeeping. The vocational classes proper take up large-quantity cooking, household administration, and restaurant management. In sewing the girls learn how to make their own clothes, but they learn as the work would have to be learned in a good dressmaking establishment; there is a course in machine operating for the girls who wish it. More advanced work teaches such principles of pattern making