BRINGING CHILDREN UP TO GRADE. By Carrie A.
Syracuse,
Ritter,
N. Y.
Why must we endeavor to bring children up to grade in school Why have they fallen below? Why, since few children are doing all they might, must it be necessary for any to have extra tutoring? Or, if not up to grade, why should they not be left to repeat the grade until such time as they are capable of doing adwork?
vanced work?
Partly must we endeavor to give them the desired requirements please ambitious parents, who wish to see their offspring advance as swiftly up the educational ladder as do the neighbors' children. The main point is to arouse interest, for it is much easier to Once let the child get in a way of maintain it than to gain it. studying and a satisfaction in results of work accomplished will spring up, then half the battle is won. to
us that for many a child there is a decided turnhis educational life, a time when he comes to realize to school. From that time on there is less difficulty. To carry him safely past this point and send him forward, rather than let him drop out of school is one great reason for trying to
Teachers tell
ing point in why he goes
him to grade, lest he become discouraged by repeated failures. Give a child a purpose that he may enter upon some chosen work, and he will study. A boy must know mathematics that he may study engineering, a girl must have a certain training before
bring
she
can
study nursing.
that lack of attention and desire to study, playin study hours, wasting time by inattention and ing whispering other pupil at work or at some mischievous prank, watching some It
seems to me
and
absence from school often with parents' sanction, rather than want There are, of of ability, cause a child to fall behind in school. who for various children are "slow" to this, course, many exceptions defects. The slow from pupil cannot physical reasons, particularly in her the teacher's meaning explanations to the class. quickly grasp While he is puzzling it out, she has gone on to something else with the quicker ones. Much is lost to the slower, and naturally his Have you not interest lags since the connection of ideas is gone. felt a similar lack when attempting to listen to a sermon or lecture of which you could not get the whole? Presently you gave up trying to hear and went to thinking of something else. (134)
BRINGING CHILDREN IIP TO GRADE.
135
Often the children who fail are from families where the elders read almost nothing and the youngsters themselves rarely touch even a newspaper or magazine, so they lack general information. We know a young contractor and his wife who read little beyond the daily paper or a fashion-magazine?and not always those. They seem to know nothing of the pleasure aside from the information to be obtained even from fiction. "No, we have no time to read," the wife says. Once we fell to describing to them a story which dealt with certain phases of life in the Ozarks. They listened very attentively, finally the man said, "Why, I didn't know you could learn about places from stories. I believe I would like that kind." They are
industrious couple, who admire knowledge in others but they do not know where or how to get it for themselves. This is not due to lack of time, as they thought, for they have spent more time in telling what they had to do than in doing it. We know two boys past sixteen years of age who have not an
simply
completed the elementary subjects, spelling, history and grammar being those in which they fail repeatedly. The mother of one told us her son never read anything. When we mentioned a question in the state examination in which he had failed, "State who each of five of the following is: William Jennings Bryan, Colonel Goethals, Elihu Root, George Dewey, Robert E. Peary, Charles S. Whitman, Thomas A. Edison," she said, "He would not even know who Bryan is, for he does not read such things." A mother may do much to help her child along in school, yet the principal of one school tells us that when the child must be brought up to grade he refuses to accept the mother as instructor, though she may be capable, because she so rarely fulfills her promise to attend to the lessons. He prefers a professional tutor who can give all her attention to the work. Even if the mother intends conscientiously to hear lessons, the only possible way is to have a specific time for them with which nothing must interfere. Many things happen in a house to break in upon home lessons,?visitors, social and business engagements, household demands, "so we'll put off your lesson today, Robert, and surely do a double amount tomorrow." When tomorrow with its new demands comes, again the lessons are slighted. Often it is only one subject in which the child fails. Dr. Naomi Norsworthy after experiments with school children says, "It seems probable that certain functions which such
work, forms,
to
as
are
of importance in schoolaccuracy in spelling, attention are
quickness in arithmetic, highly specialized and not secondary
results of
some
136
BRINGING CHILDREN UP TO GRADE.
function. That just as there is no such thing as a general so there is no such thing as general quickness or accuracy * * * or observation. Accuracy in spelling is independent of in accuracy multiplication and quickness in arithmetic is not found
general
memory
with
quickness
in
marking misspelled words." This is rather a broad statement which will bear investigation since we are inclined to expect a child accurate in one subject to be accurate in others. Yet this would carry out the accepted idea that a pupil who excels in mathematics is not good at foreign lanFrom experience we know this is not always true, but often guages. when there is a decided preference for one the other is poor. One writer states as her belief that children do not work well at school because they have never been taught to work at home, that the child who from babyhood has had some definite chores to do daily will concentrate his attention in school. She adds, as are the of evils child are not as far"Deplorable labor, they and destructive the evils of child as idleness." There are reaching in this extremes and it would be certainly matter, interesting to follow out a few examples to see what the best and poorest pupils did out of school hours. Very few children over-study, though we have known a few, a very few, who were intent upon study, to the sacrifice of health, because they set themselves high standards of work. More often children who claim to study a large number of hours out of school hours are not studying, they are sitting with a book or paper before them, merely looking at it or idly drawing
lines, not even pictures on the paper or margins of the book. Mabel, who had to be tutored to keep her up with her grade and her parents' ambitions, took much credit to herself because she spent two hours daily on home work. Her paper bore crude figures, she never was known to
complete any lesson assigned, either long or short, showthat the two hours were wasted. She could have finished the work in half an hour. An excellent story is told by a teacher of how a class of boys were told they might go home a half hour early if their work was
ing
They accomplished it easily, and the next day a similar given with permission to go even earlier if the work was well done. They did it in even less time and the time was shortened each day until they accomplished in a morning what had formerly taken all day. We tried this out with a boy we were bringing up to grade and found he could do in twenty minutes what had taken one hour if he did not want to be dismissed quickly to go to a ball game. It was well done, too, neatly and accurately, if written. completed.
amount
was
BRINGING CHILDREN VP TO GRADE.
Supervised lessons are taught how to study, how
137
what the backward child
needs, to be "Unfortunately many important lesson of all?
to concentrate.
have not learned the greatest and most to do exactly what he is told to do." In some schools far too much work is supposed to be prepared at home, where it is not prepared, for the average house is not a good place in which to study. There is too much going on. The child is allowed to cease his preparation on the slightest pretext. We see very small children carrying home many books, we wonder if it is not wiser to have them do that work under the teacher's eye. W. C. Bagley in "The Educative Process" states that "the mind is constantly open to distractions?it always tends to follow the line of least effort." We all know how that is from personal experience, know how our own attention can be diverted from our work and have seen our pupils' attention drawn away by a dog coming into the room or some person stopping at the door. Immediately the child is alert to investigate this new matter. Mr. Bagley adds that a slight distraction may be essential to the best work, but the
we we
power to go
working among distracting influences comes only long training. "The capacity for work is the capacity for sustained effort. It means concentration, organization and perof manency purpose." These we find lacking in the child who is not up to grade, and these are the things we must strive to inculcate, for they are of more real value in after life than lessons from textbooks. He speaks also of the tendency to revert to type which is on
after
latent in all of
us,
a
return to ancestral conditions?"It finds expres-
in love for
change, the desire?sometimes overwhelming?to do " else.' To overcome this we must develop the "will'something power," and "self-control." "While the desire to do 'something else' is always latent the sion
desire to do nothing at all is perhaps more frequently in evidence," but "always to obey the dictates of interest would mean the instant arrest of all progress." Doris, a backward maiden of thirteen who needed much tutoring, said one day, "We wanted to go down to the auditorium and
play
This is the attitude of them
somehow,
daily
lives?
a
game, but Miss
many
Sharp
wouldn't let us."
child towards lessons, to get The desire and even play first. a
through
then play, or thought are on the side of the game. Yet Mr. Bagley says, "It is safe to say that the point will never be reached when pain and drudgery can be entirely eliminated from the educative process." And should it be, since in after life we all have many disagreeable duties, which cannot be eliminated from our
138
BRINGING CHILDREN UP TO GRADE.
We have heard it said that the valedictorian of a class rarely This may be true of those who simply makes a success in life. memorize what is given, but it is not true of the boy or girl who bears highest honor because he or she has dug it out. The real worker or thinker is not he has learned to work. mean that the bearer is
going to fail by and by out in the world; Carrying off high honors does not always especially brilliant, or that knowledge was easily attained. The child may have had to struggle for what he obtained. We are inclined to expect more of those with a high record. There was the boy with a high record in one high school class who runs a small coal-yard. Now, it is no disgrace to sell coal?we all need it?but some might sneer at that occupation for an honor student, as being not just what one would expect of him. There is more real satisfaction to the teacher in bringing up to the standard a slow child who is trying to learn, than in dealing with those who think themselves "smart." The results may not appear great, but the final victory is a delight to parents, teacher and child, for the critical point being passed the child may keep in the credit to his teacher. A child loves novelty. The lessons that stand out most distinctly in my own mind after many years are the first I ever had in physiology, upon the bones, taught in a primary grade by means
upward path doing
of a little poem. Then, too, there is a memory of the first drawing lesson in a real drawing book, a slate having been used previously. And that recalls the outside of that book and reminds us that teachers never know just how children are receiving the information given them; that is one reason they fail, because they do not comprehend. This drawing book had "Boston, L. Prang," printed at the bottom. Now, of course, that is plain to a grown-up, but I read it as one name, thinking the man's name was Boston L. Prang. It was years before experience in punctuating was great enough for To this day when I see the name of Prang me to realize the mistake. it recalls Boston L. This is not unlike the story of a boy who learned the definition of the equator, then described it as a "menagerie-lion running around the middle of the world." Set the average child to reading a page of history or geography aloud and see how he jumbles and miscalls words, then wonder if he fails, never having caught the real idea. There is much criticism of the examination method. It is going It is a fact out of our lower schools, but is it out of our colleges? that while promotion upon daily lessons is our ideal, there are children who shine in written tests who make a wretched job of a class recitation. Some are "scared stiff" when asked to recite, diffidence
BRINGING CHILDREN UP TO GRADE. and
shyness are poor preparation.
139
often mistaken for sullenness and stupidity and Of course, ease in public recitation is a habit,
but it is one which some never acquire, and a teacher who does not understand character will frighten away what little the child knows. Given a sheet of paper and a pencil they can express themselves. Yet on the other hand there are children frightened by the very mention of an examination who cannot do as well as they do at recitation. The 75 per cent method properly conducted does away with much nervous strain for a majority of the school. Yet if we must have tests every few days we might just as well call them examinations. One of our schools promotes on the monthly work and the teachers' judgment; no examinations at the end of the term. But they have "tests" in every subject during the last week. Where's the difference? Here is someone's opinion,?"The virtue of the examination lies in its power to force strenuous mental effort to the task of
large body of facts and principles into coherent They should be large and comprehensive, so formulated that they will bring out and exercise not the memory for details but the capacity to grasp large masses of knowledge and weld the separate facts and principles into systematic unities." We cannot yet quite do as Gene Stratton Porter suggests in "Laddie," but we might make school work more attractive so we would need to bring fewer children up to grade. "Schoolhouses were made wrong. If they must be, they should be built in a woods pasture beside a stream, where you could wade, swim and be corns
organizing system. *
a
*
*
fortable in summer, and slide and skate in winter. The windowshould be cut to the floor and stand wide open, so the birds and
butterflies could pass through. You ought to learn your geography by climbing a hill, walking through a valley, wading creeks, making islands in them, and promontories, capes and peninsulas along the bank. You should do your arithmetic sitting under trees adding hickory nuts, subtracting walnuts, multiplying butternuts and dividing hazelnuts. You could use apples for fractions and tin cups for liquid measure. You could spell everything in sight and this would teach you the words that are really used in the world." Wouldn't that be delightful, children and teachers?
Syracuse,
Ritter,
N. Y.
Why must we endeavor to bring children up to grade in school Why have they fallen below? Why, since few children are doing all they might, must it be necessary for any to have extra tutoring? Or, if not up to grade, why should they not be left to repeat the grade until such time as they are capable of doing adwork?
vanced work?
Partly must we endeavor to give them the desired requirements please ambitious parents, who wish to see their offspring advance as swiftly up the educational ladder as do the neighbors' children. The main point is to arouse interest, for it is much easier to Once let the child get in a way of maintain it than to gain it. studying and a satisfaction in results of work accomplished will spring up, then half the battle is won. to
us that for many a child there is a decided turnhis educational life, a time when he comes to realize to school. From that time on there is less difficulty. To carry him safely past this point and send him forward, rather than let him drop out of school is one great reason for trying to
Teachers tell
ing point in why he goes
him to grade, lest he become discouraged by repeated failures. Give a child a purpose that he may enter upon some chosen work, and he will study. A boy must know mathematics that he may study engineering, a girl must have a certain training before
bring
she
can
study nursing.
that lack of attention and desire to study, playin study hours, wasting time by inattention and ing whispering other pupil at work or at some mischievous prank, watching some It
seems to me
and
absence from school often with parents' sanction, rather than want There are, of of ability, cause a child to fall behind in school. who for various children are "slow" to this, course, many exceptions defects. The slow from pupil cannot physical reasons, particularly in her the teacher's meaning explanations to the class. quickly grasp While he is puzzling it out, she has gone on to something else with the quicker ones. Much is lost to the slower, and naturally his Have you not interest lags since the connection of ideas is gone. felt a similar lack when attempting to listen to a sermon or lecture of which you could not get the whole? Presently you gave up trying to hear and went to thinking of something else. (134)
BRINGING CHILDREN IIP TO GRADE.
135
Often the children who fail are from families where the elders read almost nothing and the youngsters themselves rarely touch even a newspaper or magazine, so they lack general information. We know a young contractor and his wife who read little beyond the daily paper or a fashion-magazine?and not always those. They seem to know nothing of the pleasure aside from the information to be obtained even from fiction. "No, we have no time to read," the wife says. Once we fell to describing to them a story which dealt with certain phases of life in the Ozarks. They listened very attentively, finally the man said, "Why, I didn't know you could learn about places from stories. I believe I would like that kind." They are
industrious couple, who admire knowledge in others but they do not know where or how to get it for themselves. This is not due to lack of time, as they thought, for they have spent more time in telling what they had to do than in doing it. We know two boys past sixteen years of age who have not an
simply
completed the elementary subjects, spelling, history and grammar being those in which they fail repeatedly. The mother of one told us her son never read anything. When we mentioned a question in the state examination in which he had failed, "State who each of five of the following is: William Jennings Bryan, Colonel Goethals, Elihu Root, George Dewey, Robert E. Peary, Charles S. Whitman, Thomas A. Edison," she said, "He would not even know who Bryan is, for he does not read such things." A mother may do much to help her child along in school, yet the principal of one school tells us that when the child must be brought up to grade he refuses to accept the mother as instructor, though she may be capable, because she so rarely fulfills her promise to attend to the lessons. He prefers a professional tutor who can give all her attention to the work. Even if the mother intends conscientiously to hear lessons, the only possible way is to have a specific time for them with which nothing must interfere. Many things happen in a house to break in upon home lessons,?visitors, social and business engagements, household demands, "so we'll put off your lesson today, Robert, and surely do a double amount tomorrow." When tomorrow with its new demands comes, again the lessons are slighted. Often it is only one subject in which the child fails. Dr. Naomi Norsworthy after experiments with school children says, "It seems probable that certain functions which such
work, forms,
to
as
are
of importance in schoolaccuracy in spelling, attention are
quickness in arithmetic, highly specialized and not secondary
results of
some
136
BRINGING CHILDREN UP TO GRADE.
function. That just as there is no such thing as a general so there is no such thing as general quickness or accuracy * * * or observation. Accuracy in spelling is independent of in accuracy multiplication and quickness in arithmetic is not found
general
memory
with
quickness
in
marking misspelled words." This is rather a broad statement which will bear investigation since we are inclined to expect a child accurate in one subject to be accurate in others. Yet this would carry out the accepted idea that a pupil who excels in mathematics is not good at foreign lanFrom experience we know this is not always true, but often guages. when there is a decided preference for one the other is poor. One writer states as her belief that children do not work well at school because they have never been taught to work at home, that the child who from babyhood has had some definite chores to do daily will concentrate his attention in school. She adds, as are the of evils child are not as far"Deplorable labor, they and destructive the evils of child as idleness." There are reaching in this extremes and it would be certainly matter, interesting to follow out a few examples to see what the best and poorest pupils did out of school hours. Very few children over-study, though we have known a few, a very few, who were intent upon study, to the sacrifice of health, because they set themselves high standards of work. More often children who claim to study a large number of hours out of school hours are not studying, they are sitting with a book or paper before them, merely looking at it or idly drawing
lines, not even pictures on the paper or margins of the book. Mabel, who had to be tutored to keep her up with her grade and her parents' ambitions, took much credit to herself because she spent two hours daily on home work. Her paper bore crude figures, she never was known to
complete any lesson assigned, either long or short, showthat the two hours were wasted. She could have finished the work in half an hour. An excellent story is told by a teacher of how a class of boys were told they might go home a half hour early if their work was
ing
They accomplished it easily, and the next day a similar given with permission to go even earlier if the work was well done. They did it in even less time and the time was shortened each day until they accomplished in a morning what had formerly taken all day. We tried this out with a boy we were bringing up to grade and found he could do in twenty minutes what had taken one hour if he did not want to be dismissed quickly to go to a ball game. It was well done, too, neatly and accurately, if written. completed.
amount
was
BRINGING CHILDREN VP TO GRADE.
Supervised lessons are taught how to study, how
137
what the backward child
needs, to be "Unfortunately many important lesson of all?
to concentrate.
have not learned the greatest and most to do exactly what he is told to do." In some schools far too much work is supposed to be prepared at home, where it is not prepared, for the average house is not a good place in which to study. There is too much going on. The child is allowed to cease his preparation on the slightest pretext. We see very small children carrying home many books, we wonder if it is not wiser to have them do that work under the teacher's eye. W. C. Bagley in "The Educative Process" states that "the mind is constantly open to distractions?it always tends to follow the line of least effort." We all know how that is from personal experience, know how our own attention can be diverted from our work and have seen our pupils' attention drawn away by a dog coming into the room or some person stopping at the door. Immediately the child is alert to investigate this new matter. Mr. Bagley adds that a slight distraction may be essential to the best work, but the
we we
power to go
working among distracting influences comes only long training. "The capacity for work is the capacity for sustained effort. It means concentration, organization and perof manency purpose." These we find lacking in the child who is not up to grade, and these are the things we must strive to inculcate, for they are of more real value in after life than lessons from textbooks. He speaks also of the tendency to revert to type which is on
after
latent in all of
us,
a
return to ancestral conditions?"It finds expres-
in love for
change, the desire?sometimes overwhelming?to do " else.' To overcome this we must develop the "will'something power," and "self-control." "While the desire to do 'something else' is always latent the sion
desire to do nothing at all is perhaps more frequently in evidence," but "always to obey the dictates of interest would mean the instant arrest of all progress." Doris, a backward maiden of thirteen who needed much tutoring, said one day, "We wanted to go down to the auditorium and
play
This is the attitude of them
somehow,
daily
lives?
a
game, but Miss
many
Sharp
wouldn't let us."
child towards lessons, to get The desire and even play first. a
through
then play, or thought are on the side of the game. Yet Mr. Bagley says, "It is safe to say that the point will never be reached when pain and drudgery can be entirely eliminated from the educative process." And should it be, since in after life we all have many disagreeable duties, which cannot be eliminated from our
138
BRINGING CHILDREN UP TO GRADE.
We have heard it said that the valedictorian of a class rarely This may be true of those who simply makes a success in life. memorize what is given, but it is not true of the boy or girl who bears highest honor because he or she has dug it out. The real worker or thinker is not he has learned to work. mean that the bearer is
going to fail by and by out in the world; Carrying off high honors does not always especially brilliant, or that knowledge was easily attained. The child may have had to struggle for what he obtained. We are inclined to expect more of those with a high record. There was the boy with a high record in one high school class who runs a small coal-yard. Now, it is no disgrace to sell coal?we all need it?but some might sneer at that occupation for an honor student, as being not just what one would expect of him. There is more real satisfaction to the teacher in bringing up to the standard a slow child who is trying to learn, than in dealing with those who think themselves "smart." The results may not appear great, but the final victory is a delight to parents, teacher and child, for the critical point being passed the child may keep in the credit to his teacher. A child loves novelty. The lessons that stand out most distinctly in my own mind after many years are the first I ever had in physiology, upon the bones, taught in a primary grade by means
upward path doing
of a little poem. Then, too, there is a memory of the first drawing lesson in a real drawing book, a slate having been used previously. And that recalls the outside of that book and reminds us that teachers never know just how children are receiving the information given them; that is one reason they fail, because they do not comprehend. This drawing book had "Boston, L. Prang," printed at the bottom. Now, of course, that is plain to a grown-up, but I read it as one name, thinking the man's name was Boston L. Prang. It was years before experience in punctuating was great enough for To this day when I see the name of Prang me to realize the mistake. it recalls Boston L. This is not unlike the story of a boy who learned the definition of the equator, then described it as a "menagerie-lion running around the middle of the world." Set the average child to reading a page of history or geography aloud and see how he jumbles and miscalls words, then wonder if he fails, never having caught the real idea. There is much criticism of the examination method. It is going It is a fact out of our lower schools, but is it out of our colleges? that while promotion upon daily lessons is our ideal, there are children who shine in written tests who make a wretched job of a class recitation. Some are "scared stiff" when asked to recite, diffidence
BRINGING CHILDREN UP TO GRADE. and
shyness are poor preparation.
139
often mistaken for sullenness and stupidity and Of course, ease in public recitation is a habit,
but it is one which some never acquire, and a teacher who does not understand character will frighten away what little the child knows. Given a sheet of paper and a pencil they can express themselves. Yet on the other hand there are children frightened by the very mention of an examination who cannot do as well as they do at recitation. The 75 per cent method properly conducted does away with much nervous strain for a majority of the school. Yet if we must have tests every few days we might just as well call them examinations. One of our schools promotes on the monthly work and the teachers' judgment; no examinations at the end of the term. But they have "tests" in every subject during the last week. Where's the difference? Here is someone's opinion,?"The virtue of the examination lies in its power to force strenuous mental effort to the task of
large body of facts and principles into coherent They should be large and comprehensive, so formulated that they will bring out and exercise not the memory for details but the capacity to grasp large masses of knowledge and weld the separate facts and principles into systematic unities." We cannot yet quite do as Gene Stratton Porter suggests in "Laddie," but we might make school work more attractive so we would need to bring fewer children up to grade. "Schoolhouses were made wrong. If they must be, they should be built in a woods pasture beside a stream, where you could wade, swim and be corns
organizing system. *
a
*
*
fortable in summer, and slide and skate in winter. The windowshould be cut to the floor and stand wide open, so the birds and
butterflies could pass through. You ought to learn your geography by climbing a hill, walking through a valley, wading creeks, making islands in them, and promontories, capes and peninsulas along the bank. You should do your arithmetic sitting under trees adding hickory nuts, subtracting walnuts, multiplying butternuts and dividing hazelnuts. You could use apples for fractions and tin cups for liquid measure. You could spell everything in sight and this would teach you the words that are really used in the world." Wouldn't that be delightful, children and teachers?
